Skeleton Crew (14 page)

“Yes, please,” he said, swinging the flashlight above his head in slow arcs and watching it play across the ceiling.

“God will keep your Steffy, and Alan, too,” Mrs. Turman said, and led Billy away by the hand. She spoke with serene sureness, but there was no conviction in her eyes.

Around five-thirty the sounds of excited argument rose near the back of the store. Someone jeered at something someone else had said, and someone—it was Buddy Eagleton, I think—shouted, “You’re crazy if you go out there!”

Several of the flashlight beams pooled together at the center of the controversy, and they moved toward the front of the store. Mrs. Carmody’s shrieking, derisive laugh split the gloom, as abrasive as fingers drawn down a slate blackboard.

Above the babble of voices came the boom of Norton’s courtroom tenor: “Let us pass, please! Let us pass!”

The man at the loophole next to mine left his place to see what the shouting was about. I decided to stay where I was. Whatever the concatenation was, it was coming my way.

“Please,” Mike Hatlen was saying. “Please, let’s talk this thing through.”

“There is nothing to talk about,” Norton proclaimed. Now his face swam out of the gloom. It was determined and haggard and wholly wretched. He was holding one of the two flashlights allocated to the Flat-Earthers. The corkscrewed tufts of hair still stuck up behind his ears like a cuckold’s horns. He was at the head of an extremely small procession—five of the original nine or ten. “We are going out,” he said.

“Don’t stick to this craziness,” Miller said. “Mike’s right. We can talk it over, can’t we? Mr. McVey is going to barbecue some chicken over the gas grill, we can all sit down and eat and just—”

He got in Norton’s way and Norton gave him a push. Miller didn’t like it. His face flushed and then set in a hard expression. “Do what you want, then,” he said. “But you’re as good as murdering these other people.”

With all the evenness of great resolve or unbreakable obsession, Norton said: “We’ll send help back for you.”

One of his followers murmured agreement, but another quietly slipped away. Now there was Norton and four others. Maybe that wasn’t so bad. Christ Himself could only find twelve.

“Listen,” Mike Hatlen said. “Mr. Norton—Brent—at least stay for the chicken. Get some hot food inside you.”

“And give you a chance to go on talking? I’ve been in too many courtrooms to fall for that. You’ve psyched out half a dozen of my people already.”

“Your people?” Hatlen almost groaned it. “Your people? Good Christ, what kind of talk is that? They’re people, that’s all. This is no game, and it’s surely not a courtroom. There are, for want of a better word, there are things out there, and what’s the sense of getting yourself killed?”

“Things, you say,” Norton said, sounding superficially amused. “Where? Your people have been on watch for a couple of hours now. Who’s seen one?”

“Well, out back. In the—”

“No, no, no,” Norton said, shaking his head. “That ground has been covered and covered. We’re going out—”

“No,” someone whispered, and it echoed and spread, sounding like the rustle of dead leaves at dusk of an October evening.
No, no, no
...

“Will you restrain us?” a shrill voice asked. This was one of Norton’s “people,” to use his word—an elderly lady wearing bifocals. “Will you restrain us?”

The soft babble of negatives died away.

“No,” Mike said. “No, I don’t think anyone will restrain you.”

I whispered in Billy’s ear. He looked at me, startled and questioning. “Go on, now.” I said. “Be quick.”

He went.

Norton ran his hands through his hair, a gesture as calculated as any ever made by a Broadway actor. I had liked him better pulling the cord of his chainsaw fruitlessly, cussing and thinking himself unobserved. I could not tell then and do not know any better now if he believed in what he was doing or not. I think, down deep, that he knew what was going to happen. I think that the logic he had paid lip service to all his life turned on him at the end like a tiger that has gone bad and mean.

He looked around restlessly, seeming to wish that there was more to say. Then he led his four followers through one of the checkout lanes. In addition to the elderly woman, there was a chubby boy of about twenty, a young girl, and a man in blue jeans wearing a golf cap tipped back on his head.

Norton’s eyes caught mine, widened a little, and then started to swing away.

“Brent, wait a minute,” I said.

“I don’t want to discuss it any further. Certainly not with you.”

