by Dean Koontz
It had to be a coincidence. Because if it wasn't, if this really was Mama's child, if Amy had been brought to the carnival by some supernatural force, then the other premonitions might also be true. Liz actually might die here. And that was unthinkable, unacceptable. So it was coincidence.
Ellen.
Coincidence, damn it!
Amy was relieved when they left Freak-o-rama.
They rode the Shazam and took another turn on the Loop-de-Loop, and then suddenly they were all starving. It was a drug-induced hunger, the insatiable appetite familiar to all serious pot smokers. They ate hot dogs, ice cream, and candy apples.
Eventually they found themselves in front of the funhouse.
A big man in a Frankenstein costume capered on a low platform, threatening the people who were boarding the cars to go into the funhouse. He waved his arms and snarled and jumped up and down in a terrible imitation of Boris Karloff.
“He's a real ham,” Richie said.
They moved a few feet to the barker's plat form, where a tall, distinguished-looking man was ballying the passing crowd. He looked down at them as he talked, and he had the bluest eyes Amy had ever seen. After a few seconds, she realized that the giant clown's face atop the building had been painted in the barker's image.
“Terror-fying! Terror-fying!” the barker shouted. “Goblins, ghosts, and ghouls! Spiders larger than men! Monsters from other worlds and from the darkest bowels of this one! Are all of the creatures that stalk the funhouse merely make i. believe . . . or is one of them real? See for yourself! Learn the truth at your own peril! Can you stand the test, the tension, the fear? Are you man enough? Ladies, are your men strong enough to comfort you inside . . . or will you have to comfort them? Terror-fying!”
“I love to go through the funhouse when I'm high as a kite,” Liz said. “When you're really, truly wrecked, it's a gas. All those dumb plastic monsters jumping out at you.”
, “So let's go,” Richie said.
“No, no,” Liz said. “We've got to save it until ~ we're really high.”
“I'm really high now,” Amy said.
“Me too,” Buzz said.
“Oh, we'll get more wasted than this,” Liz said. “This is nothing.”
“If I get more wasted than this,” Richie said, “I'll have to be institutionalized.”
“Make it a cell for two,” Buzz said.
“That's the idea,” Liz said excitedly. “You've got to be really wrecked to fully appreciate the funhouse.”
Not me, Amy reminded herself. No more dope tonight. No more dope ever.
They bought tickets for a ride called the Slithering Snake. The man at the controls was a dwarf, and while Liz waited for the ride to start, she teased the little man, made jokes about his height. He glared at Liz, and Amy wished her friend would shut up. When the Slithering Snake finally began to move, the dwarf got his revenge, he gave it much more speed than usual, and the chain of cars flashed around the looping, rising, falling track so fast that Amy was terrified it was going to fly off the rails. What should have been a thrilling ride became a knuckle-whitening, stomach-clenching ordeal, a sweat-popping torture that seemed like it would never end. Incredibly, even under those conditions, when the automatic canvas cover closed over the fast-moving train, Buzz took advantage of the darkness to take advantage of Amy, his hands were all over her.
This whole night is like the Slithering Snake, Amy thought. It's out of control.
After they rode the Octopus again, after they gleefully bashed each other around in the bumper cars once more, they returned to the cul-de-sac behind the carnival trucks, at the perimeter of the fairgrounds, and Liz stoked up another of her specially spiced joints. Darkness had come to the fairgrounds now, and they weren't able to see each other clearly as they passed the reefer around. They made jokes about some stranger stepping out of the darkness and taking a toke without anyone being the wiser, and they kidded each other about seeing freaks hiding under the trucks around them.
Amy tried to fake it when the joint came to her. She took a drag on it, but she didn't inhale. She held the smoke in her mouth for a moment, then blew it out.
Even in the darkness, with only the glowing tip of the cigarette and the sound of indrawn breath to judge by, Liz realized that Amy hadn't really taken a good pull on the weed. “Don't hold back on us, kid,” she said sharply. “Don't be a party pooper.”
