Multi-column

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Thoughts

Highlights

id746123827

They sleep not, except they have done mischief;
And their sleep is taken away,
unless they cause some to fall
For they eat the bread of wickedness,
And they drink the wine of violence.
PROVERBS 4: 16-17 ๐Ÿ”—

id746123853

I know not all that may be coming, but be it what
it will, I'll go to it laughing.
STUBB in Moby Dick ๐Ÿ”—

id746124004

But you take October, now. School's been on a month and you're riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you'll dump on old man Prickett's porch, or the hairy-ape costume you'll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it's around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash grey at twilight, it seems Hallowe'en will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners. ๐Ÿ”—

id746126333

James Nightshade ๐Ÿ”—

id746127422

But two boys, far up the gentle slope, lying on the grass. Of a like size and general shape, the boys sat carving twig whistles, talking of olden or future times, content with having left their fingerprints on every movable object in Green Town during summer past and their footprints on every open path between here and the lake and there and the river since school began. ๐Ÿ”—

id746127741

So much Will said, excitedly. So much Jim agreed to, silently. So much the salesman, running before the storm, but poised here uncertainly, heard looking from face to face. ๐Ÿ”—

id746128419

The entire surface of the rod was finely scratched and etched with strange languages, names that could tie the tongue or break the jaw, numerals that added to incomprehensible sums, pictographs of insect-animals all bristle, chaff, and claw. ๐Ÿ”—

id746128927

'Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What colour is lightning? Where does thunder go when it dies? Boys, you got to be ready in every dialect with every shape and form to hex the St Elmo's fires, the balls of blue light that prowl the earth like sizzling cats. ๐Ÿ”—

id746129739

Any boy hit by lightning, lift his lid and there on his eyeball, pretty as the Lord's prayer on a pin, find the last scene the boy ever saw! ๐Ÿ”—

id746130009

And jangling his case full of iron rods, the salesman wheeled about and charged down the walk blinking wildly at the sky, the roof, the trees, at last closing his eyes, moving, sniffing, muttering. 'Yes, bad, here it comes, feel it, way off now, but running fast. . .' ๐Ÿ”—

id746130536

Jim breathed it out all fine.
ย  ย  And Will, he breathed it in. ๐Ÿ”—

id746130694

But here in the special night, a land bricked with paper and leather, anything might happen, always did. Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast, marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift of tongues. This was a factory of spices from far countries. Here alien deserts slumbered. ๐Ÿ”—

id746131056

'I mean Dante. Look at this. Pictures by Mister Dorรฉ, showing all the aspects. Hell never looked better. Here's souls sunk to their gills in slime. There's someone upside down, wrong side out.' ๐Ÿ”—

id746131351

Dad, thought Will, why, why, he looks. . .like me in a smashed mirror! ๐Ÿ”—

id746131474

'Will,' said the old man who was also a janitor who happened to be his father ๐Ÿ”—

id746131954

Outside, a weather of stars ran clear in an ocean sky. ๐Ÿ”—

id746132006

The wind flew Jim away.
ย  ย  A similar kite, Will swooped to follow. ๐Ÿ”—

id746132064

He knew what the wind was doing to them where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life. ๐Ÿ”—

id746132098

Will runs because running is its own excuse. Jim runs because something's up ahead of him.
ย  ย  Yet, strangely, they do run together. ๐Ÿ”—

id746132239

And Will? Why he's the last peach, high on the summer tree. Some boys walk by and you cry, seeing them. They feel good, they look good, they are good. Oh, they're not above peeing off a bridge, or stealing an occasional dime-store pencil sharpener; it's not that. It's just, you know, seeing them pass, that's how they'll be all their life; they'll get hit, hurt, cut, bruised, and always wonder why, why does it happen? how can it happen to them? ๐Ÿ”—

id746132307

But Jim, now, he knows it happens, he watches for it happening, he sees it start, he sees it finish, he licks the wound he expected, and never asks why; he knows. He always knew. Someone knew before him, a long time ago, someone who had wolves for pets and lions for night conversants. Hell, Jim doesn't know with his mind. But his body knows. And while Will's putting a bandage on his latest scratch, Jim's ducking, waving, bouncing away from the knockout blow which must inevitably come. ๐Ÿ”—

