«That’s enough now, Mrs. 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 Mrs. 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. «Mr. 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. Mrs. 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. Mrs. 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.