The Mourning Glass

The summer solstice had passed, and Lila had been counting the days until the heat would relent. She kept her collection of exotic invertebrates in a converted cellar beneath her aunt’s antique shop, a space she privately called the menagerie. The lighting was low, amber, and the air hummed with the steady thrum of a dehumidifier. It was her sanctuary, her world of glass and silk and silent patience.

One night, in the thick of a heatwave, she dreamt of the cellar. It was identical in every detail: the rows of enclosures, the labeled vials, the faint mustiness cut by the chemical breeze. But the silence was oppressive, as if the air itself were holding its breath. On the top shelf, in a corner that should have held only a dusty box of molt, sat the glass enclosure that had once been home to her oldest companion—a Goliath bird-eater who had died three years prior. The glass was empty, but Lila felt a presence, an immense and patient weight. Then, a thought pressed into her mind, not in words but in pure intention: ‘Do not sell her.’

Lila woke with a start, the words ringing in her skull like a struck bell. The morning sun burned through the thin curtains, and she knew instantly who ‘she’ was—the cobalt blue, a stunning and venomous species she had raised from a spiderling. A collector had offered a small fortune, and the shipping was scheduled for today. The inevitability of it felt like a trap.

She dressed, her hands trembling as she descended into the cellar. Everything was in its place, the packaging materials laid out like a ritual kit. She paused before the cobalt blue’s enclosure. The spider was perched on a piece of cork bark, her legs a vivid electric blue, her abdomen a soft gray. She was beautiful, but she was also just a spider to Lila. Yet the dream’s command hung in the air, heavy and unspeakable.

She ignored it. She had a reputation to uphold, a business to run. She carefully transferred the spider into a small, ventilated cup, then placed it into a larger box with damp paper towels. She sealed the box, addressed it, and set it aside for the courier. The rest of the day was a blur of customers and inventory, but the dream gnawed at her, a splinter in her mind.

That night, she dreamt again. This time, the cellar was darker, and the empty glass enclosure on the top shelf was no longer empty. A shape huddled inside, indistinct, but Lila knew it was her old companion. The thought came again, sharper, more urgent: ‘You should not have sent her.’ Lila tried to speak, to ask why, but her voice was swallowed by a silence that pressed in on her ears. She woke gasping, a cold sweat on her brow.

Two days passed. The courier confirmed delivery, and the payment arrived in her account. Lila tried to feel satisfaction, but the unease persisted. She found herself avoiding the cellar, and when she did descend, she would glance at the top shelf, at that empty glass enclosure, and a chill would run down her spine.

On the third night, she woke to a sound: a faint tapping. It came from the cellar. She lay still, listening. The tapping was rhythmic, like the ticking of a clock, but faster. She pulled on her robe and crept down the stairs. The cellar light was on, even though she had turned it off. In the center of the workbench, a small package sat, wrapped in brown paper. Her name was on it, but no return address. Her hands shook as she cut the tape. Inside was a glass vial, and in the vial, a single, severed leg—the unmistakable cobalt blue of her sold spider.

She screamed and dropped the vial, which shattered on the concrete floor. The leg lay among shards, and as she stared, it twitched. It twitched, then it began to walk, dragging itself toward the nearest corner. She backed away, but the leg moved faster, and soon she saw more—antennae, mandibles, all crawling out of the shattered glass. They merged, forming a grotesque, half-formed spider, and it scuttled into the shadows.

The tapping resumed, louder now, coming from the top shelf. She turned, and there, inside the empty glass enclosure, was a shape. It coalesced, growing into the form of her old Goliath, her legspan immense. But its body was wrong—patchy, translucent, with a wound that oozed a black ichor. Its eyes, all eight, were fixed on Lila, and they were full of sorrow.

‘I tried to warn you,’ the thought came, not in words but in a wave of grief that flooded Lila’s chest. ‘She carries a curse. I carried it too. When I died, I thought it ended, but it only waited for another to bear it.’

Lila fell to her knees, tears streaming down her face. ‘What have I done?’ she sobbed.

The Goliath’s thoughts softened, almost tender. ‘You must bring her back. It is the only way. The glass remembers, and it will not let go.’

Lila spent the next days in a frenzy. She called the collector, but he had vanished. The shipping company had no record of the package after delivery. She searched online, posted in forums, but the spider was gone, as if it had never existed. Each night, the dreams grew worse, and the cellar grew colder. The half-born apparitions began to appear in her waking hours—legs skittering across the floor, mandibles clacking in the dark corners.

She realized the glass enclosure itself was the conduit. It had absorbed the spirit of her old spider, and now it was drawing her new one back. The only way to break the cycle was to return the spider to the glass, to let it die where the old one had died. But the spider was gone, lost to the world.

In a desperate act, she decided to perform a ritual. She filled the empty enclosure with soil from the Goliath’s original habitat, and she placed a tiny, skeletal fragment she had kept from its molt. She placed the enclosure on the floor, in a circle of salt, and she burned incense made from dried herbs she used for peace. She chanted words she did not fully understand, words she had found in an old journal in her aunt’s attic, a journal that spoke of spider worship and deals made in darkness.

As she chanted, the tapping stopped, and a silence deeper than any she had known descended. The light flickered, and the cellar seemed to contract around her. In the enclosure, the soil began to stir, as if something were burrowing. A tiny, dark shape emerged. It was a spider, but not a cobalt blue. It was a matte black, its abdomen marked with a pattern that resembled a weeping eye. It grew before her eyes, spreading to the size of her palm. She recognized it, with horror, as the species her aunt had warned about—the Mourning Glass, a spider that feeds on sorrow and binds itself to the heartache it causes.

The spider stopped growing and turned to face her. Its eyes were not like those of a spider but like a mirror, reflecting her own face, twisted in agony. Then it spoke, not in thoughts but in a whisper that echoed in the confines of the cellar: ‘You have called me back. I am the price of your greed.’

Lila tried to run, but her feet were rooted to the floor. The spider leapt, and she felt a sting on her neck. The world dissolved into a haze. She could feel the spider crawling across her body, entering her mouth, her nose, her ears. She felt it weaving its web inside her, threading its silk through her veins, wrapping her thoughts in a cocoon of gray.

When she woke, she was crouched in the corner of the cellar, naked, her skin covered in a thin layer of silk. The enclosure was empty, but she knew she was not alone. She crawled to the workbench and looked into a mirror she kept for examining specimens. Her face was her own, but her eyes were not. They were black, with the faintest hint of blue—the blue of the cobalt blue she had sold.

She knew then that the spider was inside her, a parasite of soul and body, and that she was now the vessel for the curse. The dream had been a warning, but she had ignored it. Now, she would spend her days in silence, listening to the thoughts of the dead, and every time she looked into a glass, she would see not her own reflection but the eyes of the mourning spider, waiting for the next soul to consume.

And in a shop window, in a city far away, a glass enclosure sat empty, waiting for a new owner.