id746132435

So there they go, Jim running slower to stay with Will, Will running faster to stay with Jim, Jim breaking two windows in a haunted house because Will's along, Will breaking one instead of none, because Jim's watching. God how we get our fingers in each other's clay. That's friendship, each playing the potter to see what shapes we can make of the other. ๐Ÿ”—

id746132893

But by the time the last stroke of nine shook everyone's fillings in his teeth, the barbers had yanked off the sheets, powdered the customers, trotted them forth; the druggist's fount had stopped fizzing like a nest of snakes, the insect neons everywhere had ceased buzzing, and the vast glittering acreage of the dime store with its ten billion metal, glass and paper oddments waiting to be fished over, suddenly blacked out. Shades slithered, doors boomed, keys rattled their bones in locks, people fled with hordes of torn newspaper mice nibbling their heels. ๐Ÿ”—

id746133123

Will watched the barber's pole whirl its red serpentine up out of nothing, leading his gaze around, rising to vanish into more nothing. On countless moons Will had stood here trying to unravel that ribbon, watch it come, go, end without ending. ๐Ÿ”—

id746133362

'Good-night.'
ย  ย  And they left him behind in a wind that very faintly smelled of licorice and cotton candy. ๐Ÿ”—

id746134373

Perhaps Time itself fixed was draining off down an immense glass, with powdered darkness failing after to bury all. ๐Ÿ”—

id746135191

Suddenly there was the old sense of terrified elation, of wanting to laugh and cry together when he saw the innocents of the earth wandering the snowy streets the day before Christmas among all the tired men and women whose faces were dirty with guilt, unwashed of sin, and smashed like small windows by life that hit without warning, ran, hid, came back and hit again. ๐Ÿ”—

id746140444

For it was no longer the street of the apples or plums or apricots, it was the one house with a window at the side and this window, Jim said, was a stage, with a curtain - the shade, that is - up. And in that room, on that strange stage, were the actors, who spoke mysteries, mouthed wild things, laughed, sighed, murmured so much; so much of it was whispers Will did not understand. ๐Ÿ”—

id746141655

'Jim!' And when Jim looked down at last he saw Will as a stranger below with some silly request to give off living and come down to earth. So Will ran off, alone, thinking too much, knowing what to think. ๐Ÿ”—

id746153035

'Carnivals come at sunrise.'
ย  ย  "Yeah, but what about the licorice and cotton candy we smelled, close?'
ย  ย  And Will thought of the smells and the sounds flowing on the river of wind from beyond the darkening houses, Mr Tetley listening by his wooden Indian friend, Mr Crosetti with the single tear shining down his cheek, and the barber's pole sliding its red tongue up and around forever out of nowhere and away to eternity. ๐Ÿ”—

id746156398

He wanted to be near and not near them, he saw them close, he saw them far. Suddenly they were awfully small in too large a room in too big a town and much too huge a world. In this unlocked place they seemed at the mercy of anything that might break in from the night.
ย  ย  Including me, Will thought. Including me.
ย  ย  Suddenly he loved them more for their smallness than he ever had when they seemed tall. ๐Ÿ”—

id746156586

That was mother, smelling like fresh milk, happy, to herself, in this room.
ย  ย  Happy? But how and why? Here, a few feet off, was the janitor, the library man, the stranger, his uniform gone, but his face still the face of a man happier at night alone in the deep marble vaults, whispering his broom in the draughty corridors.
ย  ย  Will watched, wondering why this woman was so happy and this man so sad. ๐Ÿ”—

id746157159

Some nights, abed, Will put his ear to the wall to listen, and if his folks talked things that were right, he stayed, and if not right he turned away. If it was about time and passing years or himself or town or just the general inconclusive way God ran the world, he listened warmly, comfortably, secretly, for it was usually Dad talking. He could not often speak with Dad anywhere in the world, inside or out, but this was different. There was a thing in Dad's voice, up, over, down, easy as a hand winging soft in the air like a white bird describing flight pattern, made the ear want to follow and the mind's eye to see.
ย  ย  And the odd thing in Dad's voice was the sound truth makes being said. The sound of truth, in a wild roving land of city or plain country lies, will spell any boy. Many nights Will drowsed this way, his senses like stopped clocks long before that half-singing voice was still. Dad's voice was a midnight school, teaching deep fathom hours, and the subject was life. ๐Ÿ”—

