Funhouse

by Diane Hoh

  “The school board gave everyone the day off out of respect for Dade,” Gina continued. “We could see a movie this afternoon. Something really funny, to take your mind off all this stuff.”

  More relief. Tess had been reluctant to invite herself to stay at Gina’s, even for just one night. The Giambone house was already packed to the rafters with kids and toys and bicycles and pets. She usually stayed overnight only when at least one Giambone was doing the same at someone else’s house. “Thanks,” she said gratefully, “that’d be fun.”

  It almost was. The movie was funny, and she felt perfectly safe in a theater full of people.

  And what could hurt her at the Giambones’? The house, messy and cluttered, noisy and busy, shouldn’t have been relaxing, but it always was. Gina’s parents welcomed her warmly, the smaller children gave her hugs and begged her to read to them, which she did. And The Devil’s Elbow crash wasn’t mentioned once.

  So Tess should have felt blissfully safe. She should have slept like a baby all night in the big, crowded house.

  But she didn’t. Because vivid purple words kept dancing in front of her eyes. Who will be next? It could be you … it could be you … it could be you …

  Chapter 9

  SHE WENT TO THE police with my poem. I was watching. I watched her house all night. Silly girl. The police probably think she’s loony-tunes. Laughed at her, I’ll bet!

  Have to hand it to her, though. I thought she’d split when she got my note. She didn’t. Stayed right there. Had every light in the condo on, though. The place looked like one giant light bulb!

  She stayed at Giambones’ last night. Okay by me. Plenty of time. After all, a few weeks ago I didn’t even know what I know now.

  Until I read Lila O’Hare’s journal.

  After that bunch of blank pages following the entry about losing The Boardwalk, she began writing again.

  My Tully is gone. I know people are saying that what he did was cowardly, but Tully was no coward. He did it for me and the baby. He didn’t know, that poor, sweet man, that the insurance company wouldn’t pay off in a suicide case.

  How am I going to take care of our baby when it comes?

  The man was dead? That was pretty gruesome. I wondered if those guys who took The Boardwalk from him felt guilty. Maybe not. I knew what my own father would say. He’d say, “Look, the guy couldn’t hack it. Is that my fault?”

  Well, yes, actually, I guess it could have been. If my father had been in on the deal. I hoped he hadn’t, but after all, the journal was in this trunk in this attic in this house and I had a sneaking suspicion that meant something. Lila went on:

  Buddy came to see me. He said I shouldn’t worry, that he’d take care of everything, that they all felt guilty about buying The Boardwalk, that they never thought it would drive Tully to suicide.

  They didn’t buy The Boardwalk. They stole it!

  But I have to let Buddy help me. I have no choice.

  She was going to let this creep help her out, after what he’d done. She must really be desperate.

  Tiny little hammers tattooing the inside of my skull made me put the journal down.

  Chapter 10

  WHEN TESS WENT HOME the next day, Gina insisted she take one of the Giambone cats with her. “For company,” she said. “Take Trilby. She’s the most affectionate. She has a thing for laps and she loves to be petted. You can keep her until Shelley gets back.”

  “Is Trilby trained as an attack cat?” Tess joked, in an effort to calm the nerves that were stretched taut from uncertainty and lack of sleep. What had that purple note meant? And who had written it? And why? Had it really been just a sick joke?

  The cat was beautiful, a sleek Siamese with clear blue eyes. She purred with gratitude when she was allowed to lounge in Tess’s lap all the way home.

  Tess had barely had time to change into jean and a yellow sweatshirt when the phone rang. It was Gina. “Listen, I know you’re not going to be crazy about this idea,” she warned, “but just hear me out, okay? My dad asked me this morning if I could get a bunch of kids together to go to The Boardwalk sometime this week. Just to show people that it’s safe, you know?”

  But is it? Tess wondered.

  “I thought,” Gina continued, “since we have the day off, this afternoon would be a good time. I’ve already talked to Beak and Sam and they think it’s a good idea. Sam said he’d call Guy Joe. And I think Trudy and Candace might come, too. Trudy told me she was planning to sleep all day, but when I told her Guy Joe was coming, she changed her mind. And Sam said he’d bring Candace.”

