Something Wicked This Way Comes

by Ray Douglas Bradbury

  Will’s feet slithered in the grass.

  Will’s father moved ahead.

  The freaks watched with moon-glass eyes as they passed.

  The calliope changed. It whistled sadly, sweetly, around a curve of tents, around a riverflow of darkness.

  It’s going ahead! thought Will. Yes! It was going backward. But now it stopped and started again, and this time forward! What’s Mr. Dark up to?

  “Jim!” Will burst out.

  “Sh!” Dad shook him.

  But the name had tumbled from his mouth only because he heard the calliope summing the golden years ahead, felt Jim isolate somewhere, pulled by warm gravities, swung by sunrise notes, wondering what it could be like to stand sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years tall, and then, oh then, nineteen and, most incredible!—twenty! The great wind of time blew in the brass pipes, a fine, a jolly, a summer tune, promising everything and even Will, hearing, began to run toward the music that grew up like a peach tree full of sun-ripe fruit—

  No! he thought.

  And instead made his feet step to his own fear, jump to his own tune, a hum cramped back by throat, held fast by lungs, which shook the bones of his head and drowned the calliope away.

  “There,” said Dad softly.

  And between the tents, ahead, in transit, they saw a grotesque parade. Like a dark sultan in a palanquin, a half-familiar figure rode a chair borne on the shoulders of assorted sizes and shapes of darkness.

  At Dad’s cry, the parade jolted, then broke into a run!

  “Mr. Electrico!” said Will.

  They’re taking him to the carousel!

  The parade vanished.

  A tent lay between them.

  “Around here!” Will jumped, pulling his father. The calliope played sweet. To pull Jim, to draw Jim. And when the parade arrived with Electrico? Back the music would spin, back the carousel run, to shard away his skin, to freshen forth his years! Will stumbled, fell. Dad picked him up.

  And then…

  There arose a human barking, yapping, baying, whining, as if all had fallen. In a long-drawn moan, a gasp, a shuddering sigh, an entire crowd of people with crippled throats made chorus together.

  “Jim! They’ve got Jim!”

  “No…” murmured Charles Halloway, strangely. “Maybe Jim… or us… got them.”

  They stepped around the last tent.

  Wind blew dust in their faces.

  Will clapped his hand up, squinched his nose. The dust was antique spice, burnt maple leaves, a prickling blue that teemed and sifted to earth. Swarming its own shadows, the dust filtered over the tents.

  Charles Halloway sneezed. Figures jumped and scurried away from an upended, half-tilted object abandoned half-way between one tent and the carousel.

  The object was the electric chair, capsized, with straps dangling from wooden arms and legs, and a metal headcap hanging from its top.

  “But,” said Will. “Where’s Mr. Electrico!? I mean Mr. Cooger!?”

  “That must have been him.”

  “What must have been him?”

  But the answer was there, sifting down the midway in the whorling wind devils… the burnt spice, the autumn incense that had floured them when they turned this corner.

  Kill or cure, Charles Halloway thought. He imagined them rushed in the last few seconds, toting the ancient dustsack boneheap over starched grasses in his disconnected chair, perhaps only one in a running series of attempts to foster, encourage, preserve life in what was really nothing but a mortuary junkpile, rust-flakes and dying coals that no wind could blow alight again. Yet they must try. How many times in the last twenty-four hours had they run out on such excursions, only, in panic, to cease activity because the merest jolt, the slightest breath, threatened to shake old ancient Cooger down to mealmush and chaff? Better to leave him propped in electric-warm chair, a continual exhibit, an ever-going-on performance for gaping audiences, and try again, but especially try now, when, lights out, and crowds herded off in the dark, all threatened by one smile on a bullet, there was need of Cooger as he once was, tall, flame-headed, and riven with earthquake violence. But somewhere, twenty seconds, ten seconds ago, the last glue crumbled, the last bolt of life fell free, and the mummy-doll, the Erector-set grotesque disencumbered itself in smoke puffs and November leaflets, a broadcast of mortality along the wind. Mr. Cooger, threshed in a final harvest, was now a billion parchment flecks, tumbled sea-scrolls capered in meadows. A mere dust explosion in a silo of ancient grain: gone.

