Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town 2)

The boy trotted off. "This way!"

Following, Charles Halloway watched the distraught boy who led him; observed his head, his frame, the way his pelvis hung from his spine.

"Boy," he said, by the shadowed merry-go-round, twenty feet around from where Will bent to Jim. "What's your name?"

"No time!" cried the boy. "Jed. Quick, quick!"

Charles Halloway stopped.

"Jed," he said. The boy no longer moved, but turned, chafing his elbows. "How old are you, Jed?"

"Nine!" said the boy. "My gosh, this is no time! We--"

"This is a fine time, Jed," said Charles Halloway. "Only nine? So young. I was never that young."

"Holy cow!" shouted the boy, angrily.

"Or unholy something," said the man, and reached out. The boy backed away. "You're only afraid of one man, Jed. Me."

"You?" The boy still backed off. "Cut it out! Why, why?"

"Because, sometimes good has weapons and evil none. Sometimes tricks fail. Sometimes people can't be picked off, led to deadfalls. No divide-and-conquer tonight, Jed. Where were you taking me, Jed? To some lion's cage you got fixed and ready? To some side show, like the mirrors? To someone like the Witch? What, what, Jed, what? Let's just roll up your right shirt sleeve, shall we, Jed?"

The great moonstone eyes flashed at Charles Halloway.

The boy leaped back, but not before the man had leaped with him, seized his arm, grabbed the back of his shirt and instead of simply rolling up the sleeve as first suggested, tore the entire shirt off the boy's body.

"Why, yes, Jed," said Charles Halloway, almost quietly. "Just as I thought."

"You, you, you, you!"

"Yes, Jed, me. But especially you, look at you."

And look he did.

For there, on the back of the small boy's hand, on the fingers, and up along the wrist scrambled blue serpents, blue-venomed snake eyes, blue scorpions scuttling about blue shark maws which gaped eternally hungry to feed upon all the freaks crammed and stung-sewn cheek by jowl, skin to skin, flesh to flesh all up and down the chest, the tiny torso, and tucked in the secret gathering places on this small small very small body, this cold and now shocked and trembling body.

"Why, Jed, that's fine artwork, that is."

"You!" The boy struck.

"Yes, still me." Charles Halloway took the blow in the face and clamped a vise on the boy.

"No!"

"Oh, yes," said Charles Halloway, using just his good right hand, his ruined left hand hanging limp. "Yes, Jed, jump, squirm, go ahead. It was a fine idea. Get me off alone, fix me, then go back and get Will. And when the police come, why, you're just a boy nine or ten and the carnival, oh, no, it's not yours, doesn't belong to you. Stay here, Jed. Why you trying to get out from under my arm? The police look and the owners of the show have vanished, isn't that it, Jed? A fine escape."

"You can't hurt me!" the boy shrieked.

"Funny," said Charles Halloway. "I think I can."

He pressed the boy, almost lovingly, close, very close.

"Murder!" wailed the boy. "Murder."

"I'm not going to murder you, Jed, Mr. Dark, whoever, whatever you are. You're going to murder yourself because you can't stand being near people like me, not this close, close, not this long."

"Evil!" groaned the boy, writhing. "You're evil!"