The trees were particularly tall in this part of the forest; a stand of huge firs reached into the sky. Their tops were invisible through the mass of thick branches. Charlie was looking up at something high in the canopy.

“What’s there?” Lucas whispered.

“It’s something that was mine. But I’m not sure what it is,” Charlie answered. The skeleton walked forward, still looking up, and suddenly stopped as if it had run into an invisible wall. It tried to back away, but was held in place by unseen means. “I seem to be stuck. How odd,” it said. Charlie’s feet were scraping the ground. Lucas was a few feet away, squinting at the skeleton, who struggled fruitlessly against invisible forces that held it immobile.

“What’s wrong? Why can’t you move?” Something very thin flashed suddenly in the air around Charlie, and was gone again. Lucas moved his head a little and there it was again: a thin white line that spanned the air, like a piece of very thin thread. It had stuck to Charlie somehow, and was so strong the skeleton couldn’t budge it. Now that he knew what to look for he could see more of them. A number of them were strung across the clearing between the trees, nearly invisible.

“There’s these strings all over,” he called to Charlie. The skeleton stopped moving and looked at its arms and down its body.

“Ah, yes. I see them.” Up in the trees, a patch of darkness moved; something long and black extended from its center, reaching out like long fingers, followed by another, and then another, making Lucas think of a huge disembodied hand. He realized with dread what he was looking at: a huge black spider had spun a gargantuan web across this clearing. The giant arachnid climbed down the nearly invisible but apparently very strong threads of its web towards them. Charlie stared up at the bulging body that was the size of a horse and covered in fine black hair; the soft winds seemed to create waving patterns as it blew over it. Or was it moving of its own accord?

“It’s coming! Charlie, move!” Lucas yelled. The skeleton struggled against the sticky threads but only got further entangled. Lucas saw a stick on the ground and picked it up, darting forward to smack the web with it. His stick hit the thin strands and became glued stuck immediately. He tried to pull free, but succeeded only in tensing the web like a bowstring. The stick was pulled from his hand and the web made a twanging noise as it snapped back. “Maybe I can cut it,” Lucas said, looking around for a sharp rock, but there was nothing nearby that seemed like it would serve as a makeshift knife. Charlie was getting entangled more and more in the webs made it look like it was shrouded in a ghostly veil.

“I’ll kick your behind, you eight-legged fuzzball!” the skeleton shouted angrily at the approaching spider. Lucas was taken aback when he heard his friend scream in rage. A red glow started to shine from the skeleton’s empty eye sockets. Charlie was still shouting challenges and insults at the spider that was almost upon it, when suddenly a cloud of red steam poured out of its bones and the huge red dog they had defeated earlier stood there, growling up at the spider. Lucas jumped back several steps with a gasp. The great red beast snarled loudly and bit and tore at the mass of webs with its huge paws. The red fur shone like a stoked fire and a blast of heat erupted that Lucas felt even from several feet away. Some of the strands charred and fell apart in little puffs of ash. The spider retreated a few feet up the web again.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“Fight me if you dare!” Charlie screamed at the spider again. An angry red glow shone out of its skull, and its thin voice rang across the clearing shrilly. As if in response, the spider reared on its long legs, bringing forward its bulbous, hairy abdomen. There was a disgusting noise, and a new mass of spiderwebs sprayed from the spider’s bottom across the skeleton and the red dog. Lucas, Charlie and even the hound cried, shrieked and howled as one. Lucas felt something light and slightly wet on his hand. He scrambled backwards but was held fast. He tried to remove the glob of sticky strands that had engulfed one wrist with his other hand, but succeeded only in getting both stuck.

The hound’s fur erupted with heat again, burning off some of the web, but the spider spewed another glob of webbing at it, almost burying it in the stuff completely. It struggled feebly, cocooned inside the mass of tangled strands. Charlie made muffled, angry noises in its own sticky prison. The huge spider advanced again. Lucas saw a tiny drop of clear liquid form on the tip of one of the huge, black pincers in its mouth.

“I’m sorry, Lucas,” Charlie said, sadly. “I never meant you to come to harm. Please forgive me.” Lucas pulled on his stuck hands, but could not move further away; the sticky web was springy like a rubber band, but strong as steel.

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t know,” Lucas replied, huffing with the exertion of pulling away. He didn’t get very far. “But I don’t think it can do much to you. Spiders can’t eat bones, can they?” he said. Charlie didn’t reply for a moment.

“That’s a very valid point. This stupid thing can really only inconvenience me. I don’t have any meat on me it could eat. You should just have run away and left me with it,” the skeleton said, more calmly.

“Can it do anything to the dog? I don’t think spiders can eat spirits or fire either,” Lucas said. Charlie chuckled. To Lucas’s surprise, the spider stopped its advance for a moment.

“How silly. I was perfectly safe all this time. Now I’m going to be stuck in a spiderweb for the next hundred years,” it said. Charlie’s chuckle turned into a laugh, and the spider seemed to shrink a little. Lucas peered at it and realized it really was getting smaller. Charlie turned towards the spider, speaking to it calmly and quietly as if to a friend. “I know what you are. Hiding from the world in a cocoon isn’t going to do me any good. Go away now, until you are really needed.”

As Lucas watched, the spider shrank from the size of an ox to a mere pony size, and then even further. The strands of the spider web became thinner and weaker until Lucas could free his hands. Charlie’s fingerbones tore through the white shroud and ripped it away. When the skeleton walked past the cocoon that still held the dog it turned into a cloud of red steam that flowed back inside Charlie’s bones. The skeleton bent down and picked up the now tiny spider in one bony hand. The spider crawled along the arm, up the shoulder and neck, until it vanished into the skull.

“I have one more thing I lost back. Thank you again, Lucas.”

“Uh, for what? I didn’t do anything?”

“You had the valuable insight that spiders can’t eat skeletons.”

“Why would that make the spider tiny?” Lucas asked, puzzled. Charlie pointed at its eye socket. Lucas saw the spider appear there for a moment as if it was looking out of a large window, before it disappeared again.

“This critter is the part of me that gets afraid. I lost it somehow, like I lost my anger. It didn’t want to harm me, it was doing what it is meant to do, which is to keep me safe from harm. After all, if I’m not going anywhere, I can’t be harmed. When you thought about the situation with a level head, I realized what it was. And joking about it helped a little too.”

“Right. But now you have a spider in your head. Does it tickle?” he replied after a while.

“I can live with it, now that it’s small.” It looked down at its body where the webbing was stuck to the bones in sticky wads. Charlie sighed. “Now I’m literally a spooky skeleton covered in cobwebs. I hope we can find some water so I can get cleaned up a little.”

“There’s a little stream on the way to the raspberries,” Lucas said, chuckling. Charlie nodded, and the pair went on their way.