Something Wicked This Way Comes Read online

  Their rooms were high, as boys’ rooms should be. From these gaunt windows they could rifle-fire their gaze artillery distances past library, city hall, depot, cow barns, farmlands to empty prairie!

  There, on the world’s rim, the lovely snail-gleam of the railway tracks ran, flinging wild gesticulations of lemon or cherry-colored semaphore to the stars.

  There, on the precipice of earth, a small steam feather uprose like the first of a storm cloud yet to come.

  The train itself appeared, link by link, engine, coal-car, and numerous and numbered all-asleep-and-slumbering-dream filled cars that followed the firefly-sparked chum, chant, drowsy autumn hearthfire roar. Hellfires flushed the stunned hills. Even at this remote view, one imagined men with buffalo-haunched arms shovelling black meteor falls of coal into the open boilers of the engine.

  The engine!

  Both boys vanished, came back to life binoculars.

  “The engine!”

  “Civil War! No other stack like that since 1900!”

  “The rest of the train, all of it’s old!”

  “The flags! The cages! It’s the carnival!”

  They listened. At first Will thought he heard the air whistling fast in his nostrils. But no—it was the train, and the calliope sighing, weeping, on that train.

  “Sounds like church music!”

  “Hell. Why would a carnival play church music?”

  “Don’t say hell,” hissed Will.

  “Hell.” Jim ferociously leaned out. “I’ve saved up all day. Everyone’s asleep so—hell!”

  The music drifted by their windows. Goose pimples rose bid as boils on Will’s arms.

  “That is church music. Changed.”

  “For cri-yi, I’m froze, let’s go watch them set up!”

  “At three a.m.?”

  “At three a.m.!”

  Jim vanished.

  For a moment, Will watched Jim dance around over there, shirt uplifted, pants going on, while off in night country, panting, churning was this funeral train, all black-plumed cars, licorice-colored cages, and a sooty calliope clamouring, banging three different hymns mixed and lost, maybe not there at all.

  “Here goes nothing!”

  Jim slid down the drainpipe on his house, toward the sleeping lawns.

  “Jim! Wait!”

  Will thrashed into his clothes.

  “Jim, don’t go alone!”

  And followed after.

  Chapter 12

  Sometimes you see a kite so high, so wise it almost knows the wind. It travels, then chooses to land in one spot and no other and no matter how you yank, run this way or that, it will simply break its cord, seek its resting place and bring you, blood-mouthed, running.

  “Jim! Wait for me!”

  So now Jim was the kite, the wild twine cut, and whatever wisdom was his taking him away from Will who could only run, earthbound, after one so high and dark silent and suddenly strange.

  “Jim, here I come!”

  And running, Will thought, Boy, it’s the same old thing. I talk. Jim runs. I tilt stones, Jim grabs the cold junk under the stones and—lickety-split! I climb hills. Jim yells off church steeples. I got a bank account. Jim’s got the hair on his head, the yell in his mouth, the shirt on his back and the tennis shoes on his feet. How come I think he’s richer? Because, Will thought, I sit on a rock in the sun and old Jim, he prickles his arm-hairs by moonlight and dances with hop-toads. I tend cows, Jim tames Gila monsters. Fool! I yell at Jim. Coward! he yells back. And here we—go!

  And they ran from town, across fields and both froze under a rail bridge with the moon ready beyond the hills and the meadows trembling with a fur of dew.

  WHAM!

  The carnival train thundered the bridge. The calliope wailed.

  “There’s no one playing it!” Jim stared up.

  “Jim, no jokes!”

  “Mother’s honour, look!”

  Going away, away, the calliope pipes shimmered with star explosions, but no one sat at the high keyboard. The wind, sluicing air-water air in the pipes, made the music.

  The boys ran. The train curved away, gonging it’s under-sea funeral bell, sunk, rusted, green-mossed, tolling, tolling. Then the engine whistle blew a great steam whiff and Will broke out in pearls of ice.

  Way late at night Will had heard—how often?—train whistles jetting steam along the rim of sleep, forlorn, alone and far, no matter how near they came. Sometimes he woke to find tears on his cheek, asked why, lay back, listened and thought, Yes! they make me cry, going east, going west, the trains so far gone in country deeps they drown in tides of sleep that escape the towns.

  Those trains and their grieving sounds were lost forever between stations, not remembering, where they had been, not guessing where they might go, exhaling their last pale breaths over the horizon, gone. So it was with all trains, ever.

  Yet this train’s whistle!

  The wails of a lifetime were gathered in it from other nights in other slumbering years; the howl of moon-dreamed dogs, the seep of river-cold winds through January porch screens which stopped the blood, a thousand fire sirens weeping, or worse! the outgone shreds of breath, the protests of a billion people dead or dying, not wanting to be dead, their groans, their sighs, burst over the earth!

  Tears jumped to Will’s eyes. He lurched. He knelt. He pretended to lace one shoe.

