Caitlin Kiernan - Silk

And the sky begins to tear.

And fall.

She woke up, and the room was still and quiet. A little candle flicker from the floor that made it seem darker outside, and her head was full of the dream and the confusion the Klonopin left behind. A stickywet spot on her pillow from sleeping with her mouth open. And then she remembered the dead boy in the basement and the mess at Keith Barry’s wake, the things she’d said to Spyder afterwards, the burns on her hands, all the things that she’d gone to sleep to escape. Things that made the nightmare silly, any lingering dread dissolved by simple recollection, replaced, and she called for Spyder.

No answer and she sat up in the bed, headboard at her back, and blinked at the dim light and shadows. “Spyder?” and she saw it, then, a few feet past the foot of the bed, mottled shades of sage and indigo, hanging down from the ceiling from taut cords or ligaments the same gray colors; beautiful and hideous and utterly unreal, and so maybe the dream wasn’t over after all, just a jump-cut to the next scene, a new set and she only had to wait for her cues.

“Spyder,” louder now and still no reply from the death-still house. And she couldn’t take her eyes off the thing, dangling like a misshapen butterfly’s chrysalis, and she’d been shrunk down to nothing. Except that she was beginning to see the form beneath the glossy skin, familiar lines, curves and hollows, wax-doll attempt at sculpture, and she heard the sound starting in her throat, small sound. Faint shape of arms folded across its chest, legs up to the straining umbilicus, the ceiling warped with its weight, the head a foot above the floor and thrown so far back there’s not much visible but neck and chin. And whether it was a dream or real, the same thing now, and Niki opened her mouth and let the small sound out.

Daria stood in the acid light, sizzling cold fairy light from the strands filling up Spyder’s living room, and she only had to let one of them settle on the bare back of her right hand to know that they cut. Another gash on her scalp before she finally stopped gaping at her wounded, bleeding hand held up and the light streaming through insubstantial flesh, x-ray revelation of bones and veins and capillaries hidden inside. She pulled her jacket up over her head, ducked and dodged as best she could through the living room, calling for Niki, cursing whenever the strands touched her. Less of the stuff in the next room, but it was still thick enough that she had to be careful, and she stopped, hands cupped around her mouth, “Niki! Niki, shit…” and she shook one of the strands off her arm, ugly S-shaped incision left behind in the leather.

“Niki!”

There were windows just a few feet away, past a low and uneven wall of paperback books, only patches of glassy night visible through clots of the stuff, but still another way out, maybe, and better than trying to go back the way she’d come.

She heard the front door creak open, turned around and there was Mort, an arm up to shield his eyes from the glare, and she shouted, “No! Go back! Don’t try to get through this shit,” and he squinted in her direction, as if he could hear, but couldn’t see. “Mort, just get the hell out of here!” And he did close the door, then, backed out and closed it, and she was alone again, alone and the sound of the strands falling around her was like the night it snowed, heavylight whisper of so many flakes hitting the window of Keith’s apartment at once.

Don’t think about it, chick. Think about it and you’re fucked. Keep moving.

Taut and nearly solid web across the doorway to the kitchen and all that left was the hall, a darker place in the blaze, leading back to Spyder’s room and other unfamiliar doors.

“Hell, I’m probably fucked, anyway,”

She stepped into the hall, narrow wallpaper gullet, wood and plaster, stepped careful over razor drifts and her hands pulled up inside the sleeves of her jacket so she could bat away the strands hanging from the ceiling. Daria saw the plywood covering Spyder’s door, no time to understand or even wonder before she almost walked into the open cellar, its door laid back and nail studded, nails bent and twisted at vicious, crazy angles, stairs that led almost straight down, and she would have broken her neck for sure.

“Niki!” Still no answer, just the snow sound, and she peered down into the rectangular hole in the floor, warmer air rising up from the cellar and incongruous scents: mold and earth, jasmine and the sweeter smell of rotting meat. And the blackness down there toward the foot of the stairs imperfect, dim red-orange glow, and What if they’re down there? Still feeling like a hero, Dar?

Daria leaned over the hole, the smells so much thicker close to the floor, and she almost gagged, swallowed and shouted, “Niki? Are you down there?” No reply, a crinkly faint sound that might have been people talking or radio static, and she knew if she let herself look back, she’d never do it, would choose any other way out of this, and so she put one foot down into the dark, tested her weight on wood that looked termite-chewed, punky and ready to break.

And someone screamed, close and sexless pain-scream and she almost toppled headfirst down the hole. In the quiet space after the scream, she clearly heard the top stair crack, split loud under her foot, and Daria stumbled backwards, away from the cellar. There was no mistaking the laughter filling up the emptiness beneath her feet, leaking from the open trapdoor, for anything else, no mistaking whether or not she was hearing it: many-throated patchwork of laughter that was lost and sad and utterly, hatefully insane. The way you’d laugh if there was nothing else left, if you heard the Emergency Broadcast System attention signal on television and there’d been no reassuring voice first to tell you it was just a test. The way you’d laugh at the very end.

“For fuck’s sake, Niki, where are you?” hardly more than a hesitant whisper, and she realized she was afraid maybe something besides Niki, besides Spyder, was listening. Cold sweat under her clothes, chilling sweat and adrenaline enough to tear her apart, and the scream again, but this time she knew it was Niki. This time she could tell that it was coming from a closed door directly across from Spyder’s bedroom, the plywood where the door to Spyder’s bedroom should have been. She used the cuff of her jacket to wipe away a knot of the strands, and it still stung her hand when she tried to turn the doorknob, no good anyway because it was locked.

She pounded the door and shouted, already hoarse from shouting. “Niki! Let me in! Spyder?” and Niki, then, echo-game mocking her, “Spyder,” and that was worse even than the laughter from the cellar, no spook-house creepiness to distract her, nothing but the rawest loss; scream like a missing finger, and Daria hit the door with her shoulder, hit hard and it shivered in its frame, but the lock held. She stepped back, all the way back to the other side of the hall, winced when one of the strands sliced into her forehead, and she let that sharp and sudden pain carry her forward, a wish that she was as big as Keith or Mort, as strong, and she threw herself at the door. The wood splintered, split layers, decades of paint strata, and the door slammed open.

Spyder, what had been Spyder, dangling from the bedroom ceiling, Niki naked and kneeling below her, and Daria almost turned and ran. Never mind the butchering gossamer or the laughing hole in the floor, Sunday school demons next to this. A sudden loud rapping at the window across the room, bam, bam, bam, and whatever new horror she might have expected, might have imagined, it was only Mort and Theo; urgent motions for her to open the window, and he looked over his shoulder at the night waiting past the porch.