Oh gosh, thought Will, we thought it would all be simple. The old man, Mr. Cooger, dying, so we bring doctors to save him, so he forgives us, maybe, maybe the carnival doesn't hurt us, lets us go. But now this, what's next? He's dead! It's too late! Everyone hates us!
And Will stood among the others feeling the cold air waft down from the unearthed mummy, from the cold mouth and cold eyes locked up in frozen eyelids. Inside the frozen nostrils not a white hair stirred. Mr. Cooger's ribs under his collapsed shirt were stone-rigid and his teeth under his clay lips were dry-ice cold. Put him out at noon and fog would steam off him.
The internes glanced at each other. They nodded.
The policemen, at this, took one step forward.
"Gentlemen!"
Mr. Dark scuttled a tarantula hand up an electric brass switchboard.
"One hundred thousand volts will now burn Mr. Electrico's body!"
"No, don't let him!" Will cried.
The policemen took another step. The internes opened their mouths to speak. Mr. Dark flicked a swift demanding glance at Jim. Jim cried:
"No! It's all right!"
"Jim!"
"Will, yes, it's okay!"
"Stand back!" The spider clutched the switch handle. "This man is in a trance! As part of our new act, I have hypnotized him! He could suffer injury if you shocked him from his spell!"
The internes shut their mouths. The police stopped moving.
"One hundred thousand volts! Yet he will come forth alive, whole in sound mind and body!"
"No!"
A policeman grabbed Will.
The Illustrated Man and all the men and beasts asprawl in frenzies on him now snatched and banged the switch.
The tent lights snuffed out.
Policemen, internes, boys jumped up their flesh in cobbles and boils.
But now in the swift midnight shuttering, the Electric Chair was a hearth and on it the old man blazed like a blue autumn tree.
The police flinched back, the internes leaned ahead, as did the freaks, blue fire in their eyes.
The Illustrated Man, hand glued to switch, looked upon the old old old man.
The old man was flintrock dead, yes, but electricity alive sheathed over him. It swarmed on his cold shell ears, it flickered in his deep-as-an-abandoned-stone-well nostrils. It crept blue eels of power on his praying-mantis fingers and his grasshopper knees.
The Illustrated Man's lips thrust wide, perhaps he yelled, but no one heard against the immense fry, blast, the slam and sizzle of power which prowled in around over under about man and prisoning chair. Come alive! cried the hum! Come alive! cried the storming color and light. Come alive! yelled Mr. Dark's mouth, which no one heard but Jim, reading lips, read thunderous loud in his mind, and Will the same, Come alive! willing the old man to live, start up, tick, hum, work juice, summon spit, ungum spirit, melt wax soul....
"He's dead!" But no one heard Will, either, no matter how he pushed against the lightning clamor.
Alive! Mr. Dark's lips licked and savored. Alive. Come alive. He racheted the switch to the last notch. Live, live! Somewhere, dynamos protested, skirled, shrilled, moaned a bestial energy. The light turned bottle-green. Dead, dead, thought Will. But live alive! cried machines, cried flame and fire, cried mouths of crowds of livid beasts on illustrated flesh.
So the old man's hair stood up in prickling fumes. Sparks, bled from his fingernails, dripped seething spatters on pine planks. Green simmerings wove shuttles through dead eyelids.
The Illustrated Man bent violently above the old old dead dead thing, his prides of beasts drowned deep in sweat, his right hand thrust in hammering demand upon the air: Live, live.
And the old man came alive.