"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of a great man."

Ron Middleton bowed his head. As did the rest of the five-hundred-plus people packed shoulder to shoulder around him. Even the two dozen cameramen behind the crowd all dipped their shoulders a bit, but not so much as to jar their equipment. All across the city, soft tears rolled down the cheeks of countless urbanites as they regarded the live broadcasts on their television screens. For a long moment, Harbour City united in silence to commemorate the passing of the man it knew as Raymundo Zuleta.

Middleton shrugged his shoulders, eliciting several soft pops from the aging joints, as the reverend continued, his firm tenor voice resonating through the few strategically placed loudspeakers. The priest was an elderly man, but not so old as to appear enfeebled, and his robes were lavish and flowing, far more extravagant than any basic funerary garb. His appearance echoed the graveyard's. Behind the old cleric, the face of the great marble mausoleum was hidden behind a veritable wall of floral arrangements, some fifty feet wide and twenty feet high. It was a spectacle. The cameramen were crowded in close behind the innumerable mass of black figures facing the altar and the closed coffin beneath it, their rigs craning high in order to capture the scene in all its macabre splendor. A group of over fifty of the deceased's closest friends joined a dozen more church representatives seated behind the large podium at the front of the crowd. The minister gesticulated in melodramatic sorrow as he proclaimed the rites. A ceremony fit for a king.

Middleton himself proved to be just another face in the crowd. He had come alone, and so stood, near the back. Rockwell had refused to join him. Actually, Rockwell had not even given his friend the opportunity for an invite. Mitch had been withdrawn for the few days since Zuleta's brutal murder at the hands of the bloodthirsty Spyder, and had not answered his phone for at least the past twenty-four hours that Middleton had been trying to contact him. It worried the detective. In his mind, but more importantly, in his soul, it worried him.

However, Mitch Rockwell was about the only law-abiding citizen that Middleton knew who was not in attendance at the massive funeral. Mayor Briggs was seated conspicuously in the chair nearest the minister on the right, and he was looking decidedly mournful. His second chin bubbled in all its glory as he tucked his jaw down towards his neck and focused his completely dry eyes to the ground. Foster was seated next to Briggs, sitting perfectly erect as usual, yet wearing an expression of sadness so earnest that it inadvertently exposed Briggs' own false sentiment. Interestingly, opposite Briggs, on the minister's left, former Commissioner Will Gorman sat sniffling, his eyes wet with grief. Middleton hadn't been aware of Gorman's friendship with Zuleta.

In the front row of the public multitude, current Commissioner Jeff Ross stood in full uniform with his head bowed in respect alongside nearly every ranking officer in the HCPD. Almost the entire remainder of the police force, Middleton noted, dotted the crowd. At the back, though still a ways off to the side of him, Middleton recognized Amie Paige and Ian Thorpe standing with what must have been over half of the Tribune's staff. The rest of their work force was no doubt watching the funeral at the Trib offices on one of the countless channels broadcasting the event, even as they swiftly compiled some type of special funeral coverage for the next morning's edition. Some of them may have even slipped unnoticed into the ranks of the mourners during the city-spanning parade which had begun at Raymundo Zuleta's private estate on the South Side, and had concluded at All Saints' Cemetery. Street sweepers would be busy for hours cleaning up the roses.

Middleton sighed, feeling the sweat drip down his forehead. The end of the rainstorm had brought with it the first true heat of the newly arrived Australian summer, just in time for everyone in the city to dress in heavy black and march out into the open foothills at the city's edge. He desperately wanted to at least remove his jacket. Middleton bit his tongue as he thought of cursing the weather, deciding against it considering his location.

The detective's eyes drifted hopelessly as he noticed the priest sprinkling the coffin with water. Sobs pierced the still, sweltering air, but all Middleton could think of was how refreshing that splash of water would be. The sun glared down upon them all spitefully, indifferent to the mourning city. There had to be shade to retreat to somewhere nearby, Middleton mused, discreetly turning to glance over the rest of the cemetery. Someplace in the shade. A little cooler, a little darker. Darker...

The dark black trenchcoat seemed to bleed forth, to grow up from the shaded ground into a slender, ominous form which stood quietly under the distant willow. Middleton tensed, almost gasping. He blinked several times, expunging a shallow, haggard breath, hoping to dismiss the vision as a trick of the heat. It couldn't be...No, it was just an elaborate headstone, that's all. A mirage. But the dark figure in the flowing black trenchcoat stirred then, drawing a hand slowly to his chin in deliberate contemplation, and Ron Middleton realized that his eyes truly did not deceive him. The mysterious specter looked on intently, despite his great distance, basking in both the comfort of the shade and the embrace of his strangely appropriate surroundings. The ghost returned to the graveyard. He looked so very at home.

