Daria’s face, lip busted and sneering, teeth stained red with her blood and Spyder’s, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” from her mouth, and then Theo was hauling Daria off and the toe of Spyder’s right boot had slammed into her unprotected stomach. She gagged, wrestled free of Theo’s grip and vomited on the floor, pure liquid gout of alcohol and bile that spattered them all.
“Christ,” Theo said, and Niki, leaning over Spyder now, shielding Spyder, had said only “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” again and again.
“Just get her the hell out of here, Niki,” Theo said, her arms around Daria’s shoulders as she’d heaved again. “Or I’m gonna finish what Daria started myself.”
“She didn’t mean it-” Niki began, but Theo interrupted her: “Now!” she said, and Niki had helped Spyder up off the mattress, stepped in the way when Spyder tried to kick Daria again and caught the boot herself.
“Get her out of here, Niki!”
And Spyder growling, spitting bloodpink foam, and she’d said, “I’m not done with you, bitch,” last word like tearing fabric, and Daria could only cramp and listen and stare into the spreading pool of her puke.
“What the hell was that,” Theo said, and Daria shook her head, like she had no idea. The fury had already left her, left her scraped raw with a little stream of vomit from both her nostrils, her gut aching, throat and acid-burned sinuses on fire. When she could talk, “Make them all leave, Theo. Find Mort and make them all leave.” And Theo had obeyed, reluctant, but doing it anyway; Daria sat back against the wall again, stared out at the confused crowd through watering eyes. They were trying not to stare at her, most of them, a few already being herded out the door by Mort and Theo. Someone had turned off the music. And then she’d closed her eyes and waited to be alone.
4.
Half an hour later, or an hour, outside Keith’s building, locking the door and feeling like crap. Sick and drunk and bruised. Mort and Theo hadn’t wanted to leave her, had offered to give her a lift back over to Morris, demanded finally, but she’d said the walk would do her good, that the air would help clear her head. And they’d gone reluctantly, leaving her to stuff the bottles of booze scattered around the apartment, the cans of beer, into a paper bag, leaving her to turn off the lights one last time and lock the door behind her. She’d stuck a couple of other things in the bag, too full, ready to tear and spill everything, grocery-brown paper, just some guitar picks from the floor, a t-shirt and a couple of his cassette tapes. Random souvenirs.
The key made a sound like ice or a camera click.
And when she’d turned around, he’d been standing across the alley watching her; she’d thought it was Keith for an instant, impossible, dizzy instant, had almost dropped the clinking bag. But it wasn’t him, wasn’t anyone she’d recognized at first.
“What the hell do you want,” she’d said, sounding as drunk as she was, sounding like a drunken old whore, and he’d looked both ways, nervous, up and down the alley, before crossing to stand closer to Daria. Tall, lanky boy with brown hair and a Bauhaus shirt showing under his leather jacket. Someone she’d seen with Spyder from time to time at Dr. Jekyll’s, one of the shrikes.
“Before,” he said. “When I called, I didn’t know,” and then she’d recognized the voice, too, shaky and scared, cartoon scaredy-cat voice from the phone. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever,” she said.
“I needed to talk to him.”
“Too late for that,” and she’d handed him the bag. “Did Spyder send you around to kick my ass?”
He looked down at the bag, back at Daria, drawing a perfect blank with his eyes. “What?”
“Do you have a name?”
“Walter,” he’d said, shifted the bag in his arms, “Walter Ayers. I used to be a friend of Spyder Baxter’s…”
“‘Used to be’?” and she’d started walking, him following a few steps behind, the bag noisier than their footfalls in the long empty alleyway.
“I think that’s what she’d say, if you asked her,” he said, walking faster to catch up. “I’m pretty sure that’s what she’d say.”
“Spyder seems to have her little heart set on burning bridges these days,” and she’d touched her swollen lip, but the pain couldn’t quite reach through the boozy haze, far-off sensation, like the cold all around.
“She thinks I had something to do with what happened to Robin,” he said.
“Robin? Spyder’s girlfriend?” Daria stopped, and the shrike stopped, too.
