Peter Lear
Spider Girl
1
Alone in the cellar of a derelict apartment building in New York’s East Village, Sarah Jordan watched a spider on a web. It had not moved in twenty minutes. Nor had Sarah. She had waited. Her eyes had adjusted to the faint light provided by a flashlight with a red bulb.
The male spider ventured a foreleg toward the next strand. Sarah kept as motionless as the female waiting in the crevice between two bricks where the web was anchored. The ritual had resumed.
The male’s approach is infinitely cautious. He negotiates the web in a series of delicate movements and spins a special thread on which to coax the tenant female. He telegraphs his presence by tapping the signal thread that leads to her lair. She studies the vibrations. One fault in the rhythm, one spasm of panic, and she reacts as if he is prey, she kills him savagely.
Sarah, twenty-three, wore cord pants, two double-knit sweaters, and a leather jacket for this. The dirt and darkness of the cellar did not trouble her. She combated the cold with layers of clothes, things more practical than pretty, thermal underclothes, and woolen socks that reached her thighs. She kept her red-gold hair tied in a brown silk scarf her father had thrown out three years ago. He did not know she had hooked it out of the plastic Salvation Army sack. Probably he would not notice if he saw her wearing it. In Queens last summer he had passed her on the street. She had shouted after him, and he had continued walking as if she were some streetwalker calling him Daddy out of malice.
The gutted blocks of the Lower East Side were ideal locations for Sarah’s work. The arsonists and vandals had practically destroyed the ecology. Here it was, rising from ashes. The spiders were pioneers.
The male diligently worked at the thread he had inserted in the web, strengthening it to take the weight of the heavier female. Abruptly he plunged downward and was suspended on a line below the web. This was not an accident. The female had emerged speedily from her crevice.
She moved straight to his silk bridge and examined it. In a moment she let herself hang from it in a submissive attitude, legs loosely bent.
The male, when he saw this, toiled slowly up his line and climbed onto the web. He approached her with stealth until only an inch separated the pair. The next move would be crucial. There was a point when caution would succumb to passion. A crazy, perilous scramble to coition.
From another world, someone said, “Chicken.”
The voice of a child, thick with the contempt of one scrap of half-formed humanity for another.
“You’re chicken. Scared. Go call your momma, Henry Dickinson!”
“Lay off, will you, Ruby?” put in another. “We don’t know if he’s chicken. Give him a chance. You’ll do it, won’t you, Henry?”
Sarah now recalled some children playing on the next block. They had been swinging Tarzan-style on ropes suspended inside the shell of a burned-out house. She had walked another block east to find a place free of disturbance. It was bad luck that they had come this way. She could hear the scuff of their feet directly overhead.
There was no movement on the web.
“Tell her you’ll do it, Henry. Show her you ain’t scared. Each of us guys had to do it sometime.”
“He’s scared out of his shoes. Anyone can see that.”
“Ruby, will you get off his back? Listen to me, man. You want to join the Demons, right? Okay. Prove you ain’t chicken by going down there in the dark while we shut the door and count to a hundred. Stick it out and don’t holler and you’re in.”
“He won’t do it. He’s terrified of the dark.”
“Who asked for your opinion, Janet Delac?”
“There could be rats down there.”
“Spiders.”
“Spooks.”
“Jeez — that’s just the point. You ready, Henry?”
A thin voice asked, “How do I know you will open the door when you reach a hundred?”
“You have to trust us, don’t you, jerk? If you want to join us, you have to trust us.”
“Okay. Start counting.”
“Not till we shut that door.”
Already Sarah had reached for the switch on the flashlight. If that terrorized child was coming down into the cellar, the blood-red bulb would likely shock him into hysteria. The discovery that the cellar was occupied could bring on a fit.
She heard the door being tugged open. Gray light burst in. Her heart pounding, she looked for someplace to hide.
“All the way down, Henry. No standing on the top step.”
“I heard you.”
The door slammed.
Sarah had backed into the darkest corner, to the left of the stairs. The cellar was rectangular, without recesses or furniture to give cover. She pressed against the wall, feeling its chill even through her layers of clothes. She could see without difficulty. Please God, the boy’s eyes would take time to adjust.
Upstairs they were counting in chorus. She heard him descend the stone stairs. His steps kept time with the count, as if that gave him courage. Twelve, and Henry Dickinson was in view.
He was black, not much above four feet tall, and wearing a light-colored T-shirt and jeans. From the way his hands groped in front of him, she knew he could see very little. After reaching forward with one foot to make sure he had reached floor level, he stopped, looked over his shoulder both ways, folded his arms, and began to whistle. There was no tune in it.
Sarah breathed more easily. The boy was facing away from her and the count had reached thirty.
At forty-five, Henry Dickinson stopped whistling and inclined his head slightly to one side as if he could make out something ahead. He unfolded his arms and rubbed the side of his neck. He took two steps forward.
In front of him was a pile of coal. On it, in the place where Sarah had left it, was the flashlight. He reached forward and pressed the switch.
He must have known what it was, but he was startled. He gave a strangled shout of surprise and stepped away.
If he turned around, he would see Sarah for certain.
He did not turn around. He lifted one foot off the floor and pulled off his sneaker. Gripping it tightly around the heel, he raised it above shoulder level.
It was not the red bulb that had alarmed Henry Dickinson. It was the small male spider, now alone on the web.
She could not allow it to happen.
Without a word Sarah was on him, one hand taking the wrist that was poised to deliver the death blow, the other clamping his mouth. So impetuous was the action that the back of the boy’s head crushed into her breast and she gasped for breath.
In as calm a voice as she could raise, and with her hands still gripping Henry Dickinson, Sarah whispered, “It’s okay. No one’s going to hurt you. I didn’t want to scare you, but I couldn’t let you kill the spider. Promise you’ll keep quiet and I’ll tell you the reason. I want you to let go of the sneaker to show me you heard and understand. Okay?”
He dropped it at once.
She released his wrist. “Now, shape up. I’m nothing to be scared of. Just take it easy and we’ll talk.” With her hand still lightly over his mouth, she moved around to face him. Then she withdrew the hand.
Henry Dickinson’s forehead had creased and his lips were pressed into the shape of a dime. His toes located the sneaker. Without taking his eyes off Sarah, he lifted his foot and helped the heel inside.
“You hate spiders?”
He made no reply.
“Just don’t like being down here with one?”
A shrug.
“I’m going to let you in on something. If anyone tells you they have never been scared by a spider, they’re lying. Don’t buy it. I’ve seen a gorilla scream for his life when a spider appeared in his cage. A full-grown gorilla, Henry. People are no different.”