The detective's sweat rolled more freely as he grew entirely oblivious to the funeral ceremony. His senses were all trained, all lost, on one thing. He could not make out the other's features, but Middleton's heart beat as though the distant sentinel were leering at him from not more than a foot away. Middleton did not need to see any of the man's face to know his identity. The other's presence alone, and more so the gnawing fear dredged from the depths of one's soul by this presence, was identifiable enough. Despite the summer sun, Ron Middleton shuddered, even as the specter lingered for a moment before turning languidly and strolling away, his coat gently trailing behind him like the flickering remnants of a dying fire.

"Damn you, Spyder...God damn you."

Even in a graveyard, Middleton would curse the Spyder.

THE SPYDER:
"Ghosts In The Graveyard"
By Bill Castonzo

"...not a dry eye in Harbour City this morning as Father Peter Fitzsimmons delivered one last blessing over the casket. Here we see the end of what proved to be a ceremony of both unparalleled beauty and immeasurable sadness as the pallbearers slowly slid the casket of one of Harbour's greatest philanthropists and citizens into its final resting place in Saint Paul's Mausoleum at All Saint's cemetery. Raymundo Lucio Zuleta was thirty seven years old."

"Certainly a terrible tragedy Robin, thanks. Meanwhile, Raymundo Zuleta's murderer, the elusive vigilante known as 'The Spyder', is still at large, and has been very active in the few days since Mister Zuleta's death. There have been countless reported sightings of the wraith-like figure, oftentimes nothing more than the wisp of a trenchcoat or the soft patter of feet on a rooftop, while the Harbour City Police Department attributes an astounding total of seventeen killings, all of either convicted or alleged criminals, to the Spyder in just the past four days. While Police Commissioner Jeffrey Ross declined comment this morning following the ceremony, Mayor Leo Briggs, now uncontested in his re-election campaign, expressed his concern over the current Spyder situation..."

"Of course everyone at City Hall is still grieving over the terrible, terrible tragedy of the loss of a great Harbourian in Raymundo Zuleta. However, through the grief, we remain keenly acute of the danger still poised by this so-called vigilante the Spyder, and you have my assurances that our diligent police department is devoting every ounce of available manpower and attention on apprehending this heinous fiend."

"Well, that's quite an eloquent statement, Walter..."

"Exactly as we've come to expect from his honor, though, eh Robin? Heh heh...Well, coming up in sports..."

* * *

"One minute Miss Paige!"

Amie Paige turned towards the dressing room door, giving a firm nod to the blank space which the show's assistant producer had briefly occupied. The door was already shut before Paige could even utter a response. She closed her mouth before any sound squeaked out, and swallowed hard, a maneuver which had proven most painful over the course of the past four days. She turned back to the large, well-lit mirror, pushing aside her wince as she leaned forward. Despite the layers of base and powder, the knotted purple flesh was still glaringly visible underneath her chin. She craned her head back a little, the stretch causing the bruise to throb with nearly as much pain as the swallow had.

"Fuck..." she rasped through gritted teeth, cautiously poking at the skin with two slender fingers. She relaxed her neck a bit as those same fingers reached down to the desk top, plucking a soft, sponge-like applicator from a dish of skin-tone powder. She dabbed the concealer on her neck, desperately wishing away the memento of her encounter with the Spyder at the Hotel Continental. She had only thirty seconds before they came for her, and she knew that once she left her dressing room, whatever she looked like was what the viewers of a nationally broadcast talk show would see.

She went over what Thorpe had told her several times in her head. She had to make sure to include the Tribune in as many of her responses as she could. And since her article was being reprinted in the Sunday edition, she couldn't give away enough content so as to make the viewers feel as though they didn't have to buy the paper to get the story. Everybody was looking to capitalize on her success, she thought contemptuously to herself.

From Ian Thorpe to Regina Darling.

"Miss Paige, we need you on the set! Let's go!"

Amie nodded, standing from her chair before the assistant producer had the chance to physically lift her from it, and gave one last dissatisfied glance in the mirror before being literally dragged from the small room.

* * *

"...My first guest tonight hails from Harbour City, and is one of the city's most respected investigative journalists. After bursting onto the national media scene in 1996 with her award-winning expose on Harbour City's dark vigilantes the Grim Knight and Raven, she has since molded herself a fabulous career as the Harbour City Tribune's top reporter, and has once again wowed a nation with a remarkably in-depth 'scoop' detailing the events leading up to Harbour City's mayoral candidate Raymundo Zuleta's recent murder at the hands of the newly resurfaced vigilante the Spyder. Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Miss Amie Paige."

"Slut," Middleton spat at the television screen before coughing out a few surprised laughs between his potato chips. "Ha! Lovely my ass...Look at that fuckin' goider of a bruise..."

"Amie, it's great to have you. This is your first time here on Not Tonight, Darling, isn't it?"