id746157368

Will wanted to turn away, but couldn't.
ย  ย  '. . .most beautiful. . .woman. . .in the world,' Dad's voice murmured.
ย  ย  Mother laughed softly. 'You know I'm not.'
ย  ย  No! thought Will, that's from the handbill! Why doesn't Dad tell!!?
ย  ย  Because, Will answered himself. Something's going on. Oh, something is going on!
ย  ย  Will saw that paper frolicked in the trees, its words THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN, and fever prickled his cheeks. ๐Ÿ”—

id746157623

The trouble with Jim was he looked at the world and could not look away. And when you never look away all your life, by the time you are thirteen you have done twenty years taking in the laundry of the world.
ย  ย  Will Halloway, it was in him young to always look just beyond, over or to one side. So at thirteen he had saved up only six years of staring.
ย  ย  Jim knew every centimetre of his shadow, could have cut it out of tar paper, furled it, and run it up a flagpole - his banner.
ย  ย  Will, he was occasionally surprised to see his shadow following him somewhere, but that was that. ๐Ÿ”—

id746157743

He looked at her. Her face had been hit a long time ago. The bruises had never gone from around her eyes.
ย  ย  'You'll live and get hurt,' she said, in the dark. 'But when it's time, tell me. Say good-bye. Otherwise, I might not let you go. Wouldn't that be terrible, to just grab ahold?' ๐Ÿ”—

id746157995

In the dreaming coldness of ice like someone fallen and slept in snow avalanches a thousand years, forever young, was this woman.
ย  ย  She was as fair as this morning and fresh as tomorrow's flowers and lovely as any maid when a man shuts up his eyes and traps her, in cameo perfection, on the shell of his eyelids. ๐Ÿ”—

id746158023

Once, long ago, travelling among the marbles of Rome and Florence, he had seen women like this, kept in stone instead of Ice. Once, wandering in the Louvre, he had found women like this, washed in summer colour and kept in paint. Once, as a boy, sneaking the cool grottoes behind a motion picture theatre screen, on his way to a free seat, he had glanced up and there towering and flooding the haunted dark seen a women's face as he had never seen it since, of such size and beauty built of milk-bone and moon-flesh, at to freeze him there alone behind the stage, shadowed by the, motion of her lips, the bird-wing flicker of her eyes, the snow-pale-death-shimmering illumination from her cheeks. ๐Ÿ”—

id746158381

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!
ย  ย  There, on the world's rim, the lovely snail-gleam of the railway tracks ran, flinging wild gesticulations of lemon or cherry-coloured semaphore to the stars.
ย  ย  There, on the precipice of earth, a small steam feather uprose like the first of a storm cloud yet to come.
ย  ย  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.
ย  ย  The engine!
ย  ย  Both boys vanished, came back to life binoculars. ๐Ÿ”—

id746511141

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! ๐Ÿ”—

id746511315

moon ready beyond the hills and the meadows trembling with a fur of dew. ๐Ÿ”—

id746511675

broke out in pearls of ice. ๐Ÿ”—

id746512888

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. ๐Ÿ”—

id746513122

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. ๐Ÿ”—

id746514525

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. ๐Ÿ”—

id746514619

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?
ย  ย  The maze did not ask.
ย  ย  The maze did not tell.
ย  ย  It simply stood and waited like a great arctic floe. ๐Ÿ”—

id746539579

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.
ย  ย  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? ๐Ÿ”—

id746539706

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-coloured canvas. From booths painted cotton-candy colours fine Saturday smells of bacon and eggs, hot dogs and pancakes swam with the wind. Everywhere ran boys. Everywhere, sleepy fathers followed. ๐Ÿ”—

id746541187

'Miss Foley!'
ย  ย  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!' ๐Ÿ”—

id746129739

Any boy hit by lightning, lift his lid and there on his eyeball, pretty as the Lord's prayer on a pin, find the last scene the boy ever saw! ๐Ÿ”—

id749233401

They both looked to the carnival where dusk coloured 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. ๐Ÿ”—

id749238588

The carousel wheeled, a great back-drifting lunar dream the horses thrusting, the music in-gasped after, while Mr Cooger, as simple as shadows, as simple as light, as simple as time, got younger. And younger. And younger. ๐Ÿ”—

