'Tourists?' Leandro's mind was already racing ahead, trying to figure out what came next. He had thought he was onto something big; now he believed it was one hell of a lot bigger than even he had believed.
'Some,' the storekeeper said, 'but there ain't been many down this way this summer. Mostly I sell 'em to folks like you.'
'Like me?'
'Ayuh. Folks with bloody noses.'
Leandro gaped at the storekeeper.
'Their noses bleed, they wreck their shirts,' the storekeeper said. 'Same way you wrecked yours. They want a new one, and if they're just locals - like I 'spect you are - they ain't got no luggitch and no changes. So they stop first place they come to and buy a new one. I don't blame 'em. Drivin' around in a shirt all over blood like yours'd make me puke. Why, I've had ladies in here this summer - nice-looking ladies, too, dressed to the nines - who smelled like guts in a hogshead.'
The storekeeper cackled, showing a mouth that was perfectly toothless.
Leandro said slowly: 'Let me get this straight. Other people come back from Haven with bloody noses? It's not just me?'
'Just you? Hell, no! Shittagoddam! The day they buried Ruth McCausland, I sold fifteen shirts! That one day! I was thinkin' about retirin' on the proceeds and movin' to Florida.'
The storekeeper cackled again.
'They was all out-of-towners.' He said this as if it explained everything - and perhaps in his mind, it did. 'Couple of 'em was still spoutin' when they come in here. Noses like fountains! Ears too, sometimes. Shittagoddarn!'
'And nobody knows about this?'
The old man looked at Leandro from wise eyes.
'You do, sonny,' he said.
BOOK III. THE TOMMYKNOCKERS Chapter 6. Inside the Ship
1
'You ready, Gard?'
Gardener was sitting on the front porch, looking out at Route 9. The voice came from behind him, and it was easy - too easy - for him not to flash on a hundred sleazy prison movies, where the warden arrives to escort the condemned man along the Last Mile. Such scenes always beginning, of course, with the warden growling, Are you ready, Rocky?
Ready for this? You got to be kidding.
He got up, turned around, saw the equipment in Bobbi's arms, then the little smile on Bobbi's face. There was something knowing in that smile that he didn't like.
'See something funny?' he asked.
'Heard it. Heard you, Gard. You were thinking about old prison movies,' Bobbi said. 'And then you thought, "Ready for this? You got to be kidding." I caught all of that one, and that's very rare ... unless you're deliberately sending. That's why I was smiling.'
'You were peeking.'
'Yes. And it's getting easier to do,' Bobbi said, still smiling.
From behind his decaying mental shield, Gardener thought: I have a gun now, Bobbi. It's under my bed. I got it in The First Reformed Church of the Tommyknockers. It was dangerous ... but it would be more dangerous not to know just how deep Bobbi's ability to 'peek' now went.
Bobbi's smile faltered a little. 'What was that one?' she asked.
'You tell me,' he said, and when her smile began to change to a look of narrow suspicion he added easily, 'Come on, Bobbi, I was just pulling your string a little. I was only wondering what you got there.'
Bobbi brought the equipment over. There were two rubber snorkel mouthpieces attached to tanks and homemade regulators.
'We wear these,' she said. 'When we go inside.'
Inside.
Just the word lit a hot spark in his belly and triggered all sorts of conflicting emotions - awe, terror, anticipation, curiosity, tension. Part of him felt like a superstitious native preparing to walk on taboo ground; the rest felt like a kid on Christmas morning.
'The air inside is different, then,' Gardener said.
'Not so different.' Bobbi had put her makeup on indifferently this morning, perhaps having decided there was no longer any need to hide the accelerating physical changes from Gardener. Gard realized he could see Bobbi's tongue moving inside her head as she spoke ... only it didn't look precisely like a tongue anymore. And the pupils of Bobbi's eyes looked bigger, but somehow uneven and wavering, as if they were peering up at him from under water. Water with a slight greenish tinge. He felt his stomach turn over.
'Not so different,' she said. 'Just ... rotten.'
'Rotten?'
'The ship's been sealed for over twenty-five thousand centuries,' Bobbi said patiently. 'Totally sealed. We'd be killed by the outrush of bad air as soon as we opened the hatch. So we wear these.'