Something Wicked This Way Comes (21 page)

A hand dug like a mole in the dark.

    Will's hand.

    It emptied his pockets, it delved, it rejected, it dug again. For while it was dark he knew those million old men might march, hustle, rush, leap, smash Dad with what they were! In this shut-up night, with just four seconds to think of them, they might do anything to Dad! If Will didn't hurry, these legions from Time Future, all the ,alarms of coming life, so mean, raw, and true you couldn't deny that's how Dad'd look tomorrow, next day, the day after the day after that, that cattle run of possible years might sweep Dad under!

    So, quick!

    Who has more pockets than a magician?

    A boy.

    Whose pockets contain more than a magician's?

    A boy's.

    Will seized forth kitchen matches!

    "Oh God, Dad, here!"

    He struck the match.

    The stampede was close!

    They had come running. Now, fixed by light, they widened their eyes, as did Dad, amazed their mouths at their own ancient quakes and masquerades. Halt! the match had cried. And platoons left, squads right, had stilt-muscled themselves to fitful rest, to baleful glare, itching for the match to whiff out. Then, given lease to run next time, they'd hit this old, very old, much older, terribly old man, suffocate him with Fates in one instant.

    "No!" said Charles Halloway.

    No. A million dead lips moved.

    Will thrust the match forward. In the mirrors, a wizened multiplication of boy-apes did likewise, posing a single rosebud of blue-yellow flame.

    "No!"

    Every glass threw javelins of light which invisibly pierced, sank deep, found heart, soul, lungs, to frost the veins, cut nerves, send Will to ruin, paralyze and then kick-football heart. Hamstrung, the old old man foundered to his knees, as did his suppliant images, his congregation of terrified selves one week, one month, two years, twenty, fifty, seventy, ninety years from now! every second, minute, and long-after-midnight hour of his possible survival into insanity, there all sank grayer, more yellow as the mirrors ricocheted him through, bled him lifeless, mouthed him dry, then threatened to whiff him to skeletal dusts and litter his moth ashes to the floor.

    "No!"

    Charles Halloway struck the match from his son's hand. "Dad, don't."

    For in the new dark, the restive herd of old men shambled forward, hearts hammering.

    "Dad, we gotta see!"

    He struck his second and final match.

    And in the flare saw Dad sunk down, eyes clenched, fists tight, and all those other men who would have to shunt, crawl, scramble on knees once this last light was gone. Will grabbed his father's shoulder and shook him.

    "Oh, Dad, Dad, I don't care how old you are, ever! I don't care what, I don't care anything! Oh, Dad," he cried, weeping. "I love you!"

    At which Charles Halloway opened his eyes and saw himself and the others like himself and his son behind holding him, the flame trembling, the tears trembling on his face, and suddenly, as before, the image of the Witch, the memory of the library, defeat for one, victory for another, swam before him, mixed with sound of rifle, shot, flight of marked bullet, surge of fleeing crowd.

    For only a moment longer he looked at all of himselves, at Will. A small sound escaped his mouth. A little larger sound escaped his mouth.

    And then, at last, he gave the maze, the mirrors, and all Time ahead, Beyond, Around, Above, Behind, Beneath or squandered inside himself, the only answer possible.

    He opened his mouth very wide, and let the loudest sound of all free.

    The Witch, if she were alive, would have known that sound, and died again.

Jim Nightshade, out the back door of the maze lost on the carnival grounds, running, stopped.

    The Illustrated Man, somewhere among the black tents, running, stopped.

    The Dwarf froze.

    The Skeleton turned.

    All had heard.

    Not the sound that Charles Halloway made, no.

    But the terrific sounds that followed.

    One mirror alone, and then a second mirror, followed by a pause, and then a third mirror, and a fourth and another after that and another after that and still another and another after that, in domino fashion, they formed swift spiderwebs over their fierce stares and then with faint tinkles and sharp cracks, fell.

