Silk

by Kiernan, Caitlin R.

  “I don’t know how to help you,” and Niki was crying now, hating herself for it, but she could not be this tired and scared, scared for her and Spyder, for them both separate and together, and not cry. Spyder began rubbing at the stubborn stain again, and already the kitchen was beginning to smell like death, sweet putrid death like bad meat and wilted flowers. Like breakdown, patient decay, disintegration.

  “You can’t help me. This isn’t about you. Everything isn’t about you, Niki,” and Niki turned and ran, through the house and back to their bedroom, threw herself down on the bed and gave in to the tears, the exhaustion and rage. Her own madness inside and the certainty that Spyder was right; nothing she could do but intrude, act more like Spyder’s nursemaid than her lover, or sit back and watch, wait for this shit to play itself out. She found Spyder’s Klonopin on the floor by her side of the bed, pastel blue tablets inside amber plastic, had to wrestle a moment with the childproof cap: she swallowed one of the pills and put them back, wrapped her arms tight around Spyder’s pillow, heavy feather pillow and its dingy lemon-yellow pillowcase, as if cotton and the musky stink of old feathers could be Spyder. And she closed her eyes and cried herself to sleep.

  4.

  A long dream of candlelight on earthen walls and Jackson Square, the girl with her tarot deck again, but still Niki didn’t see the whole spread, that card, dream within a dream toward the end, that night on the beach in North Carolina, the strange girl named Jenny Dare, and Niki woke up slow, drifted up from the smell of salt spray and fish and the girl’s wet clothes. Groggy and her mouth too dry, headache, and then she remembered taking the Klonopin, that this must be what the doctor had called “rebound,” like a hangover from the long benzodiazepine sleep. And then she remembered it all and wished she could close her eyes and forget again. Instead, she sat up, dizzy, and so she leaned against the headboard and stared at the windows; not dark yet, but dusk, almost night.

  Someone had undressed her—no, not someone, Spyder—had gotten her out of the bulky army coat, and it hung on a bedpost now, and there was quiet music playing on the portable CD player, Dead Can Dance, cellos and violins, Lisa Gerrard’s calming, ethereal vocals; the covers had been pulled up around her.

  She could hear the television playing, too, a game show filtered through the walls. She stood up, cautious, distrusting her throbbing head, her rubbery arms and legs. No wonder Spyder hated taking this shit so much.

  She turned off the music, set on repeat and no telling how many times the album had played through, getting into her sleep, coloring her dreams. The house was freezing, and she guessed Spyder had turned off the heat. Niki slipped the coat on, zipped it closed, and went to find Spyder.

  Spyder had not put on warmer clothes, too hot from the hours of work and finally she had stripped off the T-shirt and jeans, sat on the kitchen floor now wearing nothing but her boxers, sweat drying on her pale skin. Watching Byron on the table, the package he had become, wrapped up tight. She’d started with plain white thread, four big spools she’d found in an old sewing box that had been her mother’s, round and round his face after she’d stuffed the empty eye sockets with cotton wads from Tylenol bottles. And then she used the other colors, black and red and bright Kelly green, and she’d had to switch to yarn, orange and gold the color of grain around his narrow shoulders, and after that nylon fishing line and torn bed sheets and tape, whatever she could find, incorporated into the binding.

  She’d been thorough, and no glimpse of skin showed through. His raggedy, filthy clothes were folded and placed together neatly by the body, ruined clothes and his shoes. She thought he might be safe this way, safe from her and the things the house remembered because of her. Safe from the sounds that had begun an hour ago, the things that made the sounds, bonemetal scrape and papery rustle from the basement below.

  And she’d drawn a circle around the table, as perfect a circle as she could draw in the crystal-powder white of Morton’s iodized table salt.

  “Safe from me,” she whispered and hugged the dream catcher close. Half an hour earlier, she’d pulled it off the boards nailed over her old bedroom door. Had carefully unwound each black strand of Byron’s hair and laid them on his chest. Now the dream catcher was fraying, undone, lessened by subtraction and her busy fingers.

