by Neil Kleid
“Will you tell Betty?” she asked Peter.
He shook his head. “Even if I could do that without giving away my identity, what good would come of it?” He closed his eyes and dropped his head between his hands. They sat in silence for a moment, and then MJ lifted Pete’s chin, forcing him to meet her gaze.
“Hey. Listen, you. You did not kill Ned Leeds.” Peter opened his mouth to argue, but Mary Jane cut him off. “No, you listen to me. You are not responsible for every death, near-death, injury, or hangnail that occurs within a fifty-mile radius of Spider-Man.”
“But you don’t understand—”
“Yes, I do. I understand that there have been horrible, terrible tragedies in your life, Peter, and that you feel weighed down by guilt. But despite the ‘spider’ in your name, you are just a man. Not god, not infallible—a man, subject to mistakes and flaws, same as the rest of us. You may have spider-sense, Pete, but you cannot see the future. You just can’t.”
He set his mouth into a determined line and clasped both hands in his lap, cracking one set of knuckles and then the other. “I just…look how close he got to me, MJ. Look how vulnerable I am.” He turned to her, taking her hand. “Ned died. I mean, we weren’t best friends or anything, but we knew each other. And he was the Hobgoblin all this time! How did that happen? How did Betty Brant’s husband become a guy who flew around and tossed pumpkin bombs at super heroes? And how could I not know? I mean, I worked with him, side-by-side. We were at his wedding! And if Ned was the Hobgoblin, like Norman was the Green Goblin before him…who else is this close to me? What if someone else in my life is plotting to kill me? Is Electro my mailman? Could J. Jonah Jameson secretly be the Rhino? And…”
“And what?”
“…And what if one of them used you to get to me? Ned could have discovered my secret at any time, and then…”
He trailed off, eyes closing once again.
“I won’t lose you, Mary Jane. Not like I lost Gwen.”
“Hey. Hey, look at me.” She lifted his chin once more, tears falling from both their eyes. “I know what I’m getting into here, okay? Well, all right, maybe I’m still trying to figure it out, but I’m a New Yorker. I know what it means to be Spider-Man’s girlfriend.”
“I’m scared, MJ. I’m scared that—”
“Don’t be. Tough girl, remember? I can handle the Rhino. Or at least Stilt-Man, I’m sure.”
Pete laughed. “Bet you can. No one’s tougher, or glibber.”
MJ returned his smile, coupling it with a wink. “Hey, face it, Tiger. When it comes to glib, you hit the jackpot.”
They moved toward each other. Peter took MJ in his arms, settling back against the pillows. He lovingly played with her hair; she burrowed into his chest, excusing the faint musk of sweat and panic. The scent had been hard-won against some of New York’s most dangerous criminals.
My boyfriend is Spider-Man, she thought once more. Peter Parker is Spider-Man. Mary Jane controlled herself, careful not to let a grin break out across her face.
“Don’t worry,” she reassured him, “I’m here. I want to be here, and I want to be with you. I know what that means, and I understand the ramifications.”
She felt him smile against her, felt Peter’s chest swell and his hand take hers, resting it against his heart. But she also felt his jittery heartbeat and knew that, no matter what she might say, Peter would always be scared.
My boyfriend is Spider-Man. A sliver of doubt worked its way into her heart.
Mary Jane recalled Betty Leeds’ face once more, quiet and mysterious in her grief. MJ wondered again, despite all her assurances and bravado, whether she should be scared, as well.
THREE
I AM frightened.
The Hunter sat alone, naked on the glossy black floor, crouched in the middle of an empty space. The floor moved, its ebon polish shifting and lapping atop itself, rolling like a wave to all four corners of the sparse, sterile room.
I am scared, Sergei thought. He remained motionless amid a sea of skittering, scampering arachnids, allowing them to thread their way down from the ceiling on strands of shimmering, glistening webbing to land on his shoulders and his back, burrow into his hair, crawl over his skin, and then journey down his body to join their fellows spread out along the floor. Still Sergei waited, allowing his lungs to expand and contract at a steady, calculated rate. He let the fear wash over his soul, scouring his psyche as he controlled his breathing, in and out, spiders piling atop one another and filling the room.
