It was then that I noticed the spider. Black and big as an apple, with bright blue eyes and a row of blue button teeth, it was hanging from its thread in the middle of the bathroom. I don't know how I could have missed it.
It started moving toward me; slowly, evenly, still suspended from its thread, as though the entire spiderline were on some sort of track in the ceiling. I flattened against the wall, nude and trembling. The spider kept coming.
Desperate, I jumped over the rim of the tub, hitting my knee on the edge, and rolled along the floor underneath the hanging creature. I climbed onto my throbbing knee and tried to unlatch the bathroom door, which I had stupidly locked.
But I wasn't quick enough. The spider and its thread were coming back toward me now, faster, gaining speed.
Once again, I rolled under it, and I jumped back in the tub just as the last little trickle of water swirled down the drain. I was getting claustrophobic. The bathroom seemed smaller by the second. The toilet's in the wrong place, I thought dis-jointedly. The sink took up too much room. I found that there was no place for me to move except along the narrow path the spider was guarding.
Maybe I could make it to the door this time. The pain in my knee almost unbearable now, I climbed on the rim of the tub, hit the side wall, and slid by the hanging horror, its large hairy body half an inch from my own.
I reached the door and turned around at the same time. No chance. There was no time. The spider was heading straight for my face, moving fast and grinning.
And then it was gone.
It had been another one of their tricks. I slumped to the floor, sweat pouring from every inch of my body though the temperature was barely above freezing. I should have known from the beginning, the way Kathy and I had always known, but I had not figured it out until the whole thing was over. I'd accepted it as reality all the way through.
I was losing the battle.
This morning I awoke early. I'd decided to spend the day just cooking. It would relax me. It would allow me to think of a way to combat this encroaching madness. I rolled out of bed and put on my robe. My eyes were still half closed, and I rubbed them so I could see clearly.
It was then that I noticed the room.
It was not my bedroom at all but a bowling alley. I was seated next to an old couple who were looking at me quizzically, as though they expected me to say something. "I'm sorry," I found myself mumbling. "I didn't catch that."
The old man stood up from his plywood folding chair and grabbed a large black bowling ball. "I said, 'Do you want to go first?'" he repeated. He stepped up to a lane. "Never mind. I'll go." He rolled the ball down the lane and it grew larger as it moved away from him. My eyes followed the ball to the pins, but there were no pins. Instead, a group of people stood in a pin formation, unmoving, as the ball rolled ever larger toward them.
One of them was Kathy.
"Oh my God!" I cried. Luckily, the old man was not a very good bowler and the ball slid into the gutter, missing Kathy completely.
"Not good, Hubert," said the old lady two seats down from me.
I could not believe this. I jumped out of my chair and ran down the lane. I grabbed Kathy in my arms. "Watch this!" Hubert announced. He rolled the ball again, and I stood there, a human bowling pin unable to move, holding my Kathy as the ball rolled ever closer. I felt the wind as the now monstrous object passed us.
Hubert was talking to his wife and getting ready to bowl again, so I threw Kathy over my shoulder (she was light) and ran up the lane, past the old couple and through the door. Outside the bowling alley, my house was a maze of cheaply paneled rooms with red carpeting and bare bulbs hanging from low ceilings. Each room had several doors and each door led into another room which, in turn, led to other rooms.
I just ran. With Kathy over my shoulder, I ran. Behind us, I could hear the sound of bowling pins being knocked over. Loudly.
Only they weren't really bowling pins.
The rooms we ran through now had furniture. In one was a low couch, in another a bed. More beds became noticeable, and in one room we ran through, a man and woman were sitting together on a waterbed.
It became apparent that we were running through the back regions of some monstrous bordello.
Then the cheaply paneled rooms ended and we were in my room, in my house. Kathy and I.
I had her back.
She was still in some type of trance, but her eyes were beginning to move, and I thought I saw her left pinky wiggle. Quickly, I carried her into the bathroom and placed her gently in the tub. I turned on the cold water and splashed it over her face in order to jar her awake. But the water was like acid to her, and she stared to melt into the liquid.
And she was gone.
From somewhere, I heard laughter.
That was the last straw. I could take anything but this ... desecration of my life with Kathy. And suddenly I didn't care what happened. I just wanted to save myself, to preserve my sanity, to get the hell out of there.
Without even stopping to put on real clothes, still in my robe, I ran out of the house and into the garage, where the car waited. I grabbed the key from its hook on the press-board wall, got in the car, and slammed the door. The car was a little difficult to start since it had not been used after Kathy left, but eventually it kicked in.
And I was off.
I drove straight through the town without even looking. The people must have thought I was mad. It had been so long since I'd driven that I was not very familiar with the area, I did not know where many of the roads led. But that didn't make any difference. I just drove. And drove fast.
The car stopped around noon in a strange city. With smoke pouring from under the hood, I pulled into a gas station. A mechanic dressed in greasy jeans and an oil-stained T-shirt came out of the garage and popped open the hood. I got out of the car to join him.
"Your radiator's leaking," he said simply.
"Can you fix it?" I asked.
He closed the hood and looked at me, pulling a rag out of his pocket to wipe his hands. "I can either patch it for you or replace the radiator. I have a lot of parts in the back."
"Which one's cheaper?" I asked.
"Patching. It won't last forever, but it should be good for a couple of months at least."
"Fine," I said. "Patch it."
He said it would take a couple of hours. Since I had an afternoon to kill, I started walking down the main street of the town. It wasn't very big. I browsed through the one tourist shop, looked through a bookstore, sat down and had a cup of coffee in the grimy coffee shop, and still had more than an hour until the mechanic said he'd be done.
I decided to check out the town's department store.
I was looking through the greeting cards, wondering whether I should warn Kathy that I was coming or just drop by uninvited, when a gunshot rang out. I turned toward the entrance and saw what looked like a gang of terrorists moving, commando-like, into the department store and spreading out. I hit the ground.
A burst of machine gun fire destroyed the lights and the store was plunged into semidarkness. One woman screamed and was shot. "Stay where you are, don't move, and you'll be all right!" the leader of the terrorists announced. He strode up to the checkout counter nearest me, and I could see that he had a ski mask pulled over his head. Like the rest of the group, he was dressed all in black. He picked up a telephone, punched in a number, and spoke into the mouthpiece. "Don't move," he warned again, and his voice echoed from speakers throughout the store.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around, expecting to be shot, and saw instead a man in a three-piece suit lying on the floor next to me. The name tag on his jacket said: MR. BOWLES, MANAGER. "Come on," he whispered to me. "We have to get upstairs. It's our only hope."