The Funhouse (7 page)

He kept his eyes closed, breathed shallowly and evenly, and counted off the seconds: One . . . two . . . three . . .

He was just about to shout in her face when he realized that the person bending over him wasn’t Amy. He smelled sour, alcohol-tainted breath, and his heart began to pound.

Unaware that Joey was awake, his mother said, “Sweet, sweet, little Joey. Little baby-boy angel. Sweet, precious little angel face.” Her voice was eerie. She spoke in an odd, half-whispered, half-crooned, throaty, silky stream of slurred words.

He wished desperately that she would go away. She was very drunk, worse than usual. She had come into his room several other nights when she’d been in this condition. She had talked to him, thinking he was asleep. Maybe she came in a lot more nights than he knew; maybe some nights he
was
asleep. Anyway, he knew what was coming. He knew what she was going to say and do, and he dreaded it.

“Little angel. You look like a little snoozing angel, a baby angel, lying there so innocent, so tender, sweet.” She leaned even closer, bathing his face with her pungent breath. “But what’re you like inside, little angel? Are you sweet and good and pure all the way through?”

Stop it, stop it, stop it!
Joey thought. Please, don’t do this again, Mama. Go away. Get out of here.
Please
.

But he didn’t speak to her, and he didn’t move. He didn’t let her know he was awake because when she was like this he was afraid of her.

“You look so pure,” she said, her alcohol-thickened voice growing even softer, even more blurry. “But maybe that angel face is just the surface . . . the mask. Maybe you’re just putting on an act for me. Huh? Are you? Maybe . . . underneath . . . maybe you’re just like the other one. Are you, little angel? Under that sweet face, are you like the other one, the monster, the thing he called Victor?”

Joey never had been able to figure out what she was talking about when she sneaked in here at night and mumbled drunkenly at him. Who was Victor?

“If I produced one like you, why not another?” she asked herself aloud, and Joey thought she sounded a little bit afraid now. “This time . . . maybe it’s a monster
inside
. In the mind. A monster
inside
 . . . hiding in a normal body . . . behind such a nice face . . . waiting. Waiting to come out when no one’s looking. Just waiting patiently. Both you and Amy. Huh? Wolves in sheep’s clothing. Could be. Sure. Could be that way. What if it is? Huh? When will it happen? When will the thing come out of you for everyone to see? Can I turn my back on you, little angel? Can I ever be safe? Oh, God. Oh, Jesus, Jesus, help me. Mary, help me. I should never have had children. Not after the first one. I can never be sure of what I’ve created. Never. What if . . .”

Increasingly numbed by the liquor she had drunk, her tongue and lips became less and less able to form the words she wanted to say, and she lowered her voice so far that Joey could barely hear her, even though she was less than a foot from him. “What if . . . someday . . . what if I have to kill you, little angel?” Softer, softer, word by terrible word, softer. “What if . . . I have . . . to kill . . . you . . . like I had to kill . . . the other one . . . ?”

She began to weep quietly.

Joey was suddenly chilled to the bone, and he was worried that his shivering would disturb the sheets and draw her attention. He was afraid she would discover that he had heard every word.

Eventually her stifled weeping subsided.

Joey was sure she could hear his pounding heart.

He felt strange. He was afraid of her, but he was also sorry for her. He wanted to hug her and tell her everything would be all right—but he didn’t dare.

Finally, after what seemed like hours but was surely only a minute or two, she left the bedroom, gently pulling the door shut after her.

Under the covers Joey curled into a tight, fetal ball.

What did it all mean? What had she been talking about? Was she just drunk? Or was she crazy?

Although he was scared, he was also a little bit ashamed of himself for thinking such things about his own mother.

Nevertheless, he was glad he had the wan, milky glow of the weak night-light. He sure didn’t want to be alone in the dark right now.

* * *

In the nightmare
Amy had given birth to a bizarrely deformed baby—a disgusting, vicious thing that looked more like a crab than like a human being. She was in a small, poorly lighted room with it, and it was coming after her, snapping at her with its bony pincers and arachnoid mandibles. The walls held narrow windows, and each time she passed one of them she saw her mother and Jerry Galloway on the far side of the glass; they were looking in at her and laughing. Then the baby scuttled along the floor, closed in fast, and seized her ankle in one of its spiny pincers.

She woke up, sat up in bed, a scream caught in the back of her throat. She choked it down.

Just a dream, she told herself. Just a bad dream courtesy of Jerry Galloway. Damn him!

In the gloom to her right, something moved.

She snapped on the bedside lamp.

Curtains. Her window was open a couple of inches to provide ventilation, and a mild breeze stirred the curtains.

Outside, a block or two away, a dog howled mournfully.