“Yeah,” and he’d looked back the way they’d come, anxious eyes, anxious tired face.
“Did you?” but he hadn’t answered, just stared back down the alley like he thought they were being followed.
“Why’d you want to talk to Keith?” and that hurt, his name out loud, from her lips, little cattle-prod jolt of pain right to the fruitbruise soft spot inside her, the place the wine and beer couldn’t numb.
Walter shrugged and hadn’t looked at her.
“I thought maybe he would help, because of that night in the parking lot, when he stuck up for Spyder and Robin. I thought he might know what to do.”
“You’re losin’ me, Walter.”
“Who was the girl that left with Spyder tonight?” he’d asked, changing the subject, starting to piss her off. “The Japanese girl?”
“Her name’s Niki, and she’s not Japanese. She’s Vietnamese and she’s Spyder’s new girl. She moved in with Spyder a couple of weeks ago.”
“Is she a friend of yours?”
Daria had thought about that a second, thought about all the shit that had gone down in the weeks since Niki Ky walked into the Bean, almost a month now, and if she were superstitious…
“Yeah, she’s a friend of mine,” she answered.
“Then you ought to know that she’s in danger.”
And Daria remembered the welts on the back of Niki’s hands, like someone had begun a game of tic-tac-toe on her skin with a branding iron, like the ink in Spyder’s skin.
“Spyder’s not right,” he said.
“Spyder Baxter’s a fucking froot-loop,” Daria said and now she was staring back down the alley, trying to see what he saw, what he was afraid of.
“No. I don’t mean about her being crazy. I mean, she’s not right.”
“Walter, will you please just tell me what the hell you’re talking about and stop with the damn tap dancing?”
And back in the shadows, then, a garbage can had fallen over, bang, and the sound of metal and rolling glass on asphalt, before something dark and fast had streaked across the alley. Walter almost dropped the bag, and she’d taken it from him.
“What the hell’s wrong with you? It was just a cat, or a dog, for Christ’s sake…”
“Spyder’s not right,” he said again, like maybe she’d understand if he repeated it enough times, “and if you care about your friend, you’ll keep her away from that house. Robin knew, and she tried to tell us, and now she’s dead. And Byron believed her, and no one knows where the hell he is.”
“I think I’m way too drunk for this shit,” she’d said. and started walking again. Walter hadn’t moved.
“I’ll wait a day or two,” he’d said as she’d walked away. “Just a day or two, and then I’ve gotta leave. If you want to talk, I’ll be around.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever,” she’d muttered, not caring if he heard, just wanting to be back in her apartment, just wanting another drink.
And the last thing, before she’d stepped out of the alley and into the cold-comfort glare of streetlights: “I’m not crazy,” he’d said. “I swear to God, Daria. I’m not crazy.”
5.
She’d found Claude in her bed, making time with his boy, and she’d made them move it to the sofa. Had found a cleanish glass in the kitchen and screwed the top off a big bottle of Jim Beam, filled the glass to the brim and set the bottle of bourbon next to the bed.
“Maybe you’ve had enough,” Claude had said, careful, and a glare had been al
l it took to shut him up. He’d taken his boy and they’d left the apartment, left her alone. Her face, her hands felt fevery, wind-chapped, and her side hurt from Spyder’s boot. A miracle she didn’t have broken ribs; wondered if maybe she was bleeding somewhere inside, and Daria took a long, burning drink of the Jim Beam and went to the bathroom to piss. Just beer piss, safe yellow. She’d finished the bourbon, filled the glass again, and had lain down, head on her own pillow, soft and slightly funky, stared at Claude’s big poster of Billie Holiday through the syrup-colored liquor. The sadness, the fight with Spyder, the weirdness in the alley with Walter, everything running together like candle wax, waxen weight pulling down, and in a few minutes she was asleep.
“I don’t hate her,” her father says, “I love your mother,” and she looks up from her crayons, her color swirl under black wax and the lines she’s begun to scratch into it with her nails. Outside the sky is low and she can smell ozone and the rain rushing across the Mississippi prairies toward them, can see the electric lizard-tongue flicks of lightning on the horizon. The car bleeds red dust behind them, and she tells him that she knows that, that she never thought he hated them. Scratches at the rising welts on her arms and hands, and he puts his arm around her, pulls her close to him and the steering wheel: her crayons are in the backseat now, and she feels cold and sick at her stomach. The storm talks in thunder, and the orange speedometer needle strains toward ninety.