"Yes, Regina, it sure is."

"Well, again, it's fabulous to have you here. You look great!"

"Oh...Oh, thank you. So do you!"

"Aw, thanks. So let's talk about this new article. The Harbour City Tribune went through, what was it, four...Four printings?...and sold out every single copy. And now I hear that the article is being reprinted as a special addendum to the Sunday edition's full section tribute to Raymundo Zuleta. And did I hear correctly, that you're in negotiations for a book deal?"

"Yeah, actually, I've been contacted by a few publishers."

"God damn it..." Middleton muttered, swallowing the large ball of potato matter held in his cheeks. "She's trying to get rich off of a fucking tragedy like this..."

"Now, as good as this article was, it's not the full story, is it? You were actually far more embroiled in this investigation than your article might have let on, weren't you?"

"Uuh, yes, I actually accompanied the primary investigators. I was with them during the attack at the Hotel Continental."

"God, yes! Face to face with the Spyder! Tell me, Amie, what was that like...?"

Middleton watched in amused anticipation as Amie Paige hesitated, a solemn expression glazing over her lowered eyes as she searched for the words. For a moment, Middleton found himself quizzically sympathetic to the young woman. Almost kindred in their thoughts. He shook the distasteful notion violently from his mind, rubbing hard, almost painfully, at the bridge of his nose.

"It was...probably the most frightening moment of my life."

The young reporter bit her lower lip as she looked pleadingly with wetted eyes to Regina Darling for affirmation.

"I...I'd imagine," Darling responded, struggling with the thin line between compassion and moving the show along. "How close did you actually come to him...?"

Paige reached for her throat, delicately brushing her manicured fingertips across the thick layer of cover-up. Her expression was distant.

"Close...So close" she whispered. "He...I've never seen anyone move so fast. He was...In such control, you know? They all say he's insane, but being so close to him, you know he's not. He's so...So huge...Not that he's big like a super or anything. But he's tall, and well-built, and is just so very, very intense...His eyes. God, those eyes...It's frightening, really. It's frightening to look at him because, like I said, he's just, like, a...a tyrant. Every movement he makes, so fluid, so fast, so strong. No uncertainty. So powerful. Through all the chaos at the hotel that day, through the screams and the gunfire, and being confronted by who knows how many armed men...It's just, you always knew who was in control. It's not just his physicality, but his presence...His...His essence. It's unbelievable. The police, the media, even Raymundo Zuleta himself...None of them were in control of that situation...It was all him. Just him. He knew every single move before he even made it...So fast, so lethal...So scary..."

Ron Middleton felt a chill run down his spine as Amie Paige rasped those last words, her tearing eyes boring straight into the camera. It was that kind of shiver which coaxes a cold sweat. That terrible feeling you get when lying awake late at night, denied of the sleep you so desperately crave, when every sound echoes forever through the buried recesses of your subconscious, stirring visions of the damned and the dark. A scuffle here. A creak there. When the shadows bleed and darken, and the night becomes cold, and you swear you feel the breath of ghouls heating the nape of your neck. That unmistakable hidden sense that every human is cursed with, to know when something foul is watching you from somewhere beyond the veil of the living. Watching you...Knowing you...Invading you...

"Jesus," Middleton coughed, expunging the sulfurous lump in his throat and darting for the light switch on the nearby wall. Sacred illumination fell over the shifting shadows of the apartment's claustrophobic living room, and Middleton felt the hot tears seep back into his eyes. He exhaled deeply, realizing he had to pee.

"God damn it," he cursed softly, the soft tinkling echoing in the small bathroom. He never could figure out why he always closed the bathroom door, despite living alone. Just a gesture of decency his mother had programmed him with long ago. Strange...He just always felt much more comfortable with the door closed while he did his business. The door closed. The door closed.

It was only as the last bit of liquid dribbled from his body that he realized that the shiver had returned. Goosebumps bubbled across the surface of his skin as he found himself staring intensely at the blank wooden face of the closed bathroom door.

Did he hear something?

Shiver. His lips twisted at the unwelcome sensation. No...He couldn't have heard anything.

He didn't hear anything.

Not even the television.

Nothing.

Silence.

He absently pulled his boxers back to his waist as he crept away from the unflushed toilet, towards the door which threatened to suck his eyeballs from his head.

The floor creaked.

Loudly.

"Shit," Middleton winced, freezing in place. His gun was in the other room.

With gritted teeth and a terribly trembling hand, he reached for the door handle.

Inch...

By...

Inch.

He didn't want to open it. But he knew he had to. His hand was shaking so hard in its perch just above the handle that he nearly knocked on the door in his spasms. He withdrew it quickly, clutching it with his other hand as though he had just touched the surface of a searing hot tea kettle. He hesitated for a moment, regarding the handle as though it was some defiant bully, mocking him, threatening him. He bit his lower lip and reached again.