Amy looked at the clock. Three in the morning.

She sat there for a while, until she had calmed down, but when she switched off the light she couldn’t get back to sleep. The darkness was oppressive and threatening in a way it hadn’t been since she was a small child.

She had the curious, disturbing feeling that, outside, in the night, something terrible was bearing down on the Harper house. Like a tornado. But not a tornado. Something else. Something weird, worse than a mere storm. She had a premonition—not quite the right word, but the only word that came close to describing what she was feeling—an icy premonition that some relentlessly destructive force was closing in on her and the entire family. She tried to imagine what it could be, but no explanation occurred to her. The impression of danger remained formless, nameless, but powerful.

The sensation was, in fact, so electrifying, so unshakable, that she finally had to get up and go to the window, even though she felt foolish for doing so.

Maple Lane was dozing peacefully, wrapped in unthreatening shadows. And beyond their street, the suburban south side of Royal City rose on a series of gentle, low hills; at this hour there was only a sprinkling of lights.

Farther south, at the edge of the town and above it, lay the county fairgrounds. The fairgrounds were dark now, deserted, but in July, when the carnival arrived, Amy would be able to stand at her window and see the blaze of colored lights, the far-off, magical blur of the steadily turning Ferris wheel.

The night was filled only with the familiar. There was nothing new in it, nothing dangerous.

The feeling that she was standing in the path of a fiercely destructive, oncoming storm faded, and exhaustion replaced it. She returned to bed.

Only one threat loomed over the Harper household, and that was her pregnancy, the inescapable consequences of her sin.

Amy put her hands on her belly, and she thought about what her mother would say, and she wondered if she would always be as alone and helpless as she was now, and she wondered what was coming.

4

At the refreshment
stand near the carousel, there were five people in line ahead of Chrissy Lampton and Bob Drew.

“I hate to waste time waiting like this,” Chrissy said, “but I really want that candy apple.”

“It won’t take long,” Bob said.

“There’s so much more I want to do.”

“Relax. It’s only eleven-thirty. The carnival won’t shut down until at least one o’clock.”

“But it’s the last night,” Chrissy said. She took a deep breath, savoring the blend of aromas that permeated the night: popcorn, cotton candy, garlic-flavored french fries, hot roasted peanuts, and more. “Ahhhh! My mouth is watering. I’ve been stuffing myself all night, and I’m still famished. I can’t believe I’ve eaten so much!”

“It’s partly the excitement,” Bob said. “Excitement burns up calories. And all those thrill rides. You were scared half to death on most of those rides, and fear burns up calories even faster than strenuous exercise.” He was seriously trying to analyze her unusual appetite. Bob was an accountant.

“Listen,” Chrissy said, “why don’t you wait in line and get the candy apples while I find the ladies’ room. I’ll meet you over there by the merry-go-round in a few minutes. That way we’ll kill two birds at the same time.”

“With one stone,” Bob said.

“Huh?”

“The expression is, ‘We’ll kill two birds with one stone.’”

“Oh. Sure.”

“But I don’t think it applies here exactly,” Bob said. “Not quite. Anyway, you go ahead to the ladies’. We’ll meet at the carousel like you said.”

Sheesh!
Chrissy thought. Are all accountants like this?

She walked away from the refreshment stand, through the damp wood shavings that covered the ground, through the calliope-blast from the merry-go-round, past a high-striker where a muscular young man slammed a sledgehammer into a scale and rang a bell overhead to impress his date, past a dozen pitchmen who were spieling a mile a minute, trying to get people to play all sorts of games where you could win a teddy bear or a kewpie doll or some other piece of junk. A hundred attractions played a hundred different songs, but somehow the various strains of music didn’t sound the least bit discordant when they came together; everything fused into a single, strange, but appealing melody. The carnival was a river of noise, and Chrissy waded through it, grinning happily.

Chrissy Lampton loved the Coal County Spring Fair. It was always one of the high spots of the year. The fair, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Thanksgiving, the Halloween dance at the Elks’ Club, the Las Vegas Nights at St. Thomas’s Church (one in April, one in August)—those were the only days of excitement in the entire year, the only events worth looking forward to in all of Coal County.

She remembered part of a funny and rather dirty little song that had made the rounds when she’d been in high school:

Everyone who lives here has the zits;

Good old Coal County sure is the pits.

Anybody with a brain has got to split

Cause this is where God squats when he gets the shits.

In high school she used to laugh at that song. But now, at the still-tender age of twenty-one, grimly aware of how limited her future was in this place, she didn’t find those lyrics very humorous.

Someday she would move to New York or Los Angeles, to a place with opportunities. She intended to split as soon as she had six months’ worth of living expenses in her savings account. She already had enough for five months.

