The Hardy Boys Go Nowhere

II.

It was the only night all year that rain fell. It was the same night children went looking for butterscotch, caramel, licorice and mints, but found only a pot full of lobster tails curled up like armadillos under the lace wallpaper next to the picture frames. “What strange treats,” Joe remarked. Frank explained that lobsters are fertile only three hours a year, but Joe, who had always imagined that lace was the product of a great black spider, dreamt himself asleep in a web of eight hungry arms.