The last few nights had been an ordeal, seven hours of troubled writhing and disturbed sweats ending in a peak of released terror as the alarm clock rang.

Timmins rubbed a hole in the steam of the mirror. His eyes were sunken and dark, like a nest. The water splashing in the sink was a threat. At least the bus was on time, the passengers all annoyingly cheerful. Timmins scowled at the driver as he alighted, resentful of the fact that he had been delivered to work.

The morning papers were full of the latest killing. She had been found on some waste ground, strangled like all the others. Timmins tried not to blush as he read the psychological profile – single man (possibly living with his parents), sexually inexperienced, emotionally immature, low paid job, socially backward. The newspaper bullet points were accusatory.

It was raining so the library was quiet. The windows cast veined shadows upon the drab walls. A couple of headscarf-donned pensioners thumbed through the historical romances, lurid covers of wartime streets and country villages. Timmins mentioned to his boss, Mrs Turlough, that he lived alone, as she shook her head over the newspaper. Her puzzled expression prompted him to explain how his mother had died in a car crash when he was six. Mrs Turlough sent him to file some newly returned books.

After lunch, a group of children entered the library and noisily tried to commandeer all the new computers. In an attempt to gain favour from Mrs Turlough, Timmins cleared his throat and asked the children if they wouldn’t mind leaving. His response was a handful of sniggers and unheard mumblings. They did quiet down, although they showed no signs of leaving. Timmins counted this as a small victory.

After five o’clock, the library became deserted. As Timmins tidied the shelves he thought he saw someone waiting in the foyer, a dark shape of sentinel tweed. When he went to see, he was surprised to find it empty.

The bus ride home was tiring. The rain on the windows created web-like patterns which turned his stomach.

Tea was beans on toast, balanced on trembling knees as he watched the local news. They had no clues about the killer, the police were baffled. Timmins watched distantly as the programmes changed over until almost suddenly it was time for bed. He checked beneath the bedclothes before tentatively slipping between them, the cool sheets embracing his flesh.

Sleep was an unsettled wave of scuttled movements. His dreams were a dance through stroking cobwebs, shadows brushing his face, the eternal whisper of long forgotten corridors and the delicate feline movements of spider legs.

Sometime during the night, he awoke in a sheen of sweat. A passing car splashed scurrying shadows across the ceiling.

Fear prevented his return to sleep. He thought he could hear footsteps out on the street but when he climbed out of bed to look, the town was blanketed by pale darkness. Shadows peered at him from around corners.

In the morning, he looked worse. His skin was sallow and anxious. As he shaved, a movement in the mirror caused him to jerk, a spider-shaped explosion of blood marked the sink. He watched the water swirling in the plughole, conscious that there might be hundreds of eyes watching him from beneath there.

He got to work on time. Mrs Turlough was busy most of the morning with paperwork. Timmins watched people with real lives hurrying past the window to work. Out on the main road, a police car crept past in a sinister manner, although this probably had more to do with congestion than anything improper.

At lunchtime he escaped into the town square to eat his sandwich, gulping the pollution-hazed air in preference to the cloying suffocation of the library. Finally he had to leave -– the pigeons had crept into the periphery of his vision, causing his skin to crawl. As he gathered his belongings together he thought he saw a figure watching him through the crowd of shoppers. Suddenly his body jolted as he spotted a white insect scuttling between the legs of the crowd, but then he realised that it was only a little dog.

His reflection scowled at him as he approached the glass doors of the library. Behind him a dark shape watched his journey, but when he turned to look, the figure had vanished.

Mrs Turlough appeared in a better mood. She enthusiastically quizzed him on his choice of lunch. Timmins answered her, paranoia lacing his voice with suspicion.

He was thankful to leave work. Tea was a kebab and chips, purchased from the take away on the corner of his road. The shop was a blaze of bright lights, misted windows, yellowed with the thick sheen of grease. After eating it he felt quite ill, a feeling that prompted him to lie down on the sofa and watch the television.

Quite suddenly, he awoke to a different presenter. Obviously he had fallen asleep -– hours had passed. The window was swaying with the movement of fog outside, an undulating dance of mist that was teasing the shadows out of the streets. He stood and drew the curtains, the starkness of his reflection mocking him in the dark glass.

