He fumbled with the safety cap on the bottle of pink hearts, half empty already, spilled four of the pills out into his palm. He swallowed two, washed them down with another sip of the Pepsi, and put the other two back for later. All that later left ahead of him, all that sleep left to stave off as long as possible. Slipped the bottle back into his jacket pocket, and that’s when he saw the spider, hairy brown spider big as a silver dollar, crawling towards him across the garish wallpaper. Just a fucking house spider, but he felt his stomach roll, grabbed his backpack and slid out of the booth, trying not to draw attention on his way as he walked quickly past all those faces to the restroom, to cold porcelain, cold water. Privacy if he was lucky, and he was, no one else at the row of sinks, at the urinal, no shoes or pushed-down, rumpled pants legs showing from under the stalls. Walter splashed his face and the nausea began to recede, turning him loose, so he wouldn’t have to dry-heave again, nothing in him to puke up but the pills and Pepsi. He pulled a paper towel from the dispenser and rubbed it across his face, rough brown and the animal smell of his dirty wet hair, wet-paper smell. Looked up at the face in the mirror, hardly a face he even recognized anymore. He was starting to look sick, like he had cancer, or AIDS, maybe, like he’d been sick for a long, long time.
Walter turned off the tap, and behind him, the wiry, coarse rasp of hairs like porcupine quills drawn slow across clean white tile, labored breath, and it was there in the mirror, squatted between him and the door. Between him and escape, and he made himself look, made himself fucking stare, and one of its fang-lipped mouths moved, said his name, “Walter,” like something treasured and forgotten and just remembered.
“Walter, Walter,” and there was still enough of them to know, what might have been them once, before this wrong and hurting thing, features blurred like melted wax, a green iris set along the rows of glinting black and pupilless eyes, cupid’s bow and prettysharp nose mashed between nervous, restless chelicerae and meat-hook fangs. Three delicate and black-nailed fingers at the end of one jointed leg, and the voice, neither Robin nor Byron, but both of them.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice so calm, like he didn’t feel the warm piss running down the inside of his leg, like he thought he was gonna walk away from the thing in the mirror sane.
So much pain in that one human eye and the lips moved, working silently a moment, and he didn’t turn around, but didn’t look away from the mirror, either, watched its reflection.
“What? What the fuck do you want from me?”
“Help,” and it coughed something up, and he had to look away, down at the sink, the spotless, safe sink, or he would have puked. “Help,” it said again.
“I can’t,” he said. “I’ve done everything I could do.”
“Please, kill her,” it said, phlegmy voice that suddenly didn’t sound like anyone he’d ever known, and that made it easier. “Please help…”
“You’re not listening. I didn’t say I won’t; I said I fucking can’t. I can’t kill anyone. There’s nothing else I can do. And I’m sorry. I’m really fucking sorry.”
And he turned the water back on, twisted both knobs all the way so the gush and splash covered up the sounds it had begun to make.
“Now leave me the fuck alone,” and he looked at it one last time, backed into its corner, quivering bristles and thick tears from that one green eye, before he put his fist through the mirror. The glass shattered, big razor shards that rained down off the wall, broke into smaller pieces all around his feet, slicing at his knuckles and fingers.
He waited almost five minutes, and when nothing happened and no one came in to see what the noise had been, Walter turned around and saw he was alone again.
5.
Niki’s sitting with her back to the wrought-iron fence that surrounds Jackson Square like a spiked bracelet, silent, watching as the girl turns her cards over one by one. Wind in the palms, the sewer-mud smell of the river and the girl turns up the Hanged Man and there’s only one card left. She points at the man dangling by one leg from the T-shaped tree, triangle of his legs pointing toward the earth, cross of his arms and the glow around his head, saint’s nimbus. “Ah,” she says. “That one,” and “That one can be trouble.” And nothing else, no insight or prophecy before she reaches for the final card, reaches for the outcome, before the wind gusts and scatters the spread along the paving stones. The girl runs after her cards, barefoot with silver rings on her toes and the wind making bat wings of her black shawl. Niki looks at the sky, clouds so low and black, yellow-green lightning lying up there like electric serpents, and she thinks she should get inside, leaves money in the girl’s cigar box and when she stands, tries to stand, she feels the pain in her ankles, the bottoms of her feet, coursing angry and hot up her calves.