“I don't know what you mean,” Amy said.
“Like hell you don't. Take another hit on that joint. When I'm wasted I like a lot of company in the same condition.”
Rather than irritate Liz, Amy took another drag on the joint and sucked the smoke deep this time. She hated herself for her lack of willpower.
But I don't want to lose Liz, she thought. I need Liz. Who else do I have?
When they walked back onto the midway, they nearly collided with an albino. His thin, cottony white hair streamed behind him in the warm June breeze. He turned transparent eyes on them, eyes like cold smoke, and he said, “Free tickets to Madame Zena's. Free tickets to get your fortunes told. One for each lady, compliments of the carnival management. Tell all your friends that Big American is the friendly carnival.”
Surprised, Amy and Liz accepted the tickets from the worm-white hands that offered them.
The albino vanished in the crowd.
13
THE FOUR of them crowded into the fortuneteller's small tent. Liz and Amy sat in the two available chairs, at the table where the crystal ball was filled with lambent light. Richie and Buzz stood behind the chairs.
Amy didn't think that Madame Zena looked much like the Gypsy she was supposed to be, even dressed up in all the colored scarves and pleated skirts and gaudy jewelry. But the woman was very pretty, and she was suitably mysterious.
Liz got her fortune told first. Madame Zena f: asked her all sorts of questions about herself and her family, information that she needed (so she said) in order to focus her psychic perceptions. When she had no more questions to ask, she peered into the crystal ball, she leaned so close to it that the eerie light and the shadows it cast made her features look different, hawklike.
In four glass chimneys, in the four corners of the tent, four candles guttered.
In its large cage to the right of the table, the raven shifted on its perch and made a cooing sound in the back of its throat.
Liz glanced at Amy and rolled her eyes.
Amy giggled, giddier than ever from the dope.
Madame Zena stared into the crystal ball with a theatrical scowl, as if she were struggling to pierce the veils that concealed the world of tomorrow. But then the expression on her face changed and became a look of genuine puzzlement. She blinked, shook her head, and leaned even closer to the glowing sphere on the table.
“What is it?” Liz asked.
Madame Zena didn't respond. Her face held a ghastly look, so real that Amy was unnerved by it.
“No . . .” Madame Zena said.
To Liz, apparently, Madame Zena still seemed to be putting on an act. Liz evidently didn't see the uncontrived horror in the fortune-teller's face, which Amy was sure she saw there.
“I don't . . .” Madame Zena began, then stopped and licked her lips. “I never . . .”
“What am I going to be?” Liz asked. “Rich or famous or both?”
Madame Zena closed her eyes for a moment, slowly shaking her head, then looked again into the crystal. “My God . . . I . . . I . . .”
We should get out of here, Amy thought uneasily. We should go before this woman tells us something we don't want to hear. We should get up and leave and run for our lives.
Madame Zena looked up from the crystal ball. All the blood had drained from her face.
“What an actress!” Richie said softly.
“Bunch of mumbo-jumbo,” Buzz said sullenly.
Madame Zena ignored them and spoke to Liz. “I . . . I would rather not . . . tell your fortune . . . just yet. I need . . . time. Time to interpre
t what I've just seen in the crystal. I'll read your friend's future first, and then . . . I'll come back to yours, if that's all right.”
“Sure,” Liz said, enjoying what she thought was a con game of some sort, a way to prime the customer for a joke or a request for money to pay for a more detailed reading. “Take as long as you want.”
Madame Zena turned to Amy. The fortuneteller's eyes were not what they had been a few minutes ago, now they were haunted.
Amy wanted to get up and leave the tent. She was experiencing the same kind of psychic energy that had electrified her at Marco the Magnificent's show. A chill, clammy sensation swept through her, and she saw stroboscopic images of graves and rotting corpses and grinning skeletons, nightmare flashes as if clips of film were being projected on a screen behind her eyes.
She tried to stand up. She couldn't.
