Shot up with a gasp.
Knees popping.
Eyeballs exploding. I couldn’t see my quarters.
Swallowed me whole, a regular Jonah. My sweat smelled of cinnamon, berries, vodka from Kamchatka.
Groping and patting, senses unreliable. I sniffed again, the smack of swimming pool, spiced cider. Wall and window now one and the same, ceiling and floor, I didn’t want to play this game anymore.
“Sylvia!” I called.
I wheezed and I gulped, the air like soup or gravy. Thumping my chest with a hand unseen to me. I grasped at my bedding. Not damask or linen, but the coarse weave of a blanket—a Dickensian vision? But I saw nothing.
I blinked. Once. Twice. Useless. So I listened.
My head chimed with bells—jangling, jingling. Was it the tower in the square? Or my tinnitus singing.
Then came a light—the faintest shimmer.
Firefly in a jar—swaying, swinging in front of me. An angler, a lantern, a loosejaw, a gulper. Nocturnal predators swimming, tempting me with Christmas lights out of my bed.
First of the three. Would it eat me?
I found my feet, followed it.
The light came from the mirror.
As if squeezed from the glass it emerged. Thin legs unfolding first, joints glistening with silver. Body shimmered, cloaked in a veil of cobwebs expanding and contracting as though living. Eyes like dew droplets—clear, wet, and glinting—unblinking. A lamp winking.
“Ernest Slack,” it whispered, thready and wheezy, light as a breath caught between worlds. “Come with me.”
Not a cruel sound. Not kind either. It made my skin itch, and my knees tremble. I took a step back.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I don’t want to. I’ve had enough of ghosts and drama.”
The Spider jerked its head with a pop, its cobweb cape swishing with a rustle . “Really! Enough you say? Why there’s never enough. Not for you. Not for any. I pray—”
Its mouth snapped shut. Mandibles pinched.
The Spider flounced, its lantern clanking against the sink. “Stop! Something’s not right.” It tapped its head, examined itself and twitched. “Darn! Can you believe it? A loose thread. And on my first day at the office, too. Hold that thought!”
With two of its legs, it plucked out a needle. A swish and a click, weaving and knotting, its mandibles quirking. “Just conducting some running repairs. There! That’s better. Where was I?” The Spider coughed. “I see you smirking.” It sighed. Coughed again.
“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past. Time’s flying—we must away.”
I swallowed hard, my throat clicking.
“Come,” it said again, drifting closer. The cobwebs that shrouded its body stretched and curled, reaching for me. One brushed my arm—cold, soft, and sticky.
I flinched.
“Why?” I croaked. “I’m not wicked.”
“Bear witness,” it whispered. “None are innocent.”
Its lamp flickered. And went out.
Silence.
An explosion, a flash, the scream of a child. Walls tumbled like bombs falling on innocents. My looking glass rippled, like splashing through puddles. Catapulted forwards, arms flailing, but the Spider’s webs caught me, sticking me fast, cradling me like a newborn baby.
The sweet smell of cardamom.
The world shifted.
My aspect changed immediately, I glanced about to see, the Pale Spider beside me, the two of us, knee-high to fleas. My companion and I spun circles in a courtyard, its square footage incalculable. I gawped, my eyes disbelieving. The Spider shook its belly, and delivered a vision unto me.
A child. Yes, a boy of mountainous proportions—dwarfing me.
Scratching and rooting through the burnt ground, digging into the dirt. Tongue sticking out. The earth trembled, my heart stopped. He smiled as he uncovered something—a beetle.
Not deathwatch, borer, long-horned or weevil. No. A stag. Magnificent, regal, most festive of beetles. Bright red antlers. Carapace shining like shiny napoleans.
The boy’s joy was fleeting.
A jackboot slammed down, with military insignia, crunching the beetle back to Abyssinia.
The child looked up, tears glistening. A soldier flashed gold teeth at him, shaking a Kalashnikov. The boy hesitated, then nodded, wiping his hands on his trousers. Roaring, prancing, the soldier gesticulated wildly. The boy scuffed bare feet on the highway.
“Do you see how it begins?” the ghost whispered in my ear.
I opened my mouth to reply, but the world shifted again.
Black.
Throat tickling.
Fusty.
Knee clipped something hard.
Spider shifting. Close to me. Tapping its lamp.
Like curtains parting.
Damp now, with something metallic. Squeezing. Somehow patting myself down—my regular-sized anatomy. My companion farted, releasing a silky gas—a curious outcome nonetheless. Metamorphised. Not bug-sized, but slightly too big. Perspective altered, heads scraping the ceiling. No. Wood panel. A kitchen closet, door cracked open.
