Silk

“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.

“Robin?” and her eyes fluttered, half-mast lids and no recognition there, so he slapped her cheek softly and spoke louder. “I have to get help. I have to find someone to call an ambulance.”

She coughed once, and a little glob of dark pink foam rolled past her lower lip, slid down her chin.

“Robin.”

She opened her eyes for him then, lost, glazed eyes, and she began to shiver violently.

“See what I see?” she said, words around clacking teeth, a voice like Robin’s broken and put back together the wrong way, full of pain and wonder. She was looking past him, back toward the house. “In the trees,” she said, “like gri

And the goose bumps on the back of his neck, prickling his arms, skin that felt watched, kept him from turning around to look for himself.

“I have to go get help, Robin,” he said, then pulled off his coat and covered her with it. “I have to go get help right now.”

“Yeah,” she said, detached and blurred. “Yeah, Byron. Don’t leave me, okay.”

I have to leave you, he started to say. I can’t find help unless I leave you, but there were branches snapping behind him, and so he stood instead and walked away from her as quickly as he could.

8.

Halfway across town, the city crippled, already shutting down before the storm, Walter stood alone in the empty parking lot opposite Dr. Jekyll’s. The snow swirled down through the arc lights and stuck to his hair, melted against his face.

He’d walked part of the way from the diner, freezing and his clothes soaked through from the glass of water Byron had thrown at him, had finally hitched a ride with a woman inching cautiously along in her Jeep. She’d been wearing freedom rings and had talked too much, nervous chatter about the weather, what they were saying on the radio: blizzard conditions expected, the worst winter storm to hit the southeast in more than a century. She’d let him out in the short tu

And the parking lot was as deserted as the streets.

Nothing he could do, no way to even know what had happened.

He shivered and stared across the tracks, the uneven lights, black pockets here and there where the lines were down. Looked for the exact place where Spyder’s house would be, but the mountain was just a black smudge against the sky. No way to tell, exactly, so he turned, fingers crossed that the Fidgety Bean would still be open, that he wouldn’t have to try to walk all the way home through the storm and the night. And then movement or the fleeting impression of form, quickest glimpse from the corner of one eye, something stretched too long across the snow and too tall across brick. He tried to turn fast enough to catch it there, finally, more sick of the dread than afraid, better to be damned and sure than to spend another night jumping at shadows.

But there was nothing to see but the storm, the wind making a silvery dust devil with the snow, and he pulled his damp clothes tighter around bony shoulders and walked away fast toward the coffee shop.