The night air was muffled, as if his house was trapped within a jam-jar. He decided to go up and read in bed -- not one of those murder mysteries that he had seen in the library. That would be no good. He needed something to unwind him.

The only book that he could find was a dog-eared paperback under the wardrobe, a tattered copy of Lord of the Flies. The word ‘flies’ reminded him too much of insects, so he pushed it back under and flicked on the clock radio. It was a late night phone in. The voices were like a drone, a low hum of monotony, a suggestion of bumblebees. The rhythm of the language lulled him into oblivion, another blanket of comfort that aided him through another night.

He awoke on the bed, fully clothed and stiff, the remnants of last night's fog dissipated by the morning sun, weak though it was. And then he heard the news on the radio. The police had confirmed that the Strangler had struck again; a young woman had been found on a grassy roundabout near the ring-road. Her murder occurred sometime after midnight.

He contemplated phoning in sick. His face looked desperate in the mirror. How much more of this could he stand?

After taking a shower to distract himself, he decided that he must go into work. His probation period was nearing its end and Mrs Turlough hardly needed another excuse to file a poor report on him.

By the time he had reached the library he was convinced that there was a figure following him. As he watched the grey streets chugging passed the bus, a dark shape kept loitered just out of sight. His footsteps were echoed in the subway as he ascended the steps. Somebody sent a tin can skittering across the floor in the distance behind him. His hurrying only twisted a pain of fear into his stomach.

Mrs Turlough was busy with a couple of inspectors from the council so Timmins was left to anxiously pace around the library, stalking up and down the aisles of books like a wraith.

At intervals Mrs Turlough and the inspectors came into the main library reception, taking notes and talking in hushed tones. Timmins smiled nervously at them and attempted to tidy things which were already tidy. He thought he heard one of the inspectors say the word ‘streamlining’.

He almost had a heart attack before lunch. A wheelchair-bound old woman was struggling to get between the glass doors at the entrance. Timmins went over to help her through, in an attempt to impress the watching library inspectors. He courteously held the glass doors open as she wheeled inside. Suddenly, he let out a yelp which caused the old woman to jump in surprise and turn round. He was staring aghast at a child’s pink glove that was lying on the floor, a lost relic of childhood carelessness.

“Whatever’s the matter?” The old woman’s tone was suffused with anger.

“I thought it was a big spider.” Timmins’ voice cracked in shocked relief. “God, it’s a glove. I thought it was something else.”

Shaking her head, the old woman wheeled her way into the library, muttering under her breath.

Timmins nervously poked the glove with a scuffed trainer to check that it was dead.

After dinner he loitered in the foyer until he watched the library inspectors depart with a stern handshake and a brisk manner of business. Mrs Turlough looked stressed, absently mumbling that she would grab a bite to eat. The rest of the day slipped past in a haze of boredom.

Timmins dreaded going home. As he approached his house from the corner of the street, it loomed up at him like a threat. It occurred to him that the net curtains in the bedroom windows made it look like they were coated in webs. The reflection of the streetlight in the windows was like a pair of pale eyes.

As he entered the front doorway, dust motes crept across the stuffy hallway air. He stood for a moment in the hallway and listened to the empty house. The heating was on, the radiators knocking and clicking as if something was about to strike.

After tea he decided to leave the television off and listen to some music instead. When he switched the radio on, the static hissed a warning at him so he hastily hit the play button on the cd player. The music seemed to soothe his nerves until he realised that it was The Beatles and that just reminded him of insects.

After switching the cd player off, a sinister silence smothered the house. The street outside was distant, almost as if cocooned. He went upstairs and ran a hot bath. The steam swirled in the bathroom like gossamer waiting to trap something. Coupled with the warm soothing water, the bath dulled his senses and injected a degree of tranquillity into him. He stayed in as long as he could before slipping straight into bed.

Sleep crept silently over him before he was aware of it. He woke after a few hours, relieved to realise that his dreams had been comfortable and secure. He closed his eyes and was beginning to drift back to sleep before he had a powerful feeling that there was something in the room with him.

