Jim’s hand was a warm hand, a familiar, a good hand. It closed on his. He gripped it yelling.

“Jim, please!”

But still they spun on the journey, Jim borne, Will dragged in a jog-crazy-trot.

“Please!”

Will jerked. Jim jerked. Trapped by Jim, Will’s hand was shot with July heat. It went, like a kept animal, held and fondled by Jim, along, around, into older times. So his hand, far-traveling, would be alien to himself, knowing things by night that he himself, abed, might only guess. Fourteen-year boy, fifteen-year hand! Jim had it, yes! cramped it tight, would not let go! And Jim’s face, was it older, from the journey round? Was he fifteen now, going on sixteen!?

Will pulled. Jim pulled opposite.

Will fell on the machine.

Both rode the night.

All of Will rode with friend Jim now.

“Jim! Dad!”

How easy it might be to just stand, ride, go round with Jim, if he couldn’t pull Jim off, just leave him on and, dear pals, travel! The juices of his body swam, binding his sight, they drummed his ears, shot electric jolts through his loins…

Jim shouted. Will shouted.

They traveled half a year in slithering orchard-warm dark before Will seized Jim’s arm tight and dared to leap from so much promise, so many fine tall-growing years, flail out, off, down, pull Jim with. But Jim could not let go the pole, could not give up the ride.

“Will!”

Jim, half between machine and friend, one hand on each, screamed.

It was like a great tearing of cloth or flesh.

Jim’s eyes went blind as a statue’s.

The carousel whirled.

Jim screamed, fell, spun crazily, on the air.

Will tried to break his fall, but Jim struck earth rolling. He lay, silent.

Charles Halloway hit the carousel control switch. Empty, the machine slowed. Its horses paced themselves down from their trot toward some far midsummer night.

Together, Charles Halloway and his son knelt by Jim to touch his wrist, to put ear to his chest. Jim’s eyes, skinned white, were fixed on the stars.

“Oh, God,” cried Will. “Is he dead?”

Chapter 52

“Dead…?”

Will’s father moved his hand over that cold face, the cold chest.

“I don’t feel…”

A long way off, someone cried for help.

They looked up.

A boy came running down the midway bumping into the ticket booths, falling over tent ropes, looking back over his shoulder.

“Help! He’s after me!” the boy cried. “The terrible man! The terrible man! I want to go home!”

The boy flung himself forward, and grabbed at Will’s father.

“Oh, help, I’m lost, I don’t like it. Take me home. That man with the tattoos!”

“Mr. Dark!” gasped Will.

“Yes!” gibbered the boy. “He’s down that way! Oh, stop him!”

“Will—” his father rose—“take care of Jim. Artificial respiration. All right, boy.”

The boy trotted off. “This way!”

Following, Charles Halloway watched the distraught boy who led him; observed his head, his frame, the way his pelvis hung from his spine.

“Boy,” he said, by the shadowed merry-go-round, twenty feet around from where Will bent to Jim. “What’s your name?”

“No time!” cried the boy. “Jed. Quick, quick!”

Charles Halloway stopped.

“Jed,” he said. The boy no longer moved, but turned, chafing his elbows. “How old are you, Jed?”

“Nine!” said the boy. “My gosh, this is no time! We—”

“This is a fine time, Jed,” said Charles Halloway. “Only nine? So young. I was never that young.”

“Holy cow!” shouted the boy, angrily.

“Or unholy something,” said the man, and reached out. The boy backed away. “You’re only afraid of one man, Jed. Me.”

“You?” The boy still backed off. “Cut it out! Why, why?”

“Because, sometimes good has weapons and evil none. Sometimes tricks fail. Sometimes people can’t be picked off, led to deadfalls. No divide-and-conquer tonight, Jed. Where were you taking me, Jed? To some lion’s cage you got fixed and ready? To some side show, like the mirrors? To someone like the Witch? What, what, Jed, what? Let’s just roll up your right shirt sleeve, shall we, Jed?”

The great moonstone eyes flashed at Charles Halloway.

The boy leaped back, but not before the man had leaped with him, seized his arm, grabbed the back of his shirt and instead of simply rolling up the sleeve as first suggested, tore the entire shirt off the boy’s body.

“Why, yes, Jed,” said Charles Halloway, almost quietly. “Just as I thought.”

“You, you, you, you!”

“Yes, Jed, me. But especially you, look at you.”

And look he did.

For there, on the back of the small boy’s hand, on the fingers, and up along the wrist scrambled blue serpents, blue-venomed snake eyes, blue scorpions scuttling about blue shark maws which gaped eternally hungry to feed upon all the freaks crammed and stung-sewn cheek by jowl, skin to skin, flesh to flesh all up and down the chest, the tiny torso, and tucked in the secret gathering places on this small small very small body, this cold and now shocked and trembling body.

“Why, Jed, that’s fine artwork, that is.”

“You!” The boy struck.

“Yes, still me.” Charles Halloway took the blow in the face and clamped a vise, on the boy.

“No!”

“Oh, yes,” said Charles Halloway, using just his good right hand, his ruined left hand hanging limp. “Yes, Jed, jump, squirm, go ahead. It was a fine idea. Get me off alone, fix me, then go back and get Will. And when the police come, why, you’re just a boy nine or ten and the carnival, oh, no, it’s not yours, doesn’t belong to you. Stay here, Jed. Why you trying to get out from under my arm? The police look and the owners of the show have vanished, isn’t that it, Jed? A fine escape.”

“You can’t hurt me!” the boy shrieked.

“Funny,” said Charles Halloway. “I think I can.”

He pressed the boy, almost lovingly, close, very close.

“Murder!” wailed the boy. “Murder.”

“I’m not going to murder you, Jed, Mr. Dark, whoever, whatever you are. You’re going to murder yourself because you can’t stand being near people like me, not this close, close, not this long.”

“Evil!” groaned the boy, writhing. “You’re evil!”

“Evil?” Will’s father laughed, which made the boy, wasp-stung and brambled by the sound, jerk all the more violently. “Evil?” The man’s hands were flypaper fastened to the small bones. “Strange hearing that from you, Jed. So it must seem. Good to evil seems evil. So I will do only good to you, Jed. I will simply hold you and watch you poison yourself. I will do good to you, Jed, Mr. Dark, Mr. Proprietor, boy, until you tell what’s wrong with Jim. Wake him up. Let him free. Give him life!”

“Can’t… can’t…” The boy’s voice fell down a well inside his body, fading away, away “can’t…”

“You mean you won’t?”

“…can’t…”

“All right, boy, all right, then here and here and this and this…”

They looked like father and son long apart, passionately met, embraced, yet more embraced, as the man lifted his wounded hand to gently touch the stricken face as the crowd, the teem, of illustrations shivered and flew now this way and that in microscopic forays quickly abandoned. The boy’s eyes swiveled wildly, fixed upon the manes mouth. He saw there the strange and somehow lovely smile once flung as beatification to the Witch.

He gathered the boy somewhat closer and thought, Evil has only the power that we give it. I give you nothing. I take back. Starve. Starve. Starve.

The two matchstick lights in the boy’s affrighted eyes blew out.

The boy, and his stricken and bruised conclave of monsters, his felt but half-seen crowd, fell to earth.

There should have been a roar like a mountain slid to ruin.

But there was only a rustle, like a Japanese paper lantern dropped in the dust.