Something Wicked This Way Comes Read online

  “Jim! You hear her!”

  “No! I don’t, I don’t!”

  But then the crying came stronger across the dead grass, flew like a sad bird through the rain, and Jim had to turn, for there was Will marching across the rubble.

  “Jim—that voice—I know it!”

  “Will, don’t go there!”

  And Jim did not move, but Will stumbled and walked until he entered the shade of the raining tree where the sky fell and was lost in autumn leaves and crept down at last in shining rivers along the branches and trunk and there was the little girl, crouched, face buried in her hands, weeping as if the town were gone and the people in it and herself lost in terrible woods.

  And at last Jim came edging up and stood at the edge of the shadow and said, “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know.” But Will felt tears start to his eyes, as if some part of him guessed.

  “It’s not Jenny Holdridge, is it…”

  “No.”

  “Jane Franklin?”

  “No.” His mouth felt full of novocaine, his tongue merely stirred in his numb lips. “…no…”

  The little girl wept, feeling them near, but not looking up yet.

  “…me… me… help me… nobody’ll help me… me… me… I don’t like this…”

  Then when she had strength enough and was quieter she turned her face, her eyes almost swollen shut with weeping. She was shocked to see anyone near, then surprised.

  “Jim! Will! Oh God, it’s you!”

  She seized Jim’s hand. He writhed back, yelling. “No! I don’t know you, let go!”

  “Will, help me, Jim, oh don’t go, don’t leave!” she gasped, brokenly, new tears bursting from her eyes.

  “No, no, don’t!” screamed Jim, he thrashed, he broke free fell, leaped to his feet, one fist raised to strike. He stopped, trembling, held it to his side. “Oh, Will, Will, let’s get out of here, I’m sorry, oh God, God.”

  The little girl in the shadow of the tree, flung back, widened her eyes to fix the two in wetness, moaned, clutched herself and rocked back and forth, her own child-baby, comforting her elbows… soon she might sing to herself and sing that way, alone beneath the dark tree, forever, no one able to join or stop the song.

  “…someone must help me… someone must help her…” she mourned as for one dead, “someone must help her… nobody will… nobody has… help her if not me… terrible… terrible…”

  “She knows us!” said Will, hopelessly, half bent down to her, half turned to Jim. “I can’t leave her!”

  “Lies!” said Jim, wildly. “Lies! She don’t know us! Never saw her before!”

  “She’s gone, bring her back, she’s gone, bring her back,” mourned the girl, eyes shut.

  “Find who?” Will got down on one knee, dared to touch her hand. She grabbed him. Almost immediately she knew this was wrong for he tried to tear free, so she let him go, and wept, while he waited near and Jim, far out in the dead grass, called in for them to go, he didn’t like it, they must, they must go.

  “Oh, she’s lost,” sobbed the little girl. “She ran off in that place and never come back. Will you find her, please, please…?”

  Shivering, Will touched her cheek. “Hey now,” he whispered. “You’ll be okay. I’ll find help,” he said, gently. She opened her eyes. “This is Will Halloway, okay? Cross my heart, we’ll be back. Ten minutes. But you mustn’t go away.” She shook her head. “You’ll wait here under the tree for us?” She nodded, mutely. He stood up. This simple motion frightened her and she flinched. So he waited and looked at her and said, “I know who you are.” He saw the great familiar eyes open grey in the small wounded face. He saw the long rainwashed black hair and the pale cheeks. “I know who you are. But I got to check.”

  “Who’ll believe?” she wailed.

  “I believe,” Will said.

  And she lay back against the tree, her hands in her lap, trembling, very thin, very white, very lost, very small.

  “Can I go now?” he said.

  She nodded.

  And he walked away.

  At the edge of the lot, Jim stomped his feet in disbelief, almost hysterical with outrage and declamation.

  “It can’t be!”

  “It is,” said Will. “The eyes. That’s how you tell. Like it was with Mr. Cooger and the evil boy—There’s one way to be sure. Come on!”

  And he took Jim through the town and they stopped at last in front of Miss Foley’s house and looked at the unlit windows in the morning gloom and walked up the steps and rang the bell, once, twice, three times.

  Silence.

  Very slowly, the front door moved whining back on its hinges.

  “Miss Foley?” Jim called, softly.

  Somewhere off in the house, shadows of rain moved on far windowpanes.

  “Miss Foley…?”

  They stood in the hall by the bead-rain in the entry door, listening to the great attic beams ashift and astir in the downpour.

  “Miss Foley!” Louder.

  But only the mice in the walls, warmly nested, made sgraffito sounds in answer.

  “She’s gone out to shop,” said Jim.

  “No,” said Will. “We know where she is.”

  “Miss Foley, I know you’re here!” shouted Jim suddenly, savagely, dashing upstairs. “Come on out, you!”

  Will waited for him to search and drag slowly back down. As Jim reached the bottom of the steps, they both heard the music blowing through the front door with the smell of fresh rain and ancient grass.

  The carousel calliope, among the hills, piping the “Funeral March” backwards.

  Jim opened the door wider and stood in the music, as one stands in the rain.

  “The merry-go-round. They fixed it!”

  Will nodded. “She must’ve heard the music, gone out at sunrise. Something went wrong. Maybe the carousel wasn’t fixed right. Maybe accidents happen all the time. Like to the lightning-rod man, him inside-out and crazy. Maybe the carnival likes accidents, gets a kick out of them. Or maybe they did something to her on purpose. Maybe they wanted to know more about us, our names, where we live, or wanted her to help them hurt us. Who knows what? Maybe she got suspicious or scared. Then they just gave her more than she ever wanted or asked for.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  But now, in the doorway, in the cold rain, there was time to think of Miss Foley afraid of mirror mazes, Miss Foley alone not so long ago at the carnival, and maybe screaming when they did what they finally did to her, around and around, around and around, too many years, more years than she had ever dreamed of shucked away, rubbing her raw, leaving her naked small, alone, and bewildered because unknown-even-to-herself, around and around, until all the years were gone and the carousel rocked to a halt like a roulette wheel, and nothing gained and all lost and nowhere for her to go, no way to tell the strangeness, and nothing to do but weep under a tree, alone, in the autumn rain…

  Will thought this. Jim thought it, and said:

  “Oh, the poor… the poor…”

  “We got to help her, Jim. Who else would believe? If she tells anyone, “I’m Miss Foley!” “Get away!” they’d say, “Miss Foley’s left town, disappeared!” “Go on, little girl!” Oh, Jim, I bet she’d pounded a dozen doors this morning wanting help, scared people with her screaming and yelling, then ran off, gave up, and hid under that tree. Police are probably looking for her now, but so what? it’s just a wild girl crying and they’ll lock her away and she’ll go crazy. That carnival, boy, do they know how to punish so you can’t hit back. They just shake you up and change you so no one ever knows you again and let you run free, it’s okay, go ahead, talk, ’cause folks are too scared of you to listen. Only we hear, Jim, only you and me, and right now I feel like I just ate a cold snail raw.”

  They looked back a last time at the shadows of rain crying on the windows inside the parlour where a teacher had often served them cookies and hot chocolate and waved to them from the window and m
oved tall through the town. Then they stepped out and shut the door and ran back toward the empty lot.

  “We got to hide her, until we can help—”

  “Help?” panted Jim. “We can’t help ourselves!”

  “There’s got to be weapons, right in front of us, we’re just too blind—”

  They stopped.

  Beyond the thump of their own hearts, a greater heart thumped. Brass trumpets wailed. Trombones blared. A herd of tubas made an elephant charge, alarmed for unknown reasons.

  “The carnival!” gasped Jim. “We never thought! It can come right into town. A Parade! Or that funeral I dreamt about, for the balloon?”

  “Not a funeral and only what looks like a parade but’s a search for us, Jim, for us, or Miss Foley, if they want her back! They can march down any old street, fine and dandy, and spy as they go, drum and bugle! Jim, we got to get her before they—”

  And breaking off, they flung themselves down an alley, but stopped suddenly, and leaped to hide in some bushes.

  At the far end of the alley, the carnival band, animal wagons, clowns, freaks and all, banged and crashed between them and the empty lot and the great oak tree.

  It must have taken five minutes for the parade to pass. The rain seemed to move on away, the clouds moving with them. The rain ceased. The strut of drums faded. The boys loped down the alley, across the street, and stopped by the empty lot.

  There was no little girl under the tree.

  They circled it, looked up in it, not daring to call a name.

  Then very much afraid, they ran to hide themselves somewhere in the town.

  Chapter 33

  The phone rang.

  Mr. Halloway picked it up.

  “Dad, this is Willy, we can’t go to the police station, we may not be home today, tell Mom, tell Jim’s mom.”

  “Willy, where are you?”

  “We got to hide. They’re looking for us.”

  “Who, for God’s sake?”

  “I don’t want you in it, Dad. You got to believe, we’ll just hide one day, two, until they go away. If we came home they’d follow and hurt you or Ma or Jim’s mom. I got to go.”

  “Willy, don’t!”

  “Oh, Dad,” said Will. “Wish me luck.”

  Click.

  Mr. Halloway looked out at the trees, the houses, the streets, hearing faraway music.

  “Willy,” he said to the dead phone. “Luck.”

  And he put on his coat and hat and went out into the strange bright rainy sunshine that filled the cold air.

  Chapter 34

  In front of the United Cigar Store on this before-noon Sunday with the bells of all churches ringing across here, colliding with each other there, showering sound from the sky now that the rain was spent, in front of the cigar store the Cherokee wooden Indian stood, his carved plumes pearled with water, oblivious to Catholic or Baptist bells, oblivious to the steadily approaching sun-bright cymbals, the thumping pagan heart of the carnival band. The flourished drums, the old-womanish shriek of calliope, the shadow drift of creatures far stranger than he, did not witch the Indian’s yellow hawk-fierce gaze. Still, the drums did tilt churches and plummet forth mobs of boys curious and eager for any change mild or wild, so, as the church bells stopped up their silver and iron rain, pew-stiffened crowds became relaxed parade crowds as the carnival, a promotion of brass, a flush of velvet, all lion-pacing, mammoth-shuffling, flag-fluttered by.

  The shadow of the Indian’s wooden tomahawk lay on an iron grille embedded in the sidewalk in front of the cigar store. Over this grille with faint metallic reverberations, year after year, people passed, dropping tonnages of mint-gum wrapper, gold cigar-band, matchstub, cigarette butt or copper penny which vanished below forever.

  Now, with the parade, hundreds of feet rang and clustered on the grille as the carnival strode by on stilts, roared by in tiger and volcano sounds and colors.

  Under the grille, two shapes trembled.

  Above, like a great baroque peacock striding the bricks and asphalt, the freaks’ eyes opened out, to stare, to search office roofs, church spires, read dentists’ and opticians’ signs, check dime and dry goods stores as drums shocked plate glass windows and wax dummies quaked in facsimiles of fear. A multitude of hot and incredibly bright fierce eyes, the parade moved, desiring, but not quenching its desire.

  For the things it most wanted were hidden in dark.

  Jim and Will, under the cigar store sidewalk grille.

  Crouch-pressed knee to knee, heads up, eyes alert, they sucked their breaths like iron Popsicles. Above, women’s dresses flowered in a cold breeze. Above, men tilted on the sky. The band, in a collision of cymbals, knocked children against their mothers’ knees with concussion.

  “There!” exclaimed Jim! “The parade! It’s right out front the cigar store! What’re we doing here, Will? Let’s go!”

  “No!” cried Will, hoarsely, clenching Jim’s knee. “It’s the most obvious place, in front of everybody! They’ll never think to check here! Shut up!”

  Thrrrummmmm…

  The grille, above, rang with the touch of a man’s shoe, and the worn nails in that shoe.

  Dad! Will almost cried.

  He rose, sank back, biting his lips.

  Jim saw the man above wheel this way, wheel that, searching, so near, yet so far, three feet away.

  I could just reach up… thought Will.

  But Dad, pale, nervous, hurried on.

  And Will felt his soul fall over cold and white-jelly quivering inside.

  Bang!

