It was one of those clammy Durham evenings when the fog squats on the hedgerows like a court bailiff, and the lamps burn as though they would rather be elsewhere. I, Alastair Frobisher, lately of the merchant service and familiar with every gin shop between Portsmouth and Seahouses, was marooned for the night in my uncle’s draughty cottage on Crowleg Lane, miles removed from civilisation. Ordinarily, I would have laughed this off as a short inconvenience. Unfortunately, I carry a terror of spiders so unmanly it would make a young lieutenant faced with the bill at a Shanghai brothel weep like a homesick schoolgirl.

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I fortified the house like a man expecting mutiny: shutters clamped, curtains drawn tight as a miser’s purse, every crack rammed with the Morning Chronicle. The beams groaned like a card-sharp caught short of an ace and the fire hissed, soot swirling, casting eight-legged shadows.

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I opened Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévenne, attempting to lull myself, but I might as well have tried to recite the Psalms in Swahili. Every scratch of the coal rake became the march of hairy saboteurs. The fringe of the hearthrug trembled, and I nearly launched my brandy. ‘Hell and damnation,’ I whispered.

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Soon I was convinced the wainscoting hid silk spinning sappers who were stringing cables stout enough to hang a bishop. The chandeliers, powdered with dust, seemed to bow beneath the tread of unseen sentries. In the wallpaper I read the heraldry of a spider duke whose motto ran, Eat First, Ask Never.

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A tap at the window, only rain, sent me vaulting over a footstool with the grace of a startled Muscovite dancer. My heart hammered like a corporal’s voice calling the muster. Here stood a man who had once bluffed a Calcutta gaming house and now he quaked at drizzle on the window.

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Silence settled, heavy and patient. No webs. No legs and no grand offensive.

Only the echo of my own cowardice, loud as any bell. I drained the last of the brandy and poured another for good measure. My eyelids sagged and, with the fire sinking to a dull red, sleep dragged me under in the chair.

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***

From the darkness of the skirting board something stirred.

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Eight legs tested the air, delicate as harp strings. The scent of warm blood drifted across the floor.
A giant shape loomed above, mouth slightly parted, breath slow and damp. The creature climbed the leg of the chair with the silent certainty of instinct. Across the arm, along the slope of his chest, into the shadow of his chin. A soft cavern of heat waited. It paused once, tasting the night with the tips of its forelegs, then slipped forward and disappeared into the moist dark.

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***

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I awoke with a violent choke. The bitter taste of the liquor lingered in my throat, so I swallowed hard. With not a spider in sight, I slumbered on, content.