The Funhouse Read online

  It was hideous.

  “Oh, God,” Ellen said, her voice quavering. “God, why me? What have I done to deserve this?”

  The large, green, inhuman eyes of her offspring regarded her venomously.

  Ellen wanted to turn away from it. She wanted to run out of the trailer, into the crackling storm, into the vast darkness, out of this nightmare and into a new dawn.

  The creature's twisted, flared nostrils quivered like those of a wolf or a dog, and she could hear it sniffing eagerly as it sorted out her scent from the other odors in the trailer.

  Kill it!

  The Bible said, Thou shalt not kill. Murder was a sin. If she strangled the baby, she would rot in Hell. A series of cruel images flickered through her mind, visions of a Hell that her mother had painted for her during thousands of lectures about the terrible consequences of sin: grinning demons tearing ragged gobbets of flesh from living, screaming women, their leathery black lips slick with human blood, white-hot fire searing the bodies of sinners, pale worms feeding off still-conscious dead men, agonized people writhing painfully in mounds of indescribably horrible filth. Ellen was not a practicing Catholic, but that did not mean that she was no longer a Catholic in her heart. Years of daily Mass and nightly prayer, nineteen interminable years of Gina's mad sermons and stern admonitions could not be sloughed off and forgotten easily. Ellen still believed wholeheartedly in God, Heaven, and Hell. The Bible's warnings continued to hold value and meaning for her. Thou shalt not kill.

  But surely, she argued with herself, that commandment did not apply to animals. You were permitted to kill animals, that was not a mortal sin. And this thing in the bassinet was just an animal, a beast, a monster. It was not a human being. Therefore, if she destroyed it, that act of destruction would not seal the fate of her immortal soul.

  On the other hand, how could she be certain that it wasn't human? It had been born of man and woman. There couldn't be any more fundamental criterion for humanity than that one. The child was a mutant, but it was a human mutant.

  Her dilemma seemed insoluble.

  In the bassinet, the small, swarthy creature raised one hand, reaching toward Ellen. It wasn't a hand, really. It was a claw. The long, bony fingers were much too large to be those of a sixweek-old infant, even though this baby was big for its age, like an animal's paws, the hands of this little beast were out of proportion to the rest of it. A sparse, black fur covered the backs of its hands and bristled more densely around its knuckles. Amber light glinted off the sharp edges of the pointed fingernails. The child raked the air, but it was unable to reach Ellen.

  She couldn't understand how such a thing could have come from her. How could it possibly exist? She knew there were such things as freaks. Some of them worked in a sideshow in this very carnival. Bizarre-looking people. But not like this. None of them was half as weird as this thing that she had nurtured in her womb. Why had this happened? Why?

  Killing the child would be an act of mercy. After all, it would never be able to enjoy a normal life. It would always be a freak, an object of shame, ridicule, and derision. Its days would be unrelievedly stark, bitter, lonely. Even the tamest and most ordinary pleasures would be denied it, and it would have no chance of attaining happiness.

  Furthermore, if she were forced to spend her life tending to this creature, she wouldn't find any happiness of her own. The prospect of raising this grotesque child filled her with despair. Murdering it would be an act of mercy benefitting both herself and the pitiful yet frightening mutant now glaring at her from the bassinet.

  But the Roman Catholic Church did not condone mercy killing. Even the highest motives would not save her from Hell. And she knew that her motives were not pure, ridding herself of this burden was, in part, a selfish act.

  The creature continued to stare at her, and she had the unsettling feeling that its strange eyes were not merely looking at her but through her, into her mind and soul, past all pretension. It knew what she was contemplating, and it hated her for that.

  Its pale, speckled tongue slowly licked its dark, dark lips.

  It hissed defiantly at her.

  Whether or not this thing was human, whether or not killing it would be a sin, she knew that it was evil. It was not simply a deformed baby. It was something else. Something worse. It was dangerous, both less and more than human. Evil.

  She felt the truth of that in her heart and bones.

