The Spider Queen's Door

    For as long as I could remember, the field by my neighborhood was empty. The ground was too soft for construction equipment, and the soil wouldn’t nurture anything but weeds. Only two dead trees, surrounded by mushrooms, broke up the emptiness of the field.

    The owner couldn’t do anything with it, so he left it empty. My parents wouldn’t let me play over there. They called it trespassing. My friends called it something else.

    Spider Queen.

    They said the trees were the doorway to her cobweb kingdom. They said if you went between them she’d catch you up and eat you. No one ever found the kids who wandered into the Spider Queen’s home.

    We never played in the field, even though it would have been perfect for any game we could think of. But no one wanted to risk death, or worse, getting grounded. So we played in the streets and driveways and broke up games whenever a car drove through. And we never went near the Spider Queen’s field.

    But rules were made to be broken. Even ones we made up ourselves.

    That rule got broken on Halloween night.

    A bunch of my friends and I had decided to dress up as super heroes that year, and we were feeling pretty brave. Stupidly brave. After a couple blocks, trick-or-treating started to get boring. We’d already knocked on the Crone’s door- she gave us full-sized candy bars for being the only kids to visit her- and braved the yard with the psychotic dogs- we came away with more slobber than dog bites. Now it was time for some real serious stuff.

    “Hey, Theo.” Kenny grinned at me from under his Batman cowl. “I bet you all my candy you’re too chicken to go to the Spider Queen’s place.”

    I clutched my pillowcase close to my chest. “That’s not fair, Kenny. I’m not a chicken. I knocked on the Crone’s door. You hid behind Joshua the whole time. You go to the Spider Queen’s place.”

    “That’s not how it works. I made the bet. You have to do it.”

    It was already dark outside. We were standing under the safe light of a street lamp. In the field, there would be no light. It was too cloudy to see the moon or the stars. This wasn’t fair. “I don’t want to.”

    But Kenny wasn’t about to let me off the hook. Maybe I shouldn’t have reminded him how scared he was at the Crone’s house.

    “If you don’t do it, you have to give me your candy, and everybody will know that The Flash is a big, stupid coward.”

    I couldn’t let him talk about The Flash like that. He was one of the greatest heroes ever. Flash was the fastest man alive. Batman was just some rich jerk with a bunch of gadgets.
 
    “Fine. But if I die, it’s your fault and you have to explain to my mom.”

    I regretted the decision before I’d gotten ten steps. Why was I willing to risk my life for a few extra pieces of candy? I could spend my allowance and get that much, and it would all be candy I liked.

    But maybe the grownups were right. Maybe it was just an abandoned field. Maybe there was no Spider Queen and when I stepped between those trees nothing would happen. The adults said it was just a field. Nothing special about it. So I told myself that when I got to the trees I’d just step between them and nothing would happen. Except for the part where I got to laugh in Kenny’s face as I took his candy.

    As each step brought me closer to the field, it got harder and harder to just dismiss this as a field. After all, there had to be a good reason no one came here, right? Even the teenagers refused to park here.

    I stopped across the street from the trees. My feet didn’t want to go any further, but all my friends were behind me. They wanted to see what would happen. Wanted to see if I’d get eaten. How many of them cared if I didn’t show up for school on Monday? How many of them would laugh at me forever if I chickened out?

    The trees loomed overhead. A breeze blew down the street, making the branches rattle against each other. It sounded like they were laughing at me, too. I took a deep breath and crossed the street.

    Up close, the trees didn’t seem like a big deal. It had rained the day before, and it had made the bark black and shiny under the street light. Between the trunks was a spiderweb. The spider was hiding, probably waiting for a bug to be stupid enough to fly into its web so it could have dinner.

    “Tell the Spider Queen I said hi,” Kenny called from behind one of our bigger friends.

    I’d show him. Kenny hated spiders. If I could find this one, I could take it back and say something clever like “Why don’t you tell her yourself?” and watch him scream when I gave him the spider. Then Batman would be the coward. He’d never live it down.

    The spider was hiding on the other side of the trunk. I had to reach all the way around to find it. But the other side felt weird. The air felt warmer than it did on my side of the trunk. And when I pulled my hand back to me, it was covered in cobwebs.

    “That’s not right,” I said to myself. I could see between the trunks, and there were no other webs. I put my hand back through to see if it still felt warm, but I yanked it right back when it disappeared between the trees.

    Maybe it really was a door, I thought to myself. But I didn’t want to see what was on the other side. Not if it had all these cobwebs.

    “What are you waiting for, you big baby? Just go in!”

    Kenny was still watching, and if I wanted to keep my candy- and Flash’s dignity- I’d have to go in. I closed my eyes, prayed the Spider Queen wouldn’t be home, and stepped through.

    It really was warm on the other side. And dark. The light from the street lights didn’t come in here, and the air was musty like my attic at home. My feet stuck to the floor when I walked, and spider webs brushed my face. It was quiet in here. There was no skittering in the dark, and I blew out a breath of relief.

    I’d done what I came to do. I went into the Spider Queen’s home. For real. It wasn’t some pretend place the grownups kept telling us didn’t exist. Kenny hadn’t told me to bring anything back, so all I had to do was go back out and collect Kenny’s Halloween candy.

    “There he is!” My friends were all across the street where I’d left them, but instead of grinning, they were all pale and screaming and pointing.

    “Where did you go, Theo? We thought you fell in a hole and died!”

    “Hey, guys! The Spider Queen’s place is real. You owe me a bag of candy, Kenny! Kenny?”

    He had already taken off running. Typical. Kenny never came through on his side of a bet, but he always expected you to come through on yours. I’d just have to track him down to his house and collect my winnings.

    But before I could set out, the tone of my other friends had changed. They were screaming louder, and pointing at me. “What, the cobwebs? It’s nothing. The Spider Queen wasn’t even home.”

    That was when I saw it. A giant, pointy leg reaching over my left shoulder.