Senselessly, he permitted an idiot smile to balloon itself up from somewhere to attach itself with careless ease under his nose.
"Slowest!"
Her new fever, her anxiety which changed itself to anger was even more of a toy to him. A part of his attention, secret until now, leaned forward to scan every pore of her Halloween face. Somehow, irresistibly, the prime thing was: nothing mattered. Life in the end seemed a prank of such size you could only stand off at this end of the corridor to note its meaningless length and its quite unnecessary height, a mountain built to such ridiculous immensities you were dwarfed in its shadow and mocking of its pomp. So with death this near he thought numbly but purely upon a billion vanities, arrivals, departures, idiot excursions of boy, boy-man, man and old-man goat. He had gathered and stacked all manner of foibles, devices, playthings of his egotism and now, between all the silly corridors of books, the toys of his life swayed. And none more grotesque than this thing named Witch Gypsy Reader-of-Dust, tickling, that's what! just tickling the air! Fool! Didn't she know what she was doing!
He opened his mouth.
Of itself, like a child born of an unsuspecting parent, one single raw laugh broke free.
The Witch swooned back.
Charles Halloway did not see. He was far too busy letting the joke rush through his fingers, letting hilarity spring forth of its own volition along his throat, eyes squeezed shut; there it flew, whipping shrapnel in all directions.
"You!" he cried, to no one, everyone, himself, her, them, it, all. "Funny! You!"
"No," the Witch protested.
"Stop tickling!" he gasped.
"Not!" she lunged back, frantically. "Not! Sleep! Slow! Very slow!"
"No, tickling is all it is, for sure!" he roared. "Oh, ha! Ha, stop!"
"Yes, stop heart!" she squealed. "Stop blood." Her own heart must have shaken like a tambourine; her hands shook. In mid-gesticulation she froze and became aware of the silly fingers.
"Oh, my God!" He wept beautiful glad tears. "Get off my ribs, oh, ha, go on, my heart!"
"Your heart, yesssssss!"
"God!" He popped his eyes wide, gulped air, released more soap and water washing everything clear, incredibly clean. "Toys! The key sticks out your back! Who wound you up!?"
And the largest roar of all, flung at the woman, burnt her hands, seared her face, or so it seemed, for she seized herself as from a blast furnace, wrapped her fried hands in Egyptian rags, gripped her dry dugs, skipped back, gave pause, then started a slow retreat, nudged, pushed, pummeled inch by inch, foot by foot, clattering bookracks, shelves, fumbling for handholds on volumes that thrashed free as she scrambled them down. Her brow knocked dim histories, vain theories, duned-up time, promised but compromised years. Chased, bruised, beaten by his laugh which echoed, rang, swam to fill the marble vaults, she whirled at last, claws razoring the wild air and fled to fall downstairs.
Moments later, she managed to cram herself through the front door, which slammed!
Her fall, the door slam, almost broke his frame with laughter.
"Oh God, God, please stop, stop yourself!" he begged of his hilarity.
And thus begged, his humor let be.
In mid-roar, at last, all faded to honest laughter, pleasant chuckling, faint giggling, then softly and with great contentment receiving and giving breath, shaking his happy-weary head, the good ache of action in his throat and ribs, gone from his crumpled hand. He lay against the stacks, head leaned to some dear befriending book, the tears of releaseful mirth salting his cheeks, and suddenly knew her gone.
Why? he wondered. What did I do?
With one last bark of mirth, he rose up, slow.
What's happened? Oh, God, let's get it clear! First, the drug store, a half-dozen aspirin to cure this hand for an hour, then, think. In the last five minutes you did win something, didn't you? What's victory taste like? Think! Try to remember!
And smiling a new smile at the ridiculous dead-animal left hand nested in his right crooked elbow, he hurried down the night corridors, and out into town....
III.
Departures
Chapter 45
THE SMALL parade moved, soundless, past the eternally revolving, ending-but-unending candy serpentine of Mr. Crosetti's barber pole, past all the darkening or darkened shops, the emptying streets, for people were home now from the church suppers, or out at the carnival for the last side show or the last high-ladder diver floating like milkweed down the night.
Will's feet, far away below, clubbed the sidewalk. One, two, he thought, someone tells me left, right. Dragonfly whispers: one-two.
