The Spindlers Read Free

whether she still had Anna’s cell phone number, but at the last minute decided against it. What if Anna was busy doing something Important and got angry when Liza called? Worse, what if she didn’t remember Liza at all?
    Instead she got out a notebook and made a little list for herself: “Everything I Know About Spindlers and Their Habits.”
    Spindlers were not like regular spiders. They had eight legs, of course, but at the end of their legs they had human hands; and they had only two eyes, like a person’s, although their eyes were enormous and crescent-shaped, and they could see perfectly well in even the darkest night. Furthermore, though they were often as small as a pinhead, they could quite easily swell to the size of a house cat or larger. Some of the largest spindlers could grow to the size of a car, and in their large-jawed mouths they had one hundred teeth, each as sharp as a fang.
    She did not know what the spindlers did with the souls that they stole. Anna had claimed that she did not know either, although Liza had never quite believed her; Anna had always gone white when Liza mentioned them, as though someone had just punctured her chin and drained all the color from her face.
    She did know that spindlers were practically indestructible. Even brooms would not kill them.
    She did not know how to kill a spindler, or whether it was even possible.
    And that frightened her.
    That night, she washed her face and put on her pajamas and brushed her teeth—standing as far as possible from not-Patrick, who brushed his teeth dutifully beside her (another thing the real Patrick, who despised brushing his teeth and used as many tricks as possible to get out of it, would not have done).
    Both of them were now pretending that everything was back to normal. It was a game they had entered into by silent agreement. Liza pretended not to know that Patrick was not really Patrick; and Patrick pretended both that he was himself and that Liza believed that he was himself. It was a difficult game, but fortunately Liza was used to playing games with her brother.
    â€œWill you tell me a story?” the not-Patrick asked, as the real Patrick might have after they had both rinsed and placed their toothbrushes side by side in the toothbrush stand. Liza was careful to swivel her bristles away from his so they would not be touching.
    â€œNot tonight,” Liza said, struggling to keep her voice normal and cheerful. Liza often snuck into the real Patrick’s room and told him stories late into the night.
    â€œWhy not?” He stared at her with large, hollow eyes.
    Liza knew what he was doing. He was trying to lure her into his bedroom, where the spindlers would be waiting—hundreds of them—to steal her soul as soon as she closed her eyes.
    â€œI’m too tired tonight,” she said. “Maybe tomorrow night.”
    Not-Patrick shrugged. “Fine,” he said, his eyes flashing angrily. “I didn’t want to hear one of your stories anyway.” Liza thought about the letters lined up on the rim of his bowl this morning: I H-A-T-E Y-O-U. She thought, too, of their argument last night, and how it was her fault that Patrick had forgotten to say the broom charm.
    And yet only yesterday Patrick had run up to her, laughing, cupping a tiny rose-colored newt in his muddy palms, and asked her whether they could keep it together, as a pet. And in that second her hatred for the spindlers was so intense she had to grip tightly to the porcelain sink.
    She waited until he had gone into his bedroom and closed the door. Then she shoved her feet into a pair of her favorite sneakers without bothering to put on socks, and padded carefully down the broad, carpeted stairs into the living room. For a moment she paused, listening to her parents’ muffled voices; they were in the den.
    â€œIt’ll be all right,” her father was saying.
    Her mother responded, “And now you’ll need