"...We're back with Amie Paige, reporter f-"

The TV. Must have just been a quiet commercial, that's all. Though faint, Regina Darling's sweet voice was still audible through the bathroom door. Relieved, Middleton rubbed the sweat from his palms, flushing his urine and running his hands under a stream of cool water. He splashed a bit on his face.

"Snap out of it," he chuckled to himself, vigorously rubbing at his heavily stubbled chin. He turned, grasping the door handle firmly.

The room was black.

"We need to talk."

Ron Middleton screamed.

* * *

"Why are you no longer working on my case?"

The gun which shone clearly through the water on the opposite side of the glass from him, however, was not to be appreciated quite so readily.

"I asked to be removed," he answered wearily, his voice digging lower through the octave scale than even his eyes did through the water.

"And Mitchell?"

"Look, Ross invited both of us to remain on the case until it was solved. Briggs even OK'd rehirin' Rock. Neither one of us bit."

"Where is Mitchell?"

"How the fuck should I know?"

"Calm down, Middleton. You haven't talked to him?"

Middleton's eyes rose, meeting the other's. That shiver again.

"No," he stated defiantly, despite himself.

The Spyder looked into him with a skeptical leer and instantly Middleton's eyes nervously shifted back to his water.

"Have a drink."

"No thanks," Middleton replied softly.

The Spyder reclined a bit from the table, his face falling thankfully further into shadow. The automatic weapon rested complacently on the table, directly between them, its handle towards the vigilante, its barrel pointed directly at the haggard black detective, daring the man to try something. Regina Darling's smiling face flashed in stark contrast to the rest of the scene in the dark apartment.

"Why haven't y-"

"I saw you at Zuleta's funeral yesterday," Middleton interrupted, struggling against his emotions. He eyed the gun on the table slyly, but knew he had no chance of wielding the weapon against the Spyder's reflexes. He clenched his teeth in his frustration. "Who the fuck are you, god damn it? Dale Steffens? Daniel Stockholm? Raymundo Zuleta?! You said I needed to find out who fucking Raymundo Zuleta was...Who the fuck was he, Spyder?! God damn it, who did we bury yesterday?!"

A long silence.

The grotesque arachnid clutching at the Spyder's black face seemed to bleed forth from the darkness as the vigilante leaned forward. Middleton forced himself not to look away.

"He was the leader of the Red Jesters."

Middleton was taken aback.

"Jesus Christ."

The detective sat wide-eyed for a long moment, expecting more from the Spyder. The vigilante sat in patient silence. They locked eyes.

"His name, Spyder! God damn it, all tests on the body showed up Raymundo Zuleta! But you know what? I don't buy it...You and I both know that YOU are the original Raymundo Zuleta. I'll believe that. And I guess...For him to be the leader of the Red Jesters, that does make sense. And for him to have thoroughly faked as much as he did to create an identity he could use to run for mayor of the fucking city, that tells me that something in the government stinks real, real bad. But you know?...Before I start worrying about any of that shit...I need to know his real, fucking, name!"

Another silence, longer this time. Black eyes peered forth in stoic contemplation from behind that spider. "I don't know it."

"Bullshit! That's bullshit! Fine, you don't know his fucking name?! Then why in the fuck did he slaughter your ex-wife?! Huh?!" Middleton roared, pounding at the table. The water in the glass rippled.

The Spyder winced, shifting forwards. Middleton's words were chosen carefully. But he was stupid to think he could use psychology to manipulate the vigilante into losing his control. The inherent lack of respect alone almost angered the Spyder. Almost.

"A vendetta," the Spyder replied calmly, folding his hands upon the table. "He was insane. Looking for retribution because I had crippled his syndicate."

"But how the fuck did he know who your wife was, you cryptic sonuvabitch?! Huh?! How the fuck did he know who you really were?!" Middleton demanded, standing now, knocking into the table and causing the water glass to totter and the gun to rattle.

No response.

"God damn it, Daniel!! Do you remember when we first met?! Do you?! At Mitch's house? Christ, you've been in Mitch's house...Fucking shit, do you remember that?! Well I knew Beth too, you fuck! I fucking knew Beth too, Daniel! Shit, Daniel's not even your real name, is it...?! Is it?!"

"No."

"Fuck! You bastard! God damn it!" Middleton screamed, wildly flailing his upper body about, his cheeks wet with streaming tears. The Spyder casually eyed the gun, still resting near the wobbly water glass. Middleton pounded at the table again. The glass skipped a quarter inch, but settled, still upright. "I knew Beth too, god damn it! I was her friend!! So answer me, you fucker..."

Middleton jabbed an accusatory finger through the air, directly into the Spyder's face, his body knocking into the table as he thrust his weight forward.

