PLOT DEVELOPMENT

Something Wicked This Way Comes is set in Green Town, Illinois, in late October. The idyllic nature of Green Town, based on Bradbury’s memories of growing up in Waukegan, Illinois, is characterized by small-town values and traditional social roles. The action of the novel takes place within limited time, from late afternoon on a Friday to midnight on the following Sunday, late in the month of October.

SWTWC is structured in three titled sections: “Arrivals” (chapters 1–24), “Pursuits” (chapters 25–44), and “Departures” (chapters 45–54), with a prologue and an afterword. The prologue briefly establishes the time of year, introduces the characters of Jim Nightshade and William Halloway, and explains that what happens in the novel forever changes these two young protagonists. Their age is emphasized: when the novel begins, Jim is thirteen years, eleven months, and twenty-three days old, while Will is thirteen years, eleven months, and twenty-four days old, and both are looking forward to Halloween and to being fourteen.

Chapters 1–10 present the setting, major characters, and conflicts of the novel. The novel begins with a lightning rod salesman named Tom Fury arriving in Green Town. He meets Jim and Will late Friday afternoon and sells them a lightning rod, predicting that a bad storm is going to hit Jim’s house. Will and Jim’s actions on this Friday evening are normal for these two best friends on an autumn weekend. They race to the library where they visit with Will’s father, Charles Halloway, check out books, and run home through the town. The two boys do experience some conflict on the way home when Jim wants to go by a house where, last August, they had seen a naked couple making love, and Will does not. As they walk home, the wind blows them a handbill about a carnival. Meanwhile, Charles closes the library where he works as a janitor and stops at a saloon. Charles sees himself as an old man, envying the youth and energy of Will and Jim.

While at the saloon, Charles sees a man displaying a placard for “Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show,” and stops to view a display in an empty shop that promises to exhibit “the Most Beautiful Woman in the World” in a block of ice. Charles and Will are both aware of the promised arrival of the carnival, but they do not tell Will’s mother. When Jim arrives home, readers learn that he is an only child, having survived the deaths of two siblings and the loss of his father. Chapter 10 returns to the lightning rod salesman, Tom Fury, who is walking through town after midnight and catches sight of the same display that Charles saw, except that he does see a woman in the ice, a woman as beautiful as the statues he saw in Rome and the paintings he saw in Paris. Tom enters the shop and becomes the first person to disappear from Green Town.

The novel contains a pattern of light and darkness that structures the plot. Chapters 11–14 take place during Friday night, when the promised carnival arrives in a most unusual way: after midnight. Will and Jim are in bed, but are awakened by the sound of a train engine and strange music. They climb out their windows to investigate. They see the train pass over the railway bridge, and they follow it to a large meadow, where they watch the carnival set up. The darkness and strangeness frightens them both, and they run home. Charles is also aware of the carnival arriving. He has gone back to the library, as he often does. When he walks home, he sees in place of the display he saw earlier only a puddle of water with some strange shards and hairs, which he refuses to acknowledge. The chapter ends with Will lying in bed listening to his father return and feeling threatened, and Charles feeling depressed as he often does at three o’clock in the morning.

Chapter 15–17 covers Saturday from dawn to sunset. During this period, the strange and threatening nature of the carnival becomes apparent to Will and Jim. They spend the day at the carnival, which seems, at first, to be normal. But then they have an unsettling experience when they meet Miss Foley, their 7th-grade teacher, who is taking a visiting nephew to the carnival. She insists on going into the Mirror Maze, but then becomes terrified, and Will has to rescue her. Will would like to leave after that, but Jim insists on staying at least until sunset, although he agrees to avoid the Mirror Maze. At sunset, though, Jim disappears and Will must rescue him from the Maze as well. Jim still insists on returning to the carnival after dark, and asks Will to come along. As they start to leave the carnival temporarily, they trip over a bag of lightning rods that they recognize as Tom Fury’s. This discovery encourages them to come back and explore, although they are both fearful.

A major turning point of the novel comes in chapter 18, where the fantastic elements that have been only hinted at, never clearly described, manifest themselves to both Jim and Will. The chapter starts with Will and Jim looking at the merry-go-round that has had an “Out of Order” sign posted all day. They’ve visited the other rides and seen nothing interesting, so Jim climbs on it. A man working on the carousel catches Jim, and then Will when he tries to rescue his friend. A second man orders the first to put them down, and they talk.

The first man is Mr. Cooger, and the second is Mr. Dark; they are the owners of the carnival. Dark is attracted to Jim, and shows his “illustrations,” which are described as different as tattoos. Jim looks at them, seeing a snake, and seems bewitched. Dark wants to know their names, but they give false ones. Dark gives them a card for a free ride when the merry-go-round is fixed, and tells them to come back at seven. The boys leave, but hide in a tree to watch. They see Dark start the carousel running backward and Cooger leap on it and ride it backward, becoming younger with each revolution, ending up as a boy of twelve. The boys agree they have to see more.

