Things That Sit Creepily in the Night

I am a person who is eminently capable of scaring myself nearly out of my wits when it gets dark. Recently, among other books, I began to read The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian. All the book reviewers were all “it’s horror, with a twist” so, because I liked Midwives and The Double Bind I decided to read it. I started it one evening in bed and then ignored it for several days because it’s a ghost story, and what do you think happens when you stop reading a ghost story and turn out the lights? Well, you start imagining that there is a ghost right there…maybe next to the bed…maybe hidden by the bed and in fact rising up slowly over the edge…

If you’re me you imagine that, quite irrationally and for quite some time.

My usual strategy in this case is to then imagine a glowing, green (I don’t know why it’s green, but it probably has something to do with Michigan State being so awesome and also Star Wars) force field around the bed. I’ve described this before. It’s several inches thick and completely surrounds the bed. Although it allows air in, everything that’s sinister is immediately vaporized upon contact with it. Yes, I’m 24, but so what? Don’t fix what’s not broken.

Anyway, on Sunday afternoon I finished The Night Strangers. The writing was okay but I give the book an overall rating of “awful” due to the ending. I suffered through all the creepiness of the ghosts and the anxiety that comes from reading a “horror” book to get to a decent ending and was denied by Mr. Bohjalian. I won’t soon forget that, sir.

I finished an entirely different book after that, and it took until slightly after midnight, but of course when that light went out all I could think of was those stupid ghosts. So, to alleviate my fears, I started telling Jack the entire plot of the book, which took some time. That led us to a discussion of the John Green books I read over the weekend, and then (improbably) to a discussion about whether or not all of the Afghani people engaging U.S. troops are actually Taliban (it was late, okay?). I didn’t have any nightmares about The Night Strangers.

But something came to mind earlier today, and that thing is: there is something worse than picturing the fake ghosts from The Night Strangers, and that’s when a real creepy thing creeps into your bedroom.

I have a small table lamp from Ikea (one of those round, green ones) on the bedside table about four inches from where I sleep. When I turn it on at night (or usually Jack turns it on and then snores for a while until I get around to coming to bed to read and eventually sleep) the light rises up in this perfect angle over my side of the bed.

One night last week, I came into the bedroom. Jack was kind of asleep. One of my nightly rituals is to scan the bedroom for spiders, which in fact are more terrible than any fake ghost. I check to make sure there are none in the corners of the room and I especially check to make sure none are hovering near the bed. I once had a spider come down on me when I was in the shower at my parents’ house and screamed so loudly that I woke up my sister and I almost ran into her as I was running out of the bathroom in a towel, my hair still full of shampoo. So, a spider coming down on me is actually a legitimate fear, having experienced the terror firsthand.

On the line where the light met the shadows, I saw another, smaller shadow. “Hmm,” I thought. “It’s not much of a shadow. I’m sure it’s normally there and I just don’t see it. But I’ll check to make sure.”

And so I went over there, to the wall about three feet above my pillow, and leaned in closer and closer (I wasn’t wearing  my glasses; I leave them in the other room at night) and when my face was about four inches away I perceived that ACTUALLY IT WAS A SPIDER, lightly colored almost like the paint on the walls.

“Oh, my god, it is one,” I said loudly.

Jack was all, “What?”

“There’s a spider.”

“Where?” he said.

“RIGHT THERE,” I said, as if this thing was too massive to miss, which I almost had. Then he started telling me to get something to kill it with and I was trying to flee the room and the competing instincts were just going crazy, but finally I got some toilet paper and brought it back and he slew the beast. After that, though, when the lights were out, I couldn’t help it and turned all of them back on and made both of us search again. When Jack asked me why I said, “Vigilance, Jack. Vigilance is the only way to protect ourselves.” It was probably one o’clock in the morning.

It’s those possible outcomes that are so unnerving. What if I DIDN’T practice constant vigilance against spiders? What if I missed it? WHAT IF IT CRAWLED DOWN ONTO MY PILLOW, WHAT THEN? And furthermore, WTH was that thing doing three feet from my pillow? It might have been there earlier while I took a nap. It might have spent all day traversing the wall. Ugh. UGH. Of course, the force field is ineffective against non-imaginary spiders.

Anyway, I suppose the point of all this is fourfold. 1) The Night Strangers was so not worth it. 2) In the future I should practice being more vigilant when it comes to horror books with supposed “twists” and just avoid them, unless I can find a review that proves otherwise. 3) Perhaps I should not read so many books. 4) Sometimes my fears are justified.

It’s not that I lose a lot of sleep over these things. Well, maybe some sleep. But sometimes things just layer on each other. Probably, it all started with that spider.

Anyway, with book and spider vanquished, onward…