Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town 2)

Jim, ten feet back, watched the horses leap, his eyes striking fire from the high-jumped stallion's eyes.

The merry-go-round was going forward!

Jim leaned at it.

"Jim!" cried Will.

The nephew swept from sight borne around by the machine. Drifted back again he stretched out pink fingers urging softly: "... Jim ...?"

Jim twitched one foot forward.

"No!" Will plunged.

He knocked, seized, held Jim; they toppled; they fell in a heap.

The nephew, surprised, whisked on in darkness, one year older. One year older, thought Will, on the earth, one year taller, bigger, meaner!

"Oh God, Jim, quick!" He jumped up, ran to the control box, the complex mysteries of brass switch and porcelain covering and sizzling wires. He struck the switch. But Jim, behind, babbling, tore at Will's hands.

"Will, you'll spoil it! No!"

Jim knocked the switch full back.

Will spun and slapped his face. Each clenched the other's elbows, rocked, flailed. They fell against the control box.

Will saw the evil boy, a year older still, glide around into night. Five or six more times around and he'd be bigger than the two of them!

"Jim, he'll kill us!"

"Not me, no!"

Will felt a sting of electricity. He yelled, pulled back, hit the switch handle. The control box spat. Lightning jumped to the sky. Jim and Will, flung by the blast, lay watching the merry-go-round run wild.

The evil boy whistled by, clenched to a brass tree. He cursed. He spat. He wrestled with wind, with centrifuge. He was trying to clutch his way through the horses, the poles, to the outer rim of the carousel. His face came, went, came, went. He clawed. He brayed. The control box erupted blue showers. The carousel jumped and bucked. The nephew slipped. He fell. A black stallion's steel hoof kicked him. Blood printed his brow.

Jim hissed, rolled, thrashed, Will riding him hard, pressing him to grass, trading yell for yell, both fright-pale, heart ramming heart. Electric bolts from the switch flushed up in white stars a gush of fireworks. The carousel spun thirty, spun forty--"Will, let me up!"--spun fifty times. The calliope howled, boiled steam, ran ancient dry, then played nothing, its keys gibbering as only chitterings boiled up through the vents. Lightning unraveled itself over the sweated outflung boys, delivered flame to the silent horse stampede to light their way around, around with the figure lying on the platform no longer a boy but a man no longer a man but a more than a man and even more and even more, much more than that, around, around.

"He's, he's, oh he's, oh look. Will, he's--" gasped Jim, and began to sob, because it was the only thing to do, locked down, nailed tight. "Oh God, Will, get up

! We got to make it run backward!"

Lights flashed on in the tents.

But no one came out.

Why not? Will thought crazily. The explosions? The electric storm? Do the freaks think the whole world's jumping through the midway? Where's Mr. Dark? In town? Up to no good? What, where, why?

He thought he heard the agonized figure sprawled on the carousel platform drum his heart superfast, then slow, fast, slow, very fast, very slow, incredibly fast, then as slow as the moon going down the sky on a white night in winter.

Someone, something, on the carousel wailed faintly.

Thank God it's dark, thought Will. Thank God, I can't see. There goes someone. Here comes something. There, whatever it is, goes again. There ... there ...

A bleak shadow on the shuddering machine tried to stagger up, but it was late, late, later still, very late, latest of all, oh, very late. The shadow crumbled. The carousel, like the earth spinning, whipped away air, sunlight, sense and sensibility, leaving only dark, cold, and age.

In a final vomit, the switch box blew itself completely apart.

All the carnival lights blinked out.