“Am I supposed to go back there and look at some ninety-eight-cent rubber-joke novelty while these two hicks stand around and laugh their apses off?”

“Hey, you want to watch who you're calling a hick,” Myron said.

“I'm glad that tree fell on your boathouse, if you want to know the truth. Glad.” Norton was grinning savagely at me. “Stove it in pretty well, didn't it? Fantastic. Now get out of my way.”

He tried to push past me. I grabbed him by the arm and threw him against the beer cooler. A woman cawed in surprise. Two six-packs of Bud fell over.

“You dig out your ears and listen, Brent. There are lives at stake here. My kid's is not the least of them. So you listen, or I swear I'll knock the shit out of you.”

“Go ahead,” Norton said, still grinning with a kind of insane palsied bravado. His eyes, bloodshot and wide, bulged from their sockets. “Show everyone how big and brave you are, beating up a man with a heart condition who is old enough to be your father.”

“Sock him anyway!” Jim exclaimed. “Fuck his heart condition. I don't even think a cheap New York shyster like him has got a heart.” “You keep out of it,” I said to Jim, and then put my face down to Norton's. I was kissing distance, if that had been what I had in mind. The cooler was off, but it was still radiating a chill. “Stop throwing up sand. You know damn well I'm telling the truth.”

“I know... no... such thing,” he panted.

“If it was another time and place, I'd let you get away with it. I don't care how scared you are, and I'm not keeping score. I'm scared, too. But I need you, goddammit! Does that get through? I need you!”

“Let me go!”

I grabbed him by the shirt and shook him. “Don't you understand anything? People are going to start leaving and walk right into that thing out there! For Christ's sake, don't you understand?”

“Let me go!”

“Not until you come back there with me and see for yourself.”

“I told you, no! It's all a trick, a joke, I'm not as stupid as you take me for—”

“Then I'll haul-you back there myself.”

I grabbed him by the shoulder and the scruff of his neck. The seam of his shirt under one arm tore with a soft purring sound. I dragged him toward the double doors. Norton let out a wretched scream. A knot of people, fifteen or eighteen, had gathered, but they kept their distance. None showed any signs of wanting to interfere.

“Help me!” Norton cried. His eyes bulged behind his glasses. His styled hair had gone awry again, sticking up in the same two little tufts behind his ears. People shuffled their feet and watched.

“What are you screaming for?” I said in his ear. “It's just a joke, right? That's why I took you to town when you asked

to come and why I trusted you to cross Billy in the parking lot because I had this handy fog all manufactured, I rented a

fog machine from Hollywood, it cost me fifteen thousand dollars and another eight thousand dollars to ship it, all so I

could play a joke on you. Stop bullshitting yourself and open your eyes!” “Let... me... go!” Norton bawled. We were almost at the doors.

“Here, here! What is this? What are you doing?” It was Brown. He bustled and elbowed his way through the crowd of watchers. “Make him let me go,” Norton said hoarsely. “He's crazy.” “No. He's not crazy. I wish he were, but he isn't.” That was Ollie, and I could have blessed him. He came around the aisle behind us and stood there facing Brown. Brown's eyes dropped to the beer Ollie was holding. “You're drinking!” he said, and his voice was surprised but not totally devoid of pleasure. “You'll lose your job for this.” “Come on, Bud,” I said, letting Norton go. “This is no ordinary situation.” “Regulations don't change,” Brown said smugly. “I'll see that the company hears of it. That's my responsibility.” Norton, meanwhile, had skittered away and stood at some distance, trying to straighten his shirt and smooth back his hair. His eyes darted between Brown and me nervously.

“Hey!” Ollie cried suddenly, raising his voice and producing a bass thunder I never would have suspected from this large but soft and unassuming man. “Hey! Everybody in the store! You want to come up back and hear this! It concerns all of you!” He looked at me levelly, ignoring Brown altogether. “Am I doing all right?”

“Fine. “

People began to gather. The original knot of spectators to my argument with Norton doubled, then trebled.

“There's something you all had better know—” Ollie began.

“You put that beer down right now,” Brown said.

“You shut up right now,” I said, and took a step toward him.

Brown took a compensatory step back. “I don't know what some of you think you are doing,” he said, “but I can tell you it's going to be reported to the Federal Foods Company! All of it! And I want you to understand-there may be charges!” His lips drew nervously back from his yellowed teeth, and I could feel sympathy for him. Just trying to cope; that was all he was doing. As Norton was by imposing a mental gag order on himself. Myron and Jim had tried by turning the whole thing into a macho charade-if the generator could be fixed, the mist would blow over. This was Brown's way. He was... Protecting the Store.

“Then you go ahead and take down the names,” I said. “But please don't talk.”

“I'll take down plenty of names,” he responded. “Yours will be head on the list, you... you bohemian.”

“Mr. David Drayton has got something to tell you,” Ollie said, “and I think you had better all listen up, in case you were planning ongoing home.”

So I told them what had happened, pretty much as I told Norton. There was some laughter at first, then a deepening uneasiness as I finished.

“It's a lie, you know,” Norton said. His voice tried for hard emphasis and overshot into stridency. This was the man I'd told first, hoping to enlist his credibility. What a balls-up. “Of course it's a lie,” Brown agreed. “It's lunacy. Where do you suppose those tentacles came from, Mr. Drayton?” “I don't know, and at this point, hat's not even a very important question. They're here. There's—” “I suspect they came out of a few of those beer cans. ~ That's what I suspect.” This got some appreciative laughter. ~ It was silenced by the strong, rusty-hinge voice of Mrs. Carmody.

“Death!” she cried, and those who had been laughing quickly sobered.

She marched into the center of the rough circle that had formed, her canary pants seeming to give off a light of their own, her huge purse swinging against one elephantine thigh. Her black eyes glanced arrogantly around, as sharp and balefully sparkling as a magpie's. Two good-looking girls of about sixteen with CAMP WOODLANDS written on the back of their white rayon shirts shrank away from her. “You listen but you don't hear! You hear but you don't believe! Which one of you wants to go outside and see for himself?” Her eyes swept them, and then fell on me. “And just what do you propose to do about it, Mr. David Drayton? What do you think you can do about it?” She grinned, skull-like above her canary outfit. “It's the end, I tell you. The end of everything. It's the Last Times. The moving finger has writ, not in fire, but in lines of mist. The earth has opened and spewed forth its abominations—” “Can't you make her shut up?” one of the teenage girls burst out. She was beginning to cry. “She's scaring me!”

“Are you scared, dearie?” Mrs. Carmody asked, and turned on her. “You aren't scared now, no. But when the foul creatures the Imp has loosed upon the face of the earth come for you—” “That's enough now, Mrs. Carmody,” Ollie said, taking her arm. “That's just fine.” “You let go of me! It's the end, I tell you! It's death! Death!” “It's a pile of shit,” a man in a fishing hat and glasses said disgustedly. “No, Sir,” Myron spoke up. “I know it sounds like something out of a dope-dream, but it's the flat-out truth. I saw it myself.