Good grief, thought Will, he wants to be slit and stuffed with broken Mirror Maze glass.
"Hey!" called Jim, softly. "You ... !"
A shadow uprose on a dim-lit shade, above. A small shadow. The nephew had brought Miss Foley home, they were in their separate rooms or--Oh Lord, thought Will, I hope she's safe home. Maybe, like the lightning-rod salesman, she--
"Hey ...!"
Jim gazed up with that funny warm look of breathless anticipation he often had nights in summer at the shadow-show window Theater in that house a few streets over. Looking up with love, with devotion, like a cat Jim waited for some special dark mouse to run forth. Crouched, now slowly he seemed to grow taller, as if his bones were pulled by the thing in the window above, which now suddenly vanished.
Will ground his teeth.
He felt the shadow sift down through the house like a cold breath. He could wait no longer. He leaped forth.
"Jim!"
He seized Jim's arm.
"Will, what you doing here?!"
"Jim, don't talk to him! Get out of here. My gosh, he'll chew and spit out your bones!"
Jim writhed himself free.
"Will, go home! You'll spoil everything!"
"He scares me, Jim, what you want from him!? This afternoon ... in the maze, did you see something!!?"
"... Yes ..."
"For gosh sakes, what!"
Will grabbed Jim's shirt front, felt his heart bang under the chest bones. "Jim--"
"Let go." Jim was terribly quiet. "If he knows you're here, he won't come out. Willy, if you don't let go, I'll remember when--"
"When what!"
"When I'm older, darn it, older!"
Jim spat.
As if he was struck by lightning, Will jumped back.
He looked at his empty hands and put one up to wipe the spittle off his cheek.
"Oh, Jim," he mourned.
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! 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!
Will hauled off and hit Jim, hard, on the nose.
Then he jumped Jim, wrapped him tight, and toppled him rolling down, yelling, in the bushes. He slapped Jim's mouth, stuffed it, mashed it full of fingers to snap and bite at, suffocating the angry grunts and yells.
The front door opened.
Will crushed the air out of Jim, lay heavy on him, fisting his mouth tight.
Something stood on the porch. A tiny shadow scanned the town, searching for but not finding Jim.