Lying in bed, I checked my watch.
It was one in the morning. There was no light in the house.
Liz was in the other room.
Since we'd already dealt with a spider a few hours ago, we could rest easy.
For the past few months we hadn't had any instances where another spider would come for us on the same night. If she was in her room at this hour, she should be sleeping.
The front door made a lot of noise so I obviously couldn't use that. The creaking of the back door could get loud at night but if I could be a little more careful, she wouldn't be able to hear me. This was why I'd oiled up the hinges the days before, which stopped the creaking but there was no guarantee they wouldn't go off now.
To reach the back entrance of the house, I just had to pass by her room, which didn't have a door.
Treading softly, I went out of my bedroom and into the hallway. I kept my arms close to me, holding onto my shirt to keep the rustling of the fabric to a minimum.
From the distance, the moonlight shone from the boarded-up window by the back door, sifting through the slits.
The door was just a dozen steps away.
When I neared the entrance to her room, the whirring of the electric fan was the only thing I could hear that became slightly louder with every step.
It sounded a little muffled, which meant she was lying right in front of it. If she had been further away, the pitch would have been much higher.
With one more step, I was standing in front of her room.
Then my heart stopped.
She was lying in bed, facing me.
It was too dark; I couldn't see whether she was really asleep or her eyes were wide open.
Even as she lay in bed, she was holding onto the red book—its silhouette was visible from where I was standing.
My body froze as my feet were rooted to the ground.
I was about to count to three in my head—
"Don't go."
I held my breath.
No, I was imagining it.
My brain was playing tricks on me, making me hear voices.
If it had really been her calling out to me, it would've sounded different.
My chest was throbbing so hard I could even hear it. The heartbeats were loud enough that I was afraid they would leak into the room and wake her.
I started counting in my head.
One.
If she really was awake, she would be moving.
Two.
Three.
I took another dreaded step past the entrance of her room, praying to God that my guesses were correct—that her eyes were closed and she was really sleeping.
Tiptoeing on the cement, I sidestepped the few remaining tiles on the floor to keep them from cracking because of the hollow space underneath. Reaching the back entrance, I pulled out the key, which I'd taken out from the rest of the key chain so it wouldn't rattle, and slowly slid it inside the socket.
I began to slowly rotate the key. The moment I felt the jam inside the lock, I stopped, and then inched forward very slowly. The hand movement was so small that I couldn't even see it.
The lock opened with a small click. With my sweaty hands still on the key and lever, I turned around and waited, my heart pounding in my chest.
A full minute passed. The hallway was still empty.
She didn't hear it.
I gently pulled down the handle.
I'd oiled the hinges along with whatever parts connected to the lever right before this, on two consecutive days. It was quiet yesterday so it shouldn't squeal now all of a sudden.
Very slowly, the door moved forward without any resistance as if it had no weight—I really had overdone the oiling. I stepped out the moment it was open wide enough for me to squeeze through.
Then, very gently I closed the door behind me, releasing the lever slow enough so the latch bolt wouldn't click inside the door frame.
I put my shoes on, grabbed my second crutch which was propped against the wall and limped five kilometers to the nearest road, where I called a cab to the city.
As I sat in the back seat, I kept turning around to check if there was anyone behind me.