Dean Koontz - (1980)

by The Funhouse(Lit)

  From the funhouse barker's platform, four feet above the midway, Conrad Straker watched the albino. Straker had stopped in the middle of his come-on spiel the instant he had seen Ghost approaching. Behind Straker, the raucous funhouse music blared continuously. Every thirty seconds the giant clown's face--a much larger, more sophisticated, and more animated version of the face that had topped his first funhouse, twenty-seven years ago--winked down at the passersby and let out a recorded, four-bark laugh: aHaa,haa,haa,haaaaa."

  As he waited for the albino, Straker lit a cigarette. His hand shook, the match bobbled.

  At last Ghost reached the funhouse and pulled himself up onto the barker's platform. "It's done," he said. "I gave her the free ticket." He had a cool, feathery voice that nevertheless carried clearly above the carnival din.

  "She wasn't suspicious?" "Of course not. She was thrilled to have her fortune told for free.

  She acted like she really believed that Madame Zena could see into the future." "I wouldn't want her to think she'd been singled out," Straker said worriedly.

  "Relax," Ghost said. "I gave her the usual dumb story, and she bought it. I said my job was to wander up and down the midway, giving out free tickets for this and that, just to stir up interest. Public relations."

  Frowning, Straker said, "You're positive you approached the right girl?" "The one you pointed out."

  Above them, the enormous clown's face broadcast another tinny burst of laughter.

  Taking small, quick, nervous drags on his cigarette, Straker said, "She was sixteen or seventeen. Very dark hair, almost black. Dark eyes.

  About five foot five."

  "Sure," Ghost said. aLike the others, last season." "This one was wearing a blue and gray sweater.

  She was with a blond boy about her age." "That's the one," Ghost said, combing his lank hair with his long, slender, milky-white fingers.

  "Are you sure she used the ticket?" aYes. I walked her straight to Zena's tent."

  "Maybe this time . . ." "What does Zena do with these kids you steer to her?" aWhile she tells their fortunes, she finds out as much about them as she can-their names, their parents' names, a lot of things like that." "Why?" "Because I want to know." aBut why do you want to know?" "That's none of your business."

  Behind them, inside the enormous funhouse, several young girls screamed at something that popped out at them from the darkness. There was a phony quality to their squeals of terror, like thousands of teenage girls before them, they were pretending to be frightened witless, so that they would have an excuse to cuddle closer to the young men beside them.

  Ignoring the screams behind him, Ghost stared intently at Straker, the albino's almost colorless, semitransparent eyes were disconcerting.

  "Something I have to know. Have you ever . . . well . . . have you ever touched one of these kids I've sent to Zena?"

  Straker glared at him. "If you're asking me whether I've sexually molested any of the young girls and boys in whom I've shown an interest, the answer is no.

  That's ridiculous." "I sure wouldn't want to be a part of something like that," Ghost said.

  "You've got an ugly, dirty little mind," Straker said, disgusted.

  "I'm not looking for fresh meat, for God's sake. I'm searching for one child in particular, someone special." "Who?" "That's none of your business." Excited, as always, by the prospect of finally, successfully concluding his long search, Conrad said, "I've got to get over to Zena's tent. She's probably just about finished with the girl.

  This could be the one. This could be the one I've been looking for."

  In the funhouse, their voices muffled by the walls, the girls screamed again.

  As Straker turned toward the platform steps, anxious to hear what Zena had discovered, the albino put a hand on his arm, detaining him.

  "Last season, in almost every town we hit, there was a kid who caught your eye.

  Sometimes two or three kids. How long have you been looking?" "Fifteen years."

  Ghost blinked. For a moment a pair of thin, translucent lids covered but did not fully conceal his strange eyes. "Fifteen years? That doesn't make sense." "To me, it makes perfect sense," Straker said coldly.

  "Look, last year was my first season working for you, and I didn't want to complain about anything until I understood your routines better.

  But that bu siness with the kids really bugged me. There's something creepy about it.

  And now it's starting all over again this year. I just don't like being a part of it." "Then quit," Straker said sharply. "Go to work for someone else." aBut, except for this one thing, I like the job.

  It's good work and good pay." "Then do what you're told, take your paycheck, and shut up," Straker said. "Or get the hell out. It's your choice."

  Straker tried to pull away from the albino, but Ghost would not relinquish his hold on the larger man's arm. His bony, clammy, death-white hand had a surprisingly strong grip. "Tell me one thing.

  Just to set my mind at ease." "What is it?" Straker asked impatiently.

  "If you ever find who you're looking for, do you intend to hurt him .

  . . or her?" "Of course not," Straker lied. "Why would I hurt him?" "Well, I don't understand why you're so obsessed with this search, unless--" "Look," Straker said, "there's a woman to whom I'm deeply indebted. I've lost track of her over the years. I know she has children by now, and every time I see a kid who resembles her, I check it out. I figure I might be lucky enough to stumble across her daughter or son, find her, and repay the debt."

  Ghost frowned. "You're going to an awful lot of trouble just to--" "It's an awfully big debt," Straker said, interrupting him. "It's on my conscience. I won't rest easy until I repay it." aBut the chance that she'd have a kid that looks like her, the chance that her kid will come wandering past your funhouse some day . . . Do you realize what a long shot that is?" "I know it's unlikely," