RAY BRADBURY Something Wicked This Way Comes GRANADA London Toronto Sydney New York
P ublished by Granada Publishing Limited 1977 Reprinted 1983 ISBN 0 586 04357 8 First published in Great Britain by Hart-Davis, MacGibbon 1963 Copyright © Ray Bradbury 1963 Made and printed in Great Britain by Collins, Glasgow This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser Granada ® Granada Publishing ®
WITH GRATITUDE TO JENET JOHNSON who taught me how to write the short story AND TO SNOW LONGLEY HOUSH who taught me poetry at Los Angeles High School a long time ago AND TO JACKGUSS who helped with this novel not so long ago
Contents PROLOGUE I.ARRIVALS II.PURSUITS III.DEPARTURES
Man is in love, and loves what vanishes. W.B. YEATS They sleep not, except they have done mischief; And their sleep is taken away, unless they cause some to fall For they eat the bread of wickedness, And they drink the wine of violence. PROVERBS 4: 16-17 I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing. STUBB in Moby Dick
PROLOGUE First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare. But there be bad abd good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: schoool begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September's a billion years away. But you take October, now. School's been on a month and you're riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you'll dump on old man Prickett's porch, or the hairy-ape costume you'll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it's around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash grey at twilight, it seems Hallowe'en will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners. But one strange wild dark long year, Hallowe'en came early. One year Hallowe'en came on October 24, three hours after midnight. At that time, James Nightshade of 97 Oak Street was thirteen years, eleven months, twenty- three days old. Next door, William Halloway was thirteen years, eleven months and twenty-four days old. Both touched toward fourteen; it almost trembled in their hands. And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young any more. . .
I Arrivals
1 The seller of lightning-rods arrived just ahead of the storm. He came along the street of Green Town, Illinois, in the late cloudy October day, sneaking glances over his shoulder. Somewhere not so far back, vast lightnings stomped the earth. Somewhere, a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth could not be denied.
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