Something Wicked This Way Comes, Page 9

"Tell him, boys."

  Silence. The freaks watched.

  "Simon," said Jim. "Simon Smith."

  Mr. Dark's hand, holding the tickets, constricted.

  "Oliver," said Will. "Oliver Brown."

  The Illustrated Man sucked in a mighty breath. The freaks inhaled! The vast ingasped sigh might have, seemed to, stir Mr. Electrico. His sword twitched. Its tip leaped to spark-sting Will's shoulder, then sizzle over in blue-green explosions at Jim. Lightning shot Jim's shoulder.

  The policemen laughed.

  The old old man's one wide eye blazed.

  "I dub thee ... asses and foolssssss ... I dub ... thee ... Mr. Sickly ... and ... Mr. Pale ... !"

  Mr. Electrico finished. The sword tapped them.

  "A ... sssshort ... sad life ... for you both!"

  Then his mouth slit shut, his raw eye glued over. Containing his cellar breath, he let the simple sparks swarm his blood like dark champagne.

  "The tickets," murmured Mr. Dark. "Free rides. Free rides. Come any time. Come back. Come back."

  Jim grabbed, Will grabbed the tickets.

  They jumped, they bolted from the tent.

  The police, smiling and waving all around, followed at their leisure.

  The internes, not smiling, like ghosts in their white suits, came after.

  They found the boys huddled in the back of the police car.

  They looked as though they wanted to go home.

  II.

  Pursuits

  Chapter 25

  SHE COULD feel the mirrors waiting for her in each room much the same as you felt, without opening your eyes, that the first snow of winter has just fallen outside your window.

  Miss Foley had first noticed, some years ago, that her house was crowded with bright shadows of herself. Best, then, to ignore the cold sheets of December ice in the hall, above the bureaus, in the bath. Best skate the thin ice, lightly. Paused, the weight of your attention might crack the shell. Plunged through the crust, you might drown in depths so cold, so remote, that all the Past lay carved in tombstone marbles there. Ice water would syringe your veins. Transfixed at the mirror sill, you would stand forever, unable to lift your gaze from the proofs of Time.

  Yet tonight, with the echo of the running feet of the three boys dying away, she kept feeling snow fall in the mirrors of her house. She wanted to thrust through the frames to test their weather. But she was afraid that doing this might cause all the mirrors to somehow assemble in billionfold multiplications of self, an army of women marching away to become girls and girls marching to become infinitely small children. So many people, crammed in one house, would provoke suffocation.

  So what must she do about mirrors, Will Halloway, Jim Nightshade, and ... the nephew?

  Strange. Why not say my nephew?

  Because, she thought, from the first when he came in the door, he didn't belong, his proof was not proof, she kept waiting for ... what?

  Tonight. The carnival. Music, the nephew said, that must be heard, rides that must be ridden. Stay away from the maze where winter slept. Swim around with the carousel where summer, sweet as clover, honey-grass, and wild mint, kept its lovely time.

  She looked out at the night lawn from which she had not yet retrieved the scattered jewels. Somehow she guessed this was a way the nephew had of getting rid of the two boys who might stop her using this ticket she took from the mantel:

  CAROUSEL. ADMIT ONE.

  She had waited for the nephew to come back. With time passing, she must act on her own. Something must be done not to hurt, no, but slow down interference from such as Jim and Will. No one must stand between her and nephew, her and carousel, her and lovely gliding ride-around summer.

  The nephew had said as much, by saying nothing, by just holding her hands, and breathing baked-apple-pie scent from his small pink mouth upon her face.

  She lifted the telephone.

  Across town she saw the light in the stone library building, as all the town had seen it, over the years. She dialed. A quiet voice answered. She said:

  "Library? Mr. Halloway? This is Miss Foley. Will's teacher. In ten minutes, please, meet me in the police station.... Mr. Halloway?"

  A pause.

  "Are you still there ...?"

  Chapter 26

  "I'D HAVE sworn," said one interne. "When we first got there ... that old man was dead."

  The ambulance and the police car had pulled up at the same moment at the crossroads, going back into town. One of the internes had called over. Now one of the policemen called back:

  "You're joking!"

  The internes sat in their ambulance. They shrugged.

  "Yeah. Sure. Joking."

  They drove on ahead, their faces as quiet and white as their uniforms.

  The police followed, with Jim and Will huddled in back, trying to say more, but the police started talking and laughing, retelling everything that happened to one another, so Will and Jim wound up lying, giving wrong names again, saying they lived around the corner from the police station.

  They let the police drop them at two dark houses near the station and they ran up on those porches and grabbed the doorknobs and waited for the prowl car to swing off around the corner into the station, and then they came down and followed and stood looking at the yellow lights of the station all sun-colored at midnight and Will glanced over and saw the whole evening come and go in Jim's face and Jim watching the police station windows as if at any moment darkness might fill every room and put the lights out forever.

  On my way back into town, thought Will, I threw away my tickets. But--look ...

  Jim still has his, in his hand.

  Will trembled.

  What did Jim think, want, plan, now that dead men lived and only lived through the fire of white-hot electric chair machines? Did he still very much love carnivals? Will searched. Faint echoes, yes, they came, they went in Jim's eyes, for Jim, after all, was Jim, even standing here with the calm light of Justice falling on his cheekbones.

  "The Chief of Police," Will said. "He'd listen to us--"

  "Yeah," said Jim. "He'd wake just long enough to send for the butterfly net. Hell, William, hell, even I don't believe what's happened the last twenty-four hours."

  "But we got to find someone higher up, keep trying, now we know what the score is."

  "Okay, what's the score? What's the carnival done is so bad? Scared a woman with a mirror maze? So, she scared herself, the police'd say. Burgled a house? Okay, where's the burglar? Hiding inside an old man's skin? Who'd believe that? Who'd believe an old old man was ever a boy twelve? What else is the score? Did a lightning-rod salesman disappear? Sure, and left his bag. But he could've left town--"

  "That dwarf in the side show--"

  "I saw him, you saw him, looks kinda like the lightning-rod man, sure, but again, can you prove he was ever big? No, just like you can't prove Cooger was ever small, so that leaves us right here, Will, on the sidewalk, no proof except what we saw, and us just kids, the carnival's word against ours, and the police had a fine time anyway there. Oh gosh, it's a mess. If only, if only there was still some way to apologize to Mr. Cooger--"

  "Apologize?" Will yelled. "To a man-eating crocodile? Jehoshaphat! You still don't see we can't do business with those ulmers and goffs!"

  "Ulmers? Goffs?" Jim gazed upon him thoughtfully, for that was how the boys talked of the creatures who dragged and swayed and slumped through their dreams. In the bad dreams of William, the "ulmers" moaned and gibbered and had no faces. In the equally bad dreams of Jim, the "goffs," his peculiar name for them, grew like monster meringue-paste mushrooms, which fed on rats which fed on spiders which fed, in turn, because they were large enough, on cats.

  "Ulmers! Goffs!" said Will. "You need a ten-ton safe to fall on you? Look what happened to two folks already, Mr. Electrico, and that terrible crazy dwarf! All kinds of things can go wrong with people on that darn machine. We know, we seen it. Maybe they squashed the lightning-rod man down that way on pu
rpose, or maybe something went wrong. Fact is, he wound up in a wine press anyway, got run over by a steam-roller carousel and's so crazy now he doesn't even know us! Ain't that enough to scare the Jesus out of you, Jim? Why, maybe even Mr. Crosetti--"

  "Mr. Crosetti's on vacation."

  "Maybe yes, maybe no. There's his shop. There's the sign: CLOSED ON ACCOUNT OF ILLNESS. What kind of illness, Jim? He eat too much candy out at the show? He get seasick on everybody's favorite ride?"

  "Cut it, Will."

  "No, sir, I won't cut it. Sure, sure, the merry-go-round sounds keen. You think I like being thirteen all the time? Not me! But for cri-yi, Jim, face it, you don't really want to be twenty!"

  "What else we talked about all summer?"

  "Talk, sure. But throwing yourself head first in that taffy machine and getting your bones pulled long, Jim, you wouldn't know what to do with your bones then!"

  "I'd know," said Jim, in the night. "I'd know."

  "Sure. You'd just go away and leave me here, Jim."

  "Why," protested the other, "I wouldn't leave you, Will. We'd be together."

  "Together? You two feet taller and going around feeling your leg-and-arm-bones? You looking down at me, Jim, and what'd we talk about, me with my pockets full of kite-string and marbles and frog-eyes, and you with clean nice and empty pockets and making fun, is that what we'd talk, and you able to run faster and ditch me--"

  "I'd never ditch you, Will--"

  "Ditch me in a minute. Well, go on, Jim, just go on leave me because I got my pocket knife and there's nothing wrong with me sitting under a tree playing mumblety-peg while you get yourself plain crazy with the heat of all those horses racing around, but thank God they're not racing any more--"

  "And it's your fault!" cried Jim. He stopped.

  Will stiffened and made fists. "You mean I should've let young mean-and-terrible get old mean-and-terrible enough to chew our heads off? Just let him ride around and hock his spit in our eye? and maybe you with him, waving good-bye, going around again, waving so long! and all I got to do is wave back, Jim, that what you mean?"

  "Sh," said Jim. "Like you say, it's too late. The carousel's broke--"

  "And when it's fixed, they ride old horrible Cooger back, make him young enough so he can speak and remember our names, and then they come like cannibals after us, or just me, if you want to get in good with them and go tell them my name and where I live--"

  "I wouldn't do that, Will." Jim touched him.

  "Oh, Jim, Jim, you do see, don't you? Everything in its time, like the preacher said only last month, everything one by one, not two by two, will you remember?"

  "Everything," said Jim, "in its time ..."

  And then they heard voices from the police station. In one of the rooms to the right of the entrance, a woman was talking now, and men were talking.

  Will nodded to Jim and they ran quietly over to pick their way through bushes and look into the room.

  There sat Miss Foley. There sat Will's father.

  "I don't understand," said Miss Foley. "To think Will and Jim would break in my house, steal, run off--"

  "You saw their faces?" asked Mr. Halloway.

  "When I screamed, they looked back under the light."

  She's not mentioning the nephew, thought Will. And she won't, of course.

  You see, Jim, he wanted to shout, it was a trap! The nephew waited for us to come prowling. He wanted to get us in so much trouble, no matter what we said to anybody, police, parents, that nobody'd listen to us about carnivals, late hours, merry-go-rounds, because our word'd be no good!

  "I don't want to prosecute," said Miss Foley. "But if they are innocent, where are the boys?"

  "Here!" someone cried.

  "Will!" said Jim.

  Too late.

  For Will had jumped high and was scrambling through the window.

  "Here," he said, simply, as he touched the floor.

  Chapter 27

  THEY WALKED home quietly on the moon-colored sidewalks, Mr. Halloway between the boys. When they reached home, Will's father sighed.

  "Jim, I don't see any reason to tear your mother to bits at this hour. If you promise to tell her this whole thing at breakfast, I'll let you off. Can you get in without waking her up?"

  "Sure. Look what we got."

  "We?"

  Jim nodded and took them over to fumble among the clusters of thick moss and leaves on the side of the house until they found the iron rungs they had secretly nailed and placed to make a hidden ladder up to Jim's room. Mr. Halloway laughed, once, almost with pain, and a strange wild sadness shook his head.

  "How long has this gone on? No, don't tell. I did it, too, your age." He looked up the ivy toward Jim's window. "Fun being out late, free as all hell." He caught himself. "You don't stay out too long--?"

  "This week was the very first time after midnight."

  Dad pondered a moment. "Having permission would spoil everything, I suppose? It's sneaking out to the lake, the graveyard, the rail tracks, the peach orchards summer nights that counts.... "

  "Gosh, Mr. Halloway, did you once--"

  "Yes. But don't let the women know I told you. Up." He motioned. "And don't come out again any night for the next month."

  "Yes, sir!"

  Jim swung monkeywise to the stars, flashed through his window, shut it, drew the shade.

  Dad looked up at the hidden rungs coming down out of the starlight to the running-free world of sidewalks that invited the one-thousand-yard dash, and the high hurdles of the dark bushes, and the pole-vault cemetery trellises and walls....

  "You know what I hate most of all, Will? Not being able to run any more, like you."

  "Yes, sir," said his son.

  "Let's have it clear now," said Dad. "Tomorrow, go apologize to Miss Foley again. Check her lawn. We may have missed some of the--stolen property--with matches and flashlights. Then go to the Police Chief to report. You're lucky you turned yourself in. You're lucky Miss Foley won't press charges."

  "Yes, sir."

  They walked back to the side of their own house. Dad raked his hand in the ivy.

  "Our place, too?"

  His hand found a rung Will had nailed away among the leaves.

  "Our place, too."

  He took out his tobacco pouch, filled his pipe as they stood by the ivy, the hidden rungs leading up to warm beds, safe rooms, then lit his pipe and said, "I know you. You're not acting guilty. You didn't steal anything."

  "No."

  "Then why did you say you did, to the police?"

  "Because Miss Foley--who knows why?--wants us guilty. If she says we are, we are. You saw how surprised she was to see us come in through the window? She never figured we'd confess. Well, we did. We got enough enemies without the law on us, too. I figured if we made a clean breast, they'd go easy. They did. At the same time, boy, Miss Foley's won, too, because now we're criminals. Nobody'll believe what we say."

  "I'll believe."

  "Will you?" Will searched the shadows on his father's face, saw whiteness of skin, eyeball, and hair.

  "Dad, the other night, at three o'clock in the morning--"

  "Three in the morning--"

  He saw Dad flinch as from a cold wind, as if he smelled and knew the whole thing and simply could not move, reach out, touch and pat Will.

  And he knew he could not say it. Tomorrow, yes, some other day, yes, for perhaps with the sun coming up, the tents would be gone, the freaks off over the world, leaving them alone, knowing they were scared enough not to push it, say anything, just to keep their mouths shut. Maybe it would all blow over, maybe ... maybe....

  "Yes, Will?" said his father, with difficulty, the pipe in his hand going dead. "Go on."

  No, thought Will, let Jim and me be cannibalized, but no one else. Anyone that knows gets hurt. So no one else must know. Aloud he said:

  "In a couple days. Dad, I'll tell you everything. I swear. Mom's honor."

  "Mom's honor," said Dad, at last
, "is good enough for me."

  Chapter 28

  THE NIGHT was sweet with the dust of autumn leaves that smelled as if the fine sands of ancient Egypt were drifting to dunes beyond the town. How come, thought Will, at a time like this, I can even think of four thousand years of dust of ancient people sliding around the world, and me sad because no one notices except me and Dad here maybe, and even us not telling each other.

  It was indeed a time between, one second their thoughts all brambled airedale, the next all silken slumbering cat. It was a time to go to bed, yet still they lingered reluctant as boys to give over and wander in wide circles to pillow and night thoughts. It was a time to say much but not all. It was a time after first discoveries but not last ones. It was wanting to know everything and wanting to know nothing. It was the new sweetness of men starting to talk as they must talk. It was the possible bitterness of revelation.

  So while they should have gone upstairs, they could not depart this moment that promised others on not so distant nights when man and boy-becoming-man might almost sing. So Will at last said, carefully:

  "Dad? Am I a good person?"

  "I think so. I know so, yes."

  "Will--will that help when things get really rough?"

  "It'll help."

  "Will it save me if I need saving? I mean, if I'm around bad people and there's no one else good around for miles, what then?"

  "It'll help."

  "That's not good enough, Dad!"

  "Good is no guarantee for your body. It's mainly for peace of mind--"

  "But sometimes, Dad, aren't you so scared that even--"

  "--the mind isn't peaceful?" His father nodded, his face uneasy.

  "Dad," said Will, his voice very faint. "Are you a good person?"

  "To you and your mother, yes, I try. But no man's a hero to himself. I've lived with me a lifetime. Will. I know everything worth knowing about myself--"

  "And, adding it all up ...?"

  "The sum? As they come and go, and I mostly sit very still and tight, yes, I'm all right."

  "Then, Dad," asked Will, "why aren't you happy?"

  "The front lawn at ... let's see ... one-thirty in the morning ... is no place to start a philosophical ..."

  "I just wanted to know is all."

  There was a long moment of silence. Dad sighed.

  Dad took his arm, walked him over and sat him down on the porch steps, relit his pipe. Puffing, he said, "All right. Your mother's asleep. She doesn't know we're out here with our tomcat talk. We can go on. Now, look, since when did you think being good meant being happy?"