"I asked him. He said he wanted to-"
"I mean it, Theda. Right this f.u.c.king minute."
"Okay, I"m going to count to three," Walter says. "I"m going to count real slow, and whatever happens after that is entirely up to you."
"Who the h.e.l.l are you people?" the redneck whimpers and tries to back away, knocking over the display of beef jerky and a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a grinning stock-car racer brandishing a bottle of Mountain Dew.
"Maybe we"re witches," Theda snickers. "Maybe we"re monsters. Maybe we"re something worse than monsters.
Maybe there isn"t even a word for what we are."
"Little girl, there are a whole lot of words for what you are," Archer says.
"Archer, shut the h.e.l.l up and get her out of here."
"Mister, if I put down this gun you"re going to shoot me," the clerk says again. "You"re all crazy, and if I put it down you"ll kill me." His hands have started to tremble, and the barrel of the shotgun bobs and jerks.
204.
"One," Walter says calmly, firmly, trying to figure out how everything could possibly have gone to h.e.l.l so fast.
How they could have gotten this close to Birmingham and not a detour or delay, and now he"s about to have to put a bullet in this dumb son of a b.i.t.c.h"s skull because Theda can"t be trusted to p.i.s.s without turning the morning into a horror show. He takes a deep breath and another step towards the counter. "Two," he says.
"Jesus, Frank, just put down the f.u.c.king shotgun before somebody gets killed," a man shouts from the back of the store. The redneck in the Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt is busy stomping at one of the black widows that"s managed to free itself of Theda"s stringy vomit and is crawling across the floor towards him.
"Hey, don"t do that!" she yells. "You"ll kill it."
"d.a.m.n straight, I"ll f.u.c.king kill it," the redneck replies and squashes the black widow beneath the sole of his work boot.
"Three, " Walter whispers, one word meant for no one but the clerk, one last word of warning and the look in his eyes to say that he isn"t kidding.
"All right," the clerk says and sets the c.o.c.ked Winches-ter down on the countertop, then holds both his hands up like a bank teller in an old Western movie. "There. I f.u.c.king put the gun down. Now get out of here, and take that G.o.dd.a.m.n freak b.i.t.c.h with you."
"You"re a smart man, Frank," Walter whispers, so relieved that he wants to vomit, too, wants to get down on his knees next to Theda and barf up the hard, twisting knot that"s settled into his belly. But Archer is already hauling the girl to her feet, and he reaches for his wallet instead, not lowering the Beretta.
The redneck stomps another black widow, and Theda moans and tries to pull free of Archer"s grip. "I hope all your children are born without eyes," Theda snarls, spittle flying from her lips. "I hope your wife"s t.i.tties rot off. I hope you never have another f.u.c.king night"s sleep without dreaming about me."
205.
"Don"t be such a d.a.m.ned drama queen," Archer mutters, dragging her away towards the plate-gla.s.s doors. "If you hadn"t put them there, he wouldn"t be killing them, now would he?"
Walter fumbles his wallet open and pulls out a couple of folded bills. "Sorry about the mess. Take this and buy some bug spray and a mop. And you and your buddies here are gonna keep your mouths shut or all those things she just said," and he nods towards Theda, "that s.h.i.t ain"t nothing compared to what"ll happen to you if I have to come back."
He drops the money, a hundred and a fifty, on the counter, but the clerk just stares at it.
"All you guys gotta do is forget you ever saw us," Walter says, easing his finger off the pistol"s trigger and reaching for the shotgun. "I hope you don"t mind if I take this-"
"I don"t give two s.h.i.ts what you do," the clerk replies.
"Just take it, and get out of here."
Walter thinks about asking for the tape from the security camera mounted on the wall behind the counter, then decides not to press his luck. Archer"s probably already seen to that, anyway, and there won"t be anything for the cops but static and wavy lines.
"f.u.c.k this," the redneck says. "They"re f.u.c.kin" everywhere, " and he stomps another spider.
And Walter turns around, shoving the doors open with his right shoulder, and he follows Archer Day and Theda back out into the bright Alabama morning.
"They live in the deep places," Spyder says, "but when they die, their bones fill with gas, and the skeletons float to the surface. The fishermen bind the bones together and anchor them to the ocean floor."
