Ray Bradbury, Dave Mckean
The Homecoming

How many times do we feel inadequate? If I were to answer, I'd say millions.

If Timothy were to answer, he'd say one for each member of his Family. And they are many. They come from the sky, come from afar, come like the fog, come amidst the autumn leaves, come tearing through the October sky, they come. Or rather, they return. They return Home. Timothy is eager to see them return, he wants to be among them, enjoy the night, for once, he who usually sleeps through it, the night. Not like them who are masters of the night, absurd beasts, smoky eyes, monstrous powers. Not him. He's sick. The illness that pervades him is unique and leaves no escape and is called life. He talks with his sister Cecy, who can see through anyone's eyes, live anyone's life, without living her own, standing still in the attic full of sand, he talks with Arach, a spider living in a matchbox, and he talks with one of the guests at the macabre party to be held shortly, his Uncle Einar, the only one with wings, who reassures him, perhaps deludes him, that one day he will also fly. Illusions, sadness, a certain death.

When the story first came out, in 1946, there were illustrations by Charles Addams (whose famous Family mirrored Bradbury’s). Now, in the version in the original language that I hold, being from a completely different generation, born forty years after the first print, there are drawings by a majestic Dave McKean who translates with his crooked shadows, his hallucinatory faces, the straight lines dripping with madness, now Timothy's fears, now the mad Pavans held in the hall of the House, now spider webs forming words of denial. Now the sadness, now the fear, as if they were his own children. 

There is the mad bitterness of Bradbury, there are the shadows with which he paints the canvas of his books, there is something that one cannot touch. And that perhaps should be left there, to lie dormant, like the Family’s monsters.