Up The Water Spout

by Abby Yasuzawa

 

        Knocking comes from the windows but only at night. Each time, wait. Each time, it knocks. Yet pull away the curtains, there’s nothing there. Sit in the bedroom night after night. Just wait, the knocking will come.

         If you're early enough, you’ll watch the clock tick down the hours. The minute hand will move slowly as you watch it, anticipation beating in your chest. At 1:56, you’ll hear it. The tapping at the window will start. It will keep tapping until you acknowledge it. You won’t find the source when you look. Maybe you’ll find sticky prints along the window where the tap, tap, tapping hit each time. The prints come away like silk if you touch them.

         There is nothing you can do to stop the tapping. No bribes can be made. No earplugs can stop it from waking you. The rap, tap, tapping on the window panes will come.

         One day, the tapping might stop. One day, you might see the long spindly legs from the corner of your eye. One day, it might ask to come inside.

 

         And you will let it inside.

***

         Lacy Webber sat alone in her house. She curled herself into her plush chair in the corner of her room and huddled in a blanket like a royal cloak. Sipping a warm cup of tea, she opened a worn paperback book with deep cracks in its spine and set it on her lap. She lazily flipped through the browning pages until she found her old gum wrapper bookmark. It remained at attention in the same spot where she always restarted the book, the pages worn a metallic-gray color where the bookmark rested. She was content under her fairy lights that mocked the stars.

        

Down came the rain.

 

          Her house was silent, save for the rain outside her window. The storm played with the trees stationed on each lawn and puppeteered the fall leaves. It beat down on her roof like a drummer losing a song’s rhythm.

         Hers was one of the many houses that lined the street and formed the seemingly neverending cul-de-sac with its twists and turns. Her curtains were closed even though she liked watching the rain. She didn’t want the neighbors to see her still awake. But, it was certainly close to two, and her neighbors would be asleep. Her lights would’ve been the only unnatural thing lighting up the neighborhood.

         Lightning bloomed along the clouds, followed by a muffled clap of thunder. No dogs stirred in the neighborhood. Instead, they cowered under porches, wet fur ruffled on their backs. They would not bark in the night even as something passed their posts.

          Lacy continued reading, skimming through each page because she couldn’t be bothered to read the long-winded exposition again. She didn’t remember why she was even rereading this book. It was a habit for her to pick it up every so often. She only wanted to get to the chase scene that happened a few chapters away, but the dialogue on page 42 was always so well written.

         She flipped a few pages and discovered the tiny corpse of a spider crushed between the pages. The guts stained the paper a putrid orange. The creature’s spindly legs almost seemed to twitch, as if still gasping for a last breath. Lacy screamed. She slammed the book closed and launched the book across the room. It hit the wall with a thud. The pages were splayed across the carpet, bent in odd ways. Her silvery bookmark landed not too far away from the mess. She had lost her page.

         She pulled her hands close to her chest like the pages burned her mere seconds ago. Her fingers tinged at their tips as she balled her fists tighter and tighter.

        She waited. Where had it gone? The spider was supposed to crawl out from the pages somehow revived. She thought it would limp towards her with its mangled legs, each stammering step a plea for mercy. But it did not.

 

And washed the spider out.

 

         Lacy sat frozen in her chair, staring at the book. A tap, tap, tapping came from her window. It echoed like it was her heartbeat escaping her ribs, showing how thin and brittle the barrier was. She didn’t move, not even a twitch. What time was it?

        The tapping continued, but she assumed it was the rain. It was the only thing she could reason, for the unreasonable was in the room with her right then. How could a spider, let alone a dead one, be inside her book? She had sprayed every baseboard, dusted every nook, cranny, and corner, and checked every bug trap in her house to ensure a spider didn’t get in. So how?

       The sounds of the rain eventually mixed with the tapping. Slivers of lightning would sneak through the curtains and light up the room, casting great branching shadows across the walls. The thunder punctuated the echo inside the room, inside her chest. It became melodic. The sounds somehow hypnotized her into thinking they were her friend, her only companion in her cuddly corner.

 

Out came the sun.

 

          When the sunlight glimmered through the curtain, Lacy found that she hadn’t moved from her chair. She couldn’t remember if she had fallen asleep. She only remembered darkness as her fairy lights faded into the morning light.

          The first thing she did was glance at the book still spilled open on the ground. She thought she saw a page twitch like something was under it. She waited a while longer, white knuckles clenching the blanket draped across her lap. Her legs were stiff as she stood tentatively and shuffled over to the book, dragging her blanket behind her like a child.

