WebWorld (4.4)

“‘Any chance I could meet this Karen?’” Tristan hissed at me as we were led through a series of narrow, wood-panelled hallways.

“What?”

“Meet her? What the fuck?”

I pulled up my sleeve by way of explanation. I tried to make my eyes say, I want to know what this is.

I think he was trying to make his eyes reply: you fucking moron. But he said, his voice still slithering out over his lips: “Just remember what I said,” and in a slightly louder tone “we still got plenty to do today, guys.”

Karen was a lot worse off than I was. I had to stifle a small gasp when I saw her sitting there on the bed, her face half-covered in a scaly mask. She looked almost part-crocodile, or perhaps part-turtle. One of her eyes had gone red-opaque, and the other seemed lightly cloudy, the iris just tinted with a shade of winter blue. She had bare arms beneath the short sleeves of a collared red dress, and bare legs, all these surfaces showing lines and grooves of infection.

She tilted her head a little as I walked in.

Mari was with us. She touched my arm: “The infection’s touched her mind as well.”

“She’s crazy?” I blurted. And my face burned. She was sitting right there in front of me. And no-one had mentioned anything being wrong with her ears.

Mari said, “She’s… altered. She sees and hears things… differently.”

Yup. Crazy.

“But she’s still lucid. She’s still with us.”

Just being spoken of in the third person whilst we’re standing right in front of her.

I think that was what really jabbed at me. We might as well have been talking about a dog or a baby. I walked into the room, ignoring a somewhat pointed look from Tristan, and reached out a hand to her. “I’m Nate.”

She tilted her head the other way, and did seem to be looking at me. She said eventually, “I’m Karen.” She reached out her hand but didn’t seem to want to shake. It was almost as if she was waiting for me to take her hand up to my lips and politely kiss her knuckles as if we’d stepped into an historical movie or the like.

“We’re just passing through…” I started.

“You’re like me.”

I fingered some of the skin on my left arm. “Yeah. I got this skin thing.”

She smiled. There was something deprecating and amused in there.

“What?”

“It’s not only a skin thing.”

I knew some of the answer, but I asked her: “What do you mean?”

“You dream yet?”

“Sometimes.”

“And the dreams, they bleed into reality, don’t they?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you see when you see me?”

“I-”

“Don’t be scared. Tell the truth.”

“You’re skin’s all white and grey-green and scaly. A lot of it is. And your eyes… wait, are you blind?”

“No.”

“Good. That’s good. But they do look…” the word I was stumbling for couldn’t be found anywhere, and I ended up vomiting out “…scary.” And I felt myself sinking into the floorboards.  “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. But do you want to know what I see when I see you?”

Hell, no.  “What?”

“I see them. I see another people. Their faces are soft and white, and their eyes are yellow, you look like you’re covered in cobwebs, or thinly painted in watercolour. You’re beautiful, you know. All these threads made of your own skin, and they flow off you like a mane of beautiful hair, not just your head, but your arms and shoulders.”

“Not spiders?”

“Not spiders.”

“What do spiders see?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know what they are? You know that they’re just nests of giant spiders, and there’s nothing beautiful about them, right?”

She shook her head.

“You do know that?”

“You don’t see them in me yet, though do you?”

I shook my head.

“I’d like to kiss you,” she said.

“No.” I gritted my teeth a little not to back away.  “That is. I have a girlfriend. I can’t kiss anybody else. This,” I touched the thick scales along her upper arm, “is it contagious?” I was asking Mari as much as her.

Mari said, “we think it can be. A few of the others… Like Elaine.”

“We’re all going to end up…” I swallowed the rest of the sentence.

Mari said, “she’s not mad. She just sees and hears…”

“Things that aren’t there.”

“That are different.” She set her lips into a small, stubborn trail.

“And that’s going to happen to me too?”

Mari shrugged.

Karen said, “it’s snowing out there.”

“Is she one of them?”

“Of what?”

“Those gum creatures. The spiders?”

Mari looked puzzled for a moment.

“They’re giant spiders!” I had to force down the roar that was developing in my chest.

Karen reached her fingers into mine. She gave my hand a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay, Nate. It’s not as bad as you think. It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t even itch any more. I was as scared as you are, but I’m okay now.”

But you sit in this room, staring at God-knows-what but really only the wallpaper. You’re not out there with the rest of them, and I bet they keep you locked up here constantly, and never let out without an escort. But hey, you’re okay. At least it doesn’t itch!

Tristan was taking my arm to manoeuvre me out of there. “That’s going to be me,” I said.

“Speculation.”

“Uh-huh.”

“She’s one person. Just one person. Variables.”

“… variables.” Greg echoed.