She looks down and the stones are breaking up around her, busted apart by the writhing snarl of roots, roots as smooth as the slick bellies of worms, the red of naked muscle, the blue of naked veins: the roots that grow time-lapse fast from her legs and feet, holding her to the spot, that bury themselves, herself, deeper and deeper into the soggy ground beneath the Square, rich black soil and fat white grubs. The murmuring tourists who point and stumble past with their souvenir New Orleans Jazz T-shirts and plastic beads, to-go cups of beer, daiquiris and hurricanes, and she can see the fear and the awe on their drunken, puffy faces.
And the sky begins to tear.
And fall.
She woke up, and the room was still and quiet. A little candle flicker from the floor that made it seem darker outside, and her head was full of the dream and the confusion the Klonopin left behind. A stickywet spot on her pillow from sleeping with her mouth open. And then she remembered the dead boy in the basement and the mess at Keith Barry’s wake, the things she’d said to Spyder afterwards, the burns on her hands, all the things that she’d gone to sleep to escape. Things that made the nightmare silly, any lingering dread dissolved by simple recollection, replaced, and she called for Spyder.
No answer and she sat up in the bed, headboard at her back, and blinked at the dim light and shadows. “Spyder?” and she saw it, then, a few feet past the foot of the bed, mottled shades of sage and indigo, hanging down from the ceiling from taut cords or ligaments the same gray colors; beautiful and hideous and utterly unreal, and so maybe the dream wasn’t over after all, just a jump-cut to the next scene, a new set and she only had to wait for her cues.
“Spyder,” louder now and still no reply from the death-still house. And she couldn’t take her eyes off the thing, dangling like a misshapen butterfly’s chrysalis, and she’d been shrunk down to nothing. Except that she was beginning to see the form beneath the glossy skin, familiar lines, curves and hollows, wax-doll attempt at sculpture, and she heard the sound starting in her throat, small sound. Faint shape of arms folded across its chest, legs up to the straining umbilicus, the ceiling warped with its weight, the head a foot above the floor and thrown so far back there’s not much visible but neck and chin. And whether it was a dream or real, the same thing now, and Niki opened her mouth and let the small sound out.
6.
Daria stood in the acid light, sizzling cold fairy light from the strands filling up Spyder’s living room, and she only had to let one of them settle on the bare back of her right hand to know that they cut. Another gash on her scalp before she finally stopped gaping at her wounded, bleeding hand held up and the light streaming through insubstantial flesh, x-ray revelation of bones and veins and capillaries hidden inside. She pulled her jacket up over her head, ducked and dodged as best she could through the living room, calling for Niki, cursing whenever the strands touched her. Less of the stuff in the next room, but it was still thick enough that she had to be careful, and she stopped, hands cupped around her mouth, “Niki! Niki, shit…” and she shook one of the strands off her arm, ugly S-shaped incision left behind in the leather.
“Niki!”
There were windows just a few feet away, past a low and uneven wall of pape
rback books, only patches of glassy night visible through clots of the stuff, but still another way out, maybe, and better than trying to go back the way she’d come.
She heard the front door creak open, turned around and there was Mort, an arm up to shield his eyes from the glare, and she shouted, “No! Go back! Don’t try to get through this shit,” and he squinted in her direction, as if he could hear, but couldn’t see. “Mort, just get the hell out of here!” And he did close the door, then, backed out and closed it, and she was alone again, alone and the sound of the strands falling around her was like the night it snowed, heavylight whisper of so many flakes hitting the window of Keith’s apartment at once.
Don’t think about it, chick. Think about it and you’re fucked. Keep moving.
Taut and nearly solid web across the doorway to the kitchen and all that left was the hall, a darker place in the blaze, leading back to Spyder’s room and other unfamiliar doors.
