by Bryn Roar
“Buddy boy! Joe!” Rusty cried, relieved.
“RUN!” Bud screamed back at them.
Tubby and Rusty didn’t need any further explanation. They had all experienced too much that day to hesitate out of any natural curiosity.
Bud and Josie quickly caught up, and then matched Tubby’s speed, so they wouldn’t leave him behind. Bud hung back a little more, watching their backs. Rusty caught a glimpse of the gun in his hand and felt better for it. “Is it another one of those rabid dogs?” he asked Josie on the fly.
Josie looked down at him with such panic drawn eyes that it almost caused him to wet his pants again. “Holy shite, Rusty! I don’t know what that was!”
They sprinted onto Main Street, stopping at last underneath the brightly lit marquee. Out of breath and exhausted, Tubby collapsed on the curb, holding onto his side. He had a painful stitch, and he wasn’t the only one.
Nobody spoke as they all took a moment to compose themselves and catch their breath. Bud stood there like a statue, looking back the way they’d come.
Huggins Way was quiet and dark. No spectral eyes lurking about on the road. “I don’t think it ever left the woods,” he said, running a hand over his forehead.
“Was that your gun we heard out there?”
Her hands on her knees, Josie nodded. “Yeah. I think Bud might have hit it, too.”
“Well, damn, girl, didn’t you see?”
“All we saw were the eyes,” was Bud’s reply. He slipped the gun back into the pocket of his coat. The last thing he needed was for someone to witness him with a drawn weapon on Main Street. “They glowed. As for the rest of the thing…I just don’t know.”
“What you mean, Thing?” Rusty practically shouted. Realizing he was talking too loud, he checked the storefronts around them, the apartments overhead—no one seemed to be observing them. “Don’t you mean dog?”
“I’m not so sure,” said Bud, shaking his head. “I’ve never seen a dog stand six-feet-tall, have you?”
They traded in the humidity for the air-conditioned lobby inside the museum. As soon as Bud locked the door behind them, they all felt considerably safer, their fears at once absurd. Josie started laughing, and soon they were all giggling like Girl Scouts on a sleepover.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Tubby groaned, holding on to his side. The stitch was getting worse. “I’m about to split a seam! Oh, sweet Sonny Jesus, have mercy on me!”
“Yeah!” Rusty wiped tears from underneath his glasses. “I think I just peed my drawers again.” He sniffed the air. “Whoops…my mistake. I done shit myself!”
TheCreeps rolled on the floor, the four of them laughing hysterically. The darkened lobby lit up, silencing the laughter as if it were on the same switch.
Tubby gasped as a tall man in cotton twill shorts and a blue work shirt entered the lobby from a set of frosted glass doors in the rear. An oval patch sewn over the right breast pocket read Bill. A scowl darkened his face.
He was a lean, healthy looking specimen with curly dark hair and matching bristly mustache. He wore a ball cap with the museum’s name emblazoned across the front, and ragged Adidas sneakers without socks. Grease streaked his work shirt and caked his hands, which he was attempting to clean in vain with a filthy red shop rag. Upon seeing them, the scowl disappeared, replaced with a huge smile, the tall man’s mustache blooming across his face.
“I thought I heard someone in here,” he said, in a rich baritone voice. “Where’ve y’all been all day? I had to eat those pork ‘n beans all by myself, Buddy boy.”
Bud went over to hug his dad. “Thanks for the warning, Pop.” They were the same height, though Bud was a bit stockier, his muscles heavier. “Got someone I’d like you to meet.” He waved Tubby over. “A fellowCreep,” he said, as if including his dad in that definition.
Tubby blushed bright red. He hated meeting new people. Their eyes invariably drifted down to his gut or his boy-boobs. They might act as if his weight was of no consequence, but the eyes never lied. Especially very fit people like Mr. Brown. The man was the spitting image of Magnum PI! Consequently he was taken aback when Bud’s dad actually seemed delighted to meet him.
The eyes, they never lie.
“This is Ralph Tolson. His folks run the—”
“The Moonlite Drive-In! Of course! I met your father this morning, Ralph!” Mr. Brown pumped Tubby’s hand as if he meant to take it off at the wrist. Like Mr. Huggins before, Tubby instantly took a liking to Bud’s dad. “I ran into him at the bank. Is he still having trouble with that old projector Mr. Grimes pawned off on him?”
Rusty barked a laugh and Tubby smiled. “Yes, sir. He sure is. By the way, he loves the front entrance of your museum. He says it’s very accurate in its Post War detail.”
Bill Brown beamed. His moustache blooming again. “Well, that’s very gratifying coming from someone like your dad. Have you been to our museum before, Ralph?”
“No, sir. I was waiting until my father and I could go together. I’m afraid that isn’t going to happen anytime soon, though. The work keeps piling up.”
“Well then, unless y’all have other plans, what say I give your newest member the grand tour?” It spoke volumes that all four kids eagerly agreed—even if three of them had been through it a thousand times before.
Tubby followed Bill, while Bud and the rest hung back a little, letting their new friend take front-and-center.