id749238715

Another and another time around under the sky and trees and Will whispering, Jim counting the times around, around, while the night air warmed to summer heat by friction of sun-metal brass, the passionate backturned flight of beasts, wore the wax doll down and down and washed him clean with the still stranger musics until all ceased, all died away to stillness the calliope shut up its brassworks, the ironmongery machines hissed off, and with a last faint whine like desert sands blown backup Arabian hourglasses, the carousel rocked on seaweed waters and stood still. ๐Ÿ”—

id749254116

And again Will had the feeling about Jim that he had always had about an old almost forgotten dog. Some time every year that dog, good for many months, just ran on out into the world and didn't come back for days and finally did limp back all burred and scrawny and odorous of swamps and dumps; he had rolled in the dirty mangers and foul dropping-places of the world, simply to turn home with a funny little smile pinned to his muzzle. Dad had named the dog Plato, the wilderness philosopher, for you saw by his eyes there was nothing he didn't know. Returned, the dog would live in innocence again, tread patterns of grace, for months, then vanish, and the whole thing start over. Now, walking here he thought he heard Jim whimper under his breath. He could feel the bristles stiffen all over Jim. He felt Jim's ears flatten, saw him sniff the new dark. Jim smelled smells that no one knew, heard ticks from clocks that told another time. Even his tongue was strange now, moving along his lower, and now his upper lip as they stopped in front of Miss Foley's house again. ๐Ÿ”—

id749254589

He looked up straight at the boy.
ย  ย  And it was wild and crazy and the floor sank away beneath for there was the pink shiny Hallowe'en mask of a small pretty boy's face, but almost as if holes were cut where the eyes of Mr Cooger shone out, old, old, eyes as bright as sharp blue stars and the light from those stars taking a million years to get here. And through the little nostrils cut in the shiny mask, Mr Cooger's breath went in steam, came out ice. And the Valentine candy tongue moved small behind those trim white candy-kernel teeth.
ย  ย  Mr Cooger, somewhere behind the eye-slits, went blink-click with his insect-Kodak pupils. The lenses exploded like suns, then burnt chilly and serene again.
ย  ย  He swivelled his glance to Jim. Blink-click. He had Jim flexed, focused, shot, developed, dried, filed away in the dark. Blink-click. ๐Ÿ”—

id749256883

Jim spat.
ย  ย  As if he was struck by lightning, Will jumped back.
ย  ย  He looked at his empty hands and put one up to wipe the spittle off his cheek.
ย  ย  'Oh, Jim,' he mourned.
ย  ย  And he heard the merry-go-round motioning, gliding on black night waters around, around, and Jim on a black stallion riding off and about, circling in tree-shadow and he wanted to cry out, Look! the merry-go-round I you want it to go forward, don't you, Jim? forward instead of back! and you on it, around once and you're fifteen, circling and you're sixteen, three times more and nineteen! music! and you're twenty and off, standing tall! not Jim any more, still thirteen, almost fourteen on the empty midway, with me small, me young, me scared!
ย  ย  Will hauled off and hit Jim, hard, on the nose. ๐Ÿ”—

id749257365

Running, Will knew he was doing just what the nephew wanted. He should turn back, pick up the jewels, tell Miss Foley what happened. But he must save Jim!
ย  ย  Far back, he heard Miss Foley's new cries turn on more lights! Will Halloway! Jim Nightshade! Night runners! Thieves! That's us, thought Will, oh my Lord! That's us! No one'll believe anything we say from now on! Not about carnivals, not about carousels, not about mirrors or evil nephews, not about nothing! ๐Ÿ”—

id749257653

But he knew from Jim's running there'd be no help from Jim. Jim wasn't running after nephews. He was running toward free rides. ๐Ÿ”—

id749257952

A black shadow on the shuddering machine tried to stagger up, but it was late, late, later still, very late, latest of all, oh, very late. The shadow crumbled. The carousel, like the earth spinning, whipped away air, sunlight, sense and sensibility, leaving only dark, cold, and age. ๐Ÿ”—

id749258108

The man was cold as an albino frog.
ย  ย  He smelled of moon swamps and old Egyptian bandages. He was something found in museums, wrapped in nicotine linens, sealed in glass. ๐Ÿ”—