          Lacy’s hands shook as she reached for the book, still expecting the creature or its corpse to eye her as she searched through the pages.

         There was no spider.

         She sighed in relief or fear, she couldn’t tell which. It might have been a nacho stain, a knot of hair, an inkblot, a blood droplet. But since she couldn’t find it, she chalked it up to her tired imagination running away with the stormy night. She remembered waking up early the previous morning to try and edit her manuscript. It must’ve been her sleeplessness.

         She placed the book back on her chair, stretched, and left her room without turning the lights off. She’d be back. Relief loosened the knot in her stomach as she descended the stairs.

         Lacy tried her best not to think about the missing spider, the numerous legs that should’ve been accounted for. She forced herself to get ready and eat some breakfast before doing her work in her at-home office. But, all she found herself doing was wondering where it crept off to. There had to be a web or a nest or a hole… somewhere that she was missing.

 

And dried up all the rain.

 

          Her phone pinged with notifications that went unanswered, having been discarded at the foot of her bed. She didn’t hear them go off, buried under her pillows and blankets. Her bed was pulled haphazardly away from the wall and had been relieved of its sheets. She spent the afternoon tearing apart her cozy room, her lovely creative space, for the third time. Clothes from the hamper were strewn across the floor. The chair she was sitting in the night prior was turned over. Her nightstand which was normally dotted with half-used notebooks, pencils, and a semi-functioning alarm clock was dispersed across the floor.

          Bug spray in one hand and a fly swatter in the other, Lacy pushed aside her stack of books. As she did, a small cobweb ripped away from the wall. She gasped and peered back over the books, noticing how densely coated in dust the web was. This must've been where the spider came from, she reasoned. She didn’t know how old the web was. The dust signaled it had been there a while… The spider had been there a while.

           How long had the spider been here, lazing about, eating the other crawlies that made Lacy’s skin twitch, reading her books where it made its home, watching her sleep from its perch with its eight beady eyes? How long had it been judging her for her late-night scribbling and one-man scene performance overhauls? Did it like them?

          She cleared away the cobweb with the fly swatter and decided she had enough searching for the phantom spider. It’d been days. How many days? How many…? She’d lost count in her foggy dehydrated state, her best guess was three, maybe four.

          She tried to convince herself that the spider wasn’t there, had never been there. She put the room back together, eventually finding her phone and its alerts. Many were emails from work, asking for her to submit her spreadsheets or to put in her meeting availability. She checked the time. There was no way she spent eight hours away from her computer looking for the spider.

         No, no, she was simply clearing her room. There was no spider. She just got distracted from her work. Yes, distracted.

        She walked downstairs to get some water and learned she had managed to tear her whole house apart. Her kitchen chairs were pulled away from the island. Pictures were askew on the wall. Every closet, bathroom, and basement door had been opened, their contents splayed across the floor.

         She sighed and got herself a small glass of wine. Morning Lacy could deal with the mess. Night Lacy was tired of searching for eight-legged freaks. As she slumped onto her couch, there it was again, the tapping. It was soft and came from her bedroom window; though, she didn’t know exactly where it was coming from.

         She shrugged it off, not bothering to get up and investigate. Surely it was just the wind. She finished off her glass, left it in the sink, and went upstairs to her bathroom to shower. She could hear the distant thump, thump, thump through the closed bathroom door. The tapping lulled her to sleep when she laid her head down on the pillow later in the night. She knew it was strange, but the rhythmic tap, tap, tap was nice, friendly even.

         Yes, the knocking wind was a friend, she thought.

 

And the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again.

 

        Lacy sat at her desk in her office. She stared off into the night, thinking that it would spark some kind of idea to fix her plot hole. When inspiration did not find her, she continued to stare at her fence line. The dim glow of her desk lamp kissed her yard ornaments with an orange blush. The stars were not out tonight to laugh at her misfortune.

       She sighed and glanced back down at her pages stapled into a thick packet. Red marks were scribbled across line after line, arrows pointed to obscure words, and x’s carved their way through paragraphs. Scornfully, she squinted at the page before tearing it from the rest. The paper turned to confetti in her fingers and dusted her overflowing trash can. What further meaning did it have anyway?

       Her eyes snapped back outside, not wanting to sacrifice another look at the crap on her desk. The orange glow of her lamp illuminated something small in the corner of her window frame. She couldn’t help but steal a glance. It was a tender white mass, the size of a soda can. Stringy bits of silk lazily flapped in the breeze. The nest writhed under Lacy’s gaze.

