Free Spiders on the Case by Kathryn Lasky

unbelievable , he thought for the one hundredth time. The spiders had spelled his name. At five forty-five, the largest of the spider children, the one he thought was a girl, although it was hard to be sure, had completed the glyph for the letter “M.” The last letter in his name.

    The image was burnished in his mind’s eye. It was an owl, elegantly constructed with a large gleaming silverfish slanted at just the right angle and a smaller one placed for each foot. The rest of the body was woven with silk thread. It was a work of art. Tom could picture it now even as evening fell, car lights blazed, and impatient drivers honked their horns as if the sound alone would blast them down Route 3 and across the Sagamore Bridge to the Cape.
    The temperature was hovering — even at this hour — near 90, and everyone was thinking of the beach except Tom Parker. He was tempted to make a U-turn and drive straight back to Boston, but how would he explain it to his aging mother? He had not been to visit her for almost a month. No, he had to continue. I mean , he thought, what would I say? “Mom, I had to go back to work because some brown recluse spiders are trying to send me a message.” It would sound certifiably crazy. He’d be packed off to the loony bin.
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    Meanwhile, back in the Rare Books Department, Jo Bell was directing the beginning of the first hieroglyphic call numbers. Silverfish lent themselves well to the hieroglyphic numbering system because the numbers one through ten were shown as groupings of short lines. It was, however, a somewhat complex engineering job. She and Buster had spun a double-strand halyard for hoisting the silverfish that would be used for several of the call numbers.
    â€œAll right, commence hoist!” She barked out the command. A glimmering silverfish rose on the halyard.
    â€œHalt and begin to pay out!”
    Julep and Felix swung out on a radial and began to squeeze out number four sticky thread.
    â€œAttachment complete!” Felix called down to Jo Bell. “Over and out!”
    The silverfish now hung in the web. Soon they would begin the next set of call numbers for the New World Explorers’ Atlas and be one step closer to catching the thieves.

O n Sunday night, one minute before midnight, Edith and the children had completed the job.
    â€œIt’s a work of art!” Fatty exclaimed, gazing at the shimmering threads that showed the complicated hieroglyph numbers.
    They couldn’t wait until Tom returned.
    But by nine forty-five on Monday, when there was still no sign of the conservator, they began to worry.
    â€œHe’s never late,” Buster said. “I hope he didn’t have an accident driving down to the Cape.”
    â€œSurely we would have heard,” Edith replied. “Rosemary would have said something.”
    They waited for Tom all day Monday. But it was early Tuesday morning that Edith began to sense something dreadful was about to happen. She heard a tuneless whistling at seven thirty in the morning, when the cleaning crew usually came through. But it was always Joe who did the sweeping and dusting in the rare books room, and he never whistled. The whistling was coming closer and closer, and suddenly there was a creaking noise that sent a jolt from Edith’s fangs to her spinnerets.
    Edith heard a scream. She was not sure if it came from herself or one of her children. Then Felix shouted, “SCATTER AND DIVE FOR COVER!”
    The case was opening. An immense feather duster hovered like a dreadful cloud above them.
    â€œClimb!” cried Edith. “Get out of the web.” And then it was all gone, every fantastic filament, every last shred of the hieroglyphs they had spent three whole days weaving.
    Next, there was a terrible roar as the cleaning lady poked something with a nozzle into the corner of the case. “Outta here! We’ll be sucked up!” Felix cried out. Draglines flew through