Silk

And as her fist co

Daria had chased Niki across Spyder’s scraggly, snow-covered front yard, Keith never more than a couple of his long strides behind her, had followed melting tracks through the house to Spyder’s bedroom. The fallen shelf and glass everywhere, a purer, meaner version of the ice outside, broken windows and the snow getting in, flakes drifting and settling comfortably into the chaos. And on the other side of the bed, crouched in the narrow space between mattress and wall, Niki and Spyder.

“Shit…” Keith whispered, and Daria took one step into the room, the crunch beneath her boots like something she almost remembered from a nightmare, and then she stopped when Niki held up one bloody, sock-covered hand. There was a new sound where the terrible wailing had been, a softer sound and somehow worse for that. It took Daria a moment to realize that it was the sound of Spyder crying.

She took a step closer to the bed, ignoring Niki, and Spyder turned her head away, pressing one cheek hard against the wall, and Daria noticed a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth, like maybe she’d bitten her lip or tongue.

“Oh,” Spyder said. “Oh, fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck them.”

“Who did this, Spyder?” Daria asked, but Niki only shook her head, shrugged, and Spyder pressed her face to the wall that much harder, ground it back and forth against the old wallpaper.

“Fuck them forever,” she whispered. “Fuck them until the fucking end of time.”

Behind Daria, Keith muttered, started to follow her into the room, his boots louder, heavy boy feet, until she stopped him with her eyes. He sighed loud, sagged inside his rags, and Whatever, silent from his lips.

“They don’t know,” Spyder said, “They have no fucking idea what they’ve done,” and then she was crying again, crying too hard to say anything else. But she held something out for Daria to see, stroked sie

And then the voice, dry paper voice of an old, old woman, straining to be heard, floating through the cold, still house, and Daria jumped, almost screamed.

“Lila?” the woman called. “Lila? Are you home, dear?” and a faint knock on wood.

Daria turned around, “Keith, will you go see who that is?” but the hall behind her was empty, and over the sound of Spyder’s sobs she could hear him walking away, the rhythm of his boots on the floor, tracing his way back through the house.

The whole fucking thing was giving him the creeps, and if nobody asked him soon, Keith was just about ready to tell them anyway. And that look in Daria’s eyes, colder than the goddamn blizzard, like he had no business even being alive, much less any chance that he could help. Because he had a dick. Well, she knew where she could stick her this-is-a-girl-thing bullshit.

The old woman sounded like a ghost, pathetic phantom, confused and lost and frightened, urgent. Keith was halfway across the living room, could see the pale light from the open front door leaking from the foyer when something snagged at his pants leg and he stumbled, almost tripped and fell sprawling on Spyder’s junk-cluttered coffee table.

“Goddammit…” and he reached down, thought for a moment he felt strong cord or nylon fishing line, like a tripwire, probably Spyder’s dumbfuck idea of a burglar alarm. Before he cut his fingers on nothing he could see, nothing there at all, nothing strung to snare intruding feet, and he pulled his hand back as the same taunt nothing gently brushed his forehead, cut him across the bridge of his nose.

“Lila, honey? Is that you?”

“Just a minute,” he shouted, slapping at the empty air, and for an instant, a noise drier than the old woman’s grating voice, almost too high or far away for him to hear, rustling around him, sand and bones and autumn leaves. Then he was staggering into the foyer and there was only the old woman, waiting in the doorway like a storybook witch. Incredible frizzy mane of hair as stark as the snow behind her, no coat and a dirty, stiff blue dress, torn stockings above her black galoshes. Dark, distrustful eyes and her frown setting like concrete.

“Who are you?” she demanded, then took a step back, and Keith tried wiping the blood off his nose, but that hand was bleeding even worse and he felt the wet smear across his face.

“I said, who are you?”

“Uh,” and he tried wiping the blood on his jeans, “Uh, I’m a friend of Spyder’s.”

“Where’s Lila?” the witch demanded. “I have to talk to Lila right now.”

“She’s, uh, right back there,” and he jabbed a thumb at the shadows over one shoulder. “In her room, I think.”

“I have to speak to Lila right now, young man.”

“Yeah,” he said, and the fresh cuts were stinging, the one across his nose making his eyes water. “I’ll go get her.”

“You go

The cuts stung like alcohol or iodine, like salt rubbed into the wounds.

“No,” he said. “Of course not. Come on in,” and she crept past him, hugging close to the wall, as much distance between them as she could keep, just in case.

“Terrible business,” the witch said, shaking her head, her shaggy, tousled white hair. “And you know, I might have fallen and broken my hip coming up that hill. I could have broken my neck. But I promised the police I’d be here to tell Lila what happened,” and then Keith shouted for Daria, because he felt suddenly ill and dizzy, the world pressing its callused thumbs at his temples like a hangover or a bad fix, and he couldn’t imagine making it all the way back to Spyder’s bedroom.

“Daria! There’s someone out here to see Spyder!”

“Oh!” the witch said, eyes round and hands clamped over her ears. “Oh, please don’t shout so.”

“Sorry,” he said, and made it out onto the porch before he had to sit down. The fresh air helped a little, drove back the claustrophobia, washed soothing cool across the cuts on his hand and face. He sat on the steps, top step clean of snow or ice, head down, waiting for the sick, spi

“Terrible business,” the witch muttered again somewhere behind him; despite the clouds, it was too bright out here, too much white, and he squinted at his feet, old shoes like the old woman’s leathery skin.

He heard Daria now, questions in her voice and the witch answering them, and he looked up, slow and his eyes shielded from the murky day.

“They found her laying right out there in the street,” the witch said, and he heard her just as clearly as if she were standing next to him, heard a sharp breath drawn, and then the day seemed to brighten around him and he risked looking up through the branches, looking up for the sun breaking through the clouds.

“Someone called,” the witch said. “There wasn’t nothing they could do, though.”

The sky was still as overcast as it had been all morning, scraping its insubstantial violet belly across the mountaintop. So he looked away from it, counted the braid of footprints in the snow, five separate sets, coming together and splitting apart again, all except his own, the biggest, apart from the rest. He could count each individual print, each a pool of gloom now as the air shimmered and grew bright around him.

“You shouldn’t a had to hear it this way, Lila,” the witch said, the old woman who looked like a witch and his footsteps looked like a trail of giant and moldy bread crumbs in the snow. So we can find our way back, he thought. So we don’t get lost in the woods.