Something Wicked This Way Comes Read online

  With a wild flutter of breath, they raised their eyes from the earth they had been treading.

  And the carnival was there.

  “Hey…”

  For the tents were lemon like the sun, brass like wheat fields a few weeks ago. Flags and banners bright as blue-birds snapped above lion-colored canvas. From booths painted cotton-candy colors fine Saturday smells of bacon and eggs, hot dogs and pancakes swam with the wind. Everywhere ran boys. Everywhere, sleepy fathers followed.

  “It’s just a plain old carnival,” said Will.

  “Like heck,” said Jim. “We weren’t blind last night. Cone on!”

  They marched one hundred yards straight on and deep into the midway. And the deeper they went, the more obvious it became they would find no night men cat-treading shadow while strange tents plumed like thunder clouds. Instead, close up, the carnival was mildewed rope, moth-eaten canvas, rain-worn, sun-bleached tinsel. The side-show paintings, hung like sad albatrosses on their poles, flapped and let fall flakes of ancient paint, shivering and at the same time revealing the unwondrous wonders of a thin man, fat-man, needle-head, tattooed man, hula dancer…

  They prowled on but found no mysterious midnight sphere of evil gas tied by Mysterious Oriental knots to daggers plunged in dark earth, no maniac ticket takers bent on terrible revenges. The calliope by the ticket booth neither screamed deaths nor hummed idiot songs to itself. The train? Pulled off on a spur in the warming grass, it was old, yes, and welded tight with rust, but it looked like a titanic magnet that had collected to itself, from locomotive bone-yards across three continents, drive shafts, flywheels, smoke stacks, and hand-me-down second-rate nightmares. It did not cut a black and mortuary silhouette. It asked permission but to lie dead in autumn strewings, so much tired steam and iron gunpowder blowing away.

  “Jim! Will!”

  Here came Miss Foley, their seventh-grade schoolteacher, along the midway, all smiles.

  “Boys,” she said, “what’s wrong? You look as if you lost something.”

  “Well,” said Will, “last night, did you hear that calliope—”

  “Calliope? No—”

  “Then why’re you out here so early, Miss Foley?” asked Jim.

  “I love carnivals,” said Miss Foley, a little woman lost somewhere in her grey fifties, beaming around. “I’ll buy hot dogs and you eat while I look for my fool nephew. You seen him?”

  “Nephew?”

  “Robert. Staying with me a few weeks. Father’s dead, mother’s sick in Wisconsin. I took him in. He ran out here early today. Said he’d meet me. But you know boys! My, you look glum.” She shoved food at them. “Eat! Cheer up! Rides’ll open in ten minutes. Meantime, I think I’ll spy through that Mirror Maze and—”

  “No,” said Will.

  “No what?” asked Miss Foley.

  “No Mirror Maze.” Will swallowed. He stared at fathoms of reflections. You could never strike bottom there. It was like winter standing tall, waiting to kill you with a glance. “Miss Foley,” he said at last, and wondered to hear his mouth say it, “don’t go in there.”

  “Why not?”

  Jim peered, fascinated, into Will’s face. “Yeah, tell us. Why not?”

  “People get lost,” said Will, lamely.

  “All the more reason. Robert might be wandering, loose, and not find his way out if I don’t grab his ear—”

  “Never can tell—” Will could not take his eyes off the millions of miles of blind grass—“what might be swimming around in there…”

  “Swimming!” Miss Foley laughed. “What a lovely mind you have, Willy. Well, yes, but I’m an old fish. So…”

  “Miss Foley!”

  Miss Foley waved, poised, took a step, and vanished into the mirror ocean. They watched as she settled, wandered, sank deep, deep, and was finally dissolved, grey among silver.

  Jim grabbed Will. “What was all that?”

  “Gosh, Jim, it’s the mirrors! They’re the only things I don’t like. I mean, they’re the only things like last night.”

  “Boy, boy, you been out in the sun,” snorted Jim. “That maze there is…” His voice trailed off. He sniffed the cold air blowing out as from an ice house between the tall reflections.

  “Jim? You were saying?”

  But Jim said nothing. After a long time he clapped his hand to the back of his neck. “It really does!” he cried in soft amaze.

  “What does?”

