Elise was startled out of a satisfying drowse an hour or so later by a thump on the roof. She got up on her elbows. ‘What was that, Johnny?’
‘Huzz,’ John said, and turned over on his side.
Toads, she thought, and giggled . . . but it was a nervous giggle. She got up and went to the window, and before she looked for anything, which might have fallen on the ground, she found herself looking up at the sky.
It was still cloudless, and now shot with a trillion spangled stars. She looked at them, for a moment hypnotized by their simple silent beauty.
Thud.
She jerked back from the window and looked up at the ceiling. Whatever it was, it had hit the roof just overhead.
‘John! Johnny! Wake up!’
‘Huh? What?’ He sat up, his hair all tangled tufts and clock-springs.
‘It’s started,’ she said, and giggled shrilly. ‘The rain of frogs.’
‘Toads,’ he corrected. ‘Ellie, what are you talking ab — ‘
Thud-thud.
He looked around, then swung his feet out of bed.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he said softly and angrily.
‘What do you m — ‘
Thud-CRASH! There was a tinkle of glass downstairs.
‘Oh, goddam,’ he said, getting up and yanking on his blue-jeans. ‘Enough. This is just . . .
fucking . . . enough.’
Several soft thuds hit the side of the house and the roof. She cringed against him, frightened now. ‘ ‘What do you mean?”
‘ ‘I mean that crazy woman and probably the old man and some of their friends are out there throwing things at the house,’ he said, ‘and I am going to put a stop to it right now. Maybe they’ve held onto the custom of shivareeing the new folks in this little town, but — ‘
THUD! SMASH! From the kitchen.
‘God-DAMN!’ John yelled, and ran out into the hall.
‘Don’t leave me!’ Elise cried, and ran after him.
He flicked up the hallway light-switch before plunging downstairs. Soft thumps and thuds struck the house in an increasing rhythm, and Elise had time to think, How many people from town are out there? How many does it take to do that? And what are they throwing? Rocks wrapped in pillowcases?
John reached the foot of the stairs and went into the living room. There was a large window in there, which gave on the same view, which they had admired earlier. The window was broken.
Shards and splinters of glass lay scattered across the rug. He started toward the window, meaning to yell something at them about how he was going to get his shotgun. Then he looked at the broken glass again, remembered that his feet were bare, and stopped. For a moment he didn’t know what to do. Then he saw a dark shape lying in the broken glass — the rock one of the imbecilic, interbred bastards had used to break the window, he assumed — and saw red. He
might have charged to the window anyway, bare feet or no bare feet, but just then the rock twitched.
That’s no rock, he thought. That’s a —
‘John?’ Elise asked. The house rang with those soft thuds now. It was as if they were being bombarded with large, rotten-soft hailstones. ‘John, what is it?’
‘A toad,’ he said stupidly. He was still looking at the twitching shape in the litter of broken glass, and spoke more to himself than to his wife.
He raised his eyes and looked out the window. What he saw out there struck him mute with horror and incredulity. He could no longer see the hills or the horizon — hell, he could barely see the barn, and that was less than forty feet away.
The air was stuffed with falling shapes.
Three more of them came in through the broken window. One landed on the floor, not far from its twitching mate. It came down on a sharp sliver of window-glass and black fluid burst from its body in thick ropes.
Elise screamed.
The other two caught in the curtains, which began to twist and jerk as if in a fitful breeze. One of them managed to disentangle itself. It struck the floor and then hopped toward John.
He groped at the wall with a hand, which felt as if it were no part of him at all. His fingers stumbled across the light-switch and flipped it up.
The thing hopping across the glass-littered floor toward him was a toad, but it was also not a toad. Its green-black body was too large, too lumpy. Its black-and-gold eyes bulged like freakish eggs. And bursting from its mouth, unhinging the jaw, was a bouquet of large, needle-sharp teeth.
It made a thick croaking noise and bounded at John as if on springs. Behind it, more toads were falling in through the window. The ones which struck the floor had either died outright or been crippled, but many others — too many others — used the curtains as a safety-net and tumbled to the floor unharmed.
‘Get out of here!’ John yelled to his wife, and kicked at the toad which — it was insane, but it was true — was attacking him. It did not flinch back from his foot but sank that mouthful of crooked needles first over and then into his toes. The pain was immediate, fiery, and immense.
Without thinking, he made a half-turn and kicked the wall as hard as he could. He felt his toes break, but the toad broke as well, splattering its black blood onto the wainscoting in a half-circle, like a fan. His toes had become a crazy road-sign, pointing in all directions at once.
Elise was standing frozen in the hall doorway. She could now hear window-glass shattering all over the house. She had put on one of John’s tee-shirts after they had finished making love, and now she was clutching the neck of it with both hands. The air was full of ugly croaking sounds.
‘Get out, Elise!’ John screamed. He turned, shaking his bloody foot. The toad which had bitten him was dead, but its huge and improbable teeth were still caught in his flesh like a tangle of fishhooks. This time he kicked at the air, like a man punting a football, and the toad finally flew free.
The faded living-room carpet was now covered with bloated, hopping bodies. And they were all hopping at them.
John ran to the doorway. His foot came down on one of the toads and burst it open. His heel skidded in the cold jelly, which popped out of its body, and he almost fell. Elise relinquished her death-grip on the neck of her tee-shirt and grabbed him. They stumbled into the hall together and John slammed the door, catching one of the toads in the act of hopping through. The door cut it
in half. The top half twitched and juddered on the floor, its toothy, black-lipped mouth opening and closing, its black-and-golden pop-eyes goggling at them.
Elise clapped her hands to the sides of her face and began to wail hysterically. John reached out to her. She shook her head and cringed away from him, her hair falling over her face.
The sound of the toads hitting the roof was bad, but the croakings and chirrupings were worse, because these latter sounds were coming from inside the house . . . and all over the house. He thought of the old man sitting on the porch of the General Mercantile in his rocker, calling after them: Might want to close y ‘shutters.
Christ, why didn’t I believe him?
And, on the heels of that: How was I supposed to believe him? Nothing in my whole life prepared me to believe him!
And, below the sound of toads thudding onto the ground outside and toads squashing themselves to guts and goo on the roof, he heard a more ominous sound: the chewing, splintering sound of the toads in the living room starting to bite their way through the door. He could actually see it settling more firmly against its lunges as more and more toads crowded their weight against it. He turned around and saw toads hopping down the main staircase by the dozens.
‘Elise!’ He grabbed at her. She kept shrieking and pulling away from him. A sleeve of the tee-shirt tore free. He looked at the ragged chunk of cloth in his hand with perfect stupidity for a moment and then let it flutter down to the floor.
‘Elise, goddammit!’
She shrieked and drew back again.
Now the first toads had reached the hall floor and were hopping eagerly toward them. There was a brittle tinkle as the fanlight over the door shattered. A toad whizzed through it, struck the carpet, and lay on its back, mottled pink belly exposed, webbed feet twitching in the air.
He grabbed his wife, shook her. ‘We have to go down cellar! We’ll be safe in the cellar!’