Chapter Twenty-Seven: Threads of the Spider, Puppets of the Mind

Old Ma flung the door wide open, letting the light from outside flood in. Xingxinman sat quietly on the bed, maintaining her usual calm posture.

Old Ma groped for the light switch and turned on the room’s lamp. There was no sign of the ghost spider inside, though it could still be hiding in some shadowy corner. He strode in and yanked aside the curtains—nothing, not even a fresh strand of bloody spider silk.

Aside from the extinguished night lamp, there was nothing out of the ordinary in the room. It was just a false alarm. Old Ma searched every corner, looking for the ghost spider.

I approached the night lamp. Unless Xing San’s wife had turned it off, there was no reason for the lamp to go out on its own. When I reached it, I saw that the switch had indeed been pressed—no malfunction, just turned off. Could Xing San’s wife really have done it before leaving?

I tested the switch. The lamp was perfectly fine.

A faint sense of unease crept over me. I turned to look; Xingxinman remained motionless on the bed. Was it just my imagination? Moments ago, it felt as though she’d been watching me.

Old Ma finished his search, and I too looked around, but found no trace of the spider.

With nothing else to do, we left Xingxinman’s room to search elsewhere. Before leaving, I glanced back at her—she appeared completely normal, yet I couldn’t shake the strange feeling that something was amiss.

Our second target was the guest room Old Ma and I shared—the only place, besides Xingxinman’s chamber, where spider silk had been found. This room was much simpler in layout; everything was visible at a glance, with only the bed, a small cabinet, and the curtains worth checking.

“Why did the ghost spider come here last night?” I asked as I searched. No other room showed signs of its silk; logically, it shouldn’t go anywhere except Xingxinman’s room, yet last night it came to our guest room.

“How should I know? But judging by the way it tried to attack you last night, maybe it came specifically for you,” Old Ma replied.

“For me?” Why me? Perhaps it was because I’d touched the bloody spider silk in Xingxinman’s room earlier. That seemed possible—Xing San and the others had never discovered the silk, so they likely never touched it.

The guest room yielded nothing. We moved on to search other rooms.

We turned the whole house upside down, but found nothing. Exhausted, we sat in the living room to rest. It was truly odd—the spider I saw in Xingxinman’s room last night appeared around eight o’clock, not too late, but now it was nearly ten, and still no sign of it.

Could it be that one of the pair of mother and child spiders was dead and the other had grown wary and fled? Or perhaps the ghost spider wasn’t hiding indoors, but somewhere outside?

My phone rang; it was Xing San. Old Ma didn’t use a phone, so he’d left my number for contact.

I answered. Xing San inquired about Xingxinman’s condition and whether we’d found the other spider.

“No, we’ve searched the whole house and found nothing,” I replied truthfully.

Xing San sighed, at a loss for what to do.

I remembered something. “By the way, ask your wife if she turned off the lamp in Xingxinman’s room when she left.”

Xing San agreed. After a moment, he said, “She didn’t. As soon as she got our call, she left the house immediately.”

Xing San’s wife didn’t turn it off! So how did the night lamp get switched off?

Tap!

A sound echoed; I quickly hung up and turned warily toward it.

Old Ma stood, his expression grave, eyes fixed in the direction of the noise.

Tap! The sound came again, from Xingxinman’s room. Footsteps—slow and heavy, as if someone were dragging an unbearably heavy body, struggling to walk.

I held my breath and quietly grabbed a feather duster as a makeshift weapon.

Tap! The heavy footsteps sounded again. The intervals were about half a minute; at this pace, it would take a while before whoever it was emerged.

“Come on, let’s see what’s going on,” Old Ma said, striding straight toward Xingxinman’s room.

He certainly had courage, going in without hesitation.

I followed, keeping a close eye on the bedroom door, cautious. The events of last night—her turning her head, the lamp switched off—flashed through my mind. She was never immobile; she moved only when no one was around, making her actions hard to detect. The situation was unsettling, impossible to predict what she might do next.

As we drew closer, the heavy footsteps sounded again. Old Ma pulled his gourd from his bag.

We hadn’t locked the door after searching; it was half open, the only barrier between inside and outside.

I pressed myself against the wall; Old Ma did the same on the opposite side, signaling for me to push the door open.

I reached out and slowly pushed the door. The room was faintly illuminated—the night lamp I’d switched back on before leaving cast its glow.

The door swung wide, and I could see Xingxinman’s bed, but she wasn’t on it. My wariness grew; I continued pushing the door.

I braced myself for her to be standing behind it with a strange expression, but when the door opened fully, the room was empty. She was nowhere to be seen.

Astonished, I wondered—where did she go? We’d just heard those heavy footsteps; there was no reason for her not to be inside!

A shadow dropped from above, and before I could react, a hand grabbed my shoulder and yanked me back.

Almost simultaneously, a figure leapt down from above the door inside the room, landing on all fours.

I staggered back a few steps, finally realizing—the shadow was Xingxinman herself. Her limbs were bent, hands and feet pressed to the ground, her posture eerily spider-like! Her serene face now bore a strange, cold indifference, hair loose and wild, unbelievably bizarre.

My God! The reason we didn’t see her before was because she had been crawling along the wall like a spider!

What on earth was happening to her? Had she mutated like some kind of spiderwoman? This form radiated nothing but danger.

“Sorcery has clouded her mind; spider silk manipulates her form. The other spider is on her!” Old Ma said in a low voice.

I noticed strands of bloody spider silk wrapped subtly around Xingxinman’s body. She wasn’t mutated—she was being controlled by the spider!

I was utterly shocked; if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed such a thing possible!

Xingxinman’s eyes rolled white as she turned toward me, crawling rapidly like a spider, hands and feet working together.

Damn! So she really was targeting me! We’d never met before—what had I done to deserve this? Why was it all directed at me?

Old Ma took a mouthful of water from his gourd and sprayed it at her. When the water hit Xingxinman, she writhed, shaking her head in agony, her hands and feet struggling.

Old Ma prepared to spray again, but she suddenly leapt upward, clinging to the ceiling!