Something Wicked This Way Comes (5 page)

The air was cold blowing in through the wide-open library window.

    Charles Halloway had stood there for a long time.

    Now, he quickened.

    Along the street below fled two shadows, two boys above them matching shadow stride for stride. They softly printed the night air with treads.

    'Jim!' cried the old man. 'Will!'

    But not aloud.

    The boys went away towards home.

    Charles Halloway looked out into the country.

    Wandering alone in the library, letting his broom tell him things no one else could hear, he had heard the whistle and the disjointed-calliope hymns.

    'Three,' he now said, half-aloud. 'Three in the morning. . .'

    In the meadow the tents, the carnival waited. Waited for someone, anyone to wade along the grassy surf. The great tents filled like bellows. They softly issued forth exhalations of air that smelled like ancient yellow beasts.

    But only the moon looked in at the hollow dark, the deep caverns. Outside, night beasts hung in midgallop on a carousel. Beyond lay fathoms of Mirror Maze which housed a multifold series of empty vanities one wave on another, still, serene, silvered with age, white with time. Any shadow, at the entrance, might stir reverberations the colour of fright, unravel deep-buried moons.

    If a man stood here would he see himself unfolded away a billion times to eternity? Would a billion images look back, each face and the face after and the face after that old, older, oldest? Would he find himself lost in a fine dust away off deep down there, not fifty but sixty, not sixty but seventy, not seventy but eighty, ninety, ninety-nine years old?

    The maze did not ask.

    The maze did not tell.

    It simply stood and waited like a great arctic floe.

    'Three o'clock. . .'

    Charles Halloway was cold. His skin was suddenly a lizard's skin. His stomach filled with blood turned to rust. His mouth tasted of night damps.

    Yet he could not turn from the library window.

    Far off, something glittered in the meadow.

    It was moonlight, flashing on a great glass.

    Perhaps the light said something, perhaps it spoke in code.

    I'll go there, thought Charles Halloway, I won't go there.

    I like it, he thought, I don't like it.

    A moment later the library door slammed.

    Going home, he passed the empty store window.

    Inside stood two abandoned sawhorses.

    Between lay a pool of water. In the water floated a few shards of ice. In the ice were a few long strands of hair.

    Charles Halloway saw but chose not to see. He turned and was gone. The street was soon as empty as the hardware-store window.

    Far away, in the meadow, shadows flickered in the Mirror Maze, as if parts of someone's life, yet unborn, were trapped there, waiting to be lived.

    So the maze waited, its cold gaze ready, for so much as a bird to come look, see, and fly away shrieking.

    But no bird came.

'Three,' a voice said.

    Will listened, cold but warming, glad to be in with a roof above, floor below, wall and door between too much exposure, too much freedom, too much night.

    'Three. . .'

    Dad's voice, home now, moving down the hall, speaking to itself.

    'Three. . .'

    Why, thought Will, that's when the train came. Had Dad seen, heard, followed?

    No, he mustn't! Will hunched himself. Why not? He trembled. What did he fear?

    The carnival rushing in like a black stampede of storm waves on the shore out beyond? Of him and Jim and Dad knowing, of the town asleep, not knowing, was that it?

    Yes. Will buried himself, deep. Yes. . .

    'Three. . .'

    Three in the morning, thought Charles Halloway, seated on the edge of his bed. Why did the train come at that hour?

    For, he thought, it's a special hour. Women never wake then, do they? They sleep the sleep of babes and children. But men in middle age? They know that hour well. Oh God, midnight's not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two's not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning's not bad there's hope, for dawn's just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three a.m.! The blood moves slow. You're the nearest to dead you'll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you'd slaughter your half dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that's burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It's a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead - And wasn't it true, had he read it somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 a.m. than at any other time. . .?

    Stop! he cried silently.

    'Charlie?' his wife said in her sleep.

    Slowly, he took off the other shoe.

    His wife smiled in her sleep.

    Why?

    She's immortal. She has a son.

    Your son, too!

    But what father ever really believes it? He carries no burden, he feels no pain. What man, like woman, lies down in darkness and gets up with child? The gentle, smiling ones own the good secret. Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever. So what do we do? We men turn terribly mean, because we can't hold to the world ourselves or anything. We are blind to continuity, all breaks down, falls, melts, stops, rots, or runs away. So, since we cannot shape Time, where does that leave men? Sleepless. Staring.

    Three a.m. That's our reward. Three in the morn. The soul's midnight. The tide goes out, the soul ebbs. And a train arrives at an hour of despair. Why?

