First of all, hobgoblins and spiders go together about as well as peanut butter and mustard.

"It wasn't ME who got us into this mess!"

The three-inch-tall hobgoblin scowled down his red beard at the spider in the dark little closet. Trapped. And with bad company, too.

"Well, you're the one who INSISTED on pulling one of your hobgobliny pranks in the kid's closet!" The spider had no sympathy.

The hobgoblin tried to scowl deeper. He didn't really have anything to say.

"We're in real trouble, Mister. What happens in the morning when the kid wakes up, opens her closet to find her shoes?"

"I dunno. You could bite her I guess."

The spider would have scowled right back at the hobgoblin, but unfortunately, spiders don't have the kind of faces that scowl very easily, so she let a stony silence do the scowling for her.

The hobgoblin tried to pace, but tripped over a pair of shoes, and landed his pointed nose right into the heel of a smelly old sneaker. "Eww."

"Don't you have magic, you old coot?"

"Magic? I, um, of course I do." The hobgoblin was sort of a bad liar.

"What happened to your magic?" The spider was panicking now.

"It was... um... stolen, okay?"

"Stolen! By who?"

"I don't want to talk about it!"

The hobgoblin and the spider faced off again, the hobgoblin scowling, the spider not saying anything, and those sneakers were really, really stinking up the place.

"I have an idea." It was the hobgoblin.

"Well?"

The hobgoblin shrugged out of his old coat, a brown, threadbare old thing that looked about as old as he was, wrinkled old man that he was. "I might not have my magic, but there is... remnants, that remain. I just need... some help."

The spider crossed two of her eight legs skeptically, but after listening to his plan, finally agreed.

Little Annabelle yawned. Getting out of bed in the morning was her least favorite time. She could already hear her mother calling her to change clothes and get ready for school. She stumbled to her closet, and opened the door.

"Ahhhk!" She screeched. She couldn't see what it was, but was it a bat? Something dark and flapping clumsy wings plummeted out of the closet and past her. She spun, but whatever it was, it was gone.

"The end."

"The end? What... what happened?"

George frowned. Annabelle folded her arms. "Well, little sis, you see, they finally worked together, and the hobgoblin managed to harness the magic in the spider's web to make them fly, using... his jacket."

"The hobgoblin's jacket made him fly."

"Yeah, sorta."

"George, your stories get weirder and weirder."

"You just don't believe." George stuck his nose to the air and sniffed.

Annabelle wandered off to her room, and closed the door behind her.

"Thanks for that, buddy." George looked down and winked. Standing at his feet, a spider on top of his bald head, the old, three-inch-tall hobgoblin grinned up at his old friend. The little boy who was growing up now, who he had told stories to for most of George's childhood.

"You're right. They never believe it when you tell the truth."