The Lie Spinners (The Deception Dance) (30 page)

I
hear the distinct and unmistakable click-click of the hammer of a
handgun behind me; I turn to see the goon on our other side point a
gun directly between the closed eyes of my sister’s sleeping
face.

“
A
strong suggestion, yes,” says the polite goon, drawing back my
attention.

And
I whisper, “Sure, whatever you say.”

“
Would
you mind putting this on?” he holds out his arm and the other
goon passes over the plastic bag (…a garment-bag). And he had
a shoe box hidden beneath it.
What
is he, like the wardrobe-goon
?

I
look back at the gun pointed at my sister. “Would you mind
pointing that somewhere else? Point it at me… I’ll do
whatever you say…just… leave her out of this.”

“
Sorry,
no, we can’t comply with that. Please, let us just get through
this as efficiently as possible,” says the polite goon.

“
Give
me the bag,” I whisper, holding my arm out for it though I
can’t tear my gaze from the gun pointed at Linnie’s head.
“Where should I change?”

“
Bathroom.
And if you could wash your face and brush your teeth, please.”

“
Alright,”
I say as I grab Linnie under her arms and start to hoist her into a
sitting position so I can get a better hold to drag her, when the
goon stops me.

He
says, “I am very sorry, you need to leave her here.”

Gun-goon
presses the barrel to Linnie’s temple.

I
climb away from her making no sudden movements. I don’t know if
it’s the trauma of the last twenty four hours, or even the last
year, or if it’s that the goons are being so weirdly courteous
as they threaten her, but up until this moment I felt rather calm;
the idea of leaving Linnie unconscious and alone with three goons,
one holding a gun to her head, makes me anything but calm. I get up
and back slowly to the bathroom, seeing no alternative, or maybe just
not smart enough to think of one.

As
I enter the bathroom the polite goon says, “Though I already
know you are not stupid, but just to be thorough, please believe me
that there is no point in climbing out of your window; men are
stationed on all sides.”

When
in the bathroom, I change quickly not wanting to leave Linnie alone
for an unnecessary moment. The outfit in the bag is not what I
expect, no revealing awkwardly overdressed ball gown. It’s
actually almost identical to the outfit I saw May in, a white silk
blouse and cream colored slacks. Casual-nice. The shoes are just
typical elegant supportive-sole flats. After throwing water on my
face and brushing my teeth very quickly, I exit the bathroom and
immediately know I took too long. The bed is empty and one of the
goons is gone. I sprint for the door but a goon steps in front of it
and efficiently grabs me by my shoulders, stopping me.

“
She’s
a phone call away,” says the polite goon, “Sorry about
the precaution but we are going to need you to behave.”

Just
because he’s being so polite about it I almost immediately
respond, ‘okay,’ but it’s really, really not.
“Where did you take her?”

“
The
same place that you are going, to our boss.” He says as he
holds a hair brush out to me, “If you wouldn’t mind?”

I
take the brush knowing that his asking was just a courtesy; he knows
and I know that I’ll do anything he asks me to now. The moment
the bristles touch my skin, my scalp starts to burn like I’m
pressing a hot iron to it. “What!” I yank it away from my
head, breathing hard, “Ow, ow, please…”

“
Continue,”
he says, “Either I or you need to finish it.”

So
I do. My mind blanks on the third stroke through my hair. I absently
notice as the brush finishes its last stroke, that my hair turned
back to its raven black. A year ago Madeline’s magic made me
regrow an entire head of hair with barely more than an itch.
Madeline’s magic feels cold, so cold that at times it almost
burns. As this burning-hot-magic sensation and the headache compound
into a pain so strong I can almost detach myself from it, it becomes
apparent that Madeline and this type of magic are two completely
different things.

“
Thank
you,” the goon says, holding a hand out to me.

I
look up at him, realizing that I must have slumped onto the bed
without noticing.

After
taking the brush from me and handing it to the goon that had held the
garment bag, polite goon helps me stand. He holds up sunglasses and
says, “Here, let me put these on for you.”

Not
like I have a choice,
I don’t say. The moment the sunglasses cover my eyes and hook
around my ears, I’m thrown into a silent blackness. Utter and
complete blindness and deafness blankets me. My eyes are open, my
ears unplugged, but no matter what direction I turn, I cannot see or
hear anything.

Arms
hook through both of mine and I’m led forward.

I’m
not sure if the glasses alter time and space or if the sheer fact of
being nearly senseless and led through obstacles makes those aspects
of the world impossible to gage. By the textures that brushed against
me and the pressure the goons exerted on my arms, I know that I
walked over sand and pavement, I’m pretty sure I rode in a car,
I might have traveled by boat.

Thoughts
billow up from that blackness that has lodged within me: I led my
sister into the mouth of hell, again, and again I fed her to Hell. To
love me, to care for me, is to be leverage. To be loved by me is
worse than a death sentence.

The
pressure on my elbows makes me stop. The moment the sunglasses are
lifted the world blinks into existence, but no world I know, at least
not on this scale. A huge tent hangs around us, its canopy entirely
woven from layer after layer of transparent gauzy webbing. If solid
wall exists beneath the web, it is too deep to see. All around giant
white sacks hang deep within the webbing layers, looking like more
solid patches of white within the uneven grey.

