The Spider Inside (18 page)

The three of them stood and stared at the black crater where
Sammy’s trailer had once been. There were still tendrils of thin smoke rising
from the wreckage and rubble. Jim recognized some of it as the trailer, but it
had been split open and torn apart, burnt and twisted like a tin can that has
been blasted with a shotgun.

“Turr’ble shame, just turr’ble,” said a voice behind them.
They turned and saw the old man getting out of his lawn chair in the shade and
walking slowly over to them. He stepped carefully, as though he might break
into pieces if he moved too fast or picked the wrong place to step.

“Saw the whole thing,” the old man said. “Just two nights
ago. I’s sittin right there, where ya seen me, in m’chair. Bout nine o clock,
it was, because I’s fixin to go in and watch the news. It’d just gotten dark
too, you know how late the sun stays up this time a year, it’d just gone down.
The streetlights here in th’ park’d barely come on. No warnin, no nothin, just
all the sudden
BA-DOOM!”
the old man screamed the sound effect, clapping
his hands together and making the three of them jump, then laughing in a senile
way that made Cherry’s skin crawl.

Jim had the feeling this old man had told this story a
thousand times already, he’d told it to as many people as would listen, and for
as many times as they would hear it. The police, the fire department, everyone
in the trailer park...he’d probably spent the last few days on the phone
calling every single person he knew.

“Holy shit,” Cherry whispered.

“First there was nothin, everything was quiet, just like
normal, I’s finishing up a smoke and was about to go in, you know, watch the
news, and I just happened to look across the way there, at Myra’s place.
BA-DOOM
!
Night lit up like it was noontime, that trailer, it must a went, shit, fifty
feet straight up, kinda broke in half, flipped over, come right back down
again. I’m lucky, there was shit flying everywhere. I guess this family a few
lots down, their little boy, six years old, he was in bed and a piece a sumpin
come through the window and stuck right through him. Boy’s still in the
hospital. And hell, I just finished clearing everything out my yard just this
morning. Two days, it took.”

“What the fuck happened?” Two Step asked.

“That son a hers,” the old man said, with real venom in his
voice. “Damn fool was in the crawl space, digging, for god knows what, hit a
gas line. They said we’s lucky the whole park didn’t blow, same as Myra’s
place.”

“Is she--” Cherry began.

“Myra?” the old man laughed a little, and there was venom in
his laugh, too. “You musta known her, you knew her son, right? Well you know
how god awful big she was? All that, and what they carried out of here, hell,
there weren’t enough pieces left over to fill a shopping bag. You know why
Sammy mighta been under there, digging? I know he been arrested a few times,
heard it was drugs...”

The old man didn’t stop talking but Jim stopped listening,
his old, raspy two-pack-a-day voice fading out to white noise, like the cars on
the highway a block away or the wind in the trees. He stared at that smoldering
crater and felt like it had always been there.

They got back in the car and headed back to the highway.

“Who the fuck we gonna score from, man?” Two Step asked.

“I can’t believe Sam--”

“FUCK SAMMY!” Two Step screamed, kicking the seat from the
back. “I need some
fucking gack
! We can sit down and fucking weep over
Sammy later if you have to but we gotta have a plan, Jim, and I’m not fucking
around.” Two Step’s voice changed, the rage draining out and leaving behind a
scum of desperation. “I’m sorry, you know I dug Sammy, man, he was good people,
and I’m sorry as hell bout him but I’m fucking sick back here, Jim.
I need
some shit!”

Hearing those words aloud brought it out of Jim, too,
brought it screaming to the front of his mind.

An hour had passed. The three of them rode in silence. There
was something in the car with them, and they all knew it, and to speak might
betray them...a slight tremble in the voice could acknowledge what they all
knew but wouldn’t admit. They were hooked. Badly. They needed to score.
Needed
it. Jim had never felt anything close to this his whole life, a mixture of
panic, desperation, and rage. His eyes were watering, empty tears streaming
down his cheeks. He had to make a conscious effort not to grind his teeth, his
jaw was already aching like it was busted so he would force his teeth apart
only to find them grinding against each other a few moments later. It was like
extreme hunger and thirst mixed together and not just in the stomach and throat
but all over his entire body. Everything seemed too slow, he was caught in the
clear jelly of the straight world and it was sucking the life out of him.

Cherry was just as bad, she sat slumped against the door of
the car clutching her stomach which was cramping a thousand times anything
she’d ever experienced during her worst period. She felt the bugs all over his
skin and knew they weren’t there, she
knew
it, it was stupid, if she
were covered in bugs Jim certainly would have said something so she just
squeezed her eyes shut behind her sunglasses, afraid to open them and look
because if she looked that meant the dope won and she lost and she no longer
had control of her body or mind, it meant she was no longer herself, she was a
puppet, a toy, something possessed and brought to life by some terrible wraith
and she would not, absolutely would not give up that part of herself.

And, if she opened her eyes, she was afraid she might see
she was covered in bugs just the same.

Two Step was the worst. He no longer had any illusions of
control over his habit. He was its bitch, that much was clear, that was all
there was, nothing else existed. His foot where he had taken to shooting up was
burning, and the only thing that would put it out was another shot. Like Jim he
felt everything was moving too slow but for Jim it was the world around him
that was the problem. For Two Step the problem was inside himself. His heart
wasn’t beating fast enough, his lungs weren’t pulling enough air, the blood was
drying up and coagulating in his veins, the electrical impulses in his brain
were slowing down to a crawl and if he couldn’t do something to reboot himself
he was just going to collapse, his body would fold in on itself and he would
just shrivel up in the backseat of the car and fucking die.

Jim was running out of ideas. He didn’t know who to go to,
who might be holding, let alone have enough to sell a little extra to them.

It was as though the need in his body was steering the car,
some kind of internal dowsing wand that picked up methamphetamine instead of
water. He thought he’d been driving aimlessly but soon started to recognize the
area he was in, the neighborhood. He drove a little faster, knowing where he
was going now, and soon came to a broken little cul-de-sac where the houses
were the size of some one room apartments Jim had been in, they were all
crammed together and painted horrible pastel colors...bubblegum pink and mint
green and a disgusting yellow that looked like a dried cum stain. There were
chain-link fences separating the tiny yards, some of them still standing
upright, most of them sagging this way and that. There were dirty Pit bulls and
Dobermans in some of the yards, but the house he was going to had no animal in
the yard. It had the keys to the house.

Jim stopped the car and got out without a word. Two Step was
curled up in a shaking ball in the backseat, he wasn’t going anywhere. Cherry
was still collapsed against the passenger door, and she wouldn’t really be able
to help him anyway. He started breathing fast, trying to jack himself up a
little, get the blood flowing, unsure of exactly what he was walking into.

He knocked on the door and eventually it opened. Lance stood
before him, his black eyes peering out above his twisted, yellow smile.

“Jim,” he said. “Come on in.”

“Howya doing, Lance?” Jim could see how he was doing. He
could see Lance was in much better shape than him, and that scared Jim and gave
him hope at the same time. It meant Lance was holding.

“I’m okay, Jim. I am O…K. How are you?” Still that yellow
smile, still those empty eyes, crawling all over him like leeches, draining
everything out of him. Jim saw a bag of dope on a littered coffee table, next
to a massive white candle in a thick glass holder. Was Lance shooting now? Did
he use it to cook up?

“We need something, man, I’m not gonna lie to you. We’re
hurting, ever since the bust, we haven’t been able to find anyone who’s holding.”

“Have a seat,” Lance said, motioning to a chair next to the
couch. Jim sat in the chair, Lance sat on the couch.

“I know we’ve never been that close,” Jim said, “but I got
money. I can pay whatever, we just need a little something to get through until
tomorrow and we should be good.”

Lance nodded as if he understood all of this, as if it were
the most interesting thing he’d ever heard. He sat staring at Jim, staring into
him. Jim looked around the tiny house. The walls were scarred and stained and
empty. There was no television, no stereo, no books. Jim thought of Lance in
here, in this hole of a house, spinning the days away doing nothing, sitting in
here like a troll or a goblin from some horrible fairy tale, thinking his black
thoughts and doing nothing.