“Hell, I’m probably fucked, anyway,”
She stepped into the hall, narrow wallpaper gullet, wood and plaster, stepped careful over razor drifts and her hands pulled up inside the sleeves of her jacket so she could bat away the strands hanging from the ceiling. Daria saw the plywood covering Spyder’s door, no time to understand or even wonder before she almost walked into the open cellar, its door laid back and nail studded, nails bent and twisted at vicious, crazy angles, stairs that led almost straight down, and she would have broken her neck for sure.
“Niki!” Still no answer, just the snow sound, and she peered down into the rectangular hole in the floor, warmer air rising up from the cellar and incongruous scents: mold and earth, jasmine and the sweeter smell of rotting meat. And the blackness down there toward the foot of the stairs imperfect, dim red-orange glow, and What if they’re down there? Still feeling like a hero, Dar?
Daria leaned over the hole, the smells so much thicker close to the floor, and she almost gagged, swallowed and shouted, “Niki? Are you down there?” No reply, a crinkly faint sound that might have been people talking or radio static, and she knew if she let herself look back, she’d never do it, would choose any other way out of this, and so she put one foot down into the dark, tested her weight on wood that looked termite-chewed, punky and ready to break.
And someone screamed, close and sexless pain-scream and she almost toppled headfirst down the hole. In the quiet space after the scream, she clearly heard the top stair crack, split loud under her foot, and Daria stumbled backwards, away from the cellar. There was no mistaking the laughter filling up the emptiness beneath her feet, leaking from the open trapdoor, for anything else, no mistaking whether or not she was hearing it: many-throated patchwork of laughter that was lost and sad and utterly, hatefully insane. The way you’d laugh if there was nothing else left, if you heard the Emergency Broadcast System attention signal on television and there’d been no reassuring voice first to tell you it was just a test. The way you’d laugh at the very end.
“For fuck’s sake, Niki, where are you?” hardly more than a hesitant whisper, and she realized she was afraid maybe something besides Niki, besides Spyder, was listening. Cold sweat under her clothes, chilling sweat and adrenaline enough to tear her apart, and the scream again, but this time she knew it was Niki. This time she could tell that it was coming from a closed door directly across from Spyder’s bedroom, the plywood where the door to Spyder’s bedroom should have been. She used the cuff of her jacket to wipe away a knot of the strands, and it still stung her hand when she tried to turn the doorknob, no good anyway because it was locked.
She pounded the door and shouted, already hoarse from shouting. “Niki! Let me in! Spyder?” and Niki, then, echo-game mocking her, “Spyder,” and that was worse even than the laughter from the cellar, no spook-house creepiness to distract her, nothing but the rawest loss; scream like a missing finger, and Daria hit the door with her shoulder, hit hard and it shivered in its frame, but the lock held. She stepped back, all the way back to the other side of the hall, winced when one of the strands sliced into her forehead, and she let that sharp and sudden pain carry her forward, a wish that she was as big as Keith or Mort, as strong, and she threw herself at the door. The wood splintered, split layers, decades of paint strata, and the door slammed open.
Spyder, what had been Spyder, dangling from the bedroom ceiling, Niki naked and kneeling below her, and Daria almost turned and ran. Never mind the butchering gossamer or the laughing hole in the floor, Sunday school demons next to this. A sudden loud rapping at the window across the room, bam, bam, bam, and whatever new horror she might have expected, might have imagined, it was only Mort and Theo; urgent motions for her to open the window, and he looked over his shoulder at the night waiting past the porch.
The plaster had started to sag from her weight, cracks and flakes in the old paint where the thing was attached to the ceiling.
Think about it later. Get her out of here now. Her whole life left to think about it, and she knew that she would, would see Spyder Baxter every time she closed her eyes for the rest of her life, that it would always be there in the darkness, in her dreams, behind every unopened door. But that couldn’t be helped now; maybe Niki could. She ignored Mort, went to Niki, Niki with eyes shut tight, lips moving like silent prayer, and Daria shook her hard.
