Ray Bradbury - Something Wicked This Way Comes

‘There he is! There’s Mr Cooger!’

The police, the internes, quickened.

Behind Mr Dark sat the Electric Chair.

In this chair sat a ruined man, last seen strewn wheezing in a collapse of bones and albino wax on the broken carousel. Now he was erected, propped, strapped in this device full of lightning power.

‘That’s him! He was. . .dying.’

The Blimp ascended to his feet.

The Skeleton spun about, tall.

The Wart flea-hopped to the sawdust.

The Dwarf let fall his cards and flirted his now mad, now idiot eyes ahead, around, over.

I know him, thought Will. Oh. God, what they’ve done to him!

The lightning-rod salesman!

That’s who it was. Squeezed tight, smashed small, convulsed by some terrible nature into a clenched fist of humanity. . .

The seller of lightning-rods.

But now two things happened with beautiful promptitude.

Monsieur Guillotine cleared his throat.

And the blade, above, in the canvas sky, like a homing hawk scythed down. Whisper-whisk-slither-thunder-rush-wham!

The dummy head, chop-cut, fell.

And falling, looked like Will’s own head, own face, destroyed.

He wanted, he did not want, to run lift the head turn it to see if it held his own profile. But how could you ever dare do that? Never, never in a billion years, could one empty that wicker basket.

The second happened.

A mechanic, working at the back of an upright glass-fronted coffin booth, released a trip wire. This made a last cog click within the machinery under the sign, MLLE TAROT, THE DUST WITCH. The wax woman’s figure within the glass box nodded her head and fixed the boys with her pointing nose as the boys passed, leading the men. Her cold wax hand brushed the Dust of Destiny on a ledge within the coffin. Her eyes did not see; they were sewn shut with laced black-widow web, dark threads. A waxworks fright, good and proper, she was, and the policemen beamed, viewing her, and strolled on, and beamed at Monsieur Guillotine for his act too, and moving, the police were relaxing now, and seemed not to mind being called late on a jolly venture into a rehearsing world of acrobats and seedy magicians.

‘Gentlemen!’ Mr Dark and his mob of illustrations surged forward on the pine platform, a jungle beneath each arm, an Egyptian viper scrolled on each bicep. ‘Welcome! You’re just in time! We’re rehearsing all our new acts!’ Mr Dark waved and strange monsters gaped their fangs from his chest, a Cyclops with a navel for a squinted moron eye twitched on his stomach as he strode.

Lord, thought Will, is he bringing that crowd with him or is the crowd pulling him along by his skin?

From all the creaked platforms, from the muffled sawdust, Will felt the freaks wheel and fix their eyes, enchanted, as were internes and police, by this illustrated throng of humanity that in one agglomerative move dominated and filled the immediate air and tent sky with silent shootings for attention.

Now part of the wasp-needle tattooed population spoke. It was Mr Dark’s mouth over and above this calligraphic explosion, this railroad accident of monsters in tumult upon his sweating skin. Mr Dark chanted forth the organ tones from his chest. His personal electric blue-green populations trembled, even as the real freaks on the sawdust tent floor trembled, even as, hearing in their most secret marrow, Jim and Will trembled and felt more freak than the freaks themselves.

‘Gentlemen! Boys! We’ve just perfected the new act! You’ll be the first to see!’ cried Mr Dark.

The first policeman, his hand casually nestled to his pistol holster, squinted up at that vast corral of beasts and beings. ‘This boy said—’

‘Said?!’ The Illustrated Man barked a laugh. The freaks leaped in a frolic of shock, then calmed as the carnival owner continued with great ease, patting and soothing his own illustrations, which somehow patted and soothed the freaks. ‘Said? But what did he see? Boys always scare themselves at sideshows, eh? Run like rabbits when the freaks pop out. But tonight, especially tonight!’

The policemen glanced beyond to the Erector-set-papier mache relic constricted in the Electric Chair.

‘Who’s he?’

Will saw fire lick up through Mr Dark’s smoke-clouded eyes, saw him just as quickly snuff it out. ‘The new act. Mr Electrico.’

‘No! Look at the old man! Look!’ Will yelled. The police turned to appraise his demon cry.

‘Don’t you see!’ said Will. ‘He’s dead! Only thing holds him up is the straps!’

The internes gazed up at the great flake of winter flung into and held by the black chair.

Oh gosh, thought Will, we thought it would all be simple. The old man, Mr Cooger, dying, so we bring doctors to save him, so he forgives us, maybe, maybe, the carnival doesn’t hurt us, lets us go. But now this, what’s next? He’s dead! It’s too late! Everyone hates us!

And Will stood among the others feeling the cold air waft down from the unearthed mummy, from the cold mouth and cold eyes locked up in frozen eyelids. Inside the frozen nostrils not a white hair stirred. Mr Cooger’s ribs under his collapsed shirt were stone-rigid and his teeth under his clay lips were dry-ice cold. Put him out at noon and fog would steam off him.

The internes glanced at each other. They nodded.

The policemen, at this, took one step forward.

‘Gentlemen!’

Mr Dark scuttled a tarantula hand up an electric brass switchboard.

‘One hundred thousand volts will now bum Mr Electrico’s body!

‘No don’t let him! Will cried.

The policemen took another step. The internes opened their mouths to speak. Mr Dark flicked a swift demanding glance at Jim. Jim cried:

‘No! It’s all right!’

‘Jim!’

‘Will, yes, it’s okay!’

‘Stand back!’ The spider clutched the switch handle. ‘This man is in a trance! As part of our new act, I have hypnotized him! He could suffer injury if you shocked him from his spell!’

The internes shut their mouths. The police stopped moving.

‘One hundred thousand volts! Yet he will come forth alive, whole in sound mind and body!’

‘No!’

A policeman grabbed Will.

The Illustrated Man and all the men and beasts asprawl in frenzies on him now snatched and banged the switch.

The tent lights snuffed out.

Policemen, internes, boys jumped up their flesh in cobbles and boils.

But now in the swift midnight shuttering, the Electric Chair was a hearth and on it the old man blazed like a blue autumn tree.

The police flinched back, the internes leaned ahead, as did the freaks, blue fire in their eyes.

The Illustrated Man hand glued to switch, looked upon the old old old man.

The old man was flint-rock dead, yes, but electricity alive sheathed over him. It swarmed on his cold shell ears, it flickered in his deep-as-an-abandoned-stone-well nostrils. It crept blue eels of power on his praying-mantis fingers and his grasshopper knees.

‘The Illustrated Man’s lips thrust wide., perhaps he yelled, but no one heard against the immense fry, blast, the slam and sizzle of power which prowled in around over under about man and prisoning chair. Come alive! cried the hum! Come alive! cried the storming colour and light. Come alive! yelled Mr Dark’s mouth, which no one heard but Jim, reading lips, read thunderous loud in his mind, and Will the same, Come alive! willing the old man to five, start up, tick, hum, work juice, summon spit, ungum spirit, melt wax soul. . . .

‘He’s dead!’ But no one heard Will, either, no matter how he pushed against the lightning clamour.

Alive! Mr Dark’s lips licked and savoured. Alive. Come alive. He racheted the switch to the last notch. Live, live! Somewhere, dynamos protested, skirled, shrilled, moaned a bestial energy. The fight turned bottle-green. Dead dead, thought Will. But live alive! cried machines, cried flame and fire, cried mouths of crowds of livid beasts on illustrated flesh.