Connie fished two quarters from her pocket. “I’ll treat. How’s that? Now what’s your excuse?”
Jane yanked her arm from Connie’s, just about the most aggressive thing she’d ever done. She regretted sneaking out her window to join her best friend in that don’t-be-caught-dead-in part of town, where the most questionable of attractions, the traveling carnival, had laid stakes on an old pier above an ocean of cascading waves—waves that drove home this chilly reminder: Jane did not know how to swim.
Yes, the waves below the pier had grown restless. The gulls were restless, too, squawking as they circled. Something else had arrived: a force, unseen by most, strolling like a third shadow behind the girls. There was actual magic in the air. And magic comes in pairs. The first kind is born of light. It illuminates the good in our world. The second kind, the one you’re most assuredly interested in, is the kind that festers in the dark, feeding off nightmares. You’ll find both at the carnival. Which one you get depends on you.
This dark energy made Jane queasy; she needed to sit down. On the other hand, Connie was fueled by it. She tried offering—make that insisting that Jane try—a candy apple, her treat. Jane refused, instigating Connie’s well-rehearsed pouty face. “Worried about your figure? Or afraid it might chip your perfect teeth?”
“No,” replied Jane. “I don’t like candy apples is all. Besides, you’re the one with the perfect teeth.”
“Nonsense. Everybody likes candy apples. Can’t trust a kid who doesn’t!”
“Then don’t trust me!” Jane hated being bullied, especially by Connie.
Jane had timed the next trolley and was already making a move for the exit. Connie had to stop her from leaving. To take the trip inside the ghost house seemed like innocent fun, the kind you went to carnivals for. “Let’s just watch for a while,” suggested Connie. Jane shrugged. And from the safety rail with its peeled paint, they did just that. A pair of kids climbed into a black pod-like vehicle—a Poison Pod, if you will—with the number thirteen stenciled on the rear. The safety bar was lowered for them (thank you very much), and the pod glided along iron rails, entering the black-as-coal entrance to the Grim Grinning Ghost House. “See? They went in. And they’re younger than us. Eight or nine, at most.”
“I’d say ten,” said Jane. “They looked ten.”
“That’s still two years younger than us. A pair of ten-year-old squirts, brave enough to ride the ghost house without their mommies.”
Jane gave it a moment’s consideration. “I’m brave enough.”
“Are you?” Connie snickered. “Let’s face it. I’m the brave one. You’re the pretty one. And you know what they say.”
“What?” Jane had enough curiosity to risk hearing what would certainly be an unpleasant response. “What do they say?”
Connie unveiled a toothy grin, proving once again that smiles can be just as ugly as they can be pleasing. “Beauty fades.” She handed the attendant two quarters, looking back at the pretty one. “Beauty fades.”
Pod number thirteen emerged from the Grim Grinning Ghost House empty, the guests, who might or might not have been ten, both gone. Had history repeated itself? With a trembling arm, Jane pointed out a splotch of red on the cushioned seat. “They disappeared! Look! There’s blood on the seat!”
Connie was surprised, too—until she saw from the corner of her eye the same two kids barreling down the exit ramp. The probably-ten-year-olds from pod thirteen, one holding a red slushie. “There’s your blood.” Connie laughed. “Man alive, Janie. You’re as gullible as they come.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
Another pod jiggered into range, the seat turning on its own to greet them. The attendant motioned for the girls to board. Jane shook her head. “Seriously?” questioned Connie. “We came all the way across town just to chicken out. Besides”—Connie put the icing on top—“you owe me.”
Jane’s body stiffened. So Connie would be playing the “you owe me” card once more. How long would that go on? How much did she really owe Connie? Well, after you read this little flashback, you might argue that Jane owed Connie everything. Or at least her life, which is pretty much everything. Oh, but it isn’t.
The debt Jane constantly found herself repaying came from an incident that happened at the beach the previous summer. That was the summer of ’64, when beach movies played at the drive-in and a fabulous foursome from England invaded our shores. Now, you may ask, and rightly so, what a self-proclaimed nonswimmer, like Jane, was doing at a public beach, where, let’s face it, you’ve got your sand and you’ve got your water. Lots and lots of water. And the only reason you put up with the sand is to get to the water. Well, Jane was there with her group, working on her tan. Connie was there, too, but not with the group. She despised the group, but that’s beside the point. Jane went into the water up to her ankles. No harm in that. Then a little more. Mid-thigh. Then a little more. She was up to her waist, which was as far as she planned on going, when a six-foot wave knocked her over, and a vicious undertow carried her out to sea. Thank heavens for that girl no one liked. Connie. Her name was Connie.
