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Thoughts on Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

The receipt stuck in my copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes tells me that I first read the book almost exactly fourteen years ago. I’d forgotten the plot entirely, so I figured it was a good way to get into the mood of the season.

I remembered the wistful prose that characterizes much of Bradbury’s work, and that’s definitely there 1. As I recalled, though, this novel was somewhat darker than Dandelion Wine or Farewell Summer. In my memory, it was too gentle to qualify as horror, less scary and more spooky, like traditional American Halloween lore.

I remembered one specific moment–an absolutely enchanting rooftop battle between protagonist Will Halloway and a witch piloting a hot air balloon. Otherwise, I was drawing blanks about what actually happened.

For my second reading, I found Wicked way more substantial than my shoddy memory let on.

For one, it really IS scary. Bradbury writes to frighten you on a bunch of levels. There are grotesque passages 2, more psychological creepy parts 3, and some outright menacing encounters 4. It all makes for a far more rich horror experience than I remembered.

Secondly, the book explores aging with more depth than your typical YA Bildungsroman novel. That’s partly thanks to the involvement of Will’s father, Charles. Although the carnival hides its dark nature from the general public, the familiar tension around “convincing the adults” is dispelled early on when the boys enlist Charles’ help.

It’s not just about legitimizing the kids’ experience, though. Relating Charles’ struggle with aging elevates the reflection, allowing Bradbury to come at the idea from an angle that’d be foreign to kids. Interestingly, all three (Will, Charles, and Will’s best friend Jim) find the same truth: that they are bound to their age by the people they love. It’s much more common for kids in stories like this to grudgingly accept the virtues of patience, but that clearly doesn’t help Charles. Rather than “coming of age,” all three learn the value of “staying of age.”

Bradbury’s most impressive achievement may be sustaining the dreamlike aura on top of these more nuanced themes. Whether describing the macabre or reminding you of your own parents’ fragility, he’s not trying to comfort you, but Wicked somehow never feels unsafe. The word “charming” has never felt more apt.

I definitely enjoyed my first reading of the novel, but judging by how much I forgot, I don’t think I truly appreciated it. This reading feels way more durable to me. I doubt I’ll need to re-read fourteen years from now, but I’ll probably revisit it it sooner, anyway.

  1. “No,” he whispered, “no carnival’s coming this late. It can’t!” He hid under the covers, switched on his flashlight, opened a book. The first picture he saw was a prehistoric reptile trap-drumming a night sky a million years lost.

    Heck, he thought, in the rush I got Jim’s book, he’s got one of mine.

    But it was a pretty fine reptile.

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  2. The shadowy figure lay on the near side, on the plank floor, its face turned away.

    One hand hung off the platform.

    It did not belong to a boy.

    It seemed a huge wax hand shriveled by fire.

    The man’s hair was long, spidery, white. It blew like milkweed in the breathing dark.

    They bent to see the face.

    The eyes were mummified shut. The nose was collapsed upon gristle. The mouth was a ruined white flower, the petals twisted into a thin wax sheath over the clenched teeth through which faint bubblings sighed. The man was small inside his clothes, small as a child, but tall, strung out, and old, so old, very old, not ninety, not one hundred, no, not one hundred ten, but one hundred twenty or one hundred thirty impossible years old.

    Will touched.

    The man was cold as an albino frog.

    He smelled of moon swamps and old Egyptian bandages. He was something found in museums, wrapped in nicotine linens, sealed in glass.

    But he was alive, puling like a babe, and shriveling unto death, fast, very fast, before their eyes.

    Will was sick over the side of the carousel.

     ↩︎

  3. The Dust Witch.

    The Witch who might draw skulls and bones in the dust, then sneeze it away. Jim looked to Will and Will to Jim; both read their lips: the Witch!

    But why a wax crone flung out in a night balloon to search? thought Will, why none of the others, with their lizard-venom, wolf-fire, snake-spit eyes? Why send a crumbled statue with blind-newt lashes sewn tight with black-widow thread?

    And then, looking up, they knew.

    For the Witch, though peculiar wax, was peculiarly alive. Blind, yes, but she thrust down rust-splotched fingers which petted, stroked the sluices of air, which cut and splayed the wind, peeled layers of space, blinded stars, which hovered and danced, then fixed and pointed as did her nose.

    And the boys knew even more.

    They knew that she was blind, but special blind. She could dip down her hands to feel the bumps of the world, touch house roofs, probe attic bins, reap dust, examine draughts that blew through halls and souls that blew through people, draughts vented from bellows to thump-wrist, to pound-temples, to pulse-throat, and back to bellows again. Just as they felt that balloon sift down like an autumn rain, so she could feel their souls disinhabit, reinhabit their tremulous nostrils. Each soul, a vast warm fingerprint, felt different, she could roil it in her hand like clay; smelled different, Will could hear her snuffing his life away; tasted different, she savored them with her raw-gummed mouth, her puff-adder tongue; sounded different, she stuffed their souls in one ear, tissued them out the other!

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  4. “I wish I knew where they were.” Charles Halloway started carrying the books to the shelves. “Hell, if they knew you were here with free tickets, they’d shout for joy.”

    “Would they?” Mr. Dark let his smile melt like a white and punk paraffin candy toy he no longer had appetite for. Softly, he said, “I could kill you.”

    Charles Halloway nodded, walking slowly.

    “Did you hear what I said?” barked the Illustrated Man.

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