Something Wicked This Way Comes (15 page)

    Will's father, his face pale, considered these mean, constricted fingers, knuckles' digging nails, inside which two boys faces, crushed hard in dark vice, tight, very tight in prison flesh, were kept in fury.

    Two shadows, below, thrashed in agony.

    The Illustrated Man erased his face to serenity.

    But a bright drop fell from his right fist.

    A bright drop fell from his left fist.

    The drops vanished through the steel sidewalk grille.

    Will gasped. Wetness had struck his face. He clapped his hand to it, then looked at his palm.

    The wetness that had hit his cheek was bright red.

    He glanced from it to Jim, who lay still now also, for the scarification, real or imagined, seemed over and both flicked their eyes up to where the Illustrated Man's shoes flint-sparked the grille, grinding steel on steel.

    Will's father saw the blood ooze from the clenched fists, but forced himself to look only at the Illustrated Man's face, as he said:

    'Sorry I can't be more help.'

    Beyond the Illustrated Man, rounding the corner, hands weaving the air, dressed 'm harlequin Gypsy colours, face waxen, eyes hid behind plum-dark glasses, the Fortune Teller, the Dust Witch, came mumbling.

    A moment later, looking up, Will saw her. Not dead! he thought. Carried off, bruised, fallen, yes but now back, and mad! Lord, yes, mad, looking especially for me!

    Will's father saw her. His blood slowed, by instinct alone, to a pudding in his chest.

    The crowd opened happily, laughing and commenting on her bright if tattered costume, trying to remember what she rhymed, so as to tell it later. She moved, fingers feeling the town as if it were an immensely complicated and lush tapestry. And she sang:

    'Tell you your husbands. Tell you your wives. Tell you your fortunes. Tell you your lives. See me, I know. See me at the show. Tell you the colour of his eyes. Tell you the colour of her lies. Tell you the colour of his goal. Tell you the colour of her soul. Come now, don't go. See me, see me at the show.'

    Children appalled, children impressed, parents delighted, parents in high good humour, and still the Gypsy from the dusts of living sang. Time walked in her murmuring. She made and broke microscopic webs between her fingers wherewith to feel soot fly up, breath fly out. She touched the wings of flies, the souls of invisible bacteria, all specks, mites, and mica-snowings of sunlight filtrated with motion and much more hidden emotion.

    Will and Jim cracked their bones, cowered down., hearing:

    'Blind, yes, blind. But I see what I see, I see where I be,' said the Witch, softly. 'There's a man with a straw hat in autumn. Hello. And - why there's Mr Dark, and. . .an old man. . .an old man.'

    He's not that old! cried Will to himself, blinking up at the three, as the Witch stopped, her shadow falling moist-frog cool on the hidden boys.

    '. . .old man. . . '

    Mr Halloway was jolted as by a series of cold knives thrust in his stomach.

    '. . .old man. . .old man. . .' said the Witch.

    She stopped this. 'Ah. . .' The hairs in her nostrils bristled.

    She gaped her mouth to savour air. 'Ah. . .'

    The Illustrated Man quickened.

    'Wait. . .!' sighed the Gypsy.

    Her fingernails scraped down an unseen blackboard of air.

    Will felt himself yip, bark, whimper like an aggravated hound.

    Slowly her fingers climbed down, feeling the spectrums, weighing the light. In another moment, a forefinger might thrust to the sidewalk grille, implying: there! there!

    Dad! thought Will. Do something!

    The Illustrated Man, gone sweetly patient now that his blind but immensely aware dust lady was here, watched her with love.

    'Now. . .' The Witch's fingers itched.

    'Now!' said Will's father, loud.

    The Witch flinched.

    'Now, this is a fine cigar!' yelled Will's father, turning with great pomp back to the counter.

    'Quiet. . .' said the Illustrated Man.

    The boys looked up.

    'Now - ' The Witch sniffed the wind.

    'Got to light it again!' Mr Halloway stuck the cigar in the eternal blue flame.

    'Silence. . .' suggested Mr Dark.

    'Ever smoke, yourself?' asked Dad.

    The Witch, from the concussion of his fiercely erupted and overly jovial words, dropped one wounded hand to her side, wiped sweat from it, as one wipes an antenna for better reception, and drifted it up again, her nostrils flared with wind.

    'Ah!' Will's father blew a dense cloud of cigar smoke. It made a fine thick cumulus surrounding the woman.

