Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town 2)

"Jim," said Mr. Dark. "Will."

Jim writhed in the dark. Will sank his head deep in his shoulder blades, eyes tight.

Will's father's face was a pond into which the two dark stone names sank without a ripple.

"First names? Jim? Will? Lots of Jims and Wills, couple hundred, town like this."

Will, crouched and squirming, thought, who told? Miss Foley? But she was gone, her house empty and full of rain shadows. Only one other person ...

The little girl who looked like Miss Foley weeping under the tree? The little girl who frightened us so bad? he wondered. In the last half hour the parade, going by, found her, and her crying for hours, afraid, and ready to do anything, say anything, if only with music, horses plunging, world racing, they would grow her old again, grow her around again, lift her, shut up her crying, stop up the awful thing and make her as she was. Did the carnival promise, lie to her, when they found her under the tree and ran her off? The little girl crying, but not telling all, because--

"Jim. Will," said Will's father. "First names. What about the last?"

Mr. Dark did not know the last names.

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

"Now," said Will's father, with a strange, and to him almost-delightful-because-new, calm, "I think you're lying. You don't know the last names. Now, why should you, a carnival stranger, lie to me here on a street in some town on the backside of nowhere?"

The Illustrated Man clenched his two calligraphic fists very hard.

Will's father, his face pale, considered these mean, constricted fingers, knuckles, digging nails, inside which two boys' faces, crushed hard in dark vise, tight, very tight in prison flesh, were kept in fury.

Two shadows, below, thrashed in agony.

The Illustrated Man erased his face to serenity.

But a bright drop fell from his right fist.

A bright drop fell from his left fist.

The drops vanished through the steel sidewalk grille.

Will gasped. Wetness had struck his face. He clapped his hand to it, then looked at his palm.

The wetness that had hit his cheek was bright red.

He glanced from it to Jim, who lay still now also, for the scarification, real or imagined, seemed over and both flicked their eyes up to where the Illustrated Man's shoes flint-sparked the grille, grinding steel on steel.

Will's father saw the blood ooze from the clenched fists, but forced himself to look only at the Illustrated Man's face, as he said:

"Sorry I can't be more help."

Beyond the Illustrated Man, rounding the corner, hands weaving the air, dressed in harlequin Gypsy colors, face waxen, eyes hid behind plum-dark glasses, the Fortune Teller, the Dust Witch came mumbling.

A moment later, looking up, Will saw her. Not dead! he thought. Carried off, bruised, fallen, yes, but now back, and mad! Lord, yes, mad, looking especially for me!

Will's father saw her. His blood slowed, by instinct alone, to a pudding in his chest.

The crowd opened happily, laughing and commenting on her bright if tattered costume, trying to remember what she rhymed, so as to tell it later. She moved, fingers feeling the town as if it were an immensely complicated and lush tapestry. And she sang:

"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 color of his eyes. Tell you the color of her lies. Tell you the color of his goal. Tell you the color of her soul. Come now, don't go. See me, see me at the show."

Children appalled, children impressed, parents delighted, parents in high good humor, and still the Gypsy from the dusts of living sang. 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.

Will and Jim cracked their bones, cowered down, hearing:

"Blind, yes, blind. But I see what I see, I see where I be," said the Witch, softly. "There's a man with a straw hat in autumn. Hello. And--why there's Mr. Dark, and ... an old man ... an old man."