Dark Carnival, Ray Bradbury
Dark Carnival
Contents
The Homecoming
Skeleton
The Jar
The Lake
The Tombstone
The Smiling People
The Emissary
The Traveller
The Small Assassin
The Crowd
The Handler
Let’s Play ‘Poison’
Uncle Einar
The Wind
The Night
There Was An Old Woman
The Dead Man
The Man Upstairs
Cistern
The Next In Line
The Homecoming
‘HERE they come,’ said Cecy, lying there flat in her bed.
‘Where are they?’ cried Timothy from the doorway.
‘Some of them are over Europe, some over Asia, some of them over the Islands, some over South America!’ said Cecy, her eyes closed, the lashes long, brown, and quivering, her mouth opening to let the words whisper out swiftly.
Timothy came forward upon the bare plankings of the upstairs room. ‘Who are they?’
‘Uncle Einar and Uncle Fry, and there’s Cousin William, and I see Frulda and Helgar and Aunt Morgianna, and Cousin Vivian, and I see Uncle Johann! They’re all coming fast.’
‘Are they up in the sky?’ cried Timothy, his little grey eyes flashing. Standing by the bed, he looked no more than his fourteen years. The wind blew outside, the house was dark and lit only by starlight.
‘They’re coming through the air and travelling along the ground, in many forms,’ said Cecy, in her sleeping. She did not move on the bed; she thought inward upon herself and told what she saw. ‘I see a wolf-like thing coming over a dark river — at the shallows — just above a waterfall, the starlight shining up his pelt. I see a brown oak leaf blowing far up in the sky. I see a small bat flying. I see many other things, running under the forest trees and slipping through the highest branches; and they’re all coming this way!’
‘Will they be here by tomorrow night?’ Timothy clutched the bedclothes. The spider on his lapel swung like a black pendulum, excitedly dancing. He leaned over his sister. ‘Will they all be here in time for the Homecoming?’
‘Yes, yes, Timothy, yes,’ sighed Cecy. She stiffened. ‘Ask no more of me. Go away now. Let me travel in the places I like best.’
‘Thanks, Cecy,’ he said. Out in the hall, he ran to his room. He hurriedly made his bed. He had just awakened a few minutes ago, at sunset, and as the first stars had risen, he had gone to let his excitement about the party run with Cecy. Now she slept so quietly there was not a sound.
The spider hung on a silvery lasso about his slender neck as he washed his face. ‘Just think, Spid, tomorrow night is All Hallows’ Eve!’
He lifted his face and looked into the mirror. His was the only mirror allowed in the house. It was his mother’s concession to his ‘illness.’ Oh, if only he were not so afflicted! He opened his mouth, surveyed the poor, inadequate teeth nature had given him. No more than so many bean kernels, round, soft and pale in his jaws. The canines were nothing at all! Some of the high spirit died in him.
It was now totally dark and he lit a candle to see by. He felt exhausted. This past week the whole family had lived in the fashion of the old country. Sleeping by day, rousing at sunset to move about. There were blue hollows under his eyes. ‘Spid, I’m no good,’ he said quietly, to the little creature. ‘Can’t even get used to sleeping days like the others.’
He took up the candle. Oh, to have strong teeth, with incisors like spikes. Or strong hands, even; or a strong mind. To have the power to send one’s mind out, free, as Cecy did, while lying on her soft bed, sleeping. But, no; he was the imperfect one, the sick one. He was even — he shivered and drew the candle flame closer — afraid of the dark. His brothers snorted at him. Bion and Leonard and Sam.
They laughed because he slept in a bed. With Cecy it was different; her bed was part of her comfort for the composure necessary to send her mind abroad to hunt. But Timothy, did he sleep in the wonderful polished boxes like the others? He did not! Mother allowed him his own bed, his own room, his own mirror! No wonder the family skirted him like a holy man’s crucifix. If only the wings would sprout from his shoulder blades. He bared his back, stared at it. He sighed again. No chance. Never.
Downstairs were exciting and mysterious sounds. The slithering sound of black crêpe going up in all the halls and on the ceilings and doors. The smell of burning black tapers crept up the banistered stairwell.
Mother’s voice, high and firm. Father’s voice, echoing from the damp cellar. Bion walking from outside the old country house, lugging vast two-gallon jugs of liquid that gurgled as he moved.
‘I’ve just got to go to the party, Spid,’ said Timothy. The spider whirled at the end of its silk, and Timothy felt alone. He would polish cases, fetch toadstools and spiders, hang crêpe, but when the party started he’d be ignored. The less seen or said of the imperfect son the better.
