Free Silk by Caitlin R. Kiernan Page A

lips.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, purled in his silkiest honey-voice, “I shouldn’t have said that, Spyder.”
    “Please, Byron. Just go home now,” and it shouldn’t have been so easy for him to get to her like that; Spyder braced her hands flat against the floor, the smooth, cold floor, and tried to remember if maybe she had forgotten her meds that morning.
    “But you’re not mad at me?”
    “No,” she said. “Just please go.”
    “Sure, Spyder. If that’s what you want. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
    She didn’t answer, stared down into her puddle of creepy crawlies until she heard his footsteps, a dramatic sigh, and then his footsteps and the cowbell over the door jangled loudly after him. And she was alone in her shop, except for the shadows and the stink of Byron’s cigarettes and the dead man singing through the stereo.

    Four blocks from Weird Trappings, Byron stopped in the shelter of an alley. He was not quite halfway home to the cramped apartment he shared with a drag queen named Billy (better known to her fans as the great Talulah Thunderpussy) and Billy’s butt-ugly Pekinese. The wind had picked up since he’d left the shop, had turned blustery and raw, and he’d forgotten his coat, the fine velveteen frock coat he’d rescued from a Southside estate sale, hanging useless on an old nail in Spyder’s stockroom.
    He cursed himself and took another step into the alley, deeper into the gloom nestled between the tall, old buildings, the walls on either side tattooed with spray paint tags and gang graffiti. He knew better, knew that he was safer if he kept to the main streets, the well lit sidewalks. And this particular alley was narrower than most, not even wide enough for a car. But he was freezing.
    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.