I am afraid. The Hunter is afraid, Sergei acknowledged. Thousands of tiny, hairy legs crept across his body, countless threads of webbing coming to rest in his hair, his eyes, all parts of his body. Still he waited, facing the fear, drowning in a sea of spiders.
I am afraid, but not of the Spider, Sergei thought. I do not fear the Beast. I merely fear the end. But to all things, an end must come. He nodded to himself, scattering the spiders that prickled his face and bit his throat. The ones that fell were replaced by twice their number.
Tonight.
Suddenly, violently, Sergei reared back against the wall of arachnids. He curled his fingers into makeshift claws and pounced with Lion’s speed and Tiger’s savagery, scooping up handfuls of spiders and lifting them to his mouth. Stifling a guttural cry, Kraven the Hunter began to feed, tearing apart the spiders as they squirmed from his teeth, using his tongue to force those he could down his throat.
Tonight. The word roared inside the Hunter’s skull, filled him with confidence and power as he dined on his enemy’s kin.
Tonight, the end begins.
FOUR
RAIN fell on the city that night, battering against skyscrapers as thunder sounded in the distance. New Yorkers ran for cover, heading home to loved ones. Far above, perched on a rooftop, Spider-Man watched headlights coursing the streets, blending in with neon and street lamps, streaking around corners and traversing avenues like shooting stars. Rain and hail drizzled down his costume, pattering against the wide, white eyeholes of his mask, and beading over the faded black webbing and ribbed, crimson fabric stretched against his skin. He sat there, calmly surveying the city he loved, lost in thought beneath a darkening sky.
Standing up silently, Spider-Man pressed two fingers against the metal stud in his right palm, triggering the web-shooter around his wrist and sending a tensile thread of webbing across to an adjacent building. The webbing stuck, as always— foolproof for the most part since he’d invented the stuff during the early days of his career. Back then, Peter Parker’s biggest concerns were what to do with his new, fantastic powers, and whether he might use them to get a girl.
Spider-Man gripped the webbing in both hands, kicked off, and swung out into the space between buildings.
Every time he did it, no matter the situation, Peter—the man beneath the mask—thrilled to the sudden freefall, defying gravity in ways ordinary people had been conditioned to avoid. As the wind picked up, his heart leapt against his chest. Muscles tensed, and he leaned into an aerial ballet like no other: a swooping, enchanting, exultant feeling only a select few might ever know. Despite the pelting raindrops interrupting his progress, Peter welcomed the solace and silence high above the bustling, discordant noise of the city, free of the troubling events trying to drag him down—Ned, his relationship, guilt. Everything. He closed his eyes and released the gossamer strand of webbing. Then he fired another at a dimly lit billboard, correcting his swing to the right with a graceful airborne flip as the physical world tumbled for a moment, matching the chaos in Peter’s heart. Swinging from thread to thread, keeping his eyes peeled for situations that might require Spider-Man’s attention, Peter made his way to the East Side in no particular hurry.
Spider-Man was headed to a funeral, his second in the space of a week. Ned’s had been a trial, emotionally painful and nearly impossible to get through without Mary Jane’s support. Tonight’s funeral, however, promised to be an impartial, unemotional affair. Truth be told? He hadn
’t even been invited. He’d learned about the service through back-alley informants and underworld gossip.
Peter took his time, deluding himself by pretending to patrol for crimes he might stop or lives he might save. Kittens in trees, old ladies crossing the street. At this point, Spider-Man would step in to direct traffic if it would keep him from his destination. He was sick of death and tired of mourning.
Joe Face is dead, Peter thought as he swung down Lexington, headed for Gramercy Park. Joe Face is dead, and why should I care? The last time Spider-Man had seen Face, the pudgy, ordinary crook had been boosting a truck full of Blu-ray players. The time before, he’d been henching for the Vulture, and Peter had dangled him from the edge of the Flatiron Building before delivering him to the police. Joe Face, just another street snitch—a two-bit thug he’d sometimes pump for information, and sometimes put away for petty crimes. No one of import, barely on Spider-Man’s radar.
