The Funhouse Read online

  It was definitely a body well designed for sex, for easily attracting and satisfying a man. The body of a courtesan? The body of, as Liz put it, an intimate companion? The legs and hips and buttocks and breasts of a whore? Was that what she had been born for? To sell herself? Was a future as a prostitute unavoidable? Was it some how her destiny to spend thousands of sweaty nights clutching total strangers in hotel rooms?

  Liz said she saw corruption in Amy's eyes. Mama said the same thing. To Mama, that corruption was a monstrous, evil thing that must be suppressed at all costs, but to Liz, it was nothing to be afraid of, something to be embraced. There couldn't be two people more different than Liz and Mama, yet they agreed on what was to be seen in Amy's eyes.

  Now Amy stared at her reflection in the mirror, peered into the windows of her soul, but although she looked very hard, she wasn't able to see anything more than the characterless surfaces of two dark and rather pretty eyes, she couldn't see either the rot of Hell or the grace of Heaven.

  She was lonely, frustrated, and terribly, terribly confused. She wanted to understand herself. More than anything she wanted to find the right role for herself in the world, so that for the first time in her life she would not feel tense and hopelessly out of place.

  If her hope of going to college and her dream of becoming an artist were unrealistic, then she didn't want to spend years struggling for what she was not meant to have. Her life had been too much of a struggle already.

  She touched her breasts, and her nipples sprang up at once, stiff, proud, as large as the tips of her little fingers. Yes, this was a bad thing, a sinful thing, just as Mama said, yet it felt so good, so sweet.

  If she could be sure that God would listen to her, she would get down on her knees and ask Him for a sign, an irrefutably holy sign that would tell her, once and for all, whether she was a good person or a bad person. But she didn't think God would listen to her after what she'd done to the baby.

  Mama said she was bad, that Something lurked inside of her, that she had let go of the reins that had been holding that Something back. Mama said she had the potential to be evil. And a mother should know that kind of thing about a daughter.

  Shouldn't she?

  Shouldn't she?

  * * *

  Before he went to bed, Joey counted the money in his bank again. During the past month he had added two dollars and ninety-five cents to the contents of the jar, and now he had exactly thirty-two dollars.

  He wondered if he would have to bribe someone at the carnival to let him run away with them when they left town. He figured he would need twenty dollars as a minimum bankroll, which would keep him in grub until he started earning money as a carny, sweeping up after the elephants and doing whatever else a ten-year-old boy could find to do on a midway. So that left only twelve bucks that he could spare for a bribe.

  Would that be enough?

  He decided to ask his father for two dollars to go to the Sunday matinee at the Rialto theater. But he wouldn't actually spend the money on the movies. He would go over to Tommy Culp's house and play tomorrow afternoon, pretend that he'd seen the movies when his father asked about them, and add the two bucks to his escape fund.

  He returned the bank to the desk.

  When he said his prayers before going to bed, he asked God to please keep Mama from getting pissed and coming into his room again.

  * * *

  The next day, Sunday, Amy called Liz.

  “Hello,” Liz said.

  “This is Sister Purity,” Amy said.

  “Oh, hello, Sister.”

  “I've decided to leave the nunnery.”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “It's cold and drafty here in the nunnery.”

  “Not to mention boring,” Liz said.

  “What have you got for me that I won't find boring”

  “How about Buzz Klemmet?”

  “I don't know him,” Amy said.

  “He's eighteen, soon nineteen I think. He was in the class ahead of ours—”

  “Ah, an older man!”

  “- but he dropped out of school in eleventh grade. He works at the Arco station on the corner of Main and Broadway.”

  “You sure know how to pick them,” Amy said sarcastically.

  “He may not sound like much,” Liz said, abut wait till you see him.

  He's a hunk.”

  “A hunk of what?”

  “Pretty muscle.”

  “Can he speak?”

  “Just well enough.”

  “Can he tie his own shoelaces?”

  “I'm not sure,” Liz said. “But he usually wears loafers, so you won't have to worry about that.”

  “I hope you know what you're doing.”

  “Trust me,” Liz said. “You'll love him. What night should I set it up for?”

  “Doesn't matter,” Amy said. “I work days.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “Fine.”

  “We'll double,” Liz said. “Me and Richie, you and Buzz.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “How about my place? We'll play some records, watch a movie on my folks' videocassette machine, roll a few joints. I got some bitchin' grass that'll mellow us out real fast.”

  “What about your parents?” Amy asked.

  “They're leaving on a two-week vacation today. New Orleans. I'll have the house all to myself.”

  “They trust you alone there for two weeks?”

  “They trust me not to burn the place to the ground,” Liz said. “And that's really all they care about. Listen, kid, I'm glad you finally came to your senses. I was afraid the summer was going to be a bummer. We'll sure raise hell now that you're back in the swing of things.”

  “I'm not sure I want to get back in the swing of things, at least not all the way, if you know what I mean. I want to have some fun. I want to date. But I don't think I'm going to screw around anymore. Not until college is behind me.”

