“Shhh now, child,” hissed a voice in my ears. I could smell its breath, all ripe and rotted things. “We mustn’t say a word.”

All those skulls staring down at me, green with grime and mold, jaws gone like they were laughing so hard they just fell off and sloshed into the water. The moon a low glow on the horizon, morning still hours off. My luck, my luck.

I felt a cold, wet hand grip the back of my neck and yank me, and down, down I plunged into the water as I was dragged under.

12

I CAME TO IN A dark cave with one burning torch lodged in a nook in the wall. All around me water dripped in the darkness. I couldn’t see a thing, just the flickers of that one little fire. I yanked the torch from the wall and realized its handle was made of bone. I heard scuttling noises in the ground beneath me, felt my feet crunching on something. I looked down at the halo of light around my feet, and it was bones, human bones, legs and skulls and teeth and fingers. Everywhere I stepped they crunched under my feet.

“Tally?” I called into the darkness. “Tally, where are you?”

I bumped something on the ground, something soft. It groaned.

I bent down and in the torchlight saw it was Tally. She was alive, she was. I tried to drag her up to her feet.

“Come on now,” I said. “We got to move.”

“I wouldn’t bother,” rasped a voice out of the darkness. I whirled the torch around, but I couldn’t see anything. The voice echoed throughout the cave, it could have been coming from anywhere. “You mustn’t leave now. You can’t.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, trying to sound all brave. “Watch us.”

“I can see you quite clearly,” said the voice. I felt its breath right on my ear. “It’s you who cannot see me.”

I swung the torch behind me and heard a scattering of bones. Laughter bounced along the cave walls.

“Buddy?” It was Tally, she was getting up. “Where are we?”

“We’re in a cave,” I said. “Something’s dragged us down here.”

“The Creepy,” she said.

“I told you already, there ain’t any such thing as a Creepy,” I said. “Pop said so.”

I heard something scuttle at my feet. I swung the light toward the sound. A face stared back at me, no more than an inch from mine. Teeth yellow, cracked, and broken, hair scraggled down past its shoulders. In the torchlight its eyes burned black.

I screamed and dropped the torch. It glowed dimly on the cave floor. I grabbed a hand and it was warm and furry, it was Tally’s, it had to be, she’d gone full spider. At least now we could fight. At least now we stood a chance.

“Spider-folk?” said the voice. “I thought they’d long died out. I thought they were just a myth.”

“Think again,” said Tally. “Think about how bad it’ll hurt when I sink my fangs into that scrawny neck of yours.”