Something Wicked This Way Comes: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

Back at home, Charles can’t imagine why a carnival would come at three in the morning. To Charles, three a.m. is a “special hour.” Women aren’t up at that time— “they sleep the sleep of babes and children”—but men “know that hour well.” Middle aged men frequently wake at this time, and it is when “the body’s at low tide.” The soul leaves the body at three a.m., creating a sort of “living death,” and it is the closest to death one comes without actually dying. Charles remembers reading that “more people in hospitals die at three a.m. than at any other time.”

Charles looks to his wife, who is sleeping with a faint smile on her face. “She’s immortal,” Charles thinks. “She has a son.” Charles knows that Will is his son too, but it is different for men. Women “own the good secret” and are “strange wonderful clocks” who “nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity.” Mrs. Halloway stirs in the bed and half-wakes. “You…all right…. Charlie?” she asks. Charles doesn’t answer. He “can’t tell her how he is.”