Will yelled himself hoarse.
And no one heard.
For now, very slowly, as if roused by thunder, as if the electric fire were new dawn, one dead eyelid peeled itself slowly open.
The freaks gaped.
A long way off in the storm, Jim was yelling, too, for Will had his elbow tight and felt the yell pouring out through the bones, as the old man's lips fell apart and frightful sizzles zigzagged between lips and threaded teeth.
The Illustrated Man cut the power to a whine. Then, turning, he fell to his knees, and put out his hand.
Away off up there on the platform, there was the faintest stir as of an autumn leaf beneath the old man's shirt.
The freaks exhaled.
The old old man sighed.
Yes, Will thought, they're breathing for him, helping him, making him to live.
Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale--yet it looked like an act. What could he say, or do?
"... lungs so ... so ... so ..." someone whispered.
The Dust Witch, back in her glass box?
Inhale. The freaks breathed. Exhale. Their shoulders slumped.
The old old man's lips trembled.
"... heart beat ... one ... two ... so ... so ..."
The Witch again? Will feared to look.
A vein ticked a small watch in the old man's throat.
Very slowly now that right eye of the old man opened full wide, fixed, stared like a broken camera. It was like looking through a hole in space, with no bottom forever. He grew warmer.
The boys, below, grew colder.
Now the old and terribly-wise-with-nightmare eye was so wide and so deep and so alive all to itself in that smashed porcelain face that there at the bottom of the eye somewhere the evil nephew peered along and out at the freaks, internes, police, and ...
Will.
Will saw himself, saw Jim, two little pictures posed in reflection on that single eye. If the old man blinked, the two images would be crushed by his lid!
The Illustrated Man, on his knees, turned at last and gentled all with his smile.
"Gentlemen, boys, here indeed is the man who lives with lightning!"
The second policeman laughed; this motion shook his hand off his holster.
Will shuffled to the right.
The old spittle-eye followed, sucking at him with its emptiness.
Will squirmed left.
As did the phlegm that was the old man's gaze, while his chill lips peeled wide to shape, reshape an echoed gasp, a flutter. From deep below the old man bounced his voice ricochetin