Her heart was hammering.
It was the drugs again. That was all. Just the drugs. The spice Liz had added to the pot. She wished she hadn't smoked any more of it, she wished she'd stood up to Liz and refused.
“I'll have to ask you some questions. . . about yourself . . . and your family,” Madame Zena said haltingly, without any of the theatrical pizazz that she had shown while plying Liz with her spiel. “It is just as I told your friend here . . . I need the information in order to focus my psychic perceptions.” She sounded as if she wanted to jump up and run out of the tent every bit as much as Amy did.
“Go ahead,” Amy whispered. “I don't want to know . . . but I've got to.”
“Hey, what's going on here?” Richie asked, picking up on the new, evil vibrations that now filled the tent.
Still blissfully unaware of the sudden seriousness in the fortune-teller's demeanor, Liz said, “Ssshh, Richie! Don't spoil the show.”
To Amy, Madame Zena said, “Your name?”
“Amy Harper.”
“Your age?”
“Seventeen.”
“Where do you live?”
“Here in Royal City.”
“Do you have any sisters?”
“No.”
“Brothers?”
“One.”
“His name?”
“Joey Harper.”
“His age?”
“Ten.”
“Is your mother alive?”
“Yes.”
“What is her age?”
“Forty-five, I think.”
Madame Zena blinked, licked her lips.
What color hair does your mother have?”
“Dark brown, almost black, like mine.”
“What color are her eyes?”
“Very dark, like mine.”
“What is . . .” Madame Zena cleared her throat.
The raven flapped its wings.
Finally Madame Zena spoke again. “What is your mother's name?”
“Ellen Harper.”
The name clearly jolted the fortune-teller. Fine beads of sweat broke out along her hairline.
“Do you know your mother's maiden name?”
“Giavenetto,” Amy said.
Madame Zena's face became even whiter, and she began to tremble visibly.
What the hell . . . ?” Richie said, perceiving the very real fear in the phony Gypsy, baffled by it.
“Ssshh!” Liz said.
“What a bunch of crap,” Buzz said.
Madame Zena was obviously reluctant to look into the crystal ball, but at last she forced her eyes to it. She blinked and gasped and cried out. She pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. She swept the glass sphere off the table, it crashed to the earthen floor, but it was too heavy to break that easily. “You've got to get out of here,” she said urgently. “You've got to go. Get away from the carnival. Go home and lock your doors and stay there until the carnival leaves town.”
Liz and Amy stood up, and Liz said, “What's all the malarkey? We were supposed to get our fortunes told for free. You haven't told us how we're going to be rich and famous.”
From the other side of the table, Madame Zena stared at them with wide, frightened eyes. “Listen to me. I'm a fake. A phony. I don't have any psychic ability. I just con the marks. I've never seen into the future. I've never seen anything in that crystal ball except the light from the flashlight bulb in the wooden base. But tonight . . . just a minute ago . . . my God, I did see something. I don't understand it. I don't want to understand it. My God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, who would want to be able to see the future? That would be a curse, not a gift. But I saw. You've got to leave the carnival now, right away. Don't stop for anything. Don't look back.”
They stared at her, amazed by her outburst.
Madame Zena swayed, and her legs seemed to turn to mush, and she collapsed into her chair again. “Go, damn you! Get the hell out of here before it's too late! Go, you goddamned fools! Hurry!”
Out on the midway, standing in a pool of flashing lights, with people streaming past, with waves of calliope music breaking over them, they looked at each other, waiting for someone to say something.
Richie spoke first. “What was that all about?”
“She's nuts,” Buzz said.
“I don't think so,” Amy said.
“A real looney-tune,” Buzz insisted.
“Hey, don't you guys understand what happened?” Liz asked. She laughed happily and clapped her hands with delight.
“If you've got an explanation, tell us,” Amy said, still chilled to the bone by the look that had come over Madame Zena's face when she had peered into the crystal ball.
