“Hector—look.... It—It....”
As her brother still stood speechless, with bent head and ashen face, she dropped to silence: too terrified of It, of her plainly deluded self, of everything on earth, to say more....
One simply could not trust one’s own eyes; that’s what it came to.
Her legs were trembling; she could feel her knees touching each other, cold and clammy.
It would have been impossible to say a word, even if she had dared to reveal her own insanity; she could only pluck the lapels of her brother’s coat, running her dry tongue along her lips.
Something in her unusual silence must have stirred through the boy’s own misery, for after a moment or so he looked up, at first dimly, as though scarcely recognising her. Then—slowly realising her intent glance fixed on something beyond his own shoulder, he turned—and saw.
Twenty yards or more off, on a mound of coarse grass and sand just above the high-tide mark, “It” was sitting, its long arms wound round its knees, staring out to sea.
For a moment or so they hung, open-mouthed, wide-eyed.
For the life of her, Rhoda could not have moved a step nearer. The creature’s heavy shoulders were rounded, its head thrust forward. Silhouetted against sea and sky, white in contrast to its darkness, it had the aloofness of incredible age; drawn apart, almost sanctified by its immeasurable remoteness, its detachment from all that meant life to the men and women of the twentieth century: the web of fancied necessities, trivial possessions, absorptions.
“There was no sea—of course, there was no sea anywhere near here then!” The boy’s whisper opened an incalculable panorama of world-wide change.