“Some-Somebody! Sister Marguerite! Sister Gudrun!” Elisabeth yelled up the stairwell. “Help!” She swiveled back at the wheezing stranger, then towards the desk, spying the telephone. She dropped her inhaler on the desk, snatched up the phone, and dialed beeping numbers.

“Hallo? Hallo, police?” she said, rapidly. “J-ja there’s a woman here at the Wohngruppe, by the St. Mary Abbey? I-I think she’s dying... No—no, she broke in, the gate and doors should’ve been locked, b-but she’s coughing terribly and—what? ...Elisabeth,” she patted her beating chest. “My name’s Elisabeth, b-but— Oh my.”

The girl heard her name uttered in a low, strained voice.

“Elisabeth...”

She spun around to find the woman struggling to get up. She uttered Elisabeth’s name again and painfully got to her feet. She stumbled hard against the wall.

“No! Stop!” Elisabeth said, dropping the phone to the floor. “You’ll hurt yourself!” An idea hit her. The inhaler! “H-Here!” she said, picking the inhaler off the desk. “I-I think you’re having an asthma attack!” The woman watched Elisabeth as she took a puff then offered it, “Here, take it.” The woman took it and tried it. Instantly, she coughed and gagged and threw the inhaler across the room, breaking it against the wall.

“Hey! I needed that!” Elisabeth yelled. The woman wasn’t doing any better. “Water? Will water help? I’ll—I’ll get you some water.”

Elisabeth ran into the kitchen in the other room and flicked on the overhead lights. She swung open the refrigerator door. “I know we have bottled water in here somewhere— Ah-ha!” She turned around with the water in her hand but… that woman was leaning against the doorway, all wide-eyed. She sniffed the air.

With sudden energy, she shoved Elisabeth aside. She inhaled something within the fridge and soon picked up and threw over her shoulders some bottles and jars of food, after which she gave each a good whiff. Elisabeth shrieked and caught glass bottles and bowls before they shattered on the floor.

“What are you do...” Her body tensed up. “...ing?”

That strange woman scoped out a jar of preserves, opened its fabric-covered lid, and stuck her nose right in, deeply inhaling its sugary goodness. After one, deep, whiff, the woman lets out a loud sigh of satisfaction. She revved back to life. Her ruby eyes gleamed on Elisabeth, a smirk stamped above her rounded chin.

In the overhead light, Elisabeth blinked several times at this strange woman, then muttered, “Spinnen...frau?”

The woman, or "Spinnenfrau" rather, looked as though she was dressed for some Halloween business trip. The cuffs of her black coat and red slacks were laced to look like spider webs. Her boots with a bit of a heel were covered in mud. Standing out on this woman, however, which was the cause of Elisabeth’s nickname, was the collar of her coat, frayed into eight starchy, bent pieces, giving an allusion to spider legs flaring around her pale face. A sight to behold for a girl in simple hand-me-down pajamas holding cold containers of food.