The Void (3 page)

She crawled out of bed. The sheets rustled. She could just about make out the contours of a body under the blanket, her fiancé, Donald, who slept soundlessly and undisturbed. Meredith walked through the house, checking the doors and windows. Everything was locked. The house was secure.

She returned to her bed and climbed in, settling down and closing her eyes, drifting into an uncomfortable sleep. Someone straddled her, cupping a hand on her left breast. It was light and familiar, a gesture she recognized from a time almost forgotten. In the dark, she imagined she could hear throaty, labored breathing. Slowly, the sounds became frenetic as she felt her panties slide down to her ankles and something warm and hard enter her from behind. It throbbed, and she smiled, mumbling in her sleep, “Baby, I love you.” It drove deep inside her. “I miss you. Baby, just like that. Oh god, that feels good.”

Her orgasm was powerful and a restless sleep soon followed. She turned over on her side and began snoring.

Something parted her moist flesh and crawled out.

In the morning, Meredith poured herself a bowl of cereal. The milk swirled into the bowl, crackling the frosted wheat checkered squares. She sat down at the table, rubbing her temples to try and sate the headache. She dipped her spoon in the liquid, winched a mass of sodden muesli, and chewed. It crunched in her mouth. Each bite worked her lower jaw muscles, triggering fresh pain that spiked up her temporal lobe.

Her eyes watered.

What in God’s name happened last night?
She thought.

She had awakened early to take Morgan to school. On her way home, she grabbed a cup of coffee at a fast food chain. Sipping the hot java, she heard her stomach rumbling. She was awfully hungry; she didn’t know why. Usually, she didn’t eat breakfast, but for some reason, all her energy felt sapped.

She scooped another spoonful of cereal and jammed it in her mouth. She ground her teeth, crushing the wheat-sized meal with the incisors and back molars, and swallowed. The front door opened and closed.

“Morgan actually likes this stuff?” she said, aloud, to no one in particular.

Footsteps made their way up the entrance into the dining room where Meredith was seated. She chewed without looking up. She knew who it was even before his voice filled the quarters.

“Hey, what’s wrong with Wheaties?” Donald Sheridan asked.

“It’s too sugary,” she replied to her fiancé of six months. Don sat down.

“Nothing wrong with sugar,” he said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to propose to you,” he joked.

Meredith glared at Don. For the past several weeks, Don was busy with work and he couldn’t come for his regular visits. The fact he finally got down on his knees and proposed two years after dating almost caused her an aneurism. Now, that they were engaged Donald Sheridan thought he could just come and go as he pleased as if this was his own house.

“You think that’s funny?” she asked.

“Do you see me laughing?” he countered.

“You know how I feel about marriage.”

“Yeah—yeah,” Don said, digging in the cereal carton, and popping a few squares into his mouth. “Is Morgan here?”

“He’s at school.”

“Already? I thought it was still vacation.”

“No,” Meredith said. “Today was his first day back after the holidays.” She lifted the bowl with two hands and drank the milk from the source. She was about halfway done when a big, black, hairy blob surfaced to the top. It was a dead spider floating, winy legs curled under its abdomen, bobbing upside down.

Her heart stopped.

The spider spread its legs.

She reeled back, screeching, and flung the bowl across the room.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Don asked, getting up from his chair. “That was your favorite bowl.”

“Fuck the bowl,” Meredith screamed, eyes engorged and spilling out with horror. “There was a spider. An enormous one!” She trembled at the thought of what had almost happened. She had almost swallowed a spider—a whole friggin’ spider—down her throat. The thought of drinking the same milk the spider had shared, skinny dipping in the white pool, made her nauseous. “Dear God, I almost drank it.”

“Would you calm down?” Don headed to the upturned bowl. It hadn’t shattered, miraculously. “It was just a spider. You make it sound like you drank arsenic.”

“It’s still alive,” she said in a hushed whisper. “Be careful.”

Don stooped down to pick the upside-down bowl back right-side up. As he grabbed it, the bowl shifted to the right, hard, dragging Don with it. Don’s eyes bugged out of his head.

“It moved me. Something’s under here.” Don said, incredulously.

“I told you,” Meredith said. Beads of sweat formed on her upper lip. She licked them. “Watch out. Kill it as soon as it pops out.”

“With what?”

“With your hands, you pussy,” she hissed. “Your shoes. Anything!”

“Christ,” he said, and gulped. He reached back down, touched the bowl, counted to three, and flipped it over. It clattered round and round on the wooden surface of the floor. They stared at the where the spider should be, but there was nothing.

It was gone.

II

Four hours later, during lunchtime, Morgan played basketball with a group of school socialites at recess. He participated for a couple of minutes, but when he realized none of the other players were passing the ball to him, he grew bored of watching the rebounds and the shots smacking the rim, but rarely going in. Everyone sucked. They thought they were all hot-shots.

“Here, here!” Morgan said, waving his arms. “Pass it here!”

But nobody passed it. They ran back and forth on the court, rubber soles clapping on the gravel. They attacked the rim. The ball bounced passed him. Someone finally threw the basketball at him, but Morgan lost his grasp when his thumb became squashed, bending backwards pressed into an enjambment, since the ball came at a wrong angle.

The ball bounced away, and he cursed under his breath. He swore the next time he got the ball, he’d make sure he’d shoot it through the net and aim high for the round hole. After another seven minutes ticked on the stopwatch, he stole the ball. The players crowded around him, attempting to filch it back in their hands.

“Get away! No!” Morgan cried. He whipped his elbows in a fanlike eddy, swiveling his joints like a mallet. “Get off me!” One of the boys named Andrew Chauffer got a grip of the ball from behind Morgan. “Get away!”

