Something Wicked This Way Comes

by Ray Douglas Bradbury

His cigar, unnoticed, fell from his hand, dropped in a spark shower through the grate.

  It lay in the square pit glowing its single fiery pink eye at Jim and Will, who looked back and at last snatched to blind and put it out.

  Chapter 36

  The Dwarf, bearing his demented and wildly lighted eyes, made his way south on Main Street.

  Stopping suddenly, he developed a film strip in his head, scanned it, bleated and blundered back through the forest of legs to reach for and pull the Illustrated Man down where a whisper was as good as a shout. Mr. Dark listened, then fled, leaving the Dwarf far behind.

  Reaching the cigar store Indian, the Illustrated Man sank to his knees. Clutching the steel lattice-grille, he peered down in the pit.

  Below lay yellow newspapers, wilted candy wrappers, burnt cigars, and gum.

  Mr. Dark’s cry was muffled fury.

  “Lose something?”

  Mr. Tetley blinked over his counter.

  The Illustrated Man clenched the grate, nodding once.

  “I clean under the grate once a month for the money,” said Mr. Tetley. “How much you lose? Dime? Quarter? Half dollar?”

  Bing!

  The Illustrated Man glared up.

  In the cash-register window a small fire-red sign jumped high:

  NO SALE.

  Chapter 37

  The town clock struck seven.

  The echoes of the great chime wandered in the unlit halls of the library.

  An autumn leaf, very crisp, fell somewhere in the dark. But it was only the page of a book, turning.

  Off in one of the catacombs, bent to a table under a grass-green-shaded lamp, lips pursed, eyes narrowed, sat Charles Halloway, his hands trembling the pages, lifting, rearranging the books. Now and then he hurried off to peer into the autumn night, watchful of the streets. Then again he came back to paper-clip pages, to inset papers, to scribble out quotations, whispering to himself. His voice brought forth quick echoes from the library vaults:

  “Look here!”

  “…here…!” said the night passages.

  “This picture…!”

  “…picture…!” said the halls.

  “And this!”

  “…this…” The dust settled.

  It had been the longest day of all the days he could remember in his life. He had mingled with strange and not-so-strange crowds, he had searched after the searchers, in the wake of the wide-scattering parade. He had resisted telling Jim’s mother, Will’s mother, more than they needed to know for a happy Sunday, and meantime crossed shadows with Dwarf, traded nods with Pinhead and Fire-eater, kept free of shadowed alleys, and controlled his panic, when, doubling back, he saw the basement pit empty under the cigar store grille and knew that the boys were at hide-and-seek somewhere nearby or somewhere, praise God, very far away.

  Then, in the crowds, he moved to the carnival ground, stayed out of tents, stayed free of rides, observed, watched the sun go down, and just at twilight, surveyed the cold glass waters of the Mirror Maze and saw just enough on the shore to pull him back before he drowned. Wet all over, cold to the bone, before night caught him he let the crowd protect, warm, and bear him away up into town, to the library, and to most important books which he arranged in a great literary clock on a table, like someone learning to tell a new time. So he paced round and round the huge clock squinting at the yellowed pages as if they were moth-wings pinned dead to the wood.

  Here lay a portrait of the Prince of Darkness. Next a series of fantastic sketches of the Temptations of St. Anthony. Next some etchings from the Bizarie by Giovanbatista Bracelli, depicting a set of curious toys, humanlike robots engaged in various alchemical rites. At five minutes to twelve stood a copy of Dr. Faustus, at two lay on Occult Iconography, at six, under Mr. Halloway’s trailed fingers now, a history of circuses, carnivals, shadow shows, puppet menageries inhabited by mountebanks, minstrels, stilt-walking sorcerers and their fantoccini. More: A Manual of the Air Kingdoms (Things That Fly Down History). At nine sharp: By Demons Possessed, lying atop Egyptian Philtres, lying atop the Torments of the Damned, which in turn crushed flat The Spell of Mirrors. Very late up the literary clock one named Locomotives and Trains, The Mystery of Sleep, Between Midnight and Dawn, The Witches’ Sabbath, and Pacts With Demons. It was all laid out. He could see the face.

  But there were no hands on this clock.

  He could not tell what hour of the night of life it was for himself, the boys, or the unknowing town.

  For, in sum, what had he to go by?

  A three-o’-clock-in-the-morning arrival, a grotesque-looking glass maze, a Sunday parade, a tall man with a swarm of electric-blue pictures itching on his sweaty hide, a few drops of blood falling down through a pavement grille, two frightened boys staring up out of the earth, and himself, alone in mausoleum quiet, nudging the puzzle together.

  What was there about the boys that made him believe the simplest word they whispered up through the grille? Fear itself was proof here, and he had seen enough fear in his life to know it, like the smell from a butcher’s shop in summer twilight.

  What was there about the illustrated carnival owner’s silences that spoke thousands of violent, corrupt, and crippling words?

  What was there in that old man he had seen through a tent flap late this afternoon, seated in a chair with the words MR. ELECTRICO bannered over him, power webbing and crawling on his flesh like green lizards?

  All, all, all of it. And now, these books. This. He touched Physiognomonie. The secrets of the individual’s character as found in his face.

  Were Jim and Will, then, featured all angelic, pure, half-innocent, peering up through the sidewalk at marching terror? Did the boys represent the ideal for your Woman, Man, or Child of Excellent Bearing, Color, Balance, and Summer Disposition?

  Conversely… Charles Halloway turned a page… did the scurrying freaks, the Illustrated Marvel, bear the foreheads of the Irascible, the Cruel, the Covetous, the mouths of the Lewd and Untruthful? the teeth of the Crafty, the Unstable, the Audacious, the Vainglorious, and your Murderous Beast?

  No. The book slipped shut. If faces were judged, the freaks were no worse than many he’d seen slipping from the library late nights in his long career.

  There was only one thing sure.

  Two lines of Shakespeare said it. He should write them in the middle of the clock of books, to fix the heart of his apprehension:

  By the pricking of my thumbs,

  Something wicked this way comes.

  So vague, yet so immense.

  He did not want to live with it.

  Yet he knew that, during this night, unless he lived with it very well, he might have to live with it all the rest of his life.

  At the window he looked out and thought, Jim, Will, are you coming? will you get here?

  Waiting, his flesh took paleness from his bones.

  Chapter 38

  The library, then, at seven-fifteen, seven-thirty, seven-forty-five of a Sunday night, cloistered with great drifts of silence and transfixed avalanche of books poised like the cuneiform stones of eternity on shelves, so high the unseen snows of time fell all year there.

  Outside, the town breathed back and forth to the carnival, hundreds of people passing near where Jim and Will lay strewn in bushes to one side of the library, now ducking up, now ducking down to nose raw earth.

  “Cheezit!”

  Both smothered in grass. Across the street there passed what could have been a boy, could have been a dwarf, could have been a boy-with-dwarf-mind, could have been anything blown along like the scuttle-crab leaves on the frost-mica sidewalks. But then whatever it was went away Jim sat up, Will still lay face buried in good safe dirt.

  “Come on, what’s wrong?”

  “The library,” said Will. “I’m even afraid of it, now.” All the books, he thought, perched there, hundreds of years old, peeling skin, leaning on each other like ten million vultures. Walk along the dark stacks and all the gold titles shine
their eyes at you. Between old carnival, old library and his own father, everything old… well…

  “I know Dad’s in there, but is it Dad? I mean what if they came, changed him, made him bad, promised him something they can’t give but he thinks they can, and we go in there and some day fifty years from now someone opens a book in there and you and me drop out, like two dry moth-wings on the floor, Jim, someone pressed and hid us between pages, and no one ever guessed where we went—”

  This was too much for Jim, who had to do something to flog his spirits. Next thing Will knew, Jim was hammering on the library door. Both hammered, frantic to jump from this night to that warmer book-breathing night inside. Given a choice of darkness, this one was the better: the oven smell of books, as the door opened and Dad stood with his ghost-colored hair.