    'Charlie. . .?'

    His wife's hand moved to his.

    'You. . .all right. . .Charlie?'

    She drowsed.

    He did not answer.

    He could not tell her how he was.

The sun rose yellow as a lemon.

    The sky was round and blue.

    The birds looped clear water songs in the air.

    Will and Jim leaned from their windows.

    Nothing had changed.

    Except the look in Jim's eyes.

    'Last night. . .' said Will. 'Did or didn't it happen?'

    They both gazed toward the far meadows.

    The air was sweet as syrup. They could find no shadows, anywhere, even under trees.

    'Six minutes!' cried Jim.

    'Five!'

    Four minutes later, cornflakes lurching in their stomachs, they frisked the leaves to a fine red dust going out of town.

    With a wild flutter of breath, they raised their eyes from the earth they had been treading.

    And the carnival was there.

    'Hey. . .'

    For the tents were lemon like the sun, brass like wheat fields a few weeks ago. Flags and banners bright as blue-birds snapped above lion-coloured canvas. From booths painted cotton-candy colours fine Saturday smells of bacon and eggs, hot dogs and pancakes swam with the wind. Everywhere ran boys. Everywhere, sleepy fathers followed.

    'It's just a plain old carnival,' said Will.

    'Like heck,' said Jim. 'We weren't blind last night. Cone on!'

    They marched one hundred yards straight on and deep into the midway. And the deeper they went, the more obvious it became they would find no night men cat-treading shadow while strange tents plumed like thunder clouds. Instead, close up, the carnival was mildewed rope, moth-eaten canvas, rain-worn, sun-bleached tinsel. The side-show paintings, hung like sad albatrosses on their poles, flapped and let  fall flakes of ancient paint, shivering and at the same time revealing the unwondrous wonders of a thin man, fat-man, needle-head, tattooed man, hula dancer. . . .

    They prowled on but found no mysterious midnight sphere of evil gas tied by Mysterious Oriental knots to daggers plunged in dark earth, no maniac ticket takers bent on terrible revenges. The calliope by the ticket booth neither screamed deaths nor hummed idiot songs to itself. The train? Pulled off on a spur in the warming grass, it was old, yes, and welded tight with rust, but it looked like a titanic magnet that had collected to itself, from locomotive bone-yards across three continents, drive shafts, flywheels, smoke stacks, and hand-me-down second-rate nightmares. It did not cut a black and mortuary silhouette. It asked permission but to lie dead in autumn strewings, so much tired steam and iron gunpowder blowing away.

    'Jim! Will!'

    Here came Miss Foley, their seventh-grade schoolteacher, along the midway, all smiles.

    'Boys,' she said, 'what's wrong? You look as if you lost something.'

    'Well,' said Will, 'last night, did you hear that calliope - '

    'Calliope? No - '

    'Then why're you out here so early, Miss Foley?' asked Jim.

    'I love carnivals.' said Miss Foley, a little woman lost somewhere in her grey fifties, beaming around. 'I'll buy hot dogs and you eat while I look for my fool nephew. You seen him?'

    'Nephew?'

    'Robert. Staying with me a few-weeks. Father's dead, mother's sick in Wisconsin. I took him in. He ran out here early today. Said he'd meet me. But you know boys! My, you look glum.' She shoved food at them. 'Eat! Cheer up! Rides'll open in ten minutes. Meantime, I think I'll spy through that Mirror Maze and - '

    'No,' said Will.

    'No what?' asked Miss Foley.

    'No Mirror Maze.' Will swallowed. He stared at fathoms of reflections. You could never strike bottom there. It was like winter standing tall, waiting to kill you with a glance. 'Miss Foley,' he said at last, and wondered to hear his mouth say it, 'don't go in there.'

    'Why not?'

    Jim peered, fascinated, into Will's face. 'Yeah, tell us. Why not?'

    'People get lost,' said Will, lamely.

    'All the more reason. Robert might be wandering, loose, and not find his way out if I don't grab his ear - '

    'Never can tell - ' Will could not take his eyes off the millions of miles of blind grass - 'what might be s around in there. . . .'

    'Swimming!' Miss Foley laughed. 'What a lovely mind you have, Willy. Well, yes, but I'm an old fish. So. . .'

    'Miss Foley!'

    Miss Foley waved, poised, took a step, and vanished into the mirror ocean. They watched as she settled, wandered, sank deep, deep, and was finally dissolved, grey among silver.