    One minute there was this incredible Jacob's ladder of glass, folding, refolding and folding away yet again images pressed in a book of light. The next, all shattered to meteor precipitation.

    The Illustrated Man, halted, listening, felt his own eyes, crystal, almost spiderweb and splinter with the sounds.

    It was as if Charles Halloway, once more a choirboy in a strange sub-sub-demon church had sung the most beautiful high note of amiable humor ever in his life which first shook moth-silver from the mirror backs, then shook images from glass faces, then shook glass itself to ruin. A dozen, a hundred, a thousand mirrors, and with them the ancient images of Charles Halloway, sank earthward in delicious moonfalls of snow and sleety water.

    All because of the sound he had let come from his lungs through his throat out his mouth.

    All because he accepted everything at last, accepted the carnival, the hills beyond, the people in the hills, Jim, Will, and above all himself and all of life, and, accepting, threw back his head for the second time tonight and showed his acceptance with sound.

    And lo! like Jericho and the trump, with musical thunders the glass gave up its ghosts, Charles Halloway cried out, released. He took his hands from his face. Fresh starlight and dying carnival glow rushed in to set him free. The reflected dead men were gone, buried under the cymbaled slide, the splash and surfing of glass at his feet.

    "'Lights . . . lights!"

    A far voice cried away more warmth.

    The Illustrated Man, unfrozen, vanished among the tents.

    The crowd was now gone.

    "Dad, what'd you do?"

    But the match burned Will's fingers, he dropped it, but now there was dim light enough to see Dad shuffle the trash, stir the mess of mirrored glass, heading back through the empty places where the maze had been and was no more.

    "Jim?"

    A door stood open. Pale carnival illumination, fading, poured through to show them wax figures of murderers and murderess.

    Jim did not sit among them.

    "Jim!"

    They stared at the open door through which Jim had run to be lost in the swarms of night between black canvases.

    The last electric light bulb went out.

    "We'll never find him now,"' said Will.

    "Yes," said his father, standing in the dark. "We'll find him."

    Where? Will thought, and stopped.

    Far down the midway, the carousel steamed, the calliope tortured itself with musics.

    There, thought Will. If Jim's anywhere, its there, to the music, old funny Jim, the free-ride ticket hid in his pocket still, I bet! Oh, damn Jim, damn him, damn him! he cried, and then thought, no! don't you, he's damned already, or near it! So how do we find him in the dark, no matches, no lights, just the two of us, all of them, and us alone in their territory?

    "How-" said Will, aloud.

    But his father said "There," very softly. With gratitude.

    And Will stepped to the door, which was lighter now.

    The moon! Thank God.

    It was rising from the hills.

   "The police . . . ?"

    "No time. It's the next few minutes or nothing. Three people we got to worry about-"

    "The freaks!"

    "Three people, Will. Number one, Jim, number two, Mr. Cooger frying in his Electric Chair. Niunber three, Mr. Dark and his skinful of souls. Save one, kick the other two to hell and gone. Then I think the freaks go, too. You ready, Will?"

    Will eyed the door, the tents, the dark, the sky with new light paling it.

    "God bless the moon."

    Hands tight together, they stepped out the door.

    As if to greet them, the wind flung up and down all the tent canvases in a great prehistoric thunder-kite display of leprous wings.

They ran in urine smell of shadow, they ran in clean ice smell of moon.

    The calliope steam-throb whispered, tatted, trilled.

    The music! thought Will, is it running backward or forward?

    "Which way?" Dad whispered.

    "Through here!" Will pointed.

    A hundred yards off, beyond a foothill of tents, there was a flare of blue light, sparks jumped up and fell away, then dark again.