All through the house below, Laura ran. ‘The Homecoming!’ she shouted gaily. ‘The Homecoming!’ her footsteps everywhere at once.
Timothy passed Cecy’s room again, and she slept soundly. Once in a great while she went below stairs. Mostly she stayed in bed. Lovely Cecy. He felt like asking her, ‘Where are you now, Cecy? And in whom? And what’s happening? Are you beyond the hills? and what goes on there?’ But he walked on to Ellen’s room instead.
Ellen sat at her desk, sorting out all kinds of blonde, red and dark hair and little clips of fingernail gathered from her manicurist job at the Mellin Town beauty parlour five miles over. A sturdy mahogany case lay in one corner with her name on it.
‘Go away,’ she said, not even looking up at him. ‘I can’t work with you gawking.’
‘All Hallows’ Eve, Ellen!’ he said, trying to be friendly. ‘Just think!’
‘Huh!’ She put fingernail clippings in small white sacks and labelled them. ‘What’s it mean to you? It’ll scare the hell out of you. Go back to bed.’
His cheeks burned. ‘I’m needed to polish and work and help serve.’
‘If you don’t go, you’ll find a dozen raw oysters in your bed tomorrow,’ said Ellen, matter-of-factly. ‘Goodbye, Timothy.’
In his anger, rushing downstairs, he bumped into Laura.
‘Watch where you’re going!’ she shrieked from clenched teeth, out of which stuck tiny flat-headed nails. She hammered them into doors and upon them hung — what a joke! — imitation wolfsbane! ‘Won’t this give Uncle Einar a fright!’ she shouted to everybody.
She swept away. He ran to the open cellar door, smelled the channel of moist earthy air rising from below. ‘Father?’
‘It’s about time,’ Father shouted up the steps. ‘Hurry down, or they’ll be here before we’re ready!’
Timothy hesitated only long enough to hear the million other house sounds. Brothers came and went like trains in a station, talking and arguing. If you stood in one spot long enough the entire household passed with their pale hands full of things. Leonard with his little black medical case, Samuel with his large, dusty, ebon-bound book under his arm, bearing more black crêpe, and Bion excursioning to the wagon outside and bringing in many more gallons of liquid.
Father stopped polishing to give Timothy a rag and a scowl. He thumped the huge mahogany box. ‘Come on, shine this up, so we can start on another. Sleep your life away.’
While waxing the surface, Timothy looked inside.
‘Uncle Einar’s a big man, isn’t he, papa?’
‘Umm.’
‘How big?’
‘The size of the box’ll tell you.’
‘Seven feet tall?’
‘You talk a lot.’
Timothy made the box shine. ‘And he weighs two hundred and five.’
Father blew. ‘Two hundred and fifteen.’
‘And space for wings!’
Father elbowed him. ‘You’re doing that wrong. This way. Watch!’
About nine o’clock Timothy ran out into the October weather. For two hours in the now-warm, now-cold wind he walked the meadows collecting toadstools and spiders.
He passed a farm house. If only you knew what’s happening at our house! he said to the glowing windows. He climbed a hill and looked at the town, miles away, settling into sleep, the church clock high and round white in the distance. The town didn’t know, either.
He brought home many jars of toadstools and spiders.
In the cellar chapel a brief ceremony was celebrated, with father incanting the dark lines, mother’s beautiful white ivory hands moving in the reverse blessings, and all the children gathered except Cecy, who lay upstairs in bed. But Cecy was present. You saw her peering from now Bion’s eyes, now Samuel’s, now mother’s, and you felt a movement and now she was in you, fleetingly, and gone.
Timothy prayed to the Dark One with a tightened stomach.
‘Please, please, help me grow up, help me be like my brothers and sisters. Don’t let me be different. If only I could put the hair in the plastic images as Ellen does, or make people fall in love with me, as Laura does with people, or read strange old books as Sam does, or work in a fine job like Leonard and Bion do. Or even raise a family some day, like mother and father’ve done. . .’
At midnight the first relatives arrived!
Grandmother and Grandfather, all the way from the old country; cheery and talkative. There was much greeting!
After that, people arrived every hour. There were flutters at side windows, raps on the front door, knocks at the back. Noises from the cellar and rustlings from the attic, and the chimney whistled with autumn wind. Mother filled the large crystal punch bowl with a fluid. Father hurried from room
