“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.
So the old man’s hair stood up in prickling fumes. Sparks, bled from his fingernails, dripped seething spatters on pine planks. Green simmerings wove shuttles through dead eyelids.
The Illustrated Man bent violently above the old old dead dead thing, his prides of beasts drowned deep in sweat, his right hand thrust in hammering demand upon the air: Live, live.
And the old man came alive.
Will Yelled himself hoarse.
And no one heard.
For now, very slowly, as if roused by thunder, as if the electric fire were new dawn, one dead eyelid peeled itself slowly open.
The freaks gaped.
A long way off in the storm, Jim was yelling, too, for Will had his elbow tight and felt the yell pouring out through the bones, as the old man’s lips fell apart and frightful sizzles zigzagged between lips and threaded teeth.
The Illustrated Man cut the power to a whine. Then, turning, he fell to his knees, and put out his hand .
Away off up there on the platform, there was the faintest stir as of an autumn leaf beneath the old man’s shirt.
The freaks exhaled.
The old old man sighed.
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?
“…lungs so…so…so…” someone whispered.
The Dust Witch, back in her glass box?
Inhale. The freaks breathed. Exhale. Their shoulders slumped.
The old old man’s lips trembled.
“…heart beat…one…two…so…so…”
The Witch again? Will feared to look.
A vein ticked a small watch in the old man’s throat.
Very slowly now that right eye of the old man opened full wide, fixed, stared like a broken camera. It was like looking through a hole in space, with no bottom forever. He grew warmer.