    Mr. Electrico! Thought Will. They're trying to move him, sure! Get him to the merry-go-round, kill or cure! And if they cure him, then, oh gosh, then, it's angry him and angry Illustrated Man against just Dad and me! And Jim? Well, where was Jim? This way one day, that way the next, and . . . tonight? Whose side would he wind up on? Ours! Old friend Jim! Ours, of course! But Will trembled. Did friends last forever, then? For eternity, could they be counted to a warm, round, and handsome sum?

    Will glanced left.

    The Dwarf stood half enfolded by tent flaps, waiting motionless.

    "Dad, look," cried Will, softly. "And there-the Skeleton."

    Further over, the tall man, the man all marble bone and Egyptian papyrus stood like a dead tree.

    "The freaks-why don't they stop us?"

    "Scared."

    "Of us?!"

    Will's father crouched and squinted out from around an empty cage.

    "They're walking wounded, anyway. They saw what happened to the Witch. That's the only answer. Look at them."

    And there they stood, like uprights, like tent poles spotted all through the meadow grounds, hiding in shadow, waiting. For what? Will swallowed, hard. Maybe not hiding at all, but spread out for the running fight to come. At the right time, Mr. Dark would yell and they'd just circle in. But the time wasn't right. Mr. Dark was busy. When he'd done what must be done, then he'd give  that yell. So? So, thought Will, we got to see he never yells at all.

    Will's feet slithered in the grass.

    Will's father moved ahead.

    The freaks watched with moon-glass eyes as they passed.

    The calliope changed. It whistled sadly, sweetly, around a curve of tents, around a riverflow of darkness.

    It's going ahead! thought Will. Yes! It was going backward. But now it stopped and started again, and this time forward! What's Mr. Dark up to?

    "Jim!" Will burst out.

    "Sh!" Dad shook him.

    But the name had tumbled from his mouth only because he heard the calliope summing the golden years ahead, felt Jim isolate somewhere, pulled by warm gravities, swung by sunrise notes, wondering what it could be like to stand sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years tall, and then, oh then, nineteen and, most incredible! -twenty! The great wind of time blew in the brass pipes, a fine, a jolly, a summer tune, promising everything and even Will, hearing, began to run toward the music that grew up like a peach tree full of sun-ripe fruit-

    No! he thought.

    And instead made his feet step to his own fear, jump to his own tune, a hum cramped back by throat, held fast by lungs, which shook the bones of his head and drowned the calliope away.

    "There," said Dad softly.

    And between the tents, ahead, in transit, they saw a grotesque parade. Like a dark sultan in a palanquin, a half-familiar figure rode a chair borne on the shoulders of assorted sizes and shapes of darkness.

    At Dad's cry, the parade jolted, then broke into a run!

    "Mr. Electrico!" said Will.

    They're taking him to the carousel!

    The parade vanished.

    A tent lay between them.

    "Around here!" Will jumped, pulling his father. The calliope played sweet. To pull Jim, to draw Jim. And when the parade arrived with Electrico? Back the music would spin, back the carousel run, to shard away his skin, to freshen forth his years! Will stumbled, fell. Dad picked him up.

    And then . . .

    There arose a human barking, yapping, baying, whining, as if all had fallen. In a long-drawn moan, a gasp, a shuddering sigh, an entire crowd of people with crippled throats made chorus together.

    "Jim! They've got Jim!"

    "No . . ." murmured Charles Halloway, strangely. "Maybe Jim . . . or us . . . got them."

    They stepped around the last tent.

    Wind blew dust in their faces.

    Will clapped his hand up, squinched his nose. The dust was antique spice, burnt maple leaves, a prickling blue that teemed and sifted to earth. Swarming its own shadows, the dust filtered over the tents.

    Charles Halloway sneezed. Figures jumped and scurried away from an upended, half-tilted object abandoned half-way between one tent and the carousel.

    The object was the electric chair, capsized, with straps dangling from wooden arms and legs, and a metal headcap hanging from its top.

    "But," said Will. "Where's Mr. Electrico!? I mean Mr. Cooger!?"

    "That must have been him."

    "What must have been him?"

