Somewhere hidden, Jim thought: He's coming!
Somewhere hidden, Will thought: He's near!
"Boys ...?"
Mr. Dark came carrying his panoply of friends, his jewel-case assortment of calligraphical reptiles which lay sunning themselves at midnight on his flesh. With him strode the stitch-inked Tyrannosaurus rex, which lent to his haunches a machined and ancient wellspring mineral-oil glide. As the thunder lizard strode, all glass-bead pomp, so strode Mr. Dark, armored with vile lightning scribbles of carnivores and sheep blasted by that thunder and arun before storms of juggernaut flesh. It was the pterodactyl kite and scythe which raised his arms almost to fly the marbled vaults. And with the inked and stencilled flashburnt shapes of pistoned or bladed doom came his usual crowd of hangers-on, spectators gripped to each limb, seated on shoulder blades, peering from his jungled chest, hung upside down in microscopic millions in his armpit vaults screaming bat-screams for encounters, ready for the hunt and if need be the kill. Like a black tidal wave upon a bleak shore, a dark tumult infilled with phosphorescent beauties and badly spoiled dreams, Mr. Dark sounded and hissed his feet, his legs, his body, his sharp face forward.
"Boys ...?"
Immensely patient, that soft voice, ever the warmest friend to chilly creatures burrowed away, nested amongst dry books; so he scuttered, crept, scurried, stalked, tip-toed, wafted, stood immensely still among the primates, the Egyptian monuments to bestial gods, brushed black histories of dead Africa, stayed awhile in Asia, then sauntered on to newer lands.
"Boys, I know you hear me! The sign reads: SILENCE! So, I'll whisper: one of you still wants what we offer. Eh? Eh?"
Jim, thought Will.
Me, thought Jim. No! oh, no! not still! not me!
"Come out." Mr. Dark purred the air through his teeth. "I guarantee rewards! Whoever turns himself in wins it all!
Bangity-bang!
My heart! thought Jim.
Is that me? thought Will, or Jim!!?
"I hear you." Mr. Dark's lips quivered. "Closer now. Will? Jim? Isn't it Jim who's the smart one? Come along, boy ...!"
No! thought Will.
I don't know anything! thought Jim, wildly.
"Jim, yes ..." Mr. Dark wheeled in a new direction. "Jim, show me where your friend is." Softly. "We'll shut him up, give you the ride that would have been his if he'd used his head. Right, Jim?" A dove voice, cooing. "Closer. I hear your heart jump!"
Stop! thought Will to his chest.
Stop! Jim clenched his breath. Stop!!
"I wonder ... are you in this alcove ...?"
Mr. Dark let the peculiar gravity of a certain group of stacks tug him forward.
"You here, Jim ...? Or ... over behind ...?"
He shoved a trolley of books mindlessly off on rubber rollers to bump through the night. A long way off, it crashed and spilled its contents to the floor like so many dead black ravens.
"Smart hide-and-seekers, both," said Mr. Dark. "But someone's smarter. Did you hear the carousel calliope tonight? Did you know, someone dear to you was down to the carousel? Will? Willy? William. William Halloway. Where's your mother tonight?"
Silence.
"She was out riding the night wind, Willy-William. Around. We put her on. Around. We left her on. Around. You hear, Willy? Around, a year, another year, another, around, around!"
Dad! thought Will. Where are you!
In the far room, Charles Halloway, seated, his heart pounding, heard and thought, He won't find them, I won't move unless he does, he can't find them, they won't listen! they won't believe! he'll go away!
"Your mother, Will," called Mr. Dark, softly. "Around and around, can you guess which direction, Willy?"
Mr. Dark circled his thin ghost hand in the dark air between the stacks.
"Around, around, and when we let your mother off, boy, and showed her herself in the Mirror Maze, you should have heard the one single sound she made. She was like a cat with a hair ball in her so big and sticky there was no way to gag it out, no way to scream around the hair coming out her nostrils and ears and eyes, boy, and her old old old. The last we saw of her, boy Willy, she was running off away from what she saw in the mirrors. She'll bang Jim's house door but when his ma sees a thing two hundred years old slobbering at the keyhole, begging the mercy of gunshot death, boy, Jim's ma will gag the same way, like a hairballed cat sick but can't be sick, and beat her away, send her beggaring the streets, where no one'll believe, Will, such a kettle of bones and spit, no one'll believe this was a rose beauty, your kind relation! So Will, it's up to us to run find, run save her, for we know who she is--right, Will, right, Will, right, right, right?!"
