Chapter Eleven

"Mayday, where the heck have you been? Mom just went looking for you! And you won't believe what's on TV!" Benny came running into the front hall and froze. "This guy just...what happened to you? Did you get in a fight?"

"What?" I dropped my backpack and limped over to the hall mirror. The left side of my face, from my temple to my chin was covered in one painful bruise. I could still taste blood in my mouth from a split lower lip.

"Um...yeah. I did."

"Who beat you up? It better not have been a guy. You know, Jim's big brother goes to Midtown. He could beat him up for you if it was a guy."

I smiled. "Thanks, Benny, but I don't think that Jim's big brother could really take this...person...on."

Benny went to the kitchen. "Want the ice pack? How come Harry didn't help you? Why'd you get in a fight anyway?"

"Harry wasn't there. Thanks." I took the ice pack. The bruises would probably be gone by tomorrow morning, but the coldness helped.

"You've gotta come see this. Hurry! It's on again!" Benny and I hurried into the den, where the news was on at full blast. The trusty CNN reporters were commentating on the sealed off Times Square.

Benny vaulted over the couch. "I saw it when I got home. This flying weirdo with bombs just tried to blow up Times Square! And Spider-Girl showed up, and they started fighting! And Spider-Girl threw a car at him! Look! There it is! See?"

Benny was pointing at the TV and bouncing up and down on the sofa cushion. On the news was a blurry, jerking camera view that must have been filmed by a running reporter. The camera zoomed in on the armored figure. Hobgoblin. As the cameraman was murmuring, "He's got something behind his back...watch out!" Hobgoblin whirled and flung an object with lightning speed at something out of view. There was a bright flash, and people shouting, and then there I was, staggering backwards, clutching at my face.

"Oh, man! She can't see!" Benny said.

Then the TV-Hobgoblin bounded forward and delivered a crushing right hook to the side of my head, sending me reeling.

"Look at all of those people down there! What's the matter with this creep?" I sat down on the sofa, aching and glaring at the television. What kind of deranged madman would put over a thousand people in danger just to get at me? And I had been stupid enough to rush in there and screw everything up! If I had actually thought it through before acting, Hobgoblin would have been in jail by now and not off somewhere terrorizing someone else!

"There was another one, too! They didn't get very good footage, but it looked like another spider-person!"

"Another spider-person?" I stared at Benny in astonishment. Of course! How many people in New York City could websling? Just me and...

And Dad.

But Dad couldn't have done that! Dad would never have done anything like that! Whoever that was had slammed me against a wall and nearly strangled me!

"Yeah. But a real spider-person."

"What do you mean, a 'real' spider-person? Spider-Girl's a real spider-person," I said, feeling a little defensive.

"Not like this one! This one was all black. Like pitch-black. And it had too many arms."

As the scene switched back to the newsroom, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Benny was staring at me. He had a strange expression on his face.

"What?" I asked.

"How hard did that guy hit you? Who did that, anyway?" Benny pointed to the bruise blackening the side of my head.

Slam!

Benny and I twisted around to see Mom hang her coat on the rack. I smiled shakily. "Hi, Mom."

Mom took one look at me, gasped, dropped her purse on the table and rushed into the den. She pried the ice pack away from my face.

"Mayday! Oh my God, how..." I saw Mom's eyes focus on the television screen behind us. The anchorwoman was saying, "What you're seeing here are the first few moments of the fight between Spider-Girl and the person recently dubbed 'Hobgoblin'..."

I saw the color drain from Mom's face. She switched her piercing gaze back to me, but this time her eyes were wide with fear.

"Mayday got in a fight, Mom," said Benny.

"No. Absolutely not! I should never have let you go through with this in the first place!"

"Mom! Mom, just listen to me! I-"

"May Eleanor Parker, I may not be able to climb on walls, but I know much more about this situation than you do!" Mom cast a nervous glance at the dark hallway leading up to the stairs, but all was silent. The wall clock read 12:18.

I threw up my hands. "I can handle him! If it wasn't for that...that thing...I would have got him!"

Mom set her mug down on the table harder than she needed to. "Mayday. You don't know what you're getting into! Do you know who that is?"

I shrugged in irritation, scowling. It was just because I had been overconfident the first time. I wouldn't make that mistake again. I could handle Hogoblin on my own. I could capture him. I would capture him!