And now Joe Face was dead.
So why should I care? Peter asked himself again, landing on the low, flat rooftop of a dive called Jimmy’s on the northwest corner of Twentieth and Third. How many Joe Faces have I known over the years? Too many to count. Peter crouched in the shadows on the edge of the roof, weighing the moment, tense and tentative as stinging droplets landed on his back.
Men like Joe Face were minor obstacles to Spider-Man—small-time hindrances, faces in a crowd, and sometimes a means to an end. Average grunts: too poor to buy a persona, too pathetic to prove a threat. They were usually dressed in threadbare clothes and armed with secondhand weapons—unless they managed to hook up with one of the big boys, one of the super villains who made Peter’s life a never-ending, web-slinging, spectacular headache. Usually, though, they were petty crooks undertaking petty crimes, and Spider-Man shut them down without bothering to remember their names.
Joe Face was nobody, like many before. And if a nobody died, why should Spider-Man care?
Ned Leeds was a name in the crowd.
Peter sighed, low and long. After a moment, giving in to the inevitable, he made his way inside.
Jimmy’s, rundown and splintered, had been closed for the night by its proprietor. The rickety chairs—loosely scattered around peeling, painted tables—had been shoved aside to make room for a simple, open pine box resting against the back wall near a rusted jukebox, a few yards from the dimly lit restrooms. No one stood behind the bar. Rows of dusty, unevenly filled bottles lined a wooden shelf behind an ancient cash register. On the walls hung a handful of pun-laden posters that relayed vaguely humorous bar rules, and a flickering Miller Lite sign that had probably been installed shortly after the invention of neon tubing. The bar was empty apart from a small gathering of blue-collar types circling the coffin, hands fitfully clasped before them or stuffed into their pockets as they looked down at the peaceful corpse of poor Joe Face. The orator—Jimmy, no doubt, dressed in bartender shirtsleeves and a small black tie—stood to one side with a bowl of crumpled dollars on a chair, speaking to the recently departed.
Peter slunk in through a low window above the bar and crawled along the rafters, doing his best to stay silent and stick to the shadows. He edged forward to listen to the last words anyone would say to Joe Face.
“Didn’t leave behind no money,” Jimmy was saying, “and no fam’ly to speak of.” He cleared his throat, shifted nervously and continued. “We’re all ya had, Joey. An’ this…” Jimmy gestured outward, to the bowl of money, the sparse attendance, and the stained casket. “This here is the best we could do.”
Jimmy reached down and took the bowl, lifted it in his hands, and presented it to Joe’s body, as if the dead thug might accept the cash and stuff it in the pocket of his faded jeans. “We got up a collection for ya, Joey. Figured…figured the least we owed ya was a decent box an’ a piece of ground. Maybe someday… maybe someday somebody’ll do the same for—”
Jimmy glanced up then, reacting by instinct. He’d sensed Spider-Man’s presence, and when he looked up, so did the others. Each saw the blood red of his costume, bright white of his eyes, and deep, rich black of his emblem blending with shadows that had failed to keep him from notice.
“Holy jeez,” Jimmy sputtered. “It’s…it’s…”
He couldn’t finish, struck dumb as Peter slowly dropped from a thinning webline. Spider-Man. None of the patrons could get the name out of their mouths. Most of them, scared and shocked to find the hero in their midst, started running for the door. Joe Face had been scared, too. The man would shake whenever Spider-Man approached him for information or to bust him for some crime. Joe used to run, like his former friends were running now, running from a masked nightmare.
Peter reacted to their cowardly retreat; landing before Joe Face’s casket, he pivoted and fired a thread at the door, webbing it shut. Joe’s associates turned in horror, waiting for Spider-Man’s blows and quips to begin.
But Peter was in no mood. This bleak affair, after all, was a funeral. And besides: Spider-Man was a mask, a myth. A lie.
“Stop!” Peter cried. “I didn’t come looking for trouble.”
