‘It is,’ gasped Douglas. ‘A baby!’
‘What’s it doing in there?’
‘Being dead, dummy.’
‘Yeah, but … how …?’
All their eyes swiveled to rush back – eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five and four and three and two and one – to the first jar, the one holding the pale little oyster curlicue.
‘If that’s a baby …’
‘Then,’ said Will, all numbness, ‘what in blazes are all those creepy things in the other jars?’
Douglas counted backward, then forward again, but stayed silent, his icy flesh all goose bumps.
‘I got nothing to say.’
‘Upchuck, Doug, upchuck.’
‘Those things in the jars …’ Doug began, face pale, voice paler. ‘They’re – they’re babies, too!’
It was as if half a dozen sledgehammers had slammed into half a dozen stomachs.
‘Don’t look like babies!’
‘Things from another world, maybe.’
Another world, thought Douglas. In those jars, drowned. Another world.
‘Jellyfish,’ Charlie said. ‘Squids. You know.’
I know, thought Douglas. Undersea.
‘It’s got blue eyes,’ Will whispered. ‘It’s looking at us.’
‘No, it’s not,’ said Doug. ‘It’s drowned.’
‘C’mon, Doug,’ Tom whispered. ‘I got the willies.’
‘Willies, heck,’ Charlie said. ‘I got the heebie–jeebies. Where’d all this stuff come from?’
‘I don’t know,’ Douglas said, chafing his elbows.
‘The wax museum last year. That was sort of like this.’
‘These aren’t wax,’ said Tom. ‘Oh, gosh, Doug, that’s a real baby there, used to be alive. I never seen a dead baby before. I’m gonna be sick.’
‘Run outside. Go on!’
Tom turned and ran. In a moment, Charlie backed off and followed, his eyes darting from the baby to the jellyfish or whatever it was and then to the seahorse or what might be someone’s earlobes, tympanum and all.
‘How come there’s no one here to tell us what all this stuff is?’ Will wondered.
‘Maybe,
’ said Doug slowly, ‘maybe they’re afraid to tell, or can’t tell, or won’t.’
‘Lord,’ said Will. ‘I’m froze.’