I know their game.
I know her game.
Creeping out there and staring through holes in the walls.
Does she think I cannot hear her whispering those profane things?
March
That puppet-spider baby is crying.
It cries out in the corridor, creeping on those long black legs. It is hungry. It wants its milk. It sucks the milk from things wrapped in silk high up in its web.
I hear it nursing at night.
It wishes to nurse on me, little puppet-spider baby. I saw it through a hole in the wall and it saw me. It has many eyes and they are all black.
It needs to nurse.
I will let it nurse on me, sweet evil puppet-spider baby. Yes, yes, yes. It scratches over my bare belly. It is hairy and plump and gurgling. I let it nurse at my breast. Its teeth are very sharp. Its mouth is slimy.
Sucking and sucking.
The feel of its tongue lapping makes me scream. I like to scream.
March?
Creeping in the corridor.
I hear her creeping even now.
She has more than one child and they all have many legs. A thousand creeping legs.
I have only two.
But I have ten fingers.
I can make them crawl.
See how they crawl.
Over walls and over faces.
Lovely spider legs, see them creep.
March 27 i creep up walls robert does not like it does not like what i have webbed up tasty things in webs yes i have many legs with which i creep and crawl up walls and down walls over floors and under cabinets it is such good fun the face of my lover: flyblown and grinning, soft and pulpy with white bone bearing teeth marks. i paint his face with kisses he tastes sweet beneath the cobwebs i have spun over him he is safe in a gray coccoon. she will not have him i have chased her and her leggy babies down below for i am queen and i eat children with yellow snapping teeth i eat spider babies their meat is rich their blood brown like gravy cold gravy i seek dark damp corners to spin my webs places i can creep and crawl and slink i dream of basements and cellars and webby places i hang over Robert he is my lover so i cocooned him laid my spider eggs in him creeping always creeping waiting for my spider babies to be born when they are born we will eat my lover tastes so sweet robert like candied meats love his taste like candied meats i creep and i wait
The entries as such ended there.
Cook was sweating and shaking. It was all the mad ramblings of an insane mind, yet he almost half-believed it, crazy and improbable as it all sounded. His heart was pounding and he could not hold the book still. He was angry. Angry at a God that would allow this woman to become a lonely, deranged thing that maybe had to eat her husband’s corpse to survive. Angry at Saks for showing it to him and maybe angry at that woman herself for invading his mind, spinning lustrous webs in the corners where things breathed and crept and light would never touch. He did not want to see these things. Did not want to ever feel them.
“You’re not done yet,” Saks said.
“No, you’re fucking wrong, I am done,” Cook said, filled with hatred now. “You can stay if you want, but I’m going.”
“No, you’re not,” Saks said, blocking his way. “There’s more. Just look at it.”
Cook toyed with the idea of hammering his way through Saks with his fists, but instead he just picked up the book. Blank page after blank page. All of them yellowed and going to pieces.
What was the point?
Then he saw. More writing.
A single sentence repeated, but at the intervals of a year each time:
March 27, 1956
Another lovely day!
March 27, 1957
Another lovely day!
March 27, 1958
Another lovely day!
In fact, the rest of the diary was just this repeated again and again every March on the anniversary of Lydia Stoddard’s madness. Something about that really sucked the wind out of Cook. The funny thing was, the real disturbing thing, was that these cryptic little entries continued right to the present year… but went no farther. As if Lydia’s ghost showed up once a year to scribble in the diary.
“She must… she must have written these entries back in 1955,” Cook said, knowing it sounded thin as a sliver.
“And she just happened to pick this year as the year to stop?”
“C’mon, Saks. You’re a little too hard-headed to believe in ghosts.”
Saks smiled. “Ghosts wasn’t what I was thinking. Not exactly.”
“Then what were you thinking?”
But Saks did not answer that. “Do you know what today’s date is?”
“No. My watch stopped working-”
“Well, my digital works just fine. Today is the twenty-seventh of March.”
Cook felt a chill on his arms. Sure, it was easy to believe absurd, frightening things like that and especially in this cabin with the drifting dust and age and that oppressive atmosphere that just seemed to drain you dry minute by minute. But Cook wasn’t going there.
He said, “Maybe… maybe Makowski forged this shit.”
“You don’t believe that, Cook, and neither do I,” Saks said. “Unless you’re willing to take a real wild leap here and say he wrote the entire thing. But that’s a woman’s writing and we both know that. The entries from the fifties are faded, the newer ones pretty fresh. .. now how would that fucking idiot pull that off?”
Saks was right. The forgery angle was silly… but there had to be an explanation, didn’t there? Or was it just this place? This goddamn nameless dimension where anything went. Because, deep down, that’s what he was thinking. Lydia Stoddard went slowly and completely insane here. All alone, her mind went to pieces. Who could blame her? She was long dead, certainly, but what if her madness was not? What if it came back once a year? If that was even remotely possible, they were all in serious danger.
Saks said, “You heard what that freak Makowski was saying, stuff about her coming back and her not wanting us here. Jesus, Cook, I’m getting some ideas here and I don’t like ‘em.”
“We better get back. I don’t like the idea of leaving the others alone.”
Saks picked up the diary, paged through it. “What the hell?” he said. He dropped the book on the desk, backing away from it.
Cook knew and did not know. He picked up the diary, thought it felt warm in his hands, like something alive. He saw today’s entry.. . then he saw something else which had not been there five minutes before. What he was seeing could not possibly be… but it was there, glaring and fresh, daring him to talk it away with nonsense like logic and reason. But Cook could not talk it away, could not make sense of it, he could do nothing but stand there, terror oozing out of him like bile… hot and sour and rancid-smelling. He could hear himself breathing with a dry, rattling sound like a dying breath blown through straw.
He kept staring at the diary and what he saw, just beneath what had been the last entry, was this:
March 27 i am waiting i am waiting waiting waiting hear me creeping i am coming now
Cook dropped the diary with a little cry of revulsion, for in his mind, he suddenly saw it sprout segmented legs, becoming not a book, but something bloated and pale and hairy. Something that like to creep.
He looked over at Saks and Saks’s face had gone bloodless, his eyes were huge and wet and filled with a wild