Soaking up the color and glamour of the carnival as she walked, Chrissy headed toward the amusements that stood at the fringe of the midway, behind which she expected to find a comfort station within a couple of hundred feet. The public restrooms were in cinder-block buildings scattered around the perimeter of the fairgrounds.

As she made her way through the crowd, a pitchman at a duck-shoot game gave her a loud wolf-whistle.

She grinned and waved in reply.

She felt terrific. Even though she was temporarily stuck in Coal County, she had a wonderful, sparkling future. She knew she was good-looking. She had a lot of smarts, too. With those qualities she could carve out a niche for herself in the big city in record time, easily within six months. Currently she was a typist, but that was strictly short-term.

Another pitchman, this one working a wheel of fortune, heard the first barker’s whistle, and he whistled at her, too. Then a third carny joined the fun, whistled, called to her teasingly.

She felt as if she would live forever.

Ahead of her the big clown’s face atop the funhouse laughed shrilly.

The funhouse, which stood next to Freak-o-rama, was at the eastern edge of the midway, and Chrissy figured there would be a comfort station somewhere behind it. She turned in beside the big, rambling structure, with the freak show on her right, and she walked through the narrow alley between the two attractions, away from the crowds and the lights and the music.

The air was no longer redolent with cooking food. It smelled of wet wood shavings, grease, and gasoline from the large, thrumming generators.

Inside the funhouse, chains clanked, banshees howled, ghosts laughed spookily, ghouls cackled, the wheels of the cars clattered incessantly along the winding track, and haunting music swelled and faded, swelled and faded. A girl screamed. Then another. Then three or four at once.

They’re acting like little kids, Chrissy thought scornfully. They’re so pathetically eager to be thrilled, so willing to accept the shabby illusions in there, anything to be briefly transported from the drab reality of life in Coal County, Pennsylvania.

An hour or two ago, when she had ridden through the funhouse with Bob Drew, she had screamed, too. Now, remembering her own hysteria, she was a little bit ashamed of herself.

As she stepped over cables and ropes, cautiously picking her way toward the rear of the funhouse, she realized that, a few years from now, after she had had a chance to experience classier thrills, after she had grown accustomed to more sophisticated excitements, she would find the carnival tawdry and juvenile instead of exotic and glamorous.

She was almost at the end of the long, narrow passageway. It was darker here than she had expected.

She stumbled over a fat electric cable.

“Damn!”

She regained her balance, squinted at the ground ahead.

There was just enough light to create impenetrable, purple-black shadows on all sides.

She thought of turning back, but she really had to pee, and she was sure there was a bathroom nearby.

At last she reached the end of the alley and turned the corner into the darkness behind the funhouse, looking for one of the brightly lighted comfort stations.

She almost walked into the man.

He was standing against the rear wall of the funhouse, in an exceedingly deep pool of velvety shadows.

Chrissy yelped in surprise.

She couldn’t see his face, but she
could
see that he was big. Very big. Huge.

An instant after she registered his presence, even as she gasped in shock, even as she saw how large he was, she realized that he was waiting for her. She started to scream.

He struck her on the side of the head with such brutal force that it was a miracle her neck didn’t snap.

The scream died in her throat. She dropped to her knees, then toppled onto her side in the dirt, stunned, numbed, unable to move, struggling desperately to remain conscious. Her mind was a dully glinting blade skating on a crescent of silvery ice, with mile-deep, black water on both sides.

She was vaguely aware of being lifted and carried.

She couldn’t resist him; she had no strength at all.

A door creaked noisily.

She forced her eyes open and saw that she was being carried out of the dark night, into an even darker place.

Her heart was beating so hard that it seemed to hammer the air out of her lungs each time she tried to draw a breath.

He dropped her rudely onto a hard, wooden floor.

Get up! Run!
she told herself.

She couldn’t move. She seemed paralyzed.

Hinges squealed as he pushed the door shut again.

This can’t be happening!
she thought.

A sliding bolt rasped into place, and the man grunted with what she took to be satisfaction. She was locked in with him.

Dizzy, confused, weak as a baby, but no longer in danger of losing consciousness, she tried to figure out where she was. The room was perfectly black, as utterly lightless as the inside of the Devil’s pocket. The wooden floor was crude, and it was filled with vibrations, the muffled sound of machinery.

Someone screamed. Then someone else. The air was split by a maniacal laugh. Music swelled. The vibrations in the floor resolved into the
clackety-clackety-clack
of steel wheels on a metal track.

She was in the funhouse. Probably in the service area. Behind the tracks on which the cars moved.