"My G.o.d," Niki whispers, gazing up at the interlocking, jackstraw symmetry of the village ramparts rising from the fog-bound sea. "They must be bigger than whales. They must be bigger than dinosaurs." And she"s surprised by her own wonder, that she can still be amazed at anything after 206 the Dog"s Bridge, after the Palisades, after following the white bird through that other, ruined San Francisco.
"Yes," Spyder says. "They must."
Low waves surge and break against the high ramparts, against the pontoon bases of floating wharves and the hulls of the small wooden boats moored there. Hundreds or thousands of lanterns shine from hundreds or thousands of hooks, poles, and posts, flickering sentries against the night. There"s a red buoy bobbing around in the water on Niki"s left, not far from the edge of the walkway.
"There are many villages like this one-hundreds probably-scattered across the Outer Main," Spyder says. "But I"ve only seen a few of them."
"Where is everyone? It looks deserted."
"They"re always wary of travelers approaching from the Palisades. Don"t worry, Niki. It"s not deserted."
"I wasn"t worried," Niki says.
"We shouldn"t linger here. Shake a leg," and Spyder starts walking again.
There can"t be much more than a couple hundred yards or so remaining between them and the tall rope and bamboo gates where the catwalk finally ends and the village begins, but Niki"s so tired she thinks it may as well be a mile, and her bandaged hand aches so badly it"s starting to make her dizzy and sick to her stomach. She glances back up at the walls, steep, uneven barricades fashioned from the skeletons of leviathans, wire and wood and sea-monster bone rising into the mist, the uppermost reaches almost entirely obscured by the fog. Is everything in this place built out of f.u.c.king bones? she thinks, and then realizes that Spyder"s getting ahead of her and she runs to catch up, her footsteps echoing hollowly from the shadowed s.p.a.ces beneath the punky gray boards.
Strings are drawn tight, or hang loose.
And clocks tick the spent moments away-third wheels, center wheels, bra.s.s pendulum shafts-as atoms trapped in 207.
the blazing hearts of stars decay, and suns spit prominences to arch forty thousand miles above photospheric h.e.l.ls.
In her trapdoor, black-hole nursery, nestled at the rotten heart of every universe, every bubble frozen in the forever-expanding matrix of chaotic eternal inflation, the Weaver spins in her uneasy sleep, casting new lines of s.p.a.ce and time across the void. She dies and is reborn from her own restless thoughts. A trillion eggs hatch, and her daughters cloud the heavens.
Or drift down from night skies to swarm across rooftops and city parks.
Her heart beats, and this line is severed, or that line is secured.
A life is saved. A life is lost. Scales balance themselves or fall forever to one side or the other.
Twenty miles north of Birmingham, Alabama, a man who drives a rusty purple Lincoln Continental and knows how one world might end, sticks to the back roads and county highways, just in case. The ginger-haired woman sitting next to him chews a stick of spearmint gum and says her prayers to forgotten, jealous G.o.ds.
And at 10:37 A.M., a graduate student from Berkeley, searching for clams and mussel sh.e.l.ls along a narrow stretch of beach below Treasure Island Road, pauses to ad-mire the view of the Bay Bridge silhouetted against the cloudless morning sky. He spots something dark stranded among the rocks at the water"s edge and thinks it"s probably a dead sea lion, until he gets closer and can see the Asian girl"s battered face, her skin gone blue and gray as slate, her hair like matted strands of kelp half buried in the sand. Her eyes are open wide, though they"re as perfectly empty as the eyes of any dead thing. At first, he can only stand and stare at her, horror and awe become one and the same, beauty and revulsion, peace and death and the sound of hungry gulls wheeling overhead. After five or ten minutes, the noise of a pa.s.sing helicopter brings him back to himself and he drags her nude and broken body to higher ground so maybe the tide won"t carry it out into the bay 208 again, then he scrambles up the crumbling cliffs to call the police.
A cell phone rings. And then another. And another.
News travels fast, and bad news travels faster still.
There is another sh.o.r.e, you know, upon the other side.
A syringe, a stethoscope, and electrocardiograph displays in a white room that smells of loss and antiseptic.
These things happen.
And then . . .
C H A P T E R S E V E N.
Snakes and Ladders I"m going to fall forever, Daria thinks. I"m never going to hit the water, but then she does, and it"s like hitting a brick wall. Not what she expected, but then few things ever are, and at least the pain only lasts an instant, less than an instant, as the cold waters of the bay close mercifully around her shattered bones and bruised flesh, accepting her, promising that there"s nothing left to fear. Nothing ahead that"s half so terrible as all the trials laid out behind her; she wants to believe that more than she"s ever wanted to believe anything.
And she"s certain this is real, because no one ever dies in dreams. If it were only a dream, she thinks, she"d have awakened in that final, irredeemable second before the long fall ended. That"s what she"s always heard, and she"s never died in a dream. No one dies in dreams.
In another moment, you will not even feel the cold, the ocean whispers, as the southbound currents wrap kelp-slick tendrils about her broken legs and pull her down and down and down. Drawing her towards the black and silty bottom, away from the comfortless oyster light of the moon shining so bright that she can still see it through the shimmering, retreating surface of the bay.
The light at the end of the tunnel, near-death or afterlife cliche, but she has no use for light anymore, and she"s 210 grateful that soon the moon and the sun and all light will be lost to her forever.
Was it like this for you? she asks, and the shadows swarming thick through the water around her sigh and murmur a thousand conflicting answers. So she takes her pick, choosing at random because she can"t imagine that choices still matter. No, Niki whispers. It"s different for everyone.
Daria stares up at the rippling moon growing small, hardly a decent saucer now when a moment ago it was a dinner plate, and she tries hard to remember if she"s sinking or rising, if she"s getting farther from the moon or it"s getting farther away from her. That doesn"t matter, either, the bay rea.s.sures her. Don"t even think about it, and so she doesn"t. She can see the inky cloud of blood leading back the way she"s come, a blood road back to the moon, but Daria knows the bay will take care of that, as well, and soon there will be no evidence whatsoever of her pa.s.sage.
A loose school of surfperch sweep hurriedly past, their mirror scales flashing the moonlight because they have no light of their own, and Daria knows exactly how that feels.
Never any light but what she stole, never her own soul for a lantern, but only for cloudy days and shuttered rooms, closets and nights without stars.
That girl in Florida, the moon calls down to her with its silken, accusing voice. Old Becky What"s-her-name. You think that"s the way she felt? You think that"s what she heard when she listened to your songs? And then it begins to whistle the melody of "Seldom Seen."
You leave me alone, Daria calls back at the moon. I"m going down to Niki. It"s not my problem anymore.
The moon stops whistling, and Ohhh, it purrs, pretending to sound surprised. Was it ever? Weren"t you the lady that couldn"t be bothered?
Don"t start listening to that old wh.o.r.e, the bay whispers.
She steals her light, too, just the same as you and those fish.
And the water presses in on her, something that would hurt if she could still feel pain, an unfelt agony of pressure 211.
stacking up above, pounds and anamnesis per square inch, and maybe it will finally crush her so flat that the moon won"t be able to see her, and she won"t have to listen to it, won"t have to think about all the questions she"s never known the answers to. There"s a final rush of air from her deflating lungs, and she watches indifferently as the bubbles rise (or fall) like the bells of escaping jellyfish.
You can"t follow me, Niki says, her voice drifting up from some place so deep and black that Daria has never even dared imagine it, some endless, muddy plain where there"s only night that runs on forever in all directions. A silent wilderness of fins and spines and the stinging tentacles of blind things, the rotting steel and wooden husks of drowned ships, and countless suicide ghosts mired in the ooze and labyrinths of their own condemning thoughts.
You can"t stop me, Daria tells her.
It"s all a dream, Daria. It"s only a bad dream.
And now there"s something floating towards her, a paler sc.r.a.p of night dividing itself from the greater darkness, and at first she thinks it"s only a curious seal or maybe, if she"s very lucky, a shark come along to finish what she"s started.
But then she can make out Niki"s face, the empty sockets that were her eyes before the hungry jaws of fish, her hair like seaweed strands swaying gently about her gray and swollen cheeks.
Not what you think, Niki mumbles, her clay-blue lips and a flat gleam of beach-gla.s.s teeth; where her tongue should be there are only the nervous coils of a tiny octopus nestled in her mouth. You can"t find me here. I didn"t mean for you to follow. Then the tattered girl holds out her right hand, and the ball bearing glimmers faintly in her ruined palm.
