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Ceiling
Spiders
By
R. G. Larsen
Just before he turned the overhead light off in the Victorian Bed and Breakfast he and Elena had rented for a weekend in San Francisco on Bush Street, Federico looked at the ornate light fixture overhead. Its curving metal arms with bell-shaped glasses housed eight fifteen-watt bulbs, hardly enough to light the room with its tall ceiling and nineteenth century flower-decked wallpaper. His bride of eight months snuggled against him, so he tried not to move until he heard her breathing slow into a rhythm that signified sleep. All the while his heart raced. He felt a sweat break across his forehead. His hands felt clammy. He could see a familiar, menacing shape above him where moments before there had been a light fixture, and he felt the terror of an old, well-remembered fear taking hold of him. A giant, black spider was hanging directly over his head.
As he watched, it flexed it legs, ready to drop upon him. Fear pounded loudly in his temples, and he was sure the spider could feel his fright. He moved his head slightly; it moved with him. He slid up higher against the pillows; it moved that way. His many months of counseling before marriage and the eight months since had been continual victories with only minor setbacks. Now, his lovely weekend getaway was starting to unravel. How could he tell Elena? She had no inkling that the husband she admired was nothing but an eggshell-thin caricature of a real man, a Humpty-Dumpty who might crumble before her eyes. His fears had come predominantly at night, during quiet times when he was alone and could hear his own pulse in his ears. A flip of the light switch could banish them. He became evasive once when Elena questioned him about why he was roaming their house and turning on every lamp. She had become angry with him then. What was he to do now?
Slow movement to the edge of the bed and a quick dash for the bathroom light switch without waking her was possible if he did it smoothly. Once in the bathroom, he could easily justify his nocturnal passage. If he woke her, he could wait there until Elena dropped off to sleep, leave the door partially ajar, and tell her in the morning, “I must have forgotten to turn off the bathroom light, Dear.” Unfortunately, the bathroom was eight feet away. He might not make it. The switch for the ceiling light was closer. As he looked for the switch and found it, tightness gripped his throat. The switch was a finger, moving slowly, beckoning him with rhythmic movements. Touch me, see how soft I am. My God, it was a snake, ready to put its fangs into him as he reached for help. He knew it was poisonous by the way it moved. The bathroom and its light were his only salvation.
He bolted from the bed and rushed for the bathroom, certain that he felt the finger snake reach out for him as he passed. In one movement, he made the doorway, spun, and turned on the light switch. Relief flowed over him. He opened the door, spilling more light into the room and saw the spider not on the ceiling but slowly lowering itself over his sleeping wife. His pulse quickened. Something else was wrong besides the descending spider that had not vanished in the light as he expected it to. He shook his head and looked more discriminately. The walls were not moving, as he first thought, the wallpaper was. The patterns appeared to flow downward. Each of the vines and flowers that had formed what Elena had called a charming pattern appeared to blur, sharpen, and blur again. The snake was still on the wall but had moved down a foot below the switch. Elena awoke and screamed as she looked up. She rose up and stared at him. He saw the terror in her eyes pleading louder than her screams as he slammed the door closed and put his body against it.
Gathering hold of his fears, he turned to open the door once more and saw columns of tiny ants, like red, quivering tendrils, reach under the crack in the door. He poured water from an antique pitcher sitting on a vanity to wash them off him, jumped into the tub, and turned on the spigot. Water roared above Elena’s shrieks. A bathroom window above the tub offered his only avenue. Instinctively, he flung the pitcher through the glass. A couple walking below looked up uncomprehending. “Fire,” he screamed, “Fire... Help... Get help... Fire!” Then as loudly as he could, he yelled, “Hold on, Elena, I’m coming,” but he didn’t. As the floor moved on tiny feet and up tub walls toward him, he remained frozen in place. Elena’s screams had stopped.
He was still trembling when he heard fireman break down the bedroom door. There was much shouting. “Get the hose in here quick. Use that extinguisher until Tony gets here with the hose. Quick, she isn’t breathing.” Water soon seeped under the door washing ants with it, followed by heavy booted men in yellow fire jackets. “Stay there don’t move,” they ordered. It seemed an age before two of them returned and covered his nakedness with a woolen blanket. “Everything is under control now. Why don’t you sit on the toilet’s lid and dry off,” they said as they helped him out of the tub. Drowned ants flowed across the floor under their heavy steps.
“My wife,” Federico protested, “I closed the door. I was scared,” he offered.
“Don’t go in there,” one of them said, “not yet.”
“My wife?”
“I’m afraid she didn’t make it. We’re very sorry. We tried our best. The ceiling spider got to her first and the wallpaper ants polished her off. We might have saved her if it was just the spider; they usually just paralyze the tongue with a quick bite and wait for the victim to suffocate. The wallpaper ants have venom like a fire ant. They are small, but there are so many of them that the effect is nearly always fatal. We killed a finger snake, too. I have never seen so many ants,” the fireman explained.
“I thought I was the only one who could see them.”
“No way, every time an old neighborhood is renovated, especially Victorian apartments, we have an outbreak of some sort. Most of us have seen ceiling spiders, ants, or finger snakes but never all at once.”
“I can’t stop shaking,” I’m sorry.
“Understandable. The coroner will put this down as death by insect, and the police will ask you questions. Probably be better if we had the paramedics put you on a gurney and transport you to the hospital due to shock.” It was really a question, and Federico nodded, yes, as he shivered in the woolen blanket. “We fried the spider with a torch and Jim stepped on the finger snake with his boot. Once again, we are very sorry for your loss.”
“Elena is gone?” asked Federico. Reality had settled heavily upon him. “I didn’t help her,” he sobbed. “She was screaming for help, but I stayed here.”
“That finger snake would have killed you in forty-five seconds with a single bite. Once the ants started their attack, you couldn’t have saved her.”
“But I didn’t try,” cried Federico.
“Yeah, we know that,” said the fireman, “Sweet dreams, buddy.”
Copyright © 2005 R. G. Larsen
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