Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [138]
Thwump, and this time she looked at the wall and glanced back to Niki. “You’re not hearing things,” she said. “Unless we’re both hearing things. I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“It’s probably just a dog,” pretend certain, pretend composure, but Niki didn’t look at the kitchen window, “or the wind.”
“The wind,” Spyder whispered and held out her arms, skin and ink, permanent, forever; turned them over to show her naked palms, unstained space but lines there, too, and she knotted her fingers together, lace of fingers, cup of flesh back behind her head, teeth gritted.
“They didn’t bite me, Niki,” almost a growl, throaty grinding up and out, leaking. “They’ve never bitten me.”
“Maybe they protected you, then,” and Niki as surprised as the look on Spyder’s face, the look that said How did you know, Niki? How did you know that?, as surprised and she knew how important it was that she’d said that, even if she was just fumbling in the dark and confusion, needing to say something reassuring, anything right and comforting.
“Like a totem animal.”
The pain from Spyder’s eyes, twisting under her skin so her forehead and eyebrows folded in like old, old mountains, so her lips trembled, and she held them open a moment before she could speak.
“But they won’t stop. They won’t ever stop. They took Robin because they thought they were protecting me. They took Byron,” and Niki didn’t look toward the thing on the table.
“You need someone to help you make them stop, Spyder.”
Thwump and the windows rattled; a coffee cup fell off the sink and shattered on the floor. Spyder covered her ears, hid her face between her knees, muffling what she said.
“Stop playing like you know what’s happening, Niki. You don’t know what’s happening. If I let you stay, they’ll just take you, too.”
“It’s my decision,” and she grabbed Spyder by the shoulders, pushed her back against the cabinet doors. “Look at me, Spyder. Look at me.”
Spyder opened her eyes, stared out through her dreads, through tears and the roil behind the tears.
“It’s my call. If I want to be here. If I want to help.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Spyder growled. “There’s nothing in the whole fucking world you can do, even if I let you try.” She closed her eyes again and began to pound her head against the cabinets, once, twice, the back of her skull against the wood, hitting hard enough that the cabinet door split the third time, and then Niki shook her.
“Stop it, Spyder! Stop it right now, goddamnit! You’re gonna hurt yourself…”
Crack like lightning reaching for the ground and touching, splitting sound that wasn’t the cabinet door or Spyder’s skull; hungry light before Niki could shut her eyes, light that had mass and substance, cold as zero, broiling. And she couldn’t let go, couldn’t crawl away and hide in shadows that didn’t exist in the blinding-flash moment before it was over and the kitchen seemed so completely black there might never have been even the glow of a single candle in all the world. Her hands came away from Spyder’s shoulders with a sick and tearing noise, and Niki crawled to the sink, felt for the cold water knob in the dark and held her scalded hands under the tap, tasting ozone and something like dust, tasting her own blood where she’d bitten her tongue.
And there was no sound but the soothing, icy splash of water from the faucet and Spyder sobbing behind her.
“It’s still my call,” Niki said, blinking, wondering if her eyes had burned away to steam, if there was nothing now but empty red sockets in her face.
5.
Niki found Bactine in the medicine cabinet and sprayed some on her hands, the burns crisscrossing the backs of both, striping her wrists and forearms. Made bandages from an old bedsheet and then she sat alone in the living room, nothing for the pain but four