The Molt Collector

In the arid outskirts of Marrakesh, where the wind carries whispers of ancient dunes, I ran a modest business breeding tarantulas. My specialty: the ornate baboon spiders of the Atlas Mountains, their bodies a tapestry of burnt orange and coal black, their legs like twisted iron. The locals whispered that I was touched by djinn, but they still brought me their dead—mummified spiders found in olive groves, their legs curled like prayer. I would pay them in silver dirhams and never ask questions.

My private quarters were a labyrinth of glass terrariums, each a miniature world of cork bark and moss. The females were prized: their abdomens swelled like ripe figs, their fangs gleaming with venom. The males, smaller and short-lived, were sold to enthusiasts in Europe. But it was the slings—the spiderlings no bigger than a fingernail—that occupied my nightmares. I told myself I burned them after death to prevent pathogens, a public health measure. The truth was simpler: I was terrified of what they might become.

My own childhood was haunted by dreams of spiders crawling from my mouth, their legs tasting the air, their eyes like wet seeds. My therapist called it an irrational phobia, but I knew better. There was something ancient, something patient, in the way a tarantula waits. I kept them, perhaps to prove I was stronger than my fear, perhaps because I believed they held a secret only the dead could share.

The trouble began with an old Berber woman who brought a jar of silt from the ruins of Ait Benhaddou. She claimed it was cursed, that the spiders within were not of this world. I dismissed her, as I always did, and paid her in coins. That night, I opened the jar to find the silt teeming with tiny, translucent spiderlings. They were smaller than any sling I had bred, and their bodies pulsed with a faint, forlorn luminescence.

I should have burned them immediately. But my curiosity, my arrogance, stayed my hand. I placed the jar on a shelf and forgot it. Days passed. I noticed my females growing restless, tapping their front legs against the glass, a rhythm I recognized as a mating dance. Yet there were no males in the room. The tap-tap-tap continued, growing louder, more insistent, until one night a glass shattered with a sound like a gunshot.

I rushed to find the largest female, a horned baboon I called Zara, escaped. She was crouched on the floor, her legs wrapped around something—a pale, hairless spider, twice her size, with an abdomen that seemed to breathe. I grabbed a pair of tongs, but as I reached for it, the creature turned. Its fangs were not like a tarantula’s; they were long, curved, and dripping a milky ichor that hissed where it touched the stone floor. My limbs locked. The dream was real.

It spoke, not in words, but in a vibration that traveled through my bones. It asked why I burned its children. I tried to explain, but my voice became a croak. It said it had been waiting, that it had been feeding on my fear through the slings I disposed of. It had been growing, patient, in the silt of forgotten graves.

I backed away slowly, my heart a wild drum. The creature’s legs extended, and I saw the barbs on its body, each one a tiny tooth. It lunged, and I was thrown against the terrarium wall. The glass shattered, and I felt the sting of a thousand tiny fangs on my back. I screamed, but no sound came out. The spider’s ichor seeped into my skin, and suddenly I was a child again, my bed overflowing with spiders, their legs in my throat.

When I woke, the room was silent. Zara was back in her tank, her legs still. The jar was empty. I stood up, shaky, and noticed a new pattern on the floor—a spiral of webbing, like a fingerprint, with a single word woven into it: *Behold*.

I have not burned a sling since. Now, I keep them all, even the dead ones. I collect their molts, those empty husks, and I hang them from the ceiling like wind chimes. When the wind blows, they click together, and I hear a sound like laughter. Sometimes, at night, I feel a phantom crawling on my skin, and I look to the jar on the shelf, expecting to find it glowing again. It never does. But I know it is only patient. It was always patient. And I am part of its pattern now.