There was a spider above her head. Its eight legs worked tirelessly, inching its way across the web, checking each line. It didn’t flinch when a glass smashed. It didn’t pause its work when there was a scream. Not once did the tiny creature stop to wonder why this little girl and her sister were huddled beneath it. In that dark, dusty enclosed space of the cupboard under the stairs, they were in its domain and yet still, it didn’t care. Why should it? No one else cared for Erika Waterstone.
Except for her sister. Brave, teenage Nadine who wound her arms around Erika’s small frame. She didn’t see the spider any more than it saw her. But Erika saw it. She watched each of its graceful, deliberate moves as it wove its web, unperturbed by them or the yelling from the hallway. The silk lines stretched from each stair alcove creating a circular net. The longer Erika observed, the more the web became whole. The spider was building something and nothing would get in her way.
Pots and plates smashed. Her mutter shrieked her terrible accusations. Her papa argued the best he could. The house shook from the thunderous row. Tears landed on Erika’s bare neck. They didn’t belong to her. They were Nadine’s. They came quietly, stifled as though she feared them. Erika’s eyes, however, were dry.
“Alles wird gut,” Nadine panted in a whisper. Erika nodded in reply. She didn’t believe her.
It doesn’t feel okay.
It all feels wrong.
“Es wird gut. Halte durch.”
Hold on…
To what?
The ground was shifting like sand beneath Erika’s feet. All that she had once relied on, trusted, was fading, slipping through her fingers. She didn’t know where she would land when the world stopped spinning. The spider above her was the only constant now. It had a job to do and nothing would get in her way.
Enid stroked back the long greasy strands of hair from Erika’s face. “As long as we are together, nothing will ever happen to you, verstehst du?”
Erika did understand. Her sister was all that stood between her and fear. Not the eight-legged kind of fear that lived in a cupboard. But the real horror that existed beyond a door. Horror that Nadine could never have protected her from, even if she had lived.
Hillside Academy: October (Volume II) Copyright © 2024 Jodie May Mullen