A Handful of Darkness by Philip K. Dick Read Free Book Online Page B

too bad for him, though.”
    It was nightfall. The street was dark and deserted. Along the pavement the man came, a newspaper under his arm. He walked quickly, glancing around him. He skirted the big tree growing by the kerb and leaped agilely into the street. He crossed the street and gained the opposite side. As he turned the corner he entered the web, sewn from bush to telephone pole. Automatically he fought it, brushing it off him. As the strands broke a thin humming came to him, metallic and wiry.
    “… wait!”
    He paused.
    “… careful… inside… wait…”
    His jaw set. The last strands broke in his hands and he walked on. Behind him the spider moved in the fragment of his web, watching. The man looked back.
    “Nuts to you,” he said. “I’m not taking any chances, standing here all tied up.”
    He went on, along the pavement, to his path. He skipped up the path, avoiding the darkening bushes. On the porch he found his key, fitting it into the lock.
    He paused. Inside? Better than outside, especially at night. Night a bad time. Too much movement under the bushes. Not good. He opened the door and stepped inside. The rug lay ahead of him, a pool of blackness. Across on the other side he made out the form of the lamp.
    Four steps to the lamp. His foot came up. He stopped.
    What did the spider say? What? He waited, listening. Silence.
    He took his cigarette lighter and flicked it on.
    The carpet of ants swelled towards him, rising up in a flood. He leaped aside, out on to the porch. The ants came rushing, hurrying, scratching across the floor in the half-light.
    The man jumped down to the ground and around the side of the house. When the first ants came flowing over the porch he was already spinning the faucet handle rapidly, gathering up the hose.
    The burst of water lifted the ants up and scattered them, flinging them away. The man adjusted the nozzle, squinting through the mist. He advanced, turning the hard stream from side to side.
    “God damn you,” he said, his teeth locked. “Waiting inside—”
    He was frightened. Inside—never before! In the night cold sweat came out on his face. Inside. They had never got inside before. Maybe a moth or two, and flies, of course. But they were harmless, fluttery, noisy—
    A carpet of ants!
    Savagely, he sprayed them until they broke rank and fled into the lawn, into the bushes, under the house.
    He sat down on the walk, holding the hose, trembling from head to foot.
    They really meant it. Not an anger raid, annoyed, spasmodic; but planned, an attack, worked out. They had waited for him. One more step—
    Thank God for the spider.
    Presently he shut the hose off and stood up. No sound; silence everywhere. The bushes rustled suddenly. Beetle? Something black scurried—he put his foot on it. A messenger, probably. Fast runner. He went gingerly inside the dark house, feeling his way by the cigarette lighter.
    Later, he sat at his desk, the spray gun beside him, heavy-duty steel and copper. He touched its damp surface with his fingers.
    Seven o’clock. Behind him the radio played softly. He reached over and moved the desk lamp so that it shone on the floor beside the desk.
    He lit a cigarette and took some writing paper and his fountain pen. He paused, thinking.
    So they really wanted him, badly enough to plan it out. Bleak despair descended over him like a torrent. What could he do? Whom could he go to? Or tell? He clenched his fists, sitting bolt upright in the chair.
    The spider slid down beside him on the desk top. “Sorry. Hope you aren’t frightened, as in the poem.”
    The man stared. “Are you the same one? The one at the corner? The one who warned me?”
    “No. That’s somebody else. A Spinner. I’m strictly a Cruncher. Look at my jaws.” He opened and shut his mouth. “I bite them up.”
    The man smiled. “Good for you.”
    “Sure. Do you know how many there are of us in—say—an acre of land? Guess.”
    “A thousand.”
    “No. Two and a half