  They tiptoed back through the deserted corridors, Will feeling a crazy urge to whistle as he often did past the graveyard at sundown, Dad asking what made them late, and they trying to remember all the places they hid in one day.

  They had hid in old garages, they had hid in old barns, they had hid in the highest trees they could climb and got bored and boredom was worse than fear so they came down and reported in to the Police Chief and had a fine chat which gave them twenty safe minutes right in the station and Will got the idea of touring churches and they climbed all the steeples in town and scared pigeons off the belfries and whether or not it was safer in churches and especially up with the bells or not, no one could claim, but it felt safe. But there again they began to get starchy with boredom and fatigued with sameness, and were almost on the point of giving themselves up to the carnival in order to have something to do, when quite fortunately the sun went down. From sundown to now it had taken a wonderful time, creeping upon the library, as if it were a once friendly fort that might now be manned by Arabs.

  “So here we are,” whispered Jim, and stopped.

  “Why am I whispering? It’s after hours. Heck!”

  He laughed, then stopped.

  For he thought he heard a soft tread off in the subterranean vaults.

  But it was only his laughter walking back through the deep stacks on panther feet.

  So when they talked again, it was still in whispers. Deep forests, dark caves, dim churches, half-lit libraries were all the same, they tuned you down, they dampened your ardour, they brought you to murmurs and soft cries for fear of raising up phantom twins of your voice which might haunt corridors long after your passage.

  They reached the small room and circled the table on which Charles Halloway had laid out the books, where he had read many hours, and for the first time looked in each other’s faces and saw a dreadful paleness, so did not comment.

  “From the beginning.” Will’s father pulled out chairs. “Please.”

  So, each taking his part, in their own good time, the boys told of the wandering-by lightning-rod salesman, the predictions of storms to come, the long-after-midnight train, the suddenly inhabited meadow, the moonblown tents, the untouched but full-wept calliope, then the light of noon showering over an ordinary midway with hundreds of Christians wandering through but no lions for them to be tossed to, only the maze where time lost itself backward and forward in waterfall mirrors, only the OUT OF ORDER carousel, the dead supper hour, Mr. Cooger, and the boy with the eyes that had seen all the glistery tripes of the world shaped like hung-and-dripping sins and all the sins tenterhooked and running red and verminous, this boy with the eyes of a man who has lived forever, seen too much, might like, to die but doesn’t know how…

  The boys stopped for breath.

  Miss Foley, the carnival again, the carousel run wild, the ancient Cooger mummy gasping moonlight, exhaling silver dust, dead, then resurrected in a chair where green lightning struck his skeleton alight, all of it a storm minus rain, minus thunder, and parade, the cigar store basement, the hiding, and at last them here, finished, done with the telling.

  For a long moment, Will’s father sat staring blindly into the centre of the table. Then, his lips moved.

  “Jim. Will,” he said. “I believe.”

  The boys sank in their chairs.

  “All of it?”

  “All.”

  Will wiped his eyes. “Boy,” he said gruffly. “I’m going to start bawling.”

  “We got no time for that!” said Jim.

  “No time.” And Will’s father stood up, stuffed his pipe with tobacco, rummaged his pockets for matches, brought out a battered harmonica, a penknife, a cigarette lighter that wouldn’t work, and a memo pad he had always meant to write some great thoughts down on but never got around to, and lined up these weapons for a pygmy war that could be lost before it even started. Probing this idle refuse, shaking his head, he finally found a tattered matchbox, lit his pipe and began to muse, pacing the room.

  “Looks like we’re going to do a lot of talking about one particular carnival. Where’s it come from, where’s it going, what’s it up to? We thought it never hit town before. Yet, by God, look here.”

