Caitlin Kiernan: Silk

© 1998

The section headings have been taken from the successive stages of the arachnid molting process. To quote Dr. Rainer F. Foelix (Biology of Spiders, 1982): “In a strict sense molting comprises two different processes: (1) apolysis, the separation of the old cuticle from the hypodermal cells, and (2) ecdysis, the shedding of the entire old skin (exuvium), which corresponds to what most people think of as molting. Apolysis precedes ecdysis by about one week.”

I would also like to acknowledge the works of Drs. Joseph Campbell and Carl G. Jung (and in particular Synchronicity, 1960) as indispensable resources during the writing of this book.

Silk was written between October 1993 and January 1996, and during the writing and since its original publication in 1998, very many people lent their assistance in very many ways. In particular, I would like to thank (in no particular order) Jada Walker and Katharine Stewart, David Ferguson, Poppy Z. Brite, Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman, the late Kathy Acker, Clive Barker, Joe Daley, Harlan Ellison, Brian Hodge, Charles de Lint, Douglas E. Winter, William Schafer, Liz Scheier, Laura Anne Gilman, Merrilee Heifetz, Laura Tucker, Richard Curtis, Kelly Hall, Paula Guran, Darren McKeeman, Ed Bryant, Victor Stabin, Christa Faust, Barry Hoffman, Tamara Babyock-Zannis, Matthew Grasse, Scott Crumpton, and Kathryn Pollnac. Also, I would like to note that the Birmingham, Alabama, appearing in this novel is a fictional, wishful fusion of Athens, Georgia, in the early 1990s and Birmingham in the late 1980s and, as such, has never existed outside the pages of Silk. Don’t go looking for it anywhere else.

Parlor Game, And Flies With Faces

Two nights before Halloween, as if it matters to anyone in the house, as if every day in this house isn’t Halloween. As if every moment they live isn’t the strain and stretch, the hand reaching back, groping through bottomless candy bags down to where front porches glow with orange-flicker grins and skeletons dance hopscotch sidewalks and ring doorbells. And they are all here, here around her where they belong.

When someone passes Spyder the little pipe and the plastic lighter, she pushes her bone-bleached dreadlocks from her face, matted as close to dreads as her stringy, white-girl hair allows, virgin black showing at the roots. She sucks, pulls the delicious, spicy smoke into her mouth, and the embers in the bowl glow warm and safe as jack-o’-lantern light.

She holds the smoke inside until it seems she might never have to breathe simple air again, and then releases it slow through her nostrils, passes the pipe to Robin. Robin sprawled on the floor at her feet, almost naked, black panties and black lace wrapped loose around her shoulders, hair dyed the color of absinthe.

“Ummm,” Robin murmurs, accepts the pipe, but her wide, acid-bright eyes never waver from the television screen, from the silent gore and splatter of a pirated second-generation Italian zombie flick, sound all the way down so that everything becomes an impromptu video for the Skinny Puppy or Marilyn Manson pounding from the stereo. But Robin knows where all the shrieks and moans belong and on cue she opens her mouth wide, perfect teeth and pink tongue, and Spyder shuts her eyes, feels the scream tear itself from Robin’s throat and wash over her, filling up the room until the jealous music pulls it apart.

Someone claps loudly, and Byron glares from the sofa where he’s still making out with the pretty black boy from Chicago, the boy who brought the sheets of blotter. Spyder smiles at him, runs her fingers through Robin’s improbable hair, dares him to say a word. Then Robin laughs and spills gray smoke from her lips, gives the pipe to someone else before she nestles snug into Spyder’s lap. And Byron turns away and hides his face deep in the boy’s neck.

Spyder squints through the gauze of marijuana and cigarette smoke hanging a few feet above the hardwood floor, through the strange half light, salt-and-pepper TV glare blending into the gentler glimmer from the candles scattered around the room. She lingers, admires the tattoos that cover both her arms from shoulder to knuckle, dark sleeves, tapestry of webs rendered in silvery blues and iridescent highlights against a field of deepest black and indigo.

On the screen, another latex disembowelment and the sudden seethe of maggots like boiling rice.

“Oh,” and Robin flinches like she hasn’t seen this tape fifteen times before, like there’s anything left to shock. Spyder closes her eyes again, tight, savoring the smoky aftertaste and the industrial throb and crash from the speakers, the soft snarl of Robin’s hair.

This moment, she thinks, and her head is clear, no acid or X and certainly none of Walter’s ugly little mushrooms. Only enough of the rich Mississippi pot to deal with the distractions, the blurry edges of her attention. This one moment, and behind her eyes, she imagines bottling the seconds, one whole minute, in antique green glass or amber vials, drives the cork in deep before it goes to past like vinegar or slips away.

Everything, she thinks, and everyone here around me.

“Ohhhh,” Robin says, almost whispers, “Oh fuck, oh fuck, that’s so beautiful.”

Later, the last precious hour before dawn, and the sable-skinned boy from Chicago has gone, and the hangers-on have gone, the girl from Atlanta with her tarot deck and the nameless child treading on her shadow, both so skinny it hurt to see. The two drag queens who dropped by looking for Walter, looking to score a quarter bag after their last show of the evening.

Just Spyder and Robin all but asleep in her lap, still tripping deep and hard on her three hits, three tiny white tabs stamped with prancing blue unicorns and dissolved like sugar on her tongue. Byron sits alone on the sofa now, staring at the television, Murnau’s original Nosferatu in scratchy blacks and whites like celluloid watercolors, and his eyes are somehow vacant and expectant at the same time.

And Walter, squatted like a ragged gargoyle before the stereo, digging noisily through her CDs and cassettes, singing or mumbling to himself. He settles on something, slips it into the deck and the Cure’s “Plainsong” pours like honey and raindrops from the speakers.

The girl rises from her bed like a living ghost and sleepwalks along the edge of a balcony; her bare feet, jerky tiptoe stride, barely seem to touch the stone balustrade. Byron picks up the remote, presses Pause, and she freezes in midstep. He holds her that way until the song’s overture is done and Robert Smith releases them both.

“Spyder?” and Robin’s voice slips from her like an echo of itself, something shouted far away and faded thin and hollow by the time it finally crosses her lips.

“I’m here,” Spyder answers.