"My babies!" screamed the woman. "I can't reach my babies!" Now I began to get my bearings in the curtained room. I saw the table and the buffet and the door that led into the bedroom hallway.
Donovan was coming through the doorway. He was half leading, half carrying the woman.
"I tried to get to them," she cried. "There's something there — something that stopped me. I can't get to my babies!" He let her down on the floor and propped her against the wall and knelt gently beside her. He looked up at me and there was a baffled, angry terror in his eyes.
"It's the barrier," I told him. "The one down on the road. It runs straight through the house."
"I don't see no barrier," he said.
"Damn it, man, you don't see it. It just is there, is all."
"What can we do?" he asked.
"The children are OK," I assured him, hoping I was right. "They're just on the other side of the barrier. We can't get to them and they can't get to us, but everything's all right."
"I just got up to look in on them," the woman said. "I just got up to look at them and there was something in the hall…"
"How many?" I asked.
"Two," said Donovan. "One is six, the other eight."
"Is there someone you can phone? Someone outside the village. They could come and take them in and take care of them until we get this thing figured out. There must be an end to this wall somewhere. I was looking for it…"
"She's got a sister," said Donovan, "up the road a ways. Four or five miles."
"Maybe you should call her." And as I said it, another thought hit me straight between the eyes. The phone might not be working. The barrier might have cut the phone lines.
"You be all right, Liz?" he asked.
She nodded dumbly, still sitting on the floor, not trying to get up.
"I'll go call Myrt," he said.
I followed him into the kitchen and stood beside him as he lifted the receiver of the wall phone, holding my breath in a fierce hope that the phone would work. And for once my hoping must have done some good, for when the receiver came off the hook I could hear the faint buzz of an operating line.
Out in the dining-room, Mrs Donovan was sobbing very quietly.
Donovan dialed, his big, blunt, grease-grimed fingers seemingly awkward and unfamiliar at the task. He finally got it done.
He waited with the receiver at his ear. I could hear the signal ringing in the quietness of the kitchen.
"That you, Myrt? said Donovan. "Yeah, this is Bill. We run into a little trouble. I wonder could you and Jake come over…. No, Myrt, just something wrong. I can't explain it to you. Could you come over and pick up the kids? You'll have to come the front way; you can't get in the back.
Yeah, Myrt, I know it sounds crazy. There's some sort of wall. Liz and me, we're in the back part of the house and we can't get up to the front. The kids are in the front…. No, Myrt, I don't know what it is. But you do like I say. Them kids are up there all alone and we can't get to them…. Yes, Myrt, right through the house. Tell Jake to bring along an axe. This thing runs right straight through the house. The front door is locked and Jake will have to chop it down. Or bust a window, if that's easier…. Sure, sure, I know what I'm saying. You just go ahead and do it. Anything to get them kids. I'm not crazy. Something's wrong, I tell you. Something's gone way wrong. You do what I say, Myrt…. Don't mind about the door, just chop the damn thing down. You just get the kids any way you can and keep them safe for us." He hung up the receiver and turned from the phone. He used his forearm to wipe the sweat off his face.
"Damn woman," he said. "She just stood there and argued. She's a flighty bitch." He looked at me. "Now, what do we do next?"
"Trace the barrier," I said. "See where it goes. See if we can get around it. If we can find a way around it, we can get your kids."
"I'll go with you."
I gestured toward the dining-room. "And leave her here alone?"
"No," he said. "No, I can't do that. You go ahead. Myrt and Jake, they'll come and get the kids. Some of the neighbours will take Liz in. I'll try to catch up with you. Thing like this, you might need some help."
"Thanks," I said.
Outside the house, the paleness of the dawn was beginning to flow across the land. Everything was painted that ghostly brightness, not quite-white, not quite any other colour either, that marks the beginning of an August day.
On the road below, a couple of dozen cars were jammed up in front of the barrier on the east-bound lane and there were groups of people standing around. I could hear one loud voice that kept booming out in excited talk — one of those aggressive loudmouths you find in any kind of crowd. Someone had built a small campfire out on the boulevard between the lanes — God knows why, the morning was surely warm enough and the day would be a scorcher.
And now I remembered that I had meant to get hold of Alf and tell him that I wasn't coming. I could have used the phone in the Donovan kitchen, but I'd forgotten all about it. I stood undecided, debating whether to go back in again and ask to use the phone. That had been the main reason, I realized, that I'd stopped at Donovan" s.
There was this pile of cars on the east-bound lane and only the truck and my battered car on the west-bound lane and that must mean, I told myself, that the west-bound lane was closed, as well, somewhere to the east.
And could that mean, I wondered, that the village was enclosed, was encircled by the wall?
I decided against going back to make the phone call, and moved on around the house. I picked up the wall again and began to follow it. I was getting the hang of it by now. It was like feeling this thing alongside me, and following the feeling, keeping just a ways away from it, bumping into it only now and then.
The wall roughly skirted the edge of the village, with a few outlying houses on the other side of it. I followed along it and I crossed some paths and a couple of bob-tailed, dead-end streets, and finally came to the secondary road that ran in from Coon Valley, ten miles or so away.
The road slanted on a gentle grade in its approach into the village and on the slant, just on the other side of the wall, stood an older model car, somewhat the worse for wear. Its motor was still running and the door on the driver's side was open, but there was no one in it and no one was around. It looked as if the driver, once he'd struck the barrier, might have fled in panic.
As I stood looking at the car, the brakes began to slip and the car inched forward, slowly at first, then faster, and finally the brakes gave out entirely and the car plunged down the hill, through the barrier wall, and crashed into a tree. It slowly toppled over on its side and a thin trickle of smoke began to seep from underneath the hood.
But I didn't pay much attention to the car, for there was something more important. I broke into a run, heading up the road.
The car had passed the barrier and had gone down the road to crash and that meant there was no barrier. I had reached the end of it!
I ran up the road, exultant and relieved, for I'd been fighting down the feeling, and having a hard time to fight it down entirely, that the barrier might run all around the village. And in the midst of all my exultation and relief, I hit the wall again.
I hit it fairly hard, for I was running hard, sure that it wasn't there, but in a terrible hurry to make sure it wasn't there. I went into it for three running strides before it tossed me back. I hit the roadbed flat on my back and my head banged upon the pavement. There were a million stars.
I rolled over and got on my hands and knees and stayed there for a moment, like a gutted hound, with my head hanging limp between my shoulders, and I shook it now and then to shake the stars away.
I heard the crackle and the roar of flames and that jerked me to my feet. I still was fairly wobbly, but wobbly or not, I got away from there.