Is Jim in the parade?! Will's eyes flicked the briefest to one side. Yes! But who's the other little one? The gone-mad, everything's-interesting-so-touch-it, everything's red-hot, pull-back, Dwarf! Plus the Skeleton. And then behind, who were all those hundreds, no, thousands of people marching along, breathing down his neck?
The Illustrated Man.
Will nodded and whined so high and silently that only dogs, dogs who were no help, dogs who could not speak, might hear.
And sure enough, looking obliquely over, he saw not one, not two, but three dogs who, smelling the occasion, their own parade, now ran ahead, now fell behind, their tails like guidons for the platoon.
Bark! thought Will, like in the movies! Bark, bring the police!
But the dogs just smiled and trotted.
Coincidence, please, thought Will. Just a small one!
Mr. Tetley! Yes! Will saw-but-did-not-see Mr. Tetley! Rolling the wooden Indian back into his shop, closing for the night!
"Turn heads," murmured the Illustrated Man.
Jim turned his head. Will turned his head.
Mr. Tetley smiled.
"Smile," murmured Mr. Dark.
The two boys smiled.
"Hello!" said Mr. Tetley.
"Say hello," someone whispered.
"Hello," said Jim.
"Hello," said Will.
The dogs barked.
"A free ride at the carnival," murmured Mr. Dark.
"Free ride," said Will.
"At the carnival!" clacked Jim.
Then, like good machines, they shut up their smiles.
"Have fun!" called Mr. Tetley.
The dogs barked joy.
The parade marched on.
"Fun," said Mr. Dark. "Free rides. When the crowds go home, half an hour from now. We'll ride Jim round. You still want that, Jim?"
Hearing but not hearing, locked away in himself, Will thought, Jim, don't listen!
Jim's eyes slid: wet or oily, it was hard to tell.
"You'll travel with us, Jim, and if Mr. Cooger doesn't survive (it's a near thing for him, we haven't saved him yet, we'll try again now) but if he doesn't make it, Jim, how would you like to be partners? I'll grow you to a fine strong age, eh? Twenty-two? twenty-five?! Dark and Nightshade, Nightshade and Dark, sweet lovely names for such as we with such as the side shows to run around the world! What say, Jim?"
Jim said nothing, sewn up in the Witch's dream.
Don't listen! wailed his best friend, who heard nothing but heard it all.
"And Will?" said Mr. Dark. "Let's ride him back and back, eh? Make him a babe in arms, a babe for the Dwarf to carry like a clown-child, roundabout in parades, every day for the next fifty years, would you like that, Will? to be a babe forever? not able to talk and tell all the lovely things you know? Yes, I think that's best for Will. A plaything, a little wet friend for the Dwarf!"
Will must have screamed.
But not out loud.
For only the dogs barked, in terror; yiping, off they ran, as if pelted with rocks.
A man came around the corner.
A policeman.
"Who's this?" muttered Mr. Dark.
"Mr. Kolb," said Jim.
"Mr. Kolb!" said Will.
"Darning-needle," whispered Mr. Dark. "Dragonfly."
Pain stabbed Will's ears. Moss stuffed his eyes. Gum glued hi
s teeth. He felt a multitudinous tapping, shuttling, weaving, about his face, all numb again.
"Say hello to Mr. Kolb."
"Hello," said Jim.
"... Kolb ..." said the dreaming Will.
"Hello, boys. Gentlemen."
"Turn here," said Mr. Dark.
They turned.
Away toward meadow country, away from warm lights, good town, safe streets, the drumless march progressed.
Chapter 46
STRETCHED OUT over a mile of territory the straggling parade now moved as follows: At the edge of the carnival midway, stumping the grass with their dead feet, Jim and Will paced friends who constandy retold the wondrous uses of darning-needle dragonflies.
Behind, a good half mile, trying to catch up, walking mysteriously wounded, the Gypsy, who whorl-symboled the dust.
And yet farther back came the janitor-father, now slowing himself with remembrances of age, now pacing swiftly young with thoughts of the brief first encounter and victory, carrying his left hand patted to his chest, chewing medicines as he went.