  He tapped a yellowed newspaper ad dated October 12, 1888, and ran his fingernail along under this:

  J.C. COOGER AND G.M. DARK PRESENT THE PANDEMONIUM THEATRE CO. COMBINED SIDE-SHOWS AND UNNATURAL MUSEUMS, INTERNATIONAL!

  “J.C. G.M.” said Jim. “Those are the same initials as on the throwaways around town this week. But—it couldn’t be the same men…”

  “No?” Will’s father rubbed his elbows. “My goose pimples run counter to that.”

  He laid forth other old newspapers.

  “1860. 1846. Same ad. Same names. Same initials. Dark and Cooger, Cooger and Dark, they came and went, but only once every twenty, thirty, forty years, so people forgot. Where were they all the other years? Travelling. And more than travelling. Always in October: October 1846, October 1860, October 1888, October 1910, and October now, tonight.” His voice trailed off. “…Beware the autumn people…”

  “What?”

  “An old religious tract. Pastor Newgate Phillips, I think. Read it as a boy. How does it go again?”

  He tried to remember. He licked his lips. He did remember.

  “‘For some, autumn comes early, stays late through life where October follows September and November touches October and then instead of December and Christ’s birth, there is no Bethlehem Star, no rejoicing, but September comes again and old October and so on down the years, with no winter, spring, or revivifying summer. For these beings, fall is the ever normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In gusts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles—breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.’”

  After a pause, both boys exhaled at once.

  “The autumn people,” said Jim. “That’s them. Sure!”

  “Then—” Will swallowed—“does that make us… summer people?”

  “Not quite.” Charles Halloway shook his head. “Oh, you’re nearer summer than me. If I was ever a rare fine summer person, that’s long ago. Most of us are half-and-half. The August noon in us works to stave off the November chills. We survive by what little Fourth of July wits we’ve stashed away. But there are times when we’re all autumn people.”

  “Not you, Dad.”

  “Not you, Mr. Halloway!”

  He turned quickly to see both appraising him, paleness next to paleness, hands on knees as if to bolt.

  “It’s a way of speaking. Easy, boys, I’m after the facts. Will, do you really know your Dad? Shouldn’t you know me, and me you, if it’s going to be us’ns against them’ns?”

  “Hey, yeah,
” breathed Jim. “Who are you?”

  “We know who he is, darn it!” Will protested.

  “Do we?” said Will’s father. “Let’s see. Charles William Halloway. Nothing extraordinary about me except I’m fifty-four, which is always extraordinary to the man inside it. Born in Sweet Water, lived in Chicago, survived in New York, brooded in Detroit, floundered in lots of places, arrived here late, after living in libraries around the country all those years because I liked being alone, liked matching up in books what I’d seen on the roads. Then in the middle of all the running away, which I called travel, in my thirty-ninth year, your mother fixed me with one glance, been here ever since. Still most comfortable in the library nights, in out of the rain of people. Is this my last stop? Chances are. Why am I here at all? Right now, it seems, to help you.”

  He paused and looked at the two boys and their fine young faces.

  “Yes,” he said. “Very late in the game. To help you.”

  Chapter 39

  Every night-blind library window clattered with cold.

  The man, the two boys, waited for the wind to pass away.

  Then Will said: “Dad. You’ve always helped.”

  “Thanks, but it’s not true.” Charles Halloway examined one very empty hand. “I’m a fool. Always looking over your shoulder to see what’s coming instead of right at you to see what’s here. But then, for what salve it gives me, every man’s a fool. Which means you got to pitch in all your life, bail out, board over, tie rope, patch plaster, pat cheeks, kiss brows, laugh, cry, make do, against the day you’re the worst fool of all and shout “Help!” Then all you need is one person’s answer. I see it so clear, across the country tonight lie cities, towns and mere jerkwater stops of fools. So the carnival steams by, shakes any tree: it rains jackasses. Separate jackasses, I should say, individuals with no one, they think, or no one actual, to answer their “Help!” Unconnected fools, that’s the harvest the carnival comes smiling after with its threshing machine.”