September
High above the master bedroom of the once-grand old Victorian, on a tree-lined street in Oldetowne, the moon hung heavy and white.From her bed, Ladybug imagined the way it would cast its glow across the wide expanse of lawn, turning the tulip magnolias into snarling, grasping beasts; monsters traversing a shadowed sea.The leaves had already begun to drop, leaving patches of bare branch exposed to the moonlight, as if the beast was showing off its ribcage to advertise its hunger.To the left of the house, her mind’s eye was able to envision Slade Manor squatting in the near distance like a malevolent brick toad, four stories of second empire ostentation.The moonlight would turn the long drive into a reaching arm and the gated entrance into jagged teeth, waiting to swallow up the unwary into its haunted darkness.
The house, for the moment at least, was still.
It was coming up on half a year now, she thought into the shadows of the room, that day she was cast out.She disliked using the term anniversary for such an ugly affair.She held space for anniversaries, days of remembrance and reverence and honor: the death days of her mother, gone since she was a small child, and for each of the aunts, leaving this plane of existence within months of each other only several years earlier.She celebrated the anniversary of the town’s founding with the rest of Cambric Creek and observed the anniversary of the birth of the small cat who lived in her garden, refusing to be brought indoors.The anniversary of the moon’s turn to darkness each month, and the sun’s annual leaving and subsequent joyous returns.Anniversaries were for celebration, andthiswas not a memory worth celebrating.To give weight to such a day ...Ladybug turned on her pillow to stare up at the ceiling, aggravated by how often her thoughts were turned by the approaching sabbath.
The moonlight filtered through the sheers at the bedroom windows — a waxing gibbous, not quite full, but enough to bathe the bedroom in its soft, silver-white glow, giving shape to the shadows lurking at the edges of the night.Several days more until a brilliant harvest moon would alight the sky, several days to think and to plan, to create her own quiet ritual, to forget about the pitiable state of her solitary celebration on such a day of worship.She was able to press the loneliness aside most days, shoved into corners and tight spaces, pushed out of mind ...but the full moon had a way of illuminating even the darkest crevices, putting all that the shadows concealed to light.But that was several days away, and she didn’t need to think about how she would be alone as the moon rose over the valley rather than seated in a circle of sisters.She didn’t need to think about her lonely Mabon feast.She needed to sleep.
Sleep does not come easy these days.
She was wide awake, as she had been each night for the better part of the last several weeks, her breath coming in small, quick puffs, and her pulse quick and thready.She ought to roll over and pull the sheet up over her head, blotting out what she knew would come next, the smell and the sounds that would make sleep an impossibility.Instead, she gripped the edges of the quilt, the one she’d made with the aunts that last summer they'd been here, that last summer of family, of normalcy.The quilt was another relic of the past in a house full of them, but still, she gripped the edges of the well-loved cotton and held her breath in the moonlit dark, waiting for the sounds to start.
The darkness does not disappoint.
A heavy thump and drag above her head made the ancient floorboards squeal and creak in protest, followed by the familiar scuttling sound — leg after leg after leg, moving over themselves with a speed that made her heart clench, heavier than they seemed only weeks ago.Weeks!She’d been taught to keep time with the moon since she was a small child, and the skill had aided her in tracking the odd sounds from the attic, beginning in late summer when the days were humid and balmy, and cicada’s thrumming song each day gave way to the chorus of treefrogs and crickets at night.
The moon had been full the first time she’d heard the sounds, the first thump from above startling her awake, the night of that terrible storm.She’d had begun keeping track in earnest when the black moon returned and she’d sipped her Deipnon wine at midnight beneath a pitch-dark sky, and now the full moon approached once more, a complete turn since she’d first heard the sounds and smelled that ancient wanting, and still she waited, listening in the dark.
The floorboards creaked, and she held her breath.The smell would come next: that cloying, heavy black musk that seemed to roll in beneath the door and in between the cracks in the walls, pressing her to the bed and seeping into her lungs until it filled her completely and she was left gasping.It was the smell ofneedandwant, and it beseeched her through the air, licking up her legs beneath the bedclothes until she writhed, pained with her inability to give the darkness what it desired.
She wasn’t sure how much longer it could go on, for the rising tension that the twilight brought each night seemed to be nearing a breaking point.A tangible heaviness filled every room in the house with its need, and the corresponding band behind her navel seemed to winch itself tighter and tighter with each passing night as she waited forsomething.She wished she knew how to address the noises, the restlessness and tension.The air in the house seemed to thrum with expectancy, and she was, after all, a giver.Ladybug wished she knew what to say, what to do, how to signal to the darkness beyond her door that she was willing to provide for its wants...Instead, she clutched her quilt a bit tighter and listened, the scrabbling pacing above her not quieting.
* * *
Four Months Earlier
May
The ad had run in theCambric Creek Gazette for two weeks before Anzan had called.
