They were friends and neighbours and there was not a thing to stop them, if
they wanted to, from coming up the walk and knocking at the door and coming
in to see me.
But now, instead, they stood outside and watched and waited. It was, I
thought, as if the house were a cage and I was some new, strange animal from
some far-off land.
Twenty-four hours ago I had been another villager, a man who had lived
and grown up with those people watching in the street. But now I was a
freak, an oddity – perhaps, in the minds of some of them, a sinister figure
that threatened, if not their lives, their comfort and their peace of mind.
For this village could never be the same again – and perhaps the world
could never be the same again. For even if the barrier now should disappear
and the Flowers withdraw their attention from our Earth, we still would have
been shaken from the comfortable little rut which assumed that life as we
knew it was the only kind of life and that our road of knowledge was the
only one that was broad and straight and paved.
There had been ogres in the past, but finally the ogres had been
banished. The trolls and ghouls and imps and all the others of the tribe had
been pushed out of our lives, for they could survive only on the misty
shores of ignorance and in the land of superstition. Now, I thought, we’d
know an ignorance again (but a different kind of ignorance) and
superstition; too, for superstition fed upon the lack of knowledge. With
this hint of another world – even if its denizens should decide not to
flaunt themselves, even if we should find a way to stop them – the trolls
and ghouls and goblins would be back with us again. There’d be chimney
corner gossip of this other place and a frantic, desperate search to
rationalize the implied horror of its vast and unknown reaches, and out of
this very search would rise a horror greater than any true other world could
hold. We’d be afraid, as we had been before, of the darkness that lay beyond
the little circle of our campfire.
There were more people in the Street; they kept coming all the time.
There was Pappy Andrews, cracking his cane upon the sidewalk, and Grandma
Jones, with her sunbonnet socked upon her head, and Charley Hutton, who
owned the Happy Hollow tavern. Bill Donovan, the garbage man, was in the
front ranks of the crowd, but I didn’t see his wife, and I wondered if Myrt
and Jake had come to get the kids. And just as big and mouthy as if he’d
lived in Millville all his life and known these folks from babyhood, was
Gabe Thomas, the trucker who, after me, had been the first man to find out
about the barrier.
Someone stirred beside me and I saw that it was Nancy. I knew now that
she had been standing there for some little time.
‘Look at them,’ I said. ‘It’s a holiday for them. Any minute now the
parade will be along.’
‘They’re just ordinary people,’ Nancy said. ‘You can’t expect too much
of them. Brad, I’m afraid you do expect too much of them. You even expected
that the men who were here would take what you told them at face value,
immediately and unquestioningly.’
‘Your father did,’ I said.
‘Father’s different. He’s not an ordinary man. And, besides, he had
some prior knowledge, he had a little warning. He had one of those
telephones. He knew a little bit about it.’
‘Some,’ I said. ‘Not much.’
‘I haven’t talked with him. There’s been no chance for us to talk. And
I couldn’t ask him in front of all those people. But I know that he’s
involved. Is it dangerous, Brad?’
‘I don’t think so. Not from out there or back there or wherever that
other world may be. No danger from the alien world – not now, not yet. Any
danger that we have to face lies in this world of ours. We have a decision
we must make and it has to be the right one.’
‘How can we tell,’ she ‘asked, ‘what is the right decision? We have no
precedent.’
And that was it, of course, I thought. There was no way in which a
decision – any decision – could be justified.
There was a shouting from outside and I moved closer to the window to
see farther up the street. Striding down the centre of it came Hiram Martin
and in one hand he carried a cordless telephone.
Nancy caught sight of him and said, ‘He’s bringing back our phone.
Funny, I never thought he would.’
It was Hiram shouting and he was shouting in a chant, a deliberate,
mocking chant.
‘All right, come out and get your phone. Come on out and get your God
damn phone.’
Nancy caught her breath and I brushed past her to the door. I jerked it
open and stepped out on the porch.
Hiram reached the gate and he quit his chanting. The two of us stood
there, watching one another. The crowd was getting noisy and surging closer.
Then Hiram raised his arm, with the phone held above his head.
‘All right,’ he yelled, ‘here’s your phone, you dirty…’
Whatever else he said was drowned out by the howling of the crowd.
Then Hiram threw the phone. It was an unhandy thing to throw and the
throw was not too good. The receiver flew out to one side, with its trailing
cord looping in the air behind it. When the cord jerked taut, the flying
phone skidded out of its trajectory and came crashing to the concrete walk,
falling about halfway between the gate and porch. Pieces of shattered
plastic sprayed across the lawn.
Scarcely aware that I was doing it, acting not by any thought or
consideration, but on pure emotion, I came down off the porch and headed for
the gate. Hiram backed away to give me room and I came charging through the
gate and stood facing him.
I’d had enough of Hiram Martin. I was filled up to here with him. He’d
been in my hair for the last two days and I was sick to death of him. There
was just one thought – to tear the man apart, to pound him to a pulp, to
make certain he’d never sneer at me again, never mock me, never try again to
bully me by the sole virtue of sheer size.
I was back in the days of childhood – seeing through the stubborn and
red-shot veil of hatred that I had known then, hating this man I knew would
lick me, as he had many times before, but ready, willing, anxious to inflict
whatever hurt I could while he was licking me.
Someone bawled, ‘Give ’em room!’ Then I was charging at him and he hit
me. He didn’t have the time or room to take much of a swing at me, but his
fist caught me on the side of the head and it staggered me and hurt. He hit
me again almost immediately, but this one also was a glancing blow and
didn’t hurt at all – and this time I connected. I got my left into his belly
just above the belt and when he doubled over I caught him in the mouth and
felt the smart of bruised, cut knuckles as they smashed against his teeth. I
was swinging again when a fist came out of nowhere and slammed into my head
and my head exploded into a pinwheel of screaming stars. I knew that I was
down, for I could feel the hardness of the street against my knees, but I
struggled up and my vision cleared. I couldn’t feel my legs. I seemed to be
moving and bobbing in the air with nothing under me. I saw Hiram’s face just
a foot or so away and his mouth was a gash of red and there was blood on his
shirt. So I hit his mouth again – not very hard, perhaps, for there wasn’t
much steam left behind my punches. But he grunted and he ducked away and I
came boring in.
And that was when he hit me for keeps.
I felt myself going down, falling backwards and it seemed that it took
a long time for me to fall. Then I hit and the street was harder than I
thought it would be and hitting the street hurt me more than the punch that
put me there.
I groped around, trying to get my hands in position to hoist myself
erect, although I wondered vaguely why I bothered. For if I got up, Hiram
would belt me another one and I’d be back down again. But I knew I had to