By now, Spyder had probably found his coat, was probably having herself a good old belly laugh at his expense. He imagined her standing alone in the stockroom, stuffywarm, cozy in her maze of boxes and brooms and junk, and Byron hugged himself tightly, shivered in his thin cotton blouse.
“Bitch,” he whispered to the empty street, the alley, to Spyder snickering in his head, and wiped his runny nose on the back of his hand. A little of the maroon lipstick he always wore rubbed off onto his knuckles, smudgy dull smear the color of cranberry sauce. He glanced nervously over his shoulder into the dark and realized that he couldn’t see light from the other side, that the alleyway must dead-end instead of opening back out onto Morris.
A violent, sudden gust swept along First Avenue, air like ice-water breath, and Byron was forced even farther from the useless comfort of the streetlight pooled yellow-white on the sidewalk. The wind dragged the rustling pages of a discarded newspaper past the alley and they were gone.
Just a couple more seconds, just until I can stop shaking so bad and get my…
Somewhere behind him, something moved; a dry and weighty scritch, scritch, scritch over asphalt and gravel and trash, the glass tinkle of an empty bottle disturbed.
And something else, something almost inaudible beneath the rising wail and whistle of the wind, a sound like crackling autumn leaves or the guilty whisperings of children. A murmur and a sigh and the sharp, wet wheeze of breath drawn in quickly through clenched teeth.
Byron stepped out of the alley, three steps backwards and he was once again at the slicing mercy of the wind. But he did not run, knew at least enough to know that there was nothing to be gained by trying to run away, by wearing his fear like a gaudy gold cuff link on his sleeve.
And there was nothing in the alley, either, nothing but the empty, lightless space between two buildings, a few bottles left behind by winos, needles left by junkies. He made himself stand still and look, never mind the cold or the way his heart was pounding, pounding like it was ready to explode in a gory spray from his chest.
There ain’t nothing under the bed, Byron. Nothing in the closet. See?
But he’d always told his mother, his grandmother, his big sister, that real monsters were fast, fast and much too smart to get caught when you turned on the light.
I’m not afraid of you, and although Byron thought he’d spoken, had expected to hear the words out loud, his lips had gone numb, and there was no sound but the wind and the white noise backdrop of the city.
And from the alley, perfect silence.
Byron Langly turned and walked quickly away, not stopping once or even slowing down until it was to slide his key into the lock of his apartment door.
2.
Two-thirds up the side of Red Mountain, Spyder left the obstacle course of potholes and badly patched and repatched asphalt, pulled roughly into her narrow driveway. The turd-brown Celica coughed its oily exhaust against the cold, bald tires scrunching along the gravel furrow, haphazard excuse for a drive framed between tall, untended rows of holly and crape myrtle. Set far back from the last dim streetlight on Cullom Street, the house waited for her in its protective cocoon of dark, sheltered safe beneath the craggy limbs of water oaks and arthritic old pecans.
Dark windows like cheap sunglasses or the eyes of birds, and the long dark front porch.
By the time she reached the door she was shivering, stood fumbling with her cluttered key ring, keys to Weird Trappings and its half-dozen display cases, some that fit locks that no longer existed and a few she’d picked up at yard sales and antiques shops just because she’d liked how they looked or felt in her hands. The porch offered only the barest sanctuary from the wind; a wild, junky confusion of debris, things tossed out and pushed to the back, forgotten except when she happened to trip over something or, much more rarely, when she discovered a use for some discarded this or that and reclaimed it. Deflated bicycle wheels and unidentifiable machinery, cogs and sprockets, an ancient Maytag washing machine she’d dragged out of the house years ago, now stuffed to overflowing with rags and garbage. The old Norton she’d bought meaning to fix up, had even gotten as far as breaking down the transmission one day late last spring.
She finally found the key that felt right, that had the right number of peaks and valleys of the proper heights and depths cut in the right order, held it tight in her trembling fingers and turned the dead bolt, opened the door and stepped into the murky warmth of the house.
And the house accepted her, slipped itself around her like a steaming bath, and it hardly mattered that she’d closed the door; the house had its own meteorology, its own gentle system of fronts and pressure centers. Spyder stood very still as her eyes adjusted to the shadows and the darkness behind the shadows, letting the day slide off her like grime, breathing in the whispery dustiness of the little foyer. A few seconds more and she easily found the switch on the wall, the ornate iron switchplate cooler to the touch than the wallpaper skin, and flooded the room, the hall beyond, with soft white light.
Spyder blinked, squinted, dropped the brown paper grocery bag she’d carried from the car, bump to the floor, and one of the rubber monitor lizards tumbled out. It lay helpless on its back, legs in the air and “Made in China ” molded into its smooth cream-colored belly. She leaned down, set it on its feet, pointed the long snout and forever-extended tongue at the door. Then she made sure she’d reset the dead bolt and left the key ring dangling from the lock.
“Nothing personal,” she said to the monitor. “I’m sure you’re a very good watch lizard.”
Spyder checked the door again, rattled the sturdy knob, and followed the light down into the depths of the house.
Three days after Spyder’s tenth birthday, her mother had died of uterine cancer. The irony had not been lost on her, that the creeping thing that had slowly devoured her mother from inside had begun in her womb, had grown itself there in secret like a seditious fetus. Her malignant, vindictive sibling, brother cancer, sister tumor. Her Aunt Margaret had kept Spyder out of school and together they had watched over her mother through the long last month. Spyder had washed her mother’s piss and blood from the bedsheets, had measured out careful doses of the tea-shaded morphine elixir, had held her mother’s head while she’d puked into the plastic garbage can that her aunt had moved from the kitchen.
And Trisha Baxter had left her daughter the rambling Victorian house at the nub end of Cullom Street, the house her grandfather had built and the only thing she owned worth leaving behind. Spyder’s father had died years before, and her mother had kept them fed and clothed on what she’d made as a seamstress, that and the rare and grudging gifts from family members.
So, after the funeral, after the Bible verses and carnation stink, Spyder had been packed off to live in Pensacola, handed down to cousins that she’d never met. And when she was thirteen she’d run away the first time, had been picked up by Florida state troopers, hitchhiking a few miles from the Alabama state line. Had finally spent a little time in juvie, and no one had really bothered to argue when she turned sixteen and dropped out of school. No one had come after her when she’d bought the bus ticket back to Birmingham with her own money. She’d walked from the Greyhound depot downtown, dragging an old duffel bag behind her, military canvas crammed full of her ratty jeans and T-shirts and comic books like some gigantic olive-drab sausage.
But her Aunt Margaret had rented out the house, her house, and the fat woman who’d answered the door hadn’t even let Spyder come inside, had stood behind the latched screen, nervous, piggy eyes and children screaming over the television behind her. Had threatened to call the police when Spyder kicked the door and called the woman white trash. Spyder had dumped her clothes and junk out all over the front porch, had screamed obscenities while the terrified woman had frantically dialed the police and the children cheered from an open window. Finally, tired past exhausted, she’d sat down in the porch swing and waited quietly for the cops to come.