  “Oh, no, no, no, no, no,” someone murmured.

  Charles Halloway touched Will’s arm.

  Will stopped saying “Oh, no, no, no.” He, too, in the last few moments, had thought the same as his father, of the toted corpse, the strewn bone-meal, the mineral-enriched hills of grass…

  Now there was only the empty chair and the last particles of mica, the radiant motes of peculiar dirt crusting the straps. And the freaks, who had been toting the baroque dump, now fled to shadows.

  We made them run, thought Will, but something made them drop it!

  No, not something. Someone.

  Will flexed his eyes.

  The carousel, deserted, empty, traveled on its way through its own special time, forward.

  But between the fallen chair and the carousel, standing alone, was that a freak? No…

  “Jim!”

  Dad knocked his elbow and Will shut up.

  Jim, he thought.

  And where, now, was Mr. Dark?

  Somewhere. For he had started the carousel, hadn’t he? Yes! To draw them, to draw Jim, and—what else? Right now there was no time, for—

  Jim turned from the spilled chair, turned and walk slowly toward the free, free ride.

  He was going where he had always known he must go.

  Like a weather vane in wild seasons he had tremored this way, wandered that, hesitated upon bright horizons and warm directions, only at last now to tilt and, half sleep-walking, tremble about in the bright brass pull and summer march of music. He could not look away.

  Another step, and then another, toward the merry-go-round, there went Jim.

  “Go get him, Will,” said his father.

  Will went.

  Jim raised his right hand.

  The brass poles flashed by into the future, pulling the flesh like syrup, stretching the bones like taffy, the sunmetal color burning Jim’s cheeks, flinting his eyes.

  Jim reached. The brass poles flick-knocked his fingernails, tinkling their own small tune.

  “Jim!”

  The brass poles chopped by in a yellow sunrise at night.

  The music leaped in a clear fountain, high.

  Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

  Jim opened his mouth with the same cry:

  “Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

  “Jim!” cried Will, running.

  Jim’s palm slapped one brass pole. The pole whipped on.

  He slapped another brass pole. This time, his palm glued itself tight.

  Wrist followed fingers, arm followed wrist, shoulder and body followed arm. Jim, sleepwalked, was torn from his roots in the earth.

  “Jim!”

  Will reached, felt Jim’s foot flick from his grasp.

  Jim swung round the waiting night in a great dark summer circle, Will racing after.

  “Jim, get off! Jim, don’t leave me here!”

  Flung by centrifuge, Jim grasped the pole with one hand, spun, and, as if by some lone lost and final instinct, gestured his other hand free to trail on the wind, the one part of him, the small white separate part that still remembered their friendship.

  “Jim, jump!!”

  Will snatched for that hand, missed, stumbled, almost fell. The first race was lost. Jim must circle once, alone. Will stood waiting the next charge of horses, the fling-about of boy not-so-much boy—

  “Jim! Jim!”

  Jim awoke! Circled half round, his face showed now July, now December. He seized the pole, bleating out his despair. He wanted, h
e did not want. He wished, he rejected, he ardently wished again, in flight, in heat-spell river of wind and blaze of metal, in jog of July and August horses whose hoofs thudded the air like thrown fruit, his eyes blazed. Tongue clamped in teeth, he hissed his frustration.

  “Jim! Jump! Dad, stop the machine!”

  Charles Halloway turned to see where the control box stood, fifty feet off.

  “Jim!” Will’s side was stabbed with pain. “I need you! Come back!”

  And, far over away on the far side of the carousel, traveling, fast-traveling, Jim fought with his own hands, the pole, the empty wind-whipped journey, the growing night, the wheeling stars. He let go the pole. He grabbed it. And still his right hand trailed down and out, begging Will’s last full ounce of strength.

  “Jim!”

  Jim came around. There, below, in the black-night station from which this train pulled away forever in a flurry of ticket-punch confetti, he saw Will—Willy—William Halloway, young pal, young friend who would seem younger still at the end of this journey, and not just young but unknown! vaguely remembered from some other time in some other year… but now that boy, that friend, that younger friend, ran along by the train, reached up, asking passage? or demanding he get off? which?!

  “Jim! Remember me?”

  Will lunged his final lunge. Fingers touched fingers, palm touched palm.

