The plump fingers of the child gesticulated through the grille.
Go.
Mr. Skull walked away.
Thank God, thought Will, then gasped, "Oh, no!"
For the Dwarf as suddenly appeared, waddling along, a fringe of bells on his dirty shirt jingling softly, his toad-shadow tucked under him, his eyes like broken splinters of brown marble now bright-on-the-surface mad, now deeply mournfully forever-lost-and-gone-buried-away mad, looking for something could not be found, a lost self somewhere, lost boys for an instant, then the lost self again, two parts of the little squashed man fought to jerk his flashing eyes here, there, around, up, down, one seeking the past, one the immediate present.
"Mama!" said the child.
The Dwarf stopped and looked at the boy no bigger than himself. Their eyes met.
Will flung himself back, tried to gum his body into the concrete. He felt Jim do the same, not moving but moving his mind, his soul, thrusting it into darkness to hide from the little drama above.
"Come on, Junior!" A woman's voice.
The boy was pulled up and away.
Too late.
For the Dwarf was looking down.
And in his eyes were the lost bits and fitful pieces of a man named Fury who had sold lightning rods how many days how many years ago in the long, the easy, the safe and wondrous time before this fright was born.
Oh, Mr. Fury, thought Will, what they've done to you. Threw you under a pile driver, squashed you in a steel press, squeezed the tears and screams out of you, trapped you in a jack-in-a-box all pressed down until there's nothing left of you, Mr. Fury ... nothing left but this ...
Dwarf. And the Dwarf's face was less human, more machine now; in fact, a camera.
The shuttering eyes flexed, sightless, opening upon darkness. Tick. Two lenses expanded--contracted with liquid swiftness: a picture-snap of the grille.
A snap, also, of what lay beneath?
Is he staring at the metal, thought Will, or the spaces between the metal?
For a long moment, the ruined-squashed clay doll Dwarf squatted while standing tall. His flash-camera eyes were bulbed wide, perhaps still taking pictures?
Will, Jim, were not seen really at all, only their shape, their color and size were borrowed by these dwarf camera eyes. They were clapped away in the box-Brownie skull. Later--how much later?--the picture would be developed by the wild, the tiny, the forgetful, the wandering and lost lightning-rod mind. What lay under the grille would then be really seen. And after that? Revelation! Revenge! Destruction!
Click-snap-tick.
Children ran laughing by.
The Dwarf-child, drawn by their running joy, was swept along with them. Madly, he skipped off, remembered himself, and went looking for something, he knew not what.
The cloudy sun poured light through all the sky.
The two boys, boxed in light-slotted pit, hisstled their breath softly out through gritted teeth.
Jim squeezed Will's hand, tight, tight.
Both waited for more eyes to stride along and rake the steel grille.
The blue-red-green tattooed eyes, all five of them, fell away from the counter top.
Charles Halloway, sipping his third coffee, turned slightly on the revolving stool.
The illustrated Man was watching him.