Curse of Arachnaman

by Hayden Thorne

  Dr. Dibbs cocked his head. “Interesting. I'd have thought that simply being in this place would cause a meltdown, but I suppose I was being much too harsh on you, Mr. Eric."

  "Um, actually, if I could hang out at the Jumping Bean while everyone else practiced search-and-rescue here, that'd be way better.” I flashed him a hopeful little smile. As they say, though, hope springs eternal. In my case, it was always out of reach because my Jumping Bean suggestion apparently didn't leave its mark in Dr. Dibbs; in other words, he completely ignored it.

  "Young Mr. Peter has already argued pretty convincingly to keep you free on the condition that you stay put and not mess around with the day's agenda."

  "If I promise to stay put, will you let me have a mocha or something?” I'm nothing if not insistent. That said, Dr. Dibbs was nothing if not selective in his hearing.

  He merely adjusted my jacket (Peter's jacket, that is) and ordered me to put my hood up. I wore a hoodie under the jacket; it was that cold in there. Then he gave me this gigantic flashlight. “It's got brand new batteries, Mr. Eric,” he said with a satisfied grin. He nudged his glasses up his nose. “It's a mighty powerful thing, that flashlight is, so you've got nothing to worry about should the lights outside go dim.” With another quick inspection of the room, Dr. Dibbs left me alone.

  I stared forlornly at the massive flashlight in my hand and guessed its length. Seriously, if I were to make a convincing enough picture of a boy who was trying to overcompensate for something, that would be the moment. I think the flashlight was around two feet long, with the main lamp thingie being five inches in diameter, give or take an inch. I pushed the button to turn it on and nearly dropped the whole thing, screaming and blinded.

  Note to self: never turn on a ginormous flashlight while staring straight at the bulb. Jeebus.

  I suppose there was some comfort there. I could be abandoned in that decrepit old warehouse and still be able to find my way out, thanks to this thing. Besides, the mere size of the flashlight was enough for me to marvel at its other use, which was that of a weapon in case I had to fight someone or something.

  From an old speaker that had been set up in one corner of the room, Magnifiman's voice blared.

  "Hello, innocent victim,” he said, his voice slightly breaking up. I'd always thought that the speakers they used in that warehouse were a little too old for their purpose.

  I held up a hand. Then I realized that he couldn't see me. “Hi, Magnifiman,” I said, blushing, as I lowered my hand sheepishly. “I'm in position and ready."

  "Good. The others are being briefed at the moment, and they'll begin today's practice in around five minutes. Stay put, and be patient. They'll come for you. Magnifiman out."

  I was alone again. I looked around and saw nothing that I could sit on comfortably, which was a real bummer. I didn't know how long the others would take to find me, and I wanted to be as relaxed as I possibly could be under the circumstances.

  No such luck. The room was completely empty. The only things that made the area slightly less psychologically traumatic were the gigantic cracks in the walls and floor. Then again, if mutant caterpillars suddenly crawled out of those cracks, the Psychological Trauma Meter would shoot right through the roof.

  There were four large windows with no glass, so the wind blew in and chilled me. I pulled up my hood and walked over to one of the windows and gazed out, scanning Vintage City's grimy landscape. It was also overcast, so there really wasn't much light coming through, but I kind of liked the way the scene looked, all urban and filthy and rundown, with rain clouds hanging above. There was nothing but warehouses surrounding me because we were in the old industrial end of the city. From where I stood, I could see the rooftops of the shorter ones. I noted piles of rotting crates, boxes, and miscellaneous industrial materials scattered all over. There were also those giant industrial ventilation duct things that jutted out of the roofs like massive periscopes. Every once in a while a few black birds would flitter from one thing to another, which startled me at first into thinking that they were bizarre shadows.

  From some distant part of the warehouse, I could hear tiny fake explosions and gunfire, so I figured that the heroes were already on the move. In the meantime, I could enjoy the view a little more.

  I guess I zoned out after a couple of minutes of just staring out because I didn't realize that the shadow creeping across the rooftop of one of the other warehouses across the way was actually alive till I blinked, snapped out of my trance, and looked again.

  "What the..."