Morgan jabbed his elbow out, instinctively, and clipped Andrew in the mouth. Blood gushed out, running down the front of his t-shirt. Morgan dropped the ball and bounced it to the backboard. He shot it, springing up off his two feet, and the ball glided in the net, making the
swishing
sound. Morgan clapped and laughed.

He went to another part of the court and acquired his hands on a hula-hoop. The girls stared, while, in the distance, Andrew howled with tears and pain—a wail that never stopped.

III

Meredith, stood wide-eyed, clutching an insect killer spray and trembling as she rounded a corner in the kitchen. She imagined spiders dancing on the walls and hiding in shadows. She remembered how large that black mass was in the milk, how, when it spread its legs, it expanded twice its size.

Meredith felt sick it was midday, and she still couldn’t find the damn arachnid.

“I’m telling you, it’s not there,” Don said, as she rejoined him at the table. She plopped down and sighed. “I checked everywhere. There’s nothing here.”

“It has to be somewhere,” she said, fingers twitching. She set the canister down on the countertop.

“Well if it is, it’s gone now.”

“I swear to you, Don, it was huge…” she murmured, eyes rolling. “Like one of those Australian spiders I’ve seen on the internet.”

“Surely, it can’t be
that
big.”

“Oh, believe me,” she nodded her head vigorously. “It was,
huge
. You saw how it moved the bowl.”

“Maybe it was the wind.”

“The wind?” she laughed, cackling a strange choked-up peal. “Ha! The wind. Oh, please. Don’t even start with me, Don.”

“What? What’d I do?”

“You know what? Get out of my house.”

“What? Why?” Donald pleaded. He stood back up and began to inspect the corners of the room.

“Because you’re acting like a jerk.”

“Look,” Don said, spreading his palms. “I know I haven’t been visiting you recently. I’ve been caught up with work. Please, you know my predicament and what I do every night.”

“That’s not why I’m pissed at you.”

“Then what is it?”

“You come here last night and stay over, act all cuddly and shit, then have the galls to tell me I’m imagining shit?” Meredith growled. She flicked the crumbs of cereal with a backhand off the table. “Are you serious? You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

“I don’t understand,” Don said, clutching the mop that had been used to clean up the soggy mess. “I wasn’t here last night.”

“You weren’t what?”

“I said I wasn’t here last night. I showed up today because I was concerned for your safety. I wanted to make sure that sinkhole wasn’t going to end up swallowing your property.”

“You weren’t here last night?”

“No.”

“You’re bugging the shit out of me. Tell me the truth, Don—are you telling me you weren’t with me last night?” Meredith’s voice wavered as she said it.

Donald stared at her with a pale face. “No.”

Just then, the telephone started to ring.

IV

She rushed to the school. The principal had called to let her know that her son was involved in an accident, which he had triggered, and he had split open a classmate’s lip.

No, not her boy, Meredith assured herself. Morgan would never do such a thing.

Yet, as she entered the principal’s office and observed her son sitting in a chair, head down with downcast eyes, she knew he was in a world of trouble. They shook hands. The principal’s name was Sandy Wilton. Clumps of mascara pasted on her eyelashes, eyebrows, and jowls like freshly pressed wallpaper. She dressed in a casual brown suit, and her skirt was hiked up just above her knobby knees.

She sat across from Meredith behind a long horseshoe shaped desk, oval, a half semi-circle.

“How are you doing, Mrs. Brewster?” she said, pulling in the chair.

“Not so well. What did Morgan do now?”

“Do you know why I called you?”

“Please tell me what’s going on,” Meredith implored, glancing at Morgan and at Sandy. “If my son had done anything, you can be certain he’ll be disciplined.”

The principal picked up a pencil and scratched something on a notepad. “I don’t think this can be fixed by punishing your son. I’m afraid your son cannot come to our school anymore.”

“What? What did he do?”

“He didn’t do anything, except cut another child’s lip.”

“That can’t be the reason why he’s being expelled,” Meredith stood up. “Tell me, what happened here.”

Sandy watched Morgan play with his fingers. He tapped his open palm, rattling his fingers like the legs of a spider. Sandy forced down the fear cracking to break out. Earlier the previous week, she had been infested with spiders under the skin. They worked their way into her blood veins, protruding the vessels as if they were boiling in hot water. The pain was unbearable—the same pain that was besieging her now. She stopped doodling and scratched her hands.

“Your son is dangerous.”

“Like I said, what did he do?”

“Under penal code 860, it’s illegal for your child to cause harm or threaten the safety of others. If by any reason, the public’s safety is in danger, that danger must be removed.”

“My son, a health risk to others?” Meredith asked in disbelief. “No, you’re wrong. This isn’t grounds for expulsion. You can’t do this.”

“Mrs. Brewster. Your son was levitating. He was three feet off the ground. A number of teaching staff saw this. And so did I,” Sandy said calmly.

She had something in her. She itched. She scratched her skin, running her long fingernails across, breaking the skin and spurting blood. A thin trickle sprouted like a flowing streamer. There was black infestation under that skin, burning up the arteries. It hurt, dear God. It was worse around the boy.

Meredith gestured to Morgan. “My son is not dangerous. What you’re saying is beyond credibility, makes me wonder what kind of environment my son has to endure. We’re leaving now.”

“Yes, you do that. And don’t ever come back.”

“You’ll hear from me again,” Meredith warned. “And from the school board advisors.”

The Brewster family left, and Sandy brooded. She would not leave the school premise tonight.

V

She hung herself. She looped a belt around her neck, tightened it, and knotted it around the ceiling fan. The assistant principal found her the next day, swaying, as though there was a light breeze in the room, but all the windows were closed.

Inside the walls, between the insulation and plaster, she heard a skittering.