Silk (43 page)

“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.

“I wouldn’t have left you,” Niki said. “I wouldn’t really have left you.” And the last of the spiders squeezed themselves into the cracks between the floorboards and were gone.

“Come on,” Daria said. “There’s nothing else you can do.”

“There never was much, was there?” and Daria didn’t have an answer, helped Niki up and to the window. Mort waiting there, and Daria buttoned Niki snug inside Theo’s coat while he cleaned the last of the glass away.

“Give me your hands,” Mort said, reaching for her. “Wait,” Niki said and bent down, shaky, and picked up something that Daria couldn’t see off the floor, blew out the candle and then the darkness smelled like hot wax.

“Now,” she said, taking Mort’s hands. “Now, I’m ready.”

Exuvium

T
he week before Christmas, and they sit together in another diner, another truck-stop breakfast. Fifty miles east of Denver and they’ll see the mountains by noon, Mort says. Niki picks at her waffles and hash browns, brown foods, getting maple syrup on the shredded potatoes and grease on the waffles. Not as hungry as when she ordered it, not really hungry at all, anymore.

“Anyone want this?” and Mort says sure, so she hands her plate across the table to him. Theo forks away the top waffle, and he scrapes the rest on top of his own breakfast. Daria stops chewing her last mouthful of sausage and looks at Niki.

“You feelin’ okay?” and Niki nods her head. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just not hungry. I’m going to the restroom,” and she slips out of the booth, leaves them sitting there under the steer horns mounted on the wall and the moth-eaten jackelope with plastic holly and mistletoe tied in its antlers. Walks past the men sitting at the bar, truckers and locals, and they watch her, uneasy mix of disdain and lust on their sleepy, sunworn faces. Past the cash register and gumball machines, the hall that leads back to the toilets. Out the door into the Colorado morning as clear and cold and dry as wine. Niki puts her hand into the pocket of the coat that Theo let her keep, shiny black vinyl lined inside with fake fur the color of blue Play-Doh. Checking to see that it’s still there, her solid bit of certainty, like she’s checked times past counting in the weeks since they left Birmingham. Her new secondhand boots, a gift from Daria, scrunch in the parking lot gravel, scrunch past pickups and the van, and soon she’s walking on chalky dirt and scrubby patches of grass and cactus. Thirty or forty yards, and when she looks back, Daria is following her across the roadside prairie; she stops and waits for her to catch up.

“Where you goin’?” and Niki shrugs, looks west, and the sky and the brown earth seem to go on that way forever, azure Heaven and the World below and her trapped somewhere between.

“I just needed to walk.”

“Sure,” Daria says. “Would you mind some company?”

“I’m okay,” and Daria apologizes, turns back toward the truck stop. “No,” Niki says. “It’s all right. You can stay.”

“Thanks.”

“You know we’re almost out of cash again,” Niki says.

“We’ll all get jobs in Boulder. It’s a college town; I’m sure there are plenty of shit jobs. Don’t worry about the money, Niki.”

“Daria, are you still scared?” and Daria looks east over her shoulder, the wind through her hair that’s faded cinnamon and grown out blonde at the roots.

“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t think it just stops. You wanna walk some more?”

“No,” Niki says and takes the ball bearing out of her pocket. “This is far enough, I guess.” The constant caress of her fingers has almost worn away the ink, but she can still read her name in Spyder’s handwriting.

“What is it?” Daria asks, and Niki doesn’t answer, holds the steel ball in her palm. It glints in the bright sun like old chrome, and for a moment she just lets it catch the light, silver and the bright scars lacing her arm. And then she squats down and digs a shallow hole in the ground with the fingers of her other hand, puts the ball bearing inside and pushes the dirt back into place over it. She stands up and taps the spot with the toe of her boot until it’s smooth again.