“Better get used to it. And quick.” The Spider’s bristles pricked.
The smack of vinegar and tea tree oil hit. My neck cricked.
Tiny black spots of mold resisted, tickling the back of my throat, boards damp, streaming, air steamy. I tugged at the neck of my sweater with a finger. I smelled boiled eggs, fettuccine.
I mumbled, elbows banging, the Ghost Spider squatting square on my shoulder. Somehow he’d jammed us into a wooden cupboard between fridge and kitchen corner in a dwelling in Canada. I spied a red maple leaf motif on a banner.
Stowed with the mop, a dust pan, and a broom, foot in a bucket, at least I assumed. A basic apartment, the kind that feels temporary—a holding cell between one life and eternity. Steam spiraling from a kettle into the atmosphere. Ping. Hum of a single bulb.
The Spider stuck a leg out to better the view. The door creaked, like a Vincent Price classic. The mop teetered, it wobbled, I reached out to grab it. But it crashed to the checkerboard vinyl like ghosts in the attic.
“The game’s up.” I stammered, my voice cracking.
Before I could scramble back, the Spider kicked me—a jab of its bristly leg—I bounced like a beach ball at a church christening.
The Ghost of Christmas past tumbled beside me in a flurry of fur and webbing. The bucket tipped, soapy water splashing everywhere. I landed hard, sprawled on the floor, face slapping the tiles with an “oomph!”
I sprang to my feet, slipping and sliding, grasping a sideboard, “It wasn’t my idea,” I yelled, aiming a finger towards—the Spider—now perched on an antique ottoman. Crossing its legs, rolling its belly, a portly fakir, performing magic tricks for money.
“Relax,” the Spider said, its tone dry and dusty. “He can’t see us. Or hear us. Ride a bus, squeeze into a truss, and still go unnoticed. Don’t you trust me.”
I glared at it, wiping my hands on my trousers. Wetness appearing like I’d peed myself. “You could’ve warned me.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” it replied, tapping my temple with a sticky leg. “Now, look here.”
A young man perched at a table, alone, a bowl of noodles and vegetables. Chopsticks moving, practised, mechanical, clinking porcelain. Slurping. Invisible. Notebooks beside him, an almanack of healing therapies. Open at May, twenty-fourteen, a date saved with a thumbtack. The picture, a boy sipping at a cup, handwritten benefits of chicory and turmeric.
“Recognise the date?” the Pale Spider questioned me.
“No. But I should, right?
“Now you’re getting it.” The Spider bumped me aside with a gentle grin. “The kid here is Jun Lin, a student from China, sentenced to death by the Vacuum Kitten Killer.”
“The what now?” My turn to question the ghost, now observing our host, head listing.
“May, twenty-four, twenty-fourteen. The day the world failed him. Look in his eyes. No different from me. Or you.” The ghost of the past clipped my ear with a ding. “Cut the smirking, Ernest Slack. I ain’t gonna sing. Concentrate man. You could have been him.”
A laptop glowed on the table beside Lin, screen filled with numbers, formulas, photos of boyfriends, a snapshot of his killer. His manner beaten, pale. A student, anyone could tell. A Casablanca poster. New Order on the stereo.
“That’s the kind of tired that gets little kids riled. Boy, I could tell ya. Parenthood is wild. Above all at the holidays.”
The Spider rubbed two legs together, a click, a snap and darkness befell them.
“I got it,” a stagehand yelled. Then there was light. Jun Lin in a spotlight, poking at noodles.
But he wasn’t alone and the room got cold.
Then the shadow of death dragged up a chair. Papery thin, shoulders scrunched like a vulture. Crowing and pecking at scraps on the table.
“Cut!” Someone yelled. “Is this appropriate for a BBC audience?”
“Hey! It’s culture,” the Spider shouted back. But nobody heard it.
Death wandered off shaking a script.
“So for the sake of the children,” the Spider nodded at some unseen director, “I’ll cut this scene short. But don’t mistake my silence for mercy. What happens next, I dare not report. But take it from me, Ernest Slack, pay heed to the lesson, you shouldn’t go fearing them that are different.”
Ernest’s stomach lurched. “Hey! That’s awful. But I didn’t kill Jun Lin. Getting your ego stroked. That’s relatable, but I ain’t Eddie Gein. And yeah. I checked Lin’s killer online. Messed up. But what could I have done? Thousands of miles away.”
