The Puffin Book of Horror Stories

    I sat down and tried to analyse what it was about spiders I hated so much. Was it their very thin legs or squelchy bodies? Or the fact that they were boneless? (I sometimes wonder how I know all this when I've never got that near to one, nor can even bear to look at one.) For some unknown reason it seems to be only spiders that inspire such blind terror in me.

    More recently, some friends tried a kind of aversion therapy on me. They kept emphasizing the positive side of spiders. They told me how good spiders were at catching flies, for instance. And flies spread diseases, unlike spiders. So really, spiders are protecting us from diseases.

    Someone even tried to make me feel sorry for spiders. 'Think,' she said. 'That spider you killed was probably a parent and now his poor baby spiders are fatherless or motherless. Next time you see a spider, think of its children.'

    But I knew I could no more think of a spider as a parent, than I could an evil spirit. Yet I pretended to go along with it, for I was becoming more and more ashamed of my fear. And although no one ever said anything, I knew what they were thinking: fancy being scared of spiders at her age! And the fact that this fear never left me made it more and more sinister. Was there some deep, dark reason for it? Freud would probably say it pointed to some kind of sexual hangup. Or perhaps I was just plain neurotic.

    Besides, being scared of spiders was such a girly thing. And I am, I suppose, a semi-feminist. I've certainly always despised women who jump on tables and chairs and scream loudly if they see a mouse. Yet, to other people, I must seem as moronic. That's why I tried to bury my fear away. I stopped talking about it and oddly enough I stopped seeing spiders, too. So everyone gradually forgot about it. Even my mum assumed it had vanished away as childhood fears often do.

    Then one evening, shortly after my sixteenth birthday, my mum and Roger went out to a dinner-dance. And they were staying at the hotel overnight so they could both drink and make merry (though they never told me that was the reason). I'd originally planned to have some friends visit but I was still getting over flu, so I said I'd just have a bath and an early night instead.

    My mum left me a list of instructions headed by, 'Lock yourself in and keep the chain on the door'. And before I took my bath I did just that, even checking the locks on the windows. There's something about being in the bath that makes you feel especially vulnerable, isn't there?

    Then I went upstairs. I was already a bit drowsy and my head felt heavy. I decided I'd only have a quick bath tonight. But first I'd lie down on my bed for a minute.

    When I woke up the room was covered in darkness. It was two o'clock. I'd slept for nearly four hours. And now it felt all stuffy. I had this full throbbing pain in my head. I bet I wouldn't get off to sleep again for ages. So I decided the best thing would be to have my bath now. I wouldn't stay in the bath long, just long enough for that lovely, tired feeling baths always give me to soak in.

    I put on my robe, went into the bathroom, switched on the light and put on the wall heater. The bathroom window's made of pebbled glass, so all I could see was the night's darkness, transformed into something strange and distorted. But I could also hear the rain pattering against the glass and the wind whistling tunelessly. A cold, unfriendly night. A night to sleep through.

    I bent down just to test the water was hot enough; I hate lukewarm baths. I stretched my hand out and then shrank back in terror.

    I'd almost touched it. If I'd put my hand down just a couple of centimetres more I would have touched it. I would have touched the largest black spider I'd ever seen.

    For a moment I stood completely still, numb with disbelief. I hadn't seen a spider for months, years. I'd assumed they'd disappeared from my life now, and their terror couldn't reach me anymore. For I was sixteen, an adult. But as I backed out of the bathroom and into my bedroom I felt myself dwindling away into a small, terrified girl again. Had I really just seen a spider? Or was my flu making me hallucinate? For that spider was so huge it could only have jumped out of one of my nightmares. For years it had hidden itself in the darkest corners of my mind just waiting to come back, stronger than ever, to possess me.

    No. Stop. I had to try and be rational about this. Just how had the spider got into the bath? I'd always assumed its only way into the bath was through the drainpipe. That's why every morning I'd check the plug was in the bath. I did it without thinking, a kind of reflex act, like locking the front door after you. So it can't have got in that way.

    Well then, it must have just dropped into the bath from the window ledge. Unless - I suddenly remembered Mum had had a bath just before she went out. And I'm sure she left a towel hanging over the edge of the bath, something I would never ever do.