“I’m gonna get you to a doctor, Daria, and you’re gonna be fine. So don’t be afraid, okay? You’re gonna be fine. I swear I’d never let anything happen to you.”
The world rumbles under the thunder, and the car bumps and lurches along the dirt road.
“I should have listened to your Mammaw,” he says, and she tries not to think about what happened back at the gas station, the old shed and the biting spiders all over her, in her clothes and hair, and the look on her father’s face almost as bad as all those legs on her skin.
“I was scared, Daria, I didn’t know what to do.”
Crack, sky cracking open like a rotten egg and blue yolk fire arcing over them. Blistered sky boiling, and she closes her eyes; the blanket that the man at the gas station gave her father to wrap her in itches and she wants to kick it off, but he’s bundled her too tight.
“I just couldn’t let her hurt you again.”
She shivers and listens to the thunder. And something else, a wail like the storm has learned to howl, opens her eyes and she looks over dashboard faded plastic and the stitches in the earth laid out before them, bisecting the dirt-red road, iron spikes and steel rails and pinewood ties to close some monstrous wound up tight, and the train, crawling the tracks like a jointed metal copperhead, train so long, boxcar after boxcar, that she can’t even see the end. Can see the candy-striped gate arm coming down in front of them ahead, red crossing light flashing its useless warning.
Her father presses his foot down hard on the accelerator, and now he’s praying, praying loud, please God, please God, if we get stuck behind that thing she’ll die. And the train bigger than God, the God that hides behind His storm up above and sticks at the land with hatpin fire.
“Daddy…?” she says, but he’s still praying, and the cyclops eye of the train through the gloom, engine jaws and spinning silver-wheel teeth. And she thinks that it has started to rain, because something’s hitting the windshield, ocher drops that the wind sweeps away. Dry, yellow-brown drops before the shark snout of the Pontiac hits the gate arm and the wood snaps loud, flips up and smacks the windshield, spiderwebs safety glass as they fly over the railroad tracks, careening, jarring flight, and the train is everything on her right, her father everything on the left of her, the storm the world above, and they smash through the gate arm on the other side as the train roars past behind them.
The car fishtails, spins to a stop in the dust, and her father’s crying, slumped over the wheel and crying the way her mother had cried when he’d taken her away. And the broken windshield beneath the rain, rain with tiny furred bodies and a billion busy legs.
And another night, Thursday night, Daria sat with her back against the wall, bug spray in one hand and a cigarette in the other, hours since she’d awakened in the early afternoon pale sun coming through her window, head throbbing from the bull-bitch of all hangovers and the nightmare memories that still hadn’t faded; waiting alone for Claude to come back from the Bean, Claude who’d listened to everything she said, who’d fed her aspirin and coffee and cold glasses of tap water. Who’d helped her to the toilet when she had to puke again but hadn’t thought she could walk that far, and who should have been back half an hour ago. Before it got dark.
She took a deep drag off the Marlboro, exhaled, and jumped when she thought she saw something move, half glimpse from the corner of her left eye. Something big leaning over the foot of the bed, but of course there was nothing there now, nothing but tangled sheets and her blanket, gray powder smears from where she’d hurled the ashtray at Claude.
“Fuck,” she said, tried to laugh and take another drag, but the cigarette had burned down to the filter so she stubbed it out on the bottom of the Hot Shot can, flicked the butt away. “Fuck me.”
Can’t even tell the difference between a goddamn bad dream and what’s real. Crazy as Spyder fuckin’ Baxter, now.