  “Oh, Spyder. What have you done?” and Spyder looked up: Niki was standing in the doorway, beautiful confusion, rumpled clothes and hair, bags beneath her dark eyes, eyes puffy from sleep or crying or both.

  “If I tell you,” Spyder said, “you have to promise—you have to fucking swear to me—that you’re never gonna tell anyone else. No matter what happens, you’ll never tell anyone else a single, solitary word of it.” But Niki didn’t promise, looked back and forth, from the pathetic cocooned shape on the kitchen table to Spyder sitting on the floor, like neither could be real, like there was a choice to make between them.

  “I want you to go back to the hospital,” she said, finally, and Spyder said no, laughed and said no again.

  “Please, Spyder. You’re frightening me.” Niki took a step closer, moved so slow, one small step and another, and she kneeled, close enough that Spyder could reach out and touch her now, would have if it could have done anything but make things worse; for a second, Spyder thought she smelled jasmine, maybe, but it was only the cleansers or bug spray under the sink.

  “I’m not trying to scare you. I don’t want to scare you.”

  “Well, you are. You’ve got me scared shitless.”

  “I’m sorry. I am sorry.” She laid one hand palm-up on the floor, empty, so Niki could take it if she chose.

  “It’s not too late to work this shit out, to get you out of here,” and Niki did take her hand, squeezed it, twined their fingers together, weave of Spyder’s pale, chilled flesh and Niki’s dusky, warm flesh. “I think maybe this house is making you sick, Spyder. Or keeping you from getting any better. Too much bad shit’s happened to you here. It’s no wonder you can’t stop thinking about it.”

  It’s not even half that simple, but all Spyder said was, “It’s been too late for a long time,” and Niki frowned, heat lightning flash of anger across her face and sudden anger behind her words. “Don’t give me that crap, goddammit. I don’t want to hear it. All you have to do is get up and let me take you to the hospital.”

  Spyder shook her head, let go of Niki’s hand; the separation hurt, physical pain and pain inside that was worse, pulling away from the last bit of warmth in the world.

  “Do you still want to hear what I was gonna say or not? I won’t tell you if you don’t.”

  “I want to help you, Spyder.”

  “Then listen, ’cause I don’t think there’s anything else you can do.”

  Spyder saw the moment clear in Niki’s eyes, swollen moment of decision; saw it come like the shadows before a summer thundershower, lingering, sweet rain scent and ozone and the hair on your arms and the back of your neck prickling from the static charge, and then it was gone, and Niki sighed loudly, sat down next to Spyder and held her hand again. Decision made, and Spyder was glad for her touch, but couldn’t look at her face, the fear and regret stamped there, stared over the edge of the sink and out the kitchen window instead, the cold night gathering around the house, taking its place, and when it had settled, when it was comfortable, she started to talk.

  Not the night that he cut her face, a month later, maybe, and the cross scar between her eyes is bubblegum pink and fresh. And it made no difference at all, because the angels still haven’t taken them all away, haven’t taken him away, and that’s really all that matters anymore. But they sit in the basement, inside his charm, listening to two radios at once, one playing the preaching and the other playing hymns. The orange extension cords hang in loops from the ceiling so they won’t break the circle; nothing must break the circle, ever.

  The circle keeps out the monsters, the wicked things that are gonna crawl up from Hell at the end, will keep out the radiation when the bombs come down
, when the sky burns and falls down to smash them and everyone in the world scorched flat. She isn’t sure what radiation is, but he says it will kill her even though she’ll never see it coming, and she doesn’t want to know any more than that.

  And this is the time that her mother didn’t go down with them, the only time she said no, and so he hit her. Her mother a ball on the floor, skinny arms folded like a shield over her head while he punched and kicked and Lila watched it all from the shadows in the hall. Obedient, good girl standing beside the trapdoor, waiting, praying that he’ll stop, praying Jesus that he won’t really let her mother stay up here alone to burn, to get eaten by the radiation monsters. That they’ll make it down before the black sky outside begins to smudge and drip, squirming rain blood drops on the window-panes; her mother begs No, Carl. Please, she’s watching. Please, and he stops, steps back and looks lost, tired and lost and sad. Her mother holds her stomach where he kicked her, cries and says words Lila’s not supposed to use.