The Spider tilted its white sticky head, stepping back to reframe the idea. “One act of kindness, Ernest. That’s all it takes to change the outcome.”
“I don’t see how!” Ernest snapped. “One act won’t fix the world!”
“Kindness ripples, Ernest.” The Spider leaned in, plucking a stone from behind my ear. “Ever skip stones at the lake? Scrabble in the dirt for the perfect pebble—not too flat, a little curve, three or four ounces. Snug between your thumb and pinkie. You let it fly, count the jumps. Watch the ripples. They circle out, Ernest. They go where they’re needed. And they go.”
The stone clattered into the fridge.
Ernest opened his mouth to argue but stopped. His throat clicked.
The Spider belched, spewing white thread, obliterating the stage in white sticky web.
Lin’s dwelling dissolved into static and snow.
The Spider still close, in a cheerless tone. “They’ll censor this part. Soften the edges, dull the blade. But fear doesn’t fade—it festers. Jun’s death? Just another true crime binge on Netflix.”
I swallowed hard, my throat rasped. “Why show me, then?”
“Because you fear what you don’t understand,” it said, “and what you fear, you destroy. Conditioned from birth.”
I wanted to argue, to deny it, but the words wouldn’t come.
The Spider’s voice dropped further, almost a sigh. “Violence doesn’t only happen at Christmas,” it whispered. “It happens every day, in every corner of the world. And you let it.”
The world shifted, the past pulling us further still—cold, unrelenting.
Wet breath steaming. Sniffed. Nose running. Wait.
“Hang the witch!”
Did I hear that right?
Bells clanging. Dogs barking. People jeering. Children screeching.
The world shook like a wet dog. The Spider and I mere droplets, launched into the air, spun, wrapped in cobwebs, spun in reverse, crash landing in a shaggy fir forest in a cloud of powder snow.
When I turned my head aside, I heard the gentle melody of water flowing through a creek—a writer’s trick—establish a red herring.
Hair stuck up, cheeks rosy, teeth chattering. My ears popped.
I blinked and found myself in a clearing, surrounded by trees blackened by frost. Snow blanketed the ground, pristine and untouched. Save for the trampled path leading to the oak at the centre, a snarling mob gathered around it.
Heart beating fast. “The Spirit’s gone,” I said to myself. I checked over my shoulder, swept snow from my sweater. Not a peek from my Spider mentor. Was my ordeal over?
“Hang the witch!” the Spider bellowed, bursting from a snow bank, in a puff of sparkling powder—bristling white, eyes glowing pink, mandibles yellow.
“Strong! Independent! Isn’t she? Look there, Ernest!” The Spider at my ear, its voice cracked like a stone on a pebble. “But she ain’t no demon. She’s got a cunning gift. Asks awkward questions, I bet.” It jabbed a stick leg forwards, cobwebs draped across its body.
“Top of the bill—the main attraction.” The Pale Spider prodded me in the chest. It left a sticky residue. “They won’t break her.”
It scuttled forwards, white webbing unraveling from its abdomen, trailing behind it like the train of a bride’s dress. “I hope we’re not late! I’ve got two tickets, Ernest. Let’s go. Front and centre.”
“What? No! Nah… Wait, you’re serious? You want to drag me to a public execution?” I shuffled backwards, shaking my head. “That’s what they’re doing, right? They want to…” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. “Hang a poor girl.” But I said it.
The Spider tilted its head, its cobweb cloak rustling. “Don’t be so dramatic, Ernest. All the celebrities want to be seen at the shows. Come on. It’s educational!”
“Educational?” I barked, my voice cracking. “You’re talking about a witch hanging! That’s not a show—it’s barbaric!”
“And it’s all in the past, Ernest. She’s already dead.”
My stomach twisted. I burped acid. “Then why do I have to see it?”
The Spider didn’t answer.
Instead, it lunged forward. Legs moving in a blur, spinning a web around my ankles. I stumbled, trying to pull away, but the sticky threads clung to me, and I dropped to the dirt with a thump.
“Let me go!” I shouted, clawing at the webbing.
“Someone’s got a date with a lady.” The Spirit pointed at me, clicking its mandibles. “Be rude to keep her waiting.”
It snatched up its web, yanking me forwards, dragging me, kicking and cursing. Ringside—heart of the action. With a grunt, and a snap of its thread, tossed me headlong into an animal pen. An outburst of bleating and squawking and flying feathers. But then.
The smell hit me like a brick. I scrunched up my nose. Retched a little. Goat piss, wet hay and something ripe. I couldn’t say. I’m sorry it wasn’t festive. The whole trip was a bust.