  Nope, it wasn't caused by a flock of black birds. I pinched my eyes shut and then looked one more time, leaning out as far as I could. Holy crap. I wasn't hallucinating. It was a giant spider, moving over boxes and crates and other junk. I couldn't guess what its size could be, but I was sure that there was something human-like about it. It moved so quickly and so easily that I could've sworn that it was actually gliding, not walking on all eight legs.

  It paused once it reached the edge of the roof it was on. Then it raised itself on its four rear legs, the front four waving in the air. Was it smelling the air or something? I wasn't familiar with the way spiders worked, so I couldn't say for sure. Then it heaved its humungous body and leaped from that roof and landed on the next one.

  The sudden downpour rattled me out of my shock. The rain came down hard and fast, a solid curtain of gray that forced me to stumble back into the room. Once I managed to gather my wits, I quickly turned on my flashlight and hurried out the door, yelling for the others.

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  Chapter 10

  * * * *

  I couldn't look at Peter as we sat in his car. We'd reached my house by then. The car idled, I was a little drenched, and it still poured outside. My clothes, including Peter's jacket, were a mess. There were scorched patches here and there. I could still smell burned fabric, and I could've sworn that some of the damaged parts still smoked.

  "You okay?"

  I nodded, sinking in my seat. “I am, yeah. Just embarrassed as hell. I'm really sorry I screwed up your training today."

  "We've got plenty of other days to train. It's just...when you decide to run from your designated hideaway, don't get in the line of fire. We almost blew you away back there."

  "I know, I know. I'm sorry. I just wanted to tell you—"

  Peter sighed. “We all scoured the area, Eric, and we found no sign of a giant spider anywhere. It doesn't mean that it wasn't there, though."

  I looked at him, finally. “You believe me, then?"

  He chuckled. “Of course I do. We all do. But that was reckless, Eric. You could've been seriously hurt, probably even killed, by running straight for our practice zone. Remember, for the bigger warehouses, we use eighty percent of our powers. God, even Freddie as G. I. Joe was nearly on full blast."

  What happened in the past hour would live on in infamy—in my immediate world, anyway. It was about to be counted on my growing list of What Not To Tell Your Parents. I could still see everything happen in slow motion. The exploding dummies and the noise of simulated gunfire suddenly crashing around me as I ran into the open area on the main floor of the warehouse, while I waved my arms and shouted at everyone about the giant spider I saw. Everything was a blaze of white and color, fire, speed, electronics, and in G. I. Joe's case, improvised weaponry (a hammer flew pretty damned close to my head) because Freddie was told not to use his grenade launchers for any kind of exercise. Then came the scattered cries of “Gah! What the hell is he doing here? Shouldn't he be kidnapped?” and then the too familiar sensation of getting swept up by Calais in hyper speed and taken to safety, while Magnifiman bellowed through the speakers: “I think not tying him down is a bad idea, Calais!” Then Dr. Dibbs and Brenda yelled at everyone to stop destroying things because the innocent kidnap victim somehow found a way to escape his captors, the crazy kid. When I said that it was embarrassing, I meant it.

  "I promise I won't do it again.” I mustere
d up enough courage to lean close for a kiss. One of the things that I'd yet to get used to was coping with extremely humiliating situations like what had just happened. I always defaulted to believing that Peter was mad at me, so trying to make the first reconciliatory move was always so hard.

  He held my face and kissed me again, this time the usual full-on, wet, tongue-in-throat kind that made me melt. And get so goddamned horny. The fact that it was raining hard kind of added to the swoony, slutty moment. We ended up making out for a couple of minutes in the rain, breaking apart only because moving had grown extremely uncomfortable with a raging boner in a small car.

  I pulled away and rested my forehead against his. We were both breathing heavily, and a quick glance down at his mouth nearly drove me into attacking him right then and there. A lot has been written about kiss-swollen lips, but I was there to attest to the truth in all the purple prose descriptions of what those looked like.

  "I gotta go before I have an accident in my pants,” I whispered. Peter didn't say anything, but he gave me one more deep kiss for the road.

