The Persistent Patron

The town of Redmoor was a quiet place, tucked between the moors and the sea, where the fog rolled in like a slow, silent tide. I’d moved there for the peace, for the isolation, and for a job that kept my hands busy and my mind empty. After the incident at the old farmhouse—the one they called the Blot—I needed to forget. The thing that had oozed out of the cellar, that had swallowed the last of my courage, was gone, but the memory clung to me like a cold sweat.

Life settled into routine. I worked at the boatyard, scraping hulls and mending nets. The bath spiders, as I’d come to call them, still crept up from the drains, tiny black specks that scurried toward the corners of the tub. I’d catch them with a glass and a piece of mail, toss them out the window. It became a ritual, a small rebellion against the unnatural, and I took comfort in it. But at the Anchor, the local pub, there was always Harold.

Harold was an old man with a face like crumpled paper and spectacles that sat crooked on his nose. He’d plant himself at the corner table, next to the window, nursing a single malt that never seemed to run dry. Every time I walked in, he’d look up over those glasses, his eyes milky and knowing, and he’d rasp, ‘Anything else happen yet?’

I’d shake my head, order my pint, and find a seat as far from him as possible. But regardless of where I sat, he’d catch my eye, his thin lips parting in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He never believed my refusals. I could see it in the way his fingers tapped the table, in the tilt of his head, as if he was listening for something I couldn’t hear.

One storm-lashed Friday, the sea threw itself against the cliffs and the wind howled through the streets. The Anchor was nearly empty, the other regulars having chosen to stay home. I thought about doing the same, but the silence of my cottage felt heavier than the storm. I pulled on my coat, stepped into the rain, and made my way to the pub, telling myself I would just have one drink and leave.

Harold was there, of course, a fixture, a ghost of habit. The moment I pushed through the door, the rain dripping from my hood, he spoke. ‘Anything else happen yet?’

I felt a cold spike of irritation, but I controlled it, forcing a neutral tone. ‘No, Harold. Nothing.’

He chuckled, a dry sound like stones rattling in a tin. ‘You’re lying,’ he said, and for once, he stood up. He shuffled over to my table, his thin frame casting a long shadow in the low light. ‘You think I don’t know? Filthy things come out of the dark, and you think you just toss them out a window and they’re gone?’

I stared at my beer, not wanting to engage. But he leaned in close, his breath smelling of whisky and something else, something like rot. ‘They come back,’ he whispered. ‘They always come back. But they’ll find another way in. They’ll find a crack, a pipe, a keyhole. They’ll find the cracks in your mind.’

I didn’t answer. I just sat there, gripping my glass until my knuckles were white, willing him to go away. Finally, he shuffled back to his corner, but his eyes didn’t leave me. He took a slow sip from his glass, and I could swear the level hadn’t dropped.

I finished my beer quickly, paid, and left, the door slamming behind me. The storm had gotten worse, the rain pelting me sideways, and the streets were rivers of black water. I hurried toward my cottage, but as I turned the corner, I saw something that stopped me cold. On my doorstep, huddled against the wood, was a pile of tiny, black legs—spiders, dozens of them, all dead, their bodies crushed. I looked closer, and I saw that they were arranged in a circle, their legs pointing inward, as if they had been placed there carefully.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I stepped back, and behind me, a voice said, ‘I told you.’

I spun around. Harold stood under the flickering streetlamp, his coat sodden, his glasses glinting. ‘They don’t die, you know,’ he said. ‘They just wait. For a way in.’

I pushed past him, stumbled into my cottage, and locked the door. I turned on every light, searched every corner. I found nothing, no spiders, no signs of anything. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching, that the walls were too thin, that the world had become a little more unreal.

That night, I didn’t sleep. I sat in the kitchen, a knife on the table, staring at the back door. The bath spiders didn’t come. The silence was absolute. But then, just before dawn, I heard a noise from the bathroom: a faint, skittering sound, like a thousand tiny feet on wet tile.

I crept down the hall, my hand shaking, and pushed the door open. The bath was full, the water dark and still. On the surface, bobbing gently, was a single black shape—a spider, but larger than any I had seen, its body the size of my palm. Its eyes, impossible to see in the dim light, seemed to fix on me. And as I stood there, frozen, it raised one leg, as if in greeting.

The water rippled, and I saw something else—a reflection, but it wasn’t mine. It was Harold, sitting behind me, his mouth open in a silent laugh.

I whirled around, but there was no one there. When I looked back, the spider was gone. The water was clear, clean, just a bath I’d drawn earlier and forgotten to drain. I slumped against the doorframe, my chest heaving, my mind a whirlwind of fear and confusion. I tried to tell myself it was a hallucination, a trick of the storm. But I knew better.

From that day on, I stopped going to the Anchor. I stopped leaving my cottage. I boarded up the bathroom, but the skittering never stopped. Harold didn’t follow, but I could feel him somewhere, waiting. And every night, I find new cracks in the walls, new holes in the doors, and I know that whatever happened at the farmhouse, whatever I thought I’d left behind, had found a way back. And this time, it wasn’t just in the water. It was in me.

The last thing I saw before the blackness took me was a reflection in the window—my face, but my eyes were Harold’s, milky and old, and they said, ‘Anything else happen yet?’