Charles E. Fritch

“ I told him. "But it's just as well they are broken. I tell you, Johnny, there's nothing unusual in the sky. Nothing at all. Spider webs! Next you'll be seeing pink elephants."
Johnny stood in the cool night and stared at the sky. "They're up there, I tell you. They're up there, and I want to know why. And there's one thing I want to know more than anything else; suppose they're really spider webs—" His face was deathly white. "Are there spiders?"
He stared at me insanely in the darkness. "Do you realize what that would mean, Charlie? Giant spiders, invisible, roaming across the Earth!" ”

“ Huge spiders walking along the streets, mingling with human beings. And get this, Charlie—when I took the glasses off, they were like human beings. Like humans, you understand. You know what that means? They're in disguise all around us!"
"That's not true, Johnny," I insisted. "There are no webs in the sky. There are no spiders. It's your imagination. The strain. Working in the lab—"
"No," he cried, and the gun never wavered. "You know what else I saw? A few minutes ago. I was looking down into the street, and a spider got out of a car just in front of the hotel here and started coming in. ”

“ Why not? I'm just beginning to experience that rosy sensation, that warm feeling of camaraderie they keep stoppered up in bottles. It's the only place on this planet you can find it."
"Don't be cynical."
"Maybe I should bust out laughing. The whole thing's really funny; it's the funniest thing I've ever heard."
"We'd better go."
"Sure, let's go. But first—you want to see something really funny? Here."
He took a pair of glasses from his pocket and handed them to me. They seemed like ordinary shell-rimmed glasses, though the lenses were tinted a slight blue. ”