  “Please,” she says. “For god’s sake, don’t take her down there tonight!”

  And he reaches down, helps her mother up off the floor. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, my head hurts Trish or I would never hurt you, but my head hurts. It’s too small to hold it all in, everything I’ve seen, everything I know.”

  “I just can’t do it anymore, Carl. I just can’t sit down there anymore. Please let me take her. Let us go.”

  “No,” he says, turns around and looks at Lila, like she said something and he’s trying to think of an answer, like he’s forgotten who she is.

  “We’ll go to the church. I’ll take her to the church, okay? We’ll be safe there, Carl. You could even come with us. It’ll be safe there.”

  “There’s only one church,” he says and her mother starts screaming, fuck you fuck you fuck you you crazy drunk bastard shit she’s my daughter and there they sit, he in his chair, Lila in hers, her mother’s chair empty and both radios turned up loud. He’s been sitting for a long time with his head down in his hands, shaking hands, like his head’s gonna fly apart if he doesn’t hold it together, and there’s a muddy spot on the floor between his feet from the tears.

  “They’re tellin’ me what I got to do,” he says, and by now her mother’s stopped banging on the basement door, she’s stopped screaming at him to let her in. So the monsters must have taken her away, but Lila would rather believe she ran away to hide in the church, that Brother Taylor and the woman who plays the organ are watching over her.

  “They’re tellin’ me, and I’ve been tryin’ not to listen, Lila. ’Cause it don’t seem right. It don’t seem right at all.” She can hardly understand him, he’s crying so hard, wet face in the lamplight from crying and snot. “But it’s the only way, and this is the last night. They’re runnin’ out of patience with me. If I don’t listen and the trumpets start, they won’t take us with them….”

  He stops, opens his red Bible and reads something from the back that she tries not to hear, locusts and seals, locusts and seals, and then she sees the jar beneath his chair for the first time when he reaches for it. Big Mason jar and there’s something inside, but she can’t tell what, except it moves when he picks it up. Her father holds the Bible up in one hand and the jar in the other, holds them high up, and he stands so that his long arms almost reach the ceiling. She watches his lips, moving and making words but no sound coming out until finally, Please don’t make me do this. Someone else, Lord. Not me.

  “Daddy?” and there’s a sound above them like thunder, and she’s too scared to say anything else.

  “You are not pure,” he says to her, his eyes shut now, shut tight. “You have to be made pure so that the angels can carry us into Paradise before it’s too late. It’s not your fault, Lila,” he says.

  His arms come down slow, the Bible and the jar, and it’s not one thing in the jar, a lot of small black living things, nervous things, and he sets the Bible in his chair. Tells her to go to her cot, and then he counts backwards, big numbers she hasn’t learned yet. And he unzips his pants.

  “It’s your mother. She’s a sinner, and now she’s lost forever, ’cause she’s too proud to listen, too proud to hear. She wants me to let her drag you down to Hell with her, but I won’t, Lila. This is bad, but it’s better than lettin’ her have your immortal soul.”

  He bends over her, and she can see inside the jar now, can see the shiny black spiders and the red on their bellies. The bottom and sides of the jar covered with them, clinging to glass and each other; he hands her the jar, makes her take it in both hands, and now she’s too scared to say no, too scared to scream for her mother who wouldn’t hear her anyway because she’s dead or has run away. And her father puts his hands between her legs.

  “When I say, Lila, you open that jar.”

  All she can do is shake her head, no, no, she can’t do that, won’t let them out; her grandfather taught her about black widows when he taught her about rattlesnakes and copperheads and poison ivy.

  “Don’t shake your head at me, little lady. You’re gonna do it when I say, and then it’ll be all right. Then it’ll all be over.”

  He touches her where she pees, slides two fingers inside her; it hurts, and she can’t help but cry.

