Shrieks and yells.

The Illustrated Man heaved.

Twisting, he fell-jumped to the floor.

The boys, kicking, yelling, fell with him. They landed on their feet, toppled, collapsed, to be held, reared, set right, fistfuls of their shirts in Mr. Dark's fists.

'Jim!' he said. 'Will! What were you doing up there, boys? Surely not reading?'

'Dad!'

'Mr. Halloway!'

Will's father stepped from the dark.

The Illustrated Man rearranged the boys tenderly under one arm like kindling, then gazed with genteel curiosity at Charles Halloway and reached for him. Will's father struck one blow before his left hand was seized, held, squeezed. As the boys watched, shouting, they saw Charles Halloway gasp and fall to one knee.

Mr. Dark squeezed that left hand harder and, doing this, slowly, certainly, pressured the boys with his other arm, crushing their ribs so air gushed from their mouths.

Night spiraled in fiery whorls like great thumbprints inside Will's eyes.

Will's father, groaning, sank to both knees, flailing his right arm.

'Damn you!'

'But,' said the carnival owner quietly, 'I am already.'

'Damn you, damn you!'

'Not words, old man,' said Mr. Dark. 'Not words in books or words you say, but real thoughts, real actions, quick thought, quick action, win the day. So!'

He gave one last mighty clench of his fist.

The boys heard Charles Halloway's finger bones crack. He gave a last cry and fell senseless.

In one motion like a solemn pavane, the Illustrated Man rounded the stacks, the boys, kicking books from shelves, under his arms.

Will, feeling walls, books, floors fly by, foolishly thought, pressed close... Why, why, Mr. Dark smells like... calliope steam!

Both boys were dropped suddenly. Before they could move or regain their breath, each was gripped by the hair on their head and roused marionettes-wise to face a window, a street.

'Boys, you read Dickens?' Mr. Dark whispered.

Critics hate his coincidences. But we know, don't we? Life's all coincidence. Turn death and happenstance flakes off him like fleas from a killed ox. Look!'

Both boys writhed in the iron-maiden clutch of hungry saurians and bristly apes.

Will did not know whether to weep with joy or new despair.

Below, across the avenue, passing from church going home, was his mother and Jim's mother.

Not on the carousel, not old, crazy, dead, in jail, but freshly out in the good October air. She had been not a hundred yards away in church during all the last five minutes!

Mom! screamed Will, against the hand which, anticipating his cry, clamped tight to his mouth..

'Mom,' crooned Mr. Dark, mockingly. 'Come save me!'

No, thought Will, save yourself yourself, run!

But his mother and Jim's mother simply strolled content, from the warm church through town.

Mom! screamed Will again, and some small muffled bleat of it escaped the sweaty paw.

Will's mother, a thousand miles away over on that side-walk, paused.

She couldn't couldn't have heard! thought Will. Yet - have heard! thought Will. Yet - She looked over at the library.

'Good,' sighed Mr. Dark. 'Excellent, fine.'

Here! thought Will. See us, Mom! Run call the police!

'Why doesn't she look at this window?' asked Mr. Dark quietly. 'And see us three standing as for a portrait. Look over. Then, come running. We'll let her in.'

Will strangled a sob. No, no.

His mother's gaze trailed from the front entrance to the first-floor windows.

'Here,' said Mr. Dark. 'Second floor. A proper coincidence, let's make it proper.'

Now Jim's mother was talking. Both women stood together at the curb.

No, thought Will, oh, no.

And the women turned and went away into the Sunday-night town.

Will felt the Illustrated Man slump the tiniest bit.

'Not much of a coincidence, no crisis, no one lost or saved. Pity. Well!'

Dragging the boys' feet, he glided down to open the front door.

Someone waited in the shadows.

A lizard hand scurried cold on Will's chin.

'Halloway,' husked the Witch's voice.

A chameleon perched on Jim's nose.

'Nightshade,' whisked the dry-broom voice.

Behind her stood the Dwarf and the Skeleton, silent, shifting, apprehensive.

Obedient to the occasion, the boys would have given their best stored yells air, but again, on the instant recognizing their need, the Illustrated Man trapped the sound before it could issue forth, then nodded curtly to the old dust woman.

The Witch toppled forward with her seamed black wax sewn-shut iguana eyelids and her great proboscis with the nostrils caked like tobacco-blackened pipe bowls, her fingers tracing, weaving a silent plinth of symbols on the mind.