"...Who murdered your fucking ex-wife?!"

The glass shattered loudly as it fell. The water covered one side of the small table in an instant. The Spyder lowered his eyes. Tense seconds passed.

His response was almost inaudible.

"The Grim Knight."

"What did you just say?" Middleton gasped.

Louder now, as he raised his dark eyes to meet Middleton's.

"The Grim Knight. He was the Grim Knight."

"We'll be right back," Regina Darling chirped.

Middleton staggered, his finger lowered limply to his side and his mouth hanging open. He glared at the Spyder.

"You fucking liar..." the detective spat contemptuously.

"Why do you think Raven was seen only with me towards the end of the Red Jester siege?" the Spyder answered with a humoring patience, expectant of Middleton's utter disgust. "There was a warehouse explosion about three weeks before Beth's murder. The Grim Knight faked his own death to get me off his trail. Left Raven behind as a witness. The poor bastard Liebowitz had no idea about any of it. He didn't have me fooled though. Beth had, of course, already left me by this time. And in case you were curious, yes, she knew. She knew I was the Spyder. Naturally, it's why we broke up...She couldn't take me being out there like I was, risking myself all the time. I had sworn to myself that the Jester case would be my last. And...And I had told it to the Grim Knight before I had discovered him for the bastard he was. I let him get too close, Ron. Fuck...He used it against me. I found him out, I destroyed the Jesters, and I beat him within an inch of his life...And then I just left him for the cops. Because it was over for me. I was done...For Beth. But god damn it he used it against me."

"No..No..." Middleton muttered, not wanting to believe his ears as the Spyder pressed on unemotionally.

"He killed them. Somhow...That entire squadron of murdered cops...It wasn't me, Middleton. It was him. He made it back to Beth's house before I got there. I wasn't in a rush...I thought it was over. I f-"

The Spyder dipped his head and tensed his neck, sucking in air through clenched teeth.

"I fuuuhh-...Fuck, I found, I found her d-...I found her. I saw him. And. And I knew it wasn't over. I knew as long as I went on living it could never be over. So I put it on again, the costume. I chased him to the roof where you found me, again, just a few days ago. I thought I killed him. No...No, I did kill him. God damn it...How...Fuck, how did he-?"

The Spyder fell silent, lost in his own confusion.

"And then you turned yourself in, realizing it was the only way you could...escape. Escape the madness," Middleton finished sullenly. "Damn it. Jesus fucking Christ. Why didn't you tell them, Daniel? Why didn't you tell them it was all the Grim Knight? You let them believe it was you, all along!"

"It was a private score, Ron. Personal business. It didn't matter in the end, so I refused to let Harbour City suffer in the revelations. It was over for me regardless, and besides that, I couldn't bear to put others' in Beth's life at risk from those trying to get at me. Her death was more than enough itself."

"Others...?" Middleton mused. "Jesus, you mean me and Rock."

The Spyder was silent.

"I knew there was a reason you never killed us," Middleton continued.

"I don't work that way, Ron," the Spyder replied, a hint of disgust in his tone.

"We...You...still can't prove any of this," Middleton stated softly. "There's no way you can prove any of this."

"You're wrong."

Middleton and the Spyder locked sideways stares. The water from the broken glass dribbled softly to the carpet.

"You said it, Ron. 'Something in the government stinks real bad'. There's a web of corruption here that runs deeper than even the Grim Knight himself might have known. Oh, there's a way to take down the Knight, even in death."

"You can't be serious, Daniel," Middleton gasped. "You can't take on an entire city...Fuck, maybe even an entire country..."

"I've been away too long," the Spyder rasped with a new found conviction. He rose, almost jumped, from his chair, disgusted with himself. He turned away from Middleton, into the darkness. "God damn it. I was weak, Ron. I was fucking weak. For once in my life...I let them down. Damn it."

The Spyder's head dropped shamefully. Middleton studied him, every word the vigilante uttered leaving him more and more speechless.

"Never again," the Spyder suddenly growled, snapping his eyes back up. "Never fucking again. I knew I could never escape this...So I tried to bury it, push it aside...Like a coward! A coward!"

The Spyder's voice, however savage, however powerful, still rang unmistakably with the tears which moistened his cowl. He gazed out Middleton's open window, feeling the cool ocean air swell in his lungs.

"Things have festered out of control in my absence...This city rots. It cries out for me. I cast it aside, I forsook it, yet still it cries out for me, longs for me! I'm back, damn it! I'm back, risen from Hell!"

The dark vigilante almost cackled at his own words.

"Why Daniel?" Middleton asked softly from behind. "Why do you do it?"

The Spyder turned. The detective looked to him with achingly pleading eyes, seeking the answer to the most timeless, yet most simple, of all questions. Why?

The gun still rested harmlessly on the table in front of him.