  “Open the jar, Lila.

  “Open the jar.”

  And his fingers come out and something else goes in, rips into her and she screams and he says it again, Open the jar. Now, Lila.

  The lid isn’t screwed on tight, makes a gritty sound when she turns it, and he drives the pain all the way in before the lid hits the floor, rings like bells and the spiders flow out, tickling legs over her hands, down her arms, onto her father.

  “It’s almost over, baby,” her father says, and she closes her eyes and waits for the end of the world.

  Nothing Niki could say, nothing for her to do but sit and wait for Spyder to finish. Or maybe the story was finished and Spyder was waiting on her, for a sign, for sympathy or a shred of consolation. Maybe Spyder only thought she’d finished, and she sat for five more minutes, not speaking, face a white and empty canvas, until Niki asked, “You’ve told your doctors all this?” and Spyder’s head snapped around, puppet-string whiplash, and for a moment Niki was sure Spyder was going to hit her.

  “Mostly,” she said, instead of violence, the subtle, instant fury on her face, “But what the hell difference does that make? They can’t undo it, they can’t fix things so it never happened. They can’t even make me forget about it, so what’s the fucking point?”

  And Niki didn’t have an answer for that, either.

  “My mother ran next door and called the cops, and when they finally got here they had to use a crowbar to get into the basement, because he’d put so many fucking locks on the door.”

  Soft scrape against the floorboards under them, and Niki’s racing heart, wanting out; a gentle thwump against the wall of the house, and she opened her mouth to ask if Spyder had heard that, too, but Spyder was already talking again, and she made herself wait.

  “I fainted or I was in shock or something. I don’t remember that part. I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital. They had my mother sedated somewhere, and it was a week before I even knew he was dead, when my Aunt Maggie finally told me. It took him three days to die from all those bites.”

  That sound again, thwump, solid basketball thwump against the side of the house, the basement scrub-brush sound right after it, and Niki pretended she hadn’t heard, that there was nothing in the world now except Spyder.

  “It’s hard to get a black widow to bite you,” she said. “You almost have to force them, Niki. And most people don’t die, unless they’re allergic or already sick from asthma or a heart condition or something like that. Something to weaken them enough the poison does more than make them wish they were dead. He must have spent days and days down there in the dark, catching all those spiders.”

  Thwump, and this time she looked at the wall and glanced back to Niki. “You’re
not hearing things,” she said. “Unless we’re both hearing things. I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

  “It’s probably just a dog,” pretend certain, pretend composure, but Niki didn’t look at the kitchen window, “or the wind.”

  “The wind,” Spyder whispered and held out her arms, skin and ink, permanent, forever; turned them over to show her naked palms, unstained space but lines there, too, and she knotted her fingers together, lace of fingers, cup of flesh back behind her head, teeth gritted.

  “They didn’t bite me, Niki,” almost a growl, throaty grinding up and out, leaking. “They’ve never bitten me.”

  “Maybe they protected you, then,” and Niki as surprised as the look on Spyder’s face, the look that said How did you know, Niki? How did you know that?, as surprised and she knew how important it was that she’d said that, even if she was just fumbling in the dark and confusion, needing to say something reassuring, anything right and comforting.

  “Like a totem animal.”

  The pain from Spyder’s eyes, twisting under her skin so her forehead and eyebrows folded in like old, old mountains, so her lips trembled, and she held them open a moment before she could speak.

  “But they won’t stop. They won’t ever stop. They took Robin because they thought they were protecting me. They took Byron,” and Niki didn’t look toward the thing on the table.

  “You need someone to help you make them stop, Spyder.”

  Thwump and the windows rattled; a coffee cup fell off the sink and shattered on the floor. Spyder covered her ears, hid her face between her knees, muffling what she said.

  “Stop playing like you know what’s happening, Niki. You don’t know what’s happening. If I let you stay, they’ll just take you, too.”

  “It’s my decision,” and she grabbed Spyder by the shoulders, pushed her back against the cabinet doors. “Look at me, Spyder. Look at me.”