You can guess the rest. Connie, being an excellent swimmer, dove in and saved Jane’s life; there’s no denying it. So how do you repay a debt like that? Well, you don’t really. But if the someone who saved your life asks you to ride the haunted attraction at a traveling carnival, for crying out loud, stop your whining and climb aboard!
The attendant steadied the pod. “How many in your party?”
Connie looked back at Jane, hoping she had changed her mind, but she hadn’t. “Just little ole me.” The attendant reminded Connie not to lower the safety bar; the ghosts would lower it for her. She climbed into the pod, this one stenciled with the number two. But as it sputtered toward the entrance, Jane made a surprise move, scooting into the seat next to her. “Okay, you got me!”
Connie smiled. “I got you,” she said, repeating the words with a more sinister tone. “I got you.”
The pod blasted through a set of steel double doors, Jane and Connie gobbled up by the dark chasm of the carnival haunted house, where black lights and canned screams were the order of the night. All for a mere quarter, with no wait. Jane tilted her head back as the doors began to close, and through a sea of faces—young, old, cheering, jeering—she saw the barker pointing her way. “You’ll be sorreeeeeey.”
Blam! The doors closed and pod number two made its way twenty feet, stopped abruptly, and turned halfway. A purple light flickered on, and the girls were facing a witch stirring a potion in a cauldron. After the initial shock, they laughed. The display wasn’t very convincing. The witch was clearly a store mannequin, with green poster paint flaking off her molded plastic face.
It had to get better. This couldn’t be the same haunted house, could it? Not the one that claimed Francine, as per the urban legend.
The pod continued its journey, and Connie uttered the words Jane was thinking: “This had better get better.”
It did not. Oh, but it will. Heh-heh!
A plastic skeleton swooped down on a wire. It didn’t even have the courtesy to rattle. After that, a sheet on a stick, doubling as a ghost, said, “Boo.” All very much your grandma’s haunted house. Jane and Connie recognized the screams; they were the same ones from outside: fake, prerecorded, all part of the trickery. For Jane, it came as a great relief. If she had ever believed the urban legend before, it, too, had now turned to cheap molded plastic. Haunted houses didn’t really exist. Not in amusement parks or in movies or in books. But you know better, don’t you?
Jane’s relief was short-lived. Connie had turned to face her, nose to perfect nose, the dark doing little to mute her angry eyes. “I have a secret,” she began, her voice a gravelly hiss. “A terrible sssssssecret. You’re the only one I can tell.”
Jane shifted as far away from Connie as she could. Whatever Connie had to say, Jane wasn’t sure she wanted to hear it anywhere, much less in the dark confines of
a carnival ride, while she was trapped by a safety bar. “Can’t it wait until the ride is over?”
“Boo!” A phantom wearing a top hat appeared before their pod, playing a funeral dirge on an organ. As a prop, it, too, left much to be desired, but as she was caught off guard, Jane unleashed a charitably realistic scream.
“Hold it together, Janie-girl. We’re still best friends, aren’t we?” Connie sounded like herself again, and Jane breathed a short sigh of relief.
“Yeah, sure, whatever you say.”
Then the other voice returned. “Good. I must asssssk you not to judge.”
“Okay, Con, you’re starting to scare me.”
“That’sssss sssswell,” said the voice from Connie’s mouth. “You should be ssssscared. Because I’m about to tell you ssssomething I haven’t told anyone. That sssstory, the one about the kid…Francine. It happened, for real, right where we are. Want to know what really happened?”
“N-not particularly.”
“Please, I have to get thissss off my chesssst or I might die!” The pod was slowing down, as if all its power was being drained by Connie’s malevolent persona. They entered an unlit stretch, and Jane couldn’t tell if Connie was close to her or far away, but she knew one thing for certain: Connie was easily the scariest thing on the ride. “You ssssee, I went to sssschool with Francine. Before I moved into town. Matter of fact, she’s the reason I was forced to move in the firsssst place.”