  “Hair! I read it all my life. In scary stories, it stands on end! Mine’s doing it—now!”

  “Gosh, Jim. So’s mine!”

  They stood entranced with the delicious cold bumps on their necks and the suddenly stiffened small hairs quilled up over their scalps.

  There was a flourish of light and shadow.

  Bumping through the Mirror Maze they saw two, four, a dozen Miss Foleys.

  They didn’t know which one was real, so they waved to all of them.

  But none of the Miss Foleys saw or waved back. Blind she walked. Blind, she tacked her nails to cold glass.

  “Miss Foley!”

  Her eyes, flexed wide as from blasts of photographic powder, were skinned white like a statue’s. Deep under the glass, she spoke. She murmured. She whimpered. Now she cried. Now she shouted. Now she yelled. She knocked glass with her head, her elbows, tilted drunken as a light-blind moth, raised her hands in claws. “Oh God! Help!” she wailed. “Help, oh God!”

  Jim and Will saw their own faces, pale, their own eyes, wide, in the mirrors as they plunged.

  “Miss Foley, here!” Jim cracked his brow.

  “This way!” But Will found only cold glass.

  A hand flew from empty space. An old woman’s hand, sinking for the last time. It seized anything to save itself. The anything was Will. She pulled him under.

  “Will!”

  “Jim! Jim!”

  And Jim held him and he held her and pulled her free of the silently rushing mirrors coming in from the desolate seas.

  They stepped into sunlight.

  Miss Foley, one hand to her bruised cheek, bleated, muttered, then laughed quickly, then gasped, and wiped her eyes.

  “Thank you, Will, Jim, oh thank you, I’d of drowned! I mean… oh, Will you were right! My God, did you see her, she’s lost, drowned in there, poor girl, oh the poor lost sweet… save her, oh, we must save her!”

  “Miss Foley, boy, you’re hurting.” Will firmly removed her fists from clenching the flesh of his arm. “There’s no one in there.”

  “I saw her! Please! Look! Save her!”

  Will jumped to the maze entrance and stopped. The ticket taker gave him an idle glance of contempt. Will backed away to Miss Foley.

  “I swear, no one went in ahead or after you, ma’am. It’s my fault, I joked about the water, you must’ve got mixed up, lost, and scared…”

  But if she heard, she went on biting the back of her hand, her voice the voice of someone come out of the sea after no air, a long dread time deep, no hope of life and now set free.

  “Gone? She’s at the bottom! Poor girl. I knew her. ‘I know you!’ I said when I first saw her a minute ago. I waved, she waved. ‘Hello!’ I ran!—bang! I fell. She fell. A dozen, a thousand of her fell. ‘Wait!’ I said. Oh, she looked so fine, so lovely, so young. But it scared me. ‘What’re you doing here?’ I said. ‘Why,’ I think she said, ‘I’m real. You’re not!’ she laughed, way under water. She ran off in the maze. We must find her! Before—”

  Miss Foley, Will’s arm around her, took a last trembling breath and grew strangely quiet.

  Jim was staring deep into those cold mirrors, looking for sharks that could not be seen.

  “Miss Foley,” he said, “what did she look like?”

  Miss Foley’s voice was pale but calm.

  “The fact is… she looked like myself, many, many years ago.

  “I’ll go home now,” she said.

  “Miss Foley, we’ll—”

  “No. Stay. I’m just fine. Have fu
n, boys. Enjoy.”

  And she walked slowly away, alone, down the midway.

  Somewhere a vast animal made water. Ammonia made the wind turn ancient as it passed.

  “I’m leaving!” said Will.

  “Will,” said Jim. “We’re staying until sundown, boy, dark sundown, and figure it all. You chicken?”

  “No,” murmured Will. “But… anybody want to dive back in that maze?”

  Jim gazed fiercely deep into the bottomless sea, where now only the pure light glanced back at itself, help up emptiness upon emptiness beyond emptiness before their eyes.

  “Nobody.” Jim let his heart beat twice. “…I guess.”

  Chapter 16

  A bad thing happened at sunset.

  Jim vanished.

  Through noon and after noon, they had screamed up half the rides, knocked over dirty milk-bottles, smashed kewpie-doll winning plates, smelling, listening, looking their way through the autumn crowd trampling the leafy sawdust.