At the midway rim, Mr. Dark looked back as if an inner voice had named the stragglers in his widely separated maneuver. But the voice failed, he was unsure. He nodded briskly, and Dwarf, Skeleton, Jim, Will thrust through the crowd.
Jim felt the river of bright people wash by all around but not touching. Will heard waterfall laughter here, there, and him walking through the downpour. An explosion of fireflies blossomed on the sky; the ferns wheel, exultant as a titanic fireworks, dilated above them.
Then they were at the Mirror Maze and sidling, colliding, bumping, careening through the unfolded ice ponds where stricken spider-stung boys much like themselves appeared, vanished a thousand times over.
That's me! thought Jim.
But I can't help me, thought Will, no matter how many of me there are!
And crowd of boys, plus crowd of reflected Mr. Dark's illustrations, for he had taken off his coat and shirt now, crammed and crushed through to the Waxworks at the end of the maze.
"Sit," said Mr. Dark. "Stay."
Among the wax figures of murdered, gunshot, guillotined, garroted men and women the two boys sat like Egyptian cats, unblinked, untwitched, un-swallowing.
Some late visitors passed through, laughing. They commented on all the wax figures.
They did not notice the thin line of saliva crept from the corner of one "wax" boy's mouth.
They did not see how bright was the second "wax" boy's stare, which suddenly brimmed and ran clear water down his cheek.
Outside, the Witch limped in through back alleys of rope and peg between the tents.
"Ladies and gentlemen!"
The last crowd of the night, three or four hundred strong, turned as a body.
The Illustrated Man, stripped to the waist, all nightmare viper, sabertooth, libidinous ape, clotted vulture, all salmon-sulphur sky rose up with annunciations: "The last free event this evening! Come one! Come all!"
The crowd surged toward the main platform outside the freak tent, where stood Dwarf, Skeleton, and Mr. Dark.
"The Most Amazingly Dangerous, ofttimes Fatal--World Famous BULLET TRICK!"
The crowd gasped with pleasure.
"The rifles, if you please!"
The Thin One cracked wide a racked display of bright artillery.
The Witch, hurrying up, froze when Mr. Dark cried: "And here, our death-defier, the bullet-catcher who will stake her life--Mademoiselle Tarot!"
The Witch shook her head, bleated, but Dark's hand swept down to swing her like a child to the platform, still protesting, which gave Dark pause, but, in front of everyone now, he went on: "A volunteer, please, to fire the rifle!"
The crowd rumbled softly, daring itself to speak up.
Mr. Dark's mouth barely moved. Under his breath he asked, "Is the clock stopped?"
"Not," she whined, "stopped."
"No?" he almost burst out.
He burnt her with his eyes, then turned to the audience and let his mouth finish the spiel, his fingers rapping over the rifles.
"Volunteers, please!"
"Stop the act," the Witch cried softly, wringing her hands.
"It goes on, damn you, worse than double-damn you," he whispered, whistled fiercely.
Secretly, Dark gathered a pinch of flesh on his wrist, the illustration of a black-nun blind woman, which he bit with his fingernails.
The Witch spasmed, seized her breast, groaned, ground her teeth. "Mercy!" she hissed, half aloud.
Silence from the crowd.
Mr. Dark nodded swiftly.
"Since there are no volunteers--" He scraped his illustrated wrist. The Witch shuddered. "We will cancel our last act and--"
"Here! A volunteer!"
The crowd turned.
Mr. Dark recoiled, then asked: "Where?"
"Here."
Far out at the edge of the crowd, a hand lifted, a path opened.
Mr. Dark could see very clearly the man standing there, alone.
Charles Halloway, citizen, father, introspective husband, night-wanderer, and janitor of the town library.
Chapter 47
THE CROWD'S appreciative clamor faded.
Charles Halloway did not move.
He let the path grow leading down to the platform.
He could not see the expression on the faces of the freaks standing up there. His eyes swept the crowd and found the Mirror Maze, the empty oblivion which beckoned with ten times a thousand million light years of reflections, counterreflections, reversed and double-reversed, plunging deep to nothing, face-falling to nothing, stomach-dropping away to yet more sickening plummets of nothing.
And yet, wasn't there an echo of two boys in the powdered silver at the back of each glass? Did or did he not perceive, with the tremulous tip of eyelash if not the eye, their passage through, their wait beyond, warm wax amongst cold, waiting to be key-wound by terrors, run free in panics?
