Silk by Kiernan Caitlin R

Author:Kiernan, Caitlin R. [Kiernan, Caitlin R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Horror, Thriller, Fantasy, Novel
Publisher: Unofficial e-book edition
Published: 1998-01-01T02:00:00+00:00

5.

At the end of the road, the house waited for them, crouched way down in its blanket of snow and bare tree limbs like an alley cat. They’d left the Celica blocks away, abandoned where the bald tires had finally lost traction for the last time, and they’d slid gracefully, dream smooth loss of control and direction, into a line of sugar-coated garbage cans. Their feet ached from the melted snow that had seeped into their shoes, lungs ached almost as much from the cold air and the extra effort required not to fall on their asses every time they took a step up the icy, steep slope.

Spyder never bothered with the porch light, had always told Robin that it only attracted burglars, and past the pool of this last streetlamp there was only the glow that had gathered underneath the storm, creamy champagne light filtered so soft and kind it played with the eyes. Brighter back there away from the street than it should have been, but no comfort in the illumination.

The snow falling around them, on them, made a crisp sound, like rice paper crumpled slowly in dry hands or small and padded paws on dead leaves.

“We can’t back out,” she said, “not now,” before Byron had a chance to say that maybe Walter had been right after all, maybe they shouldn’t be here, and the cushioned world muffled her voice, magnified it at the same time, made it as wrong as the light.

“We can’t back out now.”

Lightning then, a dull and greenish flash trapped in the low clouds, unearthly, and thunder wrapped tight in velvet before the crackling boom of a transformer blowing somewhere, sympathetic chaos, echoed across the mountain. The streetlamp flickered, dimmed, and died.

Byron said nothing, stepped silently past the withered scraggle of oleander and honeysuckle that framed the crooked walk to Spyder’s front door, cracked and weed-crowded flagstones lost now beneath the equalizing snow. And she followed as silent, her boots where his had gone before, pockmarking the perfect white mantle.

Spyder’s house had never seemed anything but welcoming, the one sure sanctuary from her parents and the whole shitty world; even that first time she’d come back after the peyote and the basement horrors, even then, through all her dread, it had seemed to welcome her back, to want her inside where Spyder and the old walls could shield her safe. Tonight, it wasn’t friendly, sat gathering drifts on the tarshingle pitch of its roof, its dark windows staring straight through them with vicious indifference.

Robin counted their steps to the porch, twenty, twenty-five, counted to keep herself from thinking about what they were about to do, what they’d already done; what might be pursuing them across the yard or waiting for them inside the house, watching, hungry and pleased with itself, from any or all of the stark blind windows. Thirty-five, forty-three, and they were standing amid the garbage and porch junk. Looking back the way they’d come, the arrow-straight scar of footprints disfiguring the snow, incriminating for however long it took the storm to fill them in again.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.