She’d told Claude about her mother and father, talked for hours, through the pain and dread, about that day with the spiders and the train and everything that had led up to it. Her father’s secrets, not other women but other men, and her mother taking it out on her. So her dad had put her in his Pontiac and they’d driven, heading nowhere, just driving, and her not even eight years old. How she’d wound up in a Bolivar County, Mississippi hospital with twelve brown recluse bites, and she’d shown him the ugly scars on her legs to prove it, the worst of the scars that she never showed anyone. Puckered-flesh proof that it had all happened, touch and go for a while, and afterwards, the divorce and the years before she ever saw her father again.
Claude had listened, kind and so good at listening, but he can’t walk a block down the street and back in forty-five goddamn minutes. And she hadn’t told him about the other dreams, the dreams since that day on Cullom Street, not just the familiar race with the train, the threadbare echoes of her father and that one awful day, but the new dreams of fire and things from the sky, entrail rain and the silent, writhing angels, greased stakes up their asses while the streets filled with blood and the long-legged shadows that might be crabs or tarantulas big as fucking Volkswagens, under a sun the color of a nosebleed.
She reached for another cigarette but the pack was empty, and she wasn’t about to get up and look for more. Thunder, right overhead, and the windowpane shuddered.
And the lights flickered.
“Christ, Claude…”
She hadn’t told him that she knew that Keith had been having the dreams too, or about her talk with dowdy, frightened Walter the goddamned shrike on her way home. Hadn’t brought up the marks on Niki’s hands or the weeping marks on Keith’s face and ankles. Connect the dots, Dar, draw your fucking paranoid’s connections.
A tickle on her cheek, then, and Daria brushed at her face, brushed back hair and stared at the thing that had fallen into her lap, eight legs drawn up tight like a closed umbrella, spider fetal, and she almost screamed, thumped it away from her. Touched her face again, and there were others waiting there, running from her, and she did scream, then, screamed louder when she saw how the walls were moving, crappy old wallpaper seeping their thumbnail bodies, the floor alive and clumps swelling from the ceiling, hanging there until their own weight and gravity’s pull had its way and they began to fall around her. The spider clumps made almost no sound when they hit the floor.
Daria beat at her face, her chest, the scream continuous now, waiting for their jaws, the hypo sting, waiting to drown beneath them. She remembered the can of Hot Shot and sprayed herself, the bed, stinking pesticide mist everywhere, wet mist falling with the recluse
shower.
“I’m not done with you…” whispered next to her ear. “I’m not done with you, bitch,” and she screamed for Claude, for Mort, screamed for Keith. They were inside her clothes, touching her everywhere, at every orifice, and soon they would be inside her. So many legs moving together they made a sound like burning leaves. Daria bashed herself against the wall, spidervelvet-papered wall, head thump against the Sheetrock, and through the pain she saw her silver Zippo lying where she’d left it on the table by the bed.
Just like Pablo had taught her years ago, cans of hair spray or whatever and a lighter, just for fuckin’ kicks, just to see the noisy rush of fire, Daria aimed the can of Hot Shot at the foot of the bed, thumb on the striker wheel and fwoomp, bright splash of flame, gout of flame and spiders crisping, curling to charred specks, charred lumps of specks. The blanket caught, the sheets, and she aimed the flamethrower at the wall.
The can spat up a last dribble of fire and was empty, but it didn’t matter, because the flames were crawling away on their own, devouring a thousand fleeing bodies every second as they spread.
And then Mort, reaching through the smoke, strong boy arms, his hands, dragging her off the burning bed, bump, bump, bump across the floor like Pooh, and she let him, let him drag her all the way across the apartment and out into the hall, too busy beating at the spiders still clinging to her to stop him, the spiders carpeting the floor. He left her lying on the landing, grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and rushed back inside. Muffled sound like a giant espresso machine steaming milk, steaming a whole goddamn cow, and he was right back, coughing, his eyes watering and black smoke all around them.
“Get them off me,” she sobbed, begged. “Please, Mort, get them off me,” and he squatted down next to her, into the cleaner air beneath the smoke.
“Get what off of you, Daria? Tell me what the hell you’re talking about,” but she was raking at her face, now, raking at the spiders trying to burrow their way into her skin to escape the fire. And he slapped her, slapped her so hard her ears rang like Sunday morning bells, and she fell over; Mort picked her up again, held her hands in his fists and talked slowly.
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