An almost imperceptible rustling, the scratch of silk upon wood, a tentative probing from something unseen on the floor. Timmins felt the terror building within him.

He drew the covers over his head and tried hard to listen, his body rigid and sensitive in a spasm of fear. His eyes were focused on a patch of carpet through a gap in the covers, when suddenly, into his line of vision, crept a large pale spider, hairless and anaemic, pink legs probing the air slowly as if to taste his fear. Timmins released a high-pitched shriek, wavering upon the abyss of insanity, recoiling at the sight of the monstrous insect. It was almost white, its body veined with pink blotches and sinister wrinkles. And then as the noise of his scream subsided, Timmins heard from the corner the voice of his dead mother.

“Curtis, get something quick! Kill it!”

He awoke, not in the clichéd manner of a movie -– all sweating and wide eyed -– but in a panting relief of reality.

The bedside clock read 3.15am, the brightness of the LED scorching his eyes. The bedroom was dark, inhabited by shadow.

And quite suddenly he was aware that only a quarter of a mile away, a nurse was leaving her shift and walking briskly towards her car. He knew that in a heartbeat she would be silently approached from behind and dragged into the bushy undergrowth, a gloved hand stifling her frantic cries for help. He saw her eyes bulging, a bloated mixture of terror -- and the blind realisation that she would soon die - as the hands squeezed the last of her breath from her. He was conscious of the fact that at the last moment tiny capillaries erupted in the whites of her eyes, pupils dilating, a warm puddle steaming onto the gravel as she voided her bladder.

And now Timmins was dressing, throwing clothes on from a pile on the floor. His body was taut with anxiety. He was running down the stairs, out into the street, bursting through the white mist that circled the streetlights, footsteps swallowed by the night.

* * * * *

The room in the police station was claustrophobic and stifling. The green metal grille at the window held back the strangling fog. Somewhere in the back of the building, Timmins could vaguely hear a woman crying. He was alone with his thoughts.

They were fools, of course. He had tried to reason with what they had told him. But could it be at all possible that they were correct?

The police had tried to calm him, ushering him into this room, to investigate his confession. They had called a doctor, some kind of psychiatrist, who had taken ages to arrive and then spent an eternity reading through a huge folder with things typed on the cover. When he had at last sat down with him and began to speak, Timmins knew that something had begun to creep into his mind; a tiny creature of doubt, a niggling belief that had started crumbling and was now at the point of total collapse.

The car crash when he was six had almost been totally blanked from his mind. The doctor had spoken in calm low tones and described the events of that horrific day.

The car had been hit coming out of a busy junction, pushed across the high street by a lorry, before being flipped over by the opposite kerb and landing on its side against the railings by the park. The lorry driver had been shaken, though unhurt. His mother had received severe head trauma and had been rushed to the city hospital where she fought for dear life for three days before finally succumbing to her injuries. This, of course, was in the days when seat belts were an option, not legally required, and so nobody wore them.

The doctor had told him sympathetically that because of the injuries that he had sustained it was impossible for Timmins to be the strangler of those women over the past six months. He was most insistent –- the confession was incorrect. He smiled reassuringly and suggested that Timmins talked to one of his colleagues at the hospital in a couple of days. And with that, he had gone.

But now Timmins was not so sure. He wept silently, tears fragmenting the sight that greeted his sleep-sore eyes. The images were all broken up.

He studied the pink round stumps of his forearms, the way the skin was smooth and yet twisted in strips that ran up to his elbow before blending into the normality of hair and freckled skin that resembled an arm.

The crash had robbed him of a mother. The crash had snatched away his hands, leaving instead a lifetime of imagined memories and haunted dreams. The lullabies of his childhood were the wretched tears of his shattered father. His dreams were stalked by the gentle white movements of spiders, a bloated five-legged insect, a lucid nightmare of a child’s hand, bloodstained and limp, lying in a sinister plastic container.

Timmins stared at the stumps of his arms and giggled quietly to himself. They were all wrong.

Relief itched away at his scalp as he heard the scratch-scratch sound of a fingernail scraping away at the outside of the door.