  Or am I crazy? she wondered. No. She couldn't allow doubt to creep in. She was not out of her mind. Grief-stricken, deeply depressed, frightened, horrified, confused—she was all of those things. But she was not crazy. She perceived that the child was evil, and in that regard her perception was not askew.

  Kill it.

  The infant screamed. Its gravelly, strident voice grated on Ellen's nerves. She winced.

  Wind-driven sheets of rain drummed noisily against the trailer. Thunder picked up the night and vigorously rattled it again.

  The child squirmed, thrashed, and managed to push aside the thin blanket that had been draped across it. Hooking its bony hands on the edges of the bassinet, gripping with its wicked claws, it strained forward and sat up.

  Ellen gasped. It was too young to sit up on its own with such assurance.

  It hissed at her.

  The thing was growing at a frightening rate, it was always hungry, and she fed it more than twice as much as she would have fed an ordinary child, week by week she could see the amazing changes in it. With surprising, disquieting swiftness it was learning how to use its body. Before long it would be able to crawl, then walk.

  And then what? How big and how mobile would it have to get before she would no longer have any control over it?

  Her mouth was dry and sour. She tried to work up some saliva, but there was none.

  A trickle of cold sweat broke from her hairline and wriggled down her forehead, into the corner of one eye. She blinked away the salty fluid.

  If she could place the child in an institution, where it belonged, she would not have to murder it. But Conrad would never agree to giving up his baby. He was not the least bit revolted by it. He was not frightened of it, either. He actually seemed to cherish it more than he might have done a healthy child. He took considerable pride in having fathered the creature, and to Ellen his pride was a sign of madness.

  Even if she could commit the thing to an institution, that solution would not be final. The evil would still exist. She knew the child was evil, knew it beyond the slightest doubt, and she felt responsible for bringing such a creature into the world. She could not simply turn her back and walk away and let someone else deal with it.

  What if, grown larger, it killed someone? Wouldn't the responsibility for that death rest on her shoulders?

  The air coming through the open windows was much cooler than it had been before the rain had begun to fall. A chilly draft brushed the back of Ellen's neck.

  The child began trying to get out of the bassinet.

  Finally summoning all of her bourbon-inspired courage, her teeth chattering, her hands trembling as if she were afflicted by palsy, she took hold of the baby. No. The thing. She must not think of it as a baby. She could not allow herself the luxury of sentiment. She must act. She must be cold, unmoved, implacable, iron-willed.

  She intended to lift the loathesome creature, retrieve the satin-encased pillow that was under its head, and then smother it with the same pillow. She didn't want to leave any obvious marks of violence on the body. The death must appear to be natural. Even healthy babies sometimes died in their cribs without apparent cause, no one would be surprised or suspicious if this pitiful deformity passed away quietly in its sleep.

  But as she lifted the thing off the pillow, it responded with such shocking fury that her plan instantly became unworkable. The creature squealed. It clawed her.

  She cried out in pain as its sharp nails gouged and sliced her forearms.

  Blood. Slender ribbons of blood.

  The infant squirme
d and kicked, and Ellen had great difficulty holding onto it.

  The thing pursed its twisted mouth and spat at her. A viscous, foul-smelling glob of yellowish spittle struck her nose.

  She shuddered and gagged.

  The child-thing peeled its dark lips back from its mottled gums and hissed at her.

  Thunder smashed the porcelain night, and the lights in the trailer blinked once, blinked twice, and lightning coruscated through the brief spell of blackness before the lamps came on again.

  Please, God, she thought desperately, don't leave me in the dark with this thing.

  Its bulging, green eyes seemed to radiate a peculiar light, a phosphorescent glow that appeared, impossibly, to come from within them.

  The thing screeched and writhed.

  It urinated.

  Ellen's heart jackhammered.

  The thing tore at her hands, scratching, drawing blood. It gouged the soft flesh of her palms, and it ripped off one of her thumbnails.

  She heard an eerie, high-pitched ululation quite unlike anything she had heard before, and she didn't realize for several seconds that she was listening to her own shrill, panicked screaming.

