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…”
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.
His heart heard. Like a tight fist it began to relax, a finger at a time.
”Stop all for good, forget all for good,” she whispered.
Well why not?
”Slower … slowest.”
His heart stumbled.
And then for no reason, save perhaps for a last look around, because he did want to get rid of the pain, and sleep was the way to do that … Charles Halloway opened his eyes.
He saw the Witch.
He saw her fingers working at the air, his face, his body, the heart within his body, and the soul within the heart. Her swamp breath flooded him while, with immense curiosity, he watched the poisonous drizzle from her lips, counted the folds in her stitch-wrinkled eyes, the Gila monster neck, the mummy-linen ears, the dry-rivulet riversand brow. Never in his life had he focused so nearly to a person, as if she were a puzzle, which once touched together might show life’s greatest secret. The solution was in her, it would all spring clear this moment, no, the next, no, the next, watch her scorpion fingers! hear her chant as she diddled the air, yes, diddled was it, tickling, tickling, “Slow!” she whispered. “Slow!” And his obedient heart pulled rein. Diddle-tickle went her fingers.
Charles Halloway snorted. Faintly, he giggled.
He caught this. Why? Why am I … gigling … at such a time!?
The Witch pulled back the merest quarter inch as if some strange but hidden electric light socket, touched with wet whorl, gave shock.
Charles Halloway saw but did not see her flinch, sensed but seemed in no way to consider her withdrawal, for almost immediately, seizing the initiative, she flung herself forward, not touching, but mutely gesticulating at his chest as one might try to spell an antique clock pendulum.