Excerpted: Yellow Barks Spider

you remember, don’t you.

back then there was a new stray cat in the neighbourhood every summer, and that year there was a little calico who liked to sleep behind the shed in that narrow place between the wall and the fence. the family next door left out food for it every night in a metal dish, and when the days got colder the water froze in its bowl. that winter the little calico would get pregnant, and as the nights grew darker, it would curl up to die behind the shed in that narrow place between the wall and the fence, lost in the hungry dark.

but this was summer, and kid touched the calico’s head as it rolled in the warm dirt beside him and kid forgot all about death in the way that some people can for a while. but the shed remembered death.

nobody goes in there, neighbour had said, we don’t use it anymore. it’s full of junk.

it was full of death: even the objects abandoned inside it were dead. and it drew kid in, though even the calico knew better. the cat slipped away through the fence in a wisp of gold and white and black. kid was circling back, always circling back here. a force large enough to bend the flow of time was drawing him back, something ultramassive. a light-drinker.

kid’s hand rested against the crooked door to push it open, the portal, and he closed his eyes as a long splinter sank into his right palm and trembled deep past his wrist, and kid pushed but the door moved open by only a crack. no more.

here at the threshold, kid sensed the tides of time rushing back out to the ocean and the undertow dragged him in after it. somewhere in the twisting current, his body turned inside out, hot and acid, strands of spit clinging to his lips, and he was vomiting, and all the dense and muggy air that clung to his skin swirled around in candy-apple sweetness and deep-fried sugardough and huge marquees of strobing lights all exploding neon voices kids screaming there was a kid crying and screaming drowned out by a voice on a megaphone howling at passersby.

kid was vomiting into a big garbage can, splattering the flies and wasps inside with his half-digested dinner, and his head was spinning from all the wild noise of the fairground. people were pushing by on all sides, licking their sticky fingers and laughing and barking and sucking their fizzing pops, jostling and tripping on the trampled grass and uneven dirt that swarmed with ants.

a week before, these fairgrounds had been nothing but an empty lot, a wide field full of grasshoppers on the outskirts of town. in a week it would be gone, and the only traces left behind would be the torn up earth where the big trucks dug in their wheels to haul out the tents, the bleachers, the rides — that year’s exclusive special: a towering, rotating arm that spun around on three separate axes, at one point tipping straight upside down and suspending riders there for a full minute, where the brave would look up over their heads and see the entire fairground lit up below, spread out and shining like nothing else in the world.

kid had been split up from his friends. the night air was thick with sweat, humming with flies. kid’s scalp itched, and he shoved his way through the throng into a dark gap between food trailers. it was quieter here, and climbing over a low barrier through the tall grass, kid found himself in an inner circle, backstage of the fair.

in the dark clearing there was a huddle of teenagers. they were passing a flat plastic bottle between them, topping up their pop cans with its contents. kid wiped his mouth on his sleeve, unable to go forward or go back, when one of them waved him over. kid approached the circle as it grudgingly opened to allow him in. kid recognized the boy who beckoned him over as a friend’s older brother, but the other teenagers were strangers, and they looked at kid’s oversized sweater and hand-me-down jeans with disdain. friend’s older brother sucked on a peach cigarillo before passing it to kid as the rest of the group went back to their talk. kid kept his head down and pretended to smoke it, feeling spit on the flavoured filter, as he tried to calculate the path of his escape.

the girl standing next to kid handed him the bottle. long bleach-streaked hair fell out the bottom of her hood, and in the shadow of her sweater kid could see mean eyes. all the teenagers turned to look, waiting to see what kid would do.

chase it with this, friend’s older brother said, pressing a warm can into kid’s hand. everyone was waiting to see him choke, ready to tear him apart for any misstep. a sort of numbness went over his body as his brain slipped into its hiding place at the back of his mind, and he watched his body from afar as its hand took the bottle, saw the girl’s black lipstick inked around the rim, the smell of her perfume, dead flowers, pressing lips to the bottle, something fiery moving into its mouth, down its throat like knives, raw in its stomach, flooding its face with blood, animating its limbs, then hearing a voice calling: chase it dude, chase it with this. and the sizzle came next, washing down anything left behind, stripping its mouth and leaving the numbness behind. the circle was laughing and clapping, the body had handled it well, someone was slapping it on the back, and it was turning away now back to the lights and the rush and the noise, pushing through the gap in the trailers back into the night.