Something Wicked This Way Comes (23 page)

    Them! all of them! he thought. That's me!

    Dad! thought Will, at his back, don't be afraid. It's only you. All only my father!

    But he did not like their look. They were so old, so very old, and got much older the farther away they marched, wildly gesticulating, as Dad threw up his hands to fend off the revelation, this wild image repeated to insanity.

    Dad! he thought, it's you!

    But, it was more.

    And all the lights went out.

    And both, squeezed still, in mufflegasping silence, stood afraid.

49

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 shutup 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 stiltmuscled 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 boyapes did likewise, posing a single rosebud of blueyellow 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 kickfootball 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 longaftermidnight 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.

50

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 subsubdemon church had sung the most beautiful high note of amiable humor ever in his life which first shook mothsilver 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 freeride 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 thunderkite display of leprous wings.

51

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

    The calliope steamthrob 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 merrygoround, 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 therethe Skeleton.”

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

    “The freakswhy 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 moonglass 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 sunripe 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 halffamiliar 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 longdrawn 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, halftilted object abandoned halfway 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.