Danny hurried over to get a close-up of the jars with his camera, making sure to spend enough time on each so the audience could read all the labels in full. Becca and Frankie walked up to join him, bending down as they studied the labels.

“Eight different jars for eight different types of bugs,” Danny said in a low voice. “But each jar is empty. I’m not sure I like where this is going.”

“Me either,” Frankie agreed. “Look, there’s a note tucked beneath this first jar. Maybe it’ll be the instructions from the Game Master.”

Sure enough, the folded note was stamped with the familiar GM symbol. Becca opened it and read it to the others.

“Welcome, Danny and friends, to your very own creature feature! Can you identify and capture each of the basement creepies listed below? I’ve provided a means for a closer look, so you can get up close and personal with the stars of the show.”

“Means for a closer look?” Danny wondered. “What does that mean?”

“What’s this?” Frankie asked, picking up what looked like a small weight. “I think it’s a microscope!”

“I am not looking at a spider through a microscope,” Danny said, taking a few steps back from the table. “No way, no how!”

“It looks like only one of these jars will need to contain a spider,” Becca said as she inspected the jars further. “The last jar is the spider jar, but there are a whole lot of others that come before it that don’t seem so bad. See how each of the jars have ‘number of legs’ specified? Only one jar says eight.”

“That offers very little comfort,” Danny said, “when this jar over here says ‘thirty to ninety pairs.’ Thirty to ninety pairs of legs? What sort of monsters are we expected to deal with here?”

“I bet you that one is a millipede,” Frankie remarked. “I’ve seen them in my grandma’s basement, and I had to help Miguel catch one for a science project once. I remember him talking about the thirty to ninety pairs of legs.”

“So we’re supposed to capture a millipede in that jar?” Becca asked. “Yikes.”

“We can do this,” Frankie said, stepping forward to grab the first jar, which listed the characteristics of a millipede. “Come on.”

“You guys go ahead,” Danny mumbled, bringing the camera up again to catch Frankie at the start of the hunt. “I’ll just make sure everything gets documented.”

“Okay,” Becca said, taking a breath to steady her nervous heart. “The jar says that in addition to thirty to ninety pairs of legs, we’re also looking for something that has antennae, and is ‘long and wormlike.’”

“I’m not going to lie,” Frankie said, kneeling in a particularly shadowy corner of the basement. “They look pretty horrifying.”