    Jim grabbed Will. 'What was all that?'

    'Gosh, Jim, it's the mirrors! They're the only things I don't like. I mean, they're the only things like last night.'

    'Boy, boy, you been out in the sun,' snorted Jim. 'That maze there is. . . .' His voice trailed off. He sniffed the cold air blowing out as from an, ice house between the tall reflections.

    'Jim? You were saying?

    But Jim said nothing. After a long time he clapped his hand to the back of his neck. 'It really does!' he cried in soft amaze.

    'What does?'

    'Hair! I read it all my life. In scary stories, it stands on end! Mine's doing it - now!'

    'Gosh, Jim. So's mine!'

    They stood entranced with the delicious cold bumps on their necks and the suddenly stiffened small hairs quilled up over their scalps.

    There was a flourish of light and shadow.

    Bumping through the Mirror Maze they saw two, four, a dozen Miss Foleys.

    They didn't know which one was real, so they waved to all of them.

    But none of the Miss Foleys saw or waved back. Blind she walked. Blind, she tacked her nails to cold glass.

    'Miss Foley!'

    Her eyes, flexed wide as from blasts of photographic powder, were skinned white like a statue's. Deep under the glass, she spoke. She murmured. She whimpered. Now she cried. Now she shouted. Now she yelled. She knocked glass with her head, her elbows, tilted drunken as a light-blind moth, raised her hands in claws. 'Oh God! Help!' she wailed. 'Help, oh God!'

    Jim and Will saw their own faces, pale, their own eyes, wide, in the mirrors as they plunged.

    'Miss Foley, here!' Jim cracked his brow.

    'This way!' But Will found only cold glass.

    A hand flew from empty space. An old woman's hand, sinking for the last time. It seized anything to save itself. The anything was Will. She pulled him under.

    'Will!'

    'Jim! Jim!'

    And Jim held him and he held her and pulled her free of the silently rushing mirrors coming in from the desolate seas.

    They stepped into sunlight.

    Miss Foley, one hand to her bruised cheek, bleated, muttered, then laughed quickly, then gasped, and wiped her eyes.

    'Thank you, Will, Jim, oh thank you. I'd of drowned! I mean. . .oh, Will you were right! My God, did you see her, she's lost, drowned in there, poor girl!. oh the poor lost sweet. . .save her, oh, we must save her!'

    'Miss Foley, boy, you're hurting.' Will firmly removed her fists from clenching the flesh of his arm. 'There's no one in there.'

    'I saw her! Please! Look! Save her!'

    Will jumped to the maze entrance and stopped. The ticket taker gave him an idle glance of contempt. Will backed away to Miss Foley.

    'I swear, no one went in ahead or after you, ma'am. It's my fault, I joked about the water, you must've got mixed up, lost, and scared. . . .'

    But if she heard, she went on biting the back of her hand, her voice the voice of someone come out of the sea after no air, a long dread time deep, no hope of life and now set free.

    'Gone? She's at the bottom! Poor girl. I knew her. "I know you!" I said when I first saw her a minute ago. I waved, she waved. "Hello!" I ran! - bang! I fell. She fell. A dozen, a thousand of her fell. "Wait!" I said. Oh, she looked so fine, so lovely, so young. But it scared me. "What're you doing here?" I said. "Why," I think she said, "I'm real. You're not!" she laughed, way under water. She ran off in the maze. We must find her! Before - '

    Miss Foley, Will's arm around her, took a last trembling breath and grew strangely quiet.

    Jim was staring deep into those cold mirrors, looking for sharks that could not be seen.

    'Miss Foley,' he said, 'what did she look like?'

    Miss Foley's voice was pale but calm.

    'The fact is. . .she looked like myself, many, many years ago.

    'I'll go home now.' she said.

    'Miss Foley, we'll - '

    'No. Stay. I'm just fine. Have fun, boys. Enjoy.'

    And she walked slowly away, alone, down the midway.

    Somewhere a vast animal made water. Ammonia made the wind turn ancient as it passed.

    'I'm leaving!' said Will.

    'Will,' said Jim. 'We're staying until sundown, boy, dark sundown, and figure it all. You chicken?'

    'No,' murmured Will. 'But. . .anybody want to dive back in that maze?'

    Jim gazed fiercely deep into the bottomless sea, where now only the pure light glanced back at itself, help up emptiness upon emptiness beyond emptiness before their eyes.

    'Nobody.' Jim let his heart beat twice. '. . .I guess.'