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A Passion For Horror
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By
Ray Bradbury Something Wicked This Way Comes is set in the small town of Green Town Illinois where two boys, Will Halloway and Jim Nightshade, live next door to each other. Will and Jim are best friends and they have a lot more in common than just living side by side on the same street. The two boys were born within just a couple of minutes of each other, and yet a day apart. Will was born at one minute before midnight on October thirtieth and Jim was born one minute after midnight, which made it October thirty-first. The boys are very proud of this fact and the first chapter of the book finds them sharing the story with a seller of lightning rods, who has turned up in town, just ahead of the storm, and is convinced that one the boy’s homes will be struck by lightning. It might sound like a sales tactic, but the salesman obviously believes his own spiel because when he hears that neither of the boys has any money and that their parents are not home, he gives Jim a lightning rod for free, after a closer inspection of the two houses reveals to him that it is Jim’s house and not Will’s that is on the lightning’s hit-list. When the seller of lightning rods passes through Green Town the date is October twenty-third, but during the early hours of October twenty-fourth something far more dangerous than lightning arrives in town. Something Wicked. Lightning might be able to destroy the body, but Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show brings with it an evil that can endanger the very soul. The
Carnival arrives by train at three A.M. Will and Jim are asleep at the
time, but when they hear the strange calliope music carried on the wind
both boys wake and lean out their windows to see the where it is coming
from. Wide awake now, they are soon running over night time lawns and
through dark streets and on their way to Rolfe’s
Moon Meadow to
watch the carnival being set up. It proves to be a disquieting
experience for the two boys because the tents go up in silence and it
happens very fast: a cloud blows over the moon and by the time the
moonlight bursts free the poles are all up. Another cloud and then the
moonlight reveals...
‘Tents that
rippled like black rain on their poles.’
Someone else is also awake when the carnival arrives, but he is nowhere near Rolf’s Moon Meadow. Will’s father Charles is working alone in the library. He is the caretaker there, but it is not unusual for him to be amongst the books in the middle of the night. Charles does not sleep well and often, sneaks back to work when he believes that his wife and son are asleep. He is a lot older than his wife and was past his prime when they had Will. Charles might be an old man, but he is probably not as old as he feels. That is his weakness, Charles feels like an old man, and it is a weakness that the carnival later tries to use against him. Charles has a lot of strengths as well though. One of which is his mind. He is a thinking man and there is an awful lot more to him than meets the eye. There is a lot more to Mr Dark than meets the eye as well. Mr Dark is not just the co-owner of Cooger and Dark’s he is also one the star attractions -- The Illustrated Man –- and beneath all of that tattooed skin resides an evil that has walked the centuries. Something Wicked This Way Comes first saw print in 1962 and is based on a short story that Ray Bradbury had written many years before, called The BlackFerris. The story had never been published and he later used it for the basis of a screenplay that he hoped Gene Kelly might be interested in. Kelly was more than interested, he loved it and wanted to direct and produce it. Unfortunately, he could not find the money to do so and had to pass on the project. With his screenplay dead in the water, Bradbury spent five years re-working it as a novel. And what a novel it is! Something Wicked This Way Comes is one of the best books that I have ever read. There is a real magic to the story and Ray Bradbury seems to be very in touch with what it is like to be boy, because of this the two boys in the story, Jim and Will, are very believable, though very different. Jim is a lot more impulsive than Will and so it is Will who keeps him out of getting into too much trouble. I liked all of the characters in this book, even the evil ones like The Dust Witch (wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her), but there is a lot more to this tale than just the characters. If you should decide to read Something Wicked you will find a mirror maze that reveals a lot more than just a distorted reflection, and a carousel that offers something very tempting. Ride it one way and you get older. Ride it the other way and the aging process is thrown into reverse along with the gears, but everything has its price and sometimes even a free ride can cost you dear. |