“I know you don’t. I just want to ask a favor.” I looked around and saw Billy coming back toward the checkouts at a run.

“What’s that?” Norton asked suspiciously as Billy came up and handed me a package done up in cellophane.

“Clothesline,” I said. I was vaguely aware that everyone in the market was watching us now, loosely strung out on the other side of the cash registers and checkout lanes. “It’s the big package. Three hundred feet.”

“So?”

“I wondered if you’d tie one end around your waist before you go out. I’ll let it out. When you feel it come up tight, just tie it around something. It doesn’t matter what. A car door handle would do.”

“What in God’s name for?”

“It will tell me you got at least three hundred feet,” I said.

Something in his eyes flickered ... but only momentarily. “No,” he said.

I shrugged. “Okay. Good luck, anyhow.”

Abruptly the man in the golf cap said, “I’ll do it, mister. No reason not to.”

Norton swung on him, as if to say something sharp, and the man in the golf cap studied him calmly. There was nothing flickering in his eyes. He had made his decision and there was simply no doubt in him. Norton saw it too and said nothing.

“Thanks,” I said.

I slit the wrapping with my pocketknife and the clothesline accordioned out in stiff loops. I found one loose end and tied it around Golf Cap’s waist in a loose granny. He immediately untied it and cinched it tighter with a good quick sheet-bend knot. There was not a sound in the market. Norton shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

“You want to take my knife?” I asked the man in the golf cap.

“I got one.” He looked at me with that same calm contempt. “You just see to paying out your line. If it binds up, I’ll chuck her.”

“Are we all ready?” Norton asked, too loud. The chubby boy jumped as if he had been goosed. Getting no response, Norton turned to go.

“Brent,” I said, and held out my hand. “Good luck, man.”

He studied my hand as if it were some dubious foreign object. “We’ll send back help,” he said finally, and pushed through the OUT door. That thin, acrid smell came in again. The others followed him out.

Mike Hatlen came down and stood beside me. Norton’s party of five stood in the milky, slow-moving fog. Norton said something and I should have heard it, but the mist seemed to have an odd damping effect. I heard nothing but the sound of his voice and two or three isolated syllables, like the voice on the radio heard from some distance. They moved off.

Hatlen held the door a little way open. I paid out the clothesline, keeping as much slack in it as I could, mindful of the man’s promise to chuck the rope if it bound him up. There was still not a sound. Billy stood beside me, motionless but seeming to thrum with his own inner current.

Again there was that weird feeling that the five of them did not so much disappear into the fog as become invisible. For a moment their clothes seemed to stand alone, and then they were gone. You were not really impressed with the unnatural density of the mist until you saw people swallowed up in a space of seconds.

I paid the line out. A quarter of it went, then a half. It stopped going out for a moment. It went from a live thing to a dead one in my hands. I held my breath. Then it started to go out again. I paid it through my fingers, and suddenly remembered my father taking me to see the Gregory Peck film of
Moby
Dick at the Brookside. I think I smiled a little.

Three-quarters of the line was gone now. I could see the end of it lying beside one of Billy’s feet. Then the rope stopped moving through my hands again. It lay motionless for perhaps five seconds, and then another five feet jerked out. Then it suddenly whipsawed violently to the left, twanging off the edge of the OUT door.

Twenty feet of rope suddenly paid out, making a thin heat across my left palm. And from out of the mist there came a high, wavering scream. It was impossible to tell the sex of the screamer.

The rope whipsawed in my hands again. And again. It skated across the space in the doorway to the right, then back to the left. A few more feet paid out, and then there was a ululating howl from out there that brought an answering moan from my son. Hatlen stood aghast. His eyes were huge. One comer of his mouth turned down, trembling.

The howl was abruptly cut off. There was no sound at all for what seemed to be forever. Then the old lady cried out—this time there could be no doubt about who it was.
“Git it offa me!”
she screamed.
“Oh my Lord my Lord get it—”

Then her voice was cut off, too.

Almost all of the rope abruptly ran out through my loosely closed fist, giving me a hotter burn this time. Then it went completely slack, and a sound came out of the mist—a thick, loud grunt—that made all the spit in my mouth dry up.

