Something Wicked This Way Comes (Green Town, #2)

by Ray Bradbury

Listen! and you heard ten thousand people screaming so high only dogs feathered their ears. A million folk ran toting cannons, sharpening guillotines; Chinese, four abreast, marched on forever. Invisible, silent, yes, but Jim and Will had the gift of ears and noses as well as the gift of tongues.

“Don’t,” said Will. Then, murmuring, “Don’t turn it off.” Mr. Crosetti looked at the pole, as if freshly aware of its miraculous properties. He nodded, gently, his eyes soft. “Where does it come from, where does it go, eh? Who knows? Not you, not him, not me. Oh, the mysteries, by God. So. We’ll leave it on!” It’s good to know, thought Will, it’ll be running until dawn, winding up from nothing, winding away to nothing, while we sleep.

capitalized..

There was a thing in Dad’s voice, up, over, down, easy as a hand winging soft in the air like a white bird describing flight patterns, made the ear want to follow and the mind’s eye to see.

The sound of truth,

sad, sadder, saddest,

his bones easy in his flesh, his flesh easy on his bones.

He was marbled with dark,

The trouble with Jim was he looked at the world and could not look away.

by the time you are thirteen you have done twenty years taking in the laundry of the world.

Jim knew every centimeter of his shadow, could have cut it out of tar paper, furled it, and run it up a flagpole—his banner. Will, he was occasionally surprised to see his shadow following him somewhere, but that was that.

“I’m never going to own anything can hurt me.”

some day, you’ve got to be hurt.”

“You’ll live and get hurt,”

“But when it’s time, tell me. Say goodbye. Otherwise, I might not let you go. Wouldn’t that be terrible, to just grab ahold?”

“Why do boys want their windows open wide?” “Warm blood.” “Warm blood.”

Storm, he thought, you there? Yes.

Why, he thought, why don’t I climb up, knock that lightning rod loose, throw it away? And then see what happens?

Yes.

And then see what...

“At three A.M.?”

“At three A.M.!”

Sometimes you see a kite so high, so wise it almost knows the wind. It travels, then chooses to land in one spot and no other and no matter how you yank, run this way or that, it will simply break its cord, seek its resting place and bring you, blood-mouthed, running.

So now Jim was the kite,

its undersea funeral bell,

tolling, tolling.

Those trains and their grieving sounds were lost forever between stations,

not remembering where they had been, not guessing where they might go, exhaling their last pale breaths over the horizon, gone. So it was with all trains, ever. Yet this train’s whistle!

air so cold they ate ice cream with each breath.

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, shadow-faced, he waded to the center of the meadow, his shirt as black as the gloved hands he now stretched to the sky.

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?

The maze did not ask. The maze did not tell.

I’ll go there, thought Charles Halloway, I won’t go there. I like it, he thought, I don’t like it.

But three, now, Christ, three A.M. ! Doctors say the body’s at low tide then. The soul is out. 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 wide-eyed staring, is living death!

Why speak of Time when you are Time,

How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever.

So, since we cannot shape Time, where does that leave men? Sleepless. Staring.

The soul’s midnight.

The tide goes out, the soul ebbs.

“You wouldn’t let me come alone. You’re always going to be around, aren’t you, Will? To protect me?” “Look who needs protection.”

“You’ll always be with me, huh, Will?”

yes, yes, you know it, yes, yes.

“Storm never came. But he went.”

“Sign’s been up all day. I don’t believe signs,” said Jim.

watching Jim’s mouth with his yellow eyes. He never looked once at Will. “The name is Dark.”

He flourished a white calling card. It turned blue. Whisper. Red. Whisk. A green man dangled from a tree stamped on the card. Flit. Shh. “Dark. And my friend with the red hair there is Mr. Cooger. Of Cooger and Dark’s . . .” Flip-flick-shhh. Names appeared, disappeared on the white square: “. . . Combined Shadow Shows . . .” Tick-wash.

Will wanted to run around and see, but could only watch, thinking Jim, oh, Jim!

The merry-go-round was running, yes, but . . .

It was