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

by Ray Bradbury

But he was alive, puling like a babe, and shriveling unto death, fast, very fast, before their eyes.

Freak Tent.

freak

The lightning-rod salesman!

The seller of lightning rods.

Jim and Will trembled and felt more freak than the freaks themselves.

Jim, reading lips, read thunderous loud in his mind, and Will the same, Come alive! willing the old man to live, start up, tick, hum, work juice, summon spit, ungum spirit, melt wax soul. . . .

And the old man came alive.

Will yelled himself hoarse.

And no one...

Jim was yelling, too, for Will had his elbow tight and felt the yell pouring out through the bones,

Yes, Will thought, they’re breathing for him, helping him, making him to live. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale—yet it looked like an act. What could he say, or do?

Inhale. The freaks breathed. Exhale.

Will. Will saw himself, saw Jim, two little pictures posed in reflection on that single eye.

“. . . welcome . . . mmmmmm . . .”

“well . . . cummm . . . mmmm . . .”

“No!” cried Will, suddenly. “That’s no act! He was dead! He’d die again if you cut the power—!”

Will slapped his own hand to his mouth. Oh Lord, he thought, what am I doing? I want him alive, so he’ll forgive us, let us be! But, oh Lord, even more I want him dead, I want them all dead, they scare me so much I got hairballs big as cats in my stomach!

“I . . . sssaw . . . the . . . boysssssss . . . ssssneak into . . . thee . . . tent . . . tttttt. . . .”

“. . . We . . . rehearsing . . . sssso I thought . . . play . . . thissss trick . . . pretend to be . . . dead.”

“. . . let myself fall . . . like . . . I . . . wasssss . . . dying. . . . The . . . boysssssssss . . . ssscreaming . . .ran!”

“I dub thee . . . asses and foolssssss . . . I dub . . . thee . . . Mr. Sickly . . . and . . . Mr. Pale . . . !”

“A . . . sssshort . . . sad life . . . for you both!”

they went in Jim’s eyes, for Jim, after all, was Jim,

“Sure. You’d just go away and leave me here, Jim.”

“Why,” protested the other, “I wouldn’t leave you, Will. We’d be together.”

“Together? You two feet taller and going around feeling your leg-and-arm-bones? You looking down at me, Jim, and what’d we talk about, me with my pockets full of kite-string and marbles and ...

and making fun, is that what we’d talk, and you able to run faster and ditch me—” “I’...

“I wouldn’t do that, Will.” Jim touched him.

“Oh, Jim, Jim, you do see, don’t you?

“Everything,” said Jim, “in its time . . .”

And men do love sin,

For being good is a fearful

occupation;

And I saw then and there you take a man half-bad and a woman half-bad and put their two good halves together and you got one human all good to share between. That’s you, Will, for my money.

My one wisdom is: you’re wise.”

“Because . . . I want you to be happy, Dad.” He hated the tears that sprang to his eyes. “I’ll be all right, Will.”

His voice, Will thought, I never noticed. It’s the same color as his hair.

“Pa,” he said, “don’t sound so sad.” “Me? I’m the original sad man.

I read a book and it makes me sad. See a film: sad. Plays? they r...

“One thing. Death.” “Boy!” Will started. “I should think that would!”

“Dad, oh, listen! You’ll live forever! Believe me, or you’re sunk! Sure, you were sick a few years ago—but that’s over. Sure, you’re fifty-four, but that’s young! And another thing—”

“Yes, Willy?”

“Don’t go near the carnival.” “Strange,” his father said, “that’s what I was going to tell you.”

“I wouldn’t go back to that place for a billion dollars!”

But, Will thought, that won’t stop the carnival searching throu...

“Promise,...

“Why don’t you want me to go there, Will?” “That’s one of the things I’ll tell tomorrow or next week or next year...

“I do, son.” Dad took his hand. “It’...