My Little Haunting chapter 12 by Emerson Van Wie

The first spider appeared on his pillow.

It was small, black, and perfectly still. He found it when he pulled back the sheets, its legs folded beneath its body. He crushed it with a tissue.

The next morning, there were three more.

They occupied the corners of the bedroom, the ceiling above the bed, and the narrow space behind the dresser. He killed them one by one, checking the room for webs.

By evening, he had found eleven, so he bought insecticide.

He sprayed the bedroom, the hallway, the kitchen, and the space beneath the stairs. He slept on the sofa with the lights on.

Around 3 in the morning, something crawled across his hand.

He threw the blanket away.

A beetle sat on the cushion beside him.

Then another.

Then another.

He jumped to his feet. The insects scattered across the sofa and disappeared between the cushions. He tore the fabric apart, searching for them, but found nothing.

He called an exterminator.

The man arrived the following afternoon and inspected the house. He found no infestation, no nests, no evidence that insects had entered from outside.

“You may have a few strays,” he said. “Nothing unusual.”

“They were everywhere.”

“Where?”

Seth pointed to the sofa.

The exterminator looked at it.

“I'm not seeing anything boss.”

He left a small bottle of treatment and a receipt.

Seth threw both away. That night, he sat at the kitchen table and watched the walls. A thin line of ants moved along the skirting board. They followed one another in a precise trail, disappearing beneath the cupboard.

He crouched to watch them.

One ant left the line and climbed the wall.

Another followed.

Then another.

They gathered beneath the window, where the paint had begun to peel.

He leaned closer, the insects formed a rough circle. Inside it, the wall was bare. He could see the faint outline of a mark beneath the paint, a small rectangle where something had once hung.

A photograph, perhaps.

He remembered the picture of his wife and Daniel. He had moved it from the kitchen to the bedroom, then to the drawer, then somewhere else.

He could not remember where it was now.

The ants began to scatter.

He stood up. As something moved beneath his sleeve.

He slapped his arm, then tore off his shirt and threw it across the room.

Nothing fell out. He searched his skin for bites, for marks, for any evidence of what he had felt.

There was nothing.

He sat on the floor until dawn. When the sun came up, he found a single ant crawling across the open page of his notebook.

It stopped beside a sentence he had written days earlier:

“I should have gone.”

The ant turned, crossed the words, and disappeared into the binding.

He closed the notebook.

For the first time, he did not write down what had happened.

He went to his phone instead.

He called the cemetery and asked when the groundskeeper would be there.

Then he called Lady Blue and asked whether she had any other wisdom for him. She gave the recommendation he hadn’t thought of.

He called Daniel.

The phone rang six times before someone answered.

“Hello?”

Seth had opened his mouth.

For several seconds, he could not speak.

“It's me,” he said.

A pause.

“I know,” Daniel replied.

Seth  gripped the phone.

“I need to ask you something about her.”

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check out more creativity by Emerson at @evwphotos