When I was young, the walls of my bedroom would sing to me at night. I found the mysterious phenomenon soothing, and looked forward to it every night.
At eight years old, I mentioned it to my parents, and they brought me to a doctor, who concluded I had a wild imagination. This reassured my parents, and prompted me to keep quiet about it in the future.
A few years later, my father had a heart attack in his sleep while my mom was away on a business trip. That night, I woke up suddenly and quickly noticed the absence of the walls’ singing. The silence felt weird, wrong.
It was broken by a lone, strangely familiar voice.
“Young giant, your father is in trouble,” the voice was whispered. It was breathy, like silk against silk, the voice of one of the singers.
Something tickled the skin right below my ear, then dropped down to my arm. When it reached my index finger, I brought my hand to my face so I could see my mysterious companion.
A small, black spider sat on the pad of my finger. Before I could make a move to shake it off, it spoke again.
“You father is very ill. He needs a healer,” the spider insisted in the same delicate whisper before launching itself off my finger into the darkness of my bedroom.
Sure enough, when I went to check on my dad, I was unable to wake him. Later, the doctor told me that my dad would have died if I hadn’t woken up when I did.
The next day, I whispered thanks to the spider that sang in my walls. They hummed in response, and I grinned, happy with my new friends.
My father died from another heart attack when I was seventeen, prompting my mother to spiral into mental decline until her hospitalization a year later. After that, I sunk into a deep depression and ended up in an abusive relationship.
I eventually told the spiders all about my suffering, and they murmured with sympathy from their perches in the walls. A large, brown spider dropped down from the ceiling onto the pillow beside my bruised face and asked me if I would bring my boyfriend over that evening.
“We will take care of you, young giant,” it promised.
So that’s what I did. He came over and settled himself before the TV. I stood at the stove in the kitchen, barely paying attention to my cooking as I waited eagerly to see what the spiders had in store.
He started screaming as the pasta finished. He had stopped by the time I had drained it and added the sauce. I ate my meal happily as I waiting for the police to arrive.
They said he died of a brain aneurism. Tragic, they said. Yes, I agreed, very tragic.
That night, I slept soundly, lulled by the gentle music as my friends sang from their homes in the walls