    But the answer was there, sifting down the midway in the whorling wind devils . . . the burnt spice, the autumn incense that had floured them when they turned this comer.

    Kill or cure, Charles Halloway thought. He imagined them rushed in the last few seconds, toting the ancient dustsack boneheap over starched grasses in his disconnected chair, perhaps only one in a running series of attempts to foster, encourage, preserve life in what was really nothing but a mortuary junkpile, rust-flakes and dying coals that no wind could blow alight again. Yet they must try. How many times in the last twenty-four hours had they run out on such excursions, only, in panic, to cease activity because the merest jolt, the slightest breath, threatened to shake old ancient Cooger down to mealmush and chaff? Better to leave him propped in electric-warm chair, a continual exhibit, an ever-going-on performance for gaping audiences, and try again, but especially try now, when, lights out, and crowds herded off in the dark, all threatened by one smile on a bullet, there was need of Cooger as he once was, tall, flame-headed, and riven with earthquake violence. But somewhere, twenty seconds, ten seconds ago, the last glue crumbled, the last bolt of life fell free, and the mummy-doll, the Erector-set grotesque disencumbered itself in smoke puffs and November leaflets, a broadcast of mortality along the wind. Mr. Cooger, threshed in a final harvest, was now a billion parchment flecks, tumbled sea-scrolls capered in meadows. A mere dust explosion in a silo of ancient grain: gone.

    "Oh, no. no, no,, no,, no," someone murmured.

    Charles Halloway touched Will's arm.

    Will stopped saying "Oh, no, no, no." He, too, in the last few moments, had thought the same as his father, of the toted corpse, the strewn bone-meal, the mineral-enriched hills of grass. . . .

    Now there was only the empty chair and the last particles of mica, the radiant motes of peculiar dirt crusting the straps. And the freaks, who had been toting the baroque dump, now fled to shadows.

    We made them run, thought Will, but something made them drop it!

    No, not something. Someone.

    Will flexed his eyes.

    The carousel, deserted, empty, traveled on its way through its own special time, forward.

    But between the fallen chair and the carousel, standing alone, was that a freak? No . . .

    "Jim!"

    Dad knocked his elbow and Will shut up.

    Jim, he thought.

    And where, now, was Mr. Dark?

    Somewhere. For he had started the carousel, hadn't he? Yes! To draw them, to draw Jim, and-what else? Right now there was no time, for-

    Jim turned from the spilled chair, turned and walk slowly toward the free, free ride.

    He was going where he had always known he must go.

    Like a weather vane in wild seasons he had tremored this way, wandered that, hesitated upon bright horizons and warm directions, only at last now to tilt and, half sleep-walking, tremble about in the bright brass pull and summer march of music. He could not look away.

    Another step, and then another, toward the merry-go-round, there went Jim.

    "Go get him, Will," said his father.

    Will went.

    Jim raised his right hand.

    The brass poles flashed by into the future, pulling the flesh like syrup, stretching the bones like taffy, the sunmetal color burning Jim's cheeks, flinting his eyes.

    Jim reached. The brass poles flick-knocked his fingernails, tinkling their own small tune.

    "Jim!"

    The brass poles chopped by in a yellow sunrise at night.

    The music leaped in a clear fountain, high.

    Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

    Jim opened his mouth with the same cry:

    "Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

    "Jim!" cried Will, running.

    Jim's palm slapped one brass pole. The pole whipped on.

    He slapped another brass pole. This time, his palm glued itself tight.

    Wrist followed fingers, arm followed wrist, shoulder and body followed arm. Jim, sleepwalked, was torn from his roots in the earth.

    "Jim!"

    Will reached, felt Jim's foot flick from his grasp.

    Jim swung round the waiting night in a great dark summer circle, Will racing after.

    "Jim, get off! Jim, don't leave me here!"

