And he took a step downhill, toward the house, and heard the nervous whispers and drought rustle of their bodies all around him in the dark.
“Does Spyder keep you guys on that fucking short a leash?” and he laughed louder, laughed like a lunatic, and then he was crying again before he could stop himself, cackling and crying and he took another step; their legs punched through the ground eight times, sixteen times, twenty-four times. Thirty-two, and Byron stooped, found a rock and hurled it into the night. He never heard it hit the ground.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Urgent words spit at the skitterers, and “You’re all bark and no goddamn bite. You made Robin hurt herself, got us so fucking scared she pulled that shelf over on top of herself, and the goddamn widows and the snow did the rest for you.”
And then he was running, headlong, pell-mell rush, jumping deadfall tumbles and ripping his face and hands in blackberry thicket briars. Feet almost tangling, ankles almost twisting, balance nothing but accident, and the roof of Spyder’s house rising up to meet him. A hundred yards left, now, a hundred yards at most, and he almost whacked his forehead on a low sycamore limb as big around as his leg. Ducked at the last minute, the last minute before he hit something else, something that was and wasn’t there, and it wrapped around him, tripped him but held him up, let him stumble three or four steps more before it began to slice into his flesh, slice through cloth and skin like garroting wire, and slicing, drew him backwards.
He screamed and kicked, thrashing his legs, teasing at nothing he could see, could only feel because it was cutting him apart, sinking into him. Gauzy silver hints like the moonlight, or only the reflection of the moon off something wet and razor sharp that had no color of its own.
“Spyder! Spyder, oh god get it off me, Spyder please,” and the scrunch and scritch of them all coming for him through the trees, through the leaves, slipping between the trees and out of the corners of his eyes so that finally he could see them. Calling his dare, calling his bluff, and drinking him in with eyes like Spyder’s that weren’t Spyder’s eyes. As many eyes as the night, and a second before the silk cut through his throat, sprayed feverwarm blood and left him mute and gasping, Byron felt his feet leave the ground, and he dangled like an angel or a fly without wings.
2.
Putting the old mill behind him and its casual three-tiered judgments, Keith walked west, walked toward downtown Atlanta and away from far-off morning. Away from Daria. Headful of ashes and simmering hate for no one but himself, plenty of room left for regret, and he didn’t know the name of this street, didn’t know where that alley led, and that was good, that was how it felt inside, exactly. Anonymous brick and cinder block like his soul and the expression on Daria’s face when he’d smashed his guitar. Like she hadn’t already done the honor, like he’d hurt her by making her decision final, irrevocable, her one wish on the monkey’s paw and he’d sealed it tight.
Spaces between streetlamp pools and the eyes that watched him suspiciously from black faces, the sound of his boots on concrete cold and hard as the cast of her mouth.
He shivered, zipped his jacket closed and kept moving; turning here, crossing empty chain-linked lots of cracked and potholed asphalt, broken glass, junky little white mousie in the maze-big hollow man striding under the moon and sodium-arc suns. Hey man, give me a buck, man, and he stopped to look at the ragpile that had spoken from a doorway, nailshut doorway and glass painted red. Something human in there, or just something alive, empty Thunderbird bottle in one claw like a lifeline, and he found two dollars in his pocket, held the bills out and the ragpile snatched them away and mumbled bitter and thankless to itself.
You go down, and down, thinking there’s not a bottom, and Keith looked past the ghetto ruin at the shining new towers, clean light up there, windwhistling Heaven up there and ragpile wino Hell down here, down and down, and this time she wasn’t gonna be there to haul him back to himself, back to Purgatory. One more alley, and it was a dead end, Dumpsters and the crap that had tumbled out of them, shitclogged cul-de-sac in the city’s guts. Keith followed the alley all the way back, kicked a stiff, daysdead pigeon out of his way and sat down in the trash.
Absolutely untogether, Mr. Barry, and just an hour before he’d been somewhere else, someone else, a mile away and the burn and eager need of all those bodies stretched out before him like a banquet, and Daria there beside him. Now, just the knowledge that things might have gone differently.
If we hadn’t followed Spyder home, and he knew that was true, that it wasn’t the H this time. Rushing to the door and that damn old lady, whatever he’d touched, whatever had touched him. Something bad left lying around, and his big feet had tangled in it. Too cold to shiver anymore, Keith closed his eyes and tried to think about nothing but the night before, sleeping over at Daria’s place and her in his arms, radiator warmth and their hard bodies straining against the things held between them, sex and the musky safe smell of her. And afterwards, sleepless, he’d read from a book about Vietnam and thought about Niki Ky while Daria slept, had spent more time listening to the smooth chest rise and fall of her breathing than following the pages.
The lines on her face, the wrinkled place between her eyebrows betraying her nightmares, and he’d put an arm around her, as if he could drive them off, or at least keep her company down there.
He had enough junk left for one more fix, and two Dilaudid he’d scored a week ago and been holding back. Without opening his eyes, he fished a prescription bottle from one pocket and dry-swallowed the Dilaudids, tossed the empty plastic bottle away. And smelled something, damp dried stench, jasmine and roadkill, dusty basement air and the cold-rot smell of something left too long in a refrigerator. Wind swept down the alley, wind that went straight through his clothes, and he was shivering again; wind and the puke smell of all that fucking garbage, and he tucked his face down inside his jacket, a little warm air in there and just his own rank, familiar sweatstink.
Something bad that cut if you weren’t careful where you stepped, as mindless, pointless and mean as barbed wire wrapped around his ankles and trailing after him. And what he hadn’t said to Daria, bright dream of the hole torn in a spider’s web, and whatever had escaped dying anyway, writhing in grass, silk-tangled wings and never mind that the fucking spider hadn’t even wanted it in the first place.
“Please,” she said, voice so close, voice that seemed to spring and then roll back on itself, reverb, and he opened his eyes, nothing but the empty alley leading back to the empty street. A prickling rash of chill bumps on the back of his neck, kid fear, and he yelled at the nothing, fuck off, go the fuck away, I don’t have any more goddamn money. But he watched the shadows of the Dumpsters, the space between the high brick walls. And she said, “Please, wake me up…”
“Fuck off, I said,” and a panel truck rumbled noisily past the other end of the alley and was gone.
Keith unzipped his jacket, bleeding all his warmth away into the night, felt for the comforting bulge of his kit, tucked safely into an inside pocket, his rosary, trinity of spoon and powder and syringe.
“It’s a dream,” the girl said, same voice, same papery wasp-nest voice, and there was a knife in that pocket, too, just a little pocketknife, but he took it out and held it clasped in the sweating palm of his hand.
Something scuttled from one shadow to another, too dark for him to see, just the impression of mass and movement, and he tried to open the knife, but his fingers were sweaty, too, and it was hard to get a grip on the blade.
“It’s just a dream,” and the knife popped open, dull and tiny blade he used for cutting his nails, for splicing cable. The scuttling sound again, closer, “…wake me up.”