    'Gah!' she choked.

    'Fool!' The Illustrated Man barked, but whether at man or woman, the boys below could not tell.

    'Here, let's buy you one!' Mr Halloway blew more smoke, handing Mr Dark a cigar.

    The Witch exploded a sneeze, recoiled, staggered away. The Illustrated Man snatched Dad's arm, saw that he had gone too far, let go, and could only follow his Gypsy woman off, in some clumsy and totally unexpected defeat. But then in going, he heard Will's father say, 'A fine day to you, sir!'

    No, Dad! thought Will.

    The Illustrated Man came back.

    'Your name, sir?' he asked, directly.

    Don't tell him! thought Will.

    Will's father debated a moment, took the cigar from his mouth, tapped ash and said, quietly:

    'Halloway. Work in the library. Drop by some time.'

    'You can be sure, Mr Halloway. I will.'

    The Witch was waiting near the corner.

    Mr Halloway whetted his forefinger, tested the wind, and sent a cumulus her way.

    She flailed back, gone.

    The Illustrated Man went rigid, spun about, and strode off, the ink portraits of Jim and Will crushed hard iron tight in his fists.

    Silence.

    It was so quiet under the grille, Mr Halloway thought the two boys had died of fright.

    And Will, below, gazing up, eyes wet, mouth wide, thought, Oh my gosh, why didn't I see it before?

    Dad's tall. Dad's very tall indeed.

    Still Charles Halloway did not look down at the grille but only at the small comets of splashed red colour left on the sidewalk, trailed around the corner, dropped from the clenched hands of the vanished Mr Dark. He was also gazing with surprise at himself, accepting the surprise, the new purpose, which was half despair, half serenity, now that the incredible deed was done. Let no one ask why he had given his true name; even he could not assay and give its real weight. Now he could only read the numerals on the courthouse clock and speak to it, while the boys below, listened.

    'Oh, Jim, Will, something is going on. Can you hide, keep out from under, the rest of the day? We got to have time. With things like this, where do you begin? No law's been broken, none on the books, anyway. But I feel dead and buried a month. My flesh ripples. Hide, Jim, Will, hide. I'll tell your mothers you've got jobs at the carnival, good excuse for you not coming home. Stay hid until dark, then come to the library at seven. Meantime, I'll check police records on carnivals, newspaper files at the library, books, old folios, everything that might fit. God willing, by the time you show up, after dark, I'll have a plan. Walk easy until then. Bless you, Jim. Bless you, Will.'

    The small father who was very tall now walked slowly away.

    Its cigar, unnoticed, fell from his hand, dropped in a spark shower through the grate.

    It lay in the square pit glowing its single fiery pink eye at Jim and Will, who looked back and at last snatched to blind and put it out.

The, Dwarf, bearing his demented and wildly lighted eyes, made his way south on Main Street.

    Stopping suddenly, he developed a film strip in his head, scanned it, bleated and blundered back through the forest of legs to reach for and pull the Illustrated Man down where a whisper was as good as a shout. Mr Dark listened, then fled, leaving the Dwarf far behind.

    Reaching the cigar store Indian, the Illustrated Man sank to his knees. Clutching the steel lattice-grille, he peered down in the pit.

    Below lay yellow newspapers, wilted candy wrappers, burnt cigars, and gum.

    Mr Dark's cry was muffled fury.

    'Lose something?'

    Mr Tetley blinked over his counter.

    'The Illustrated Man clenched the grate, nodding once.

    'I clean under the grate once a month for the money,' said Mr Tetley. 'How much you lose? Dime? Quarter? Half dollar?'

    Bing!

    The Illustrated Man glared up.

    In the cash-register window a small fire-red sign jumped high:

    NO SALE.

The town clock struck seven.

    The echoes of the great chime wandered in the unlit halls of the library.

    An autumn leaf, very crisp, fell somewhere in the dark. But it was only the page of a book, turning.

    Off in one of the catacombs, bent to a table under a grass-green-shaded lamp, lips pursed, eyes narrowed, sat Charles Halloway, his hands trembling the pages, lifting, rearranging the books. Now and then he hurried off to peer into the autumn night, watchful of the streets. Then again he came back to paper-clip pages, to inset papers, to scribble out quotations, whispering to himself. His voice brought forth quick echoes from the library vaults:

    'Look here!'

    '. . .here. . .!' said the night passages.

