Read Something Wicked This Way Comes for Free Online Page A

own sick-sweet candy wind, down the hill, with the boys pursuing., the air so cold they ate ice cream with each breath.
        They climbed a last rise to look down.
        'Boy,' whispered Jim.
        The train had pulled off into Rolfe's moon meadow, so-called because town couples came out to see the moon rise here over a land so wide, so long, it was like an inland sea, filled with grass in spring., or hay in late, summer or snow  in winter, it was fine walking here along its crisp shore with the moon coming up to tremble in its tides.
        Well, the carnival train was crouched there now in the autumn grass on the old spur near the Woods and the boys crept and lay down under a bush, waiting.
        'It's so quiet, whispered Will.
        The train just stood in the middle of the dry autumn field, no one in the locomotive no one in the tender, no one in any of the cars behind, all black under the moon, and just the small sounds of its metal cooling, ticking on the rails.
        "Ssst,' said Jim. 'I feel them moving in there.'
        Will felt the cat-fuzz on his body bramble up by the thousands.
        'You think they mind us watching?'
        'Maybe,' said Jim, happily.
        'Then why the noisy calliope?'
        "When I figure that,' Jim said, 'I'll tell you. Look!'
        Whisper.
        As if exhaling itself straight down from the sky, a vast moss-green balloon touched at the moon.
        It hovered two hundred yards above and away, quietly riding the wind.
        'The basket under the balloon, someone in it!'
        But then a tall man stepped down from the train caboose platform like a captain assaying the tidal weathers of this inland sea. All dark suit, shadow-faced, he waded to the centre of the meadow, his shirt as black as the gloved hands he now stretched to the sky.
        He gestured, once.
        And the train came to life.
        At first a head lifted in one window, then an arm, then another head like a puppet in a marionette theatre. Suddenly two men in black were carrying a dark tent-pole out across the hissing grass.
        It was the silence that made Will pull back, even as Jim leaned forward eyes moon-bright.
        A carnival should be all growls, roars like, timberlands stacked, bundled, rolled and crashed, great explosions of lion dust, men ablaze with working anger, pop bottles jangling, horse buckles shivering, engines and elephants in full stampede through rains of sweat while zebras neighed and trembled like cage trapped in cage.
        But this was like old movies, the silent theatre haunted with black-and-white ghosts, silvery mouth opening to let moon-light smoke out, gestures made in silence so hushed you could hear the wind fizz the hair on your cheeks. More shadows rustled from the train, passing the animal cages where darkness prowled with unlit eyes and the calliope stood mute save for the faintest idiot tune the breeze piped wandering up the flues.
        The ringmaster stood in the middle of the land. The balloon like a vast mouldy green cheese stood fixed to the sky. Then darkness came.
        The last thing Will saw was the balloon swooping down, as clouds covered the moon.
        In the night he felt the men rush to unseen tasks. He sensed the balloon, like a great fat spider, fiddling with the lines and poles, rearing a tapestry in the sky.
        The clouds arose. The balloon sifted up.
        In the meadow stood the skeleton main poles and wires of the main tent, waiting for its canvas skin.
        More clouds poured over the white moon. Shadowed, Will shivered. He heard Jim crawling forward, seized his ankle, felt him stiffen.
        'Wait! ' said Will. 'They're bringing out the canvas l'
        'No,' said Jim. 'Oh, no. . .'
        For somehow instead, they both knew, the wires high-flung on the poles were catching swift clouds, ripping them free from the wind in streamers which, stitched and sewn by some great monster shadow, made canvas and more canvas as the tent took