The Spyder marched purposefully back from the shadows, gliding with his legendary grace through the darkness. In one fell swipe of his arm he collected and holstered his firearm, sweeping the tails of his fluttery trenchcoat along in his wake.

"Why, Middleton?" he asked in return, pulling the fedora tight down around the mask. His voice rang with a chilling boldness. "Because I have no choice. Because I killed the devil when I was nine years old and have never looked back. Why do I do this, Ron?..."

He looked at the detective accusingly.

"...Because I'm the only one who makes a fucking difference."

Middleton tensed at the comment, momentarily stricken dumb by the vigilante's gall. The Spyder turned, slicing his way back through the shadows towards the window. Middleton rumbled after him, lunging for his shoulder. The Spyder spun, clamping a hand around Middleton's extended wrist and meeting the detective's defiant eyes.

"How dare you?" Middleton spat. "How dare you come into my home and tell me that my life has been worthless?!"

Angrily, the Spyder released his grip on Middleton and spun again, climbing into the open window frame.

"You think your way is the only way to do things, you fucking psycho?! To go around killing every poor kid who has to steal because his mother hasn't fed him in a week? Or fifteen-year-olds who join gangs because it's either that or have the gang kill their family? Huh? You think that's justice, you sick fucker?! The ends justifies the means?! That's bullshit, Spyder! That's bullshit!"

The Spyder simply scoffed at the tirade as he readied his grapple.

"You think you're the only one who can do any good just because you're willing to kill any goddamn thing that gets in your way?! You're no better than them! You're worse, god damn it! Fuck you, fuck you and all your goddamned swaggering pride, you sonuvabitch! Fuck you!!"

Without another word, the Spyder leapt into the embrace of Harbour's cool, dry night, his trenchcoat snapping madly behind him as he fell towards the pavement. The thin silver grapple line snaked forth from somewhere within the twisting blackness of his form. Ron Middleton leant out of his living room window, shouting with the voice of a thousand men at the fleeing specter.

"I'll show you what works, you bastard!! I'll show you what fucking works and who fucking can make a difference! I'm bringing you in, you maniac! Off your case?! Fuck that, Spyder! As far as I'm concerned, I haven't even fucking started!! Do you hear me?! I'm fucking bringing you in, you sonuvabitch...And I'll do it by the book!!"

* * *

Graveyards are a funny thing in the dark. Not funny like a joke. But that strange sort of funny...That unnerving feeling which makes you want to laugh simply to suppress the cold sweat and unnatural sensations both beading and beating upon your head. That sort of funny where, even as you smile, your eyebrows hang low and your tear ducts quiver and your vision seems unable to focus on any one thing for more than two seconds, never mind the fact that you can hear the earthworms burrowing beneath you, and feel each grain of dust which the breeze throws across your skin. Funny. Force yourself to laugh. Force yourself to laugh because it's just a graveyard...A simple human place. Hell, if you had been there just a few hours earlier, or a few hours later, in the light, you know you wouldn't be frightened. It might even be a sad place for you, a respectable place, a holy place. No goblins, no ghouls, no ghosts. So laugh. Laugh at the darkened graveyard. Graveyards are, after all, a funny thing in the dark.

Mitchell Rockwell was not laughing.

He spoke no words but his eyes confessed volumes. The soft light of the lanterns which dotted the walkways through All Saints cast his shadow in deep darkness over the headstone he regarded, making the faded text nearly indiscernible. But he knew what it said. He had read the inscriptions a thousand times over on a thousand different visits. The grass was hopelessly matted in reminiscence of his weight. He felt particularly heavy that day.

He had arrived at All Saints far before sunset. And he hadn't once smiled to the dark. He had never felt so burdened while visiting his sister's grave...So terrifyingly lost. But the tears, like the smiles, just would not come. He sought absolution, at least some sort of revelation, answers to his questions from some higher power. But he remained forsaken. All around him the shadows murmured their private conversations, but none dared disturb his melancholy communion with the grave...

...Save for one.

The other's silhouette seeped over the face of the headstone like a slow black liquid, claiming Rockwell's own shadow as merely a part of its whole. Surprised, the burly man jumped, whirling. Part of him knew who it was. Deep down inside, a buried piece of him recognized the familiar presence.

"Hello Mitchell."

His airy black trenchcoat seemed to roll about his person with a life of its own, conversing energetically between the shadows of his form and the shadows all around which seemed to embrace him. With the pale streetlamp at his back, his face fell also into darkness. Yet it was only darkness, extending from the wide brim of his hat, which masked this newcomer. Beyond the shadow, the features of his true face laid bare.

Rockwell froze. His mind essentially shocked his body into submission through the gale of countless conflicting emotions. He stood, speechless, staring the devil in the face. Staring HIS devil in the face.