"That's the son of the Green Goblin!" Mom said, "You have no idea what he's capable of! You couldn't possibly know! The Green Goblin kidnapped me, Mayday!"

"What?" I gasped. What was this? No one had ever told me anything like this before!

"Long before you were born. Your father and I weren't even married yet. It was about six months after we had both graduated from high school. The Green Goblin discovered that Peter was Spider-Man and attacked your Great-Aunt May and kidnapped me to get at him. Mayday, that man was just completely, purely evil. He would have killed everyone who got in his way. He threatened to kill a gondola full of little kids to hurt your father.

"Peter rescued me, and then he and the Goblin fought on Roosevelt Island. Only Spider-Man came back. No one ever saw any sign of the Goblin again."

Mom took a deep breath and continued. "Your father rold me about it years later, after I found out who he was. The Goblin died that night. It was a freak accident. Your father would never have killed him. But there was some kind of promise that your father made. I don't know how or why, but he never told me, or anyone, who the Green Goblin was."

I swear on the grave of the one who was stolen from me...

He was after me for revenge. Hobgoblin was venting his rage on me because I was his only target. He was going to try to kill me, I realized with a chill.

I will make you suffer...

"I am not going to allow my own daughter to go after that creature. You are not going out anymore. There is going to be none of this Spider- Girl business until this blows over."

I almost fell out of my chair. "Mom, didn't we go through this before? I have to! It's my job! I can't just abandon everybody just because of some-"

"I forbid it!" Mom snapped. "Don't you understand? He isn't stupid, Mayday! He's stronger than you-"

"He is not!"

"And he isn't stupid! One slip, one tiny mistake, and he could find out who you are. Then what? It happened to Peter, it can happen to you! Look what he did to you today!"

"My bruises are almost gone," I said.

"Don't change the subject. This is final. I am not changing my mind. Forget it, Mayday. You are not going to go fight him, understand?"

I climbed out my window that night, pulling my mask over my head as I reached the roof. It had been over an hour since Mom's verdict, and she and Benny were both sound asleep.

A nagging feeling of guilt hung over me as I hopped over the rooftops, heading north towards Manhattan. I had finally promised not to go looking for Hobgoblin, but I had never promised anything about not going patrolling for your ordinary, garden-variety criminals.

Still, I knew I was betraying Mom's trust. But what else could I do? I couldn't just take a vacation. I had to be there. I could never live with myself knowing that someone, somewhere had gotten hurt because of my selfish impulses.

I swung over the Queensboro bridge and over Lower Manhattan. Hmmm. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary yet. Maybe I would have an easy night.

Why didn't Mom think I could handle myself? And why hadn't she told me about her kidnapping or Dad's battle sooner? What kind of promise could Dad have made that would have prevented him from telling Mom who the Green Goblin was? It was too much. Secrets piled upon secrets.

I bounced over skyscrapers in the direction of Central Park, trying to concentrate only on the exhilaration of webswinging. But it wasn't enough. Disjointed thoughts and images were swirling around in my head, making no sense whatsoever.

I took a break on the roof of a high rise overlooking Central Park, the trees a black cloud against the city. There was at least a mugging a night in the park, but tonight I heard and felt nothing.

I yawned. It was relatively quiet everywhere, and the excitement of the afternoon was finally starting to catchup with me. I was contemplating just turning around and swinging home when something caught my eye from below.

Squinting, I released my grip on the wall and dropped about ten stories to get a better look. There it was again. Down in the park, something was creeping with a stilted, skittering gait, scuttling forward, then freezing. It was too large to be a person, and so dark that I could barely separate it from the shadows.

The thing rushed to the edge of the park and paused in the empty sidewalk, silhouetted by a dimming street lamp. I sucked in my breath with a hiss. The thing crouching on the pavement was huge, nearly eight feet tall. I could see what looked like long, straight black hair and the glitter of two large eyes. But what made my stomach lurch was the figure's limbs. It had arms and legs where they should have been, but much too long and thin. But from either side of its torso protruded two more arms, just as elongated and jointed, but still with massive, hooked velociraptor claws extending from the ends of its bony fingers.

It looked like a gigantic spider.

The creature's head swiveled around once again, scanning the street and skies for some sign of danger. Then it tensed its legs and sprang, clearing the entire main building of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in one enormous bound. It glanced around again, then leaped from the roof into the darkness.

I shot a line of web towards the next building and swung after it into the night.