Those spider eyes visited him at night. The vivid red spot on the spider sometimes appeared to him out of nowhere.
A thin black leg appeared on the edge of the bed. A second leg inched slowly over the bed’s edge, section by section, followed by a third leg, a fourth, then more, each moving inexorably toward Bobby, the top of a glistening black soccer ball-sized body blocking the moonlight from the bedroom window as a huge shadow rose on the opposite wall. The stark red hour-glass blotch on the creature’s body came into view as it inched forward.
WHERE THE SPIDERS GO AT NIGHT BY JOHN ALLISON 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 58
Daddy—Daddy! No! Daddy!”
My little brother’s cry broke through my deep-down kid’s sleep. I stumbled into his room, eyes still closed. “It’s okay, big guy. It’s okay, Bobby.”
I’ve called him Robert for a long time now, but then, when he was halfway between seven and eight and I was 11, he was Bobby, and he was coming out of yet another grotesque nightmare.
His telling of the nightmares were so vivid that I could call them forth myself. I still can.
As he was slipping back into sleep, I could see one of them like a film short on Oscar night:
A thin black leg appeared on the edge of the bed. A second leg inched slowly over the bed’s edge, section by section, followed by a third leg, a fourth, then more, each moving inexorably toward Bobby, the top of a glistening black soccer ball-sized body blocking the moonlight from the bedroom window as a huge shadow rose on the opposite wall. The stark red hour-glass blotch on the creature’s body came into view as it inched forward.
After about half an hour, Bobby’s breathing became regular, so I went back to my room.
Daylight came. “Hey, guy, you okay?”
“Yeah, sure, I think. You know, Carl, that old shed. You think Daddy would’ve done something? Maybe I don’t want to go back there. I said I did, but maybe, well, maybe not so much now.”
Our mother moved to a downtown condo and sold the big place outside the city soon after first I and then my brother left for college. Now, years later, back in Austin for a music festival, my old home tugged at me. After calling ahead and getting permission from the owner, I prowled around. The shed remained, no better and no worse, and most things looked pretty much the same as they had three decades before. Memories filled me.
As I remember, our parents—Elizabeth and Alex Landreth—bought the big house on 10 acres outside Austin just after Daddy began his new job at the university. In November or December, two or three months after we moved to the new place from Berkeley where he had also been a professor, one of my solo explorations discovered that creepy, very cool old shed. A little later, probably January, I took my little brother to the shed so I could impress him with what I’d discovered.
He and I were a study in contrasts. I was as big and strong for my age as he was small and spindly for his. I‘ve always had olive skin and dark brown hair, while he was fair with hair the color of ripe wheat that has darkened maybe half a shade in the years since. After he followed me to the shed, I ripped away some underbrush and broke off a couple of brittle, low-hanging cedar branches partially obscuring the shed’s doors. We crawled under and through the vegetation that remained. The scratches on my hands, arms, and face had healed since the first time I came, and this time I was able to get us both through without damage. Removing the unfastened, heavily corroded padlock and pulling back the hasp, I tugged open one of the double doors and then the other, not all the way but enough for us to get a good look inside when I flicked on the blue and red Spiderman flashlight and scanned it about the interior. Glistening black pearls hung in loosely woven, ragged webs stretched between corners of the shed and among scattered boards, buckets, and crates. Bobby sucked in his breath, not exhaling for a good three seconds.
We moved inside for a closer look. Bobby was mesmerized by the spiders’ black sheen and, on their bellies, the sharply defined red splotches. He pulled out a magnifying glass he carried in his hip pocket, and close up saw the spider’s two rows of bright, soulless eyes. Bobby suddenly bolted from the shed.
Afterwards he told me those spider eyes visited him at night. The vivid red spot on the spider sometimes appeared to him out of nowhere.