"Let's wake the dead, baby!"

The souped-up black Corvette roared down the main road of the cemetery, gravel blasting out from under its tires, spraying every which way. A few squirrels, foraging for food, frantically scrambled for the nearest trees as the car, its double headlights flaring, cut hard to the right. Its rear fishtailed around and the wheels spun on dirt and grass for a moment before once again finding purchase on the narrow pathway.

The road was intended for slow, stately processions: a hearse, followed by limos or regular cars bearing grieving and stricken friends and family. It wasn't designed for hot rods and fast turns, but the driver and passengers of the midnight 'Vette couldn't have cared less. They were too busy laughing at the top of their lungs, blaring the horn and gunning the engine so enthusiastically that it seemed as if they would fulfill their stated purpose and cause the deceased to rise up in protest.

Their names were Tyler, Keith, and Daniel, and they were flying high. They'd just come from a ball game over at the stadium in Flushing. It had been an extra-innings nail-biter that the home team had managed to pull out of the fire at the last moment, and the boys were pretty liquored up, so they were feeling good about baseball in general and themselves in particular.

The 'Vette had a small ding in the rear bumper but otherwise was in perfect working order. Tyler, at the wheel, had decided he wanted to open her up, and one of the best places to do that was the main drag outside the local cemetery, since it wasn't especially well traveled at night. As they had driven past, however, they'd noticed that only a single padlock, hanging on a heavy chain, was keeping the large wrought iron gates closed. A quick clipping with a pair of cutters that Tyler kept stashed in the trunk, and moments later they had the moonlit cemetery all to themselves.

The guys looked fairly alike. They all had their heads shaved down to a razor cut, and they had similarly large and sloped brows that indicated considerably advanced cranial capacity... if one happened to be a Cro-Magnon. Keith was wearing sunglasses, ignoring the fact that it was pitch-black out.

They were, however, easily distinguishable, one from the other, through their facial markings. Keith's face was smeared with solid blue makeup, while Tyler was wearing orange. These coincided with the official colors of their favorite baseball team, and they had festooned their faces as a mark of solidarity. Daniel had simply shaved all his hair off, down to the roots.

Tyler screeched toward an intersection, hesitated only a moment, then cut hard left. The roar of the engine filled the cemetery, barely drowning out the joyful howling of the guys in the car. Hard left again, and then right, tearing all over the place like the ghost of a driver killed in a high-speed crash.

Shooting off the road, the 'Vette hurtled across a row of graves. Daniel suddenly encountered a slight decline of nerves, and from the minimal backseat into which he was crunched, he pounded on Tyler's shoulder.

"Knock it off, man, this ain't funny!"

"They're dead, man, whatta they care?" Tyler shot back.

"Yeah, man, let the man drive!" said Keith, who was riding shotgun but had twisted around to face Daniel.

Suddenly the 'Vette slammed to a halt. It didn't happen with a screech of tires or an abrupt shuddering of medal. It just stopped, as if it had hit a brick wall, except somehow the front wasn't caved in.

"Tyler, you can't drive worth spit!" howled Keith.

"I didn't do it!" Tyler shouted in protest.

"You're drivin', man!"

"I didn't do it!" he repeated. "Something's holding us! Look!" He slammed his foot onto the gas pedal and the engine roared. The car drifted from one side to the other, the tires chewing up dirt, but otherwise it didn't move.

The full moon, which had been illuminating the graveyard, now drifted behind a bank of clouds, and the night air seemed even more chill.

"I'm getting out to see what's goin' on." Tyler unlocked the door and pushed against it. Then he pushed again. "The door won't open."

Keith tried to shove open the door on his side and had no more luck. "Okay, man, this is screwed up...."

Suddenly Daniel pointed with trembling finger. "Wh... what's that? What the hell is that?!"

Something -- some sort of strange, grayish strands were covering the side windows and the windshield. They were blind. Blind and trapped.

"There's something out there!" shouted Daniel.

"Oh, really? Y'think?!" Keith, the oldest, tried to sound sarcastic, but it only came out scared.

Daniel's mind was racing. "It's... it's a monster! Some kind of alien bug creature! It's wrapping us in a cocoon, to eat us later!"

Tyler twisted around to stare at his friend. "What're you, stupid?!" But the truth was that he'd been thinking the exact same thing; he'd just been too panicked and felt like too much of a jerk to say anything.