Jane felt a lump form in her throat, one she could not swallow. “The reason? Wh-what reason?”
“Before I came, there was a problem. In my lassssst town…they wanted to lock me up.”
Jane didn’t want to ask. But she had to. “Who’s ‘they’?”
“Doctorsssss.”
“The doctors wanted to lock you up?”
Connie nodded. “In a padded room. All white. With a ssssslot in the door sssso they could watch me, day and night. Except it wasn’t a room. It was a cage! A cage, all dresssssed in white.”
“Stop trying to scare me!” shouted Jane. “What’s that have to do with Francine?”
“Francine was my bessssst friend…before you. We did everything together. Even the carnival. You ssssssee…” Connie paused. And when she continued, the anger spilled like bile from that unfamiliar voice. “Francine was the pretty one.”
“You said that story wasn’t true!”
“The ssssstory you heard, the one the kidsssss tell during lunch, on those white tables with their white bread sssssandwiches and their white, white milk…that ssssstory isn’t true. I’m about to tell you what really happened, Janie-girl, the true story of what happened inside the Grim Grinning Ghost House, sssso listen up!”
Jane remained silent, not because she wanted to; it was more that she was afraid of what Connie might do if she interrupted. Or rather, what the owner of the voice residing inside Connie’s mouth might do. “Ssssso you’ll let me finish, because I have to get thissss out fasssst.”
Connie felt Jane nod in the dark. “She was afraid of the ghost housssse, too, and I told her. I told Francine there was nothing to be ssssscared of. It’s all make-believe. I even paid for her ride. Ssssso she came. We rode the Poison Pod, like you and me are doing right now. And then sssssomething came over me. It was the mirrors, Janie-girl.”
“What mirrors?”
“The mirrors! A hundred thousand reminders of who I had become.” And for a split second, Connie sounded like her old self again.
“Had become? What are you talking about? You’re Connie!”
“No, Jane.” The other voice was back. Whispering. Hissing. Declaring. “I’m the ugly one.”
With a SWWATCH, colored lights burst down from the rafters, a canopy of reds, blues, and greens, as the pod entered the heart of the ghost house—a magnificent hall of mirrors, some plain, some distorted. But in all of them were Connie and Jane, Jane and Connie. “I don’t know what it wassss. Or who it wassss. The doctors, they called it another perssssonality, a sssssplit persssssonality, like I was ssssomeone else part of the time, sssssomeone I’m not. But what do doctors know? They don’t want to cure you. All they want to do is lock you up!”
By then, Jane felt nauseous. “I need to get off. I’m going to be sick!” Her heart was beating a mile a minute. She was afraid. Of Connie. Or the new personality sitting beside her.
“That doctor,” Connie continued, “he knew everything about nothing. He sssssaid I couldn’t be cured, that ssssome people were born thisssss way. That I should live in a cage for what I did.” She paused. “He didn’t underssssstand. But you understand, don’t you? Tell me you underssssstand or I’ll do it again. I’ll ssssslice you open like I sssssliced open Francine!”
Jane covered her ears. “Enough! I don’t want to hear any more!” She would have pulled them off if she could have. Not to worry, Janie-girl, around here you’ll still be the pretty one.
Jane pushed the safety bar as hard as she could. It didn’t budge, and the mirrors kept coming, one after another, a universe of false promises: fat Connie and fat Jane, skinny Jane and skinny Connie, super-tall Connie and super-tall Jane, regular Connie and regular Jane…along with a third guest, propped up in the pod between them. A most unwanted guest.
Connie unleashed a shriek that was heard by no one, because Jane’s scream was three decibels louder. In that brief moment, the second most horrifying of her life, Jane saw a body slumped between them—the corpse of Francine, from the urban legend. She drooled black ooze, and then Jane saw something else: an image that would haunt her for the rest of her days.
The dead girl in the mirror opened her bulging eyes and curled her lips, forming a smile more terrible than Connie’s. Francine was wearing a hideous gaping grin and was staring, wild-eyed, at the two girls when—
CLICK! Out went the lights. The ghost house was thrown into complete darkness once more. Jane let out a full-blooded wail those prerecorded screams could only dream to emulate. And with a burst of adrenaline, she forced up the safety bar and bolted from the pod.
