Something Wicked This Way Comes (8 page)

    The front window was empty.

    'Going to walk up and ring the bell,' said Jim.

    'What, meet him face to face?!'

    'My aunt's eyebrows, Will We got to check, don't we? Shake his paw, stare him in his good eye or some such ,and if it is him - '

    'We don't warn, Miss Foley right in front of him, do we?'

    'We'll phone her later, dumb. Up we go!'

    Will sighed and let himself be walked up the steps wanting but not wanting to know if the boy in this house had Mr Cooger hid but showing like a firefly between his eyelashes.

    Jim rang the bell.

    'What if he answers?' Will demanded. 'Boy, I'm so scared I could sprinkle dust. Jim, why aren't you scared, why?'

    Jim examined both of his untrembled hands. I'll be darned,' he gasped. 'You're right! I'm not!'

    The door swung wide.

    Miss Foley beamed out at them.

    'Jim! Will! How nice.'

    'Miss Foley,' blurted Will. 'You okay?

    Jim glared at him. Miss Foley laughed.

    'Why shouldn't I be?'

    Will flushed. 'All those darn carnival mirrors - '

    'Nonsense, I've forgotten all about it. Well, boys, are you coming in?

    She held the door wide.

    Will shuffled a foot and stopped.

    Beyond Miss Foley, a beaded curtain hung like a dark blue thunder shower across the parlour entry.

    Where the coloured rain touched the floor, a pair of dusty small shoes poked out. Just beyond the downpour the evil boy loitered.

    Evil? Will blinked. Why evil? Because. 'Because' was reason enough. A boy, yes, and evil.

    'Robert?' Miss Foley turned, calling through the dark blue alwaysfalling beads of rain. She took Will's hand and gently pulled him inside. 'Come meet two of my students.'

    The rain poured aside. A fresh candypink hand broke through, all by itself, as if testing the weather in the hall.

    Good grief, thought Will, he'll look me in the eye! see the merrygoround and himself on it moving back, back. I know it's printed on my eyeball like I been struck by lightning!

    'Miss Foley!' said Will.

    Now a pink face stuck out through the dim frozen necklaces of storm.

    'We got to tell you a terrible thing.'

    Jim struck Will's elbow, hard, to shut him.

    Now the body came out through the dark watery flow of beads. The rain shushed behind the small boy.

    Miss Foley leaned toward him, expectant. Jim gripped his elbow, fiercely. He stammered, flushed, then spat it out:

    'Mr Crosetti!'

    Quite suddenly, clearly  he saw the sign in the barber's window. The sign seen but not seen as they ran by:

CLOSED ON ACCOUNT OF ILLNESS.

    'Mr Crosetti!' he repeated, and added swiftly. 'He's. . .dead!'

    'What. . .the barber?'

    'The barber?' echoed Jim.

    'See this haircut?' Will turned, trembling, his hand to his head. 'He did it. And we just walked by there and the sign was up and people told us - '

    'What a shame.' Miss Foley was reaching out to fetch the strange boy forward: 'I'm so sorry. Boys, this is Robert, my nephew from Wisconsin.'

    Jim stuck out his hand. Robert the Nephew examined it, curiously. 'What are you looking at?' he asked.

    'You look familiar,' said Jim.

    Jim! Will yelled to himself.

    'Like an uncle of mine,' said Jim, all sweet and calm.

    The nephew flicked his eyes to Will, who looked only at the floor, afraid the boy would see his eyeballs whirl with the remembered carousel. Crazily, he wanted to hum the backward music.

    Now, he thought, face him!

    He looked up straight at the boy.

    And it was wild and crazy and the floor sank away beneath for there was the pink shiny Hallowe'en mask of a small pretty boy's face, but almost as if holes were cut where the eyes of Mr Cooger shone out, old, old, eyes as bright as sharp blue stars and the light from those stars taking a million years to get here. And through the little nostrils cut in the shiny mask, Mr Cooger's breath went in steam, came out ice. And the Valentine candy tongue moved small behind those trim white candykernel teeth.

    Mr Cooger, somewhere behind the eyeslits, went blinkclick with his insectKodak pupils. The lenses exploded like suns, then burnt chilly and serene again.

    He swivelled his glance to Jim. Blinkclick. He had Jim flexed, focused, shot, developed, dried, filed away in the dark. Blinkclick.

    Yet this was only a boy standing in a hall with two other boys and a women. . .

    And all the while Jjm gazed steadily, back, feathers unruffled, taking his own pictures of Robert.

    'Have you boys had supper?', asked Miss Foley. 'We're just sitting down - '

    'We got to go!'

    Everyone looked at Will as if amazed he didn't want to stick here forever.

    'Jim - ' he stammered. 'Your mom's home alone - '

    'Oh, sure,' Jim said, reluctantly.

    'I know what.' The nephew paused for their attention. When their faces turned, Mr Cooger inside the nephew went silently blinkclick, blinkclick, listening through the toy ears, watching through the toycharm eyes, whetting the doll's mouth with a Pekingese tongue. 'Join us later for dessert, huh?'

    'Dessert?'

    'I'm taking Aunt Willa to the carnival.' The boy stroked Miss Foley's arm until she laughed nervously.

    'Carnival?' cried Will, and lowered his voice. 'Miss Foley, you said - '

    'I said I was foolish and scared myself,' said Miss Foley. 'It's Saturday night the best night for tent shows and showing my nephew the sights.'

    'Join us?' asked Robert, holding Miss Foley's hand. 'Later?'

    'Great!' said Jim.

    'Jim.' said Will. 'We been out all day. Your mom's sick.'

    'I forgot.' Jim, flashed him a look filled with purest snakepoison.

    Flick. The nephew made an Xray of both, showing them, no doubt, as cold bones trembling in warm flesh. He stuck out his hand.

    'Tomorrow, then. Meet you by the sideshows.'

    'Swell!' Jim grabbed the small hand.

    'So long!' Will jumped out the door, then turned with a last agonized appeal to the teacher.

    'Miss Foley. . .?'

    'Yes, Will?'

    Don't go with that boy, he thought. Don't go near the shows. Stay home, oh please! But then he said:

    'Mr Crosetti's dead.'

    She nodded, touched, waiting for his tears. And while she waited, he dragged Jim outside and the door swung shut on Miss Foley and the pink small face with the lenses in it going blinkclick, snapshotting two incoherent boys, and them fumbling down the steps in October dark, while the merrygoround started again in Will's head, rushing while the leaves in the trees above cracked and fried with wind. Aside, Will spluttered, 'Jim, you shook hands with him! Mr Cooger! You're not going to meet him!?'

    'It's Mr Cooger, all right. Boy, those eyes. If I met him tonight, we'd solve the whole shooting match. What's eating you, Will?'

    'Eating me!' At the bottom of the steps now, they tussled in fierce and frantic whispers, glancing up at the empty windows where, now and again, a shadow passed. Will stopped. The music turned in his head. Stunned, he squinched his eyes. 'Jim, the music that the calliope played when Mr Cooger got younger - '

    'Yeah?'

    'It was the “Funeral March”! Played backward!'

    'Which “Funeral March”?

    'Which! Jim, Chopin only wrote one tune! The “Funeral March”!'

    'But why played backward?'

    'Mr Cooger was marching away from the grave, not toward it, wasn't he, getting younger, smaller, instead of older and dropping dead?'

    'Willy, you're terrific!'

    'Sure, but - ' Will stiffened. 'He's there, The window, again. Wave at him. So long! Now, walk and whistle something. Not Chopin, for gosh sakes - '

    Jim waved. Will waved. Both whistled, 'Oh, Susanna.'

    The shadow gestured small in the high window.

    The boys hurried off down the street.

20

Two suppers were waiting in two houses.

    One parent yelled at Jim, two parents yelled at Will.

    Both were sent hungry upstairs.

    It started at seven o'clock It was done by seventhree.

    Doors slammed. Locks Clanked.

    Clocks ticked.

    Will stood by the door. The telephone was locked away outside. And even if he called, Miss Foley wouldn't answer. By now she'd be gone beyond town. . .good grief? Anyway, what could he say? Miss Foley, that nephew's no nephew? That boy's no boy? Wouldn't she laugh? She would. For the nephew was a nephew, the boy was a boy, or seemed such.

    He turned to the window. Jim, across the way, stood facing the same dilemma, in his room. Both struggled. It was too early to raise the windows and stagewhisper to each other. Parents below were busy growing crystalradio peachfuzz in their ears, alert.