  The boys jerked.

  A chewed lump of pink bubble-gum, falling, had hit a pile of old paper near Jim’s foot.

  A five-year-old boy, above, crouched on the grille, peered down with dismay after his vanished sweet.

  Get! thought Will.

  The boy knelt, hands to the grille.

  Go on! thought Will.

  He had a crazy wish to grab the gum and stuff it back up into the little boy’s mouth.

  A parade-drum thumped one huge time, then—silence.

  Jim and Will glanced at each other.

  The parade, both thought, it’s halted!

  The small boy stuck one hand half through the grille.

  Above, in the street, Mr. Dark, the Illustrated Man, glanced back over his river of freaks, cages, at the sunburst tubas and python brass horns. He nodded.

  The parade fell apart.

  The freaks hurried half to one sidewalk, half to the other, mingling with the crowd, passing out handbills, eyes fire-crystal, quick, striking like snakes.

  The small boy’s shadow cooled Will’s cheek.

  The parade’s over, he thought, now the search begins.

  “Look, Ma!” The small boy pointed down through the grille. “There!”

  Chapter 35

  In Ned’s Night Spot, half a block from the cigar store, Charles Halloway, exhausted from no sleep, too much thinking, far too much walking, finished his second coffee and was about to pay when the sharp silence from the street outside made him uneasy. He sensed rather than saw the mild intermingled disturbance as the parade melted among the sidewalk crowds. Not knowing why, Charles Halloway put his money away.

  “Warm it up again, Ned?”

  Ned was pouring coffee when the door swung wide, someone entered, and splayed his right hand lightly on the counter.

  Charles Halloway stared.

  The hand stared back at him.

  There was a single eye tattooed on the back of each finger.

  “Mom! Down there! Look!”

  The boy cried, pointing through the grille.

  More shadows passed and lingered.

  Including—the Skeleton.

  Tall as a dead tree in winter all skull, all scarecrow-stilted bones, the thin man, the Skeleton, Mr. Skull played his xylophone shadow upon hidden things, cold paper rubbish, warm flinching boys, below.

  Go! thought Will. Go!

  The plump fingers of the child gest
iculated through the grille.

  Go.

  Mr. Skull walked away.

  Thank God, thought Will, then gasped, “Oh, no!”

  For the Dwarf as suddenly appeared, waddling along, a fringe of bells on his dirty shirt jingling softly, his toad-shadow tucked under him, his eyes like broken splinters of brown marble now bright-on-the-surface mad, now deeply mournfully forever-lost-and-gone-buried-away mad looking for something could not be found, a lost self somewhere, lost boys for an instant, then the lost self again, two parts of the little squashed man fought to jerk his flashing eyes here, there, around, up, down, one seeking the past, one the immediate present.

  “Mama!” said the child.

  The Dwarf stopped and looked at the boy no bigger than himself. Their eyes met.

  Will flung himself back, tried to gum his body into the concrete. He felt Jim do the same, not moving but moving his mind, his soul, thrusting it into darkness to hide from the little drama above.

  “Come on, Junior!” A woman’s voice.

  The boy was puffed up and away.

  Too late.

  For the Dwarf was looking down.

  And in his eyes were the lost bits and fitful pieces of a man named Fury who had sold lightning-rods how many days how many years ago in the long, the easy, the safe and wondrous time before this fright was born.

  Oh, Mr. Fury, thought Will, what they’ve done to you. Threw you under a pile-driver, squashed you in a steel press, squeezed the tears and screams out of you, trapped you in a jack-in-a-box all pressed down until there’s nothing left of you, Mr. Fury… nothing left but this…

  Dwarf. And the Dwarf’s face was less human, more machine now; in fact, a camera.

  The shuttering eyes flexed, sightless, opening upon darkness. Tick. Two lenses expanded-contracted with liquid swiftness: a picture-snap of the grille.

  A snap, also, of what lay beneath?

  Is he staring at the metal, thought Will, or the spaces between the metal?

  For a long moment, the ruined-squashed clay doll Dwarf squatted while standing tall. His flash-camera eyes were bulged wide, perhaps still taking pictures?