The events during the rest of Saturday night are related in chapters 19–31, moving from the “Arrivals” to the “Pursuits” section. The plot focuses on Dark’s attempt to capture the boys, although he seems willing to seduce Jim into a partnership. After Cooger’s transformation on the merry-go-round, Jim and Will chase after him into town, finding him at Miss Foley’s. They go into the house to talk to Miss Foley, who introduces the boy as her nephew Robert, but whom Will knows to be Cooger as a child. They cannot say anything to warn Miss Foley because of Cooger’s presence.

When they finally return home, their parents are upset with them and send them to bed without dinner. Later, Will realizes that Jim is leaving his room without notifying him, the first time he’s tried to leave his friend behind. Will follows Jim, who goes first to Miss Foley’s house to try to talk to the nephew. Will fights Jim to stop this attempt, but their fight alerts the nephew, who throws jewelry outside and accuses them of theft. Then the nephew tries to escape back to the carnival, but they chase him.

The nephew reaches the merry-go-round and starts to ride it forward to get older and bigger, and Will fights Jim again to keep him from jumping on. Their struggle over the control box is interrupted when lightning hits it, and the carousel goes on a mad ride forward, which ends with Cooger a fantastic husk of an old man of a hundred or more. The boys are frightened, but finally call both the police and an ambulance. When they arrive, the boys lead them back into the carnival, but there is nothing on the carousel. When they go into the main carnival tent, Mr. Dark explains what the boys saw as a new attraction, Mr. Electrico, the false figure of an old man in an electric chair. Will also sees a dwarf that he believes is Tom Fury, the lightning rod salesman, crushed into a small figure.

These events conclude chapter 24, the last chapter of the first section, and set up a major complication: the secular authorities, the police and medical institutions, cannot help the boys. The authorities would not believe them in any case, and it is doubtful that they could do anything to oppose Dark and Cooger even if they did believe. The police and the ambulance crew live in another world and are content to wander through the tent laughing at the freaks.

The second section of the novel is titled “Pursuits,” and details the numerous attempts made by the carnival people to track down the boys and capture them. Miss Foley, who has been affected by the carnival, takes part in these actions. Although she knows that the accusation of theft is false and that, somehow, her nephew is not exactly her nephew, she is tempted by his unspoken promises of youth, of a ride into a time that is “summer, sweet as clover, honey-grass, and wild mint” (122). Miss Foley succumbs to temptation and calls the police and Charles to accuse Jim and Will of theft.

The boys, returning with the police and ambulance, happen to overhear this accusation as they are hiding outside the police station arguing about what they should do next. When Will hears what Miss Foley says, he goes inside to confess. Afterwards, Charles and the boys walk home together. When they reach the neighboring houses, Jim and Will show Charles the secret ladders they’ve made by nailing rungs to the side of their homes under the ivy. He is amused and reveals that he did the same thing as a boy, but extracts a promise from them to limit their adventures. After Jim climbs up to bed, Charles says he knows that Will did not steal anything despite his confession. Will considers telling his father what has happened, but refrains, wanting to protect him. Will promises to tell everything in a few days.

Little action occurs in chapter 28, but it relates an important moment between father and son. Charles, at age 54, has said he feels he is too old to be a father. His white hair and age are emphasized throughout the earlier section, and both Will and he doubt whether such an “old man” could protect his son if necessary. In this chapter, the father and son, encouraged by the sweetness of the night, talk: “It was a time to say much but not all…. It was the new sweetness of men starting to talk as they must talk” (133).

They debate the nature of good and evil and the relationship between goodness and happiness. After a lengthy discussion, they go inside to bed. Will starts to climb his outside ladder, then dares his father to join him. Charles at first declines, then accepts, and the two climb together: “They swung in and sat upon the sill, same size, same weight, colored same by the stars…. for fear of waking God, country, wife, Mom, and hell, they snug-clapped hands to each other’s mouths, and sat one instant longer” (139). This moment of shared experience foreshadows their reconciliation at the end of the novel.

Despite the happiness of the moment Will shares with his father, the events of Saturday night are not complete. Will wakes up after only an hour, realizing that the lightning rod has been taken off Jim’s house, and then perceiving the approach of something that turns out to be the Dust Witch from the carnival, in a balloon. The Witch marks Jim’s house. They had given false names, but the blind Witch is somehow able to sense where they live. The boys wash the slimy, snail-like marking off the roof with the garden hose, but Will still cannot sleep. Eventually he goes out to challenge the Witch directly with his Boy Scout bow and arrow. His purpose is to lure her back and then bring the balloon down to delay her report of their location. He decoys her to a deserted house and, after a struggle during which his bow breaks, is able to pierce the balloon by hand with an arrow.