    The boys threw themselves on their separate beds in their separate houses, probed mattresses for chocolate chunks put away against the lean years, and ate moodily.

    Clocks ticked.

    Nine. Ninethirty. Ten.

    The knob rattled, softly, as Dad unlocked the door.

    Dad! thought Will. Come in! We got to talk!

    But Dad chewed his breath in the hall. Only his confusion, his always puzzled, halfbewildered face could be felt beyond the door.

    He won't come in, thought Will. Walk around, talk around, back off from a thing, yes. But come sit, listen? When had he, when would he, ever?

    'Will. . .?

    Will quickened.

    "Will. . .' said Dad, 'be careful.'

    'Careful?' cried mother, coming along the hall. 'Is that all you're going to say?'

    'What else?' Dad was going downstairs now. 'He jumps, I creep. How can you get two people together like that? He's too young, I'm too old. God, sometimes I wish we'd never. . .'

    The door shut. Dad was walking away on the sidewalk.

    Will wanted to fling up the window and call. Suddenly, Dad was so lost in the night. Not me, don't worry about me, Dad, he thought, you, Dad, stay in! It's not safe! Don't go!

    But he didn't shout. And when he softly raised the window at last, the street was empty, and he knew it would be just a matter of time before that light went on in the library across town. When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they! - when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?

    '. . .careful. . .'

    What did Dad mean? Did he smell the panic, had he heard the music, had he prowled near the tents? No. Not Dad ever.

    Will tossed a marble over at Jim's window.

    Tap. Silence.

    He imagined Jim seated alone in the dark, his breath like phosphorous on the air, ticking away to himself.

    Tap. Silence.

    This wasn't like Jim. Always before, the window slid up, Jim's head popped out, ripe with yells, secret hissings, giggles, riots and rebel charges.

    'Jim, I know you're there!'

    Tap.

    Silence.

    Dad's out in the town. Miss Foley's with youknowwho! he thought. Good gosh, Jim, we got to do something! Tonight!

    He threw a last marble.

    . . .tap. . .

    It fell to the hushed grass below.

    Jim did not come to the window.

    Tonight, thought Will. He bit his knuckles. He lay back cold straight stiff on his bed.

21

In the alley behind the house was a huge oldfashioned pineplank boardwalk. It had been there ever since Will remembered, since civilization unthinkingly poured forth the dull hard unresisting cement sidewalks. His grandfather, a man of strong sentiment and wild impulse, who let nothing go without a roar, had flexed his muscles in favour of this vanishing landmark, and with a dozen handymen had toted a good forty feet of the walk into the alley where it had lain like the skeleton of some indefinable monster through the years, baked by sun, lushly rotted by rains.

    The town clock struck ten.

    Lying abed, Will realized he had been thinking about Grandfather's vast gift from another time. He was waiting to hear the boardwalk speak. In what language? Well. . .

    Boys have never been known to go straight up to houses to ring bells to summon forth friends. They prefer to chunk dirt at clapboards, hurl acorns down roof shingles, or leave mysterious notes flapping from kites stranded on attic window sills.

    So it was with Jim and Will.

    Late nights, if there were gravestones to be leapfrogged or dead cats to be hurled down sour people's chimneys, one or the other of the boys would prowl out under the moon and xylophonedance on that old hollowechoing musical boardwalk.

    Over the years, they had tuned the walk, prising up an A board and nailing it here, lifting up an F board and pounding it back down there until the walk was as near onto being melodious as weather and two entrepreneurs could fashion it.

    By the tune treaded out, you could tell the night's venture. If Will heard Jim tramping hard on seven or eight notes of 'Way Down Upon the Swanee River,' he scrambled out knowing it was moontrail time on the creek leading to the river caves. If Jim heard Will out leaping about like a scalded airedale on the timbers and the tune remotely suggested 'Marching Through Georgia,' it meant plums, peaches, or apples were ripe enough to get sick on out beyond town.

    So this night Will held his breath waiting for some tune to call him forth.

    What kind of tune would Jim play to represent the carnival, Miss Foley, Mr Cooger, and/or the evil nephew?

    Tenfifteen. Tenthirty.

    No music.

    Will did not like Jim sitting in his room thinking what? Of the Mirror Maze? What had he seen there? And, seeing, what did he plan?