The barflies hesitated, waiting for a dirty trick, but Peter didn’t plan to play the hero tonight— because that’s all he ever really did. Sure, it would be great if putting on the costume miraculously changed the man beneath, turned him into someone else. But it couldn’t; it didn’t. Beneath Spider-Man’s mask—a mask even he sometimes feared—was just plain old, everyday Peter Parker. Just a man, like the dead man in the box behind him. Just like Ned.
And in the end, Peter thought, maybe he did care about Joe Face.
He held out his hands, beckoning the crooks as he crouched next to the rickety pine coffin. “I just came to say goodbye.” He turned away, facing the deceased, preparing to pay his respects.
The men drifted back from the door, then started circling the hero and the corpse. One of them— balding, red-faced and sweating, a criminal lifer if Peter had ever seen one—pulled a handgun from beneath his coat and allowed a hungry sneer to spread across his face. Jimmy caught the motion and reached out to stop the man, hissing a warning that Peter could have heard from New Jersey.
“Harry, no—!”
“You kiddin’? I nail that wall-crawlin’ freak and my rep’s made in this town!”
Harry approached his target, coming up on Spider-Man’s back. As his shoes creaked on the warped floorboards of Jimmy’s pub, Peter whirled around and pointed a finger at the gun—the threat implicit in the blank, staring whites of his eyes.
Harry stumbled, fell back against a chair and sat down with a grunt.
Peter turned his hand, pressed two fingers to his palm. He raised it toward Harry and snapped out a warning of his own: “Don’t. Even. Try.”
Harry, sweating more than before, dropped the gun and raised his hands in surrender.
Peter nodded, then reached into the waist of his costume to pull away a small stack of crumpled bills. He placed it in Joe Face’s donation bowl and pointed at Jimmy in explanation. “A decent box and a piece of ground.”
Jimmy nodded, along with a few of the crooks. But not a single one stepped forward to share in consolation, to accept the masked hero into their time of grief.
Wouldn’t want to get too close to the “wall-crawling freak,” would you? Wouldn’t want to find out that he’s as human as you are? As fragile as the common man…as vulnerable and ordinary as Joe Face?
As scared of dying?
Peter thought about that as he swung away from Jimmy’s, leaving the criminals to their wake. He sped across town to his Chelsea apartment, preoccupied by death and loss.
Yesterday, Ned Leeds. Today, Joe Face. And tomorrow…Aunt May? Mary Jane?
Me?
Peter swung down through the strengthening rain, landing on the skylight above his place, grateful to crawl out of the terrible, portentous weather and into the welcoming warmth of his cramped, familiar apartment. He stripped away his costume and hung it over the closet door—mentally remin
ding himself to wash it as soon as possible—and fell onto his bed with a sigh of relief, gathering the blanket to his chest as he let the day settle and his thoughts run away.
Funny, Peter thought, I’m out there facing death every day, but I never think about it. I suppose I don’t let myself, because if I did, I might never sling another web.
He stared at the incandescent glow of the room’s single, dangling lightbulb and blinked away the moisture stubbornly clinging to his hair and eyelashes. So many people I love have died before their time, he thought. Uncle Ben, Gwen, now Ned…do I think that I’m somehow immune?
He idly searched the room, then noticed a familiar, glistening network of webs filling one corner. A tiny, black spider worked its way down the wall, headed in his direction. He lifted his hand, preparing to swat the spider by force of habit, but then stopped.
I’m going to die.
He dropped his hand, slowly and contemplatively. The spider scuttled away, back toward the shuddering glow of the room’s only light. Peter blinked twice, shuddered, and reached to turn it off.
I’m going to die.
But not yet.
Peter dragged the blanket over his head, turned to the right, and closed his eyes. His exhausted mind reeled with caskets and criminals; he tried to sleep, but found himself tossing and turning for hours, haunted and hunted by the night’s events.
FIVE
CHRISTINA sprinted across Sixteenth Street, barely watching where she ran, holding a sodden Bugle over her head in an effort to keep the storm at bay. Purse dangling from her shoulder, she dodged passing cars and avoided puddles with the innate instincts of a native New Yorker.
