Donny leaned closer. “Almost looks like etching—oh, shit. They’re etching the glass!”
“How? Don’t you need acid or something to do that?”
“Yeah. Hydrofluoric acid. They look like they’re secreting it.”
“To etch the glass?” Even as she said it, Hari knew that wasn’t right, that the reason had to be more sinister.
“No.” Donny’s voice quavered. “To burn through it.”
WEDNESDAY—MAY 17
BARBARA
1
Someone was shaking my shoulder.
“Wake up, Mother. We don’t want to be late.”
I opened my eyes, blinked a few times, and Ellie came into focus, leaning over me where I must have dozed off on the living room couch. She wore the same clothes as when she’d entered the passage on Monday and—I blinked again—no spider legs in sight.
I rubbed my eyes and looked again. No…no spider legs.
Had I dreamed all that? I couldn’t believe my mind capable of concocting such a scenario, even in a nightmare, yet here she was, looking like her old self.
No, not her old-old self. This was the pre-passage Ellie, with the stranger who called me “Mother” looking out through her eyes.
“Ellie…you’re all right?”
“As well as can be expected. But come on—rise and shine or we’ll be late.”
“Late for what?”
“Something momentous: the sunrise.”
“That happens every day.”
“Not like this, it doesn’t. It’s scheduled to rise at five twenty-one.”
“Good Lord, what time is it now?”
“Three-thirty. We have trains to catch if we’re going to reach Coney Island in time.”
I rose from the couch and stretched. My back ached from sleeping in an odd position.
“Why Coney Island? That’s a long way.”
I’d never been there but remembered it lay at the far end of Brooklyn.
“Because standing on a shore and watching the sun rise over the water will allow us to appreciate the full impact.”
“Ellie, you’re not making any sense.”
“Everything will make sense when we’re there, Mother. But we can’t dilly-dally. The trains are few and far between at this hour. Grab a coat because it’s chilly before dawn. And bring your phone because we’ll want to watch the time. I’ll get Blanky.”
“Blanky?”
She turned away and I saw her back. No spider legs, but…
“Oh, God! Oh, dear God!”
My knees gave way and I dropped back onto the couch. Her back was a seething, wriggling black mass of those little…things. They clung to her and to each other, bulking from the base of her neck to her waist.
She glanced back over her shoulder. “What?”
I pointed. “Those…those…” Words failed me.
“Oh, the kiddlies are coming along. They need to get out for a while.”
2
For a child—okay, teenager—who’d been to New York only a couple of times, and had never been on the subway, Ellie possessed an uncanny knowledge of its workings. I didn’t ask her how. I knew she’d say she’d learned all about it during her coma.
She’d tied Blanky around her neck where it hung over her back like a cape, mercifully concealing her horrid “kiddlies” from me and the few other people scattered on the streets at this hour. As she led me to the Lexington Line station at Seventy-seventh Street, I’d glance at her and catch faint flashes or ghost images of spindly spider legs arching from her back, but they’d be gone before I could focus. Also…Blanky…at times Blanky flickered and transformed into a long, flowing, high-collared red cape like a Disney princess might wear, and then reverted to ratty old Blanky again.
“Where are the…extra legs?” I said.
“Here and not here. Tucked elsewhere. Don’t want to attract too much attention, do we?”
Part of me wanted to run—screamed to run from her—but another part, the mother part, couldn’t leave. This was my child, my baby, and I had to stick by her in this time of trial. She’d changed for the worse—no, I shouldn’t say worse. She hadn’t done anything bad, hadn’t hurt anyone. She’d changed to the strange, the uncanny, the bizarre, the frightening. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t change back to who she’d been, and I had to be there when she did. Because she’d need me. She didn’t seem to need me now, but she’d need me then.
Down in the subway station, after what seemed like a long wait, we caught the six train downtown. We shared our car with a couple of drowsy drunks and a homeless woman stretched out on a bench surrounded by the plastic bags she’d filled with her earthy possessions. I hadn’t noticed at the apartment or on the street, but here under the fluorescents of the subway car, Ellie looked pale and drawn. Her cheeks were sunken.
“When did you last eat?” I said.
A wan smile. “Been a while.”
But was it more than simply not eating?
“Those…things…they aren’t biting you, are they?”
I imagined them sucking her blood like ticks.
“No. They’d never bite me. And they know not to bite you either.”
“Well, you need to eat,” I said. “At the next stop we’ll get out and find an all-night coffee shop and get some nourishment into you.”
She gave her head an emphatic shake. “No, Mother. This is a big day. I have to stay on schedule.”
“For the sunrise? It will happen whether you’re watching or not.”
“Sunrise isn’t the first stop on the schedule.”
“What is?”
“All in good time, Mother.”
At Bleeker Street we switched to the D train and continued to the end of the line at Coney Island. Once the D left Manhattan, it stopped being “sub” and traveled on elevated tracks.
After an uneventful trip on two largely uninhabited trains, we reached the end of the line at Coney Island. Ellie led us down to street level where we found ourselves in a rough, seedy neighborhood.
“I don’t like it here,” I said.
“It’s necessary,” she said. She was in enigmatic mode now. “What time on your phone?”
I checked. “Four fifty-seven.”
“Good. We have time.”
“Hey, Red Riding Hood,” said boozy male voice. “I dig the cape.”
An unshaven man in a short jacket and a fedora set at a rakish angle stepped out of the shadows and approached us.
I tugged on Ellie’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”
But Ellie stood firm, muttering something that sounded like, Right on schedule.
“Good evening, sir,” she
