“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?”