       She felt the hairs prickle along her back as she stepped away from the window on shaky legs. Her ankle collided with the trash can, spilling the numerous discarded paper balls, tissues, paper clips, and snack wrappers. She bent to quickly collect the trash, glancing up every few seconds to see if the nest had burst open.

        Lacy grabbed the final wad of tissues that found their way under her chair and sat up. She checked the window frame again. The nest was gone. She scanned each frame to make sure it hadn’t suddenly moved. There was nothing there. She shook her head, clenching her jaw tightly, and went upstairs to bed.

        She fell asleep earlier than she expected, but she should’ve known better. Her previous nights had been interrupted by what she thought was thunder rumbling through her window in the dead of night. She couldn’t keep track of how many times it interrupted her dreams.

        Each time she’d get up and check her phone. It read 1:56 once again. How had this happened to her for the fifth night in a row? She’d check the weather, yet there was no rain in the forecast. Lucky her. Maybe the weatherman had it wrong. Maybe a great storm brewed on the horizon and decided her house was the place to be.

        For a moment, Lacy thought of screaming out, begging whatever cruel sky god who loved playing with thunder like it was a snare drum to stop for just one night. The tapping didn’t stop. She knew pleas would be useless.

        But, lightning did not show its face through the curtains. Rain did not patter on her roof so she rolled over, trying to sleep. Thunder did not stir her from her bed. She closed her eyes tight. She threw a pillow over her head. She hid under the covers. But all she could hear was a tap, tap, tap.

        Please go away.

        The tapping stopped for a second. Lacy breathed a sigh of relief. The mighty god of dreams granted her wish and tickled her skin under the sheets. Goosebumps dotted her arms, small legs running up and down her body. Lacy shifted, asleep, crushing the thousands of tiny bodies under her. If only they had time to sink their fangs into her soft flesh, but they disappeared as the sun rose.

 

There was a blooming, bloody spider.

 

          Lacy sat on her bed, tapping away at her keyboard. She had headphones on and faintly played music. Her fingers danced across the keyboard, and words appeared on the screen in front of her.

          She didn’t register the tap, tap, tapping on the window just behind her. Her clock read 1:56; though, she didn’t check it. Her eyes glued themselves to the screen. She had a deadline she’d been ignoring for seven days, seven days wasted on a hunt that was a lost cause.

          It sounded like the knocking of a friend letting you know they were at your door. It was polite and soft. This was not a friend though. And, Lacy could not hear the not-friend at her window.

         The tapping maintained its rhythm, crescendoing after each hit. Just a tap, Tap, TAP, TAP! Lacy could now hear the hollow sound through her headphones. She tried to ignore it; though, it got so loud it drowned out her music. She put her computer down, listening to the window shutter against the force of the taps.

         Lacy huffed, more annoyed than anything. Why was someone interrupting her flow? She crept to the window. The tapping stopped as she pulled back the curtains and expected to see someone duck into the bushes below. There was no one.

          She stared down into the cul-de-sac, hand pressed to the glass. Few entry lights lit their houses and even fewer street lamps lit the street. Surely she would’ve seen someone. Yet she didn’t even see them if they were there.

           As Lacy let the curtain fall back into place, her hand came away with a silky substance that clung to her fingers. It was light and stringy like the cobweb she swept away earlier. She tried to brush it off hastily. She paused, glancing down at her hand again. A spider was caught up in its web, laced between her fingers. Its little legs twitched across the web, the joints flexing and bending as it scuttled toward her finger.

          Lacy shrieked and flailed her hand around. She could feel it crawl across her finger and dance on her palm. She felt a sharp pinch bite into her flesh. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Lacy clapped her hands together, thinking that she squashed the spider.

         When she opened her hands, the spider and its web were gone. She didn’t have any red bumps. She turned her hands over and over, searching for the spider. But, there was nothing.

         The tapping started back up again, a violent rap on the glass. The sound echoed her heartbeat once again, reminding her of the prior night. She got shakily to her feet. The tapping became louder, almost like it was about to break through the glass.

         Lacy stood, unable to move. Her chest felt light, but her stomach was heavy. She toed her way toward the window, inch by inch. The curtains fluttered against the window as her lights went out. The little light from her cul-de-sac street lamps filtered through the crack in the curtains.

