The Spider Catcher

  Chapter 9

  As Ember wavered, standing over the toilet, she knew the nausea was coming again. It was the middle of the day, and she was exhausted. Days had become her nights, and for the last three, she had been too sick to even sleep. She couldn’t remember what she had eaten to make her so sick, but doubtless, the alcohol was contributing to the situation.

  It came up in clots. Sometimes, there was blood. Once, she thought that there was fur, and for one horrifying moment, she could have sworn that she had vomited up a small family of white mice.

  Impossible, her brain had said, impossible, impossible…

  And she flushed. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the world for her to have done something like that. Her eyes were swollen and tired, and she was probably still drunk, anyways.

  Sometimes, Gina would stand by the bathroom door and just watch her. She had stopped talking to her for the most part. Once, when Ember had coughed and screamed in horror at the red mess sliding back up her throat, Gina had rushed in and held her as they both sat on the cold tile floor.

  Stroking her hair like she was a small child again, and using wads of toilet paper to clean her face, her voice had been incredibly steady. “It’s not yours, baby, it’s not your blood. Just get it all out, and you’ll feel better.”

  Afterwards, she would crawl back to her room, and under a stack of blankets nearly as thick as her mattress. She could feel the sun beating down on her, through the roof, the boarded up window, and all of her blankets. It made her head throb, and the thought that the mice were inside her, scratching against her skull to get out, wouldn’t let her sleep.

  Even in fits and naps, the sleep always came, and as her headaches burned away into darkness, night always came. Sometimes, she was too sick to go out, but it only took time to heal. When she was sick, Gina would sit with her, and sometimes Thalia would stare at her from the open door, her eyes wide with wonder at the living corpse that her sister had become.

  When Gina was cooking the meals, she would sneak in to see her sister, perching at the foot of the bed like a nervous sparrow.

  “Ember?” she whispered, leaning over the mountain of blankets. “Are you awake?”

  Her voice was barely loud enough to make it through all of the insulation. “Hm.”

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Anything to make you feel better?”

  Ember rolled on to her back, staring at the spider that had moved into her room sometime in the last week. He had built a web in the corner above her bed, and occasionally hung within the distance of her breath, dangling from a gossamer thread. She would press her lips close together and breathe out slowly, creating a little wind for the spider, and he would sail through the air with his legs twirling like a ballerina.

  Spiders kept the nightmares away, and she was appreciative for her little friend. When she looked at him, she felt peaceful; but when Thalia asked questions about what would make her happy again, it brought her thoughts crashing down again.

  “Nothing,” she would whisper back at her. “I don’t need anything, Lia.”

  And Thalia would look at the floor and nod, and get up and leave. As night drew nearer, and the headache broke, Ember felt strong enough to be out of bed. She would go down to the kitchen, have a glass of water, heat up some soup, and then dress for the night. But on this night, when she went up to put her jeans on, she found a piece of paper tucked into her pocket.

  She stared at it, scrawled in her own handwriting on what looked like an old bar napkin. She remembered being at the bar the night before, but couldn’t say when this had happened.

  You came back for your family.

  He made you eat a rabbit.

  Don’t trust Acton Knox.