Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [125]
Let her sleep. God, she hardly ever just falls asleep without the pills, and Niki’s eyelids fluttered, snapped open and fluttered halfmast again.
And something was in the road, then, something big and dark that seemed to be moving slowly ahead of them, just inches ahead of the Celica’s headlights; something too big to be real, but she snapped awake, full awake in a second and swearing, cut the steering wheel sharp to miss it, and the tires crunched breakdown lane gravel as the car rushed past and over the spot where the thing would have been, if it had been anything but her exhausted eyes, anything but her weary, sleep-hungry mind.
Spyder opened her eyes and squinted at the road in front of them.
“What happened?” and Niki shook her head, “Nothing,” she said. “I was half asleep and thought I saw an animal in the road…”
“What kind of animal?” Spyder asked and pushed the Doors tape back in.
“It was just my imagination,” Niki said, but she was sweating and there were chillbumps under her clothes; suddenly even Jim Morrison’s ghostly rumble seemed better than being awake alone with the cold Alabama night all around her.
“Stay awake for me,” she said. “Talk to me, okay?” and Spyder nodded, sure, reached over and gently kneaded the knotted muscles at the base of Niki’s neck with her strong fingers.
“It might have been a deer,” she said, and Niki said, “Yeah, maybe so,” and kept her eyes open for exit signs.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Mules That Angels Ride
1.
Wham, wham, wham, and Niki woke up from a soft dream of the French Quarter and a girl telling her fortune with an oversized, dog-eared pack of tarot cards, pretty girl in goth whiteface and eyeliner. And this card, she’d said, this card, well, you know this card. Woke up, groggy, and she rubbed her eyes, realized she was cold and the bedspread was gone, and Spyder was gone, nothing left but the sheets.
Wham. Wham.
The rusty old alarm clock on the floor said a quarter past three, and she closed her eyes again. Sunday afternoon; it had been sometime after dawn when she’d finally dozed off, after the long drive back from Atlanta and then sex, good sex even though she’d really been too sleepy.
Wham.
“Spyder?” she called, but no one answered her. “Is that you, Spyder? Christ, what the hell are you doing in there? Hanging pictures?”
She wanted to go back to sleep, wanted the girl in black lace and fishnets on her slender arms to finish the reading, turn over all her cards, wanted to feel the warm Gulf breeze instead of the clinging cold of the bedroom. Wanted the bedspread back and Spyder with it, Spyder warm around her, warm as any tropical evening.
“Spyder?”
Wham. Wham.
“Shit,” and Niki ran her fingers through her hair, shaggy mop she’d been thinking of cutting off short again, kept meaning to ask Spyder if she cared or not. She kicked the sheets away and slipped out of bed, bare feet on the cold floorboards and she looked around for her socks, none to be seen so she just tiptoed, instead. Out of the bedroom and it was even colder in the foyer, tiptoed across to the living room but still no Spyder. The television was on, the sound turned down all the way, silent MTV nonsense, gangsta rap pantomime; she had to pee.
And there was the missing bedspread, a huge white crocheted thing stretched trampoline tight and hanging in the air in the next room, the old dining room full of Spyder’s books; she stopped and rubbed at her eyes again. She could see where two corners had been nailed directly to the wall, big nails driven into the peeling wallpaper and a third corner stretched over to a crooked shelf and held in place with stacks of World Book encyclopedias. The fourth was out of sight, around the corner, wham, wham, and she knew if she stepped out into the middle of the living room