Around 3:00 A.M. (the sermon went on relentlessly, and the people who were not interested had retreated to the back to try to get some sleep) I saw Ollie put a bag of groceries on a shelf under the checkout nearest the OUT door. Half an hour later he put another bag beside it. No one appeared to notice him but me. Billy, Amanda, and Turman slept together by the denuded cold-cuts section. I joined them and fell into an uneasy doze.
At four-fifteen by my wristwatch, Ollie shook me awake. Cornell was with him, his eyes gleaming brightly from behind his spectacles.
“It’s time, David,” Ollie said.
A nervous cramp hit my belly and then passed. I shook Amanda awake. The question of what might happen with both Amanda and Stephanie in the car together passed into my mind, and then passed right out again. Today it would be best to take things just as they came.
Those remarkable green eyes opened and looked into mine. “David?”
“We’re going to take a stab at getting out of here. Do you want to come?”
“What are you talking about?” I started to explain, then woke up Turman so I would only have to go through it the once.
“Your theory about scent,” Amanda said. “It’s really only an educated guess at this point, isn’t it ?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Hattie said. Her face was white and in spite of the sleep she’d gotten there were large discolored patches under her eyes. “I would do anything take any chances – just to see the sun again.” Just to see the sun again. A little shiver coursed through me. She had put her finger on a spot that was very close to the center of my own fears, on the sense of almost foregone doom that had gripped me since I had seen Norm dragged out through the loading door. You could only see the sun through the mist as a little silver coin. it was like being on Venus.
It wasn’t so much the monstrous creatures that lurked in the mist; my shot with the pinchbar had shown me they were no Lovecraftian horrors with immortal life but only organic creatures with their own vulnerabilities. It was the mist itself that sapped the strength and robbed the will. Just to see the sun again. She was right. That alone would be worth going through a lot of hell.
I smiled at Hattie and she smiled tentatively back.
“Yes,” Amanda said. “Me too.” I began to shake Billy awake as gently as I could.
“I’m with you,” Reppler said briefly.
We were all together by the meat counter, all but Bud Brown. He had thanked us for the invitation and then declined it. He would not leave his place in the market, he said, but added in a remarkably gentle tone of voice that he didn’t blame Ollie for doing so.
An unpleasant, sweetish aroma was beginning to drift up from the white enamel case now, a smell that reminded me of the time our freezer went on the fritz while we were spending a week on the Cape. Perhaps, I thought, it was the smell of spoiling meat that had driven McVey over to Carmody’s team.
“—expiation It’s expiation we want to think about now! We have been scourged with whips and scorpions! We have been punished for delving into secrets forbidden by God of old! We have seen the lips of the earth open! We have seen the obscenities of nightmare! The rock will not hide them, the dead tree gives no shelter! And how will it end? What will stop it?”
“Expiation!” shouted good old Myron LaFleur.
“Expiation… expiation…” They whispered it uncertainly.
“Let me hear you say it like you mean it!” Carmody shouted. The veins stood out on her neck in bulging cords. Her voice was cracking and hoarse now, but still full of power. And it occurred to me that it was the mist that had given her that power-the power to cloud men’s minds, to make a particularly apt pun-just as it had taken away the sun’s power from the rest of us. Before, she had been nothing but a mildly eccentric old woman with an antiques store in a town that was lousy with antiques stores. Nothing but an old woman with a few stuffed animals in the back room and a reputation for (that witch… that cunt) folk medicine. it was said she could find water with an applewood stick, that she could charm warts, and sell you a cream that would fade freckles to shadows of their former selves. I had even heard-was it from old Bill Giosti?—that Carmody could be seen (in total confidence) about your love life; that if you were having the bedroom miseries, she could give you a drink that would put the ram back in your rod.
“EXPIATION!” they all cried together.
“Expiation, that’s right!” she shouted deliriously. “It’s expiation gonna clear away this fog! Expiation gonna clear off these monsters and abominations! Expiation gonna drop the scales of mist from our eyes and let us see!” Her voice dropped a notch. “And what does the Bible say expiation is? What is the only cleanser for sin in the Eye and Mind of God?”
“Blood. ” This time the chill shuddered up through my entire body, cresting at the nape of my neck and making the hairs there stiffen. McVey had spoken that word, McVey the butcher who had been cutting meat in Bridgton ever since I was a kid holding my father’s talented hand. McVey taking orders and cutting meat in his stained whites. McVey, whose acquaintanceship with the knife was long-yes, and with the saw and cleaver as well. McVey who would understand better than anyone else that the cleanser of the soul flows from the wounds of the body.
“Blood… ” they whispered.
“Daddy, I’m scared,” Billy said. He was clutching my hand tightly, his small face strained and pale.
“Ollie,” I said, “why don’t we get out of this loony bin?”
“Right on,” he said. “Let’s go.” We started down the second aisle in a loose group-Ollie, Amanda, Cornell, Mrs. Turman, Mrs. Reppler, Billy, and I. it was a quarter to five in the morning and the mist was beginning to lighten again.
“You and Cornell take the grocery bags,” Ollie said to me.
“Okay.”
“I’ll go first. Your Scout is a four-door, is it?”
“Yeah. It is.”
“Okay, I’ll open the driver’s door and the back door on the same side. Dumfries, can you carry Billy?” She picked him up in her arms.
“Am I too heavy?” Billy asked.
“No, hon.”
“Good.”
“You and Billy get in front,” Ollie went on. “Shove way over. Turman in front, in the middle. David, you behind the wheel. The rest of us will—”
“Where did you think you were going?” It was Carmody.
She stood at the head of the checkout line where Ollie had hidden the bags of groceries. Her pantsuit was a yellow scream in the gloom. Her hair frizzed out wildly in all directions, reminding me momentarily of Elsa Lanchester in The Bride of Frankenstein. Her eyes blazed. Ten or fifteen people stood behind her, blocking the IN and OUT doors. They had the look of people who had been in car accidents, or who had seen a UFO land, or who had seen a tree pull its roots up and walk.
Billy cringed against Amanda and buried his face against her neck.
“Going out now, Carmody,” Ollie said. His voice was curiously gentle.
“Stand away, please.”
“You can’t go out. That way is death. Don’t you know that by now?”
“No one has interfered with you,” I said. “All we want is the same privilege.” She bent and found the bags of groceries unerringly. She must have known what we were planning all along. She pulled them out from the shelf where Ollie had placed them. One ripped open, spilling cans across the floor. She threw the other and it smashed open with the sound of breaking glass. Soda ran fizzing every which way and sprayed off the chrome facing of the next checkout lane.
“These are the sort of people who brought it on!” she shouted. “People who will not bend to the will of the Almighty! Sinners in pride, haughty they are, and stiff-necked!
it is from their number that the sacrifice must come! From their number the blood of expiation!” A rising rumble of agreement spurred her on. She was in a frenzy now. Spittle flew from her lips as she screamed at the people crowding up behind her: “It’s the boy we want! Grab him! Take him! It’s the boy we want!” They surged forward, Myron LaFleur in the lead, his eyes blankly joyous. McVey was directly behind him, his face blank and stolid.
Amanda faltered backward, holding Billy more tightly. His arms were wrapped around her neck. She looked at me, terrified. “David, what do I—”