That was when the car started to shake violently. The guys screamed, cried out, shouted for someone -- anyone -- to help them as the car rocked from one side to the other.

Tyler let out a scream that they could have heard on the other side of the Whitestone Bridge, even as he shoved the car back into drive. And then, with a rending of metal, they were free, the rear bumper having been torn clean off.

The main gate still hung open, and they barreled through it at top speed, honking the horn like mad, which was fortunate since it was the only thing that kept them from smearing themselves along the side of an oncoming truck transporting -- appropriately enough -- beer. The truck slammed to a halt as the 'Vette darted around it. Before long the smell of burning rubber and the frightened cries of the trespassers faded from the night air.

In the cemetery, all was still.

Then a figure clad in blue and red emerged from the branches of one of the large oak trees, so dark that it seemed as if one of the shadows had separated and come to life. He moved so silently that the absence of sound would have prompted any onlooker to think that maybe he wasn't there at all.

His body was muscular but, at the same time, extremely well proportioned, and he moved with a lithe, skittering grace that seemed barely human. His gloves and boots were dark red, as was the design that spread up his chest and down his arms. His mask was the same color but was interrupted by two eyepieces that were impenetrable from the outside. Indeed, anyone looking at him would have wondered how in the world he was able to see at all.

Thin black web patterns covered all the scarlet areas of the costume. And on his chest, just over his solar plexus, there was the design of a spider with its legs outstretched. Had he simply been standing up, walking along down a main thoroughfare in the middle of the day, arms swinging casually at his sides, he might have looked like a circus refugee. But here, in the still of the night, with only the eyepieces visible as the moon once again darted behind the shadows, he looked more like a spider himself, in human form, spit out by dark forces which ordinary mortals could never even begin to comprehend except in their deepest nightmares.

He dropped to the ground, still noiseless, and surveyed the area which had -- so short a time ago -- been the scene of unbridled pandemonium. Looking at the tire tracks that scarred the earth, he shook his head and mentally scolded himself for not having arrived sooner and, therefore, having done more.

"But then... that's always the way, isn't it," he said softly.

As much as he might berate himself for not having arrived sooner, at least he had arrived just in time. The path of the racing 'Vette would have taken it directly across the one gravesite in the cemetery that was important to him. His intervention had prevented that, bringing the speeding car up short. And hopefully the lamebrains who'd been in the thing would never, ever, so much as think about setting foot in the place again.

Still so silent, silent as a ghost, silent as the grave, the masked man walked over to the headstone that was his destination, then crouched in front of it.

"Hey," he said softly in greeting. "Did you see them run? Pretty good show, huh?"

He reached gingerly toward the headstone and ran his fingers over the letters. "Least you've got a good view. That's what the guy at the funeral home promised; that you'd have a good view. Paid extra for it. But it was worth it." He paused there for a moment longer, as if uncertain what to say, or even why he had come by in the first place. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "I... I should have come by and spoken with you sooner. I know I haven't been by for a while. But I... I wasn't sure what to say. How to start the conversation, y'know. But... here, check this out. I figured this would be an icebreaker." He stood and turned in place, his arms outstretched to either side, like a runway model. "Like the outfit? I figure to make the best-and worst-dressed lists, all at the same time. And the pecs... not bad, huh?" and he flexed to prove his point. "I mean, okay, I'm no Arh-nuld, or even Kevin Sorbo, but I've come a long way, right? Not the way you figured I'd end up, right? I guess..." The jocularity began to fade. "I guess... neither of us ended up the way we thought we would, huh."

Then the masked man took a step back and placed one hand on his chest as if in surprise.

"Who am I, you ask?" he said in mock astonishment, as if a voice had addressed him from the grave. Then he leaned forward and continued in a surprisingly conversational tone. "You sure you wanna know? The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody said it was a happy little tale... if somebody told you I was just your average, ordinary guy, not a care in the world..."

Then his voice choked for a moment, and he forced himself onward, "...then somebody lied."

Struggling to pull himself together again, to recapture the carefree air of joie de vivre that typified his costumed persona, he flipped over so that he was doing a handstand with his left hand only. "Mine," he called out, like a ringmaster encouraging all onlookers to listen in, as if he were addressing all the other graves within hearing, "is a tale of pain and sorrow, longing and heartache, anger and betrayal. And that just covers the high school years. But let me assure you, this... like any story worth telling... is all about a girl...."

Except... in the beginning... there had been no girl. There had just been the pain and sorrow... and the loss...

...and the spider....