Something Wicked This Way Comes

In a small town called Green Town, Illinois, a lightning rod salesman named Tom Fury approaches protagonists and next-door neighbors Jim and Will, who are lounging on their front lawn. The boys explain that Will was born one minute before midnight on October 30, while Jim was born one minute after midnight on Halloween. They say that they have no money to purchase a lightning rod, and the salesman gives them one for free. He claims a terrible storm is approaching, and lightning will strike one of their houses. Without the rod, he says, the house will burn. He touches both houses; his intuition prompts him to declare that the lightning will strike Jim’s house. Jim seems excited and unafraid of the coming storm. Eventually, Will persuades Jim to heed the salesman’s warning, and they put up the lightning rod together.

Jim and Will race each other to the local library where Will’s father, Charles, works as a janitor. Charles recommends some books to the boys. Jim chooses books about dinosaurs, and Will chooses The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. They hurry home amid strong winds.

Charles closes up the library alone, thinking about Jim and Will’s friendship. He longs to be young again and part of their “pack.” He stops into a local bar for his single nightly drink.

Jim and Will head home as the town shops close. They run into the cigar store owner, Mr. Tetley, and the barber shop owner, Mr. Crosetti, who are both behaving strangely as if anticipating the frightful storm. Mr. Crosetti is crying and says that he smells cotton candy in the air. The boys also smell licorice.

On his way home, Charles sees a man, who is whistling, posting up flyers. He follows the man to an empty shop where he finds a large block of ice on two sawhorses. Next to this is a sign announcing “Cooger and Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show” and one of its attractions: the “most beautiful woman in the world” encased in ice (24). Charles is afraid but feels compelled to stay and stare at the ice block.

Will and Jim are still on their way home when Jim begs Will to stop at what they call the “Theater.” Will recalls a night when they both climbed a tree to peer into the theater’s window; they saw people naked and laughing inside. He wonders what they could have been doing and refuses to join Jim in spying this time. He takes Jim’s books and they part ways, Will continuing the trek home and Jim going to climb the tree. Jim teases Will for not coming along.

Jim rejoins Will soon after, claiming no one at the Theater was there. They catch a flyer blowing in the wind. The flyer announces the Cooger and Dark carnival arriving the next day, October 24. Will is suspicious; he claims carnivals do not occur after Labor Day. Jim is excited; he hears music and decides the carnival must be coming that very night. Jim worries that Will is upset with him for going to the Theater earlier, but Will assures him he is not. Once they reach their houses, they each go inside for the night.

Will finds his father already home, sitting by the fire with his mother. Charles is holding the carnival flyer and looking distraught. Before Will has a chance to ask about the flyer, Charles quickly hides it. After Will leaves, he hears Charles throw it into the fire. Will is curious about his father’s mysterious behavior.

Later that night, Will tries to eavesdrop on his parent’s conversation, hoping to overhear something about the carnival, but his father’s omissions only make him more afraid of what is coming. He hears Charles leave for the library again in the middle of the night.

When Jim’s mother visits him in bed that night, Jim tells her that he will not have children because everyone dies. He asks if he looks like his father, and his mother worries that Jim is growing up too fast. Being a single mother, she wants to keep him close. After she leaves, Jim looks out his open window and feels the storm approaching. He is tempted to take down the lightning rod on his roof just to see what happens.

As the lightning rod salesman wanders the empty streets of the town, he comes upon the “most beautiful woman” encased in ice. He remembers various women featured in works of art and imagines what the ice woman looks like. As he steps closer, he pictures her opening her eyes and emerging from the ice.

At three in the morning, Will and Jim hear a train approaching and the sound of a calliope, a type of organ or piano. They look out their windows with binoculars to see a very old, black train playing strange churchlike music. Jim climbs out to investigate, and Will reluctantly follows.

As they get closer to the train, they discover no one is conducting it, and the calliope is being played by the wind. The train’s loud whistle brings Jim and Will to tears before everything slows down and grows quiet. The train stops in the middle of a field, and the boys sense that the things lurking inside the train are aware of the boys’ presence.

A large green hot air balloon appears in the sky. Suddenly, a dark figure steps from the train, and at his command, more shadowy figures emerge to construct carnival tents. Will and Jim watch as the tentpoles and wires become covered in canvas seemingly made from clouds.

Just as quickly as everything is set up, the ringmaster and shadow figures disappear, leaving only the tents behind. Will is horrified and prepares to run away, but Jim is mesmerized. Finally, they both run home.