id749259426

Now part of the wasp-needle tattooed population spoke. It was Mr Dark's mouth over and above this calligraphic explosion, this railroad accident of monsters in tumult upon his sweating skin. Mr Dark chanted forth the organ tones from his chest. His personal electric blue-green populations trembled, even as the real freaks on the sawdust tent floor trembled, even as, hearing in their most secret marrow, Jim and Will trembled and felt more freak than the freaks themselves. ๐Ÿ”—

id749259615

'Stand back!' The spider clutched the switch handle. 'This man is in a trance! As part of our new act, I have hypnotized him! He could suffer injury if you shocked him from his spell!'
ย  ย  The internes shut their mouths. The police stopped moving.
ย  ย  'One hundred thousand volts! Yet he will come forth alive, whole in sound mind and body!'
ย  ย  'No!'
ย  ย  A policeman grabbed Will.
ย  ย  The Illustrated Man and all the men and beasts asprawl in frenzies on him now snatched and banged the switch.
ย  ย  The tent lights snuffed out.
ย  ย  Policemen, internes, boys jumped up their flesh in cobbles and boils.
ย  ย  But now in the swift midnight shuttering, the Electric Chair was a hearth and on it the old man blazed like a blue autumn tree.
ย  ย  The police flinched back, the internes leaned ahead, as did the freaks, blue fire in their eyes. ๐Ÿ”—

id749259773

So the old man's hair stood up in prickling fumes. Sparks, bled from his fingernails, dripped seething spatters on pine planks. Green simmerings wove shuttles through dead eyelids. ๐Ÿ”—

id749262729

The old old man's one wide eye blazed.
ย  ย  'I dub thee. . .asses and foolssssss. . .I dub. . .thee. . .Mr Sickly. . .and. . .Mr Pale. . . !'
ย  ย  Mr Electrico finished. The sword tapped them.
ย  ย  'A. . .sssshort. . .sad life. . .for you both!'
ย  ย  Then his mouth slit shut, his raw eye glued over. Containing his cellar breath, he let the simple sparks swarm his blood like dark champagne.
ย  ย  'The tickets,' murmured Mr Dark. 'Free rides. Free rides. Come any time. Come back. Come back.'
ย  ย  Jim grabbed, Will grabbed the tickets. ๐Ÿ”—

id781292728

Sure, sure, the merry-go-round sounds keen. You think I like being thirteen all the time? Not me! But for cri-yi, Jim, face it, you don't really want to be twenty!' ๐Ÿ”—

id783973211

'Having permission would spoil everything, I suppose? It's sneaking out to the lake, the graveyard, the rail tracks, the peach orchards summer nights that counts. . . .' ๐Ÿ”—

id783973996

The night was sweet with the dust of autumn leaves that smelled as if the fine sands of ancient Egypt were drifting to dunes beyond the town. ๐Ÿ”—

id783974041

It was a time to say much but not all. It was a time after first discoveries but not last ones. It was wanting to know everything and wanting to know nothing. It was the new sweetness of men starting to talk as they must talk. It was the possible bitterness of revelation. ๐Ÿ”—

id783974137

since when did you think being good meant being happy?' ๐Ÿ”—

id783975089

being good is a fearful occupation; men strain at it and sometimes break in two. ๐Ÿ”—

id783975318

Add up all the rivers never swum in, cakes never eaten, and by the time you get my age, Will, it's a lot missed out on. But then you console yourself, thinking, the more times in, the more times possibly drowned, or choken on lemon frosting. But then, through plain dumb cowardice, I guess, maybe you hold off from too much, wait, play it safe. ๐Ÿ”—

id783975786

'Because. . .I want you to be happy, Dad.'
ย  ย  He hated the tears that sprang to his eyes.
ย  ย  'I'll be all right, Will.'
ย  ย  'Anything I could say or do to make you happy, I would.'
ย  ย  'Willy, William.' Dad lit his pipe again and watched the smoke blow away in sweet dissolvings. 'Just tell me I'll live forever. That would do nicely.' ๐Ÿ”—