A trickle of strength seeped into Chrissy’s body again, but she was barely able to lift one hand to her bruised temple. She expected to find her skin and hair wet and sticky with blood, but they were dry. The flesh was tender but apparently unbroken.

The stranger knelt on the floor beside her.

She could hear him, sense him, but not see him; however, even in this pitch-black hole, she was aware of his great size; he loomed.

He’s going to rape me, she thought. God, no. Please. Oh, please don’t let him do it.

This stranger was breathing curiously. Sniffing. Snuffling. Like an animal. Like a dog trying to get her scent.

“No,” she said.

He grunted again.

Bob will come looking for me, she told herself hopefully, frantically. Bob will come; he’s got to come; he’s got to come and save me, good old Bob, please, God, please.

She was succumbing to a rapidly burgeoning panic as her head cleared and as the terrible danger became more and more evident to her.

The stranger touched her hip.

She tried to pull back.

He held her.

She was gasping, shaking. The temporary paralysis faded; the numbness in her limbs vanished. Abruptly she was awash in pain from the blow to the head that she had suffered a few minutes ago.

The stranger moved his hand up her belly to her breasts and ripped open her blouse.

She cried out.

He slapped her, jarring her teeth.

She realized that it was useless to call for help in a funhouse. Even if people heard her above all the music, above the recorded howling and wailing of the ghosts and monsters, they would think she was just another thrill-seeker startled by a pop-up pirate or a jack-in-the-box vampire.

The man tore off her bra.

She was no match for him physically, but enough of her strength had returned for her to offer some resistance, and she couldn’t just lie there, waiting for him to take her. She reached for his hands, grabbed them, intending to push them away, but with a shock she discovered that they were not ordinary hands. They weren’t a man’s hands. Not exactly. They were . . . different.

Oh, God
.

She became aware of two green ovals in the blackness. Two softly shining, green spots. Floating above her.

Eyes.

She was looking into the stranger’s eyes.

What sort of man has eyes that shine in the dark?

* * *

Bob Drew stood
at the carousel with one candy apple in each hand, waiting for Chrissy. After five minutes he started to eat his own apple. After ten minutes he grew impatient and began to pace. After fifteen minutes he was angry with Chrissy; she was a gorgeous girl, fun to be with, but she was sometimes flighty and frequently inconsiderate.

After twenty minutes his anger began to give way to mild concern; then he began to worry. Maybe she was sick. She had eaten an incredible amount and variety of junk. It would be amazing if she
didn’t
upchuck sooner or later. Besides, you never knew for sure how clean and wholesome carnival food was. Maybe she had gotten a bad hot dog or had unwittingly eaten some piece of filth along with her chiliburger.

Considering that possibility, he began to feel queasy himself. He stared at his half-eaten candy apple and finally dropped it into a trash barrel.

He wanted to find her and satisfy himself that she was all right, but he didn’t think she would be too happy to see him while her breath still stank of vomit. If she had just been sick in the ladies’ room, she would want time to freshen up, patch her makeup, and put herself back together.

After twenty-five minutes he threw Chrissy’s candy apple in the trash with his own.

After half an hour, bored by the endlessly galloping horses and by the rhythmically flashing brass poles, increasingly concerned about Chrissy, he went searching for her. Earlier, he had watched her walk away from the refreshment stand, admiring her round bottom and her shapely calves, and then she had vanished in the crowd. A minute or two later, he thought he had seen her golden head as she left the midway near the funhouse, and now he decided to look in that area first.

Between the funhouse and the freak show, a five-foot-wide path led back to an open space behind the amusements, the outer ring of the fairgrounds, where the restrooms were located. Toward the end of the passageway, the shadows were so dark and thick that they seemed tangible, like black drapes, and the night was surprisingly lonely here, considering that the busy midway was only fifty or sixty feet behind him.

Peering uneasily into the shadows, Bob wondered if Chrissy had encountered more serious trouble than just an upset stomach. She was a
very
pretty girl, and these days, when so many people seemed to have lost all respect for the law, there were more than a few men prowling around who thought nothing of taking what they wanted from a pretty girl, regardless of whether or not she wanted them to have it. Bob supposed that there were even more men of that stripe in the carnival than there were in the real world.

With growing trepidation he reached the end of the path and stepped into the open area behind the funhouse. He looked right, then left, and saw the comfort station. It was sixty yards away, rectangular, gray, made of cement blocks, perched in the center of a tightly circumscribed pool of bright yellowish light. He couldn’t see the entire structure, only a third of it, because there was a row of ten or twelve big carnival trucks parked in the intervening hundred and eighty feet. Here the darkness was even deeper; the trucks were only hulking outlines, and they made him think of slumbering, primeval beasts.