Something Wicked This Way Comes

The blows of his heart might jar him loose, crash him down but he was glad to hear them, know himself alive.

But then at last, gone calm, he gathered his limbs, most carefully searched for a prayer, and climbed himself down through the tree.

31

Nothing much else happened, all the rest of that night.

32

At dawn, a juggernaut of thunder wheeled over the stony heavens in a spark-throwing tumult. Rain fell softly on town cupolas, chuckled from rainspouts, and spoke in strange subterranean tongues beneath the windows where Jim and Will knew fitful dreams, slipping out of one, trying another for size, but finding all cut from the same dark, mouldered cloth.

In the rustling drumbeat, a second thing occurred:

From the sodden carnival grounds, the carousel suddenly spasmed to life. Its calliope fluted up malodorous steams of music.

Perhaps only one person in town heard and guessed that the carousel was working again.

The door to Miss Foley’s house opened and shut; her footsteps hurried away along the street.

Then the rain fell hard as lightning did a crippled dance down the now-totally-revealed, now-vanishing-forever land.

In Jim’s house, in Will’s house, as the rain nuzzled the breakfast windows, there was a lot of quiet talk, some shouting, and more quiet talk again.

At nine-fifteen, Jim shuffled out into the Sunday weather, wearing his raincoat, cap, and rubbers.

He stood gazing at his roof where the giant snail track was washed away. Then he stared at Will’s door to make it open. It did. Will emerged. Ms father’s voice followed: ‘Want me to come along?’ Will shook his head, firmly.

The boys walked solemnly, the sky washing them toward the police station where they would talk, to Miss Foley’s where they would apologize again, but right now they only walked, hands in pockets, thinking of yesterday’s fearful puzzles. At last Jim broke the silence:

‘Last night, after we washed off the roof, and I finally got to sleep, I dreamed a funeral. It came right down Main Street, like a visit.’

‘Or. . .a parade?’

‘That’s it! A thousand people, all dressed in black coats, black hats, black shoes, and a coffin forty feet long!’

‘Criminentry!’

‘Right! What forty feet long needs to be buried? I thought. And in the dream I ran up and looked in. Don’t laugh.’

‘I don’t feel funny, Jim.’

‘In the long coffin was a big long wrinkled thing like a prune or a big grape lying in the sun. Like a big skin or a giant’s head, drying.’

‘The balloon!’

‘Hey.’ Jim stopped. ‘You must’ve had the same dream! But. . .balloons can’t die, can they?’

Will was silent.

‘And you don’t have funerals for them, do you?’

‘Jim, I. . .

‘Darn balloon laid out like a hippo someone leaked the wind out of—’

‘Jim, last night. . .’

‘Black plumes waving, band banging on black velvet-muffled drums with black ivory bones, boy, boy! Then on top of it, have to get up this morning and tell Mom, not everything, but enough so she cried and yelled and cried some more, women sure like to cry, don’t they? and called me her criminal son but—we didn’t do anything bad, did we, Will?’

‘Someone almost took a ride on a merry-go-round.’

Jim walked along in the rain. ‘I don’t think I want any more of that.’

‘You don’t think! ? After all this!? Good grief, let me tell you! The Witch, Jim, the balloon! Last night, all alone, I—’

But there was no time to tell it.

No time to tell his stabbing the balloon so it gusted away to die in the lonely country sinking the blind woman with it.

No time because walking in the cold rain now, they heard a sad sound.

They were passing an empty lot deep within which stood a vast oak-tree. Under it were rainy shadows, and the sound.

‘Jim,’ said Will, ‘someone’s—crying.’

‘No.’ Jim moved on.

‘There’s a little girl in there.’

‘No.’ Jim would not look. ‘What would a girl be doing out under a tree in the rain? Come on.’

‘Jim! You hear her!’

‘No! I don’t, I don’t!’

But then the crying came stronger across the dead grass, flew like a sad bird through the rain, and Jim had to turn, for there was Will marching across the rubble.

‘Jim—that voice—I know it!’

‘Will, don’t go there!’

And Jim did not move, but Will stumbled and walked until he entered the shade of the raining tree where the sky fell and was lost in autumn leaves and crept down at last in shining rivers along the branches and trunk and there was the little girl, crouched, face buried in her hands, weeping as if the town were gone and the people in it and herself lost in terrible woods.

And at last Jim came edging up and stood at the edge of the shadow and said, ‘Who is it?’

‘I don’t know.’ But Will felt tears start to his eyes, as if some part of him guessed.

‘It’s not Jenny Holdridge, is it. . .’

‘No.’

‘Jane Franklin?’

‘No.’ His mouth felt full of novocaine, his tongue merely stirred in his numb lips. ‘. . .no. . . ‘

The little girl wept, feeling them near, but not looking up yet.

‘. . .me. . .me. . .help me. . .nobody’ll help me. . .me. . .me. . .I don’t like this. . .’