The last day of the novel, Sunday, dawns, and Jim and Will are going to the police station and to visit Miss Foley. But Miss Foley wakes up early and goes out to get her one free ride on the carousel. On the way to the carnival, Will and Jim find a small girl crying under an oak tree. Will recognizes the little girl as Miss Foley and wants to help her, but Jim does not believe it is her. They go to Miss Foley’s house and cannot find her, and on the way back are nearly trapped by a parade from the carnival. When they return to the tree, the little girl is gone. Later, Will comes to believe that the little girl must have given Dark their true first names.

Most of the action in Chapters 32–41 is the ongoing search for, or pursuit of, the boys. Charles spends his day researching the occult, carnivals, possession, and witchcraft. When the boys arrive at the library, the three of them engage in a discussion about their situation that stretches over three chapters. For the first time, Will and Jim tell Charles everything that has happened to them. Charles has found news clippings about circuses and carnivals, all owned by men named Dark and Cooger, which traveled through their area in 1846, 1860, and 1888. Charles reveals his theory that the carnival people have evolved as a kind of predator species alongside humans, but that they are not all-powerful, that they can only successfully prey on the “unconnected fools,” people who have no familial or other strong connections with other people.

The group speculates further that the carnival people live off the anguish experienced by people: young people who want to be adults, older people who want to be young. What Dark and Cooger promise is false and empty, and based on the fear humans have of death. As they are discussing the nature of the carnival people, they hear the noise of the library door opening. Charles tells the boys to go hide, and sits down to wait for the confrontation.

Chapters 41–44 relate how Dark confronts Charles first, scoffing at his attempts to research the carnival and offering him his youth again if he identifies the boys. Charles refuses, determined to protect Will and Jim. Dark then searches the library, first trying to tempt them out by offering Jim a ride on the merry-go-round and saying that they’ve spun Will’s mother into extreme old age. This attempt fails, but Dark tracks them down, lying on top of the shelves. The Dust Witch enchants them into living statues who cannot see, speak, or hear. Dark wounds Charles’s left arm and takes the boys with him, leaving the Witch to kill Charles by stopping his heart. The final chapter of the section relates how Charles, almost by accident, discovers the only thing that successfully halts the Witch: laughter. He survives, drives her away, and goes out to rescue Will and Jim.

The last nine chapters of the novel, comprising the last section titled “Departures,” relate how Charles and Will are finally able to defeat Dark and Cooger. Dark takes Will and Jim back to the carnival. Again, Dark offers Jim the chance to become a partner if Cooger doesn’t survive, but he plans to ride Will on the merry-go-round back to infancy and give him to the Dwarf to carry. After they arrive back at the carnival, Dark puts the two boys in the waxworks behind the Mirror Maze until the carnival closes. He then goes off to orchestrate the last event: the Bullet Trick. When the Dust Witch returns and tells him that Charles is not dead, he makes her stand on the stage to catch the bullet in her teeth. At first there is no volunteer to fire the rifle, but then Charles arrives and volunteers.

Charles calls for Will to help him; when the crowd joins in, Will is able to move from the waxworks to the stage, although he cannot talk or move on his own. Charles makes sure a crescent moon is carved into the bullet (both the real one, and the wax one that Dark replaces it with), and then balances the rifle on Will’s shoulder. The Witch is killed by the bullet because it bears Charles’s smile, although Dark pretends she has fainted. Dark turns out the lights to close the carnival down, and Will and Charles try to rescue Jim. When the Witch is killed, Will is freed completely, and Jim partially. Will and Charles go into the Mirror Maze to get Jim and are nearly defeated when Charles is frightened by the images of old men he sees around him. Will helps rescue him, first through light (matches) and then by telling his father that he loves him no matter what. Charles is able to laugh, which destroys the Mirror Maze. But Jim is no longer in the waxworks; he has left, still fascinated by the idea of growing up fast, for the merry-go-round, where the final confrontation takes place.

Dark tries one last time to take Cooger/Mr. Electrico to the merry-go-round to spin him young again. Jim blocks them and Cooger is destroyed when his chair falls to the ground. Rather than continuing to fight Dark, Jim grabs a pole on the carousel and starts to go around. Will tries to pull him off by the one hand that Jim has extended to him. The boys go once or twice around before Will succeeds in pulling him off. Jim seems dead, and as they try to help him, a boy runs up crying for help. Charles goes with him but recognizes Dark, accuses him, and draws him close, just holding him and refusing to give him the power of Charles’s fear.

Dark is finally destroyed by these actions. After he is dead, his tattoos vanish, which frees the rest of the carnival people. Will begins to mourn the loss of his friend, but Charles realizes that Jim can be healed by laughter and singing. The father and son, singing and dancing crazily, revive Jim. Before they leave, they face one final temptation as they think about taking only a few rides on the merry-go-round. But they realize that one ride would inevitably lead them to becoming the new owners of the carnival, so they destroy the carousel forever. Then the three of them race home in the moonlight, the two boys running together again as friends and Charles running even with them, perceiving himself to be a middle-aged man rather than old (and near death).

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