  “I don’t want to go down there,” Tess protested. The oval table was still firmly pressed up against the French doors, a reminder that Saturday night’s note hadn’t been imagined. If the author had had something to do with the roller coaster crash, he might be hanging around The Boardwalk. Returning to the scene of the crime. Didn’t criminals do that sort of thing? “Why can’t we do something else?”

  “C’mon, Tess, please? First of all, there isn’t anything else to do. Secondly, my dad’s worried about what the accident will do to business on The Boardwalk, and I don’t blame him. Look, he hardly ever asks me for anything. I don’t want to turn him down.” Gina’s voice took on a stubborn note. “I’m going over there this afternoon. You coming?”

  Tess hesitated. Gina’s father had always been kind to Tess. If he was really worried, she should help out.

  “Okay, I’ll come. What time?”

  “Oh, great! Listen, we’ll just hang out in the Funhouse, okay? No rides, not when you’re so uptight. I wouldn’t torture you by forcing you on The Dragon’s Breath or Helicopter Hell. But the Funhouse is perfectly safe. We’re meeting at the entrance at two, but I thought maybe you could pick me up?”

  “Sure.” The Funhouse wasn’t always safe, Tess thought grimly. Someone had committed suicide in there, a long time ago. But then, it wasn’t as if someone had attacked him in there. He’d taken his own life.

  “The Funhouse isn’t my favorite place to be,” Tess said before she hung up, “but at least it doesn’t have any windows so it won’t have a view of The Devil’s Elbow. That’s about the only place on The Boardwalk that doesn’t. So maybe it won’t, be so grim.”

  Gina laughed. “If it was grim,” she teased, “they’d have to call it the Grimhouse. And nobody would visit it and the whole boardwalk would go out of business and we’d all be poor.”

  Tess hung up.

  And realized immediately that she’d forgotten to ask Gina if her father had heard anything about the investigation. The police should know something by now, shouldn’t they?

  She’d ask this afternoon. Beak might have heard something if Gina hadn’t. His parents were on the board of directors, too, as were Sam’s and Trudy’s. And Chalmers would probably go to the board with whatever he found before he shared it with the general public.

  Too bad she couldn’t call her own father. Well, it wasn’t that she couldn’t. She just didn’t want to. If she told him how nervous the note had made her, he’d tell her she was being illogical and unreasonable and overreacting.

  She’d rather find out what she needed to know from Gina or Guy Joe or any one of her friends. They wouldn’t lecture her. Before she left, she gave Trilby a small bowl of water and a dish of the cat food Gina had sent with her.

  Gina hadn’t heard a thing about the investigation and neither had anyone else. When Tess complained, Sam lifted one dark eyebrow as if to say, “See? What did I tell you?”

  The roller coaster frame had been roped off and tagged with large cardboard signs commanding NO ENTRY and STAY OUT! and CLOSED FOR REPAIRS. Everything else on The Boardwalk remained open. And just as Mr. Giambone had feared, few people were taking advantage of the fact. After all, something terrible had happened there. Something terrible could easily happen again. Why take a chance?

  Tess understood that feeling. It was slinking around in her own head, tugging at her and making it impossible for her
to relax. The purple note had mentioned a next. But it hadn’t said when to expect it. Which meant that today couldn’t be ruled out, could it?

  Gina, trying to keep everyone’s mind off the crash, chattered cheerfully as the group headed for the Funhouse. A bright red scarf tied around her dark curls, she trotted purposefully ahead of them in knee-length red shorts and a red-and-white flowered shirt. The sight of her, looking as if she hadn’t a care in the world, should have perked up Tess’s spirits, but it didn’t. She had already begun gnawing on the fingernails it had taken her months to grow. She shouldn’t have come. Keeping her eyes averted from the silent Devil’s Elbow frame didn’t keep the screams and moans and cries for help from echoing in her head. And she found herself continually looking over her shoulder, consumed by a creepy feeling that someone was watching her.

