Free Dark Carnival by Ray Bradbury

followed by young Juke and Mrs. Tridden and Jahdoo the coloured man. Followed by all the others, young and old, sweet and sour, creaking into chairs, each with his or her thought, hope, fear and wonder in mind. Each not looking at the shrine, but saying hello softly to Charlie.
        They waited for the others to gather. From the shine of their eyes one could see that each saw something different in the jar, something of the life and the pale life after life, and the life in death and the death in life, each with his story, his cue, his lines, familiar, old but new.
        Charlie sat alone.
        'Hello, Charlie.' Somebody glanced around, into the empty bedroom. 'Where's your wife? Gone off again to visit her folks?'
        'Yeah, she run off again to Tennessee. Be back in a couple weeks. She's the darndest one for runnin'. You know Thedy.'
        'Great one for ganntin' around, that woman.'
        Soft voices talking, getting settled, and then, quite suddenly, walking into the dark porch and shining his eyes in at the people — Tom Carmody.
        Tom Carmody standing outside the door, knees sagging and trembling, arms hanging and shaking at his side, staring into the room. Tom Carmody not daring to enter. Tom Carmody with his mouth open, but not smiling. His lips wet and slack, not smiling. His face pale as chalk, as if it had been kicked with a boot.
        Gramps looked up at the jar, cleared his throat and said,
        'Why, I never noticed so definite before. It's got blue eyes.'
        'It always had blue eyes,' said Granny Carnation.
        'No,' whined Gramps. 'No, it didn't. They was brown last time we was here.' He blinked upwards. 'And another thing — it's got brown hair. Didn't have brown hair before! '
        'Yes, yes, it did,' sighed Mrs. Tridden.
        'No, it didn't!'
        'Yes, it did!'
        Tom Carmody, shivering in the summer night, staring in at the jar. Charlie, glancing up at it, rolling a cigarette, casually, at peace and calm, very certain of his life and thoughts. Tom Carmody, alone, seeing things about the jar he never saw before. Everybody seeing what they wanted to see; all thoughts running in a fall of quick rain:
        'My baby! My little baby!' screamed the thought of Mrs. Tridden.
        'A brain!' thought Gramps.
        The coloured man jigged his fingers. 'Middibamboo Mama!'
        A fisherman pursed his lips. 'Jellyfish!'
        'Kitten! Here kittie, kittie, kittie!' the thoughts drowned clawing in Juke's skull. 'Kitten!'
        'Everything and anything!' shrilled Granny's weazened thought. 'The night, the swamp, the death, the pallid moist things of the sea!'
        Silence, and then Gramps said, 'I wonder. Wonder if it's a he — or a she — or just a plain old it ?'
        Charlie danced up, satisfied, tamping his cigarette, shaping it to his mouth. Then he looked at Tom Carmody, who would never smile again, in the door. 'I reckon we'll never know. Yeah, I reckon we won't.' Charlie smiled.
        It was just one of those things they kept in a jar in the tent of a sideshow on the outskirts of a little, drowsy town. One of those pale things drifting in alcohol plasma, forever dreaming and circling, with its peeled dead eyes staring out at you and never seeing you. . .

The Lake
    THEY cut the sky down to my size and threw it over the Michigan Lake, put some kids yelling on yellow sand with bouncing balls, a gull or two, a criticizing parent, and me breaking out of a wet wave, finding this world very bleary and moist.
        I ran up on the beach.
        Mamma swabbed me with a furry towel. 'Stand there and dry,' she said.
        I stood there, watching the sun take away the water beads on my arms. I replaced them with goose-pimples.
        'My, there's a wind,' said Mamma. 'Put on your sweater.'
        'Wait'll I watch my goose-bumps,' I said.
        'Harold,' said Mamma.
        I put the sweater on and watched the waves come up and fall down on the beach. But not clumsily. On