From my earliest days, I have known that the horror would come for me. My mother whispered tales of it into the shell of my ear while I was in my very cradle, and as I grew my terror-filled imagination grew with me, my budding mind producing a being so real that it seemed it might slither from her stories and strangle me with its slime-slick, moss-covered tentacles as soon as she left my room, leaving me with the protection of only a single, flickering wick.
It was not that my mother meant to frighten me. Instead, she meant to forewarn me, to arm my intellect and soul against the inevitable plight that would seize me on my wedding day, at the instant my chosen groom pressed his lips to mine. I could almost understand it in some way, the jealousy that would be roused in the unholy beast she told me of, the envy that would cause the great, slouched monster to drag itself from the depths in protest of my nuptials. It would only want its rightful property, for any husband I chose would be a false one. The Many-Legged One has always been my true mate, the mate of all the women in my family, both my sire and-according to my mother-the only spouse I will ever have, no matter what I might try to do to escape this fate.
Time and again, she murmured this prophecy to me in the night, as far back as I can recall, the susurration of her lips close to my cheek, her eyes glowing faintly in the velvet darkness, her slitted pupils those of a cold-blooded reptile, right up to the evening she drew a razor down her wrists and pooled ruby across her sheets. As she lay dying, she mouthed the story at me to the last, until her voice stopped forever.
I watched, my own eyes paper dry, as they lowered her in the ground two days later, and fled that same afternoon, still in my best mourning dress. I had sent letters in secret for months, each page filled with the torrid promises, working my way into the hearts of a handful of men, hoping one might take a chance on me. I had aimed at gentlemen of some fortune, though the size of their accounts mattered little compared to their home's distance from the estate of my birth. As I traveled by carriage to the waiting arms of my best prospect, I knew I risked all, and yet I hoped that a delicate show of grief and a less delicate show of ankle might place me beyond my mother's prophecies.
When I finally writhed beneath Edgar Humboldt, I vowed all I owned, both financial and flesh, if only he would take me to wife. Within the week, I stood at his side in a modest ceremony, his doubting friends gathered around us. I beamed as the priest bound us together, ignoring the contemptuous smiles of his peers. They were no worry to me, now that I was free.
It was when I quivered beneath Edgar again, in the quiet of the manse, that I heard it: the bump upon the stair, too heavy for the step of any maid or manservant. It came again, thump and glide, thump and glide, the wretched sound an enormous body landing on each riser and then dragging up the hideous weight of its limbs. I covered my mouth to smother a scream. How foolish I had been to think such a simple plan might outwit the Lord of the Depths!