Like the façade out front, Bill had modeled the lobby of the wax museum to resemble the palace theaters from Hollywood’s Golden Era. Before it had to share the limelight with TV. Everything was on a grandiose scale, like Radio City Music Hall. Tubby couldn’t get over how out of place this magnificent museum seemed on little old Moon Island. There was even a sprawling concession stand where patrons could purchase snacks and souvenirs. The familiar buttery scent of popcorn filling the air.
Tubby perused the keepsakes: T-shirts, featuring various sinister stars of the museum, key chains, tote bags, and bumper stickers. Jack the Ripper LIVES! On the Dark Side of the Moon! Baseball hats, horror figurines from Frankenstein to Freddy Kruger, collectible glassware, a variety of horror and Sci-Fi related lunch boxes, a glossy museum program, Stephen King paperbacks, all of his most famous novels, and finally the 1-sheet reproduction posters Rusty had referred to, were all laid out seductively on a five-tier-display at the far end of the concessions counter.
Placed strategically beside the cash register.
Tubby reluctantly tore his gaze from the souvenirs. He was kicking himself for spending all his dough at the comic book store. He really wanted those posters! Maybe one of those cool T-shirts, too—if they had some his size.
Bud sidled up to Ralph and put his arm around his shoulders. “There’re two different tours, Hoss. We can do the walking gig, which brings you right inside the exhibits. ‘The Black Brick Road’ as we like to call it. Although that does take awhile. Or we can take the riding tour,” he said, pointing at a row of gleaming black carnie-cars.
They looked like coffins on wheels, lined up one after another on a set of tracks. The twin rails led into a darkened tunnel beside the smoky glass doors.
Bill Brown keyed a switch on the wall and an eerie blue glow filled the tunnel’s interior. Atmospheric music filtered out of the exhibit cavern, followed by digital moans, groans, and shrieks of terror. This was obviously not a ride meant for the very young or faint of heart.
“Let’s take the coffins,” Rusty said, whimpering. “Man, my poor dogs are barking somethin’ fierce!”
“Ralphie’s choice,” Josie said. “This is his first time here.”
Tubby turned to her and smiled bashfully. He was shocked to see her and Bud holding hands.
Rusty glanced over and did a double take himself. “About time,” he said, giving Josie a wink.
“I’ll say,” Bill Brown muttered, so low that only his son heard it. “Well, Ralph. Walk or ride? What’ll it be?”
Tubby walked over to one of the coffin
cars. They were reminiscent of the Munsters’ family roadster. A combination of a hertz and a hot rod. The main body, though, shaped like a casket. They even had cup holders and trays for the snacks. The cushioned seats inside looked inviting. Tubby looked over at Mr. Brown. “If it’s not too much trouble, sir, can we take the ride?”
Bill Brown smiled. He liked this polite kid. Not Eddie Haskell polite, either. There was nothing counterfeit about this young man. “Absitively posolutely,” he said, opening the side panel of the lead coffin. There was room for four people in each casket. “Step right in…if you dare.”
Tubby’s friends took the car behind them. Mr. Brown sat beside Tubby and pushed a lever forward on the side of their conveyance. The coffin cars lurched into the tunnel with an exaggerated clanking of chains.
The tunnel was shaped like a giant mouse-hole; the walls, ceiling and floor constructed of distressed bricks. Splotches of a natural mossy growth abounded on the curved walls. The roots dangling in the air above their heads lent the cracked and pitted walls the camouflage of age and character. It felt as if they were entering a tunnel hundreds of years old, like the damp catacombs of Paris, instead of a building, which had been around for less than seven years. The forced air in the tunnel was cool and earthy, like in the bunker, although Tubby didn’t know that.
Right away, Ralph detected a faint sulfurous smell that while not unpleasant made him feel as if he had uncovered a highway bound for hell. The ever-so-noticeable downward cant of the tunnel only furthered this hell-bound sensation. To the left of the tracks, bordered by Tivoli lights, was the Black-Brick-Road Bud had mentioned earlier. It began at the smoky glass doors and followed the tracks throughout the tunnel.
Mr. Brown lifted up a microphone from a rack on the dash and began his spooky spiel, his voice echoing back to them from hidden surround speakers inside the tunnel.
“Welcome, my friends, to the Dark Side of the Moon! During this gruesome tour you will discover the abominable levels to which man will sink in his ill treatment of his fellow sentient beings. There is but one thing that truly separates mankind from the other life forms on Spaceship Earth…”
Tubby was enjoying the showmanship Mr. Brown put into his monologue. He stared open-mouthed at Bud’s dad, a delicious chill running throughout his body. This was even better than staying up past his bedtime on Friday night to watch the Late-Late Horror Show on channel 13!
He nearly died of embarrassment, though, when Bill Brown directed the commentary his way.
“Ralph Tolson,” the voice filled the hall. Would you care to enlighten us as to that degree of separation?”
Tubby looked over his shoulder at his friends—they were all smiling back at him, urging him to play along. His face burned, but he thought he knew the answer to this one; he’d heard it in his Earth Science class two years before.
“We’re the only species that wages war against one another for reasons other than surviv—”
“WRONG!” Mr. Brown thundered.
Tubby shrank down in his seat. Behind him, Rusty snickered in glee. Ahead, a pair of large wooden doors, which looked as if they’d once belonged on the hinges of a medieval castle, blocked their passage.
Bud’s dad didn’t seem to notice or care that they would soon collide head-on with them!
Over the arched doorway a pockmarked sign proclaimed in blood dripping letters that they were about to enter Murderers’ Row. Enter if you dare…
Mr. Brown leaned down and stared into Tubby’s tense face. “The one thing that separates man from animal, for good and ill, son, is his…IMAGINATION!”
On that note, the lead car crashed into the tall double-doors, knocking them asunder. The coffins rolled to a gradual halt, into an even dimmer room than the one before. A terrible scream pealed forth from an overhead speaker, and Tubby cried out in fear. Only this wasn’t like the fear he’d experienced in the Pines; this was more like the visceral thrill he craved from his monster magazines and horror movies, yet so rarely discovered in either.
The good kind of fear.
Tubby looked up; for a moment he thought they’d left the building. A canopy of stars had replaced the low overhead ceiling in the tunnel. Or so it appeared. Upon closer examination, you could tell the twinkling lights overhead were in reality pinpoints of electric light running across a vaulted ceiling. A low wispy fog eddied and flowed around them, rising and falling, as if the very ground had lungs. On either side of the tracks, a cemetery wandered off into the undulating distance. Or so it appeared. Weathered tombstones leaned every which way amid a garden of weeds and gnarled trees. Crickets chirped in concert. Whether real or digital, Tubby couldn’t tell. He saw a pair of golden hued eyes peering down at him from a leafless wreck of a tree, and was about to point them out, when the eyes flew right past him, resulting in yet another girlish shriek. “Golly! What the heck was that!?”
WHO! WHO! was the ghostlike reply, accompanied by a chorus of laughter from the three wiseguys in back. The large tawny owl stared sternly at Tubby from atop the perch of a marble cross.
Tubby grinned and managed a pallid laugh of his own. Mr. Brown gave him a pat on the back, letting Tubby know they were laughing with him and not at him—a distinction of monumental proportions.
“Don’t sweat it, son. Boris always rattles the first timers. That’s why I put him in here. That and he’s become a guard dog of sorts. Kids sometimes try hiding out in here, but old Boris always sniffs ‘em out.”
“He makes for good atmosphere, Mr. Brown. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear this was a real graveyard.”
“Thank you, Ralph,” Bill Brown said, genuinely touched by the compliment. “This lonely cemetery, however, isn’t the main attraction…”
Bill paused long enough for Tubby to hear the sound in the background: A shovel digging into the midnight soil. All heads turned to the source of the disturbance—the yawning hole of a grave. “The strange little man desecrating that earthly resting place is our first stop on our tour tonight…”
Tubby tried to get a better view of the ghoul but all he could make out was the business end of a shovel, as it lifted above the edge of the grave. The actual shovel sounds came from the unseen speakers, in synch, sorta, with the digging implement. The net result was like stepping into an old horror film. The depth of the set astounded him. Despite the size of the building, Ralph hadn’t expected anything near this scale inside. He reminded himself that the tour had just begun. As his mom liked to say, you can’t judge a house by its front porch.
“Who’s that digging over there?” Tubby whispered, as if the grave robber might overhear him.
Bill smiled. Ralph’s reaction was the equivalent to a four-star review. “That, my friend, is Edward Theodore Gein. As in Fiend. Grave robber. Ghoul. Necrophiliac. Murderer. This cowardly little fellow was the inspiration to some of the greatest horror movies ever made.”
“Really?” Tubby said, nonplussed. “Like what? I’ve never heard of him.”
“Let’s see…how about Hitchcock’s Psycho? Or Tobe Hopper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or maybe The Silence of the Lambs? Have you heard of those?”
“Gee! Sure I have! Those were really based on this guy Gein?” Tubby strained to see the user of that shovel. “Why isn’t he more well known, like Jack the Ripper?”
“His continued anonymity is a puzzling thing,” Mr. Brown conceded. “Although every year it becomes less so. This unlikely monster, Ralph, came to light in what was to become America’s last innocent decade: The Nifty ‘50’s. In the small, Rockwellian town of Plainsville Wisconsin, where Eddie Gein grew up, the disappearance of Bernice Worden, the proprietress of a local hardware store, caused the citizens there great alarm. When the townspeople found the store empty in the middle of a workday—and more ominous, a pool of blood discovered on the floor—they fanned out in search of Miss Worden. Witnesses claimed that the town oddball, Ed Gein, was the last one seen in the hardware store before the owner’s disappearance. Whi
le others remembered seeing his truck parked right outside the store. The Sheriff and his Deputy drove out to the old Gein farm straightaway…. And what those lawmen saw in that house of horrors, and in particular the shed outside the house, would stay with them ‘til the day they died…”