Will stood motionless.
Mr. Dark hesitated.
Out in the choppy sea, smiles flashed, here, there, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred whitenesses, as if a vast titillation of water had been provoked by a lunar gravity. The tide ebbed.
The Illustrated Man, in slow motion, proffered the bullet. His arm, a long molasses undulation, lazed to offer the bullet to the boy, to see if he would notice; he did not notice.
His father took the missile.
"Mark it with your initials," said Mr. Dark, by rote.
"No, with more!" Charles Halloway raised his son's hand and made him hold the bullet, so he could take a penknife with his one good hand and carve a strange symbol on the lead.
What's happening? Will thought. I know what's happening. I don't know what's happening? What!?
Mr. Dark saw a crescent moon on the bullet, saw nothing wrong with such a moon, rammed it in the rifle, slapped the rifle back at Will's father, who once more caught it deftly.
"Ready, Will?"
The boy's peach face drowsed in the slightest nod.
Charles Halloway flicked a last glance at the maze, thought, Jim, you there still? Get ready!
Mr. Dark turned to go pat, conjure, calm his dust-crone friend, but cracked to a halt at the crack of the rifle being reopened, the bullet ejected by Will's father, to assure the audience it was there. It seemed real enough, yet he had read long ago that this was a substitute bullet, shaped of a very hard steel-colored crayon wax. Shot through the rifle it would dissolve out the barrel as smoke and vapor. At this very moment, having somehow switched bullets, the Illustrated Man was slipping the real marked bullet into the Witch's jerking fingers. She would hide it in her cheek. At the shot, she would pretend to jolt under the imagined impact, then reveal the bullet caught by her yellow rat teeth. Fanfare! Applause!
The Illustrated Man, glancing up, saw Charles Halloway with the opened rifle, the wax bullet. But instead of revealing what he knew, Mr. Halloway simply said, "Let's cut our mark more clearly, eh, boy?" And with his penknife, the boy holding the bullet in his senseless hand, he marked this fresh new wax unmarked bullet with the same mysterious crescent moon, then snapped it back into the rifle.
"Ready?!"
Mr. Dark looked to the Witch.
Who hesitated, then nodded, once, faintly.
"Ready!" announced Charles Halloway.
And all about lay the tents, the breathing crowd, the anxious freaks, a Witch iced with hysteria, Jim hidden to be found, an ancient mummy still seated glowing with blue fire in his electric chair, and a merry-go-round waiting for the show to cease, the crowd to go, and the carnival to have its way with boys and janitor trapped, if possible, and alone.
"Will," said Charles Halloway conversationally, as he lifted the now suddenly heavy rifle. "Your shoulder here is my brace. Take the middle of the rifle, gently, with one hand. Take it, Will." The boy raised a hand. "That's it, son. When I say 'hold,' hold your breath. Hear me?"
The boy's head tremored with the slightest affirmation. He slept. He dreamed. The dream was nightmare. The nightmare was this.
And the next part of this was his father shouting: "Ladies! Gentlemen!"
The Illustrated Man clenched his fist. Will's picture, lost in it, like a flower, was crushed.
Will twisted.
The rifle fell.
Charles Halloway pretended not to notice.
"Me and Will here will now, together, him being the good left arm I can't use, do the one and only most dangerous, sometimes fatal, Bullet Trick!"
Applause. Laughter.
Quickly the fifty-four-year-old janitor, denying each year, laid the rifle back on the boy's jerking shoulder.
"Hear that, Will? Listen! That's for us!"