  I couldn't remember getting out of his car, but I wouldn't have been surprised if I just tumbled out and crawled blindly toward the front door of my house. I was just glad that Scanlon wasn't around to catch me all disoriented, half-burned, and totally hard.

  The good thing about embarrassing stuff like that was that the heroes were pretty cool about it. Well, after a few hours, anyway. Wade pinged me later that night for a nice chat, and it was like bonding with a really cool gal pal about silly stuff. She was sweet enough to tell me that what happened didn't screw anyone's practice time—merely rescheduled it.

  "I'm monitoring the industrial area, Eric,” she said. “That spider thing you saw could be using one of the warehouses for its hideout. Or it might not, if it's smart enough to learn from the Trill's mistakes."

  "Hey, don't do it alone. It looked pretty formidable, and God knows how strong it is."

  "No worries!” she said. “Magnifiman's on it, too. Then again, he's pretty much spread out over Vintage City, while everyone else has specific areas they're assigned to watch."

  Yeah, that sounded pretty reasonable. I figured that Magnifiman wouldn't agree to being limited in his scope. He was such a Type A, and if he could, I was sure that he'd give himself another major city to guard over, in addition to this crummy dump.

  "By the way, boyfriend, you should see my fire blades. They're the brand spankin’ new addition to my arsenal. I can kick the Debutantes’ dual butts now that my powers have expanded some more."

  Girl fight! I couldn't wait!

  * * * *

  I'd been thinking about that retro arcade. Okay, I'd been obsessing about it since I discovered the damn place. Whenever I could, I tried to go online and try my hand at some of these old games. I totally sucked at Frogger. How lame is that? I hadn't tried Super Mario yet, but Donkey Kong was next on my list, and I thought Pac-Man was like crack. I was also seriously whooping major ass with Asteroids.

  I'd make sure to tell Peter about it the next time we went out on a date. He was geeky enough to want to take on a challenge from me before, and I'd kicked his hot ass more than once in online games. I guess it was a good sign that superpowers have limits.

  I also hadn't forgotten about bingo night. How could I? I'd actually had a dream, fer chrissakes, that involved me stuck in a big hall, surrounded by zombified seniors, playing bingo. The guy calling out the letters and numbers was Jabba the Hut, and he had some strange half-naked undead woman, whose jaw seemed to have rotted away and fallen off, chained to his chair and wearing a tattered bikini. Then anyone who staggered to their feet and squawked, “Bingo!” without any body parts dropping off because of the sudden movement, would go up to Jabba and then get eaten up. I mean, really—crunch, crunch.

  I just sat there, freaking out, surrounded by groaning reanimated corpses and completely frozen. I couldn't move a finger, let alone run. Body parts and rotting tissue were dropping around me. It was gross. I woke up just at the moment when I turned to the zombie sitting next to me to puke all over him. Or it. Whatever. At any rate, I decided to do something about my predicament.

  Sometime after breakfast I went back to the kitchen and started rummaging through cupboards. It was a Saturday, so Liz had to go to work, and Dad went golfing with his buddies. Mom and I hung around the house. Things were pretty quiet and dull, so I went on ahead with Operation Blow Bingo Night and started hunting around in the kitchen.

  "Oh, my God!"

  I whirled around, startled, a box of oatmeal and a bottle of expired aspirin in my hands. “Hi, Mom. Sorry, I was just looking around."

  She stood at the kitchen doorway, jaw hanging, a hand pressed against her chest. It took her a moment to find her voice because I'd apparently shocked her speechless. She actually looked like she was about to faint. I asked her what was wrong while going back to my shelf-scanning-and-rummaging.

  "Good grief, Eric, don't ever do that again!"

  "What? Do what?"

  "Frighten me like that!” Mom took a deep and loud breath before walking up to the sink and filling up a glass with tap water. She scowled at me as she downed it.

  I looked around. “Like what?"

  She waved a hand around the kitchen. “Like that! Opening every cupboard and drawer and leaving them open! I haven't gotten over the movie, you know!"

