Silk (21 page)

“I think you flooded it,” Niki said, sounding almost as useless as she felt, looking past Theo, through the driver’s-side window. She followed the silver arc of the baseball bat in Keith’s hands, that strange scythe, and the big redneck kneeled at his feet.

“It’s not flooded. It’s just a worthless piece of shit,” and that time it turned over, half-hearted piston taunt, and almost caught.

But then the brown car jumped, seemed to spring forward like a hungry, pouncing animal, and the white-haired girl tumbled into the windshield. The front bumper caught the only one of the rednecks still standing, knocking him down, as the car swerved past the triad of Stiff Kitten. Halfway across the parking lot, the white-haired girl lost her grip on the hood or windshield and was tossed off, rag doll rolled a few feet and lay very still.

Niki gasped, grabbed Theo’s arm; for a second she was sure the Toyota was going to plow straight into the van, but at the last possible moment the driver cut the wheel sharply to the left and the car squealed past, only inches to spare, vanished up Morris in a fog of its own exhaust. As they had passed, she’d caught a hurried glimpse of the faces inside, fear rigid and gaudy as cheap Halloween masks.

And then the van made a painful grinding sound deep in its internal-combustion belly, backfired again, and rattled violently to life. Theo cursed and wrenched the gear shift into first, bumped over the curb and into the parking lot. Another three seconds, and they were pulling up alongside Mort and Daria.

“Thank god for the cavalry,” Mort said, closing his knife and putting it into his back pocket. “Better late than never.”

Keith was squatted down beside the guy the car had clipped, prodded him with one end of the bat.

“Is he dead?” Mort asked, and Keith shook his head, “Nah. He’s breathing,” and he looked back at the first guy he’d put down, still sitting on his butt, holding his ribs. “Better call your buddies here an ambulance,” and he picked up the revolver, flipped open the chamber and dumped the bullets out into his palm. He threw the gun into the tall weeds by the railroad tracks and pocketed the five cartridges.

“What about Spyder?” Daria asked, sliding the van’s side door open as Niki climbed down from the passenger seat.

Spyder was lying on her back a few feet away, eyes open, staring blankly up at the clouds. Keith walked over and waved a hand in front of her face.

“Hey. Spyder. Are you dead?” he said, and Niki saw the white-haired girl’s lips move, but couldn’t make out what she said.

“Spyder says she ain’t dead yet, Dar,” Keith said.

Spyder tried to sit up, and Keith helped her to her feet. Niki ran over to them, gladly seizing any chance to do something besides stand around gawking; she slipped one arm around Spyder and helped her towards the van.

“I can walk,” Spyder said, but Niki helped her anyway.

“C’mon, guys. Move your pokey butts,” Theo yelled. “I think Bert called the cops,” and immediately she was answered by the not-distant-enough wail of sirens.

“I’m just surprised
you
didn’t do it for him,” Mort said, climbing into the cab beside her.

“It’s snowing,” Spyder said as Niki guided her past the pug snout of the van, and she looked up into the city-bright sky, felt the snow an instant before she saw it, huge sticky flakes spiraling lazily down like Walt Disney fairies.

Spyder opened her mouth, bloodsmear-ringed like smudged lipstick or the candy-apple halo around a little girl’s mouth, and caught a single flake on her outstretched tongue. It lingered there a moment, ice-water crystal on pink flesh, before it melted and Spyder swallowed what was left.

And Niki shivered as something warm and sharp passed through her, there and gone again almost before she even had time to recognize it, something she hadn’t felt since the last time she’d seen Danny Boudreaux in the French Quarter, five months and a thousand years before. And they stood there, her and the white-haired girl, in the space between the beams of the van’s headlights, watching the snow fall, until Theo finally honked the horn.

1.

B
yron was driving like an idiot, ignoring red lights and stop signs. From the backseat, Walter was cursing him, cursing himself for not having forced Byron to let him out of the car, for not having done something to help Spyder.

“She’s dead,” he said, finality and icing despair. “Yeah, god,
you
know she’s dead.
You
killed her, Byron. You fucking killed Spyder.”

The porcelain boy he’d been making out with sat very quiet, wide scared eyes, waiting to see exactly what he’d gotten himself into and how he was going to get himself back out again. Robin kept her eyes off the road, watched the beautiful, frightened boy reflected in her outside mirror, his black Betty Page wig and magenta lips. And the snow, falling down on them like manna.

“Just shut up,” Byron said. “Just shut the hell up.”

He raced through another red light, and Robin heard tires squeal, desperate hot scream, horns blaring like pissed-off harpies, and then they were speeding south along a street she felt sure she’d seen a thousand times but couldn’t begin to recognize.

“She’s
not
dead,” Byron said.

“How the hell do you know that, Byron?
Fuck.
How the hell do you know?” and he punched the driver’s-seat headrest.

“You didn’t
see
it?”

“Man, I didn’t see shit, except for you running over Spyder with her own goddamn car.”

“Well, you just ask Robin, then. Robin saw. She knows.”

