Something Wicked This Way Comes

The music, thought Will, what is it? And how do I know it’s backside first? He, hugged the limb, tried to catch the tune, then hum it forward in his head. But the brass bells, the drums, hammered his chest, revved his heart so he felt his pulse reverse, his blood turn back in perverse thrusts through all his flesh, so he was nearly shaken free to fall, so all he did was clutch, hang pale, and drink the sight of the backward-turning machine and Mr Dark, alert at the controls, on the sidelines.

It was Jim who first noticed the new thing happening, for he kicked Will, once, Will looked over, and Jim nodded frantically at the man in the machine as he came around the next time.

Mr Cooger’s face was melting like pink wax.

His hands were becoming doll’s hands.

His bones sank away beneath his clothes; his clothes then shrank down to fit his dwindling frame.

His face flickered going, and each time around he melted more.

Will saw Jim’s head shift, circling.

The carousel wheeled, a great back-drifting lunar dream the horses thrusting, the music in-gasped after, while Mr Cooger, as simple as shadows, as simple as light, as simple as time, got younger. And younger. And younger.

Each time he wheeled to view he sat alone with his bones, which shaped like warm candles burning away to tender years.

He gazed serenely at the fiery constellations, the children-inhabited trees, which went away from him as he removed himself from them and his nose Finished and his sweet wax ears reshaped themselves to small pink roses.

Now no longer forty where he had begun his back-spiraled journey, Mr Cooger was nineteen.

Around went the reverse parade of horse, pole, music, man become young man, young man fast rendered down to boy. . . .

Mr Cooger was seventeen, sixteen. . . .

Another and another time around under the sky and trees and Will whispering, Jim counting the times around, around, while the night air warmed to summer heat by friction of sun-metal brass, the passionate backturned flight of beasts, wore the wax doll down and down and washed him clean with the still stranger musics until all ceased, all died away to stillness the calliope shut up its brassworks, the ironmongery machines hissed off, and with a last faint whine like desert sands blown backup Arabian hourglasses, the carousel rocked on seaweed waters and stood still.

The figure seated in the carved white wooden sleigh chair was very small.

Mr Cooger was twelve years old.

No. Will’s mouth shaped the word. No. Jim’s did the same.

The small shape, stepped down from the silent world, its face in shadow, but its hands newborn wrinkled pink, held out in raw carnival lamplight.

The strange man-boy shot his gaze up, down, smelling fright somewhere, terror and awe in the vicinity. Will balled himself tight and shut his eyes. He felt the terrible gaze shoot through the leaves like brown needle-darts, pass on. Then, rabbit-running, the small shape lit off down the empty midway.

Jim was first to stir the leaves aside.

Mr Dark was gone, too, in the evening hush.

It seemed to take Jim forever to fall down to earth. Will fell after and they both stood, clamorous with alarms, shaken by concussions of silent pantomime, blasted by events all the more numbing because they ran off into the night unknown. And it was Jim who spoke from their mutual confusion and trembling as each held to the other’s arm, seeing the small shadow rush, luring them across the meadow.

‘Oh, Will, I wish we could go home, I wish we could eat. But it’s too late, we saw! We got to see more! Don’t we?’

‘Lord,’ said Will miserably. ‘I guess we do.’

And they ran together, following they didn’t know what on out and away to who could possibly guess where.

19

Out on the highway the last faint water-colours of the sun were gone beyond the hills and whatever they were chasing was so far ahead as to be only a swift-fleck now shown in lamplight, now set free, running, into dark.

‘Twenty-eight!’ gasped Jim, ‘Twenty-eight times!’

‘The merry-go-round, sure!’ Will jerked his head. ‘Twenty-eight times I counted, it went around back!’

Up ahead the small shape stopped and looked back.

Jim and Will ducked in by a tree and let it move on.

‘It’, thought Will. Why do I think ‘it’? He’s a boy, he’s a man. . .no. . .it is something that has changed, that’s what it is.

They reached and passed the city limits, and swiftly jogging, Will said, Jim, there must’ve been two people on that ride, Mr Cooger and this boy and—’

‘No. I never took my eyes off him!’

They ran by the barber shop. Will saw but did not see a sign in the window. He read but did not read. He remembered, he forgot. He plunged on.

‘Hey! He’s turned on Culpepper Street! Quick!’

They rounded a corner.

‘He’s gone!’

The street lay long and empty in the lamplight.

Leaves blew on the hopscotch-chalked sidewalks.

‘Will, Miss Foley lives on this street.’

‘Sure, fourth house, but—’

Jim strolled, casually whistling, hands in pockets, Will with him. At Miss Foley’s house they glanced up.