  Oh, that. I forgot about the movie. I figured that she was still freaking out over the kitchen ghost and all the open cupboards and drawers in one of those scenes. Now if anyone wondered about where I got my tendencies toward drama queen-ness, you know the answer. I frowned at the two items I held and then showed them to her. “Mom, do you think that mixing oatmeal and expired aspirin will make me sick? I mean, like, incapacitated?"

  "I don't think so,” she replied as she went about, nervously shutting every open drawer and cupboard. “Why?"

  "Do we have expired food that I can eat and get sick on?"

  She stared at me. “Eric, what on earth are you trying to do?"

  "I want to get sick.” I had to stop myself before I blurted out “because I don't want to go to bingo night with Althea,” knowing the kind of sermon that Mom would likely unleash on me if I did.

  Apparently holding back proved to be a bad idea. Or at least being honest didn't pay off again. It never did, seriously, even with all those early childhood lectures about being a good boy all year long and getting massive karma points from Santa Claus come Christmas time.

  "Okay, I'm going to count down from ten. When I get to one, you'd better have a clear, rational explanation that's good enough to qualify you to be the next Dalai Lama,” Mom said, raising a hand and closing her eyes as she counted under her breath. “Ten...nine..."

  "Just kidding! I was only messing with you, Mom. No need to count. Or send me to Tibet."

  Mom opened her eyes and glowered at me. “If you see anything expired, Eric, throw it away. There's no need to be so sarcastic about our storage habits and saying things like you want to get sick.” She went back to closing the cupboards before retrieving her mug and pouring herself some coffee.

  Okay, things were getting more and more desperate from my end. I threw away the expired pills and thought about finding comfort in toast and Mrs. Horace's “Eric's Special Jam,” but the fact that I was going to eat stuff that Mrs. Horace gave me cut me to the quick. POW! went my Catholic conscience because, apparently, you can take the boy out of the Catholic Church, but you can't take the Catholic Church out of the boy.

  I hate my conscience. The Pope has a lot to answer for.

  So I just stuffed my face with tortilla chips and racked my brain for more ways of getting out of bingo night without making it look like I planned the whole thing. I'd have been able to focus much better if my thought process didn't veer off every ten seconds and wander into sex-with-Peter territory, which was proving to be a much bigger issue than I'd anticipated.

  God, did I just say “bigger"?r />
  I didn't even realize that the phone rang till Mom barked at me. “Eric! Are you listening to me? It's Peter on the phone for you!"

  "Oh. Sorry.” I stood up and shuffled over to where Mom stood by the door, her arm extended as she held the phone for me, a really deep, dark frown on her face. Just as I reached for the phone, she snatched it back and covered the mouthpiece.

  "Eric, is there something you need to talk to me about?"

  "No. I'm fine, Mom. Thanks for asking.” I made a grab for the phone, but Mom swatted my hand away. “Ow! Hey!"

  She didn't budge. Covering the mouthpiece again, she said, “I'm not stupid."

  "I'm not saying that you are!"

  "No, but you're acting like I am."

  "What, are you saying that you don't trust me?” Oh, that hurt. Well...yeah...

  She cocked an eyebrow. “We've been through this before, mister, and the last time we had a talk like this, it was before you were forced to leave us to join the Trill. You can't blame me for overreacting when I smell something fishy."

  I sighed, scratching my head impatiently. “Mom, if I want to talk, I'll talk, okay? Can I have some space, please? I mean, I know you worry a lot about me, even more than you worry about Liz, but I really want to be left alone.” I paused when I saw that hurt look on her face. “I'm okay, really. I'm being very, very careful when I'm out there, and I've been doing exactly what you told me to do. I can't even hang out with my friends the way I used to ever since...you know...It really sucks being alone all the time.” I shook my head, not knowing how else to say what I needed to say. “Mom, I'll be fine. All right? Don't baby me, please?"

  Mom's look of hurt eased up, but I could still tell that she was affected by what I said. Nodding and taking a deep breath, she whispered, “Okay, honey. I'll step back a little. I'm sorry."

  "It's okay.” I took the phone from her. Then I gave her a kiss and leaned against the wall, waiting for her to leave the kitchen before talking. “Hey,” I said, lowering my voice in case of anxious maternal eavesdroppers. “You should've called and left a message on my machine."