Something Wicked This Way Comes

0 Lord, he thought, what am I doing? I want him alive, so he’ll forgive us, let us be! But, oh Lord, even more I want him dead, I want them all dead, they scare me so much I got hairballs big as cats in my stomach!

‘I’m sorry. . .he whispered.

Don’t be!’ cried Mr Dark.

The freaks made a commotion of blinks and glares. What next from the statue in the cold sizzling chair? The old old man’s one eye gummed itself. The mouth collapsed, a bubble of yellow mud in a sulphur bath.

The Illustrated Man banged the switch a notch grinning wildly at no one. He thrust a steel sword in the old man’s empty glove-like hand.

A drench of electricity prickled from the sere music-box tines of the ancient stubbled cheeks. That deep eye showed swift as a bullet hole. Hungry for Will, it found and ate of his image. The lips steamed:

‘I. . .sssaw. . .the. . .boysssssss. . .ssssneak into. . . hee tent. . .tttttt. . .’

The desiccated bellows refilled, then pin-punctured the swamp air out in faint wails:

‘. . .We. . .rehearsing. . .sssso I thought. . .play. . .thissss trick. . .pretend to be. . .dead.’

Again the pause to drink oxygen like ale, electricity like wine.

‘. . .let myself fall. . .like. . .I. . .wasssss. . .dying. . .The. . .boysssssssss. . .ssscreaming. . .ran!’

The old man husked out syllable on syllable.

‘Ha.’ Pause. ‘Ha.’ Pause. ‘Ha.’

Electricity hemstitched the whistling lips.

The Illustrated Man coughed gently. ‘This act, it tires Mr Electrico. . . .’

‘Oh, sure.’ One of the policemen started. ‘Sorry.’ He touched his cap. ‘Fine show.’

‘Fine,’ said one of the internes.

Will glanced swiftly to see the interne’s mouth, what it looked like saying this, but Jim stood in the way.

‘Boys! A dozen free passes!’ Mr Dark held them out. ‘Here!’

Jim and Will didn’t move.

‘Well?’ said one policeman.

Sheepishly, Will reached up for the flame-coloured tickets, but stopped as Mr Dark said, ‘Your names?’

The officers winked at each other.

‘Tell him, boys.’

Silence. The freaks watched.

‘Simon,’ said Jim. ‘Simon Smith.

Mr Dark’s hand, holding the tickets, constricted.

‘Oliver,’ said Will. ‘Oliver Brown.’

The Illustrated Man sucked in a mighty breath. The freaks inhaled! The vast ingasped sigh might have, seemed to, stir Mr Electrico. His sword twitched. Its tip leaped to spark-sting Will’s shoulder, then sizzle over in blue-green explosions at Jim. Lightning shot Jim’s shoulder.

The policemen laughed.

The old old man’s one wide eye blazed.

‘I dub thee. . .asses and foolssssss. . .I dub. . .thee. . .Mr Sickly. . .and. . .Mr Pale. . . !’

Mr Electrico finished. The sword tapped them.

‘A. . .sssshort. . .sad life. . .for you both!’

Then his mouth slit shut, his raw eye glued over. Containing his cellar breath, he let the simple sparks swarm his blood like dark champagne.

‘The tickets,’ murmured Mr Dark. ‘Free rides. Free rides. Come any time. Come back. Come back.’

Jim grabbed, Will grabbed the tickets.

They jumped, they bolted from the tent.

The police, smiling and waving all around, followed at their leisure.

The internes, not smiling, like ghosts in their white suits, came after.

They found the boys huddled in the back of the police car.

They looked as though they wanted to go home.

II Pursuits

25

She could feel the mirrors waiting for her in each room much the same as you felt, without opening your eyes, that the first snow of winter has just fallen outside your window.

Miss Foley had first noticed, some years ago, that her house crowded with bright shadows of herself. Best, then, to was ignore the cold sheets of December ice in the hall, above the bureaus, in the bath. Best skate the thin ice, lightly. Paused, the weight of your attention might crack the shell. Plunged through the crust, you might drown in depths so cold, so remote that all the Past lay carved in tombstone marbles there. Ice water would syringe your veins. Transfixed at the mirror sill you would stand forever, unable to lift your gaze from the proofs of Time.

Yet tonight, with the echo of the running feet of the three boys dying away, she kept feeling snow fall in the mirrors of her house. She wanted to thrust through the frames to test their weather. But she was afraid that doing this might cause all the mirrors to somehow assemble in billionfold multiplications of self, an army of women marching away to become girls and girls marching to become Infinitely small children. So many people, crammed in one house, would provoke suffocation.

So what must she do about mirrors, Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade, and. . .the nephew?

Strange. Why not say my nephew?

Because, she thought, from the first when he came in the door, he didn’t belong, his proof was not proof, she kept waiting for. . .what?

Tonight. The carnival. Music, the nephew said, that must be heard, rides that must be ridden. Stay away from the maze where winter slept. Swim around with the carousel where summer, sweet as clover, honey-grass, and wild mint, kept its lovely time.