  Jim’s face, white cold, stared down.

  Will trot-paced the circling machine.

  Where was Dad? Why didn’t he shut it off?

  Jim’s hand was a warm hand, a familiar, a good hand. It closed on his. He gripped it yelling.

  “Jim, please!”

  But still they spun on the journey, Jim borne, Will dragged in a jog-crazy-trot.

  “Please!”

  Will jerked. Jim jerked. Trapped by Jim, Will’s hand was shot with July heat. It went, like a kept animal, held and fondled by Jim, along, around, into older times. So his hand, far-traveling, would be alien to himself, knowing things by night that he himself, abed, might only guess. Fourteen-year boy, fifteen-year hand! Jim had it, yes! cramped it tight, would not let go! And Jim’s face, was it older, from the journey round? Was he fifteen now, going on sixteen!?

  Will pulled. Jim pulled opposite.

  Will fell on the machine.

  Both rode the night.

  All of Will rode with friend Jim now.

  “Jim! Dad!”

  How easy it might be to just stand, ride, go round with Jim, if he couldn’t pull Jim off, just leave him on and, dear pals, travel! The juices of his body swam, binding his sight, they drummed his ears, shot electric jolts through his loins…

  Jim shouted. Will shouted.

  They traveled half a year in slithering orchard-warm dark before Will seized Jim’s arm tight and dared to leap from so much promise, so many fine tall-growing years, flail out, off, down, pull Jim with. But Jim could not let go the pole, could not give up the ride.

  “Will!”

  Jim, half between machine and friend, one hand on each, screamed.

  It was like a great tearing of cloth or flesh.

  Jim’s eyes went blind as a statue’s.

  The carousel whirled.

  Jim screamed, fell, spun crazily, on the air.

  Will tried to break his fall, but Jim struck earth rolling. He lay, silent.

  Charles Halloway hit the carousel control switch. Empty, the machine slowed. Its horses paced themselves down from their trot toward some far midsummer night.

  Together, Charles Halloway and his son knelt by Jim to touch his wrist, to put ear to his chest. Jim’s eyes, skinned white, were fixed on the stars.

  “Oh, God,” cried Will. “Is he dead?”

  Chapter 52

  “Dead…?”

  Will’s father moved his hand over that cold face, the cold chest.

  “I don’t feel…”

  A long way off, someone cried for help.

  They looked up.

  A boy came running down the midway bumping into the ticket booths, falling over tent ropes, looking back over his shoulder.

  “Help! He’s after me!” the boy cried. “The terrible man! The terrible man! I want to go home!”

  The boy flung himself forward, and grabbed at Will’s father.

  “Oh, help, I’m lost, I don’t like it. Take me home. That man with the tattoos!”

  “Mr. Dark!” gasped Will.

  “Yes!” gibbered the boy. “He’s down that way! Oh, stop him!”

  “Will—” his father rose—“take care of Jim. Artificial respiration. All right, boy.”

  The boy trotted off. “This way!”

  Following, Charles Halloway watched the distraught boy who led him; observed his head, his frame, the way his pelvis hung from his spine.

  “Boy,” he said, by the shadowed merry-go-round, twenty feet around from where Will bent to Jim. “What’s your name?”

  “No time!” cried the boy. “Jed. Quick, quick!”

  Charles Halloway stopped.

  “Jed,” he said. The boy no longer moved, but turned, chafing his elbows. “How old are you, Jed?”

  “Nine!” said the boy. “My gosh, this is no time! We—”

  “This is a fine time, Jed,” said Charles Halloway. “Only nine? So young. I was never that young.”

  “Holy cow!” shouted the boy, angrily.

  “Or unholy something,” said the man, and reached out. The boy backed away. “You’re only afraid of one man, Jed. Me.”

  “You?” The boy still backed off. “Cut it out! Why, why?”

  “Because, sometimes good has weapons and evil none. Sometimes tricks fail. Sometimes people can’t be picked off, led to deadfalls. No divide-and-conquer tonight, Jed. Where were you taking me, Jed? To some lion’s cage you got fixed and ready? To some side show, like the mirrors? To someone like the Witch? What, what, Jed, what? Let’s just roll up your right shirt sleeve, shall we, Jed?”

