Ghost Stories of a Librarian: The Ash Tree (The Spiders)

Here's my take on Gramp's "The Ash Tree" -- hope it gives you the creepies and the crawlies -- or, at least, doesn't "bug" you!

“Squish it, squish it,” Diana screeched.

The young librarian stood cowering, staring up at a black speck on an interior wall of the suburban branch library.

The black speck was a cricket, a male which was joyfully chirping away, unaware of its immanent peril.

“Oh miss, you don’t want to do that,” said Andy the maintenance man, trying not to laugh. “Crickets are good luck. Here, let me catch it and put it outside in the grass.” He stood a ladder next to the wall and taking a piece of photocopier paper and a Styrofoam cup, quickly captured – and transported – the offending insect.

Photo Credit:Toby Hudson

 Diana hated “bugs” – insects of any species -- a weakness her co-workers sometimes exploited. Books about creepy crawlies and other icky things were sometimes left piled up on the circulation desk for her to check in (it made her uncomfortable to be even handling  such disgusting items) or strategically placed, sprawled open, to reveal an especially gross two-page illustration of some especially repellant cootie. She knew what they were doing but said nothing, as she didn’t want to give the twits the satisfaction of knowing how much they got under her skin.

After all, you couldn’t expect much civility from people with Grade Twelve educations.

Pictures were bad enough, but actual vermin – especially spiders -- almost drove her to hysterics. So, when she saw the Cricket snug on the brick wall, she ran to find Andy, the only one who seemed to indulge her foible with sympathy.

But spiders were the worst.

For some reason, the branch attracted them; they were seen climbing walls, crawling across the ceiling or scurrying over the carpet. Webs were found in the stacks and strange translucent creatures, thin as Daddy Long-Legs, were sometimes observed squeezing their way out of the insides of the circulation or catalogue terminals. This was odd, as it was a fairly new building, but perhaps that was what attracts them, Diana told herself.

But she didn’t share her thoughts with her colleagues – until the day she saw IT.

IT was an ugly, gargantuan spider, covered with dark, grizzled hair or fur the colored British Racing Green. It squatted in the middle of the check-out counter, flexing its multiple legs in a truculent manner, as if daring her to try and make it go away.

“Could you…?” she began to ask, but her co-worker cut her off with, “I think this is up to you – after all, you are the shift supervisor.”

Diana realized she would have to deal with this without any help. Darting around the end of the counter -- in case the thing tried to attack her -- Diana snatched up the A volume of World Book and dropped it with a thud on the offensive beastie.

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” her colleague said with an aggrieved tone.

.

“What?” said Diana.

“It’s gonna rain for sure now.”

“Oh, that’s just an old superstition,” Diana said sharply. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

“Well, we’ll soon find out if it’s true or not, won’t we? And that’s not the only reason I’ve heard you shouldn’t kill spiders.”

“I’m sure I don’t want to know,” Diana retorted, hoping to end the conversation.

“If you kill a spider, it makes them multiply – you get seven of them for each one killed.”

“That sounds like a Greek myth!” Diana was clearly exasperated, so the clerk decided it was time for a discretionary silence – in a passive-aggressive way.

Besides, she’d had her fun.

Diana leaned over the World Book, placed both hands on it sides – and then with a gasp, quickly pulled it back to reveal: nothing. The laminate of the counter was pristine, betraying no trace of blood or bug guts. Gingerly, she turned the book over to examine the back cover: nothing.

Could I have imagined the whole thing? But the clerk saw it too! Diana kept her thoughts to herself and simply restored the World Book to its rightful place. She tried to concentrate on work.

She tried to concentrate on work, but her mind kept coming back to the incident: I killed the spider – so where did it go?

And, to make things worse, that night it did rain.

The rain was the least of Diana’s problems, for, on arriving home, she was confronted by an ugly and gargantuan spider, covered with dark, grizzled hair or fur in a color suggestive of British Racing Green, squatting right in the middle her dining room wall.

It was an exact replica, a twin of the crawly bug she had killed – or thought she had killed – this very afternoon.

(“If you kill a spider, it makes them multiply – you get seven of the beasties for each one killed.”)

Diana had just painted that wall (Barely Lilac) and she didn’t want to stain it with cootie guts.