  But then he saw Jim’s hands clap his ears, his eyes wet, too. The whistle screamed. Jim screamed against the scream. The whistle shrieked. Will shrieked against the shriek.

  Then the billion voices ceased, instantly, as if the train had plunged in a fire storm off the earth.

  The train skimmed on softly, slithering, black pennants fluttering, black confetti lost on its own sick-sweet candy wind, down the hill, with the boys pursuing, the air so cold they ate ice cream with each breath.

  They climbed a last rise to look down.

  “Boy,” whispered Jim.

  The train had pulled off into Rolfe’s moon meadow, so-called because town couples came out to see the moon rise here over a land so wide, so long, it was like an inland sea, filled with grass in spring, or hay in late summer or snow in winter, it was fine walking here along its crisp shore with the moon coming up to tremble in its tides.

  Well, the carnival train was crouched there now in the autumn grass on the old spur near the woods and the boys crept and lay down under a bush, waiting.

  “It’s so quiet,” whispered Will.

  The train just stood in the middle of the dry autumn field, no one in the locomotive, no one in the tender, no one in any of the cars behind, all black under the moon, and just the small sounds of its metal cooling, ticking on the rails.

  “Ssst,” said Jim. “I feel them moving in there.”

  Will felt the cat-fuzz on his body bramble up by the thousands.

  “You think they mind us watching?”

  “Maybe,” said Jim, happily.

  “Then why the noisy calliope?”

  “When I figure that,” Jim said, “I’ll tell you. Look!”

  Whisper.

  As if exhaling itself straight down from the sky, a vast moss-green balloon touched at the moon.

  It hovered two hundred yards above and away, quietly riding the wind.

  “The basket under the balloon, someone in it!”

  But then a tall man stepped down from the train caboose platform like a captain assaying the tidal weathers of this inland sea. All dark suit, shadow-faced, he waded to the centre of the meadow, his shirt as black as the gloved hands he now stretched to the sky.

  He gestured, once.

  And the train came to life.

  At first a head lifted in one window, then an arm, then another head like a puppet in a marionette theatre. Suddenly two men in black were carrying a dark tent-pole out across the hissing grass.

  It was the silence that made Will pull back, even as Jim leaned forward eyes moon-bright.

  A carnival should be all growls,
roars like, timberlands stacked, bundled, rolled and crashed, great explosions of lion dust, men ablaze with working anger, pop bottles jangling, horse buckles shivering, engines and elephants in full stampede through rains of sweat while zebras neighed and trembled like cage trapped in cage.

  But this was like old movies, the silent theatre haunted with black-and-white ghosts, silvery mouth opening to let moon-light smoke out, gestures made in silence so hushed you could hear the wind fizz the hair on your cheeks. More shadows rustled from the train, passing the animal cages where darkness prowled with unlit eyes and the calliope stood mute save for the faintest idiot tune the breeze piped wandering up the flues.

  The ringmaster stood in the middle of the land. The balloon like a vast mouldy green cheese stood fixed to the sky. Then darkness came.

  The last thing Will saw was the balloon swooping down, as clouds covered the moon.

  In the night he felt the men rush to unseen tasks. He sensed the balloon, like a great fat spider, fiddling with the lines and poles, rearing a tapestry in the sky.

  The clouds arose. The balloon sifted up.

  In the meadow stood the skeleton main poles and wires of the main tent, waiting for its canvas skin.

  More clouds poured over the white moon. Shadowed, Will shivered. He heard Jim crawling forward, seized his ankle, felt him stiffen.

  “Wait!” said Will. “They’re bringing out the canvas!”

  “No,” said Jim. “Oh, no…”

  For somehow instead, they both knew, the wires high-flung on the poles were catching swift clouds, ripping them free from the wind in streamers which, stitched and sewn by some great monster shadow, made canvas and more canvas as the tent took shape. At last there was the clear-water sound of vast flags blowing.

  The motion stopped. The darkness within darkness was still.

  Will lay, eyes shut, hearing the beat of great oil-black wings as if a huge, ancient bird had drummed down to live, to breathe, to survive in the night meadow.

  The clouds blew away.

  The balloon was gone.

  The men were gone.

  The tents rippled like black rain on their poles.

  Suddenly it seemed a long way to town.

  Instinctively, Will glanced behind himself.

  Nothing but grass and whispers.

  Slowly he looked back at the silent, dark seemingly empty tents.

  “I don’t like it,” he said.

  Jim could not tear his eyes away.

  “Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah.”

  Will stood up. Jim lay on the earth.

  “Jim!” said Will.

  Jim jerked his head as if slapped. He was on his knees, he swayed up. His body turned, but his eyes were fastened to those black flags, the great side-show signs swarming with unguessed wings, horns, and demon smiles.

  A bird screamed.

  Jim jumped. Jim gasped.

  Cloud shadows panicked them over the hills to the edge of town.

  From there, the two boys ran alone.

  Chapter 13

  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 color 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.

  Chapter 14

  “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 t
ime…?

  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.

  Chapter 15

  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.