Mr. Dark could see very clearly the man standing there, alone.
Charles Halloway, citizen, father, introspective husband, night-wanderer, and janitor of the town library.
Chapter 47
THE CROWD'S appreciative clamor faded.
Charles Halloway did not move.
He let the path grow leading down to the platform.
He could not see the expression on the faces of the freaks standing up there. His eyes swept the crowd and found the Mirror Maze, the empty oblivion which beckoned with ten times a thousand million light years of reflections, counterreflections, reversed and double-reversed, plunging deep to nothing, face-falling to nothing, stomach-dropping away to yet more sickening plummets of nothing.
And yet, wasn't there an echo of two boys in the powdered silver at the back of each glass? Did or did he not perceive, with the tremulous tip of eyelash if not the eye, their passage through, their wait beyond, warm wax amongst cold, waiting to be key-wound by terrors, run free in panics?
No, thought Charles Halloway, don't think. Get on with this!
"Coming!" he shouted.
"Go get 'em, Pop!" a man said.
"Yes," said Charles Halloway. "I will."
And he walked down through the crowd.
The Witch spun slowly, magnetized at the night-wandering volunteer's approach. Her eyelids jerked at their sewn black-wax threads behind dark glasses.
Mr. Dark, the illustration-drenched, superinfested civilization of souls, leaned from the platform, gladly whetting his lips. Thoughts spun fiery Catherine wheels in his eyes, quick, quick, what, what, what!
And the aging janitor, fixing a smile to his face like a white celluloid set of teeth from a Cracker Jack box, strode on, and the crowd opened as the sea before Moses and closed behind, and him wondering what to do? why was he here? but on the move, steadily, nevertheless.
Charles Halloway's foot touched the first step of the platform.
The Witch trembled secretly.
Mr. Dark felt this secret, glanced sharply. Swiftly he put his hand out to grab for the good right hand of this fifty-four-year-old man.
But the fifty-four-year-old man shook his head, would not give his hand to be held, touched, or helped up. "Thanks, no."
On the platform, Charles Halloway waved to the crowd.
The people set off a few firecrackers of applause.
"But--" Mr. Dark was amazed--"your left hand, sir, you can't hold and fire a rifle if you have only the use of one hand!"
Charles Halloway paled.
"I'll do it," he said. "With one hand."
"Hoorah!" cried a boy, below.
"Go it, Charlie!" a man called, out beyond.
Mr. Dark flushed as the crowd laughed and applauded even louder now. He lifted his hands to ward off the wave of refreshing sound, like rain that washed in from the people.
"All right, all right! Let's see if he can do it!"
Brutally, the Illustrated Man snapped a rifle from its locks, hurled it through the air.