Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [148]
Claude had listened, kind and so good at listening, but he can’t walk a block down the street and back in forty-five goddamn minutes. And she hadn’t told him about the other dreams, the dreams since that day on Cullom Street, not just the familiar race with the train, the threadbare echoes of her father and that one awful day, but the new dreams of fire and things from the sky, entrail rain and the silent, writhing angels, greased stakes up their asses while the streets filled with blood and the long-legged shadows that might be crabs or tarantulas big as fucking Volkswagens, under a sun the color of a nosebleed.
She reached for another cigarette but the pack was empty, and she wasn’t about to get up and look for more. Thunder, right overhead, and the windowpane shuddered.
And the lights flickered.
“Christ, Claude…”
She hadn’t told him that she knew that Keith had been having the dreams too, or about her talk with dowdy, frightened Walter the goddamned shrike on her way home. Hadn’t brought up the marks on Niki’s hands or the weeping marks on Keith’s face and ankles. Connect the dots, Dar, draw your fucking paranoid’s connections.
A tickle on her cheek, then, and Daria brushed at her face, brushed back hair and stared at the thing that had fallen into her lap, eight legs drawn up tight like a closed umbrella, spider fetal, and she almost screamed, thumped it away from her. Touched her face again, and there were others waiting there, running from her, and she did scream, then, screamed louder when she saw how the walls were moving, crappy old wallpaper seeping their thumbnail bodies, the floor alive and clumps swelling from the ceiling, hanging there until their own weight and gravity’s pull had its way and they began to fall around her. The spider clumps made almost no sound when they hit the floor.
Daria beat at her face, her chest, the scream continuous now, waiting for their jaws, the hypo sting, waiting to drown beneath them. She remembered the can of Hot Shot and sprayed herself, the bed, stinking pesticide mist everywhere, wet mist falling with the recluse shower.
“I’m not done with you….” whispered next to her ear. “I’m not done with you, bitch,” and she screamed for Claude, for Mort, screamed for Keith. They were inside her clothes, touching her everywhere, at every orifice, and soon they would be inside her. So many legs moving together they made a sound like burning leaves. Daria bashed herself against the wall, spidervelvet-papered wall, head thump against the Sheetrock, and through the pain she saw her silver Zippo lying where she’d left it on the table by the bed.
Just like Pablo had taught her years ago, cans of hair spray or whatever and a lighter, just for fuckin’ kicks, just to see the noisy rush of fire, Daria aimed the can of Hot Shot at the foot of the bed, thumb on the striker wheel and fwoomp, bright splash of flame, gout of flame and spiders crisping, curling to charred specks, charred lumps of specks. The blanket caught, the sheets, and she aimed the flamethrower at the wall.
The can spat up a last dribble of fire and was empty, but it didn’t matter, because the flames were crawling away on their own, devouring a thousand fleeing bodies every second as they spread.
And then Mort, reaching through the smoke, strong boy arms, his hands, dragging her off the burning bed, bump, bump, bump across the floor like Pooh, and she let him, let him drag her all the way across the apartment and out into the hall, too busy beating at the spiders still clinging to her to stop him, the spiders carpeting the floor. He left her lying on the landing, grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and rushed back inside. Muffled sound like a giant espresso machine steaming milk, steaming a whole goddamn cow, and he was right back, coughing, his eyes watering and black smoke all around them.
“Get