The dark man's voice hissed away to silence.
Very faintly now, somewhere in the library, someone was sobbing.
Ah ...
The Illustrated Man gassed the air pleasantly from his dark lungs.
Yesssssssssss ...
"Here ..." he murmured. "What? Filed under A for Boys? A for Adventure? C for Hidden. S for Secret. T for Terrified? Or filed under J for Jim or I for Nightshade, W for William, C for Halloway? Where are my two precious human books, so I may turn their pages, eh?"
He kicked a place for his right foot on the first shelf of a towering stack.
He shoved his right foot in, put his weight there, and swung his left foot free.
"There."
His left foot hit the second shelf, knocked space. He climbed. His right foot kicked a hole on the third shelf, plunged books back, and so up and up he climbed, to fourth shelf, to fifth, to sixth, groping dark library heavens, hands clutching shelfboards, then scrabbling higher to leaf night to find boys, if boys there were, like bookmarks among books.
His right hand, a princely tarantula, garlanded with roses, cracked a book of Bayeaux tapestries aspin down the sightless abyss below. It seemed an age before the tapestries struck, all askew, a ruin of beauty, an avalanche of gold, silver, and sky-blue thread on the floor.
His left hand, reaching the ninth shelf as he panted, grunted, encountered empty space--no books.
"Boys, are you here on Everest?"
Silence. Except for the faint sobbing, nearer now.
"Is it cold here? Colder? Coldest?"
The eyes of the Illustrated Man came abreast of the eleventh shelf.
Like a corpse laid rigid out, face down just three inches away, was Jim Nightshade.
One shelf further up in the catacomb, eyes trembling with tears, lay William Halloway.
"Well," said Mr. Dark.
He reached a hand to pat Will's head.
"Hello," he said.
Chapter 43
TO WILL, the palm of the hand that drifted up was like a moon rising.
Upon it was the fiery blue-inked portrait of himself.
Jim, too, saw a hand before his face.
His own picture looked back at him from the palm.
The hand with Will's picture grabbed Will.
The hand with Jim's picture grabbed Jim.
Shrieks and yells.
The Illustrated Man heaved.
Twisting, he fell-jumped to the floor.
The boys, kicking, yelling, fell with him. They landed on their feet, toppled, collapsed, to be held, reared, set right, fistfuls of their shirts in Mr. Dark's fists.
"Jim!" he said. "Will! What were you doing up there, boys? Surely not reading?"
"Dad!"
"Mr. Halloway!"
Will's father stepped from the dark.
The Illustrated Man rearranged the boys tenderly under one arm like kindling, then gazed with genteel curiosity at Charles Halloway and reached for him. Will's father struck one blow before his left hand was seized, held, squeezed. As the boys watched, shouting, they saw Charles Halloway gasp and fall to one knee.
Mr. Dark squeezed that left hand harder and, doing this, slowly, certainly, pressured the boys with his other arm, crushing their ribs so air gushed from their mouths.
Night spiraled in fiery who
rls like great thumbprints inside Will's eyes.
Will's father, groaning, sank to both knees, flailing his right arm.
"Damn you!"
"But," said the carnival owner quietly, "I am already."
"Damn you, damn you!"
"Not words, old man," said Mr. Dark. "Not words in books or words you say, but real thoughts, real actions, quick thought, quick action, win the day. So!"
He gave one last mighty clench of his fist.
The boys heard Charles Halloway's finger bones crack. He gave a last cry and fell senseless.
In one motion like a solemn pavane, the Illustrated Man rounded the stacks, the boys, kicking books from shelves, under his arms.
Will, feeling walls, books, floors fly by, foolishly thought, pressed close, Why, why, Mr. Dark smells like ... calliope steam!
Both boys were dropped suddenly. Before they could move or regain their breath, each was gripped by the hair on their head and roused marionettes-wise to face a window, a street.