The boys stared.

Her fingernails fluttered, darted, feathered cold winter-water air. Her pickled green froes breath crawled their flesh in pimples as she sang softly, mewing, humming, glistering her babes, her boys, her friends of the slick snail-tracked roof, the straight-flung arrow, the stricken and sky-drowned balloon.

'Darning-needle dragonfly, sew up these mouths so they not speak!'

Touch, sew, touch, sew her thumbnail stabbed, punched, drew, stabbed, punched, drew along their lower, upper lips until they were, thread-pouch shut with invisible read.

'Darning needle-dragonfly, sew up these ears, so they not hear!'

Cold sand funneled Will's ears, burying her voice. Muffled, far away, fading, she chanted on with a rustle, tick, tickle, tap, flourish of caliper hands.

Moss grew in Jim's ears, swiftly sealing him deep.

'Darning needle-dragonfly, sew up these eyes so they not see!'

Her white-hot fingerprints rolled back their stricken eyeballs to throw the lids down with bangs like great tin doors slammed shut.

Will saw a billion flashbulbs explode, then suck to darkness while the unseen darning-needle insect out beyond somewhere pranced and fizzed like insect drawn to sun-warmed honeypot, as closeted voice stitched off their senses forever and a day beyond.

'Darning-needle dragonfly, have done with eye, ear, lip and tooth, finish hem, sew dark, mound dust, heap with slumber sleep, now tie all knots ever so neat, pump silence, in blood like sand in river deep. So. So.'

The Witch, somewhere outside the boys, lowered her hands.

The boys stood silent. The Illustrated Man took his embrace from them and stepped back.

The woman from the Dust sniffed at her twin triumphs, ran her hand a last loving time over her statues.

The Dwarf toddled madly about in the boys' shadows, nibbling daintily at their fingernails, softly calling their names.

The Illustrated Man nodded toward the library. 'The janitor's clock. Stop it.'

The Witch, mouth wide, savoring doom, wandered off into the marble quarry.

Mr. Dark said: 'Left, right. One, two.'

The boys walked down the steps, the Dwarf at Jim's side, the Skeleton at Will's.

Serene as death, the Illustrated Man followed.

44

Somewhere near, Charles Halloway's hand lay in a white-hot furnace, melted to sheer nerve and pain. He opened his eyes. At the same moment he heard a great breath as the front door swung shut and a woman's voice came singing in the hall: 'Old man, old man, old man, old man...?'

Where his left hand should be was this swelled blood pudding which pulsed with such ecstasies of pain it fed forth his life, his will, his whole attention. He tried to sit up, but the pain hammerblowed him down again 'Old man...?'

Not old! Fifty-four's not old, he thought wildly.

And here she came on the worn stone floors, her moth-fingers tapping, scanning braille book titles, as her nostrils siphoned the shadows.

Charles Halloway hunched and crawled, hunched and crawled, toward the nearest stack, cramming pain back with his tongue. He must climb out of reach, climb where books might be weapons flung down upon any night-crawling pursuer...

'Old man, hear you breathing..

She on his tide, let her body be summoned by every sibilant hiss of his pain.

'Old man feel your hurt hurt...'

If he could fling the hand, the pain, out the window where it might lie beating like a heart, summoning her away, tricked, to go seek this awful fire. Bent in the street, he imagined her brisking her palms at this throb, an abandoned chunk of delirium.

But no the hand stayed, glowed, poisoned the air, hurrying the strange nun-Gypsy's tread as she gasped her avaricious mouth most ardently.

'Damn you!' he cried. 'Get it over with! I'm here!'

So the Witch wheeled swift as a black clothes dummy on rubber rollers and swayed over him.

He did not even look at her. Such weights and pressures of despair and exertion fought for his attention, he could only free his eyes to watch the inside of his lids upon which multiple and ever changing looms of terror jigged and gamboled.

'Very simple.' The whisper bent low. 'Stop the heart!'

Why not, he thought, vaguely.

'Slow,' she murmured.

Yes, he thought.

'Slow, very slow.'

His heart, once bolting, now fell away to a strange, ease, disquiet, then quiet, then ease.

'Much more slow, slow...' she suggested.

Tired, yes, you hear that, heart? he wondered.