Hell broke loose.
Sound welled up, pitched high and keening and almost inaudible. What was heard, was jarring and maddening. It took a man's nerve-ends out and scratched on them until his entire body was dancing. Grim stood shivering, trying to lift his hands to shelter his eardrums; discovering this his arms were jumping free of his will.
He whispered, "I can't do it. I can't turn it off." Something rolled against his leg. It was old Jasper Jones, eyes rolling in his head, a bubbly white froth at his mouth.
Grim's knees shook. They went in different directions and he pitched to the metal floor. His body danced a weird saraband against the metal. He thought, 'If something doesn't happen, we'll all go mad!' He knew that sound could crush them; that this sound that was jumbling their brains was enough for that, given the time to build itself.
His hands shook. His body quivered. His brain throbbed, and blackness swept down and blinded him.
The sound was gone. Someone was shaking him by the shoulder, urgently. Grim opened tired eyelids. Tlokine bent over him, fright making her red nails dig deep into his shoulder.
Grim said words, but he did not hear them. He put hands to his ears, found them plugged with cotton. The sound came through, a little, but it was muffled, ineffective.
He got up and took the wad of cotton that Tlokine still held and forced two balls of it into old Jasper Jones' ears. After a while the old man sat up and looked at them.