Ollie finished his Busch and dropped the can back into the cooler, where it clattered among the empties. The butt of the gun Amanda's husband had given her protruded from his pocket. “South?” he asked, meeting my eyes. “Yeah, I would,” I said. “Go south and the mist. Try like hell.” “How much gas you got?” “Almost full.” “Have you thought that it might be impossible to get out?” I had. Suppose what they had been fooling with at the Arrowhead Project had pulled this entire region into another dimension as easily as you or I would turn a sock inside out? “It had crossed my mind,” I said, “but the alternative seems to be waiting around to see who Mrs. Carmody taps for the place of honor.”
“Were you thinking about today?” “No, it's afternoon already and those things get active at night. I was thinking about tomorrow, very early.” “Who would you want to take?” “Me and you and Billy. Hattie Turman. Amanda Dumfries. That old guy Cornell and Mrs. Reppler. Maybe Bud Brown, too. That's eight, but Billy can sit on someone's lap and we can all squash together.” He thought it over. “All right,” lit said finally. “We'll try. Have you mentioned this to anyone else?” “No, not yet.” “My advice would be not to, not until about four tomorrow morning. I'll put a couple of bags of groceries under the checkout nearest the door. If we're lucky we can squeak out before anyone knows what's happening.” His eyes drifted to Mrs. Carmody again. “If she knew, she might try to stop us.”
“You think so?” Ollie got another beer. “I think so,” he said.
That afternoon-yesterday afternoon-passed in a kind of slow motion. Darkness crept in, turning the fog to that dull chrome color again. What world was left outside slowly dissolved to black by eight-thirty. The pink bugs returned, then the bird-things, swooping into the windows and scooping them up. Something roared occasionally from the dark, and once, shortly before midnight, there was a long, drawn-out Aaaaa-rooooooo! that caused people to turn toward the blackness with frightened, searching faces. It was the sort of sound you'd imagine a bull alligator might make in a swamp. It went pretty much as Miller had predicted. By the small hours, Mrs. Carmody had gained another half a dozen souls. Mr. McVey the butcher was among them, standing with his arms folded, watching her. She was totally wound up. She seemed to need no sleep. Her sermon, a steady stream of horrors out of Dory, Bosch, and Jonathan Edwards, went on and on, building toward some climax. Her group began to murmur with her, to rock back and forth unconsciously, like true believers at a tent revival. Their eyes were shiny and blank. They were under her spell.
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 Mrs. 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 Mrs. 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,” Mrs. 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 Mr. McVey over to Mrs. 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!” Mrs. 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 Mrs. 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. Mr. McVey had spoken that word, Mr. McVey the butcher who had been cutting meat in Bridgton ever since I was a kid holding my father's talented hand. Mr. McVey taking orders and cutting meat in his stained whites. Mr. McVey, whose acquaintanceship with the knife was longyes, and with the saw and cleaver as well. Mr. McVey who would understand better than anyone else that the cleanser of the soul flows from the wounds of the body. “Blood.. .” they whispered.