“Niki. Niki. Look at me,” and she did, opened her brown eyes, irises ringed red from crying and for a moment there was no recognition, blank unknowing and Daria thought maybe she would scream. And then, “Daria?” one hand reaching cautiously up to brush Daria’s cheek, fevery touch, as if maybe she thought this part wasn’t real, all the rest, but not this.
“Yeah,” Daria said. “It’s me.”
“You see it, too,” and yes, she said, yes, I do. “Let’s get out of here, Niki.”
“I can’t just leave her. That’s what she thought, that I was gonna run away again. That I was too frightened to stay with her anymore.”
“I don’t think you can help her now,” Daria said, not knowing if it was true, hardly caring. She looked frantically around the cluttered room, saw Mort again, Mort and Theo both staring in at her: pissed, very scared. Five steps to the window and she tugged at the handles, fresh agony from her hand, and it wouldn’t open anyway, unlocked but it wouldn’t even budge. One of the handles came off in her hand and she saw the nails, the sash nailed down all the way around the edges, probably painted shut besides.
“Get away from the window!” she yelled, loud enough that they would hear, and when Mort and Theo were clear, she picked up a stool by the window, swung it hard and the glass shattered on the first try, crash and tinkle as the shards rained out across the junk on the porch. The night rushed in, sobering cold, and the flame on the candle danced and guttered in the breeze, setting an example for the roomful of shadows. Daria dropped the stool and Mort was back at the window. “Will you please tell me what the holy motherfuck is happening-” and she cut him off with one finger held to her lips.
“Give me your coat, Theo. She’ll freeze out there.”
“There’s something out here, Daria,” Theo hissed.
“Just give me the goddamn coat.”
“Daria, something tried to wreck the fucking van,” but she was already taking off her coat, black vinyl handed past Mort, through the broken window. Daria took it and no answer for Theo. No time now for thoughts of what might or might not come later.
“Do you need help?” Mort asked, and, “Yeah,” she said, “Wait there, and Theo, you go get the van started. And be careful.”
“Yeah, fuck you, too,” and Theo was gone. “Hurry, Dar,” Mort said. “She wasn’t shitting you. There’s something out here…” Daria turned around and Niki was watching them, wiped her nose with the back of one hand, an action so simple it was absurd, and she said, “I need a knife, Daria.”
“Put this on, Niki,” holding out Theo’s coat. “Put this on and let’s get out of here.”
“I need a fucking knife. Mort, do you have a knife?”
“Uh, yeah,” but still looking at Daria, helpless, and he reached into the back pocket of his jeans, pulled out the big lockblade, opened it for her.
“We can send someone back to help,” Daria said, trying not to show how scared she was, how angry she was becoming; Niki was already getting to her feet, stepped around her and she took the knife from Mort. “Jesus Christ, Niki,” and Daria followed her back across the room.
“She thought I was leaving,” Niki said, down on her knees again. “Just like he did. And that’s what she was most afraid of, being left alone. Just like Danny.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and a gassy sigh and spit, then, stink like rotting peaches when Niki sliced into it, slit open a drooping thick spot where one shoulder should have been. Darker membrane underneath, and Niki cut through that, too; a couple of milky pale drops leaking out, falling to the floor and skittering swiftly away.
“Niki, wait…” but the blade sank in hilt deep and it split a wide, melon-tearing rip down the middle, and the violent gush of a hundred thousand white bodies pouring out. A hundred thousand tiny specks white as new snow, covering Niki’s arms and chest, burying her lap and Daria’s feet up past her ankles.
“Fuck this,” disgust and reflex, and Daria had already brought her boot down, crushed a few hundred of the spiders before Niki screamed, screamed for her to stop, please stop, and the alabaster tide broke and flowed away from them, mercury-smooth movement toward the walls and open door back to the hall, beneath the bed and everything else. Niki folded open the husk, released the last wriggling clot, and Daria saw or thought she saw the impression of a hand inside, negative of Spyder’s face, mold reflection, and she looked away.
Silk Page 35