Attic apartment for rent
Third floor of a single-family home in Oldetowne district
Separate entrance; kitchen & laundry included
Quiet house on a quiet street – Serious inquiries only
He was frail-looking, she noticed immediately from her vantage point on the other side of the screen.Frail and thin, as though the slightest breeze might send him scuttling into the wind like a handful of dried, crunchy leaves.The araneaen had backed down the steps after he’d rung the doorbell, vacating the wide front porch before she’d had a chance to reach the door, and the way he stood on the walkway before her with his head bowed seemed to be a gesture of deference.She'd never had an opportunity to know any araneaens, and what she'd always been told — that the secretive spider-folk were strong and lethal and kept to themselves — didn’t match up with the subservient specimen who’d arrived on her doorstep, hunched beneath a tattered shawl, a worn carpetbag on the ground beside him.
“I’m here to see the apartment for rent.We spoke on the phone earlier ...”
His voice was deep, pitched lower than she’d been expecting for such a frail-looking thing, but it wheezed with air, reminding her of an uncared-for accordion, its bellows punched through with holes, preventing the rich bass-baritone timbre from forming fully.Ladybug blushed, realizing she’d been staring from her place behind the threshold, and jolted forward to push open the door.
“Of-of course!Please, come in.Can I get you a glass of water?An-zan?Am I saying that right?”
Wincing internally at her obsequious tone, she watched as he hesitated before bending to gather his tattered bag.Just calm down, don’t give so much.Deep breath.Play it cool.She huffed to herself, as if she’d ever actually understood what “playing it cool” meant.Her years in the junior coven had been torturous.No matter how over-friendly and helpful she’d tried to be with the other young witches — fetching snacks for the whole table, letting them copy her potion notes, twisting herself into knots to fit in — all it had resulted in was her still being the last to be picked as a foraging partner, giggled at as she trailed on the edge of the group, and overlooked for offices and positions of power as she grew older.The would-be tenant ignored her awkward overtures, a bone-white arm shooting out from beneath the shawl to reach out for the banister, gripping it tightly.Just settle down before you volunteer to do his laundry as a part of his lease.
He would tower over her once they were on level ground, she realized with a gulp as he gingerly made his way up the porch steps, his numerous legs moving in a slow, measured rhythm.He’d have trouble with the steeply-pitched staircase leading to the attic at this rate.It’s going to take him ten minutes just to make it down every day.What if he falls?What if he trips over his own legs and falls all the way to the bottom?The thought of someone else in the house as clumsy as herself might have been cheering if the ramifications didn’t involve a dead or wounded araneaen laying in a crumpled head in her foyer, far too large for her to help alone.
“You’ll have a key to the front door, but the attic also has a staircase that leads right down to the side door.”She stretched as she spoke, holding the door open as wide as she could until he arrived at the top step, one of his four hands reaching out, at last, to grab the edge before she toppled.His gaze had remained trained on the ground as he’d navigated the steps, and she hoped that meant he hadn’t noticed the portico roof or the slightly uneven slope of the porch steps.The aunts had always had a running list of minor repairs the big house needed, tackling things one at a time, but since they’d been gone, it seemed as if the house were falling to pieces faster than it ever had done before.She was obliged to tip her head back as he entered the house, the foyer seeming over-crowded with his size.“Y-you can use this door, of course, but if you wanted to have a bit more privacy, the side staircase is separate from the main house.”
A silent nod was his only response.
Ladybug swallowed, waiting for him to say something, anything — a grunt of agreement, a mumbled show that he understood, but that silent nod was it.Realizing there would be no more conversation forthcoming, she turned up the staircase in the foyer leading up to the attic, keeping her own footsteps steady as the bottom step creaked, indicating he was following.What if he dies up here?How will you be able to get him down?Will they need to come in with a crane?Even though the araneaen was terribly unhealthy looking, he loomed over her like a mountain.Removing him from the house, were he to meet his untimely end in her attic, would be no easy feat.
“So a-are you new to town?I’ve lived here nearly my whole life, so if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.”When silence met her back, she plowed on, feeling obligated to fill the empty air, deciding to assume he was, in fact, new to the area.“There are some beautiful hiking trails in the Applethorpe Wood if you like being outdoors, it’s a part of the park system.Oh!If you’re at all interested in botany, the Applethorpe Manor is just amazing.Just acres and acres of orchards and rare plants and trees, and the gardens are just incredible.They have the oldest tulip poplar tree in the country, and what I wouldn’t give to have free pick of their medicinal garden!My great-great-grandmother, Flortencia Brackenbridge, she was good friends with Adeline Applethorpe and helped her plant the original section of that garden.Took plants from her very own collection, right here, just out back.I’d like to have a membership there someday.”She sighed wistfully, imagining the expansive lawns and dramatic topiaries of the manor house, wishing for the millionth time the “Friends of the Garden” subscription wasn’t a small fortune.