  The Funhouse was a long, narrow tunnel built in an L shape, the foot of the L built out over the beach and supported by wooden stilts. The dark wooden structure contained several small areas of open railings dividing one passageway from another, where people could momentarily relax and enjoy the scenery and salt air before going on to the next challenge. Tess, her stomach rebelling after conquering the challenges of the rolling wooden walkway and then the tossing and tilting of a moving padded tunnel, took advantage of the second of these open balconies to catch her breath and settle her insides. Gina, Trudy, and Candace went on ahead to the third event, a nylon-padded tunnel whose footing consisted solely of heavy metal chain links.

  Tess breathed in the cool air and tried to relax. But it was impossible. She was uncomfortable being anywhere near The Boardwalk, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the man who had committed suicide in the Funhouse.

  “You sick?” Guy Joe asked suddenly, coming up beside her. His yellow sweatshirt matched hers. But his complexion wasn’t green, as she was sure hers must be. He looked tanned and healthy, as always. His stomach was stronger than hers.

  “Uh-uh. Just catching my breath. You go ahead with the others.” She should tell him about the note. But if he believed it was really a threat, he’d just tell her to move back in with him and their father, and she didn’t want to do that.

  “Beak’s still back there,” he said, inclining his head backward. “He got hung up on the rolling tunnel. He was on the floor as much as he was on his feet. Clowning around, as usual. Sam went back to give him a hand.”

  “Guy Joe,” she said because she was sick of not talking about it, “do you think the crash was an accident? Tell the truth.”

  He shrugged. “Who knows? Anything is possible, right? The question is, why would someone do some thing so awful?”

  “Yeah,” she agreed solemnly, “that is the question.” And although her imagination was pretty vivid, she couldn’t come up with any reason why someone would commit such a horrible act.

  Sam and Beak caught up with them a few minutes later. They took a break, relaxing on the balcony briefly while Beak told a few stupid jokes, and then they all went on together.

  The hardest part of the Funhouse for Tess was always the chamber where there was no solid floor, only a cluster of constantly whirling metal saucers. They were slippery, always moving, and there was nothing to grasp for balance except the softly draped black nylon folds on the walls, almost impossible to hold onto, no matter how desperately you clutched. She had discovered long ago that the only way she could make it across was by lowering herself to a sitting position and scooting from saucer to saucer. It took longer, and seriously dented her dignity, but it worked.

  She was in the process of doing just that when she realized that she wanted, very much, to go home. She wanted out of this crazy place with its skeletons rattling and its fake bats flying overhead and its dragons breathing foul-smelling smoke in her face. She was tired of feeling like a fool, arms and legs flailing helplessly as she tried to keep her balance on moving boards, linked chains, whirling circles, and rubber tires.

  She’d had enough.

  Although there were wooden steps exiting the Funhouse in several different places, Tess and her friends always chose the steep metal chute that slid directly to the beach. The walkways were for more timid souls. It was fun to sail down to the beach and land on the sand, legs sprawled every which way.

  With a strong sense of relief, Tess did exactly that.

  Trudy, Candace, and Gina were already comfortably seated on the beach, watching the waves pounding the shore. Beak, Sam, and Guy Joe followed Tess down the chute.

  “Listen, guys,” Tess said as she dusted sand from her jeans, “I’m going to split. My head is cracking right down the middle. I need to sleep.” Ignoring Gina’s protests, she reached into the back pocket of her jeans. And groaned.

  “My keys are gone!” she cried in dismay. “I put my key case in my back pocket so I wouldn’t have to lug my purse around with me in there,” she said, waving toward the Funhouse. “They must have fallen out.” She groaned again. “My stomach can’t handle that place again, not this soon! It hasn’t recovered from that stupid rolling tunnel!”

  Gina stood up. “I’ll go. I know your key case. The red leather one with your initials on it, right?”

  “You’ll never find that key case in there,” Beak argued. “Get maintenance to look for it.”

  “Why doesn’t Tess go herself?” Trudy asked. “They’re her keys.”