“Shoo,” she yelped, “shoo, you monster you.” But the hideous, green apparition simply clung to the soft, pastel paint, not caring to move even one of its eight legs.

And then she remembered how Andy had captured the cricket and ran into the kitchen, seizing an old glass jar she was planning to recycle and rushed back…but the spider was gone.

Diana sat down heavily in one of the dining room chairs. She was positive she had seen a…but then, where was it? Could she have imagined it; had she imagined the spider she saw -- and killed -- earlier in the day?

She went into the kitchen, found the sherry bottle in one of the cupboards and poured herself a drink. She did not believe in drinking on a regular basis, but it had been a trying day. Perhaps she had  been under too much stress lately? She was leaning back against the cupboards, glass in hand…when another of the huge beasties came scuttling across the top of the counter right in front of her.

The glass fell from her hand and shattered on the floor, distracting her but when she re-focused and took another look, the emerald arachnid had vanished into thin air. 

“What’s wrong with me?” Diana said aloud, her head reeling so violently she was afraid she was going to lose her balance and had to grab the counter for support. When the dizziness finally subsided, she reached down to gather up the shards of broken glass – only to find a dark green horror at her feet, calmly sipping sherry with its mandibles.

Diana ran, cutting her feet on broken glass. She hobbled into the bathroom, in search of both a bandage and security, slamming the door behind her.

Something was rustling the shower curtain.

For a moment, Diana was transfixed, but, like Pandora, she had to know what lay behind.

Not giving herself time to hesitate, she grabbed the hem of the curtain and pulled it back so violently, she almost tore it from its rings.

The walls of the shower were covered with dozens of racing green spiders; they clung to the back of the curtain as well, and fell off and onto the tiled floor at her bare feet.

Diana ran screaming down the hall, whose walls were a moving mass of dark, hairy, green. Without thinking, she ran outside – and stopped dead. Outside = Nature and Nature was full of awful things with antennas and too many legs. She took a quick scan of the lawn in front of her condo, but in the dark and the wet, she couldn’t tell if it was grass – or a solid mass of glistening, clambering bugs. She had to flee – no pun intended – she was bleeding and she had to get help.

And getting soaked.

Diana jumped into her car; fortunately, her keys were still in her jacket pocket. At the hospital, they could bandage her feet and then she could call for pest control…

Diana stopped. What could she tell them? If she told them her flat was being overrun by large green spiders, they wouldn’t believe a word, simply lock her up in the psych ward.

She was still hesitating when she looked up – and screamed.

Three of the evil green-bottle spiders were crawling up the front wind shield.

Diana ground the key in the ignition and backed screeching out of her driveway, not even looking to see if there were any other vehicles as she oozed into the street. Her feet hurt and were probably seeping blood, but she had to get away, had to find a safe place – but where?

The library. Libraries were safe places, weren’t they? Maybe if she could get to the branch and lock herself in her office, maybe she would be safe there. If only she had a friend she could go to for help – but Diana had never been very good at making friends.

She suddenly became aware she was behind the wheel of a moving vehicle and that she was speeding along through a tempestuous night. She took her sore foot off the accelerator, making herself slow down, trying to make her heart beat slow down too.

A brilliant red stop light cut through the gathering murk. She pulled up and halted, obeying the law in spite of her panic, waiting patiently for the light to turn green.

Green.

For suddenly the car was full of green, dozens, perhaps hundreds of the British Racing Green things inside the car, crawling across the dashboard, over her legs and arms, some even touching her face. Instinctively, she jerked her head back and out the side window she saw it coming towards her car, its huge maw glistening in the rain, an anarchic the size of a transport truck.

She slammed her bloody foot down on the accelerator and only perceived the panel on the side of the bus – advertising the latest Spiderman movie – a nanosecond prior to impact.

-2-

The few passengers on the bus were treated on the scene for shock, but were otherwise okay; Diana was pronounced dead.

“She wasn’t wearing her seat belt,” one of the paramedics told one of the cops. “For some strange reason, the air bags didn’t deploy.”

“Fractured skull,” the cop asked. When the paramedic simply nodded, the cop added, “she hit the windshield hard too – look at those cracks, those radiating lines – they look like a gigantic spider web.”

The moral of the story: Never kill a spider; you might make it rain. And never use library materials to kill anything.