And yet farther back came the janitor-father, now slowing himself with remembrances of age, now pacing swiftly young with thoughts of the brief first encounter and victory, carrying his left hand patted to his chest, chewing medicines as he went.
At the midway rim, Mr. Dark looked back as if an inner voice had named the stragglers in his widely separated maneuver. But the voice failed, he was unsure. He nodded briskly, and Dwarf, Skeleton, Jim, Will thrust through the crowd.
Jim felt the river of bright people wash by all around but not touching. Will heard waterfall laughter here, there, and him walking through the downpour. An explosion of fireflies blossomed on the sky; the ferris wheel, exultant as a titanic fireworks, dilated above them.
Then they were at the Mirror Maze and sidling, coliding, bumping, careening through the unfolded ice ponds where stricken spider-stung boys much like themselves appeared, vanished a thousand times over.
That’s me! thought Jim.
But I can’t help me, thought Will, no matter how many of me there are!
And crowd of boys, plus crowd of reflected Mr. Dark’s illustrations, for he had taken off his coat and shirt now, crammed and crushed through to the Waxworks at the end of the maze.
”Sit,” said Mr. Dark. “Stay.”
Among the wax figures of murdered, gunshot, guillotined, garroted men and women the two boys sat like Egyptian cats, unblinked, untwitched, unswallowing.
Some late visitors passed through, laughing. They commented on all the wax figures.
They did not notice the thin line of saliva crept from the comer of one “wax” boy’s mouth.
They did not see how bright was the second “wax” boy’s stare, which suddenly brimmed and ran clear water down his cheek.
Outside, the Witch limped in through back alleys of rope and peg between the tents.
”Ladies and gentlemen!”
The last crowd of the night, three or four hundred strong, turned as a body.
The Illustrated Man, stripped to the waist, all nightmare viper, sabertooth, libidinous ape, clotted vulture, all salmon-sulphur sky rose up with annunciations:
”The last free event this evening! Come one! Come all!”
The crowd surged toward the main platform outside the freak tent, where stood Dwarf, Skeleton, and Mr. Dark.
”The Most Amazingly Dangerous, ofttimes Fatal—World Famous BULLET TRICK!”
The crowd gasped with pleasure.
”The rifles, if you please!”
The Thin One cracked wide a racked display of bright artillery.
The Witch, hurrying up, froze when Mr. Dark cried: ““And here, our death-defier, the bullet-catcher who will stake her life—Mademoiselle Tarot!”
The Witch shook her head, bleated, but Dark’s hand swept down to swing her like a child to the platform, still protesting, which gave Dark pause, but, in front of everyone now, he went on:
”A volunteer, please, to fire the rifle!”
The crowd rumbled softly, daring itself to speak up.
Mr. Dark’s mouth barely moved. Under his breath he asked, “Is the clock stopped?”
”Not,” she whined, “stopped.”
”No?” he almost burst out.
He burnt her with his eyes, then turned to the audience and let his mouth finish the spiel, his fingers rapping over the rifles.
”Volunteers, please!”
”Stop the act,” the Witch cried softly, wringing, her hands.
”It goes on, damn you, worse than double-damn you” he whispered, whistled fiercely.
Secretly, Dark gathered a pinch of flesh on his wrist, the illustration of a black-nun blind woman, which he bit with his fingernails.
The Witch spasmed, seized her breast, groaned, ground her teeth. “Mercy!” she hissed, half aloud.
Silence from the crowd.
Mr. Dark nodded swiftly.
”Since there are no volunteers—” He scraped his illustrated wrist. The Witch shuddered. ““We will cancel our last act and—”
”Here! A volunteer!”
The crowd turned.
Mr. Dark recoiled., then asked: “Where?”“
”Here.”
Far out at the edge of the crowd, a hand lifted, a path opened.
Mr. Dark could see very clearly the man standing there, alone.
Charles Halloway, citizen, father, introspective husband, night-wanderer, and janitor of the town library.
47
The crowd’s appreciative clamor faded.
Charles Halloway did not move.
He let the path grow leading down to the platform.
He could not see the expression on the faces of the freaks standing up there. His eyes swept the crowd and found the Mirror Maze, the empty oblivion which beckoned with ten times a thousand million light years of reflections, counterreflections,, reversed and double-reversed, plunging deep to nothing, face-falling to nothing, stomach-dropping away to yet more sickening plummets of nothing.