I've Read Every Page, Line And Word Read At Me, Sir!

"First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys. Not that all months aren't rare. But there be bad and good, as the pirates say. Take September, a bad month: school begins. Consider August, a good month: school hasn't begun yet. July, well, July's really fine: there's no chance in the world for school. June, no doubting it, June's best of all, for the school doors spring wide and September's a billion years away.

But you take October, now. School's been on a month and you're riding easier in the reins, jogging along. You got time to think of the garbage you'll dump on old man Pickett's porch, or the hairy-ape costume you'll wear to the YMCA the last night of the month. And if it's around October twentieth and everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners.

But one strange wild dark long year, Halloween came early.

One year Halloween came on October 24, three hours after midnight.

At that time, James Nightshade of 97 Oak Street was thirteen years, eleven months, twenty-three days old. Next door, William Halloway was thirteen years, eleven months and twenty-four days old. Both touched toward fourteen; it almost trembled in their hands.

And that was the October week when they grew up overnight, and were never so young any more..."

This is the prologue to Something Wicked This Way Comes, a novel written by Ray Bradbury and first published in 1962. I was thirteen years old the first time I read those words, one chilly, overcast October afternoon in my bedroom. I had just come home with a tattered old copy of the book from a used book store, along with several other books I had originally intended to read first. But the worn and dog-eared cover of Something Wicked This Way Comes called to me.

I had never read any of Ray Bradbury's work before. I had a vague familiarity with him, having seen the television adaptation of his seminal work The Martian Chronicles several years before. I recognized the name as I was browsing the seemingly endless shelves of second-hand literature and picked up this battered little book on a whim. It cost 98 cents.

When I read the prologue, sitting comfortably on my unmade bed, the sounds of fallen leaves rustling in the Autumn breeze drifting inside through an open window, I was transfixed. I had to read it again. I had to read it aloud. These words echoed through my mind. This short prologue perfectly captured the pure feeling of those absolutely magical moments that make up childhood, or at least my childhood. It all made perfect sense.

"There be good and bad, as the pirates say."

I may have never dumped garbage on old man Pickett's porch, and I never wore a hairy-ape costume when I went trick-or-treating, but the tone was spot-on. These words, written and published 20 years before I was born, captured a timeless feeling. As we grow older, we think back to those times when we were growing up, when a special kind of magic seemed to be in the air. I was a 13 year-old kid who had no way of encapsulating that magic feeling, but I felt it. And Ray Bradbury's deceptively simple-yet-evocative prose did what I never could.

He gave that magic a voice.

After reading that prologue to Something Wicked This Way Comes, Ray Bradbury had made me a life-long fan. That's all it took. Since that magical afternoon, I've read all 11 of his novels, and over a dozen of his short story collections. I love and cherish his unique creative talents. The works of Ray Bradbury have become an invaluable resource in my life. But Something Wicked This Way Comes will always come first. This beautiful work of art will never diminish in my eyes.

With his death, some knee-jerk, cynical part of me shouts that the magic no longer has a voice. But I know that's not true. That voice can never be silenced, because the man's amazing work will never die. Ray Bradbury is immortal.

Every time I find myself sitting outside on a late Autumn evening, with everything smoky-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, I fondly remember that first time I read those powerful words, and I smile. I can feel the magic in the air. Ray Bradbury has given me a lifetime of magical memories, and I am eternally in his debt.

Thank you, Mr. Bradbury.