The Funhouse Read online

  She wasn't a bad girl. She wasn't wild or loose, not deep down in her heart. Even while she let Jerry use her, she hated herself for being so easy. Whenever she made out with a boy in a parked car, she felt awkward, embarrassed, out of place, as if she were trying to be someone else and not herself.

  She wasn't a lazy girl, either. She had ambition. She planned to go to Royal City Junior College, then to Ohio State, majoring in art. She would get a job as a commercial artist, and she would labor at fine arts in her spare time, nights and weekends, and if she found that she had enough talent to make a good living as a painter, she would quit the nine-to-five job and create wonderfully beautiful pictures for sale in galleries. She was determined to build a successful, interesting life.

  But now she was pregnant. Her dreams were ashes.

  Maybe she didn't deserve happiness. Maybe she was bad, just deep-down rotten.

  Did a good girl spread her legs in the backseat of a boy's car nearly every night of the week? Did a good girl get knocked up while she was still in high school?

  The dark minutes of the night unwound like black thread from a spinning spool, and Amy's thoughts unwound, too—tangled and confusing thoughts. She couldn't make up her mind about herself, she couldn't decide whether she was basically a good person or a bad one.

  In her mind Amy could hear her mother's voice again: There's a darkness in you. Something bad is in you, and you have to fight it every minute.

  Suddenly, Amy wondered if her sluttish behavior was just an attempt to spite her mother. That was an unsettling thought.

  Speaking softly to the blackness around her, she said, “Did I let Jerry knock me up just because I knew the news would shatter Mama? Am I destroying my own future just to hurt that bitch?”

  She was the only one who knew the answer to her own question, she would have to look for it within herself.

  She lay very still beneath the covers, thinking.

  Outside, the wind stirred the nearby maple trees.

  In the distance a train whistle sounded.

  * * *

  The door scraped open, and floorboards creaked beneath the carpet as someone walked into the room.

  The noise woke Joey Harper. He opened his eyes and looked at the alarm clock, which was visible in the pale glow of the night-light. 12:36.

  He had been asleep an hour and a half, but he wasn't groggy. He was instantly awake and alert, for he was anticipating Amy's reaction to the tarantula in her bed. He had set his alarm for one o'clock because that was when she was supposed to come home, apparently she had returned early.

  Footsteps. Soft. Sneaky. Coming closer.

  Joey tensed under the sheets, but he continued to feign sleep.

  The footsteps stopped at the side of his bed.

  Joey felt a giggle building in him. He bit his tongue and struggled to hold back his laughter.

  He sensed her leaning toward him. She was inches away.

  He was going to wait a few seconds longer, and then, when she was on the verge of tickling him, he was going to yell in her face and scare the dickens out of her.

  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 g
loom 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, abut 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 hyst
eria, 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.