Silk (23 page)

“What?” Byron’s voice like stickpins, and
“What is it?”

She put the key ring in his hand without turning her back on the yard. The snow between the tall trees was smooth and sparkled faintly, no sign at all that there’d been anything there but her imagination, nerves and the X or a trick of the weird-ass light.

“Just open the door,” she said.

“Which key,” and she could hear the keys jingling in his hands, could hear the scratch of key metal on lock metal as he tried the wrong one. Another wrong one after that. “I don’t know which one it
is,
” he said, and there it was again, no fleeting, peripheral glimpse this time, the lingering impression that something was hunched down behind the trunk of the water oak, something
almost
narrow enough to hide itself behind the bole.

“Open the fucking door, Byron. Open it
now,
” and she flashed back to Walter, two hours before, the same words, the same desperate, useless insistence.

“
I am trying,
goddammit, so please just shut the hell up,” and the last key slid in cocksmooth and the dead bolt clicked back, gunshot loud. A sudden gust tossed the naked limbs like puppet arms and legs, set every shadow dancing, perfect diversion, and Robin turned and pushed, shoved Byron through the half-opened door, out of one cold and into another drier arctic, certain that something rushed liquid smooth toward them across the yard on jointed spindle legs. She slammed the door behind her, turned the bolt in the same frantic motion, and they both heard it, both
thought
they heard it: the softest thump against the other side of the door, the ragged, heavy breath, panting dog sound, and then nothing at all but the wind.

“What…?” he started to ask, his sweatcool palm finding hers; she shook her head, stepped back from the door.

“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

She felt along the wall until she found the old iron switch plate, switches for the porch and foyer, and flipped both up, but the dark stayed put, no electricity, the lines down from wind or the weight of icicles, more likely that last transformer explosion.

“The power’s out,” she said, and Byron’s grip tightened around her hand.

“I can’t see for shit,” he said.

“It isn’t that dark, pussy,” and it wasn’t, really, her eyes just beginning to adjust and there was enough pale light spilling in through the opaque rectangle of glass set high up on the door that she could see a little ways down the hall, could make out the darker entrance to the living room on her left, the closed door to the front bedroom on her right.

The room where Trisha Baxter had died and Spyder stored the junk there wasn’t space for on the porch.

“Do you have your lighter?” and she heard the cloth rustle as Byron rummaged through the pockets of his frock coat.

“Yeah, it’s right here.”

“Then we can light candles,” and she led him by the hand, little-brother tow, deeper into Spyder’s house.

6.

They had sat together on Spyder’s bed, surrounded by the glint of aquarium glass and the web-painted windows, and watched Spyder make the dream catcher by the soothing light of rose-and cinnamon-scented candles. Had all gone out together to the wild backyard night, even Walter, and Spyder had cut a green and slender branch from one of the crape myrtle bushes. Back inside the house, she’d used her pocketknife to strip away the twigs and leaves, had left the cuttings in a scatter on the kitchen floor.

And with the same knife, tiny thing but razor sharp, she’d taken locks of their hair. Robin’s first, emerald in the candlelight, then Byron’s, dyed jet-black and slick as mink, and Walter next, dirty, unwashed tortoiseshell. Had saved her own for last, sliced colorless strands from a place near her right temple where one of the dreads was coming loose. And then she’d laid each lock out on the quilt, four fraying streaks against the cotton patchwork.

She had bent the branch carefully while they watched (all but Walter, who’d pretended to read from a thick book on fossil arachnids while she worked), bowed pliant wood into a perfect hoop, near-perfect mandala six or seven inches in diameter, and tied it closed with white nylon kite twine from a box beneath the bathroom sink. And then she picked up the pocketknife again, brass handle and stainless-steel gleam, had passed the blade slowly through the flame of the red votive candle burning on the table beside Lurch and Tickler’s tank.

Spyder cut herself in the soft bend of one elbow, had drawn the cooling blade quick across her skin, severing tattooed lines and the vein hiding beneath. Dabbed her fingers in the wound and slicked the hoop with her blood.

And no one had said anything, not one word while she wove their hair with certain, patient fingers, tied the concentric rings and irregularly spaced radial lines running from rim to hub.

“It’s just a simple orb web,” she said when she’d finished, almost dawn, and Spyder had pointed to the design on one of the windows. “A snare, like garden spiders make.”

Last of all, she’d used more of the twine to tie a couple of musty old mockingbird feathers to the rim.

Robin had held it while Spyder stood and stretched, wiped at her jeans and a few stray hairs sifted to the floor.

“Now, we put it someplace safe,” she’d said and had taken the dream catcher from Robin, lifted the lid off one of the bigger tanks, twenty-five gallons of air, mostly, a few sticks and rocks strewn across the bottom. Robin didn’t have to read the sloppy writing on the yellowed strip of masking tape stuck to one corner of the tank, didn’t have to know the correct pronunciation of
Latrodectus mactans
to understand: the shiny black bodies like living vinyl, crimson hourglass bellies. Spyder brushed several clinging forms from the underside of the lid with her bare fingers, mother-voice whispered to calm them all—the widows, Robin, Byron half asleep on Robin’s shoulder, Walter still staring at the pages of his book. She slipped the dream catcher inside and replaced the lid, weighted it down with a lump of shale.

“Nothing’s gonna fuck with it in there,” she said, and then Robin asked, “We’re safe now?”

“Yeah,” she’d lied. “Yeah. Everything’s gonna be fine now. No more nightmares.” And after she’d blown out the candles, they’d followed her back out to the kitchen.

7.