id783975888

'Is there anything,' said Will, 'doesn't make you sad?'
ย  ย  'One thing. Death.'
ย  ย  'Boy!' Will started. 'I should think that would!'
ย  ย  'No' said the man with the voice to match his hair. 'Death makes everything else sad. But death itself only scares. If there wasn't death, all the other things wouldn't get tainted.'
ย  ย  And, Will thought, here comes the carnival, Death like a rattle in one hand, Life like candy in the other; shake one to scare you, offer one to make your mouth water. Here comes the side-show, both hands full! ๐Ÿ”—

id783976094

They swung in and sat upon the sill, same size, same weight, coloured same by the stars, and sat embraced once more with grand fine exhaustion, gasping on huge ingulped laughs which swept their bones together, and for fear of waking God, country, wife, Mom, and hell, they snug-clapped hands to each other's mouths, felt the vibrant warm hilarity fountained there and sat one instant longer, eyes bright with each other and wet with love. ๐Ÿ”—

id784044370

At dawn, a juggernaut of thunder wheeled over the stony heavens in a spark-throwing tumult. Rain fell softly on town cupolas, chuckled from rainspouts, and spoke in strange subterranean tongues beneath the windows where Jim and Will knew fitful dreams, slipping out of one, trying another for size, but finding all cut from the same dark, mouldered cloth. ๐Ÿ”—

id784046981

But now, in the doorway, in the cold rain, there was time to think of Miss Foley afraid of mirror mazes, Miss Foley alone not so long ago at the carnival, and maybe screaming when they did what they finally did to her, around and around, around and around, too many years, more years than she had ever dreamed of shucked away, rubbing her raw, leaving her naked small, alone, and bewildered because unknown-even-to-herself, around and around, until all the years were gone and the carousel rocked to a halt like a roulette wheel, and nothing gained and all lost and nowhere for her to go, no way to tell the strangeness, and nothing to do but weep under a tree, alone, in the autumn rain. . . . ๐Ÿ”—

id784047464

heads up, eyes alert, they sucked their breaths like iron Popsicles. ๐Ÿ”—

id784047859

in front of the cigar store the Cherokee wooden Indian stood, his carved plumes pearled with water, oblivious to Catholic or Baptist bells, oblivious to the steadily approaching sun-bright cymbals, the thumping pagan heart of the carnival band. ๐Ÿ”—

id784048557

Dwarf. And the Dwarf's face was less human, more machine now; in fact, a camera.
ย  ย  The shuttering eyes flexed, sightless, opening upon darkness. Tick. Two lenses expanded-contracted with liquid swiftness: a picture-snap of the grille.
ย  ย  A snap, also, of what lay beneath? ๐Ÿ”—

id784051430

'But, but, but?' Mr Dark loomed closer, magnificent in his picture-gallery flesh, his eyes, the eyes of all his beasts and hapless creatures cutting through his shirt, coat, trousers, fastening the old man tight, biting him with fire, fixing him with thousandfold attentions. Mr Dark shoved his two palms near. "But? ๐Ÿ”—

id784052369

His universe of monsters sweated phosphorus on his hide, soured his armpits, reeked, slammed between his iron-sinewed legs. ๐Ÿ”—

id784052469

She moved, fingers feeling the town as if it were an immensely complicated and lush tapestry. And she sang:
ย  ย  '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.' ๐Ÿ”—

id784052537

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. ๐Ÿ”—

id784052822

Mr Halloway whetted his forefinger, tested the wind, and sent a cumulus her way. ๐Ÿ”—

id784053454

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. ๐Ÿ”—

id784054254

There was only one thing sure.
ย  ย  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. ๐Ÿ”—

id784054379

'I know Dad's in there, but is it Dad? I mean what if they came, changed him, made him bad, promised him something they can't give but he thinks they can, and we go in there and some day fifty years from now someone opens a book in there and you and me drop out, like two dry moth-wings on the floor, Jim, someone pressed and hid us between pages, and no one ever guessed where we went - ๐Ÿ”—

id784054456

they had hid in the highest trees they could climb and got bored and boredom was worse than fear so they came down and ๐Ÿ”—

id784054530

So when they talked again, it was still in whispers. Deep forests, dark caves, dim churches, half-lit libraries were all the same, they tuned you down, they dampened your ardour, they brought you to murmurs and soft cries for fear of raising up phantom twins of your voice which might haunt corridors long after your passage. ๐Ÿ”—

