Caitlin Kiernan - Silk

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"An extraordinary achievement" (Clive Barker) from the author of the acclaimed novel Threshold-this is the fiction debut that won the International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel.

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Her feet only disappeared a little past the ankles this time, and the ground creaked beneath her shoes, tired wood creak, glimpses of weathered planks through the growth, and Niki realized she was walking on some sort of bridge, probably rotten, and she tried not to think about that, either. Tried to think about nothing but getting Spyder in out of the cold.

“Watch out,” Spyder said. “There’s a stump hole there,” and then Niki was standing next to her, standing directly under the body in the tree.

“Maybe if we just pull on the vines…”

“I think we should go inside now, Spyder. At least warm you up a little bit. Get your boots and coat.”

“…together. I tried it, but maybe if we were both pulling, the vines would come loose.”

“We shouldn’t do that,” and she caught a hint of something bad on the air, a ripe, meaty smell, and she told herself that it was too cold for the body to be rotting up there, but she knew that was total horseshit.

“You wouldn’t say that, if he’d been your friend. I can’t leave him there.”

“If he was my friend, Spyder…” and whatever she was about to say, whatever was true and wanted to be said, no need for Spyder to hear it, and instead, “If he was my friend, I’d call the police.”

Spyder stood, her feet raw, chapped pink, the palms of her hands the same color, the same painful shade across her forehead, under her eyes, around her mouth. But not a hint of frostbite gray, as far as Niki could tell; that was something, at least, something to hang on to. One way this could be worse.

Spyder grabbed on to one of the vines and pulled; Niki heard the limbs creak, the same grating sound the old boards over the ditch had made, same straining sound that might have been the last thing Danny heard after he stepped off the chair in his kitchen. “Help me, Niki,” and “Spyder,” she said, “Please,” but Spyder only pulled that much harder, frowned and chewed her lower lip.

“If I could just reach his feet,” she said.

The soles of the boy’s shoes, swaying now because of all the yanking Spyder was doing on the vines, a bit of gravel wedged between the treads, a yellow-green wad of hardened gum. The vine felt utterly alien in Niki’s hands, dried tendons from an alien corpse, the corpse of something big as the mountain, old as the world. She pulled and way up high there were popping sounds, rip-pings, and Spyder jerked so hard Niki could see where the skin on her fingers was cracking open and beginning to bleed.

“And what are we supposed to do with him if we ever do get him down?”

Spyder put all her weight on the vine, lifted herself off the ground a couple of inches. There was a loud crack then and bits of oak bark fell from the sky and peppered their heads.

“We put him inside, where no one’ll see.”

Niki followed her example, cringed when the body sank a little closer to them.

“What then? I mean, you don’t think you can keep him in there very long, do you? It’s a corpse, Spyder. Sooner or later…”

“He’ll have to be buried,” Spyder said, and Niki didn’t say anything else. Didn’t want to hear any more of this. She tugged until her arms ached, white clouds of breath from the exertion, the cold making her sinuses hurt. And then the vines just let go, sudden slack in her hands and the body tumbled towards them, almost landed on top of her; he lay slumped against the trunk of the tree, head lolled forward now, one arm across his lap, legs splayed like the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz, and now she recognized him, the boy she’d watched across the smoky cave of Dr. Jekyll’s. He’d been so wary that night, so pretty; the flesh around his eye sockets was tattered, torn and shredded by the careless beaks of hungry birds, but the face still looked wary. Scared and wary and sad.

“I can’t do this,” she said, and Spyder only shrugged.

“Then go back to the house. I can carry him in alone.”

She almost did, almost left Spyder to do this crazy, awful thing herself, almost left her to deal with that face, the hollows where his eyes had been. Spyder squatted beside him, brushed black hair from his face.

“No,” Niki said. “I can’t let you do this by yourself. Let’s do it, now, before someone sees us up here.”

“Oh, Byron,” Spyder whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

When she was ready, they carried the dead boy across the plank bridge and down to the house.

Spyder laid him on the kitchen table, asked Niki to get a washcloth from the bathroom, please, something to clean his hands and face with, to scrub away the dirt, the gore on his gray cheeks. His legs hung off the end, deadweight pendulums, but Spyder carefully arranged his arms at his sides so they wouldn’t flop over the edge. Niki obediently brought her a washcloth, glad for something so simple to do, for those few moments filled with the imperfect illusion of sanity; Spyder soaked the cloth with warm water from the kitchen sink, wrung it out and started to clean his face.

“We have to call the police now,” and Niki was standing right by the phone, only had to lift the receiver and dial 911, but Spyder shook her head and wiped at a rust-colored stain on the side of his nose.

“No police, Niki. Didn’t I already say no police?”

Niki looked at the phone, sick of the flat, helpless feeling, sick of walking on eggshells for Spyder, crazy Spyder, and this was going too far, humoring her this time. This was where she had to do something.

“I’m not asking your permission,” she said as she reached for the telephone, “I’m just telling you what I have to do. You’re not thinking straight right now.”

And for an answer, Spyder set the washcloth down and picked up the big carving knife still lying on the counter where she’d sliced the onion the night before, stepped past Niki and made a loop of the bandaged phone cord, slipped the knife inside, electrical tape pulled tight around the blade.

“Put it down,” she said, no malice in her voice, nothing but promise, and Niki understood the rest, put it down or there won’t be a goddamned telephone to discuss, and the knife aimed straight at her heart.

“Spyder,” and the cord pulled tighter, then, only a little more pressure and the blade would cut them off from the world again.

“When do I ever ‘think straight,’ huh? I’m taking my meds, and aren’t they supposed to make me ‘think straight’?”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” but she hung the phone up, stepped back, more distance between her and the knife, and Spyder glanced down at it. “Jesus, Niki, is that what you think? That I would ever hurt you?”

“Sometimes I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“If that’s what you think of me, you don’t understand any of this. If that’s what you think, you should just get the hell out of here now,” words pushed out hard and fast, indifferent cold melting away, and she dropped the cord, hurled the knife at the sink, and plates, dirty glasses and coffee cups shattered there.

“Everything got messed up, Niki. You weren’t here so I don’t expect you to know what I’m talking about. I tried to make it right again, but I couldn’t. This is all I can do for him. It’s the last thing left, and I have to do it.”

“How am I supposed to understand when you won’t tell me anything, Spyder? Am I just supposed to stand around and watch you mess your life up worse? Screw mine up with it? I do know that none of this is your fault.”

“You don’t know,” Spyder said, like a sentence handed down, final judgment, you don’t know, and she picked up the washcloth again, went to the sink, steaming water over glass and china shards, the window over the sink fogged opaque, and then she went back to Byron.

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