"Oh, I'm sorry I tried to share my arcane knowledge with everyone from the get go!" Terrence throws up his hands.

"It's not arcane knowledge, it's a book!"

"What do you think books have in them?!"

"We can discuss the King in Yellow at a different time that is not now."

Notably: When Terrence is not in the room to object to the information they got from Sano.

Everyone's pretending to tolerate him to get at books and bohemian contacts but now that he doesn't have a shop and can't even be around people maybe he's not even tolerable anymore. Maybe he's disposable and maybe they've already decided this at some point, together.

He's trying to reign in his thoughts to not cause another scene but good God he is miserable and scared and tired from being around people who don't even try to disguise contempt.

"Maybe if one of you had read it we'd be more prepared to be in this mess!"

That will not get people to read the King in Yellow, a voice violently says in his head, and it's not wrong so he forcefully tamps down his bitterness. "Okay. Fine. Fine."

"It tried to possess Inaaya," Sal blurts out, before he's processed that. "And it's in Terrence's dreams and it's in Roby's dreams and it does things to people and it got into the book Roby wrote and then that got into William Way and it got into Oscar and it doesn't matter what's in them, I don't care what's in them, there is something weird happening there."

And then he realizes how much of that he should've kept to himself and wants to sink into the floor.

Why is Sal bringing up his dreams in front of everyone.

"Different time, that is not now."

Terrence stares daggers at Sal. Righteous, irritated daggers.

Wonderful that everyone knows he's damaged and crazy. People are definitely going to use that in his best interests and not to hurt him.

"Okay, as I see it, we have two short term problems: We have a corpse in the woods, and we have bat summoning crop destroying rock pillars. Does anyone have suggestions about those?"

"The setting up the rock pillars also probably killed people, and not via bats, the people who died when Roby was here didn't have any injuries and didn't die of anything. I don't have suggestions about it."

He hadn't put those two things together, but that's an alarming possibility.

"On the one hand, it sucks that they destroy crops. On the other, I'm not sure trying to destroy them would... go well."

"Can we just skip town?" Terrence suggests wearily. "If someone goes to the field and finds the body, they may well find the bats too, so, not our problem. Or I suppose we could shoot one and bring it to a university."

"...there's a good chance they'll put two and two together and realise the strangers interested in history skipped town just after he died."

"Have you ever shot something before, Terrence?"

"Have you tried to shoot one these, specifically?"

Oh God we're all going to prison.

"They don't know by name. ... By our full names." Terrence thinks about it. "We could find some big game hunter to shoot one, and bring it to a university."

Inaaya's still pacing. "I'm not sure anything gets done about it if they do put two and two together, I haven't told anyone here my name at all much less my full one and there's a lot of Indian girls in England. That being said I don't like it because I am broadly against people dying."

"We could... try to move them somewhere they aren't bothering people, my first thought is the bottom of the ocean but I bet there's better solutions than that. Inside a volcano maybe."

"I could try touching the rock to see if we can get more information to work with but, one, I am not sure that I want to take whatever's up with them and stick it directly into my brain, two, that sounds like it involves going back to a clearing with bats circling above it."

"It being shot at seems to be what made the bats dive down, so I would be... hesitant to try moving it or touching it."

"We have no idea what happens if we move it or touch it nondestructively but, yes, that's a really good reason to not want to try finding out! On the other hand, 'there's a thing and it poisons crops and installing it led to people dying by an unclear mechanism and we're just going to leave it there' seems like it's also really bad, it's just really bad more slowly."

"I don't want to go near those things again. I want to find someone who knows how to deal with megafauna and hire him to deal with it."

He wants to make Sano find and hire someone to deal with it. He is not saying that in this room.

Oscar has a brief and vivid mental image of Inaaya screaming as she's attacked by a bat.