id784054577

So, each taking his part, in their own good time, the boys told of the wandering-by lightning-rod salesman, the predictions of storms to come, the long-after-midnight train, the suddenly inhabited meadow, the moonblown tents, the untouched but full-wept calliope, then the light of noon showering over an ordinary midway with hundreds of Christians wandering through but no lions for them to be tossed to, only the maze where time lost itself backward and forward in waterfall mirrors, only the OUT OF ORDER carousel, the dead supper hour, Mr Cooger, and the boy with the eyes that had seen all the glistery tripes of the world shaped like hung-and-dripping sins and all the sins tenterhooked and running red and verminous, this boy with the eyes of a man who has lived forever, seen too much, might like, to die but doesn't know how. . . .
ย  ย  The boys stopped for breath.
ย  ย  Miss Foley, the carnival again, the carousel run wild, the ancient Cooger mummy gasping moonlight, exhaling silver dust, dead, then resurrected in a chair where green lightning struck his skeleton alight, all of it a storm minus rain, minus thunder, and parade, the cigar store basement, the hiding, and at last them here, finished, done with the telling. ๐Ÿ”—

id784054816

For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles - breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them."' ๐Ÿ”—

id784054848

If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that's long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we've stashed away. But there are times when we're all autumn people.' ๐Ÿ”—

id784055284

If men had wanted to stay bad forever, they could have, agreed? Agreed. Did we stay out in the fields with the beasts? No. In the water with the barracuda? No. Somewhere we let go of the hot gorilla's paw. Somewhere we turned in our carnivore's teeth and started chewing blades of grass. We been working mulch as much as blood, into our philosophy, for quite a few life-times. Since then we measure ourselves up the scale from apes, but not half so high as angels. It was a nice new idea and we were afraid we'd lose it, so we put it on paper and built buildings like this one around it. And we been going in and out of these buildings chewing it over, that one new sweet blade of grass, trying to figure how it all started, when we made the move, when we decided to be different. I suppose one night hundreds of thousands of years ago in a cave by a night, fire when one of those shaggy men wakened to gaze over the banked coals at his woman, his children, and thought of their being cold, dead, gone forever. Then he must have wept. And he put out his hand in the night to the woman who must die some day and to the children who must follow her. And for a little bit next morning, he treated them somewhat better, for he saw that they, like himself, had the seed of night in them. He felt that seed like slime in his pulse, splitting, making more against the day they would multiply his body into darkness. So that man, the first one, knew what we know now: our hour is short, eternity is long. With this knowledge came pity and mercy, so we spared others for the later, more intricate, more mysterious benefits of love.
ย  ย  'So, in sum, what are we? We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have no choice, to laugh or cry. No other animal does either. We do both, depending on the season and the need. Somehow, I feel the carnival watches, to see which we're doing and how and why, and moves in on us when it feels we're ripe. ๐Ÿ”—

id784055620

What could he say that might make sense to them? Could he say love was above all, common cause, shared experience?
ย  ย  That was the vital cement, wasn't it? Could he say how he felt about their all being here tonight on this wild world running around a big sun which fell through a bigger space falling through yet vaster immensities of space, maybe toward and maybe away from Something? Could he say: we share this billon-mile-an-hour ride. We have common cause against the night. You start with little common causes. Why love the boy in a March field with his kite braving the sky? Because our fingers burn with the hot string singeing our hands. Why love some girl viewed from a train, bent to a country well? The tongue remembers iron water cool on some long lost noon. Why weep at strangers dead by the road? They resemble friends unseen in forty years. Why laugh when clowns are hit by pies? We taste custard, we taste life. Why love the woman who is your wife? Her nose breathes in the air of a world that I know; therefore I love that nose. Her ears hear music I might sing half the night through; therefore I love her ears. Her eyes delight in seasons of the land; and so I love those eyes. Her tongue knows quince, peach, chokeberry, mint and lime; I love to hear it speaking. Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow and pain. Shared and once again shared experience. Billions of prickling textures. Cut one sense away, cut part of life away. Cut two senses; life halves itself on the instant. We love what we know, we love what we are. Common cause, common cause, common cause of mouth, eye, ear, tongue, hand, nose, flesh, heart, and soul.
ย  ย  But. . .how to say it? ๐Ÿ”—