  “Sure, sure,” Liz said.

  “I mean it.”

  “Take it at your own pace, honey. Anyway, we'll sure have some fun with my old man and old lady out of town.”

  “And the county fair is next week,” Amy said.

  “Hey, yeah! I really get off on smoking some good dope and then hopping on those thrill rides.”

  “I suspect you would.”

  “And did you ever get high and then go through the funhouse, with all those fake monsters jumping out at you?”

  “Never did,” Amy said.

  “It's hilarious.”

  “I'll look forward to it,” Amy said.

  10

  JANET MIDDLEMEIR was a safety engineer for the county. Her job was to make certain that all public buildings—courthouses, firehouses, libraries, schools, sheriff's substations, government-subsidized sports arenas and stadiums, and so forth—were at all times clean, well lighted, and safe for both visitors and workers. She was responsible for the inspection of the structural integrity of those buildings as well as for the condition and suitability of all machinery and all major nonmechanical equipment within their walls. Janet was young, only a few years out of college, only two years on the job, and she was still as dedicated to her work as she had been when she had first started, her duties seemed almost holy to her, and the words “public trust” still held some meaning for her, even if they didn't mean much to some of the people with whom she worked in the county and state bureaucracies. She had not yet been a public employee long enough to be tainted by the inevitable corrupting influences that were attendant to any government program. She cared.

  On Monday, June 23, when the carnival came to Rockville, Maryland, Janet Middlemeir presented herself at the office-trailer that provided working space for Mr. Frederick Frederickson, the silver-haired owner and operator of Big American Midway Shows. With characteristic directness and crispness, Janet stated her intention of going through the lot from one end to the other, until she was fully satisfied that the thrill rides and the ot
her large attractions were safely erected. She would not approve the opening of the carnival if she felt that it represented a threat to the well-being of the citizens of her county.

  She was pushing her authority a little bit, perhaps even exceeding it. She wasn't entirely sure that the carnival's equipment came under her jurisdiction, even though it stood on the county-owned fairgrounds. The law was vague on that point. No one from the county Office of Public Safety had ever inspected the carnival before, but Janet felt she couldn't shirk that responsibility. Just a few weeks ago a young woman had died when a carnival ride had collapsed in Virginia, and although that tragic accident hadn't happened on the lot of Big American Midway Shows, Janet was determined to put Big American under a microscope before the fairground gates swung open.

  When she stated her intentions to Mr. Frederickson, she was afraid that he would think she was trying to shake him down, and she didn't know quite how she would handle him if he tried to bribe her. She knew that carnivals employed a man whose job it was to bribe public officials, they called him the “patch” because he went into town ahead of the show and patched things up with the police and certain other key government employees, lining their pockets with folding money and books of free tickets for their friends and families. If a patch didn't do his job, the police usually raided the midway, closing down all the games, even if it was a straight carnival that didn't dupe the marks out of their money, unpaid and angry about it, the police could shutter even the cleanest girly shows and legally declare the thrill rides hazardous, quickly and effectively bringing the carnival to its knees. She didn't want the people at Big American to think she was after a fast buck.

  Fortunately, Mr. Frederickson was a well-educated, well-spoken, courtly gentleman, not at all what she had expected, and he both recognized and admired her sincerity. No bribe was offered. He assured her that his people were as concerned about the health and safety of their customers as she was, and he gave her permission to poke around in every corner of the midway for as long as she liked. Frederickson's superintendent of transportation, Max Freed, issued her a badge with the letters VIP on it, so that all the carnies would cooperate with her.

  For most of the morning and afternoon, wearing a hard hat, carrying a big flashlight and a notebook, Janet prowled the grounds, watching the midway rise like a phoenix, inspecting bolts and rivets and spring-locked joints, crawling into dark, tight places when that was necessary, overlooking nothing. She discovered that Frederick Frederickson had been telling the truth, Big American was conscientious about maintenance and more than conscientious, downright fussy, about the erection of rides and sideshows.

  At a quarter past three she came to the funhouse, which appeared to be ready for business a full hour and fifteen minutes before the gates were scheduled to open. The area around the attraction was deserted, quiet. She wanted someone to give her a guided tour of the funhouse, but she couldn't locate anyone associated with it, and for a moment she considered skipping the place. She hadn't found even one major safety problem anywhere else on the midway, and it wasn't likely that she would uncover a dangerous construction-code violation here. She'd probably just be wasting her time. Nevertheless . . .

  She had a strong sense of duty.

  She walked up the boarding ramp, past the ticket booth, and stepped down into the sunken channel in which the gondolas would move when the ride was started up. From the boarding gate the channel led to a set of large plywood doors that were painted to resemble the massive, timbered, iron-hinged doors of a forbidding castle. When the ride was in service, the doors would swing back to admit each oncoming car, then fall shut behind it. At the moment, as she approached the entrance, one door was propped open. She i peered inside.

  The interior of the funhouse wasn't as dark now as it would be when the ride was in operation. A string of work lights ran the length of the track and disappeared around a bend fifty feet away, when the place was open for business, those lights would be extinguished. Yet even with that chain of softly glowing bulbs, the funhouse was gloomy.

