Something Wicked This Way Comes (5 page)

    They climbed a last rise to look down.

    'Boy,' whispered Jim.

    The train had pulled off into Rolfe's moon meadow, socalled because town couples came out to see the moon rise here over a land so wide, so long, it was like an inland sea, filled with grass in spring., or hay in late, summer or snow  in winter, it was fine walking here along its crisp shore with the moon coming up to tremble in its tides.

    Well, the carnival train was crouched there now in the autumn grass on the old spur near the Woods and the boys crept and lay down under a bush, waiting.

    'It's so quiet, whispered Will.

    The train just stood in the middle of the dry autumn field, no one in the locomotive no one in the tender, no one in any of the cars behind, all black under the moon, and just the small sounds of its metal cooling, ticking on the rails.

    "Ssst,' said Jim. 'I feel them moving in there.'

    Will felt the catfuzz on his body bramble up by the thousands.

    'You think they mind us watching?'

    'Maybe,' said Jim, happily.

    'Then why the noisy calliope?'

    "When I figure that,' Jim said, 'I'll tell you. Look!'

    Whisper.

    As if exhaling itself straight down from the sky, a vast mossgreen balloon touched at the moon.

    It hovered two hundred yards above and away, quietly riding the wind.

    'The basket under the balloon, someone in it!'

    But then a tall man stepped down from the train caboose platform like a captain assaying the tidal weathers of this inland sea. All dark suit, shadowfaced, he waded to the centre of the meadow, his shirt as black as the gloved hands he now stretched to the sky.

    He gestured, once.

    And the train came to life.

    At first a head lifted in one window, then an arm, then another head like a puppet in a marionette theatre. Suddenly two men in black were carrying a dark tentpole out across the hissing grass.

    It was the silence that made Will pull back, even as Jim leaned forward eyes moonbright.

    A carnival should be all growls, roars like, timberlands stacked, bundled, rolled and crashed, great explosions of lion dust, men ablaze with working anger, pop bottles jangling, horse buckles shivering, engines and elephants in full stampede through rains of sweat while zebras neighed and trembled like cage trapped in cage.

    But this was like old movies, the silent theatre haunted with blackandwhite ghosts, silvery mouth opening to let moonlight smoke out, gestures made in silence so hushed you could hear the wind fizz the hair on your cheeks. More shadows rustled from the train, passing the animal cages where darkness prowled with unlit eyes and the calliope stood mute save for the faintest idiot tune the breeze piped wandering up the flues.

    The ringmaster stood in the middle of the land. The balloon like a vast mouldy green cheese stood fixed to the sky. Then darkness came.

    The last thing Will saw was the balloon swooping down, as clouds covered the moon.

    In the night he felt the men rush to unseen tasks. He sensed the balloon, like a great fat spider, fiddling with the lines and poles, rearing a tapestry in the sky.

    The clouds arose. The balloon sifted up.

    In the meadow stood the skeleton main poles and wires of the main tent, waiting for its canvas skin.

    More clouds poured over the white moon. Shadowed, Will shivered. He heard Jim crawling forward, seized his ankle, felt him stiffen.

    'Wait! ' said Will. 'They're bringing out the canvas l'

    'No,' said Jim. 'Oh, no. . .'

    For somehow instead, they both knew, the wires highflung on the poles were catching swift clouds, ripping them free from the wind in streamers which, stitched and sewn by some great monster shadow, made canvas and more canvas as the tent took shape. At last there was the clearwater sound of vast flags blowing.

    The motion stopped. The darkness within darkness was still.

    Will lay, eyes shut, hearing the beat of great oilblack wings as if a huge, ancient bird had drummed down to live, to breathe, to survive in the night meadow.

    The clouds blew away.

    The balloon was gone.

    The men were gone.

    The tents rippled like black rain on their poles.

    Suddenly it seemed a long way to town.

    Instinctively, Will glanced behind himself.

    Nothing but grass and whispers.