  If she could have thrown the creature down, if she could have turned away from it and run, she would have done just that, but suddenly she found that she was unable to release it. The thing had a fierce grip on her arms, and it wouldn't let go.

  She struggled with the inhumanly ferocious child, and the bassinet almost tipped over. Her shadow swayed wildly across the nearby bed and up the wall, bobbing against the rounded ceiling. Cursing, straining, trying to keep the creature at arm's length, she managed to shift her left hand to its throat, and then her right hand, and she squeezed hard, bearing down, gritting her teeth, repelled by the savagery she felt rising within herself, frightened by her own newly discovered capacity for violence, but determined to choke the life out of the thing.

  It wasn't going to die easily. Ellen was surprised by the rigid, resistant muscles in its neck. It crabbed its claws higher on her arms and dug its nails into her again, making ten fresh puncture wounds in her skin, and the pain prevented Ellen from putting all of her strength into the frantic attempt to strangle the thing.

  It rolled its eyes, then refocused on her with even more evident hatred than before.

  A silvery stream of thick drool oozed out of one corner of its mouth and down its pebbled chin.

  The twisted mouth opened wide, the dark, leathery lips writhed. A snaky, pale, pointed tongue curled and uncurled obscenely.

  The child pulled Ellen toward it with improbable strength. She could not keep it safely at arm's length as she wanted. It drew her relentlessly down toward the bassinet, and at the same time it pulled itself up.

  Die, damn you! Die!

  She was bent over the bassinet now. Leaning into it. Her grip on the child's throat was weakened by her new position. Her face was only eight or ten inches from the creature's repugnant countenance. Its rank breath washed over her. It spat in her face again.

  Something brushed her belly.

  She gasped, jerked.

  Fabric ripped. Her blouse.

  The child was kicking out with its long-toed, clawed feet. It was trying to gouge her breasts and stomach. She attempted to draw back, but the thing held her close, held her with demonic power and perseverance.

  Ellen felt dizzy, fuzzy, whiskey-sick, terror-sick, and her vision blurred, and her ears were filled with the roaring suction of her own breath, but she couldn't seem to breathe fast enough, she was light-headed. Sweat flew off her brow and spattered the child as she wrestled with it.

  The thing grinned as if it sensed triumph.

  I'm losing, she thought desperately. How can that be? My God, it's going to kill me.

  Thunder pounded the sky, and lightning burst from the broken night. A mallet of wind struck the trailer broadside.

  The lights went out.

  And stayed out.

  The child fought with renewed fury.

  It was not weak like a human infant. It had weighed almost eleven pounds at birth, and it had gained, phenomenally, more than twelve pounds in the past six weeks. Almost twenty-three pounds now. And no fat. Just muscle. A hard, sinewy, gristly infant, like a young gorilla. It was as strong and energetic as the six-month-old chimpanzee that performed in one of the carnival's more popular sideshows.

  The bassinet toppled with a crash, and Ellen stumbled over it. She fell. With the child. It was close against her now. No longer safely at arm's reach. It was on top of her. Gurgling. Snarling. Its taloned feet found purchase on her hips, and it tried to tear through the heavy denim jeans she was wearing.

  “No!” she shouted.

  A thought snapped through her mind: I've got to wake up!

  But she knew she was already awake.

  The thing continued to hold her right arm, its nails hooked in her flesh, but it let go of her left arm. In the blackness she sensed the hooked claw reaching for her throat, her vulnerable jugular vein. She turned her head aside. The small yet incredibly long-fingered, deadly hand brushed past her throat, barely missing her.

  She rolled, and then the child-thing was on the bottom. Whimpering, teetering on the wire of hysteria, she tore her right arm loose of the creature's steely grip, at the expense of new pain, and she felt for its arms in the darkness, found its wrists, held its hands away from her face. The thing kicked at her stomach again, but she avoided its short, powerful legs. She managed to put one of her knees on its chest, pinning it. She bore down on it with all of her weight, the creature's ribs and breastbone gave way beneath her. She heard something crack inside the thing. It wailed like a banshee. Ellen knew, at last, that she had a chance to survive. There was a sickening crunch, a wet sound, a horrible mashing, squashing, and all the fight went out of her adversary. Its arms went slack and stopped trying to resist her. The creature abruptly fell silent, limp.