id784055853

'Have I said anything I started out to say about being good? God, I don't know. A stranger is shot in the street, you hardly move to help. But if, half an hour before, you spent just ten minutes with the fellow and knew a little about him and his family, you might just jump in front of his killer and try to stop it. Really knowing is good. Not knowing, or refusing to know, is bad, or amoral, at least. You can't act if you don't know. Acting without knowing takes you right off the cliff. ๐Ÿ”—

id784055919

We can't be good unless we know what bad is ๐Ÿ”—

id784057435

'The stuff of nightmare is their plain bread. They butter it with pain. They set their clocks by death-watch beetles, and thrive the centuries. ๐Ÿ”—

id784060232

'But why, why all the hurt?'
ย  ย  'Because,' said Mr Halloway. 'You need fuel, gas, something to run a carnival on, don't you? ๐Ÿ”—

id784064703

We salt our lives with other people's sins. Our flesh to us tastes sweet. But the carnival doesn't care if it stinks by moonlight instead of sun, so long as it gorges on fear and pain. That's the fuel, the vapour that spins the carousel, the raw stuffs of terror, the excruciating agony of guilt, the screams from real or imagined wounds. The carnival sucks that gas, ignites it, and chugs along its way.' ๐Ÿ”—

id784070839

most men jump at the chance to give up everything for nothing. There's nothing we're so slapstick with as our own immortal souls. ๐Ÿ”—

id784087050

The carnival is like people, only more so. A man, a woman, rather than walk away from, or kill, each other, ride each other a lifetime, pulling hair, extracting fingernails, the pain of each to the other like a narcotic that makes existence worth the day. So the carnival feels ulcerated egos miles off and lopes to toast its hands at that ache. It smells boys ulcerating to be men, paining like great unwise wisdom teeth, twenty thousand miles away, summer abed in winter's night. It feels the aggravation of middle-aged men like myself, who gibber after long-lost August afternoons to no avail. Need, want, desire, we burn those in our fluids, oxidize those in our souls, which jet streams out lips, nostrils, eyes, cars, broadcasts from antennae-fingers, long or short wave, God only knows, but the freak-masters perceive Itches and come crab-clustering to Scratch. ๐Ÿ”—

id784087057

So maybe the carnival survives, living off the poison of the sins we do each other, and the ferment of our most terrible regrets." ๐Ÿ”—

id784087129

"No. But I think it uses Death as a threat. Death doesn't exist. It never did, it never will. Butwe've drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we've got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing. And the carnival wisely knows we're more afraid of Nothing than we are of Something. You can fight Something. But . . . Nothing? Where do you hit it? Has it a heart, soul, butt-behind, brain? No, no. So the carnival just shakes a great croupier's cupful of Nothing at us, and reaps us as we tumble back headover-heels in fright. Oh, it shows us Something that might eventually lead to Nothing, all right. That flourish of mirrors out there in the meadow, that's a raw Something, for sure. Enough to knock your soul sidewise in the saddle. It's a hit below the belt to see yourself ninety years gone, the vapors of eternity rising from you like breath off dry ice. Then, when it's frozen you stiff, it plays that fine sweet soul-searching music that smells of fresh-washed frocks of women dancing on back-yard lines in May, that sounds like haystacks trampled into wine, all that blue sky and summer night-on-the-lake kind of tune until your head bangs with the drums that look like full moons beating around the calliope. Simplicity. Lord, I do admire their direct approach. Hit an old man with mirrors, watch his pieces fall in jigsaws of ice only the carnival can put together again. How? Waltz around back on the carousel to 'Beautiful Ohio' or 'Merry Widow.' But they're careful not to tell one thing to people who go riding to its music."
ย  ย  "What?" asked Jim.
ย  ย  "Why, that if you're a miserable sinner in one shape, you're a miserable sinner in another. Changing size doesn't change the brain. If I made you twenty-five tomorrow, Jim, your thoughts would still be boy thoughts, and it'd show! Or if they turned me into a boy of ten this instant, my brain would still be fifty and that boy would act funnier and older and weirder than any boy ever. Then, too, time's out of joint another way." ๐Ÿ”—

id784087296

On the promise alone of being returned to normal old age, that train travels with the world, its side show populated with madmen waiting to be released from bondage, meantime servicing the carnival, giving it coke for its ovens." ๐Ÿ”—