  And then quite suddenly Jim was gone.

  And Will, not asking anyone but himself, absolutely silent certain-sure, walked steadily through the late crowd as the sky was turning plum colored until he came to the maze and paid his dime and stepped up inside and called softly just one time:

  “…Jim…”

  And Jim was there, half in, half out of the cold glass tides like someone abandoned on a seashore when a close friend has gone far out, and there is wonder if he will ever come back. Jim stood as if he had not moved so much as an eyelash in five minutes, staring, his mouth half-open, waiting for the next wave to come in and show him more.

  “Jim! Get outa there!”

  “Will…” Jim sighed faintly. “Let me be.”

  “Like heck!” With one leap, Will grabbed Jim’s belt and hauled. Shuffling backward, Jim did not seem to know he was being dragged from the maze, for he kept protesting in awe at some unseen wonder: “Oh, Will, oh, Willy, Will, oh, Willy…”

  “Jim, you nut. I’m taking you home!”

  “What? What? What?”

  They were in cold air. The sky was darker than plums now, with a few clouds burning late sun-fire above. The sun-fire flamed on Jim’s feverish cheeks, his open lips, his wide and terribly rich green shining eyes.

  “Jim, what’d you see in there? The same as Miss Foley?”

  “What, what?

  “I’m gonna bust your nose! Come on!” He hustled, pulled, shoved, half carried this fever, this elation, unstruggling friend.

  “Can’t tell you, Will, wouldn’t believe, can’t tell you, in there, oh, in there, in there…”

  “Shut up!” Will socked his arm. “Scare heck outa me, just like she scared us. Bugs! It’s almost suppertime. Folks’ll think we’re dead and buried!”

  They were striding now, slashing the autumn grass with their shoes, beyond the tents in the hay-smelling, leaf-mould fields, Will glaring at town, Jim staring back at the high now-darkening banners as the last of the sun hid under the earth.

  “Will, we got to come back. Tonight—”

  “Okay, come back alone.”

  Jim stopped.

  “You wouldn’t let me come alone. You’re always going to be around, aren’t you, Will? To protect me?”

  “Look who needs protection.” Will laughed and then did not laugh again, for Jim was looking at him, the last wild light dying in his mouth, and caught in the thin hollows of his nostrils and in his suddenly deep-set eyes.

  “You’ll always be with me, huh, Will?”

  Jim simply breathed warm upon him and his blood stirred with the old, the familiar answers: yes, yes, you know it, yes, yes.

  And turning together, they stumbled over a clanking dark mound of leather bag.

  Chapter 17

  They stood for a long moment over the huge leather bag.

  Almost secretively, Will kicked it. It made the sound of iron indigestion.

  “Why,” said Will, “that belongs to the lightning-rod salesman!”

  Jim slipped his hand through the leather mouth and hefted forth a metal shaft clustered with chimeras, Chinese dragons all fang, eyeball and moss-green armour, all cross and crescent; every symbol around the world that made men safe, or seemed to, clung there, greaving the boys’ hands with odd weight and meaning.

  “Storm never came. But he went.”

  “Where? And why did he leave his bag?”

  They both looked to the carnival where dusk colored the canvas billows. Shadows ran coolly out to engulf them. People in cars honked home in tired commotions. Boys on skeleton bikes whistled dogs after. Soon night would own the midway while shadows rode the ferris wheel up to cloud the stars.

  “People,” said Jim, “don’t leave their whole life lying around. This is everything that old man owned. Something important—” Jim breathed soft fire—“made him forget. So he just walked off and left this here.”

  “What? What’s so important you forget everything?”

  “Why—” Jim examined his friend, curiously, twilight in his face—“no one can tell you. You find it yourself. Mysteries and mysteries. Storm salesman. Storm salesman’s bag. If we don’t look now, we might never know.”

  “Jim, in ten minutes—”

  “Sure! Midway’ll be dark. Everyone home for dinner. Just us alone. But won’t it feel great? Just us! And here we go, back in!”

  Passing the Mirror Maze, they saw two armies—a billion Jims, a billion Wills—collide, melt, vanish. And like those armies, so vanished the real army of people.

  They boys stood alone among the encampments of dusk thinking of all the boys in town sitting down to warm food in bright rooms.