  Ellen was afraid to take her knee off its chest. She was certain that it was faking death. If she shifted her weight, if she gave it the slightest opening, the thing would move as fast as a snake, strike at her throat, and then disembowel her with its spiky feet.

  Seconds passed.

  Then minutes.

  In the darkness she began an urgent, whispered prayer: “Jesus, help me.

  Saint Elena, my patron saint, plead for me. Mary, Mother of God, hear me, help me.

  Please, please, please. Mary, help me, Mary, please . . .”

  The electric power was restored, and Ellen cried out at the unexpected light.

  Under her, on its back, blood still running from its nostrils and its mouth, the child-thing stared up at her with glistening, bulging, bloodshot eyes. But it couldn't see her. It was looking into another world, into Hell, to which she had dispatched its soul—if it had a soul.

  There was a lot of blood. Most of it wasn't Ellen's.

  She released the child-thing.

  It didn't return magically to life, as she had half expected it would. It didn't attack.

  It looked like a huge, squashed bug.

  She crawled away from the corpse, keeping one eye on it as she went, not entirely convinced that it was dead. She did not have sufficient strength to stand up just yet. She crept to the nearest wall and sat with her back against it.

  The night air was heavy with the coppery odor of blood, the stench of her own sweat, and the clean ozone of the thunderstorm.

  Gradually, Ellen's stentorian breathing subsided to a soft, rhythmic lullaby of inhalation, exhalation, inhalation . . .

  As her fear dwindled along with the steady deceleration of her heartbeat, she became increasingly aware of her pains, there was a multitude of them. She ached in every joint and every muscle from the strain of wrestling with the child. Her left thumb was bleeding where the nail had been ripped off, the exposed flesh stung as if it were being eaten away by acid. Her scratched, scraped fingers burned, and the gouged palm of her right hand throbbed. Both of her forearms had been s
cored repeatedly by the thing's sharp fingernails. Each upper arm was marked by five, ugly, oozing punctures.

  She wept. Not just because of the physical pain. Because of the anguish, the stress, the fear. With tears she was able to wash away much of her tension and at least a small measure of her heavy burden of guilt.

  —I'm a murderer.

  —No. It was just an animal.

  —It was my child.

  —Not a child. A thing. A curse.

  She was still arguing with herself, still trying to find a comfortable set of rationalizations that would allow her to live with what she had done, when the trailer door flew open and Conrad came inside, backlighted by a strobe-flutter of lightning. He was wearing a plastic raincoat, streaming water, his thick black hair was soaked, and strands of it were plastered across his broad forehead. Wind rushed in at his heels and, like a big dog, circled the room, sniffing inquisitively at everything.

  Raw, throat-tightening fear gripped Ellen again.

  Conrad pulled the door shut. Turning, he saw her sitting on the floor with her back against the wall, her blouse torn, her arms and hands bleeding.

  She tried to explain why she had killed the child. But she couldn't speak. Her mouth moved, but nothing came out of it except a dry, frightening rasping.

  Conrad's intensely blue eyes looked puzzled for a moment. Then his gaze traveled from Ellen to the bloody, crumpled child that was on the floor a few feet from her.

  His powerful hands curled into large, hard fists. No,” he said softly, disbelievingly. “No . . . no . . . no . . .”

  He moved slowly toward the small corpse.

  Ellen looked up at him with growing trepidation.

  Stunned, Conrad knelt beside the dead creature and stared at it for what seemed like an eternity. Then tears began to track down his cheeks. Ellen had never seen him cry before. Finally he lifted the limp body and held it close. The child thing's bright blood dripped onto the plastic raincoat.

  “My baby, my little baby, my sweet little boy,” Conrad crooned. “My boy . . . my son . . . what's happened to you? What did she do to you? What did she do?”