John Connolly - The Killing Kind

A sound came from close to where my hand rested on the ground, a soft tapping on the stone floor. I looked to my left and saw, resting in a small arc of green light, a dark, semicircular shape, its body perhaps an inch and a half long and its spiny legs, it seemed, at least as long again. Instinctively, I yanked my hand away. The spider tensed, then raised its first pair of legs and exposed a set of reddish jaws.

Suddenly, and with surprising speed, it moved toward me, its legs almost a blur and the rhythm of the tapping increasing. I backed away, but it kept coming as I lashed out with my foot and felt it connect with something soft. I kicked again with the toe of my boot and the spider tumbled away into the far recesses of the room, where some empty glass cases lay piled untidily upon one another.

In my panic, I had moved almost to the aisle between the first and second lines of shelves. To my right, shards of glass caught the light and the remains of a case shattered by my 10-millimeter bullets lay in pieces on the second level. A square of card, heat-sealed in plastic, was among the glass fragments on the floor. In ornate black script were written the words Phoneutria nigriventer and then, in English below, Brazilian wandering spider. I glanced back toward the shadows into which the aggressive brown spider had bounced, and shuddered.

From far to my right came the sound of something brushing against the leaves of a plant, and the shadows on the ceiling rearranged themselves briefly. Pudd now knew where I was. The sounds of my frantic kicks at the spider had alerted him. I found that my left hand was trembling, so I used it to double-grip my gun. If I couldn't see it shaking, then I could convince myself that I wasn't afraid. Slowly, I moved to the second row of shelves, took a deep breath, and glanced into the aisle.

It was empty. Beside my left eye, a shape shifted in a case. It was small, maybe just over an inch in total, with a broad red stripe running along its abdomen. White spherical egg sacs, almost as big as the spider herself, hung suspended in the web that surrounded her. Latrodectus hasselti, read the card: Red-back spider. Starting a family too, I thought. How sweet. Shame Pop probably wouldn't be alive to see the birth.

Two more cases lay shattered beside each other in the third row. Amid the sharp edges, a long green shape stood semi-motionless. The mantid's huge eyes seemed to stare right at me as its jaws worked busily on the remains of the occupant of the adjoining case. Small brown legs moved weakly as the huge insect chomped away. I didn't feel sorry for whatever the mantid was consuming. As far as I was concerned, the sooner it finished its appetizer and got busy with some of the main courses wandering the floor, the better.

My skin was crawling, and I had to fight the urge to brush at my hair and neck, so I was partly distracted as I stepped into the next aisle. I looked to my left and saw Mr. Pudd standing at the far end, his gun raised. I threw myself forward and the bullet hit the fuse box beside the door. Sparks flew and the lights died as I rolled on the floor and came to rest against the far wall, the gun raised before me, my left hand now supporting myself on the ground for only as long as it took me to realize that something soft was crawling across it. I lifted it quickly and shook it, but not before I felt a sharp bite, like twin needles being inserted beneath my skin. I rose quickly, my lips drawn back from my teeth in disgust, and examined my hand in the dim light that filtered through the windows. Just below the knuckle of my middle finger, a small red lump was already beginning to form.

In a pair of large plastic terrariums to my right, thousands of small bodies moved. From the first terrarium came the chirping of crickets. The second contained oatmeal and bran flakes across which tiny mealworms crawled, speckled with some small black beetles that had already grown to their mature stage. To my left, arrayed along the wall in a long, multilayered display cabinet, were what looked like row upon row of plastic cups. I leaned down and made out a small black-and-red shape at the base of each cup, the remains of crickets and fruit flies lying in the ugly web beside the spider. The smell was particularly strong here, so strong that I started to gag.

This was Mr. Pudd's black widow farm.

My ears rang from the sound of the shots and there were spots before my eyes from the muzzle flare as I returned my attention to the room itself. A long shadow trailed along the ceiling, heading away from me. Through the leaves I caught a glimpse of what might have been Pudd's tan shirt, and I fired. There was a grunt of pain and the sound of glass breaking as the empty cases in that corner tumbled to the ground. I heard the glass grinding beneath his feet as he stepped over them. He was now at the far wall, close to where I had started, and I knew then what I had to do.

The shelves were not bolted to the cement floor. Instead, they rested on tripod legs, the weight of the frame and the cases it supported insurance enough against any casual impact. Ignoring the spreading pain in my hand and the possibility that the spider responsible might still be close by, I lowered myself to the ground, braced my back against the wall beside the racks of widows, and pushed at the shelf with the soles of my feet. For a moment I thought that it might just move across the floor, but then the top row tilted and the heavy frame fell slowly away from me, impacting loudly on the next shelf and creating a domino effect; two, three, four shelves fell, accompanied by the sounds of breaking glass and grinding metal, and then their combined weight collapsed on the final shelf, and I heard a sound that might have been a man's voice before it was lost in the final tumultuous roar of metal and glass.

By then I was already on my feet, using the frames of the fallen shelves to keep off the floor. I was conscious of movement all around me as predatory, multilegged things began to hunt and die. I reached the door and pushed it open, the feel of the sea breeze and the cold rain beautiful after the stale, rotten smell of the insects and spiders. The door slammed behind me and I jammed the bolt home, then stepped back. My hand was throbbing now and the swelling had increased in size, but it didn't feel too bad. Still, it would need a shot, and the sooner the better.

From inside the bug house, I heard sounds of movement. I raised my gun and aimed. A face appeared at the glass screen, and the door shook as Mr. Pudd hurled his body against it. His eyes were huge, one of them already filling with blood, and a muscle in his cheek was spasming. Tiny brown spiders, each only a fraction of an inch in length, crawled across his face and lost themselves in his hair as a large black spider with thin, skeletal legs pursued them relentlessly. Then Pudd's mouth opened and two legs appeared at each corner, pushing his lips apart, and I glimpsed palps and a cluster of dark eyes as the spider emerged from his mouth. I turned away for an instant and when I looked back, Pudd was gone.

A low thudding sound came from behind me, and the door to the lighthouse slammed softly against its frame. I was soaked through and beginning to feel the cold desperately, but I wiped the rain from my eyes and started toward the lighthouse.

The floor inside the door was flagged with stone and an iron staircase wound up to the top of the structure. There were no levels between where I stood and the open platform at the top of the lighthouse, through which a small panel allowed access to the exposed gallery.

At my feet, a trapdoor stood open. It was made of heavy oak bound with iron, and below it a flight of stone steps led into a patch of bright yellow light.

I had found the entrance to the honeycomb world.