“It's a scam,” Liz said. “The carnival security men spotted us smoking dope. They don't want that kind of trouble on their lot, but they also don't want to call the cops. Carnies don't truck with the cops. So they arranged for the albino to give us free tickets to Zena's, so she could try to scare us off.”
“Yeah!” Buzz said. “I'll be damned. That's it, all right.”
“I don't know,” Richie said. “It doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean, why wouldn't they just have their goons throw us out?”
“Because there's too many of us, dummy,” Liz said. “They'd need at least three bouncers. They wouldn't want to make a big scene like that.”
“Could she have been sincere?” Amy asked.
“Madame Zena?” Liz said. “You mean to tell me you believe she really saw something in her crystal ball? Horseshit!”
“They talked about it some more, and gradually they came to accept Liz's theory. It seemed to make more sense by the minute.
But Amy wondered if it would make any sense L at all if they weren't half wasted on dope. She thought of Marco the Magnificent, Liz's face on the woman in the coffin, Buzz cutting his finger on the jar that contained the monster. It was too much to think about, too scary. Even if Liz's explanation was thin, it was at least conveniently simple, and Amy gladly accepted it.
“I have to pee,” Liz said. “Then I want some ice cream and a ride through the funhouse. After that we can split for home.” She tickled Richie under the chin. “When we get home, I'll take you on a thrill ride better than anything they have here.” She turned to Amy. “Come to the restroom with me.”
“I don't really have to,” Amy said.
Liz took her hand. “Come on. Keep me company. Anyway, we have to talk, kid.”
“Meet you at the ice-cream stand over there,” Richie said, pointing to a joint beyond the carousel.
“Back in a jiffy,” Liz assured him. Then she pulled Amy through the crowd, toward the edge of the midway.
* * *
Conrad was standing in the shadows beside Zena's tent when the four teenagers came out and stopped in the pool of flashing red and yellow light that was cast by the nearby Tilt-a-Whirl. He heard the blond girl say that she wanted to use the restroom, get an ice cream, and then take a tour of the funhouse. As soon as the group split up and moved away, Conrad slipped into Zena's tent. As he went inside, he pulled down a canvas flap that covered the entire entrance, on the outside of it,
there were six words—CLOSED/WILL RETURN IN TEN MINUTES.
Zena was sitting in her chair. Even in the flickering light of the candles, Conrad could see that she was ashen.
“Well?” he said.
“Another dead end,” Zena said nervously.
“This one looks more like Ellen than most of the others that I've sent to you.”
“Just coincidence,” Zena said.
“What's her name?”
“Amy Harper.”
Those four syllables electrified Conrad. He remembered the small boy to whom he had given two free passes just this afternoon. That child's name had been Joey Harper, and he had said that his sister's name was Amy. He, too, had resembled Ellen.
What did you learn about her?” he asked Zena.
“Not much.”
“Tell me.”
“She's not the one.”
“Tell me anyway. Brothers? Sisters?”
Zena hesitated, then said, “One brother.”
“What's his name?”
“What does it matter? She isn't the one you're looking for.”
“Just curious,” Conrad said evenly, sensing that she was hiding the truth from him, but afraid to believe that he had found his prey after all this time.
“What's her brother's name?”
“Joey.”
“What's her mother's name.”
“Nancy,” Zena said.
Conrad knew she was lying. He stared down at her and said, “Are you sure it isn't Leona"?”
Zena blinked. “What? Why Leona"?”
“Because this afternoon, when I happened to have a friendly little chat with Joey Harper while he was watching us erect the funhouse, he told me that his mother's name was Leona”
Zena gaped at him, amazed and perplexed.
Conrad walked around the table and put a hand on her shoulder.
She looked up at him.
He said, “You know what I think? I think the boy lied to me. I think he sensed danger somehow, and he lied about his mother's name and age. And now you're lying to me.”
“Conrad . . . let them go.”
Her words were an admission that he had found Ellen's children, and a shattering, explosive elation tore through him.