And I tried to compose myself in the hallway. I saw the way Mari was looking at me, all concerned, a little puzzled. The dark-haired girl, who I surmised now might be Elaine, had been waiting in the hallway and was now offering me a polite smile, as if that meeting I’d just had shouldn’t be worrying me.

“How long did it take her to get that way?” I asked Mari.

“She had no signs four months ago. Except… well… she wasn’t quite normal from the start. No, ‘normal’ is the wrong word to use, but I think she’d had some mental health problems, she was always… vulnerable. She needed some people, you know, support people, a new family. She was all alone. Her skin started going like that – at the wrists first, then up her arms and along her neck.”

I felt my stomach tighten into a little icy lead ball.

“She started… having nightmares… then having them awake. And then she calmed down…”

“But…?”

“She talks to people who aren’t there.”

“And people who are there?”

“Us too. We take care of her. We always will.”

I made myself ask: “Is she dying?”

“We don’t know. We don’t think so.”

Is she pregnant? I had a chilling feeling inside me that she wasn’t. And that she wasn’t because somebody was waiting for the right hapless donor. I had the same chill feeling that the process would be sudden and brutal, with six or seven pairs of hand holding her down.

We should rescue her.

But I didn’t even know for sure from what, never mind how, or what to do with her after.

“Come on,” Tristan said, moving us along into the main hall.

There was something different in the mood. I was sure now that there were more people watching me. Have they found their sperm donor? And what were they going to do if the sperm donor point-blank refused?

Mari was linking her arm into mine: “She liked you.”

“Did she?”

“Yeah. She isn’t usually that chatty.”

“She couldn’t even see me straight.”

“Or she saw you dead straight.”

And was it just my imagination, or did she stress the word ‘dead’ just a little bit? Certainly, her smile never faltered as she spoke, as we walked along.

Tristan dropped a couple of brooches down on the table in exchange for cake, and announced to anybody who was listening that we’d be going now.

Mari said – to me, not to Tristan – “Oh no, stay the night.”

Tristan said, “We have people to get back to.”

She looked at me, wide, blue, mesmerising eyes: “The day’s half done.”

“We do have…” I began.

And Tristan dived in, “All the more reason to be getting moving.”

And Greg: “We don’t want to be out after dark.”

There was hesitation in the crowd. It felt as if they were weighing up whether or not to try and stop me. Whether or not they should insist. They had numbers, but perhaps we have a look of some people who’d fight back. Did they need me co-operative with Karen? Somewhere along the way I’d cemented that prospect in my head. I felt sure they wanted to tie me to her, to toss me into her bed. And then what? To see what monstrosity came crawling out nine months later?

Mari walked us to the cars.

She said, “Don’t be nervous. We won’t hurt you.”

“They looked like piranhas waiting to feed.”

Mari giggled.

“I didn’t mean it…”

“To be funny? Oh, I know. Some of those guys can get a little intense. I wish you could have stayed though. At least you’ll come back?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know…”

She leaned a bit closer. “Giant spiders?”

“You’re telling me you don’t know?”

“Tell me.”

“What hatches out of all that gum, it’s a giant spider the size of a small horse, or maybe a large dog, I don’t know. But they’re dangerous. They attack. They don’t look like soft white humanoids with golden eyes and too much skin. And they’re not friendly.”

“That we know. We’ve seen some. Had to drive them off, but it was dark and we didn’t get a good look. But you did?”

“And a good bite. They’re dangerous.” And I’m not sure if you’re a bunch of crazies who worship them or something. Did you find a way to do that to Karen on purpose? I had almost no control of my tongue right now, because my voice said on its own, “They killed a child.”

“Oh God, really?”

Her reaction seemed genuine, normal, human.

“Yeah, a six-year-old. It opened her up and ate her.”

That much elicited a small gasp out of Greg, and a near-twitch from Tristan. Hearing it again in my own head made me feel momentarily light-headed.

Mari ran her hand along my arm. “I’m so sorry. No wonder you’re paranoid and jumpy. That must have been awful.” She leaned into me as I opened my car door. “You think we’re a cult?”

Yes. “It’s not that…”

“It’s all right. I know we have that counter-culture vibe going on. But we’re not deviants, we don’t hurt anybody.”

I looked down at her belly. “Which one’s the father.”

Mari looked away. It was swift, and I saw her eyes squeeze shut.

“Mari…”

“None of them.”

I made a decision. “You can get in the car right now and come with us.”

And she laughed. “What will convince you? The asshole who gave me this,” and she glanced down at her stomach, at the life inside it, “could be anywhere right now. These are the people who took me in and made it right.”

Maybe. Maybe so. But I felt as if we were driving out of darkness and into the light as we left their commune. It was like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. I looked at my ruined forearm as I drove, wondering if maybe the clouds were coming with us, if maybe the cloud was me, and I would bring the rain down on everyone.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work