From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online

wakenings.
    Mother shut the door.
    Father walked down into the cellar.
    Timothy walked across the crepe-littered hall. His head was down, and in passing the party mirror he saw the pale mortality of his face. He shivered.
    "Timothy," said Mother.
    She laid a hand on his face. "Son," she said. "We love you. We all love you. No matter how different you are, no matter if you leave us one day." She kissed his cheek. "And if and when you die your bones will lie undisturbed, we'll see to that, you'll lie at ease forever, and I'll come see you every All Hallows' Eve and tuck you in more secure."
    The halls echoed to polished lids creaking and slamming shut.
    The House was silent. Far away, the wind went over a hill with its last cargo of small dark flights, echoing, chittering.
    He walked up the steps, one by one, crying to himself all the way.

Chapter Ten
West Of October
    The four cousins—Peter, William, Philip, and Jack—had lingered on after the Homecoming because a cloud of doom and melancholy and disbelief hung over Europe. There was no room in the dark House, so they were stashed almost upside-down in the barn, which shortly thereafter burned.
    Like most of the Family they were not ordinary.
    To say that most of them slept days and worked at odd occupations nights would fall short of commencement.
    To remark that some of them could read minds, and some fly with lightnings to land with leaves, would be an understatement.
    To add that some could not be seen in mirrors while others could be found in multitudinous shapes, sizes, and textures in the same glass would merely repeat gossip that veered into truth.
    These boys resembled their uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandparents by the toadstool score and the mushroom dozen.
    They were just about every color you could mix in one restless night.
    Some were young and others had been around since the Sphinx first sank its stone paws in tidal sands.
    And all four were in love and in need for one special Family member.
    Cecy.
    Cecy. She was the reason, the real reason, the central reason for the wild cousins to circle her and stay. For she was as seedpod full as a pomegranate. She was all the senses of all the creatures in the world. She was all the motion-picture houses and stage-play theaters and all the art galleries of all time.
    Ask her to yank your soul like an aching tooth and shoot it into clouds to cool your spirit, and yanked you were, drawn high to drift in the mists.
    Ask her to seize that same soul and bind it in the flesh of a tree, and you awoke the next morning with birds singing in your green head.
    Ask to be pure rain and you fell on everything. Ask to be the moon and suddenly you looked down to see your pale light painting lost towns the color of tombstones and spectral ghosts.
    Cecy. Who extracted your soul and pulled forth your impacted wisdom, and could transfer it to animal, vegetable, or mineral; name your poison.
    No wonder the cousins lingered.
    And along about sunset, before the dreadful fire, they climbed to the attic to stir her bed of Egyptian sands with their breath.
    "Well," said Cecy, eyes shut, a smile playing about her mouth. "What would your pleasure be?"
    "I—" said Peter.
    "Maybe—" said William and Philip.
    "Could you—" said Jack.
    "Take you on a visit to the local insane asylum," guessed Cecy, "to peek inside people's corkscrew heads?"
    "Yes!"
    "Done!" said Cecy. "Go lie on your cots in the barn. Over, up, and—out!"
    Like corks, their souls popped. Like birds, they flew. Like bright needles, they shot in various crazed asylum ears.
    "Ah!" they cried in delight.

    While they were gone, the barn burned.
    In all the shouting and confusion, the running for water, the general ramshackle hysteria, everyone forgot who was in the barn or what the high-flying cousins and Cecy, asleep, might be up to. So deep in her rushing dreams was she, that she felt neither the flames, nor the dread moment when the walls fell and four human-shaped torches