«There is no defense against the will of God. This has been coming. I have seen the signs. There are those here that I have told, but there are none so blind as those who will not see.»
«Well, what are you saying? What are you proposing?» Mike Haden broke in impatiently. He was a town selectman, although he didn’t look the part now, in his yachtsman’s cap and saggy-seated Bermudas. He was sipping at a beer; a great many men were doing it now. Bud Brown had given up protesting, but he was indeed taking names-keeping a rough tab on everyone he could.
«Proposing?» Mrs. Carmody echoed, wheeling toward Haden. «Proposing? Why, I am proposing that you prepare to meet your God, Michael Haden.» She gazed around at all of us. «Prepare to meet your God!»
«Prepare to meet shit,» Myron LaFleur said in a drunken snarl from the beer cooler. «Old woman, I believe your tongue must be hung in the middle so it can run on both ends.»
There was a rumble of agreement. Billy looked around nervously, and I slipped an arm around his shoulders.
«I’ll have my say!» she cried. Her upper lip curled back, revealing snaggle teeth that were yellow with nicotine. I thought of the dusty stuffed animals in her shop, drinking eternally at the mirror that served as their creek. «Doubters will doubt to the end! Yet a monstrosity did drag that poor boy away! Things in the mist! Every abomination out of a bad dream! Eyeless freaks! Pallid horrors! Do you doubt? Then go on out! Go on out and say howdy-do!»
«Mrs. Carmody, you’ll have to stop,» I said. «You’re scaring my boy.»
The man with the little girl echoed the sentiment. She, all plump legs and scabby knees, had hidden her face against her father’s stomach and put her hands over her cars. Big Bill wasn’t crying, but he was close.
«There’s only one chance,» Mrs. Carmody said.
«What’s that, ma’am?» Mike Haden asked politely.
«A sacrifice,» Mrs. Carmody said-she seemed to grin in the gloom. «A blood sacrifice.»
Blood sacrifice — the words hung there, slowly turning. Even now, when I know better, I tell myself that then what she meant was someone’s pet dog — there were a couple of them trotting around the market in spite of the regulations against them. Even now I tell myself that. She looked like some crazed remnant of New England Puritanism in the gloom … but I suspect that something deeper and darker than mere Puritanism motivated her. Puritanism had its own dark grandfather, old Adam with bloody hands.
She opened her mouth to say something more, and a small, neat man in red pants and a natty sport shirt struck her openhanded across the face. His hair was parted with ruler evenness on the left. He wore glasses. He also wore the unmistakable look of the summer tourist.
«You shut up that bad talk,» he said softly and tonelessly.
Mrs. Carmody put her hand to her mouth and then held it out to us, a wordless accusation. There was blood on the palm. But her black eyes seemed to dance with mad glee.
«You had it coming!» a woman cried out. «I would have done it myself!»
«They’ll get hold of you,» Mrs. Carmody said, showing us her bloody palm. The trickle of blood was now running down one of the wrinkles from her mouth to her chin like a droplet of rain down a gutter. «Not today, maybe. Tonight. Tonight when the dark comes. They’ll come with the night and take someone else. With the night they’ll come. You’ll hear them coming, creeping and crawling. And when they come, you’ll beg for Mother Carmody to show you what to do.»
The man in the red pants raised his hand slowly.
«You come on and hit me,» she whispered, and grinned her bloody grin at him. His hand wavered. «Hit me if you dare.» His hand dropped. Mrs. Carmody walked away by herself. Then Billy did begin to cry, hiding his face against me as the little girl had done with her father.
«I want to go home,» he said. «I want to see my mommy.,