  The great moonstone eyes flashed at Charles Halloway.

  The boy leaped back, but not before the man had leaped with him, seized his arm, grabbed the back of his shirt and instead of simply rolling up the sleeve as first suggested, tore the entire shirt off the boy’s body.

  “Why, yes, Jed,” said Charles Halloway, almost quietly. “Just as I thought.”

  “You, you, you, you!”

  “Yes, Jed, me. But especially you, look at you.”

  And look he did.

  For there, on the back of the small boy’s hand, on the fingers, and up along the wrist scrambled blue serpents, blue-venomed snake eyes, blue scorpions scuttling about blue shark maws which gaped eternally hungry to feed upon all the freaks crammed and stung-sewn cheek by jowl, skin to skin, flesh to flesh all up and down the chest, the tiny torso, and tucked in the secret gathering places on this small small very small body, this cold and now shocked and trembling body.

  “Why, Jed, that’s fine artwork, that is.”

  “You!” The boy struck.

  “Yes, still me.” Charles Halloway took the blow in the face and clamped a vise, on the boy.

  “No!”

  “Oh, yes,” said Charles Halloway, using just his good right hand, his ruined left hand hanging limp. “Yes, Jed, jump, squirm, go ahead. It was a fine idea. Get me off alone, fix me, then go back and get Will. And when the police come, why, you’re just a boy nine or ten and the carnival, oh, no, it’s not yours, doesn’t belong to you. Stay here, Jed. Why you trying to get out from under my arm? The police look and the owners of the show have vanished, isn’t that it, Jed? A fine escape.”

  “You can’t hurt me!” the boy shrieked.

  “Funny,” said Charles Halloway. “I think I can.”

  He pressed the boy, almost lovingly, close, very close.

  “Murder!” wailed the boy. “Murder.”

  “I’m not going to murder you, Jed, Mr. Dark, whoever, whatever you are. You’re going to murder yourself because you can’t stand being near people like me, no
t this close, close, not this long.”

  “Evil!” groaned the boy, writhing. “You’re evil!”

  “Evil?” Will’s father laughed, which made the boy, wasp-stung and brambled by the sound, jerk all the more violently. “Evil?” The man’s hands were flypaper fastened to the small bones. “Strange hearing that from you, Jed. So it must seem. Good to evil seems evil. So I will do only good to you, Jed. I will simply hold you and watch you poison yourself. I will do good to you, Jed, Mr. Dark, Mr. Proprietor, boy, until you tell what’s wrong with Jim. Wake him up. Let him free. Give him life!”

  “Can’t… can’t…” The boy’s voice fell down a well inside his body, fading away, away “can’t…”

  “You mean you won’t?”

  “…can’t…”

  “All right, boy, all right, then here and here and this and this…”

  They looked like father and son long apart, passionately met, embraced, yet more embraced, as the man lifted his wounded hand to gently touch the stricken face as the crowd, the teem, of illustrations shivered and flew now this way and that in microscopic forays quickly abandoned. The boy’s eyes swiveled wildly, fixed upon the manes mouth. He saw there the strange and somehow lovely smile once flung as beatification to the Witch.

  He gathered the boy somewhat closer and thought, Evil has only the power that we give it. I give you nothing. I take back. Starve. Starve. Starve.

  The two matchstick lights in the boy’s affrighted eyes blew out.

  The boy, and his stricken and bruised conclave of monsters, his felt but half-seen crowd, fell to earth.

  There should have been a roar like a mountain slid to ruin.

  But there was only a rustle, like a Japanese paper lantern dropped in the dust.

  Chapter 53

  Charles Halloway stood for a long while, breathing deep, lungs aching, looking down at the body. The shadows swooned and fluttered in all the canvas alleys where odd assorted sizes of freaks and people, fleshed in their own terrors and sins, held to poles, moaning in disbelief. Somewhere, the Skeleton moved out in the light. Somewhere else, the Dwarf almost knew who he was, and scuttled forth like a crab from a cave to blink and blink again at Will bent working over Jim, at Will’s father bent to exhaustion over the still form of the silent boy, while the merry-go-round, at last, slow, slow, came to a stop, rocking like a ferryboat in the watery-blowing grass.