I puffed out my cheeks and huffed. “I’m not gonna look then. I’ll look away. You can’t make me. I don’t want to see this.”
The Spider rolled all of its eyes. Slow, like watching a billiard trick. “But you must.”
One goat was chewing on my sweater. A sheep was snuffling in my ear. But no matter how hard I squeezed my eyes shut, my reality became abundantly clear. I couldn’t look away from this pantomime. To do so would deny the girl her humanity.
With a sigh, I opened my eyes.
The rope hung from the bough of a twisted oak, its bark gnarled and moss-covered. It moaned in the breeze, sap sweat from its leaves, more a creature than deciduous druid. Its purple tentacles swirling and swaying, creaking and sucking.
The noose waiting.
A ladder leaned against the tree, its rungs splintered and uneven.
A woman stood on the ladder, hands bound in front of her, the rope looped loosely about her neck. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears. Her dress hung in tatters. Hair looping, red and wild, flicked in a breeze, her green eyes bellicose and bright. Did she see me?
“She turned my aunt into a duck!” someone shouted.
“She bewitched my cows!” another added, shaking a fist.
“She made my bread rise too fast!”
“She cursed my chamber pot!”
The accusations piled up, each more absurd than the last.
“She hexed my wig!”
“She whispered to my cat!”
“She made my husband handsome!”
The crowd roared, a cacophony of fear and absurdity. Surging forwards, faces twisted with anger, merging with androgyny, one mass, unholy, in unison, breath steaming, snow crisp and even.
As I watched from the pen, with horror, my eyes darted from one face to another. By the light of the setting sun, my brain undone, they took on the form of barnyard animals.
The Ghost of Christmas Past whistled, all of its eyes glistening.
“A woman about to hang, her crime—working with herbs and homeopathy,” the Spider whispered in my ear, “on the feast day of Saint Stephen.”
But the woman on the ladder didn’t scream. She didn’t beg. She stared at the crowd, her gaze rooted in me, unflinching.
“She’s laughing at us!” someone yelled.“
“She’s summoning the devil!”
“She’s making my teeth itch!”
The rope whipped tight as they yanked away the ladder, the woman’s body jerking. Neck snapping with a crack like hot fat spitting. The crowd cheered, stomping their boots into the snow. Dogs barked louder, howls stabbing the sky.
“Who’s next!” the crowd demanded vengeance.
“I spent all my dust on the show.” A pilgrim said within earshot. “Bloody better be worth it. Long ere now a good ‘anging.”
“Stop it,” I muttered, but the Spirit ignored me. So I coughed, and went again with feeling.
Grasping at handfuls of straw, beating the earth with my fists, I glared at the Spider, igniting a fire. “Stop it, Spirit! Stop it! No more!”
The ghost turned its pearly eyes on me, all of them cold and unblinking. “A fine legacy, Ernest Slack. The fear you inherit. The fear you pass on. Can’t take it back.”
“The shadows you show me. All smoke and mirrors.” My voice trembling. “All just nonsense in my head… right?”
Well, the Spider puffed up and rushed at me, snatching me up in its legs. With a hiss of cobweb and a growl in its jaws, bristles prickling my face, eyes inches from mine, it bellowed, “Not real enough, Ernest? Let’s see it in high-definition. I’ll make it so.”
The snow beneath my feet vanished. The ground fell away. Hoisted by the Spirit into the air, my hands bound, the bite of rope digging into my wrists.
“What are you doing?” I screamed, my breath fogging.
The Spider’s voice hissed, mocking. “Bear witness, Ernest Slack. None are innocent.”
The noose tightened around my neck. The crowd jeered below, faces warped, grotesque, their laughter like crows. The rope creaked, whipping tight as I dangled, feet kicking, nothing below.
The Spider’s voice echoed through my head, cutting the ruckus like butter. “It starts small. A laugh. A slap. A stomp. The fear grows, and with it, the harm. You think small things don’t matter? You’re wrong. They always matter.”
The rope jerked tight. My vision blurred, stars bursting behind my eyes. My chest heaved, desperate for oxygen.
Then—snap.
The world shattered. The air rushed back into my lungs.
I bolted upright, here in my bed, gasping, my knees popping. My sweat smelled of cinnamon, berries, vodka from Kamchatka.
My hands flew to my neck. No rope. No marks.
The room spun around me, walls and windows blurring into one.
Was I awake? Was I alive?
The voice of the Spirit followed me, in my ears, low and cold: “Violence doesn’t only happen at Christmas. It happens every day, in every corner of the world. And you let it.”
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