You had to run with a night like this so the sadness could not hurt.' 'Midnight then and the town clocks chiming on toward one and two and then three in the deep morning and the peals of the great clocks shaking dust off old toys in high attics and shedding silver off old mirrors in yet higher attics and stirring up dreams about clocks in all the beds where children slept.' 'The night was sweet with the dust of autumn leaves that smelled as if the fine sands of ancient Egypt were drifting to dunes beyond the town.'Īs poetic as Bradbury's descriptions of the literal darkness are, it's the unspoken yet irrepressibly approaching night that is at the core of the book. 'Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. Even in daytime, the threat of darkness is present the book opens with the itinerant lightning-rod seller Tom Fury blowing into town just ahead of 'a storm like a great beast with terrible teeth'.īradbury described the night like no one else. Most of the book is set in the dead hours of night, as Jim and Will investigate the arrival of the mysterious carnival and the effect it has on the townsfolk, lured by its bright lights but quickly drawn into shadows: the teacher who grows young again, the boy aged beyond all sense, the man who becomes his dwarfish reflection in the hall of mirrors. Then there's Mr Dark, a moustache-twirling villain dressed in black, straight from the inky, monochrome illustrations of melodramas. Even the boys' names reflect it: adventurous, reckless Jim Nightshade – a night-blooming flower, for sure – and bookish Will Halloway, almost Halloween in name.

The novel is drenched in darkness, every character a slice of night.

Something wicked this way comes novel