SOURCE: "The Spider" (International, December 1915)  Hanns Heinz Ewers

DESCRIPTION: "What does Clarimonda look like? I'm not quite sure. Her hair is black and wavy; her face pale. Her nose is short and finely shaped with delicate nostrils that seem to quiver. Her lips, too, are pale: and when she smiles, it seems that her small teeth are as keen as those of some beast of prey. Her eyelashes are long and dark; and her huge dark eyes have an intense glow. I guess all these details more than I know them. It is hard to see clearly through the curtains. Something else: she always wears a black dress embroidered with a lilac motif; and black gloves, no doubt to protect her hands from the effects of her work. It is a curious sight: her delicate hands moving perpetually, swiftly grasping the thread, pulling it, releasing it, taking it up again; as if one were watching the indefatigable motions of an insect." ("The Spider" by Hanns Heinz Ewers)

NOTES: Clarimonda (or Clarimonde, depending on which version of this story you are reading) sits at her window spinning, waiting for the next tenant of No. 7 of the Hotel Stevens across the street in Paris. The men who sleep there on Friday nights find themselves hanging from the curtain cord. When their bodies are taken down, a black and purple spider is found escaping from their mouth.  Clarimonda does this to them by a slow process of playing a game with them from her window. She flirts at first, then does her game where the men copy her movements. Harmless it seems, but the victim becomes more and more obsessed by her until she motions them to hang themselves. They are helpless to resist. After this the spider comes to the body (perhaps to feed on the soul?) until the next victim. The last victim, Richard Bracquemont, can not stop from hanging himself, but he does live long enough to crush the spider between his teeth.

HISTORY: The inspiration for Ewers tale is obvious: "The Invisible Eye" (1870) by Erckmann-Chatrain which has almost the exact same plot up until the end. Of the two stories, Ewers is the more enjoyable since he makes the narrator the victim and not a watcher. Ewers' villain also seems more supernatural. Both tales have a Hoffmanesque flavor to them. Ewers appears as a vampire in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula series.