“Fine.” People began to gather. The original knot of spectators to my argument with Norton doubled, and then trebled.
“There’s something you all had better know—” Ollie began.
“You put that beer down right now,” Brown said.
“You shut up right now,” I said, and took a step toward him.
Brown took a compensatory step back. “I don’t know what some of you think you are doing,” he said, “but I can tell you it’s going to be reported to the Federal Foods Company! All of it! And I want you to understand-there may be charges!” His lips drew nervously back from his yellowed teeth, and I could feel sympathy for him. Just trying to cope; that was all he was doing. As Norton was by imposing a mental gag order on himself. Myron and Jim had tried by turning the whole thing into a macho charade-if the generator could be fixed, the mist would blow over. This was Brown’s way. He was…
Protecting the Store.
“Then you go ahead and take down the names,” I said. “But please don’t talk.”
“I’ll take down plenty of names,” he responded. “Yours will be head on the list, you… you bohemian.”
” David Drayton has got something to tell you,” Ollie said, “and I think you had better all listen up, in case you were planning on going home.” So I told them what had happened, pretty much as I told Norton. There was some laughter at first, then a deepening uneasiness as I finished.
“It’s a lie, you know,” Norton said. His voice tried for hard emphasis and overshot into stridency. This was the man I’d told first, hoping to enlist his credibility. What a balls-up.
“Of course it’s a lie,” Brown agreed. “It’s lunacy. Where do you suppose those tentacles came from, Drayton?”
“I don’t know, and at this point, that’s not even a very important question. They’re here. There’s—”
“I suspect they came out of a few of those beer cans. That’s what I suspect.” This got some appreciative laughter. It was silenced by the strong, rusty-hinge voice of Carmody.
“Death!” she cried, and those who had been laughing quickly sobered.
She marched into the center of the rough circle that had formed, her canary pants seeming to give off a light of their own, her huge purse swinging against one elephantine thigh. Her black eyes glanced arrogantly around, as sharp and balefully sparkling as a magpie’s. Two good-looking girls of about sixteen with CAMP WOODLANDS written on the back of their white rayon shirts shrank away from her.
“You listen but you don’t hear! You hear but you don’t believe! Which one of you wants to go outside and see for himself?” Her eyes swept them, and then fell on me. “And just what do you propose to do about it, David Drayton? What do you think you can do about it?” She grinned, skull-like above her canary outfit.
“It’s the end, I tell you. The end of everything. It’s the Last Times. The moving finger has writ, not in fire, but in lines of mist. The earth has opened and spewed forth its abominations—”
“Can’t you make her shut up?” one of the teenage girls burst out. She was beginning to cry. “She’s scaring me!”
“Are you scared, dearie?” Carmody asked, and turned on her. “You aren’t scared now, no. But when the foul creatures the imp has loosed upon the face of the earth come for you—”
“That’s enough now, Carmody,” Ollie said, taking her arm. “That’s just fine.”
“You let go of me! It’s the end, I tell you! It’s death! Death! ”
“It’s a pile of shit,” a man in a fishing hat and glasses said disgustedly.
“No, sir,” Myron spoke up. “I know it sounds like something out of a dope-dream, but it’s the flat-out truth. I saw it myself.”
“I did, too,” Jim said.
“And me,” Ollie chipped in. He had succeeded in quieting Carmody, at least for the time being. But she stood close by, clutching her big purse and grinning her crazy grin. No one wanted to stand too close to her-they muttered among themselves, not liking the corroboration. Several of them looked back at the big plate-glass windows in an uneasy, speculative way. I was glad to see it.
“Lies,” Norton said. “You people all lie each other up. That’s all.”
“What you’re suggesting is totally beyond belief,” Brown said.
“We don’t have to stand here chewing it over,” I told him. “Come back into the storage area with me. Take a look. And a listen.”
“Customers are not allowed in the—”
“Bud,” Ollie said, “go with him. Let’s settle this.”
