There’s a certain time of day, somewhere halfway between night and sunrise, when the sky turns blue-purple and the light blends with the dark and the clouds are reduced to thin wisps that slither across the sky and burn yellow-red on the edges. The birds have begun to warble soft little songs, and the air tastes of mist and the remnants of the smell of the night. Most everyone is still fast asleep – except me. I’m still awake somehow, staring with blank, tired eyes out the window on the back wall. I’m holding a flashlight in one hand and a flyswatter in the other, and I’m absolutely terrified.
           

At the time I was -- still am, in fact -- thirteen. I had stayed up too late reading and sketching made-up faces just because the inspiration had happened to strike me. I had nearly fallen asleep twice to the quiet music I was playing, only to be violently awoken minutes later by an obnoxiously loud trumpet solo. I had meandered away the early morning hours with barely a care, but now that it was nearing 4 A.M., I’d become a creatively inspired (but very tired) mess. Oh, and I had to pee. Bad.
           

I didn't want to wake anyone in the house. Attempting to make as little noise as possible, I rolled out of bed and shuffled to the door, using my phone as a flashlight. Its wide beam filled the room with a sickly bright glow, reflecting silver off the handle as I went to open it. The door screeched in protest as I pushed it open. Cringing, I gingerly slipped out into the hallway.
           

At the time I was in Europe, visiting my grandparents with the rest of my family. They lived in a modest old cottage that had once been a barn, but had been redone to make it a more suitable home. It was a cozy wooden affair that seemed to perpetually smell of wood smoke and gingerbread; all wide windows and doorways that had been cut by hand years ago. The stairs creaked with age, but I had learned some things from a childhood of practical jokes and night spy missions with my cousins. If one placed their feet in exactly the right places, any footsteps would be nearly silent. So I descended. The flashlight cast distended black shadows on the walls, making everything seem strange and surreal, like a scene from an old horror movie.
           

Then I saw it.
           

One of the shadows moved. It wasn’t my hand. It wasn’t one of the odd ornaments hanging from the beams. No, it seemed like it was alive. It flickered across the wall briefly, then stopped. I whirled, waving the flashlight around in an attempt to find it – whatever it was. I almost wish I hadn’t.
           

There, on the wall, was a spider. And not just any spider. Although it was much smaller than its disproportionately large shadow, it was still of a decent size – two, perhaps even three inches in length, able to fit comfortably in my palm (as if I’d let it). I stumbled down the last two stairs, whisper-shouting a few remarks I can’t repeat here, all the while keeping my flashlight trained on the eight-legged beast.
           

Now listen, for the most part, I don’t mind spiders. I like watching the cellar spiders patter purposefully about. I like watching the garden spiders outside weave their intricate webs. I’ve held tarantulas before -- and been perfectly okay with it. I think spiders are quite fascinating, really – but not if they’re indoors. Not if I see them at 4 AM. And certainly not if they’re huge, hairy, fast-moving night hunters that I wasn’t even aware could get in the house.
           

I took a few deep breaths and stared at it for a long time, trying to figure out what my options were. I couldn’t squish it. It moved too fast to be captured. However, I didn’t want to -- couldn’t -- just leave it there. It shifted one of its great hairy legs, like it was mocking me or something. I gave it one last fearful glance and sprinted in the opposite direction, not stopping until I got to the bathroom and the door was closed behind me. Ain’t no spider getting in here.
           

Actually, I was wrong.
           

Very wrong.
           

I relieved myself. I realized I was not alone. And as someone who prefers to take care of business in private, finding out that there were more spiders in the bathroom too was absolutely horrible. The first one I noticed skittered across the floor and disappeared somewhere behind the shower. The second was hunched in a corner, probably waiting for some unlucky invertebrate prey to come along. The third emerged from a towel and the fourth appeared at the head of the door, peering down with all eight spindly limbs bent. I was surrounded by spiders and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to get out without one jumping at me. My solution? Completely abandon all (if any) calm or strategy I had had before.
           

I stood still, paralyzed with fear. A rising panic spread in me until I felt like there were thousands of tiny spiders crawling all over my body. I ran my hands through my hair and jumped like a frightened animal at every noise or phantom feeling on my skin. I feared for my life – they were big, fast, and oh-my-goodness-what-if-they’re-venomous-what-if-they-bite? I spun around, trying to keep as many as I could see within view. Great Caesar, how many were there? How many could I not see? How long did they live? How many spiderlings would spawn and strew themselves across the house in the next few months? I could practically feel my heart beating through my chest as I waited for my gristly impending doom by spider attack. Looking back, it was kind of pathetic. I don’t know how long I was standing there shaking before I finally worked up the courage to throw myself at the door and bust out of there, spewing profanity worse than Andrew Jackson’s parrot at a funeral.
           

Shutting the door firmly, I allowed myself one deep breath and tiptoed to the living room. I switched on the wi-fi router. Technically, since our cottage was nestled in the hills in the middle of nowhere, we weren’t supposed to use it. We’d already gone over the data limit once. But this – this was a life-or-death situation and I didn't care how many megabytes I used.
            

I turned on my phone. In between frantically shining the light around to make sure no more spiders had come out, I frantically Googled descriptions of the spiders I had seen. After a few minutes of scrolling through Google Images and looking at pictures of various sickening species, I finally narrowed it down to three:

A) The barn funnel weaver -- a harmless thing that made white funnel-shaped webs, hence its name.

B) The giant house spider -- a behemoth whose legspan could grow up to four inches and whose lifespan could be twice as long.
C) The hobo spider -- a night-hunter with a painful, venomous bite able to cause necrosis or even death.

Well, crap. I assumed the worst, as only a hypochondriac like me can do. As far as I was concerned I was pretty much done for.
           

I didn't even bother to switch off the router. I darted to the closet in the entrance hall and grabbed a flyswatter from behind the jackets and jumped up the stairs like a bat out of hell, bare feet pitter-pattering on the floor until I got upstairs. Suddenly, I felt the arch of my foot come down on something spindly and strange and spidery. At this point I’m sure I must have woken someone up, because I stamped hard on the floor and I felt it move and I bolted, screaming without screaming, and shut myself in my room, sweating bullets and feeling more scared than I had ever been. I held the flyswatter so tightly my knuckles turned white as I searched my room for any more. I realized there was a much greater number of holes in the walls than I previously thought there were.
           

I stayed up all night, terrified that another small army of possibly poisonous arachnids would come crawling towards me in the night. They didn't -- and I’m still alive. In fact, when I told my grandparents of my encounter in the morning, they laughed and informed me that even though they had no idea what those spiders were, they showed up around the house all the time. “Great,” I replied sarcastically. “I’ll keep that in mind while we’re still here for two more weeks.”

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any cool radioactive-spider powers from the whole thing. But I do know now to keep the rooms tidy and seal the cracks in the walls and keep a can of insecticide near my bed -- just in case. Oh, and I know I’m never going to Australia.
            

Their spiders make the ones I saw look like peasants.