But she said nothing, watched the snow and the buildings slipping past as downtown turned into Southside, and everything outside was powdered soft and sugar-white. What she had seen, what she thought she had seen, and all the things she had or had not seen since that night in the basement, crept behind her eyes, interceding, keeping themselves between the world and her mind. The things that left shadows but never showed themselves, that passed between her and lights, lamps and headlights and candles. The watchers, the skitterers, that had come up, been
sent
up, after them.

“Tell him,” Byron said, begging her now, pleading for her soothing concurrence, her damning corroboration. “For god’s sake, Robin, tell him you saw it, too.”

“Why?” she whispered, a softer sound even than the snow. “He knows what you’re talking about.”

“No!” and Walter punched the back of Byron’s seat again. “I do
not
know what the fuck either of you are talking about!”

“You were down there the longest,” she said. “Spyder had to go down after you.”

“Fuck you, fuck you both,” he said, and this time Walter struck the little backseat window, hard enough that Robin was surprised it hadn’t broken. “You killed her, man. You’re both crazy, and you killed her, Byron.” But all the fury was draining away, something in his soul lanced, and his voice was suddenly as brittle as brown October leaves.

“I want out,” the porcelain boy said. “Just stop the car here, and I’ll get out.”

Byron glanced uncertainly at the rearview mirror, as if he’d forgotten all about the boy, as if he’d never known he was back there.

“I’m not gonna tell anyone anything, I promise. Just let me out, and I swear I won’t say a thing to anyone.”

“You didn’t see it, either?” Byron asked him.

“Please,” the boy said, “Please let me out,” and Robin could almost feel his fear and confusion like needles or a wire brush against her skin, knew that he’d be crying soon.

“Stop the goddamn car and let him the hell out, Byron,” she said.

Byron pulled over at the next light, green for go, but there was no one behind them; Robin opened her door and stepped out into the storm, her shoes making their shallow marks in the snow. She had to pull the little release lever before the seat popped forward, catapult quick, and the porcelain boy could climb out of the backseat.

“I didn’t see
anything
,” he told her, eyes wet, rouged cheeks already redder from the cold.

“I know,” she said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you.” And then he walked quickly away, as quickly as he could without his black patent pumps sliding on the slippery sidewalk. She watched him for a moment, wet snowflakes gathering in her hair and sticking to her face, already missing Spyder.

2.

Walter had been the last one out of the basement, the one that Spyder had gone down for herself, while Robin and Byron had sat naked and filthy in the morning-filled hall, still clutching tightly to each other. Robin had cried, had pleaded with her not to leave them alone, not to step through the protecting floor into the hungry black.

“That’s what He wants,” she said, not meaning Walter, meaning Preacher Man and His red book. Meaning the Dragon.

“Robin, I can’t just leave him down there,” and then she’d been sucked down through the gaping trapdoor hole.

“No!”
Robin had wailed. “Oh please god Spyder, no,” and she’d tried to scramble across the floor after her, but Byron hadn’t let her go, had held on, held her back.

And what had seemed like a long, long time later, Spyder had brought him back to them. Walter, his pale and hairless chest, his legs, scraped and gouged, his face caked with red basement dirt and maroon-brown streaks of his own blood. Spyder had whispered something in his ear and he’d sat down next to Robin and Byron, both hands crooked like arthritis claws and cradled close to his body. Robin had wanted to pull him to her, lock him up safe in her embrace with Byron, but his eyes, unblinking, full of nothing, had scared her too much to even touch him.

“It’s gonna be all right now,” Spyder said, and she was crying too, silent tears shiny beneath her eyes.

And then something had reached up out of the dark, two jointed legs or arms raised cautious from the trapdoor, probing, testing the bright, warm air; night-bristling hairs, quills and chitin barbs. Robin screamed, had pointed at the hole as Spyder turned and stood staring. The two appendages had rasped and tapped anxiously at the floor, and then a third rose straight from the center and unfolded like a pocketknife, felt its way eagerly along the wall.

“What?”
Spyder had asked her. “What is it? There’s nothing there.”

“Oh Jesus, they’re still coming,” Byron had whimpered. “They’re still coming,” and he’d pushed flat against the wall at his back as if he could squeeze through. So Robin had known that he saw it too, that Spyder must see it and was only trying not to scare them. When the tip end of the fourth leg appeared and she’d screamed again, and Byron had started screaming too, Spyder lifted the trapdoor with the toe of her boot, wood studded with a hundred nails like slanting needle teeth, rising, falling, and the thing had pulled itself back through just as the door had slammed closed. And then she had pushed the old trunk over on top of the trapdoor.

“See?” she’d said. “Now you’re safe. Nothing’s gonna get out of there now.” She’d gone away for just a moment, had disappeared into her bedroom, and Robin’s eyes had drifted back to the trapdoor, the trunk like the stone that sealed the tomb. But Spyder had come right back, carrying one of her prescription bottles; she’d opened it and pretty blue pills had poured out into her palm. She’d made them each swallow one, had to force Walter’s past his lips and far back on his tongue.

