«Why haven’t any of those people turned up over here?» Miller asked for me. «It’s been eighteen hours. Aren’t they hungry? They’re sure not over there eating Dristan and Stayfree Mini-pads.»
«There’s food,» I said. «They’re always selling food items on special. Sometimes it’s animal crackers, sometimes it’s those toaster pastries, all sorts of things. Plus the candy rack.»
«I just don’t believe they’d stick with stuff like that when there’s all kinds of stuff over here.»
«What are you getting at?»
«What I’m getting at is that I want to get out but I don’t want to be dinner for some refugee from a grade-B horror picture. Four or five of us could go next door and check out the situation in the drugstore. As sort of a trial balloon.»
«That’s everything?»
«No, there’s one other thing.»
«What’s that?»
«Her,» Miller said simply, and jerked his thumb toward one of the middle aisles. «That crazy cunt. That witch.»
It was Mrs. Carmody he had jerked his thumb at. She was no longer alone; two women had joined her. From their bright clothes I guessed they were probably tourists or summer people, ladies who had maybe left their families to «just run into town and get a few things» and were now eaten up with worry over their husbands and kids. Ladies eager to grasp at almost any straw. Maybe even the black comfort of a Mrs. Carmody.
Her pantsuit shone out with its same baleful resplendence. She was talking, gesturing, her face hard and grim. The two ladies in their bright clothes (but not as bright as Mrs. Carmody’s pantsuit, no, and her gigantic satchel of a purse was still tucked firmly under one doughy arm) were listening raptly.
«She’s another reason I want to get out, Drayton. By night she’ll have six people sitting with her. If those pink bugs and the birds come back tonight, she’ll have a whole congregation sitting with her by tomorrow morning. Then we can start worrying about who she’ll tell them to sacrifice to make it all better. Maybe me, or you, or that guy Hatlen. Maybe your kid.»
«That’s idiocy,» I said. But was it? The cold chill crawling up my back said not necessarily. Mrs. Carmody’s mouth moved and moved. The eyes of the tourist ladies were fixed on her wrinkled lips. Was it idiocy? I thought of the dusty stuffed animals drinking at their looking-glass stream. Mrs. Carmody had power. Even Steff, normally hardheaded and straight-from-the-shoulder, invoked the old lady’s name with unease.
That crazy cunt, Miller had called her. That witch.
«The people in this market are going through a section-eight experience for sure,» Miller said. He gestured at the red-painted beams framing the show-window segments … twisted and splintered and buckled out of shape. «Their minds probably feel like those beams look. Mine sure as shit does. I spent half of last night thinking I must have flipped out of my gourd, that I was probably in a straitjacket in Danvers, raving my head off about bugs and dinosaur birds and tentacles and that it would all go away just as soon as the nice orderly came along and shot a wad of Thorazine into my arm.» His small face wass trained and white. He looked at Mrs. Carmody and then back at me, tell you it might happen. As people get flakier she’s going to look better and better to some of them. And I don’t want to be around if that happens.»
Mrs. Carmody’s lips, moving and moving. Her tongue dancing around her old lady’s snaggle teeth. She did look like a witch. Put her in a pointy black hat and she would be perfect. What was she saying to her two captured birds in their bright summer plumage?
Arrowhead Project? Black Spring the Abominations from cellars of the earth? Human sacrifice?
Bullshit.
All the same
So what do you say.
«I’ll go this far,» I answered him. «We,ll try going over to the drug. You, me, Ollie if he wants to go, one or two others, Then we’ll talk it over again.» Even that gave me the feeling of walking out over an impossible drop on a narrow beam. I wasn’t going to help Billy by killing myself on the other hand, I wasn’t going to help him by just sitting on my ass, either. Twenty feet to the drugstore. That wasn’t so bad. «When?» he asked. «Give me an hour.» «Sure,» he said.