    Slowly he looked back at the silent, dark seemingly empty tents.

    'I don't like it he said.

    Jim could not tear his eyes away.

    'Yeah,' he whispered. 'Yeah.'

    Will stood up. Jim lay on the earth.

    "Jim!' said Will.

    Jim jerked his head as if slapped. He was on his knees, he swayed up. His body turned, but his eyes were fastened to those black flags, the great sideshow signs swarming with unguessed wings, horns, and demon smiles.

    A bird screamed.

    Jim jumped. Jim gasped.

    Cloud shadows panicked them over the hills to the edge of town.

    From there, the two boys ran alone.

13

The air was cold blowing in through the wideopen library window.

    Charles Halloway had stood there for a long time.

    Now, he quickened.

    Along the street below fled two shadows, two boys above them matching shadow stride for stride. They softly printed the night air with treads.

    'Jim!' cried the old man. 'Will!'

    But not aloud.

    The boys went away towards home.

    Charles Halloway looked out into the country.

    Wandering alone in the library, letting his broom tell him things no one else could hear, he had heard the whistle and the disjointedcalliope hymns.

    'Three,' he now said, halfaloud. 'Three in the morning. . .'

    In the meadow the tents, the carnival waited. Waited for someone, anyone to wade along the grassy surf. The great tents filled like bellows. They softly issued forth exhalations of air that smelled like ancient yellow beasts.

    But only the moon looked in at the hollow dark, the deep caverns. Outside, night beasts hung in midgallop on a carousel. Beyond lay fathoms of Mirror Maze which housed a multifold series of empty vanities one wave on another, still, serene, silvered with age, white with time. Any shadow, at the entrance, might stir reverberations the colour of fright, unravel deepburied moons.

    If a man stood here would he see himself unfolded away a billion times to eternity? Would a billion images look back, each face and the face after and the face after that old, older, oldest? Would he find himself lost in a fine dust away off deep down there, not fifty but sixty, not sixty but seventy, not seventy but eighty, ninety, ninetynine years old?

    The maze did not ask.

    The maze did not tell.

    It simply stood and waited like a great arctic floe.

    'Three o'clock. . .'

    Charles Halloway was cold. His skin was suddenly a lizard's skin. His stomach filled with blood turned to rust. His mouth tasted of night damps.

    Yet he could not turn from the library window.

    Far off, something glittered in the meadow.

    It was moonlight, flashing on a great glass.

    Perhaps the light said something, perhaps it spoke in code.

    I'll go there, thought Charles Halloway, I won't go there.

    I like it, he thought, I don't like it.

    A moment later the library door slammed.

    Going home, he passed the empty store window.

    Inside stood two abandoned sawhorses.

    Between lay a pool of water. In the water floated a few shards of ice. In the ice were a few long strands of hair.

    Charles Halloway saw but chose not to see. He turned and was gone. The street was soon as empty as the hardwarestore window.

    Far away, in the meadow, shadows flickered in the Mirror Maze, as if parts of someone's life, yet unborn, were trapped there, waiting to be lived.

    So the maze waited, its cold gaze ready, for so much as a bird to come look, see, and fly away shrieking.

    But no bird came.

14

'Three,' a voice said.

    Will listened, cold but warming, glad to be in with a roof above, floor below, wall and door between too much exposure, too much freedom, too much night.

    'Three. . .'

    Dad's voice, home now, moving down the hall, speaking to itself.

    'Three. . .'

    Why, thought Will, that's when the train came. Had Dad seen, heard, followed?

    No, he mustn't! Will hunched himself. Why not? He trembled. What did he fear?

    The carnival rushing in like a black stampede of storm waves on the shore out beyond? Of him and Jim and Dad knowing, of the town asleep, not knowing, was that it?

    Yes. Will buried himself, deep. Yes. . .

    'Three. . .'

    Three in the morning, thought Charles Halloway, seated on the edge of his bed. Why did the train come at that hour?

