The Cobwebs

Kevin Mulligan was scared shitless. He was twelve now. Twelve was the age you started cleaning the cobwebs.

Kevin grew up hearing stories about the spiders. There was always a spooky tale for campfires or sleepovers. Ben Watson told one at Tim Rollins’s house just before his dad came in to say lights out. Ben held a flashlight up under his nose in that time-honored tradition of spooky-tale-tellers.

“There were four kids,” he said. “And they were out there cleaning up the webs, just like we’ll have to do next year. One of them tripped on an egg and cracked it. Cob spiders are real big, so they lay real big eggs. When it cracked, a hundred baby cob spiders poured out and ate them all alive.”

All the other boys made icky faces—grimaces that shifted to morbid grins and sick giggles. Kevin didn’t giggle. His lips twitched into a frown, and he swallowed hard. He didn’t like the stories about the cob spiders and their webs. It was bad enough that kids had to clean them up once they turned twelve. He didn’t like hearing about the kids that didn’t make it. For all he knew, one of them was the next victim of the spiders.

Asher Tomlin told a story about how all eight of the kids that had been chosen for web-duty that month went out on a foggy day and were never seen again. Apparently, the group supervisor—a man by the name of Harold Loomis—heard the kids’ screams through the fog and ran the other way. Kevin shivered and badly had to pee after that story.

When he came back from the bathroom, the boys were all sliding into their sleeping bags, and Tim Rollins’s dad was turning out the light.

“Hey, Mr. Rollins,” Will Sanders said. He was snuggled so far into his bag that he was just two eyes peering from a slit near the top.

“Yeah?” Mr.  Rollins asked.

“Is it true that the old people didn’t have to clean cobwebs when you were kids?”

David Rollins was thirty-three. He chuckled at that.

“Correct,” he replied. “None of us old people had to deal with the cobwebs when we were younger.”

“How come?” another boy piped up from somewhere.

“We just didn’t,” David said.

“Where’d they come from, Mr. Rollins?” Will Sanders asked.

“They’ve always been here,” David explained. “They just weren’t so big before. We’ve always had cob spiders lurking in the dark places, though. Over the decades they just evolved, I guess. Adapted. Now they’re bigger, and there are more of them. That’s all.”

“What do the cob spiders look like?” Kevin asked. His voice was hoarse and shaky, and his throat was dry.

“All right, that’s enough for tonight, boys,” David said and started to close the door. “Y’all need to get your sleep. Mrs. Rollins is making you pancakes and sausage and flaky biscuits in the morning.”

The boys all cheered—except for Kevin. A part of him was glad that Mr. Rollins had stopped question-time with him. Still, his morbid imagination ran wild.

But what did they look like? What did they look like?!

He felt a knot in his stomach. A nervous roiling there in his intestines like he might have to poop. It was still a year out, but his body was reacting to the stories as if the he had to clean webs the very next day.

He dreamed about them that night. He built them mandible by mandible. In his nightmare, they were as big as cars, and their legs were fat and hairy. Their almond eyes stared at him with human irises in all different colors. Their fangs were long daggers that dripped with sizzling acid, and between the fangs were rows and rows of humanoid canines. The nightmare ended with a spider emitting a multi-tonal blood-thirsty screech as it galloped toward Kevin.

It never happened in the same place twice, like lightning.

That’s what Kevin’s supervisor, Sarah Fletcher, told his group. Of course, this wasn’t true. Lightning could strike wherever it pleased, and so could the cob spiders. The section of Carver Town that Kevin and his group were to clean up had already been hit twice since the cobwebs had started ten years ago.

“All right,” Sarah Fletcher said. “Gather round, everyone.”

She held her hand up so that all fifteen kids gathered around could see.

“I want you all in groups of three,” she said. “Everyone take a scraper and a pair of gloves. You’re to scrape up the cobwebs from the street surface and sidewalks and storefronts. If you see cobweb, scrape it into a pile in the middle of the street. Another group will come and torch those piles later. Understand?”

Everyone nodded silently. Everyone was scared. Everyone felt hot snakes writhing in their bellies. Everyone except for one boy, that is. He was bigger than most of the other kids there, and he was wide-eyed and bouncing up and down. Mr. Excitement.

“All right, good,” Sarah said. “Now group up. You’ll head out in ten minutes.”

Everyone found groups within a couple of minutes. Kevin’s group consisted of Kevin, a girl named Anna Fairbanks, and Mr. Excitement—whose name was actually Jeffrey Driskel.

“You fuckers ready for this?” Jeffrey asked Kevin and Anna.

Anna’s bottom lip was trembling. She didn’t want to clean cobwebs. She didn’t want to go out there where it was empty and quiet and full of big bad spiders. Kevin felt the same way, but he tried hard to be brave to keep from crying.

“I know I am.” Jeffrey smiled.

Ten minutes went by in a flash, and the groups of three were standing on the last bit of clean asphalt, a thick blanket of cobwebs spread out ahead of them.

“Okay, teams,” Sarah said. “Each group is being given a flare gun. If you get in any trouble, just shoot the flare directly up in the air. Also, just a reminder: cob spiders don’t attack unless provoked. If you provoke a cob spider, there is nothing we can do to prevent it from attacking. So, if you see one, avoid it, and everything will be A-OK. Got it?”

Everyone nodded.

“Good. Now get out there and get to cleaning.”

Kevin had been handed his group’s flare gun. He held it on his open palms like an alien artifact. Jeffrey shoved him and snatched the flare gun. He stuffed it in his pocket.

“Better let me have that, kid,” he said. “I’m older and bigger. Besides, I know how to use it.”

Kevin didn’t say anything. He just let Jeffrey have it

His group took Hemlock Street in the Potato District.

There were a lot of Irish pubs and Irish businesses and Catholic churches.

The Potato District was completely covered in a blanket of cobwebs. It looked like a fleet of helicopters had flown over, pulling the cobwebs as they went, tucking the street in and putting it to bed. Webs hung in curtains from the rooftops. Cars that had been left during the evacuation looked as if they had been shrink-wrapped.

They began scraping the cobwebs into piles on the street.

“My mom and dad are in the army,” Jeffrey said as he put the handle of his scraper into his shoulder and pushed hard on it, tearing a large patch of web away from the pavement. “That’s why I couldn’t do this last year. We were living in Germany.”

Kevin marveled at how unfazed Jeffrey was, how much he was enjoying this. Mr. Excitement. Kevin couldn’t go more than ten seconds without swiveling his head around at any little sound. Anna was right behind Kevin. So close that she kept stepping on the backs of his shoes.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered.