“Nothing’s gonna fuck with it in there,” she said, and then Robin asked, “We’re safe now?”
“Yeah,” she’d lied. “Yeah. Everything’s gonna be fine now. No more nightmares.” And after she’d blown out the candles, they’d followed her back out to the kitchen.
7.
“It’s still closed,” Byron said, hushed awe and relief, and she wanted to hit him. Standing close together in the hall, flickering candlelight on their faces and the wallpaper, hot wax dripping onto her fingers. Of course it was closed, the basement door, hidden underneath the moldy old Turkish carpet she and Spyder had found cheap at a junk shop months ago, had beaten with brooms but still there was as much crud as color to the thing. But she didn’t hit him, because she’d been afraid, too, afraid for no sane reason that the carpet would be rolled back and the trapdoor would be open. So she made him go first this time, held his hand and they stayed close to the wall until they were past the spot, until they were standing at Spyder’s bedroom door. It was closed, always closed whether she was in there or somewhere else.
“Did you hear something?”
But she was already turning the cold brass knob, the metal like dry ice in her hand, and it took everything she had, nothing left over for Byron or anything else. Even through the fear, the thickening hum behind her eyes, she felt like a thief, like a rapist; Spyder had always asked them here, had always trusted them…
So she made herself remember what she’d seen in the parking lot outside Dr. Jekyll’s, and she opened the door.
“There, ” he said. “Something on the roof.”
Robin stepped across the threshold, but Byron lingered behind for a moment, looking up at the high ceiling like an idiot. She set her candle down on a tall and listing stack of magazines on Spyder’s dresser, The Web and Blue Blood and Propaganda; wax-scabbed hand, maroon blobs like some bizarre skin disease. She picked them off and stood staring at the utility shelf that sagged against one wall, the shelf that held most of the old aquariums and jars, that held the only one that mattered, that biggest tank on the center shelf.
“Hurry,” Byron said, so she knew he wasn’t going to do it, should have known that all along. Robin crossed the room alone, laid her hand on the rock that held the plywood lid in place. Inside, she could see the dream catcher leaning forward against the glass, matted in funnel silk and here and there, a few of the spiders hanging like black and poison berries.
“Do you remember what Spyder said about the widows?” she asked him, setting the ash-colored stone down on the next tank over, smaller tank and nothing in there but harmless wolf spiders.
“What did she say?”
“That black widows aren’t aggressive. That they hardly ever bite people.”
“Oh. Yeah, yeah,” and he almost sounded like he did remember, but she could tell he was just playing the game, knew that Byron never paid attention when Spyder talked about her bugs.
“That’s what she said, that they’re very shy, and usually nobody ever gets bitten unless they fuck up, like, if they step on a widow or lay their hand on one so there’s no way for it to escape.”
She lifted the lid slowly, and at least there was enough light from their candles that she could see there was nothing clinging to the underside of the board.
“You practically have to make them bite you.”
“Be careful, Robin,” he said, “Please be careful,” but she was already slipping her hand between the aluminum rim of the tank and the wood, her fingers already inside.
“And even if you do get bitten,” she whispered, words so far away, like someone else’s and her heart too fast, head too light, “hardly anyone ever dies.”
Her hand in past the wrist now, and the dry crape myrtle pinched gently between thumb and index finger; one of the widows dangled only an inch from her thumbnail, hung from green strands of her own hair twisted together with ivory strands of Spyder’s. When she tugged cautiously at the dream catcher, the spider scuttled away to safety.
“See?” she said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
And then, the sound, like a sack of bones and Coca-Cola bottles rolling along the roof, like scrambling legs or marching pry bars, and she closed her hand tightly around the dream catcher and pulled, ripping apart the shrouding webs, scattering black bodies. The shelf creaked loudly, groaned and swayed toward her, precarious balance undone, and Byron screamed, something she couldn’t make out, nothing that could ever have possibly mattered anyway, before the wall of glass and metal and a thousand tiny lives crashed down upon her.
He did not leave her lying there, wrestled her limp and bleeding body from the glittering tangle that had been Spyder’s menagerie. Not because he was brave or because he loved her, but because he was more afraid of being alone, much more frightened of the sounds outside the painted windows than he could ever be of the pinprick of venom fangs. Had hauled her from the wreckage and into the hallway, towing her under the arms because he couldn’t pick her up. Sobbing and his face a wet smear of sweat and tears and snot and ruined eyeliner; angry red welts already rising on her face and hands, a jagged gash across her forehead that had peeled back enough scalp that he caught a sickening glimpse of skull through all the blood. And one of the widows, snarled in her hair, and he stomped it, ground it beneath the toe of his boot until it was unrecognizable pulp.
“Robin, don’t be dead, don’t be dead, please don’t be fucking dead,” repeated like a mantra, something holy or unholy with power against the night and the storm and whatever he could hear moving about on the roof and scritching beneath the floor.
He dragged her roughly across the rug, wouldn’t allow himself to consider the trapdoor or what wanted out, but her boots snagged on the carpet and pulled it back, like the flap of skin above her eyebrows.
“Come on, Robin, remember what she said? Remember what Spyder said? You just fucking told me, remember?”
Robin’s head lolled back on her neck like a broken toy, eyes half open to scleral whites, and he knew she was still alive, still breathing, because of the air bubbling out through the blood clogging her nose.
“Hardly anyone ever dies, Robin. Hardly anyone ever dies.”
Through the laughing, vindicated house and back out into the cold, the razor wind so much worse than when they’d gone in and the snow falling so hard and fast, pelting him with its touch like needles and feathers. It had swallowed the world, mercifully swallowed the house as soon as they were halfway across the front yard. But Byron didn’t stop until they reached the street, a thousand miles from the porch, until they were all the way off Spyder’s property and all the way across the street, a meandering, Robin-wide swath plowed through the snow.
And then he collapsed, slumped and gasping against the curb, no air left in his lungs and his muscles aching in ways he’d never hurt before. Robin sprawled at his feet, the blood from her face almost black on the snow, the places where the widows had bitten her turning dark, bruise livid. He lay there, hearing the snow and his heart and listening for anything else, anything at all, until the dizziness and nausea had passed and he’d stopped wheezing.
“Robin?” and her eyes fluttered, half-mast lids and no recognition there, so he slapped her cheek softly and spoke louder. “I have to get help. I have to find someone to call an ambulance.”
She coughed once, and a little glob of dark pink foam rolled past her lower lip, slid down her chin.