    Flung by centrifuge, Jim grasped the pole with one hand, spun, and, as if by some lone lost and final instinct, gestured his other hand free to trail on the wind, the one part of him, the small white separate part that still remembered their friendship.

    "Jim, jump!!"

    Will snatched for that hand, missed, stumbled, almost fell. The first race was lost. Jim must circle once, alone. Will stood waiting the next charge of horses, the fling-about of boy not-so-much boy-

    "Jim! Jim!"

    Jim awoke! Circled half round, his face showed now July, now December. He seized the pole, bleating out his despair. He wanted, he did not want. He wished, he rejected, he ardently wished again, in flight, in heat-spell river of wind and blaze of metal, in jog of July and August horses whose hoofs thudded the air like thrown fruit, his eyes blazed. Tongue clamped in teeth, he hissed his frustration.

    ""Jim! Jump! Dad, stop the machine!"

    Charles Halloway turned to see where the control box stood, fifty feet off.

    "Jim!" Will's side was stabbed with pain. "'I need you! Come back!"

    And, far over away on the far side of the carousel, traveling, fast-traveling, Jim fought with his own hands, the pole, the empty wind-whipped journey, the growing night, the wheeling stars. He let go the pole. He grabbed it. And still his right hand trailed down and out, begging Will's last full ounce of strength.

    "Jim!"

    Jim came around. There, below, in the black-night station from which this train pulled away forever in a flurry of ticket-punch confetti, he saw Will-Willy-William Halloway, young pal, young friend who would seem younger still at the end of this journey, and not just young but unknown! vaguely remembered from some other time in some other year . . . but now that boy, that friend, that younger friend, ran along by the train, reached up, asking passage? or demanding he get off? which?!

    "Jim! Remember me?"

    Will lunged his final lunge. Fingers touched fingers, palm touched palm.

    Jim's face, white cold, stared down.

    Will trot-paced the circling machine.

    Where was Dad? Why didn't he shut it off?

    Jim's hand was a warm hand, a familiar, a good hand. It closed on his. He gripped it yelling.

    "Jim, please!"

    But still they spun on the journey, Jim borne, Will dragged in a jog-crazy-trot.

    "Please!"

    Will jerked. Jim jerked. Trapped by Jim, Will's hand was shot with July heat. It went, like a kept animal, held and fondled by Jim, along, around, into older times. So his hand, far-traveling, would be alien to himself, knowing things by night that he himself, abed, might only guess. Fourteen-year boy, fifteen-year hand! Jim had it, yes! cramped it tight, would not let go! And Jim's face, was it older, from the journey round? Was he fifteen now, going on sixteen!?

    Will pulled. Jim pulled opposite.

    Will fell on the machine.

    Both rode the night.

    All of Will rode with friend Jim now.

    "Jim! Dad!"

    How easy it might be to just stand, ride, go round with Jim, if he couldn't pull Jim off, just leave him on and, dear pals, travel! The juices of his body swam, binding his sight, they drummed his ears, shot electric jolts through his loins. . . .

    Jim shouted. Will shouted.

    They traveled half a year in slithering orchard-warm dark before Will seized Jim's arm tight and dared to leap from so much promise, so many fine tall-growing years, flail out, off, down, pull Jim with. But Jim could not let go the pole, could not give up the ride.

    "Will!"

    Jim, half between machine and friend, one hand on each, screamed.

    It was like a great tearing of cloth or flesh.

    Jim's eyes went blind as a statue's.

    The carousel whirled.

    Jim screamed, fell, spun crazily, on the air.

    Will tried to break his fall, but Jim struck earth rolling. He lay, silent.

    Charles Halloway hit the carousel control switch. Empty, the machine slowed. Its horses paced themselves down from their trot toward some far midsummer night.

    Together, Charles Halloway and his son knelt by Jim to touch his wrist, to put ear to his chest. Jim's eyes, skinned white, were fixed on the stars.

    "Oh. God," cried Will. "Is he dead?"