    'This picture. . .!'

    '. . .picture. . .!' said the halls.

    'And this!'

    '. . .this. . .' The dust settled.

    It had been the longest day of all the days he could remember in his life. He had mingled with strange and not-so-strange crowds, he had searched after the searchers, in the wake of the wide-scattering parade. He had resisted telling Jim's mother, Will's mother, more than they needed to know for a happy Sunday, and meantime crossed shadows with Dwarf, traded nods with Pinhead and Fire-eater, kept free of shadowed alleys, and controlled his panic, when, doubling back, he saw the basement pit empty under the cigar store grille and knew that the boys were at hide-and-seek somewhere nearby or somewhere, praise God, very far away.

    Then, in the crowds, he moved to the carnival ground, stayed out of tents, stayed free of rides, observed, watched the sun go down, and just at twilight, surveyed the cold glass waters of the Mirror Maze and saw just enough on the shore to pull him back before he drowned. Wet all over, cold to the bone, before night caught him he let the crowd protect, warm, and bear him away up into town, to the library, and to most important books which he arranged in a great literary clock on a table, like someone learning to tell a new time. So he paced round and round the huge clock squinting at the yellowed pages as if they were moth-wings pinned dead to the wood.

    Here lay a portrait of the Prince of Darkness. Next a series of fantastic sketches of the Temptations of St Anthony. Next some etchings from the Bizarie by Giovan-batista Bracelli, depicting a set of curious toys, humanlike robots engaged in various alchemical rites. At five minutes to twelve stood a copy of Dr Faustus, at two lay on Occult Iconography, at six, under Mr Halloway's trailed fingers now, a history of circuses, carnivals, shadow shows, puppet menageries inhabited by mountebanks, minstrels, stilt-walking sorcerers and their fantoccini. More: A Manual of the Air Kingdoms (Things That Fly Down History). At nine sharp: By Demons Possessed, lying atop Egyptian Philtres, lying atop the Torments of the Damned, which in turn crushed flat The Spell of Mirrors. Very late up the literary clock one named Locomotives and Trains, The Mystery of Sleep, Between Midnight and Dawn, The Witches' Sabbath, and Pacts With Demons. It was all laid out. He could see the face.

    But there were no hands on this clock.

    He could not tell what hour of the night of life it was for himself, the boys, or the unknowing town.

    For, in sum, what had he to go by?

    A three-o'-clock-in-the-morning arrival, a grotesque-looking glass maze, a Sunday parade, a tall man with a swarm of electric-blue pictures itching on his sweaty hide, a few drops of blood falling down through a pavement grille, two frightened boys staring up out of the earth, and himself, alone in mausoleum quiet, nudging the puzzle together.

    What was there about the boys that made him believe the simplest word they whispered up through the grille? Fear itself was proof here, and he had seen enough fear in his fife to know it, like the smell from a butcher's shop in summer twilight.

    What was there about the illustrated carnival owner's silences that spoke thousands of violent, corrupt, and crippling words?

    What was there in that old man he had seen through a tent flap late this afternoon, seated in a chair with the words MR ELECTRICO bannered over him, power webbing and crawling on his flesh like green lizards?

    All, all, all of it. And now, these books. This. He touched Physiognomonie. The secrets of the individual's character as found in his face.

    Were Jim and Will, then, featured all angelic, pure, half-innocent, peering up through the sidewalk at marching terror? Did the boys represent the ideal for your Woman, Man, or Child of Excellent Bearing, Colour, Balance, and Summer Disposition?

    Conversely. . .Charles Halloway turned a page. . .did the scurrying freaks, the Illustrated Marvel, bear the foreheads of the Irascible, the Cruel, the Covetous, the mouths of the Lewd and Untruthful? the teeth of the Crafty, the Unstable, the Audacious, the Vainglorious, and your Murderous Beast?

    No. The book slipped shut. If faces were judged, the freaks were no worse than many he'd seen slipping from the library late nights in his long career.

    There was only one thing sure.

    Two lines of Shakespeare said it. He should write them in the middle of the clock of books, to fix the heart of his apprehension:

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

    So vague, yet so immense.

    He did not want to live with it.

    Yet he knew that, during this night, unless he lived with it very well, he might have to live with it all the rest of his life.

    At the window he looked out and thought, Jim, Will, are you coming? will you get here?

    Waiting, his flesh took paleness from his bones.