Silk

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” She turned the key and the van jerked and sputtered and was quiet again.

“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 Da

CHAPTER EIGHT

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 ma

“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 ru

“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 go

“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.