Silk

Christ, I’m still wasted, and that was almost reassuring, almost sufficient, and Daria took the steps one at a time.

Back in the parking deck, she’d thought about trying to find Walter, finding him and letting him talk out whatever he’d wanted to tell her. I’ll wait a day or two, he’d said, and then I’ve gotta leave. If you want to talk, so maybe they could’ve found him, if they’d tried. And she’d decided it was a lot sillier than just having a look for herself. Seeing that Niki was all right and getting some sleep, and later they could talk about Spyder and the marks on Niki’s arms. The marks that had looked like someone had tried to copy Spyder’s tattoos onto Niki’s skin with a soldering iron.

Loud and woodsy porchboard complaints, and Daria stepped over the spot where she’d sat with Keith, between the broken machinery and cardboard rags to the door. Raised her hand, cold knuckles, and then the movement again, subtle disruption somewhere past the corner of the porch, something big, there and gone again before she could turn to see. A rustle in the bushes, and she knocked hard, so hard it hurt.

But no one answered. No sound of footsteps coming to open the door, nothing but the van grumbling unevenly in the driveway, and so she knocked again, harder. “Come on, guys. I’m freezing my butt off out here,” and that was true, the cold and her teeth begi

“Get a grip, chick,” and she hammered at the door until her hand ached and little flakes of paint had peeled away and fallen at her feet. “Fuck this,” reaching for the doorknob and the movement, again, closer this time, as she turned cold metal in her hand and the door opened.

The house was full of light, silver-white light strung in shimmering garland strands or floating lazy on the air, lying in tangled drifts on the floor. And Daria opened her mouth, to call for Niki or just in amazement, and she heard the scrambling, the hurried noises at her back, coming up the steps, crash as something tumbled over, and she didn’t look this time, stepped across the threshold and slammed the door shut behind her.

Mort watched Daria cross the short space to Spyder’s porch, waved when she paused once and looked back, but Daria made no sign that she’d seen him. And then she went up the steps and was lost in the deeper night shrouding the porch. Theo had climbed into the front, sat beside him now, holding his hand across the empty space between the bucket seats.

“This is so stupid,” she said, and he nodded in agreement. No doubt about that. He strained to catch a glimpse of Daria, a hint of her reflected in the faint yellow-orange light from the window.

“I can’t see her anymore,” he said. And Theo said, “It’s too goddamn dark to see anything out there. You’d think they’d put a streetlight up here.”

“Theo, I’m go

He shook his head, reached for his door handle, and then she screamed, screamed and was thrown into his lap as something slammed against the passenger side of the van, hit them so hard the van rocked a few inches up onto two wheels before it bounced back down again and the motor sputtered and died. A scraping, shearing sound, metal raked over metal; Theo scrambled back into her seat, reached behind Mort and pulled out Keith’s old aluminum baseball bat.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Mort, you didn’t see it,” and he’d never heard her scared before, wasn’t sure if he’d ever heard anyone that scared. “You didn’t see that fucking thing!” and it hit them again, Mort’s side this time, and he was thrown, smacked his jaw on the nub end of the bat. Steel ping and pop, and the wall of the van bowed inward. Mort tasted blood, bitten tongue or broken tooth, and he wrestled the bat from Theo’s hands.

“Lock the doors behind me and don’t move,” and of course she said no, no and fuck you; Mort opened his door, slid out and almost lost his balance on the loose gravel under his boots, almost fell. He brought the bat around, everything he had going into the swing, but there was nothing there. Nothing at all, but the dark and the scraggly bushes and the side of the van gouged in like they’d been sideswiped by a bus.

“Come on,” he said, spitting out blood and library whispering like maybe he was afraid someone would hear, unable to look away from the dent, paint and rust scraped away to the raw metal underneath. “We’re go

“I’m right behind you,” Theo replied, shaken, but almost sounding like herself again, and together they crossed the yard to Spyder’s house.

4.

Another bus station, this bus station again, and Walter sat by himself in the Burger King kiosk, sipping a large Pepsi that had been watery and flat and warm for thirty minutes, but he couldn’t afford another, watching the clock. Waiting for his boarding call and the bus that would carry him north, nowhere in particular, but as far away from Birmingham and Spyder as the hundred and fifty bills in his wallet, everything he had left, would carry him. Crazy, coming back here to begin with, he thought again, like anyone was go

He fumbled with the safety cap on the bottle of pink hearts, half empty already, spilled four of the pills out into his palm. He swallowed two, washed them down with another sip of the Pepsi, and put the other two back for later. All that later left ahead of him, all that sleep left to stave off as long as possible. Slipped the bottle back into his jacket pocket, and that’s when he saw the spider, hairy brown spider big as a silver dollar, crawling towards him across the garish wallpaper. Just a fucking house spider, but he felt his stomach roll, grabbed his backpack and slid out of the booth, trying not to draw attention on his way as he walked quickly past all those faces to the restroom, to cold porcelain, cold water. Privacy if he was lucky, and he was, no one else at the row of sinks, at the urinal, no shoes or pushed-down, rumpled pants legs showing from under the stalls. Walter splashed his face and the nausea began to recede, turning him loose, so he wouldn’t have to dry-heave again, nothing in him to puke up but the pills and Pepsi. He pulled a paper towel from the dispenser and rubbed it across his face, rough brown and the animal smell of his dirty wet hair, wet-paper smell. Looked up at the face in the mirror, hardly a face he even recognized anymore. He was starting to look sick, like he had cancer, or AIDS, maybe, like he’d been sick for a long, long time.

Walter turned off the tap, and behind him, the wiry, coarse rasp of hairs like porcupine quills drawn slow across clean white tile, labored breath, and it was there in the mirror, squatted between him and the door. Between him and escape, and he made himself look, made himself fucking stare, and one of its fang-lipped mouths moved, said his name, “Walter,” like something treasured and forgotten and just remembered.

“Walter, Walter,” and there was still enough of them to know, what might have been them once, before this wrong and hurting thing, features blurred like melted wax, a green iris set along the rows of glinting black and pupilless eyes, cupid’s bow and prettysharp nose mashed between nervous, restless chelicerae and meat-hook fangs. Three delicate and black-nailed fingers at the end of one jointed leg, and the voice, neither Robin nor Byron, but both of them.