Hello again, Story Club members.

I'm Ivy, your ghostly host with the most and keeper of the strangest, spookiest tales on

earth.

Today is another Ivy's chilling tale.

This eight-legged tale story club members might make your flesh crawl on another level.

It's one I call tangled webs.

Brenda's spinner couldn't remember what life was without the webs.

They now covered all the windows in gauzy strands, which made it seem like the house was perpetually in a fog bank,

since you couldn't make out any details except the lighted day or the absence of it.

Brenda didn't often see the makers of the silky lattice work, but she knew they were there, hiding, waiting for someone to fly into one of the many webs.

Then, whichever hairy occupant was closest, would scramble down, take the prey in its forelegs, bundle it up in a silky package, and take it back to its hidden layer to feed at leisure.

Brenda's dad came up from the cellar, wiping his hands.

He said that the emergency generator they had for power outages was running as smooth as a Swiss clock,

and that they had enough fuel for a week if they only ran the power for a few hours a day, mostly at night when they needed the light.

Except the light at night was what seemed to attract these spiders.

Once, Brenda was sitting by the window playing a board game with her parents.

When they finished, she peeled back the curtain just to see if the invading arachnids had finally packed up their oppressive webs and moved on.

Instead, the light from within reflected on the outside eyes.

Thousands of green eyes like tiny orb stared back at her, mesmerized by the artificial illumination.

Brenda shuddered, holding back a scream and dropped the curtain, slowly backing away from the window.

Her parents believed that the state police or the National Guard would clean up this horrible mess.

When her family did run the power, they picked up a few radio signals, but phones and televisions weren't working at all.

...