"Boys, you read Dickens?" Mr. Dark whispered. "Critics hate his coincidences. But we know, don't we? life's all coincidence. Turn death and happenstance flakes off him like fleas from a killed ox. Look!"
Both boys writhed in the iron-maiden clutch of hungry saurians and bristly apes.
Will did not know whether to weep with joy or new despair.
Below, across the avenue, passing from church, going home, was his mother and Jim's mother.
Not on the carousel, not old, crazy, dead, in jail, but freshly out in the good October air. She had been not a hundred yards away in church during all the last five minutes!
Mom! screamed Will, against the hand which, anticipating his cry, clamped tight to his mouth.
"Mom," crooned Mr. Dark, mockingly. "Come save me!"
No, thought Will, save yourself, run!
But his mother and Jim's mother simply strolled content, from the warm church through town.
Mom! screamed Will again, and some small muffled bleat of it escaped the sweaty paw.
Will's mother, a thousand miles away over on that sidewalk, paused.
She couldn't have heard! thought Will. Yet--
She looked over at the library.
"Good," sighed Mr. Dark. "Excellent, fine."
Here! thought Will. See us, Mom! Run call the police!
"Why doesn't she look at this window?" asked Mr. Dark quietly. "And see us three standing as for a portrait. Look over. Then, come running. We'll let her in."
Will strangled a sob. No, no.
His mother's gaze trailed from the front entrance to the first-floor windows.
"Here," said Mr. Dark. "Second floor. A proper coincidence, let's make it proper."
Now Jim's mother was talking. Both women stood together at the curb.
No, thought Will, oh, no.
And the women turned and went away into the Sunday-night town.
Will felt the Illustrated Man slump the tiniest bit.
"Not much of a coincidence, no crisis, no one lost or saved. Pity. Well!"
Dragging the boys' feet, he glided down to open the front door.
Someone waited in the shadows.
A lizard hand scurried cold on Will's chin.
"Halloway," husked the Witch's voice.
A chameleon perched on Jim's nose.
"Nightshade," whisked the dry-broom voice.
Behind her stood the Dwarf and the Skeleton, silent, shifting, apprehensive.
Obedient to the occasion, the boys would have given their best stored yells air, but again, on the instant recognizing their need, the Illustrated Man trapped the sound before it could issue forth, then nodded curtly to the old dust woman.
The Witch toppled forward with her seamed black wax sewn-shut iguana eyelids and her great proboscis with the nostrils caked like tobacco-blackened pipe bowls, her fingers tracing, weaving a silent plinth of symbols on the mind.
The boys stared.
Her fingernails fluttered, darted, feathered cold winter-water air. Her pickled green frog's breath crawled their flesh in pimples as she sang softly, mewing, humming, glistering her babes, her boys, her friends of the slick snail-tracked roof, the straight-flung arrow, the stricken and sky-drowned balloon.
"Darning-needle dragonfly, sew up these mouths so they not speak!"
Touch, sew, touch, sew her thumbnail stabbed, punched, drew, stabbed, punched, drew along their lower, upper lips until they were thread-pouch shut with invisible thread.
"Darning-needle dragonfly, sew up these ears, so they not hear!"
Cold sand funneled Will's ears, burying her voice. Muffled, far away, fading, she chanted on with a rustle, tick, tickle, tap, flourish of caliper hands.
Moss grew in Jim's ears, swiftly sealing him deep.
"Darning-needle dragonfly, sew up these eyes so they not see!"
Her white-hot fingerprints rolled back their stricken eyeballs to throw the lids down with bangs like great tin doors slammed shut.
Will saw a billion flashbulbs explode, then suck to darkness while the unseen darning-needle insect out beyond somewhere pranced and fizzed like insect drawn to sun-warmed honeypot, as closeted voice stitched off their senses forever and a day beyond.
"Darning-needle dragonfly, have done with eye, ear, lip and tooth, finish hem, sew dark, mound dust, heap with slumber sleep, now tie all knots ever so neat, pump silence in blood like sand in river deep. So. So."
The Witch, somewhere outside the boys, lowered her hands.
The boys stood silent. The Illustrated Man took his embrace from them and stepped back.
