raised by wolves

The Spider Lady is something unique in this world. Something horrible that makes your skin crawl, something nasty that makes your teeth chatter, something inexplicable that makes the hair on your arms stand up, something absolutely one-of-a-kind.

In the years I’ve had the misfortune of knowing the Spider Lady, I’ve never been able to figure out what the hell she is. She doesn’t age, at least not properly. She’s looked as old as anything as long as I’ve known her. She doesn’t drink blood. Her skin is covered in tattoos and she dresses like a gypsy circus sideshow. She can go out in the sun. She’s not a vampire and she’s not a wolf.

There is something else, beyond the mysteries of her physiology that put me ill at ease. More than once she has demonstrated the ability to hold my kind under a sort of thrall. The way I can charm a human, the Spider Lady seems to have a similar ability in relation to vampires. More than once in her company I’ve found myself compelled to obey her will. Thankfully she’s only ever used it to shut me up, but it is a powerful sort of magic and absolutely irresistible. It makes me more nervous than I care to admit, and the answers the Spider Lady gives you to whatever question you have is just as likely to satisfy you as it is to drive you mad.

The way to the Spider Lady’s house is this: You must get lost. Pick a direction and walk in it, turn yourself around and walk in another direction. Repeat until you are good and lost. If your question is good enough, or if you are just unlucky enough, the Spider Lady’s domain will appear to you. More often than not, you will not notice anything out of the ordinary, because it usually manifests as a small white building with a neon sign in the front window that reads: Fortune Teller – Mystic – Palm Readings – Tarot.

I lit another cigarette after about five blocks and turned abruptly left. I couldn’t recall what was in this direction, then cursed when I remembered it was the direction of an all-night diner, and that I knew every street between here and there. It is difficult for a vampire to get lost. I turned abruptly again and guessed I would spend the rest of the afternoon doing this, until the sun went down at least.

Around the next bend, I saw a small white building with a neon sign in the window that read: Fortune Teller – Mystic – Palm Readings – Tarot. With a cartoonish slap of my forehead, I walked towards the rickety screen door and walked right in.

The Spider Lady sat in a plush red chair across the table from her crystal ball. The place was done up like a haunted house, black curtains in the windows, baubles and trinkets and sparkling bits of rock were neatly arranged on all the shelves and there were cobwebs in all the corners. The room looked about how you would expect it to from the outside.

I couldn’t help but imagining, as I stood waiting for the Spider Lady to acknowledge me, the image of a fly continuously running into the same web.

Finally the wrinkled old crone spoke, with a rasp in her voice like an engine made of sand being jump-started.

“I knew you would come, my little Cyril,” she says. I hate it when she uses my nickname, and I was about to let her know as much, but with a wave of her hand, I was silenced. “Sit,” she continued, and suddenly I was overcome with the compulsion to sit. My legs took me to the chair opposite of her, and inside I screamed and cursed my rotten luck. This was influence the likes of which I had never experienced.

“Are you worried, little Cyril?” she asked, squinting and leaning forward, her toothless mouth slightly agape, drawing deep breaths. “You should be,” she said. “There is much to worry about in this…troubled time.”

She took a long, haggard breath and then said: “Do I have your full attention?”

With every ounce of willpower I possessed, I gave the faintest, most strained nod of my entire existence.

She smiled like a checkerboard and leaned back, clasping her hands in front of her. “Good. I will only say this once, for time is of the essence. Listen very carefully…”