"I'm unarmed, Mitchell. I've only come to pay my respects."

"You have...You have no right," Rockwell growled, wheezing on the words, breathing heavily through his nose as the words fought their way through his twisted lips.

"I loved her too," the other pleaded. "I loved her too."

"Shut up!" Rockwell snapped, lurching forward, fighting himself, struggling to bring his twisted hands forward in spastic, jerky motions in time with his breath. He staggered a bit, arms outstretched, fingers curled in an unmistakable choking position.

"You don't want to kill me, Mitchell. You know you don't want to kill me."

His voice did not flow with the strong, seductive manipulation it often would have when speaking those words. Instead, he sounded with an almost effeminate grace, a begging pity.

"God..." Rockwell coughed out, lowering his head. His inhales came in quick, loud wheezes, causing his hunched body to jerk. He was a wreck. A complete wreck. And the Spyder felt so very, very sorry for him.

"You know Mitchell, you know I always loved her. I never stopped loving her, up until the moment of her death."

"You...killed...her..." Rockwell sobbed, trying so hard to be angry and forceful through the resignedly despairing tears.

"I didn't. I could not...I would not even think of it...Ever."

"God damn it..." Rockwell murmured, smearing a combination of tears and mucous over his face with a trembling hand.

"She...She was..." the Spyder began whimsically. "You know, I never felt right, out of costume. You know that, Mitchell? I always felt...Always...like that was where I belonged, in my costume. That there was no other path my life could take. Even before...Before I felt the mask hug my face for the first time. I never..." The Spyder paused then, his voice sounding so very distant, and so longing. "I couldn't make friends. I never...I just...I would study people, observe them. And I didn't like what I saw, Mitchell. People as a whole, just created in me...Such spite, such distaste. I never felt like I needed anybody, never felt like another was worth the time of my friendship. I've seen people, Mitchell...I know people, know what they're capable of. I never desired to waste my time on anyone. In fact...It became almost frightening for me to do so. Without the mask, I could barely stand to be in the same room with them. With other people. They scared me...And the mask...It allowed me to deal with it because it turned the tables. The mask made them fear me. And I liked it...God did I like it when they feared me."

The Spyder bit his lower lip and scoffed a bit, blinking hard with his half-hearted laugh. He was crying.

"Beth and I, we met by accident," he continued, not knowing or caring if the sobbing Mitch even paid his words any attention. "Total chance. I was...I wasn't in costume, of course, when we met. But she...She didn't scare me, Mitchell. I wasn't afraid of her. I remember...I remember her brown eyes. They were dark, but not scary dark, just soft. They weren't so crisp and stark as those people with green eyes or blue eyes. They were just brown and so soft..."

"God, don't..." Rockwell sobbed, now on his knees, collapsed upon the earth of his sister's grave.

"It was the first time I had ever walked through a crowd, and not examined, not analyzed every single person I passed. I...I didn't even pay attention. I forgot about the Spyder. I stopped being afraid. She let me not be afraid of her...And her...I never once felt the need to scare her."

"Don't you get it...?" Rockwell growled then, the skin on his face suddenly tightening, causing the large throbbing vein in his forehead to protrude to the point where it looked as though it were going to burst. "Don't you see?! For all your fucking talk...She WAS afraid of you, Daniel! You DID scare her!!"

"But I didn't," the Spyder replied confidently, still feeling so sorry for Rockwell's delusions.

"Why do you think she left you, Daniel? Why?!"

"She couldn't take the stress anymore," the Spyder answered simply. "She couldn't deal with the thought of me being out there, coming do close to death every night..."

"That may have been what she fucking told you, but it was a lie! A lie, Spyder!"

"Mitchell, please, you can't keep-"

"Shut the fuck up! You really believe yourself, don't you? You...You really thought that by giving up your life as the Spyder that she would have loved you again?!" Rockwell was almost laughing at the notion. His tearful eyes were on fire as he stood, leering intently at the suddenly vulnerable Spyder.

"Mi-"

"She was terrified of you, Daniel! Terrified!" Rockwell screamed, his lips twisted into a maniacal sneer. An owl fluttered frantically from a nearby tree. "She didn't love you! You want to know a little piece of my memory, Spyder?! You want me to let you in on a little something I remembered from a few years ago?!"

Silence now from the Spyder as Rockwell inched closer."You know she always agreed with me when I'd say how horrible the Spyder was? You know that? And then, after SHE LEFT YOU...I sat her down, tried to talk to her. She was crying, hysterical and jumpy, and I wanted to know why she did it...Why she walked OUT on you. You know what she told me? Do you know what she fucking told me, Spyder?!"

The Spyder paid the saliva which sprayed across his face no attention as Rockwell brought himself nose to nose with the vigilante. The Spyder closed his eyes and breathed deeply, holding the breath as his forehead creased under the strain of pushing the sadness from his face.