  “Why don’t we all go?” Sam said as Gina turned to leave. “Tess can show us exactly where she did most of her usual acrobatics so we’ll know where the keys would most likely have fallen out of her pocket.”

  “No, that’s silly,” Gina said, waving a hand in dismissal. “I’ll go, and I’ll be right back. I know the Funhouse like the back of my hand and,” she added with a grin, “my stomach’s cast-iron, everyone knows that.” And she turned and ran up the beach.

  “Where’s she going?” asked Doss, as he joined them.

  “To find Tess’s car keys,” Trudy answered. “She lost them in the Funhouse.”

  “Then why is Gina looking for them?” Doss asked.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Tess cried, “I’ll go, I’ll go!”

  The thought of entering the Funhouse again made her sick. But it was true—the keys were hers, she was the one who had lost them, and Gina shouldn’t have to look for them alone. She turned to follow her up the beach.

  Entering the Funhouse, Tess wondered how they would ever find the key case. The place had so many little nooks and crannies, so many cracks in the wooden floors, and then there were all those open spaces between the whirling circles. The keys might even have fallen through to the beach. If they didn’t find the case in here, they’d have to sift through the sand next.

  “Gina!” she called as she entered the rolling wooden walkway and clutched at the padded walls. “Gina, wait up!”

  She had hurried through the tilting tunnel and was headed for the first of the open balconies, when a sound stopped her in her tracks.

  It was a piercing scream that sent slivers of ice sliding down her back.

  That scream wasn’t a normal part of the Funhouse. It hadn’t come from a witch’s cackling mouth or a dangling skeleton or a bloody corpse. That scream had been real.

  And the voice had been familiar. Very familiar.

  Although she didn’t want to believe it, the voice had belonged to Gina Giambone.

  And it hadn’t been an Oh-gosh-I’m-scared Funhouse kind of scream. Tess could recognize a scream of genuine fear when she heard it.

  Calling Gina’s name, Tess tried desperately to run. But it was impossible, given the footing underneath her as she entered the puffed-pillow passageway. She stumbled and fell several times before reaching solid footing again. Her breath came in ragged gasps, threatening to stick in her throat. Calls to Gina brought only silence in return.

  Safer, more solid wooden walkways around each challenge brought her quickly to the chamber of metal saucers. They were separated by small spaces through which glimpses of the beach below could
be seen. The spaces were so tiny they provided no danger, as only a toothpick-sized person could slip through and fall to the hard-packed sand below.

  Unless … unless one of the large round circles was missing.

  And one was.

  Tess stared at the gap in the flooring, her mouth open, eyes wide as she realized that she could see, quite clearly, to the beach below. She could see the tan sand, flat in some spots, mounded into little hillocks by the wind in other places. She could see a small green plastic pail left by a careless child. And she could see … Gina.

  She was lying on the sand, her left leg sticking out at a sickening angle, her face, in profile, twisted in agony.

  And she was lying very, very still.

  Chapter 11

  STUPID GINA! GETTING IN THE way like that. If it hadn’t been for her goody-two-shoes helpfulness, it would have been Tess who fell through the hole, just as I’d planned. Slipping the key case out of her back pocket was a cinch, and the plan would have worked perfectly, if it hadn’t been for Tess’s weak stomach and Gina’s Girl Scout instincts.

  It was Tess’s fault more than Gina’s. The keys belonged to Tess. And that hole was designed for her. She really screwed up my schedule. She’ll have to pay for that. I can’t let people get away with fouling things up for, me. I’ll have to think of something special for her. To punish her.

  Like I wish I could punish that Buddy in Lila’s journal.

  Buddy came to see me today. He says he knows a wonderful family who will give my baby a good home when it’s born. I couldn’t believe it! Does he think that just because Tully is gone, I would give away our child? I threw him out.

  The next entry was several days later.

  Buddy keeps pressuring me to give up my baby. He comes back every day, saying I’ll never get a job on The Boardwalk because the new owners don’t want me there. They think I’ll make the customers uncomfortable after what Tully did right there in the Funhouse. He says I’ll never be able to earn a living and support my baby. And then he said his friends, who want a child more than anything, could give my baby everything.