  Janet leaned through the doorway. “Hello?”

  No one answered.

  “Is anyone there?” she asked.

  Silence.

  She switched on her flashlight, hesitated only a second, and stepped inside.

  The funhouse smelled damp and oily.

  She knelt and inspected the pins that joined two sections of track. They were securely fastened.

  She got up and moved deeper into the building.

  On both sides of the track, slightly elevated from it, life-sized mechanical figures stood in secret niches in the walls: an ugly, leering pirate with a sword in his hand, a werewolf, claws coated with silvery, day-glow paint that would make them look like glinting blades in the dark, phony but realistic blood on his wolfish snout and on his two-inch-long fangs, a grinning, blood-drenched ax-murderer standing over the hideously wounded corpse of one of his victims, and many others, some more gruesome than those first few. In this light Janet could see that they were only clever, lifelike mannequins, but she felt uneasy around them. Although none of them was animated, as all of them would be when the funhouse was in operation, they looked as if they were about to pounce on her, to her chagrin, the damned things spooked her. But her dislike of them didn't prevent her from inspecting the anchor bolts on a few of them to make sure they wouldn't topple down into a passing gondola and injure a rider.

  Walking along the passageway, looking up at the monsters, Janet wondered why people insisted on referring to a place like this as a funhouse.

  She turned the bend at the end of the first length of track, moved farther into the funhouse, turned another corner, then another, marveling at the richness of invention that had been employed in the design of the place. It was huge, as large as a medium-sized warehouse, and it was crammed full of genuinely frightening things. It wasn't the sort of amusement that appealed to her, but she had to admire the work, the craftsmanship, and the creativity that had gone into it.

  She was in the center of the enormous structure, standing on the track, looking up at a man-sized spider hanging overhead, when someone put a hand on her shoulder. She gasped, jumped, jerked away from the unexpected contact, turned, I and would have screamed if her throat hadn't frozen.

  A man was standing on the tracks behind her. He was extremely tall, at least six and a half feet, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, and he was wearing a Frankenstein outfit: a black suit, a black turtleneck, monster gloves, and a rubber mask that covered his entire head.

  “Scared?” he asked. His voice was exceptionally deep and hoarse.

  She swallowed hard, finally breathed, and said, “Yes, my God! You scared me half to death.”

  “My job,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Scare the marks. My job.”

  “Oh. You work here at the funhouse?”

  “My job,” he said.

  She decided that he must be dull-witted. His simple, halting declarations resembled the speech patterns of a severely retarded child. Trying to be friendly, hoping to keep him friendly, she said, My name's Janet. What's yours?”

  “Huh?”

  “What's your name?”

  “Gunther.”

  “That's a nice name.”

  “Don't like.”

  “You don't like your name?”

  “No.”

  “What would you like to be called?”

  “Victor.”

  “That's a nice name, too.”

  “Victor his favorite.”

  “Whose favorite?”

  “His,”

  She realized that she was in a bad spot—in a strange and poorly lighted place, out of sight and perhaps out of earshot of anyone who might be inclined to help her, alone except for a badly retarded man big enough to break her in half the way she might break a breadstick.

  He took a step toward her.

  She backed up.

  He stopped.

  She stopped
, too, shaking, aware that she couldn't outrun him. His legs were longer than hers, and he was probably more familiar with the terrain than she was.

  He made an odd sound behind the mask, it was like a dog sniffing busily at a scent.

  “I'm a government official,” she said slowly, hoping he would understand. “A very important government official.”

  Gunther said nothing.

  “Very important,” Janet said nervously. She tapped the VIP badge that Max Freed had given her. “Mr. Frederickson told me I could go anywhere I wanted on the midway. Do you know who he is? Do you know Mr. Frederickson?”

  Gunther didn't reply. He just stood there, big as a truck, looking down at her, his face hidden behind that mask, his arms dangling limply at his sides.

  “Mr. Frederickson owns this carnival,” she said patiently. “You must know him. He's probably . . . your boss. He told me I could go wherever I Wanted.”

  Finally Gunther spoke again. “Smell woman.”

  What?”

  Smell woman. Smell good. Pretty.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, starting to sweat.

  “Want pretty.”

  “No, no,” she said. “No, Gunther. That wouldn't be right. That would only get you in trouble.”

  He was sniffing again. The mask seemed to interfere with the scent he was trying to catch, and he reached up and pulled the Frankenstein monster face off, revealing his own face.

  When Janet saw what had been hidden by the mask, she stumbled backwards on the track and screamed.

  Before anyone could possibly have heard her cry, Gunther sprang at her and cut the scream short with one blow of his big hand.

  She fell.

  He dropped on top of her.

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes before the fairground gates opened to the public, Conrad made a final inspection tour of the funhouse. He walked the length of the track to be sure there were no obstructions on it, no forgotten tools or misplaced pieces of lumber that might derail one of the gondolas.