And then she’d led them all down the hallway to the big bathroom and its lion-footed cast-iron tub, white enamel and sparkling warm water and the calming smell of soap.

3.

Sitting in the diner, faded sunflower walls and plastic yellow booths, the stink of pork fat and waffles and other people’s cigarettes. Walter held his head in both hands as if it had grown too heavy for his shoulders, his spine. Robin across from him, sipping the sour diner coffee, close to Byron, as if they’d chosen sides; Walter the puppy loyalist, and her and Byron somehow turned traitorous, coconspirators in an accidental
coup d’état
.

Outside, the snow was still coming down, half an inch or more on the ground already and falling so hard that she could see no farther out the plate-glass window than the first row of cars in the parking lot.

“We should just go back,” Walter said again.

“I’m fucking tired of hearing that shit, Walter, so can it, okay?” Byron folded and unfolded a paper napkin, making and unmaking a sloppy origami bat for the umpteenth time. His own coffee sat untouched, cold and black.

“I’m just saying it still might not be too late, not if we go back now.”

“Too late for
what,
Wally? Huh?” Byron said, loud enough that the waitress looked up from her pencil, pad, and scribbles.

“You mean it might not be too late to watch them loading that cracker’s corpse into a body bag? Might not be too late to catch the pretty lights on top of the ambulance? Or how about this one, Wally: it might not be too goddamn late to spend a little time in the Birmingham jail, getting fucked up the ass every time you bend over?”

Robin flinched, and Walter looked at them for the first time in ten or fifteen minutes, his eyes rimmed puffy red and irises seething with onionskin layers of hurt and fear and anger, palm-print impressions framing his face like the tailfeathers of kindergarten turkeys.

“You cold-hearted son of a bitch,” he said. “You don’t even care if she’s dead or not, do you? You’re just worried about yourself. You’re just worried about having to explain this mess to the cops.”

“Frankly, Walter, I think jail’s about the
last
thing I should be worrying about right now, don’t you?” and Byron pulled the wings off his napkin bat and let its torso flutter to the tabletop.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You know what he means, Walter,” she said and looked back out at the snow, the candyland world without sharp edges. “You can pretend all you want, but you’re still just as much a part of this as we are, as much as Spyder.”

“She lied to us,” Byron said. “She lied to us, and the whole thing is just a trap.”

“You two just don’t get it, do you?” Walter asked. “The game is fucking
over,
okay? This shit is for real.”

Robin closed her eyes, feeling the X still burning inside her, her stomach and muscles tight from the strychnine and everything that had gone wrong in the last hour.

“What did you see down there, Walter?” she asked without opening her eyes. “What did you see in the basement? What did you dream about before Spyder made the dream catcher?”

“Robin, we were just fucked up. We were tripping our fucking balls off. We didn’t see anything real, nothing that wasn’t in our heads all along.”

“That’s horseshit,” Byron said, rolling his dismembered bat into a wad and sinking it in his glass of ice water. “And you know it, and you’re just too big a pussy to admit it.”

“You never believed any of the story,” Robin said, not a question, a revelation, maybe, and she opened her eyes, turned slowly away from the window to face Walter; he winced and looked quickly back down at his hands.

“I know you guys aren’t this stupid,” he said. “It was just a bad trip, and all that other stuff was just something Spyder made up to try and make us sleep better.”

“You’re a liar,” said Robin, her voice more bitter than the coffee. “You think maybe it’ll all go away if you say it never happened. That you’ll stop seeing the shadows if you say they’re not there.”

“Robin, I haven’t seen
jack shit,
okay? I’m telling you the truth. I haven’t seen jack-fucking-shit.”

“I don’t believe you,” Robin said.

“That’s not my goddamn problem.”

Short silence then, and Byron tapping impatient black nails against Formica. “So, you’re not even going with us?” he asked, finally. “You won’t even do that much?”

“We’re in enough trouble already without breaking into Spyder’s house.”

“It wouldn’t
be
breaking in,” Byron said. “Robin has a key. You know she has a key, Walter,” and without asking permission, he grabbed for her purse, chrome cut and bolted into a tiny coffin with a handle and latch and a purple velvet ankh on the lid; she let him take it, let him in.

“We have to protect the dream catcher,” Byron said as he dug through the junk in her purse, dumping everything out on the table, and there was her key ring, more goth kitsch, a plastic spine and pelvis.

“I’m sorry,” Walter said and left his mouth open like there was more, but he couldn’t find the words.

“She used your hair, too,” Robin said, but now she was looking at the storm again, frantic blur, falling ice white sky, but not at Walter or the mess of her things Byron had spilled on the table. If they didn’t leave soon, they’d be spending the night in the diner or walking.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, no more meaning than the first time, a little more regret, and she could hear the bright jingle of her keys, Byron holding them up for Walter like something he’d be helpless to refuse.

“I’m going back,” he said. “Maybe I can explain—”