It was like no sound I’ve ever heard, but the closest approximation might be a movie set in the African veld or a South American swamp. It was the sound of a big animal. It came again, low and tearing and savage. Once more ... and then it subsided to a series of low mutterings. Then it was completely gone.

“Close the door,” Amanda Dumfries said in a trembling voice. “Please.”

“In a minute,” I said, and began to yank the line back in.

It came out of the mist and piled up around my feet in untidy loops and snarls. About three feet from the end, the new white clothesline went barn-red.

“Death!” Mrs. Carmody screamed. “Death to go out there! Now do you see?”

The end of the clothesline was a chewed and frayed tangle of fiber and little puffs of cotton. The little puffs were dewed with minute drops of blood.

No one contradicted Mrs. Carmody.

Mike Hatlen let the door swing shut.

Mr. McVey had worked in Bridgton cutting meat ever since I was twelve or thirteen, and I had no idea what his first name was or his age might be. He had set up a gas grill under one of the small exhaust fans—the fans were still now, but presumably they still gave some ventilation—and by 6:30 P.M. the smell of cooking chicken filled the market. Bud Brown didn’t object. It might have been shock, but more likely he had recognized the fact that his fresh meat and poultry wasn’t getting any fresher. The chicken smelled good, but not many people wanted to eat. Mr. McVey, small and spare and neat in his whites, cooked the chicken nevertheless and laid the pieces two by two on paper plates and lined them up cafeteria-style on top of the meat counter.

Mrs. Turman brought Billy and me each a plate, garnished with helpings of deli potato salad. I ate as best I could, but Billy would not even pick at his.

“You got to eat, big guy,” I said.

“I’m not hungry,” he said, putting the plate aside.

“You can’t get big and strong if you don’t—”

Mrs. Turman, sitting slightly behind Billy, shook her head at me.

“Okay,” I said. “Go get a peach and eat it, at least. ’Kay?”

“What if Mr. Brown says something?”

“If he says something, you come back and tell me.”

“Okay, Dad.”

He walked away slowly. He seemed to have shrunk somehow. It hurt my heart to see him walk that way. Mr. McVey went on cooking chicken, apparently not minding that only a few people were eating it, happy in the act of cooking. As I think I have said, there are all ways of handling a thing like this. You wouldn’t think it would be so, but it is. The mind is a monkey.

Mrs. Turman and I sat halfway up the patent-medicines aisle. People were sitting in little groups all over the store. No one except Mrs. Carmody was sitting alone; even Myron and his buddy Jim were together—they were both passed out by the beer cooler.

Six new men were watching the loopholes. One of them was Ollie, gnawing a leg of chicken and drinking a beer. The mop-handle torches leaned beside each of the watchposts, a can of charcoal lighter fluid next to each ... but I don’t think anyone really believed in the torches the way they had before. Not after that low and terribly vital grunting sound, not after the chewed and blood-soaked clothesline. If whatever was out there decided it wanted us, it was going to have us. It, or they.

“How bad will it be tonight?” Mrs. Turman asked. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were sick and scared.

“Hattie, I just don’t know.”

“You let me keep Billy as much as you can. I’m ... Davey, I think I’m in mortal terror.” She uttered a dry laugh.

“Yes, I believe that’s what it is. But if I have Billy, I’ll be all right. I’ll be all right for him.”

Her eyes were glistening. I leaned over and patted her shoulder.

“I’m so worried about Alan,” she said. “He’s dead, Davey. In my heart, I’m sure he’s dead.”

“No, Hattie. You don’t know any such thing.”

“But I feel it’s true. Don’t you feel anything about Stephanie? Don’t you at least have a ... a feeling?”

“No,” I said, lying through my teeth.

A strangled sound came from her throat and she clapped a hand to her mouth. Her glasses reflected back the dim, murky light.

“Billy’s coming back,” I murmured.

He was eating a peach. Hattie Turman patted the floor beside her and said that when he was done she would show him how to make a little man out of the peach pit and some thread. Billy smiled at her wanly, and Mrs. Turman smiled back.