“All right,” Brown said. ” Drayton? Let’s get this foolishness over with.” We pushed through the double doors into the darkness.
The sound was unpleasant-perhaps evil.
Brown felt it, too, for all his hardheaded Yankee manner; his hand clutched my arm immediately, his breath caught for a moment and then resumed more harshly.
It was a low whispering sound from the direction of the loading door-an almost caressing sound. I swept around gently with one foot and finally struck one of the flashlights. I bent down, got it, and turned it on. Brown’s face was tightly drawn, and he hadn’t even seen them-he was only hearing them. But I had seen, and I could imagine them twisting and climbing over the corrugated steel surface of the door like living vines.
“What do you think now? Totally beyond belief?” Brown licked his lips and looked at the littered confusion of boxes and bags.
“They did this?”
“Some of it. Most of it. Come over here.” He came-reluctantly. I spotted the flashlight on the shriveled and curled section of tentacle, still lying by the push broom. Brown bent toward it.
“Don’t touch that,” I said. “It may still be alive.” He straightened up quickly. I picked up the broom by the bristles and prodded the tentacle. The third or fourth poke caused it to unclench sluggishly and reveal two whole suckers and a ragged segment of a third. Then the fragment coiled again with muscular speed and lay still. Brown made a gagging, disgusted sound.
“Seen enough?”
“Yes,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.” We followed the bobbing light back to the double doors and pushed through them.
All the faces turned toward us, and the hum of conversation died. Norton’s face was like old cheese. Carmody’s black eyes glinted. Ollie was drinking beer; his face was still running with trickles of perspiration, although it had gotten rather chilly in the market.
The two girls with CAMP WOODLANDS on their shirts were huddled together like young horses before a thunderstorm. Eyes. So many eyes. I could paint them, I thought with a chill. No faces, only eyes in the gloom. I could paint them but no one would believe they were real.
Bud Brown folded his long-fingered hands primly in front of him. “People,” he said. “It appears we have a problem of some magnitude here.”
VI. Further Discussion. Carmody.
Fortifications.
What Happened to the Flat- Earth Society.
The next four hours passed in a kind of dream. There was a long and semihysterical discussion following Brown’s confirmation, or maybe the discussion wasn’t as long as it seemed; maybe it was just the grim necessity of people chewing over the same information, trying to see if from every possible point of view, working it the way a dog works a bone, trying to get at the marrow. It was a slow coming to belief. You can see the same thing at any New England town meeting in March.
There was the Flat-Earth Society, headed by Norton. They were a vocal minority of about ten who believed none of it. Norton pointed out over and over again that there were only four witnesses to the bag-boy being carried off by what he called the Tentacles from Planet X (it was good for a laugh the first time, but it wore thin quickly; Norton, in his increasing agitation, seemed not to notice). He added that he personally did not trust one of the four. He further pointed out that fifty percent of the witnesses were now hopelessly inebriated. That was unquestionably true. Jim and Myron LaFleur, with the entire beer cooler and wine rack at their disposal, were abysmally shitfaced. Considering what had happened to Norm, and their part in it, I didn’t blame them. They would sober off all too soon.
Ollie continued to drink steadily, ignoring Brown’s protests. After a while Brown gave up, contenting himself with an occasional baleful threat about the Company. He didn’t seem to realize that Federal Foods, Inc., with its stores in Bridgton, North Windham, and Portland, might not even exist anymore. For all we knew, the Eastern Seaboard might no longer exist. Ollie drank steadily, but didn’t get drunk. He was sweating it out as rapidly as he could put it in.
At last, as the discussion with the Flat-Earthers was becoming acrimonious, Ollie spoke up. “If you don’t believe it, Norton, that’s fine. I’ll tell you what to do. You go on out that front door and walk around to the back. There’s a great big pile of returnable beer and soda bottles there. Norm and Buddy and I put them out this morning. You bring back a couple of those bottles so we know you really went back there. You do that and I’ll personally take my shirt off and eat it.” Norton began to bluster.