Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [78]
“I didn’t see anything,” he told her, eyes wet, rouged cheeks already redder from the cold.
“I know,” she said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with you.” And then he walked quickly away, as quickly as he could without his black patent pumps sliding on the slippery sidewalk. She watched him for a moment, wet snowflakes gathering in her hair and sticking to her face, already missing Spyder.
2.
Walter had been the last one out of the basement, the one that Spyder had gone down for herself, while Robin and Byron had sat naked and filthy in the morning-filled hall, still clutching tightly to each other. Robin had cried, had pleaded with her not to leave them alone, not to step through the protecting floor into the hungry black.
“That’s what He wants,” she said, not meaning Walter, meaning Preacher Man and His red book. Meaning the Dragon.
“Robin, I can’t just leave him down there,” and then she’d been sucked down through the gaping trapdoor hole.
“No!” Robin had wailed. “Oh please god Spyder, no,” and she’d tried to scramble across the floor after her, but Byron hadn’t let her go, had held on, held her back.
And what had seemed like a long, long time later, Spyder had brought him back to them. Walter, his pale and hairless chest, his legs, scraped and gouged, his face caked with red basement dirt and maroon-brown streaks of his own blood. Spyder had whispered something in his ear and he’d sat down next to Robin and Byron, both hands crooked like arthritis claws and cradled close to his body. Robin had wanted to pull him to her, lock him up safe in her embrace with Byron, but his eyes, unblinking, full of nothing, had scared her too much to even touch him.
“It’s gonna be all right now,” Spyder said, and she was crying too, silent tears shiny beneath her eyes.
And then something had reached up out of the dark, two jointed legs or arms raised cautious from the trapdoor, probing, testing the bright, warm air; night-bristling hairs, quills and chitin barbs. Robin screamed, had pointed at the hole as Spyder turned and stood staring. The two appendages had rasped and tapped anxiously at the floor, and then a third rose straight from the center and unfolded like a pocketknife, felt its way eagerly along the wall.
“What?” Spyder had asked her. “What is it? There’s nothing there.”
“Oh Jesus, they’re still coming,” Byron had whimpered. “They’re still coming,” and he’d pushed flat against the wall at his back as if he could squeeze through. So Robin had known that he saw it too, that Spyder must see it and was only trying not to scare them. When the tip end of the fourth leg appeared and she’d screamed again, and Byron had started screaming too, Spyder lifted the trapdoor with the toe of her boot, wood studded with a hundred nails like slanting needle teeth, rising, falling, and the thing had pulled itself back through just as the door had slammed closed. And then she had pushed the old trunk over on top of the trapdoor.
“See?” she’d said. “Now you’re safe. Nothing’s gonna get out of there now.” She’d gone away for just a moment, had disappeared into her bedroom, and Robin’s eyes had drifted back to the trapdoor, the trunk like the stone that sealed the tomb. But Spyder had come right back, carrying one of her prescription bottles; she’d opened it and pretty blue pills had poured out into her palm. She’d made them each swallow one, had to force Walter’s past his lips and far back on his tongue.
And then she’d led them all down the hallway to the big bathroom and its lion-footed cast-iron tub, white enamel and sparkling warm water and the calming smell of soap.
3.
Sitting in the diner, faded sunflower walls and plastic yellow booths, the stink of pork fat and waffles and other people’s cigarettes. Walter held his head in both hands as if it had grown too heavy for his shoulders, his spine. Robin across from him, sipping