Jim saw the door leading to what he assumed was the bedroom.
There was a heavy bolt and padlock on the outside of the door, and now Jim knew
why Lance wore that key around his neck. He suddenly felt sure there was
someone locked in there, gagged, maybe chained to the floor. He could almost
hear her breathing; he knew it was a girl. Someone they knew? A stranger? Jim
could feel her terror leaking through the very walls and into him. The need Jim
had felt that had brought him to this door, this last door of all the millions
of doors in L.A. County that he would ever want to knock on, that need was
slowly evaporating. What was that need compared to the question of what was
behind that locked door?

“You know, Jim...it’s funny,” Lance said. “I always got the feeling
you and your crew didn’t really like me that much.”

Jim shrugged. “We’re just different, is all. Plenty a people
out there that don’t like me, I’m sure.”

“Different,” Lance said, as though tasting the word. “We
are
different, aren’t we?”

Jim was about to respond and then he was sure he heard
something from behind that locked door; it sounded like a muffled cry and who
needs a lock on the outside of a bedroom door unless they have
something--someone—in there they don’t want anyone to see? Something they want
to keep in there for a long, long time.

“What’s in there?” Jim asked.

“I always got the feeling you thought you were better than
me, Jim.”

“I’m not better than anybody, Lance. I’m just a fucking
geeter-head, you know? Who the fuck am I better than?”

“I really wish I could help you guys today, Jim. I really
do. But I can’t, I’m sorry.”

It didn’t even matter what Lance was saying anymore. Jim was
fixated on that door.

“What’s in there?” Jim asked. “What’s in the room, Lance?”

Lance sat on the couch, staring at him.

Jim stood and walked to the door and jiggled the handle. Of
course it didn’t open. The padlock was shut tight. Jim put his ear to the door
and was just beginning to think he’d gone around the bend, that the drugs had
finally squeezed his brain a little too tightly and popped it like a fevered
grape. Of course there was an explanation for this lock. Jim didn’t even know
that it was the bedroom, did he? There could be any number of reasons for
someone having a padlock on the outside of a door in their house and Jim was
about to think of some when he heard it, this time he heard it for sure, he
heard a long low moan and the clank of a chain and he turned just in time to
see Lance coming off the couch at him.

Jim kicked him in the chest. Jim was off balance a little
and had never really kicked anyone before so it didn’t hurt Lance, but it
knocked him back onto the couch, which was all Jim really needed anyway.

For the first time he saw something in Lance’s eyes, as he
struggled up off the couch again, his hands reaching out. This was what it took
to put a little glint of light in those dark, dark eyes. Jim grabbed the candle
off the coffee table and slammed the base of it down into Lance’s face; there
was a dull thud as he connected solidly with the center of Lance’s forehead.
Lance kept coming; he got his fingers around Jim’s throat and started to dig
his fingers into the skin. He means to rip my fucking throat out, Jim thought,
and brought the candle down again, this time flattening Lance’s blackhead-covered
nose against his face. The blood flowed like a faucet and the crunch almost
made Jim sick, in fact the only thing keeping the puke from coming up was
Lance, his hands crushing Jim’s esophagus. Jim brought the candle down again,
again on Lance’s nose. Lance’s legs buckled and his hands slipped off Jim’s
throat but grabbed the collar of his shirt, bringing him down a little with
him. Lance was on his knees and Jim was bent over. They were both covered in
blood. There was blood on the candle and Jim squeezed it tighter and his hands
slipped and he almost dropped it but he didn’t. Lance clawed his way up and his
thumb dug into Jim’s eye. Jim lashed out like an animal, the shooting pain
rendering all thought impossible, reducing him to a beast caught in a trap. He
knocked Lance’s hands away from him and struck with the candle again, this time
he hit Lance square in the mouth. More blood, and broken chips of Lance’s
yellow, rotten teeth. Lance was still coming. Jim raised the candle up above
his head and brought it down as hard as he could, again, again, the glass
cracking and then breaking and falling from his hand and Lance’s face looked
almost caved in, one cheekbone was sunken and there seemed to be a dent in his
forehead. Jim brought his foot up and stomped on Lance’s face once, twice, then
ran into the bathroom and slipped on the rug and fell to his knees and vomited
into the toilet, a little surprised at the pink dish of fancy rose-shaped soaps
sitting on the back of the toilet on a lace doily.