I psyche myself up and creep to the bed, heart in my mouth. Then I yank back the duvet with my eyes partly closed and take cover on the other side of the room.
Peering over, I can still see it, perched in the centre of the bottom sheet.
Any minute now, it’s going to make a run for it!
Slowly, keeping one eye on the killer monster at all times, I creep to the window and open in. Then I take the lid off the small bin by the tea-making station, run across to the bed and plonk the bin upside down over the spider. Grabbing my empty cleaning bucket, I position it on the floor by the bed. Then I drag the bin with the spider lurking underneath over to the edge of the bed, very slowly so that I don’t squash it. When it’s right on the very edge, I quickly pull the basket over the bucket, and I see the black shape drop inside it. Quickly covering the bucket with a cleaning cloth, I rush to the window with it and tip the spider out.
I slam the window closed, drop the bucket and collapse onto the bed with relief. But as my heart rate returns to normal, I find my head invaded by memories of an altogether more nightmarish encounter with our scary hairy friends…
*****
Anxiety makes my fear of spiders worse. But nothing could have prepared me for the shock of what I thought I saw that morning.
I was looking for my sketch book, and when I pulled open the bedside drawer, my heart almost jolted out of my chest.
Spiders, lots of them, were crawling all over my art supplies.
I froze, too shocked to move at first. It was like a scene from a horror movie. There were spiders of all sizes, some scurrying manically over my new paint brushes and palette, and other much larger arachnids crouched in corners, the length of their legs magnified by a hundred because I was standing so close.
I staggered back, unable to believe what I was seeing, my heart pumping so hard, I thought I might faint. From the relative safety of the doorway, the bedside table looked perfectly normal.
But then I saw movement. One of the larger spiders was crawling out of the drawer, clinging to the handle…
I screamed, and Eleanor dashed in to find out what was wrong.
‘In my drawer,’ I muttered, pointing, my legs weak with shock.
She looked concerned, but I wasn’t hanging around to show her. I just needed to be away from there. I met Dad in the kitchen. He’d been in the garden and had heard my scream and dashed inside.
‘Lucy? What happened?’
Feeling battered by life, I broke down and in between sobs, I told him.
‘There’s so many of them, Dad. How did they get there?’ I shuddered violently and he enveloped me in a big bear hug, murmuring, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get rid of them.’ That made me feel safer, but when I drew away from him to blow my nose, I saw the concern in his eyes and my heart sank. He didn’t believe me. He actually thought I’d imagined the spiders!
‘Let’s go and take a look. Together.’ He squeezed me reassuringly. ‘Come on. It’s okay.’
‘I’m never sleeping in that room again!’ I burst out in a panic. But I allowed him to lead me gently upstairs. Eleanor was at the top, on the landing, staring down anxiously.
‘What’s happened? Lucy?’
Dad shook his head and squeezed me tighter. ‘Lucy thought she saw a spider in her drawer.’
I swallowed. ‘There were dozens. Not just one!’
‘What?’ Eleanor looked horrified. ‘Which drawer?’
I stood in the doorway and pointed, and I watched as Eleanor, with a bravery I could only dream of, walked over to the drawer, pulled it open quickly and stepped back.
I was expecting her to gasp with horror and rush away. But instead, she was bending closer and even reaching her hand into the drawer to move things around.
I held my breath. They must be hiding under objects in there. She’d find them any minute.
But a second later, she turned with a little apologetic shake of her head. ‘Nothing.’
I stared at her in dismay.
How could that be? I saw them with my own eyes. Had they escaped?
She glanced around her. ‘It’s all right, Lucy, love. There aren’t any spiders in here.’
‘Yes, there are,’ said Dad suddenly, making me start. ‘Look.’
We glanced where he was pointing, at the carpet by the bed. The solitary spider remained there as Dad scooped it up in an empty water glass and tipped it out of the open window.
He smiled back at me. ‘There. Gone.’
‘But what about the others?’ I demanded in a panic, my eyes sweeping the carpet.
‘Looks like we’re clear now,’ Dad said cheerfully, looking around him.
‘Perhaps you just saw that spider, Lucy,’ murmurs Eleanor, pointing out of the window. ‘The one your dad just dealt with. But maybe you got such a shock, your brain told you there were more.’
‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘I definitely wasn’t imagining it.’
Their glances told me they didn’t believe me.
‘But they were there. I know they were. Ten…maybe twenty of them.’ I appealed to Dad, not willing to believe my mind had tricked me, because if that was true, it would mean I really was going mad.
He smiled sadly and squeezed my hand, and panic churned inside me.
I pictured all those creepy-crawlies hiding away in little nooks and crannies in the room. They were invisible now, but once it was dark and I was in bed, they’d emerge and crawl all over me…
Eleanor was studying me with a puzzled frown.
Dad crossed to the bed and lifted the duvet cover, then he got down on his knees to look under the bed. I held my breath, willing him to find something, as Eleanor moved the bedside table away from the wall and peered behind it, in case there were more down there.
But their search was fruitless. The spiders had gone.
If they were ever there in the first place…
A cold hand squeezed my insides.
Was it possible I could have imagined the horror inside that drawer? But it was all so real. I tried to tell myself it was okay. The mind could easily play tricks on you when you were as stressed as I was.
It didn’t mean that I was losing my marbles…
I couldn’t bring myself to sleep in that room, though. Eleanor helped me move my things to the spare room – everything except the bedside table - and I slept in there after that.
The spider episode knocked all the stuffing out of me. I was full of the debilitating panic and anxiety that swamped me in the months after Mum died. Except now it was worse because I constantly questioned my own sanity, unable to trust that the things I was seeing and thinking were real and not just some sinister figment of my imagination.
What had happened to me in that room?
I looked up hallucinations online and learned they were common in people suffering from schizophrenia, which scared me even more.
The idea that I might be losing my mind was even more terrifying than when I thought I saw a drawer full of spiders…
CHAPTER NINE
Leaving The Sea View Hotel, I walk back to Mrs West’s house, my route taking me along the promenade. It’s almost seven, a perfect May evening, and the long golden sands are practically empty.
I spot a few surfers at the far end of the beach, taking advantage of the waves that are rising and crashing onto the shore.