The woman from the Dust sniffed at her twin triumphs, ran her hand a last loving time over her statues.
The Dwarf toddled madly about in the boys' shadows, nibbling daintily at their fingernails, softly calling their names.
The Illustrated Man nodded toward the library.
"The janitor's clock. Stop it."
The Witch, mouth wide, savoring doom, wandered off into the marble quarry.
Mr. Dark said: "Left, right. One, two."
The boys walked down the steps, the Dwarf at Jim's side, the Skeleton at Will's.
Serene as death, the Illustrated Man followed.
Chapter 44
SOMEWHERE NEAR, Charles Halloway's hand lay in a white-hot furnace, melted to sheer nerve and pain. He opened his eyes. At the same moment he heard a great breath as the front door swung shut and a woman's voice came singing in the hall:
"Old man, old man, old man, old man ...?"
Where his left hand should be was this swelled blood pudding which pulsed with such ecstasies of pain it fed forth his life, his will, his whole attention. He tried to sit up, but the pain hammerblowed him down again.
"Old man ...?"
Not old! Fifty-four's not old, he thought wildly.
And here she came on the worn stone floors, her moth-fingers tapping, scanning braille book tides, as her nostrils siphoned the shadows.
Charles Halloway hunched and crawled, hunched and crawled, toward the nearest stack, cramming pain back with his tongue. He must climb out of reach, climb where books might be weapons flung down upon any night-crawling pursuer....
"Old man, hear you breathing...."
She drifted on his tide, let her body be summoned by every sibilant hiss of his pain.
"Old man, feel your hurt...."
If he could fling the hand, the pain, out the window! where it might lie beating like a heart, summoning her away, tricked, to go seek this awful fire. Bent in the street, he imagined her brisking her palms at this throb, an abandoned chunk of delirium.
But no, the hand stayed, glowed, poisoned the air, hurrying the strange nun-Gypsy's tread as she gasped her avaricious mouth most ardently.
"Damn you!" he cried. "Get it over with! I'm here!"
So the Witch wheeled swift as a black clothes dummy on rubber rollers and swayed over him.
He did not even look at her. Such weights and pressures of despair and exertio
n fought for his attention, he could only free his eyes to watch the inside of his lids upon which multiple and ever-changing looms of terror jigged and gamboled.
"Very simple." The whisper bent low. "Stop the heart."
Why not, he thought, vaguely.
"Slow," she murmured.
Yes, he thought.
"Slow, very slow."
His heart, once bolting, now fell away to a strange disease, disquiet, then quiet, then ease.
"Much more slow, slow ..." she suggested.
Tired, yes, you hear that, heart? he wondered.
His heart heard. Like a tight fist it began to relax, a finger at a time.
"Stop all for good, forget all for good," she whispered.
Well, why not?
"Slower ... slowest."
His heart stumbled.
And then for no reason, save perhaps for a last look around, because he did want to get rid of the pain, and sleep was the way to do that ... Charles Halloway opened his eyes.
He saw the Witch.
He saw her fingers working at the air, his face, his body, the heart within his body, and the soul within the heart. Her swamp breath flooded him while, with immense curiosity, he watched the poisonous drizzle from her lips, counted the folds in her stitch-wrinkled eyes, the Gila monster neck, the mummy-linen ears, the dry-rivulet river-sand brow. Never in his life had he focused so nearly to a person, as if she were a puzzle, which once touched together might show life's greatest secret. The solution was in her, it would all spring clear this moment, no, the next, no, the next, watch her scorpion fingers! hear her chant as she diddled the air, yes, diddled was it, tickling, tickling, "Slow!" she whispered. "Slow!" And his obedient heart pulled rein. Diddle-tickle went her fingers.
Charles Halloway snorted. Faintly, he giggled.
He caught this. Why? Why am I ... giggling ... at such a time!?
The Witch pulled back the merest quarter inch as if some strange but hidden electric light socket, touched with wet whorl, gave shock.
Charles Halloway saw but did not see her flinch, sensed but seemed in no way to consider her withdrawal, for almost immediately, seizing the initiative, she flung herself forward, not touching, but mutely gesticulating at his chest as one might try to spell an antique clock pendulum.
"Slow!" she cried.