Poor Janie-girl. She didn’t even get to hear Connie’s laugh, see her doubled over in the pod, the tears steaming down her cheeks. “Jane, wait! What are you doing? It was a joke!” You see, Connie had known all about the smiling mannequin—she had been to the carnival the night before—and made up the accompanying tale about murdering Francine to scare the living daylights out of her best friend. Ah, a girl after my own spleen!
Connie had succeeded, only too well. The pretty one ran off into the dark, leaving Connie with a twinge of regret. She was being playful, or so she thought. But the carnival’s dark energy recognized Connie as one of its own. It recognized and embraced her.
The pod rrrrrred to a stop. There was a malfunction, a delay, soliciting groans throughout the ride. A ghostly voice spewed instructions from the loudspeakers: “Unfriendly spirits have interrupted our tour. Please remain seated in your Poison Pod. Your tour of terror will continue momentarily.”
Connie stood up, trying to spot her friend. “Jane? Janie-girl? Come back! It was a joke!” she cried. But Jane didn’t answer. “It was a joke,” she said again in a whisper. A moment later, the pod bucked and the ride came back to life. The other pods remained on course, but pod number two took a frightening detour. What’s going on? Connie thought. The pod picked up speed and flew off the tracks, gliding into a restricted area where a flashing red sign warned DO NOT ENTER: GO BACK!
Connie found herself traveling through an altogether different hall of mirrors, one not open to the public, its reflections less playful, as the truth can sometimes be. A deformed soul glared back at the girl with the angry eyes, smiling its toothy grimace. Connie barely had the chance to scream as the pod raced directly at it, blasting through and shattering the mirror.
Meanwhile, Jane followed a path of emergency exit lights back to the pier and burst outside, screaming bloody murder. Faces in the crowd turned to stare, and the barker turned to gloat. Jane had become the ghost house’s st
ar attraction. The louder she screamed, the more quarters he collected. The thing that ultimately silenced her was pod two, rolling out of the Grim Grinning Ghost House. The seat was empty.
Connie had disappeared.
Jane watched all night from a paint-chipped rail as the police combed the area, expanding their search to the water below. For her, the myth of childhood ended on the pier that night. The girl who’d saved her life was never found. When at last the sun rose and the sweepers came out of hiding, the carnival lifted its stakes, folded its tents, removed its clown white, and gathered its goods. On to the next town, maybe even yours, with ten thousand wonders to behold. And a new urban legend to be told.
Fifty years went by before Jane paid another visit to a traveling carnival. Because in truth, she never really had to. A night hadn’t passed since that fateful October when she didn’t find herself trapped in its hall of mirrors, not a solitary sleepless evening in ten thousand when she didn’t hear its sounds, taste its flavors, smell its aromas. All the terror she could ever want.
For the mere price of a quarter.
Now in her golden years, Jane was able to reflect on a good and charitable life. But evil rarely gives up without a fight.
Fifty Octobers on, a traveling carnival arrived in the town where Jane now lived—a town without a pier—planting its stakes in a vast field where vegetation no longer grew. It was Jane’s granddaughter, Emily, who begged her grandmother to take her to the show that Saturday so she could see its wonders, smell its smells. Experience its fear. After a day of resistance, with Jane making every counteroffer she could think of—the zoo, the movies, the mall—she eventually caved. But it had very little to do with her granddaughter. The day had come and Jane knew it. It was time.
To return.
They got there at dusk, grandmother and granddaughter, clasping hands. “Let’s go on the Ferris wheel!” Emily turned for her grandmother’s approval. Jane stood like a statue, her features chiseled fear. “Grandma, what’s wrong?” The rides, the games, the vendors. They were the same. A brand-new carnival hadn’t come to town. It was exactly the same. The vendors calling out to the rubes to play their games and taste their goods hadn’t aged a day. Pacing outside the Tent of 10,000 Unusual Delights, the barker spotted her through the crowd. “Welcome back,” he said to the old lady in the bifocals. “I’d know those peepers fifty years away.”
Tales from the Haunted Mansion, Volume II Page 3