         Lacy reached for her curtains and threw them open. Thousands of spiders glittered against the inside of the window, their webs catching specks of light. Their many red eyes turned toward Lacy, studying her intently. One by one, they reared on their back legs, front ones outstretched, like they were preparing to attack an unsuspecting fly. They clicked their fangs in unison with the tapping, each click, each tap an angry beat.

        Lacy fell back, kicking herself away from the window with a scream. The spiders jumped from the web toward her. She threw her hands up. The tiny bodies scurried up and down her arms, her cheeks, her legs. Their hairy bodies scratched her skin as they ran. She squeezed her eyes shut and swiped at the tiny creatures. The tapping on the window now pounded in Lacy’s head.

 

The blooming, bloody spider went up the spider web.

 

          Lacy woke up on the ground. For a moment, she couldn’t remember how she got there. Her head was pounding, and her vision was unsteady as she got to her feet. She was still dressed in last night’s clothes, her computer still open on her bed. She turned her hand over in the morning light. They were as pink as they always were, smooth and unblemished. She didn’t remember the spiders from the previous night.

          She pushed herself off the ground and went to the window. The curtains had been pulled to the ground at some point, and there was a foggy smear on the glass. She traced her fingers across the glass. They did not wipe away the fog. Must’ve been on the outside.

          Lacy left her room and groggily got herself ready for the day. She was thankful that it was the weekend so she could at least lounge around. The sky outside hung gray and stormy. She resolved herself to stay indoors for the day.

          She decided to make herself a batch of pancakes. She gathered her ingredients quietly. All she could hear while she mixed the batter was the tapping on the window in her room. It was ingrained into every fiber of her mind, scorched like a log in the fireplace. The steady tap, tap, tap turned to a bang, bang, bang like it had done night after night. It drowned out her thoughts except one. She faintly remembered the spiders adorning her window like Halloween decorations.

         She took her pancakes to the table. Tap. There was a spider on her pancake. Lacy tried to screech, but no noise escaped her throat. Tap. She stiffened as she stared at the tiny creature that now devoured her breakfast. Tap. The thing picked up crumbs with its front legs, shoving the pieces into its mouth. Tap. She closed her misty eyes and the thing was gone, her pancakes were perfect, untouched. Tap.

        With each tap, another spider appeared. She’d find one in her coffee mug, one in her sock drawer, one under her bed, one in her bread, and one nestled in her hair. She pulled small legs from her pockets and fangs from her phone throughout the day. Tears pricked her eyes each time she found a new piece of a spider. Her throat was so raw from her cries so no warm tea could soothe it. Her skin itched from the red lines she carved into it with her nails.

 

Spun its prey up tight.

 

         A knock came from the front door. It was a wooden knock, not like the tapping on the glass. A gentle tug lifted her body from the couch, something thin and silvery around her wrists. Almost robotically, she stood up, brushing the pieces of spiders from the front of her pants. She wandered down the entry hall, swaying on her feet with her arms outstretched.

        Lacy didn’t know why she was going towards the door. It was late, and she wasn’t expecting anyone. But, her mom might have been stopping by to drop off the old writing journals she wanted for research. She was giddy with the possibility of being able to add new ideas to her manuscript and seeing her mom for the first time in a while. Maybe they’d get a nice dinner. It had been a while since Lacy had left her house. She couldn’t even remember when she last stepped outside, must’ve been before the spiders appeared eight days ago.

        She didn’t stop herself as she made it to the door. Something deep in her mind told her to open it. Excitement lifted her chest. She did as she was asked without question. She unlocked it and flung it open. She stepped into the doorway like she was being puppeteered along.

        No one stood on the porch. She stepped through the door’s threshold and started around the corner to her driveway. No car was parked there. There were no cars parked along the street. The street lamps' light even seemed to be smothered in darkness.

Lacy hadn’t noticed that it was raining or that the rain soaked into her socks. The light tug on her arms stopped, and they both dropped to her sides. The same deep thing in her mind told her to look up–look up and see what was above.

         A crack of lightning illuminated the drowned sky. An enormous figure silhouetted the light towered over the shivering Lacy. Eight long hairy limbs dangled monstrously overhead, the abdomen dwarfing the tree in the yard. Large fangs clicked against each other tauntingly like it was planning its next meal. It inhumanly bent its legs to stare at the girl, its eight red eyes seeming to glow in the darkness as it studied. It beat against the driveway with one of its legs–a tap, tap, tap.

         “Thank you for letting me in.”

 

And ate them in the night.