endnote n.67: the Shed's objay darts — "Her deal is apparently that she’s…"
Her deal is apparently that she’s almost psychotically terrified of the possibility that she might be either blind or paralyzed or both. So e.g. she keeps her eyes shut tight 24/7/365 out of the reasoning that as long as she keeps her eyes shut tight she can find hope in the possibility that if she was to open them she’d be able to see, they say; but that if she were ever to actually open her eyes and actually not be able to see, she reasons, she’s lost that precious like margin of hope that she’s maybe not blind. […] the terrifying thing is that the common unifying symptom of most of The Shed’s objay darts is a terror so terrifying it makes the object of the terror come true, somehow
Context
The cops' star anecdote: the "D.P." lady who preserves the "margin of hope" that she isn't blind or paralyzed by never testing it — hope maintained only by becoming, functionally, exactly what she fears. The capper generalizes it into the theme's psychotic logic: terror that manufactures its own object, the same self-consuming circuitry as It. And Hal is the only E.T.A. kid "truly interested" in these anecdotes.