Inside the Wax Museum, Jim still had not moved, had not blinked.
"Jim!" The voice came through the maze.
Jim moved. Jim blinked. A rear exit door stood wide. Jim blundered toward it.
"I'm coming for you, Jim!"
"No, Dad!"
Will caught at his father, who stood at the first turn of the mirrors with the pain come back to his hand, racing up along the nerves to strike a fireball near his heart. "Dad, don't go in!" Will grabbed his good arm.
Behind them, the platform was empty, Mr. Dark was running ... where? Somewhere as the night shut in, the lights went off, went off, went off, the night sucked around, gathering, whistling, simpering, and the crowd, like a shake of leaves from one huge tree, blew off the midway, and Will's father stood facing the glass tides, the waves, the gauntlet of horror he knew waited for him to swim through, stride through to fight the desiccation, the annihilation of one's self that waited there. He had seen enough to know. Eyes shut, you'd be lost. Eyes open, you'd know such utter despair, such gravities of anguish would weight you, you might never drag past the twelfth turn. But Charles Halloway took Will's hands away. "Jim's there. Jim, wait! I'm coming in!"
And Charles Halloway took the next step into the maze.
Ahead flowed sluices of silver light, deep slabs of shadow, polished, wiped, rinsed with images of themselves and others whose souls, passing, scoured the glass with their agony, curried the cold ice with their narcissism, or sweated the angles and flats with their fear.
"Jim!"
He ran. Will ran. They stopped.
For the lights in here were going blind, one by one, going dim, changing color, now blue, now a color like lilac summer lightning which flared in haloes, then a flickerlight like a thousand ancient wind-blown candles.
And between himself and Jim in need of rescue, stood an army of one million sick-mouthed, frost-haired, white-tine-bearded men.
Them! all of them! he thought. That's me!
Dad! thought Will, at his back, don't be afraid. It's only you. All only my father!
But he did not like their look. They were so old, so very old, and got much older the farther away they marched, wildly gesticulating, as Dad threw up his hands to fend off the revelation, this wild image repeated to insanity.
Dad! he thought, it's you!
But, it was more.
And all the lights went out.
And both, squeezed still, in muffle-gasping silence, stood afraid.
Chapter 49
A HAND dug like a mole in the dark.
Will's hand.
It emptied his pockets, it delved, it rejected, it dug again. For while it was dark he knew those million old men might march, hustle, rush, leap, smash Dad with what they were! In this shut-up night, with just four seconds to think of them, they might do anything to Dad! If Will didn't hurry, these legions from Time Future, all the alarms of coming life, so mean, raw, and true you couldn't deny that's how Dad'd look tomorrow, next day, the day after the day after that, that cattle run of possible years might sweep Dad under!
So, quick!
Who has more pockets than a magician?
A boy.
Whose pockets contain more than a magician's?
A boy's.
Will seized forth kitchen matches!