I"ll never find it, Daria thinks. Not after ten years. I"ll never find it again.
Not if you don"t try, the octopus in Niki"s mouth replies, and then her body comes apart like sugar in a cup of tea, dissolving back into the night and the bay, and Daria is alone again. She tries to remember a prayer she knew ages 212 and ages ago, when she was a child and still thought someone might be listening, but suddenly her memories seem as insubstantial as the vision of Niki, and the fleeting, slippery words remain always just beyond her reach.
And the moon is growing larger again.
And has turned the color of a drowned girl"s skin.
Daria opens her eyes and blinks at the warm late afternoon sunlight pouring in through the hospital room"s window, a pale yellow-orange wash across the rumpled white sheets of her bed. The window frames a western sky that is broad and turning brilliant sunset shades of violet and apricot. And the dream is right there behind her, still close enough that she thinks it might continue if she"d only shut her eyes again and let it. Right there, so at least she"s spared any sudden, startling disappointments when she remembers exactly where she is, and what"s happened to Niki, and why Alex is sitting here watching her and trying too hard not to look worried.
"Hey you," he says, and there"s the faintest suggestion of a smile to warp the corners of his mouth, but the smile gives up and becomes something else.
"f.u.c.k," Daria whispers, and turns away from the window and Alex Singer and the setting sun.
"Would you like some water?"
"Unless you"ve got vodka," she replies, and licks at her chapped lips, her throat so dry it hurts, and she lies still and listens to the sound of him pouring water from a plastic pitcher into a paper cup.
"I talked to Marvin again," he says. "He rang, just before you woke up," and Alex holds the cup to her lips and supports her head. She only drinks a little, because it"s warm and tastes like chlorine, then pushes his hand away, and he sets the cup down next to the blue pitcher on the table beside the bed. He presses one hand against her forehead like someone checking to see if she has a fever.
"I don"t want to start crying again," she says.
"I know, love. I know you don"t."
213.
"I told her I was coming, didn"t I? I f.u.c.king told her I was on my way," and Daria stares at the IV tube rising from the soft inside of her left elbow, a couple of strips of tape to hide the needle, to hold it in place, and she lets her eyes follow the tube up to the bag of clear fluid suspended from a metal hook beside the bed. "When are they going to stop pumping me full of that s.h.i.t?" she asks Alex, and nods at the IV bag.
"I don"t know. You were awfully dehydrated."
"Alex, you were sitting right there. You heard me tell her I was coming home. I know you heard me."
"Yeah," he says, "I did. I heard everything you said," and then he moves his hand from Daria"s forehead to her right cheek. His skin feels cool and dry and familiar, his rough fingers to remind her of so many things at once, things that didn"t die with Niki, and she turns away from the IV bag and looks up into his gray eyes, instead. Those eyes the first part of Alex Singer that she fell in love with, even before his music, eyes like smoke and steel, and she knows that she"s going to start crying again, and there"s nothing she can do to stop it.
"You can"t start blaming yourself for this."
"Yes, I can," she says, and the tears cloud her vision and leak from the corners of her eyes. "I left her there. She begged me not to go and I went anyway."
"You did what you had to do. Niki was very sick, and you did everything you could to keep her safe. You p.i.s.sed away the last ten years of your life trying to keep Niki safe, and it"s almost killed you."
"No, that"s not true. I didn"t do everything. I was always too afraid to listen-"
"Stop it," Alex says, pulling his hand away, and he takes a quick step back from the edge of the bed. The anger in his voice like straight razors beneath worn velvet, and his gray irises spark with something that Daria doesn"t want to see, not now or ever, so she closes her eyes. She tries to wish herself into the dream again, down to the freezing, silent wastes where no one will ever find her, that night 214 without mornings or horizons and only the blind, indifferent fish and Niki"s fraying ghost for company. But it"s deserted her, left her stranded here in this white antiseptic place choked with sunlight and people determined to keep her alive.
"You almost died on that G.o.dd.a.m.n plane," Alex says.
"You heard what the doctor said. Your f.u.c.king heart stopped beating, and you were real f.u.c.king lucky that they didn"t have to take you straight from the b.l.o.o.d.y airport to the morgue."