    For, he thought, it's a special hour. Women never wake then, do they? They sleep the sleep of babes and children. But men in middle age? They know that hour well. Oh God, midnight's not bad, you wake and go back to sleep, one or two's not bad, you toss but sleep again. Five or six in the morning's not bad there's hope, for dawn's just under the horizon. But three, now, Christ, three a.m.! The blood moves slow. You're the nearest to dead you'll ever be save dying. Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wideeyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had strength to rouse up, you'd slaughter your half dreams with buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep wellbottom that's burned dry. The moon rolls by to look at you down there, with its idiot face. It's a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead - And wasn't it true, had he read it somewhere, more people in hospitals die at 3 a.m. than at any other time. . .?

    Stop! he cried silently.

    'Charlie?' his wife said in her sleep.

    Slowly, he took off the other shoe.

    His wife smiled in her sleep.

    Why?

    She's immortal. She has a son.

    Your son, too!

    But what father ever really believes it? He carries no burden, he feels no pain. What man, like woman, lies down in darkness and gets up with child? The gentle, smiling ones own the good secret. Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever. So what do we do? We men turn terribly mean, because we can't hold to the world ourselves or anything. We are blind to continuity, all breaks down, falls, melts, stops, rots, or runs away. So, since we cannot shape Time, where does that leave men? Sleepless. Staring.

    Three a.m. That's our reward. Three in the morn. The soul's midnight. The tide goes out, the soul ebbs. And a train arrives at an hour of despair. Why?

    'Charlie. . .?'

    His wife's hand moved to his.

    'You. . .all right. . .Charlie?'

    She drowsed.

    He did not answer.

    He could not tell her how he was.

15

The sun rose yellow as a lemon.

    The sky was round and blue.

    The birds looped clear water songs in the air.

    Will and Jim leaned from their windows.

    Nothing had changed.

    Except the look in Jim's eyes.

    'Last night. . .' said Will. 'Did or didn't it happen?'

    They both gazed toward the far meadows.

    The air was sweet as syrup. They could find no shadows, anywhere, even under trees.

    'Six minutes!' cried Jim.

    'Five!'

    Four minutes later, cornflakes lurching in their stomachs, they frisked the leaves to a fine red dust going out of town.

    With a wild flutter of breath, they raised their eyes from the earth they had been treading.

    And the carnival was there.

    'Hey. . .'

  
 For the tents were lemon like the sun, brass like wheat fields a few weeks ago. Flags and banners bright as bluebirds snapped above lioncoloured canvas. From booths painted cottoncandy colours fine Saturday smells of bacon and eggs, hot dogs and pancakes swam with the wind. Everywhere ran boys. Everywhere, sleepy fathers followed.

    'It's just a plain old carnival,' said Will.

    'Like heck,' said Jim. 'We weren't blind last night. Cone on!'

    They marched one hundred yards straight on and deep into the midway. And the deeper they went, the more obvious it became they would find no night men cattreading shadow while strange tents plumed like thunder clouds. Instead, close up, the carnival was mildewed rope, motheaten canvas, rainworn, sunbleached tinsel. The sideshow paintings, hung like sad albatrosses on their poles, flapped and let  fall flakes of ancient paint, shivering and at the same time revealing the unwondrous wonders of a thin man, fatman, needlehead, tattooed man, hula dancer. . . .

    They prowled on but found no mysterious midnight sphere of evil gas tied by Mysterious Oriental knots to daggers plunged in dark earth, no maniac ticket takers bent on terrible revenges. The calliope by the ticket booth neither screamed deaths nor hummed idiot songs to itself. The train? Pulled off on a spur in the warming grass, it was old, yes, and welded tight with rust, but it looked like a titanic magnet that had collected to itself, from locomotive boneyards across three continents, drive shafts, flywheels, smoke stacks, and handmedown secondrate nightmares. It did not cut a black and mortuary silhouette. It asked permission but to lie dead in autumn strewings, so much tired steam and iron gunpowder blowing away.