Something Wicked This Way Comes

And in the moment before the Illustrated Man himself translated the mouthings, quickly, Charles Halloway cried, faintly, ‘Hold!’ Will held his breath. Far back among wax statues, Jim, hid away, dripped saliva from his chin. Strapped in electric chair a dead-alive mummy hummed power in its teeth. Mr. Dark’s illustrations writhed with sick sweat as he clenched his fist a final time, but—too late! Serene, Will held breath, held weapon. Serene, his father said, ‘Now.’

And fired the rifle.

48

One shot!

The Witch sucked breath.

Jim, in the Wax Museum, sucked breath.

As did Will, asleep.

As did his father.

As did Mr. Dark.

As did all the freaks.

As did the crowd.

The Witch screamed.

Jim among the wax dummies, blew all the air from his lungs.

Will shrieked himself awake, on the platform.

The Illustrated Man let the air from his mouth in a great angry bray, whipping up his hands to stop all events. But the Witch fell. She fell off the platform. She fell in the dust.

The smoking rifle in his one good hand, Charles Halloway let his breath go slow, feeling every bit of it move from him. He still stared along the rifle sights at the target where the woman had been.

At the platform rim, Mr. Dark looked down at the screaming crowd and what they were screaming about.

‘She’s fainted—’

‘No. She slipped!’

‘Shes . . . shot!’

At last Charles Halloway came to stand by the Illustrated Man, looking down. There were many things in his face: surprise, dismay, and some small strange relief and satisfaction.

The woman was lifted and put on the platform. Her mouth was frozen open, almost with a look of recognition.

He knew she was dead. In a moment, the crowd would know. He watched the Illustrated Man’s hand move down to touch, trace, feel for life. Then Mr. Dark lifted both her hands, like a doll, in some marionette strategy, to give her motion. But the body refused.

So he gave one of the Witch’s arms to the Dwarf, the other to the Skeleton, and they shook and moved them in a ghastly semblance of reawakening as the crowd backed.

‘. . . dead

‘But . . . there’s no wound.’

‘Shock, you think?’

Shock, thought Charles Halloway, my God, did that kill her? Or the other bullet? When I fired the shot, did she suck the other bullet down her throat? Did she . . . choke on my smile! Oh, Christ!

‘It’s all right! Show’s over! Just fainted!’ said Mr. Dark. ‘All an act! All part of the, show,’ he said, not looking at the woman, not looking at the crowd, but looking at Will, who stood blinking around, out of one nightmare and fresh into the next as his father stood with him and Mr. Dark cried: ‘Everyone home! Show’s over! Lights! Lights!’

The carnival lights flickered.

The crowd, herded before the failing illumination, turned like a great carousel and as the lamps dimmed, hustled toward the few remaining pools of light as if to warm themselves there before braving the wind. One by one, one by one, the lights indeed were going off.

‘Lights!’ said Mr. Dark.

‘Jump!’ said Will’s father.

Will jumped. Will ran with his father who still carried the, weapon that had fired the, smile that had killed the Gypsy and put her to dust.

‘Is Jim in there?’

They were at the maze. Behind them, on the platform, Mr. Dark bellowed: ‘Lights! Go home! All over. Done!’

‘Is Jim in there?’ wondered Will. ‘Yes. Yes, he is!’

Inside the Wax Museum, Jim still had not moved, had not blinked.

‘Jim!’ The voice came through the maze.

Jim moved. Jim blinked. A rear exit door stood wide. Jim blundered toward it.

‘I’m coming for you, Jim!’

‘No, Dad!’

Will caught at his father, who stood at the first turn of the mirrors with the pain come back to his hands racing up along the nerves to strike a fireball near his heart. ‘Dad, don’t go in!’ Will gabbed his good arm.

Behind them, the platform was empty, Mr. Dark was running . . . where? Somewhere as the night shut in, the lights went off, went off, went off, the night sucked around, gathering, whistling, simpering, and the crowd, like a shake of leaves from one huge tree, blew off the midway, and Will’s father stood facing the glass tides, the waves, the gauntlet of horror he knew waited for him to swim through, stride through to fight the desiccation, the annihilation of one’s self that waited there. He had seen enough to know. Eyes shut, you’d be lost. Eyes open, you’d know such utter despair, such gravities of anguish would weight you, you might never drag past the twelfth turn. But Charles Halloway took Will’s hands away. ‘Jim’s there. Jim, wait! I’m coming in!’

And Charles Halloway took the next step into the maze.

Ahead flowed sluices of silver light, deep slabs of shadow, polished, wiped, rinsed with images of themselves and others whose souls, passing, scoured the glass with their agony, curried the cold ice with their narcissism, or sweated the angles and flats with their fear.

‘Jim!’

He ran. Will ran. They stopped.