“
Please,
avoid touching the webs,” Polite Goon says, unnecessarily,
making me aware that I’m still wedged between the polite and
wardrobe goons. We descend a staircase into a large hall within the
web canopy.

A
spider just like the one who attacked Linnie, whose body is probably
close to the size of a house cat, scuttles past on my left, climbing
up the webbing, and it’s not alone. Hundreds, no thousands, of
spiders cling to the web in all directions, some weave the web,
others wrap up those giant sacs; the rest just scuttle to-and-fro.

“
Ugh,”
I can’t help whispering. “I hate spiders.”

Wardrobe
Goon chuckles (which totally startles me), but he stops when Polite
Goon shoots a chastising glare at him.

Polite
Goon says, “Arachnophobia affects one in twenty people, it is
common.”

Wardrobe
Goon says, also with that too-perfect English way of articulating,
“You are right, I apologize for laughing, Miss Smith.”

My
dear God
.
Well at least I know that when they kill me and my sister, they’ll
do it with the utmost courtesy.

Someone
polished the stretch of hardwood to a mirror-like surface so that the
floor reflects the canopies above; it gives the impression that the
mats and people lying on them throughout the hall are suspended
within a cob-webbed prism.

If
not for the mats, however, the people could easily camouflage into
their surroundings; like the fire dancers and my troupe of goons, the
people are all at least partially covered in white web tattoos, if
not completely covered (as my goons are). As we pass the lounging
webbed people, I inspect their eyes; it’s not hard to do as
most stare at me. I have a moment of panic seeing that their iris
glow and pupils are slit, like that psycho-girl’s from the
beach, yet when I stare I am almost positive that there are no eyes
with the tell-tale greater demon luminescence—which is just
brighter, different… stronger than what these people have.

I
do feel something, though… a familiarity, coldness within
their stares. Underneath the webbing, the people here are both sexes
and have the full spectrum of human shades of skin color, but somehow
there is a sameness about them.

These
people are well dressed, groomed, and fed, yet their eyes have that
quality the bedraggled crowd from the beach had— as if they’re
starving.

They
inspect and dismiss me, but each of their gazes lingers on my goons
who don’t spare them a glance (or at least I don’t think
they do as they’re still wearing sunglasses).

As
I force myself to look away from the people on the mats, I notice for
the first time the dais with a giant seated on an enormous throne
upon it. I register that he’s not the only person seated there
that there are dozens seated on that dais, but though I try, my
attention cannot be detached from the giant to take in his
surroundings. Even sitting he’s taller than a man should be and
much, much wider. Though his facial features look Thai, his skin is
an absolute black; strange shifting red dots appear and disappear
constantly over his face and hands, which is all the skin I can see.
The whole consistency of his skin has a strange moving quality to it;
as if under his skin thousands of…something… roils,
shifts, scuttles until it consumes all of his skin in the strange
shifting movement.

But
more than the strangeness of his appearance and his girth keeps my
attention glued to him, it is just… the overwhelming presence
of him, it’s as if instead of one man there are armies of men
contained within him.

His
right hand absently pets the back of a woman who sits on a mat on a
platform beside his throne. The woman sits bowed, curled up with head
down, her hair covering her mat. As he rubs her back tattooed spiders
scuttle off of his fingers, crawling onto the white webbing that
crisscrosses every exposed inch of the woman’s skin.

I
don’t realize that I stopped, gaping, until the goons gently
put more pressure on my elbows leading me closer.

The
giant smiles, his top front two teeth are long yellowish fangs. The
tattooed spiders—because I’m almost positive that his
skin is made up entirely of spiders—roil even more furiously as
he grins.

“
Raven
Smith,” says his horribly familiar voice, the voice from our
attack last night. I’d imagine with those fangs his voice would
lisp, or at least whistle, but it rings out clear, deep and loudly
projected. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear it, as obviously
he’s the one who’s trapped Linnie and me, but the
familiarity still sends a quivery feeling throughout my bones. “Thank
you for coming,” he continues, still absently petting the girl,
“I’ve been very interested in meeting you. You are very
beautiful, as I expected.” The smile he gives me looks so
happy, so normal, I almost expect him to say, ‘I work with your
dad, he told me all about you.’ It’s almost creepier than
if he leapt out and tried to bite off my head with his rotten-looking
fangs.

I
close my eyes wishing that my brain would stop inflicting pain on me
and let me think. “Thank you for having me,” I say, “your
home is very…unique.”

“
Do
you like it?” the giant asks, as if he actually cares whether I
do or not.

“
Yes,”
I answer.

“
That
is a lie,” says another familiar voice, the voice of the only
person, or moreover demon, that could make this situation worse. For
the first time I look over the dais, more like a raised room with
close to thirty people on it. The woman whom the giant pets is
actually only one of a line of seven women who sit bowed, heads down,
hair forward, webbed backs exposed. The rest of the crowd on that
side of his throne is male, all webbed and lounging on mats, watching
me. On the giant’s other side is only one person…or
demon, the demon who called me a liar; I’m not really all that
surprised to see her, I rather feel a cold resignation that the demon
Chauncey will always be where ever she can do the most damage in my
life.