No, thought Charles Halloway, don't think. Get on with this!
"Coming!" he shouted.
"Go get 'em, Pop!" a man said.
"Yes," said Charles Halloway. "I will."
And he walked down through the crowd.
The Witch spun slowly, magnetized at the night-wandering volunteer's approach. Her eyelids jerked at their sewn black-wax threads behind dark glasses.
Mr. Dark, the illustration-drenched, superinfested civilization of souls, leaned from the platform, gladly whetting his lips. Thoughts spun fiery Catherine wheels in his eyes, quick, quick, what, what, what!
And the aging janitor, fixing a smile to his face like a white celluloid set of teeth from a Cracker Jack box, strode on, and the crowd opened as the sea before Moses and closed behind, and him wondering what to do? why was he here? but on the move, steadily, nevertheless.
Charles Halloway's foot touched the first step of the platform.
The Witch trembled secretly.
Mr. Dark felt this secret, glanced sharply. Swiftly he put his hand out to grab for the good right hand of this fifty-four-year-old man.
But the fifty-four-year-old man shook his head, would not give his hand to be held, touched, or helped up. "Thanks, no."
On the platform, Charles Halloway waved to the crowd.
The people set off a few firecrackers of applause.
"But--" Mr. Dark was amazed--"your left hand, sir, you can't hold and fire a rifle if you have only the use of one hand!"
Charles Halloway paled.
"I'll do it," he said. "With one hand."
"Hoorah!" cried a boy, below.
"Go it, Charlie!" a man called, out beyond.
Mr. Dark flushed as the crowd laughed and applauded even louder now. He lifted his hands to ward off the wave of refreshing sound, like rain that washed in from the people.
"All right, all right! Let's see if he can do it!"
Brutally, the Illustrated Man snapped a rifle from its locks, hurled it through the air.
The crowd gasped.
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Charles Halloway ducked. He put up his right hand. The rifle slapped his palm. He grabbed. It did not fall. He had it good.
The audience hooted, said things against Mr. Dark's bad manners which made him turn away for a moment, damning himself, silently.
Will's father lifted the rifle, beaming.
The crowd roared.
And while the wave of applause came in, crashed, and went back down the shore, he looked again to the maze, where the sensed but unseen shadow-shapes of Will and Jim were filed among titanic razor blades of revelation and illusion, then back to the Medusa gaze of Mr. Dark, swiftly reckoned with, and on to the stitched and jittering sightless nun of midnight, sidling back still more. Now she was as far as she could sidle, at the far end of the platform, almost pressed to the whorled red-black rifle bull's-eye target.
"Boy!" shouted Charles Halloway.
Mr. Dark stiffened.
"I need a bov volunteer to help me hold the rifle!" shouted Charles Halloway.
"Someone! Anyone!" he shouted.
A few boys in the crowd shifted around on their toes.
"Boy!" shouted Charles Halloway. "Hold on. My son's out there. He'll volunteer, won't you, Will?"
The Witch flung one hand up to feel the shape of this audacity which came off the fifty-four-year-old man like a fever. Mr. Dark was spun round as if hit by a fast-traveling gunshot.
"Will!" called his father.
In the Wax Museum, Will sat motionless.
"Will!" called his father. "Come on, boy!"
The crowd looked left, looked right, looked back.
No answer.
Will sat in the Wax Museum.
Mr. Dark observed all of this with some respect, some degree of admiration, some concern; he seemed to be waiting, just as was Will's father.
"Will, come help your old man!" Mr. Halloway cried, jovially.
Will sat in the Wax Museum.
Mr. Dark smiled.
"Will! Willy! Come here!"
No answer.
Mr. Dark smiled more.
"Willy! Don't you hear your old man?"
Mr. Dark stopped smiling.
For this last was the voice of a gentleman in the crowd, speaking up.
The crowd laughed.
"Will!" called a woman.
"Willy!" called another.
"Yoohoo!" A gentleman in a beard.
"Come on, William!" A boy.
The crowd laughed more, jostled elbows.
Charles Halloway called. They called. Charles Halloway cried to the hills. They cried to the hills.
"Will! Willy! William!"
A shadow shuttled and wove in the mirrors.