  Chapter 18

  The red-lettered sign said: OUT OF ORDER! KEEP OFF!

  “Sign’s been up all day. I don’t believe signs,” said Jim.

  They peered in at the merry-go-round which lay under a dry rattle and roar of wind-tumbled oak trees. Its horses, goats, antelopes, zebras, speared through their spines with brass javelins, hung contorted as in a death rictus, asking mercy with their fright-colored eyes, seeking revenge with their panic-colored teeth.

  “Don’t look broke to me.”

  Jim ambled across the clanking chain, leaped to a turntable surface vast as the moon, among the frantic but forever spelled beasts.

  “Jim!”

  “Will, this is the only ride we haven’t looked at. So…”

  Jim swayed. The lunatic carousel world stirred atilt with his lean bulk. He strolled through brass forests amidst animal rousts. He swung astride a plum-dusk stallion.

  “Ho, boy, git!”

  A man rose from machinery darkness.

  “Jim!”

  Reaching out from the shadows among the calliope tubes and moon-skinned drums the man hoisted Jim yelling out on the air.

  “Help, Will, help!”

  Will leaped through the animals.

  The man smiled easily, welcomed him handily, swung him high beside Jim. They stared down at bright flame-red hair, bright flame-blue eyes, and rippling biceps.

  “Out of order,” said the man. “Can’t you read?”

  “Put them down,” said a gentle voice.

  Hung high, Jim and Will glanced over at a second man standing tall beyond the chains.

  “Down,” he said again.

  And they were carried through the brass forest of wild but uncomplaining brutes and set in the dust.

  “We were—” said Will.

  “Curious?” This second man was tall as a lamp post. His pale face, lunar pockmarks denting it, cast light on those who stood below. His vest was the color of fresh blood. His eyes-brows, his hair, his suit were licorice black, and the sun-yellow gem which stared from the tie-pin thrust in his cravat was the same unblinking shade and bright crystal as his eyes. But in this instant, swiftly, and with utter clearness, it was the suit which fascinated Will. For it seemed woven of boar-bramble, clock-spring hair, bristle, and a sort of ever-trembling, ever-glistening dark hemp. The suit caugh
t light and stirred like a bed of black tweed-thorns, interminably itching, covering the man’s long body with motion so it seemed he should excruciate, cry out, and tear the clothes free. Yet here he stood, moon-calm, inhabiting his itch-weed suit and watching Jim’s mouth with his yellow eyes. He never looked once at Will.

  “The name is Dark.”

  He flourished a white calling card. It turned blue.

  Whisper. Red.

  Whisk. A green man dangled from a tree stamped on the card.

  Flit. Shh.

  “Dark. And my friend with the red hair there is Mr. Cooger. Of Cooger and Dark’s…”

  Flip-flick-shhh.

  Names appeared, disappeared on the white square:

  “…Combined Shadow Shows…”

  Tick-wash.

  A mushroom-witch stirred mouldering herb pots.

  “…and cross-continental Pandemonium Theatre Company…”

  He handed the card to Jim. It now read:

  Our speciality: to examine, oil, polish, and repair Death-Watch Beetles.

  Calmly, Jim read it. Calmly, Jim put a fist into his copious and richly treasured pockets, rummaged, and held out his hand.

  On his palm lay a dead brown insect.

  “Here,” Jim said. “Fix this.”

  Mr. Dark exploded his laugh. “Superb! I will!” He extended his hand. His shirt sleeve pulled up.

  Bright purple, black green and lightning-blue eels, worms, and Latin scrolls slid to view on his wrist.

  “Boy!” cried Will. “You must be the Tattooed Man!”

  “No.” Jim studied the stranger. “The Illustrated Man. There’s a difference.”

  Mr. Dark nodded, pleased. “What’s your name, boy?”

  Don’t tell him! thought Will, and stopped. Why not? he wondered, why?

  Jim’s lips hardly twitched.

  “Simon,” he said.

  He smiled to show it was a lie.

  Mr. Dark smiled to show he knew it.

  “Want to see more, ‘Simon’?”

  Jim would not give him the satisfaction of a nod.

  Slowly, with great mouth-working pleasure, Mr. Dark pushed his sleeve high to his elbow.