Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [101]
“Houses catch things, Niki.”
Niki wrestled her way free of the razor tangle on the bed, gashed her right palm in the process, and Keith’s dirty tube sock was immediately soaked a deep and ugly crimson. She grabbed Spyder again, soppy, bloody sock firm on one leather shoulder and spun her completely around, almost all the strength she had left, aimed the punch the way she’d been taught years and years ago, thumb safe outside so it wouldn’t break.
And as her fist connected with Spyder’s jaw, she saw the limp and lifeless things Spyder held close against her chest, like she might protect them, even now.
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 sienna fur and orange stripes as if she held a kitten, and it took Daria a second to recognize the crushed thing in her hands, no, two things crushed together. Two huge tarantulas, a sticky, bristling mess, some legs missing and others hanging over the sides of her palms, and Spyder held them out and up, like an offering, like a surrender or a promise.
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