Ray Bradbury - Something Wicked This Way Comes

‘It’s just a plain old carnival,’ said Will.

‘Like heck,’ said Jim. ‘We weren’t blind last night. Cone on!’

They marched one hundred yards straight on and deep into the midway. And the deeper they went, the more obvious it became they would find no night men cat-treading shadow while strange tents plumed like thunder clouds. Instead, close up, the carnival was mildewed rope, moth-eaten canvas, rain-worn, sun-bleached tinsel. The side-show paintings, hung like sad albatrosses on their poles, flapped and let fall flakes of ancient paint, shivering and at the same time revealing the unwondrous wonders of a thin man, fat-man, needle-head, tattooed man, hula dancer. . . .

They prowled on but found no mysterious midnight sphere of evil gas tied by Mysterious Oriental knots to daggers plunged in dark earth, no maniac ticket takers bent on terrible revenges. The calliope by the ticket booth neither screamed deaths nor hummed idiot songs to itself. The train? Pulled off on a spur in the warming grass, it was old, yes, and welded tight with rust, but it looked like a titanic magnet that had collected to itself, from locomotive bone-yards across three continents, drive shafts, flywheels, smoke stacks, and hand-me-down second-rate nightmares. It did not cut a black and mortuary silhouette. It asked permission but to lie dead in autumn strewings, so much tired steam and iron gunpowder blowing away.

‘Jim! Will!’

Here came Miss Foley, their seventh-grade schoolteacher, along the midway, all smiles.

‘Boys,’ she said, ‘what’s wrong? You look as if you lost something.’

‘Well,’ said Will, ‘last night, did you hear that calliope—’

‘Calliope? No—’

‘Then why’re you out here so early, Miss Foley?’ asked Jim.

‘I love carnivals.’ said Miss Foley, a little woman lost somewhere in her grey fifties, beaming around. ‘I’ll buy hot dogs and you eat while I look for my fool nephew. You seen him?’

‘Nephew?’

‘Robert. Staying with me a few-weeks. Father’s dead, mother’s sick in Wisconsin. I took him in. He ran out here early today. Said he’d meet me. But you know boys! My, you look glum.’ She shoved food at them. ‘Eat! Cheer up! Rides’ll open in ten minutes. Meantime, I think I’ll spy through that Mirror Maze and—’

‘No,’ said Will.

‘No what?’ asked Miss Foley.

‘No Mirror Maze.’ Will swallowed. He stared at fathoms of reflections. You could never strike bottom there. It was like winter standing tall, waiting to kill you with a glance. ‘Miss Foley,’ he said at last, and wondered to hear his mouth say it, ‘don’t go in there.’

‘Why not?’

Jim peered, fascinated, into Will’s face. ‘Yeah, tell us. Why not?’

‘People get lost,’ said Will, lamely.

‘All the more reason. Robert might be wandering, loose, and not find his way out if I don’t grab his ear—’

‘Never can tell—’ Will could not take his eyes off the millions of miles of blind grass—‘what might be s around in there. . . .’

‘Swimming!’ Miss Foley laughed. ‘What a lovely mind you have, Willy. Well, yes, but I’m an old fish. So. . .’

‘Miss Foley!’

Miss Foley waved, poised, took a step, and vanished into the mirror ocean. They watched as she settled, wandered, sank deep, deep, and was finally dissolved, grey among silver.

Jim grabbed Will. ‘What was all that?’

‘Gosh, Jim, it’s the mirrors! They’re the only things I don’t like. I mean, they’re the only things like last night.’

‘Boy, boy, you been out in the sun,’ snorted Jim. ‘That maze there is. . . .’ His voice trailed off. He sniffed the cold air blowing out as from an, ice house between the tall reflections.

‘Jim? You were saying?

But Jim said nothing. After a long time he clapped his hand to the back of his neck. ‘It really does!’ he cried in soft amaze.

‘What does?’

‘Hair! I read it all my life. In scary stories, it stands on end! Mine’s doing it—now!’

‘Gosh, Jim. So’s mine!’

They stood entranced with the delicious cold bumps on their necks and the suddenly stiffened small hairs quilled up over their scalps.

There was a flourish of light and shadow.

Bumping through the Mirror Maze they saw two, four, a dozen Miss Foleys.

They didn’t know which one was real, so they waved to all of them.

But none of the Miss Foleys saw or waved back. Blind she walked. Blind, she tacked her nails to cold glass.

‘Miss Foley!’

Her eyes, flexed wide as from blasts of photographic powder, were skinned white like a statue’s. Deep under the glass, she spoke. She murmured. She whimpered. Now she cried. Now she shouted. Now she yelled. She knocked glass with her head, her elbows, tilted drunken as a light-blind moth, raised her hands in claws. ‘Oh God! Help!’ she wailed. ‘Help, oh God!’

Jim and Will saw their own faces, pale, their own eyes, wide, in the mirrors as they plunged.

‘Miss Foley, here!’ Jim cracked his brow.

‘This way!’ But Will found only cold glass.

A hand flew from empty space. An old woman’s hand, sinking for the last time. It seized anything to save itself. The anything was Will. She pulled him under.

‘Will!’

‘Jim! Jim!’

And Jim held him and he held her and pulled her free of the silently rushing mirrors coming in from the desolate seas.

They stepped into sunlight.

Miss Foley, one hand to her bruised cheek, bleated, muttered, then laughed quickly, then gasped, and wiped her eyes.

‘Thank you, Will, Jim, oh thank you. I’d of drowned! I mean. . .oh, Will you were right! My God, did you see her, she’s lost, drowned in there, poor girl!. oh the poor lost sweet. . .save her, oh, we must save her!’

‘Miss Foley, boy, you’re hurting.’ Will firmly removed her fists from clenching the flesh of his arm. ‘There’s no one in there.’

‘I saw her! Please! Look! Save her!’

Will jumped to the maze entrance and stopped. The ticket taker gave him an idle glance of contempt. Will backed away to Miss Foley.

‘I swear, no one went in ahead or after you, ma’am. It’s my fault, I joked about the water, you must’ve got mixed up, lost, and scared. . . .’

But if she heard, she went on biting the back of her hand, her voice the voice of someone come out of the sea after no air, a long dread time deep, no hope of life and now set free.

‘Gone? She’s at the bottom! Poor girl. I knew her. “I know you!” I said when I first saw her a minute ago. I waved, she waved. “Hello!” I ran!—bang! I fell. She fell. A dozen, a thousand of her fell. “Wait!” I said. Oh, she looked so fine, so lovely, so young. But it scared me. “What’re you doing here?” I said. “Why,” I think she said, “I’m real. You’re not!” she laughed, way under water. She ran off in the maze. We must find her! Before—’

Miss Foley, Will’s arm around her, took a last trembling breath and grew strangely quiet.

Jim was staring deep into those cold mirrors, looking for sharks that could not be seen.

‘Miss Foley,’ he said, ‘what did she look like?’

Miss Foley’s voice was pale but calm.

‘The fact is. . .she looked like myself, many, many years ago.

‘I’ll go home now.’ she said.

‘Miss Foley, we’ll—’

‘No. Stay. I’m just fine. Have fun, boys. Enjoy.’

And she walked slowly away, alone, down the midway.

Somewhere a vast animal made water. Ammonia made the wind turn ancient as it passed.

‘I’m leaving!’ said Will.

‘Will,’ said Jim. ‘We’re staying until sundown, boy, dark sundown, and figure it all. You chicken?’

‘No,’ murmured Will. ‘But. . .anybody want to dive back in that maze?’