BLACK STATIC #41 by Andy Cox Page A

said Mr Levis.
    She tucked herself inside the hutch. She had to curl up, her head squashed against the box section that held all the darkness and teeth. The hutch was tight around her and it smelled awful but she made it fit. She kicked, and kicked, and the mesh door fell down shut.
    She could see herself in the mirror opposite and she was getting dirty all over like she was becoming her own shadow. She couldn’t see what was in the hutch with her, though. She could only feel it biting and scratching. She tried to cover her head.
    “Sweetheart, baby, what’s wrong?” Her mum went to her knees in front of her, “What’s wrong ?” but Jess covered her ears.
    Harvey came in next and Mum told him to stay back, so he lingered in the doorway. He pointed at her the same way he had in the middle of the night. He was eating an ice-lolly but he took it out of his mouth to say something she didn’t hear. When Mr Levis appeared behind him he was holding an ice-lolly too, a Magnum, still in its wrapper. In his other hand he held a shoebox.
    “For you,” he said to Jess.
    “Sweetheart—” said Mum.
    But Jess kicked her, thump-thump-thump, right in the stomach, humming to block out her screams and biting the hands that tried to stop her as if the hutch wasn’t even there.
    •••••
    One of Ray’s several Black Static stories, ‘Shark! Shark!’, won the British Fantasy Award, while a couple of others were selected for Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year series. ‘Water For Drowning’ is a new chapbook available now from This is Horror, and ‘Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow’, a hardback novelette, will appear later this year from Spectral Press. His collection, Probably Monsters , is due soon from ChiZine Press. You can find out more at  probablymonsters.wordpress.com .

THE SPIDER SWEEPER
    THERSA MATSUURA
    ILLUSTRATED BY RICHARD WAGNER

    Kumo-harai balanced a green and yellow harlot spider on the end of an old, twiggy broom. He was hurrying to reach the persimmon tree before the creature leapt to the ground and scrambled away. Morning spiders were always taken to the same tree and carefully placed in its craggy branches. Everyone knew that they were good luck and should never be harmed. Kumo-harai could boast – if he were the type of man to do such a thing – that in his three years of working at the temple he had never killed or injured a single morning spider.
    His kindheartedness, though, embraced even the night spiders, creatures that ought to be crushed beneath a tightly woven sandal. These he feared. Placing his palms together as he saw the monks do every day, he would bow, recite some pieces of the heart sutra he’d managed to memorise, and leave the night spiders entirely alone. It had never occurred to the young man that they could be the exact same creature.
    As he was depositing the morning spider on a low branch he heard the voice for the first time.
    “Kumo-harai.”
    It was his lover who had been gone for six days. Excitement swelled in his chest and he spun around. But there was no one there, only a wet, early morning mist settling into the leafy ground, and beyond that the old wooden temple, its paper doors pushed open. He could see the monks filing quietly into the main hall for meditation. A bronze bell rang in low waves across the graveyard; and Kumo-harai’s heart broke for the second time.
    “Kumo-harai,” the voice whispered again.
    Kumo-harai. The Spider Sweeper. It wasn’t his real name, but it was what everyone called him, ever since the monks of the Yamaoku Temple had taken him in. It was his job.
    He was just one of too-many children, a boy who didn’t work particularly hard at anything, who would rather stare at the sky half the day than mend the broken geta of a beautiful woman. But, still, he was attractive enough for the go-betweens in town to seek out his parents and attempt to arrange marriages. But no matter how much status or money the offering family had,