The walls make me crazy. The bulkheads have rivets only they are not rivets. I know they are not really rivets. Yes, they are tiny yellow eyes that blink and watch and see. They like to watch me to stare at me I am never alone now. Never ever never. Those eyes want to know my secret things that I have locked up in my head. But only I have the key. Yet they stare and leer and watch. They’re waiting for something. Waiting for me to do something.
But what?
I cut smiling mouths into my palms with the knife.
The mouths wake me up.
They like to scream.
February 25?
The insane woman still haunts the corridor.
Oh, she thinks I do not know what she wants.
But I know because I can think with her mind as easily as with my own. Ha, ha, ha. She didn’t expect that.
Still, she creeps in the corridor. The sounds she makes. Patter, patter, tink, tink, tink. She must have a dozen legs to make sounds like that.
The creeping.
The hideous creeping.
Oh, how it echoes even now.
February 26?
I woke spun in webs.
She must have gotten in while I slept. She is very sneaky with her loathsome creeping. The webs were all over me. I couldn’t see them, but I could feel them. Oh, sticky and clinging and wet with spider mucus. Gossamer strung with pearls that must be eggs. Eggs for puppet-spider babies. Hee, hee. What an image that conjures? But I know it to be true, so very true. Out there, walking and creeping about with all those legs.
Do they think I do not know?
Yes, I woke spun with webs.
As I walked through my cabin, they were strung everywhere. Like spiderwebs breaking across one’s face… but imagine a thousand million spiderwebs breaking over your face at once.
Be quiet. They’re out there now… the lady and the puppet-baby. Can you hear them creeping? They have a thousand legs.
I know their game.
I know her game.
Creeping out there and staring through holes in the walls.
Does she think I cannot hear her whispering those profane things?
March
That puppet-spider baby is crying.
It cries out in the corridor, creeping on those long black legs. It is hungry. It wants its milk. It sucks the milk from things wrapped in silk high up in its web.
I hear it nursing at night.
It wishes to nurse on me, little puppet-spider baby. I saw it through a hole in the wall and it saw me. It has many eyes and they are all black.
It needs to nurse.
I will let it nurse on me, sweet evil puppet-spider baby. Yes, yes, yes. It scratches over my bare belly. It is hairy and plump and gurgling. I let it nurse at my breast. Its teeth are very sharp. Its mouth is slimy.
Sucking and sucking.
The feel of its tongue lapping makes me scream. I like to scream.
March?
Creeping in the corridor.
I hear her creeping even now.
She has more than one child and they all have many legs. A thousand creeping legs.
I have only two.
But I have ten fingers.
I can make them crawl.
See how they crawl.
Over walls and over faces.
Lovely spider legs, see them creep.
March 27 i creep up walls robert does not like it does not like what i have webbed up tasty things in webs yes i have many legs with which i creep and crawl up walls and down walls over floors and under cabinets it is such good fun the face of my lover: flyblown and grinning, soft and pulpy with white bone bearing teeth marks. i paint his face with kisses he tastes sweet beneath the cobwebs i have spun over him he is safe in a gray coccoon. she will not have him i have chased her and her leggy babies down below for i am queen and i eat children with yellow snapping teeth i eat spider babies their meat is rich their blood brown like gravy cold gravy i seek dark damp corners to spin my webs places i can creep and crawl and slink i dream of basements and cellars and webby places i hang over Robert he is my lover so i cocooned him laid my spider eggs in him creeping always creeping waiting for my spider babies to be born when they are born we will eat my lover tastes so sweet robert like candied meats love his taste like candied meats i creep and i wait
The entries as such ended there.
Cook was sweating and shaking. It was all the mad ramblings of an insane mind, yet he almost half-believed it, crazy and improbable as it all sounded. His heart was pounding and he could not hold the book still. He was angry. Angry at a God that would allow this woman to become a lonely, deranged thing that maybe had to eat her husband’s corpse to survive. Angry at Saks for showing it to him and maybe angry at that woman herself for invading his mind, spinning lustrous webs in the corners where things breathed and crept and light would never touch. He did not want to see these things. Did not want to ever feel them.
“You’re not done yet,” Saks said.
“No, you’re fucking wrong, I am done,” Cook said, filled with hatred now. “You can stay if you want, but I’m going.”
“No, you’re not,” Saks said, blocking his way. “There’s more. Just look at it.”