“It’s still closed,” Byron said, hushed awe and relief, and she wanted to hit him. Standing close together in the hall, flickering candlelight on their faces and the wallpaper, hot wax dripping onto her fingers. Of course it was closed, the basement door, hidden underneath the moldy old Turkish carpet she and Spyder had found cheap at a junk shop months ago, had beaten with brooms but still there was as much crud as color to the thing. But she didn’t hit him, because she’d been afraid, too, afraid for no sane reason that the carpet would be rolled back and the trapdoor would be open. So she made him go first this time, held his hand and they stayed close to the wall until they were past the spot, until they were standing at Spyder’s bedroom door. It was closed, always closed whether she was in there or somewhere else.

“Did you hear something?”

But she was already turning the cold brass knob, the metal like dry ice in her hand, and it took everything she had, nothing left over for Byron or anything else. Even through the fear, the thickening hum behind her eyes, she felt like a thief, like a rapist; Spyder had always asked them here, had always trusted them…

So she made herself remember what she’d seen in the parking lot outside Dr. Jekyll’s, and she opened the door.

“There
,
”
he said. “Something on the roof.”

Robin stepped across the threshold, but Byron lingered behind for a moment, looking up at the high ceiling like an idiot. She set her candle down on a tall and listing stack of magazines on Spyder’s dresser,
The Web
and
Blue Blood
and
Propaganda;
wax-scabbed hand, maroon blobs like some bizarre skin disease. She picked them off and stood staring at the utility shelf that sagged against one wall, the shelf that held most of the old aquariums and jars, that held the only one that mattered, that biggest tank on the center shelf.

“Hurry,” Byron said, so she knew he wasn’t going to do it, should have known that all along. Robin crossed the room alone, laid her hand on the rock that held the plywood lid in place. Inside, she could see the dream catcher leaning forward against the glass, matted in funnel silk and here and there, a few of the spiders hanging like black and poison berries.

“Do you remember what Spyder said about the widows?” she asked him, setting the ash-colored stone down on the next tank over, smaller tank and nothing in there but harmless wolf spiders.

“What did she say?”

“That black widows aren’t aggressive. That they hardly ever bite people.”

“Oh. Yeah, yeah,” and he almost sounded like he did remember, but she could tell he was just playing the game, knew that Byron never paid attention when Spyder talked about her bugs.

“That’s what she said, that they’re very shy, and usually nobody ever gets bitten unless they fuck up, like, if they step on a widow or lay their hand on one so there’s no way for it to escape.”

She lifted the lid slowly, and at least there was enough light from their candles that she could see there was nothing clinging to the underside of the board.

“You practically have to
make
them bite you.”

“Be careful, Robin,” he said, “Please be careful,” but she was already slipping her hand between the aluminum rim of the tank and the wood, her fingers already inside.

“And even if you do get bitten,” she whispered, words so far away, like someone else’s and her heart too fast, head too light, “hardly anyone ever dies.”

Her hand in past the wrist now, and the dry crape myrtle pinched gently between thumb and index finger; one of the widows dangled only an inch from her thumbnail, hung from green strands of her own hair twisted together with ivory strands of Spyder’s. When she tugged cautiously at the dream catcher, the spider scuttled away to safety.

“See?” she said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

And then, the sound, like a sack of bones and Coca-Cola bottles rolling along the roof, like scrambling legs or marching pry bars, and she closed her hand tightly around the dream catcher and pulled, ripping apart the shrouding webs, scattering black bodies. The shelf creaked loudly, groaned and swayed toward her, precarious balance undone, and Byron screamed, something she couldn’t make out, nothing that could ever have possibly mattered anyway, before the wall of glass and metal and a thousand tiny lives crashed down upon her.

He did not leave her lying there, wrestled her limp and bleeding body from the glittering tangle that had been Spyder’s menagerie. Not because he was brave or because he loved her, but because he was more afraid of being alone, much more frightened of the sounds outside the painted windows than he could ever be of the pinprick of venom fangs. Had hauled her from the wreckage and into the hallway, towing her under the arms because he couldn’t pick her up. Sobbing and his face a wet smear of sweat and tears and snot and ruined eyeliner; angry red welts already rising on her face and hands, a jagged gash across her forehead that had peeled back enough scalp that he caught a sickening glimpse of skull through all the blood. And one of the widows, snarled in her hair, and he stomped it, ground it beneath the toe of his boot until it was unrecognizable pulp.

“Robin, don’t be dead, don’t be dead, please don’t be fucking dead,” repeated like a mantra, something holy or unholy with power against the night and the storm and whatever he could hear moving about on the roof and scritching beneath the floor.

He dragged her roughly across the rug, wouldn’t allow himself to consider the trapdoor or what wanted out, but her boots snagged on the carpet and pulled it back, like the flap of skin above her eyebrows.

“Come on, Robin, remember what she said? Remember what Spyder said? You just fucking told me, remember?”

Robin’s head lolled back on her neck like a broken toy, eyes half open to scleral whites, and he knew she was still alive, still breathing, because of the air bubbling out through the blood clogging her nose.

“Hardly anyone ever dies, Robin. Hardly anyone ever dies.”

Through the laughing, vindicated house and back out into the cold, the razor wind so much worse than when they’d gone in and the snow falling so hard and fast, pelting him with its touch like needles and feathers. It had swallowed the world, mercifully swallowed the house as soon as they were halfway across the front yard. But Byron didn’t stop until they reached the street, a thousand miles from the porch, until they were all the way off Spyder’s property and all the way across the street, a meandering, Robin-wide swath plowed through the snow.

And then he collapsed, slumped and gasping against the curb, no air left in his lungs and his muscles aching in ways he’d never hurt before. Robin sprawled at his feet, the blood from her face almost black on the snow, the places where the widows had bitten her turning dark, bruise livid. He lay there, hearing the snow and his heart and listening for anything else, anything at all, until the dizziness and nausea had passed and he’d stopped wheezing.