"No," he whispered weakly.

"She told me she was scared of you," Rockwell whispered with a giddy satisfaction. Visibly, the Spyder broke. "She told me that she couldn't take being afraid all the time anymore."

"No..." the Spyder managed, turning away. Rockwell pressed on, keeping his hot breath on the back of the Spyder's neck the entire time.

"And I asked her what she was afraid of," he continued, smiling darkly. "She hesitated for a long time. A long, long time. And then, through her tears, she told me this...Word for word, I remember her telling me this: 'I can't tell you, Mitch. He'd kill me if he found out I told you.'"

The Spyder heaved, his great sob punctuated with a throaty cough.

"She was afraid that you would KILL her."

"Never..." the Spyder cried, his voice trembling.

"And I was so angry at you, Daniel. She was my baby sister. So she made up some bullshit cover to calm me down, some shit about you moving back to New Zealand to live with your family. My baby sister, god damn it. And after she died, I even considered it for a while, that you were really the Spyder. Stupid...I told myself...I convinced myself it couldn't be. It couldn't be you who killed her like that, for no reason at all..."

"I didn't kill her..." the Spyder whispered, staggering away further into the darkness.

"But you did!" Rockwell roared, his smile gone now, replaced by re-emergent tears. "You did kill her, god damn it! You brought that shit into her life! I don't care if it was you or Raymundo Zuleta or whoever the fuck it was..."

"I loved her..." the Spyder sobbed pleadingly as the clamoring fingers of shadows clenched tight around his form, trying tenaciously to pull him back into the darkness beyond the graves.

"...You brought her into your fucked up excuse for a life...You got her killed, Spyder! You killed Beth!!"

With those last words, Mitch Rockwell collapsed, weighted down by an unfathomable load, unable to cope anymore with the atrocities of his past. He fell hard to the ground, to the soft grass six feet above the decomposing corpse of his baby sister. And his tears dripped from his face as he pounded at that ground, crying as though he had never cried before, weeping for the loss of Beth, and then of his wife...Weeping for the loss of a normal life, all because of the Spyder. Mourning his own living death, nourishing the grave of murdered family with his bitter, salty tears, as he realized his very existence had finally, and totally, crumbled around him.

He had had dreams once. Mitchell Rockwell had been a promising young man who excelled in both his studies and athletics. He spent most of his childhood caring for his younger sister Beth in a single-parent household...But his working mother never neglected her children, and always did well to teach the two siblings the important virtues in life. When she died, Mitchell decided to be a police officer, to spread his mother's ideals over the city in which she had raised him. To make his mother proud. And given his athletic prowess, he was a natural for the then-infantile Supers Detection Department. He had met Victoria Wilson through a fellow officer, and he had fallen in love. At one time, he looked forward to nothing more than when he had a son of his own, to whom he could impart his mother's wisdom. He had dreamed, once long ago, of a life that would lead him to a happy death. A time when he himself could embrace the endless sleep somewhere within the confines of All Saints with a satisfied smile on an old man's face.

Shattered dreams. All of them, shattered dreams. Shredded as easily as the grass each of his hammering blows sheared from the earth as he wept upon his sister's grave, childless and loveless. He wept for a life which might have been, and a life extinguished far too soon. But most of all he wept angrily for the one man who had taken it all away from him.

"I'll kill you Spyder!" Rockwell roared despite the tears. "I'll kill you!!"

And somewhere within the dark cemetery, the words echoed clearly in the Spyder's ears as he ran. He ran harder then, pushed, pushed out into the darkness. The tears bit against his face as he sprinted aimlessly, tripping over graves, balling into the night. All around him he heard the laughter of ghosts mocking him from somewhere in the darkness, their chilling cackles stripping bare his soul, shattering all he held dear. Mocking his weak tears. He cried with the desperation of a lost child. A lost, abused, dying child, somewhere in the wilderness. He shoved a hand into his coat, fumbling gracelessly through the material as he tried so hard to shut out the laughter.

"Stop..." he whispered meekly. "God, please stop..."

But the ghosts refused to listen to him. He kept running, hoping to out race their snide, maddened crows. Suddenly, that clumsy hand which was buried in his coat found what it had been searching for. Still sprinting, his face soaked in his own tears, he brought it greedily towards the crowd of his head.

The mask felt so very good against his skin.

"Shuuut UUUP!!!" he roared. The scream echoed forever off the black silhouettes of the nearby foothills, and somewhere in the distance a great black cloud of screeching bats blotted out the crescent moon. A new moon.

And the ghosts fell silent.

But the night...

The night still screamed, and was very much alive.

And somewhere...Somewhere in the black recesses of that dark graveyard, nervous snickers were still purred from specters' lips.

After all, graveyards are a funny thing in the dark.