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

by Ray Bradbury

running ba...

The music, Will thought, it’s backwards, too!

The music, thought Will, what is it? And how do I know it’s backside first?

then hum it forward in his head.

But the brass bells, the drums, hammered his chest, revved his heart so he ...

his blood turn back in perverse thrusts through all his flesh, so he was nearly shaken free to fall, so all he did was clutch, hang pale, and drink the sight of the backward-turning machine an...

It was Jim who first noticed the new th...

for he kicked Will, once, Will looked over, and Jim nodded frantically at the man in the machine as ...

Mr. Cooger’s face was melting li...

His hands were becoming doll’s hands. His bones sank away b...

his clothes then shrank down to fit his d...

His face flickered going, and each time around...

Will saw Jim’s head shift...

Jim who spoke from their mutual confusion and trembling as each held to the other’s arm,

They both stopped to enjoy the swift pound of each other’s heart.

Jim said nothing. Walking arm in arm with Will he just looked over at his friend and blinked once, let the lids come down over his shiny green eyes and go up.

Will had the feeling about Jim that he had always had about an old almost forgotten dog.

“Boy, I’m so scared I could sprinkle dust.

“It was the ‘Funeral March’! Played backwards!” “Which ‘Funeral March’?” “Which! Jim, Chopin only wrote one tune! The ‘Funeral March’!”

“Mr. Cooger was marching away from the grave, not toward it,

wasn’t he, getting younger, smaller, instead of older and dropping dead?” “Willy, you’re terrific!”

This wasn’t like Jim. Always before, the window slid up, Jim’s head popped out, ripe with yells, secret hissings, giggles, riots and rebel charges.

“Marching Through Georgia,”

Will started to raise his window to be sure. But suddenly, Jim’s window slid quietly up. He hadn’t been down on the boards! It was just Will’s wild wish that made the tune! Will started to whisper, but stopped. For Jim, without a word, scuttled down the drainpipe.

Jim! Will thought. Jim, on the lawn, stiffened as if hearing his name.

You’re not going without me, Jim? Jim glan...

If he saw Will, he mad...

Jim, Will thought, we’re still pals, smell things nobody else smells, hear things no one else hears, got the same blood, run the same way. Now, this first t...

I’m alone. If I lose Jim, it’s the first ever I’ll be out alone at night, too. And where am I going? Wherever Jim goes.

Jim glanced back. Will became a bush behind a bush, a shadow among shadows, with two starlight rounds of glass, his eyes, holding the image of Jim calling up in a whisper toward the second-floor windows.

“Hey there . . . hey . . .” Good grief, thought Will, he wants to be slit and stuffed with broken Mirror Maze glass.

Jim gazed up with that funny warm look of breathless anticipation he often had nights in summer at the shadow-show window Theater in that house a few streets over. Looking up with love, with devotion, like a cat Jim waited for some special dark mouse to run forth.

“Jim!” He seized Jim’s arm. “Will, what you doing here?!” “Jim, don’t talk to him! Get out of here. My gosh, he’ll chew and spit out your bones!” Jim writhed himself free. “Will, go home! You’ll spoil everything!”

“He scares me, Jim, what you want from him!? This afternoon . . . in the maze, did you see something!!?” “. . . Yes . . .” “For gosh sakes, what!”

Will grabbed Jim’s shirt front, felt his heart bang under the...

“Let go.” Jim was terribly quiet. “If he knows you’re here, he won’t come out. Willy, if you don’t...

“When what!” “When I’m older, darn it, older!” Jim spat. As if he was struck by lig...

“Oh, Jim,” he mourned.

you want it to go forward, don’t you, Jim? forward instead of back! and you on it, around once and you’re fifteen, circling and you’re sixteen, three times more and nineteen! music! and you’re twenty and off, standing tall! not Jim any more, still thirteen, almost fourteen on the empty midway, with me small, me young, me scared! Will hauled off and hit Jim, hard, on the nose.

Then he jumped Jim, wrapped him tight, and toppled him rolling down, yelling, in the bushes. He slapped Jim’s mouth, stuffed it, mashed it full of fingers to snap and bite at, suffocating the angry grunts and yells. The front door opened. Will crushed the air out of Jim, lay heavy on him, fisting his mouth tight.

they themselves

Will was so shocked he let go Jim. Jim was so shocked he let go of Will.

But he must save Jim!

A black otter. A tomcat. A rabbit. Me, thought Will, I’m the rabbit. And he was white, and much afraid.

The merry-go-round was going forward!

Jim leaned at it. “Jim!” cried Will.

one year older. One year older, thought Will, on the earth, one year taller, bigger, meaner!

“Oh God, Will, get up! We got to make it run backward!”

Will let Jim go.

How many times? said Jim’s face,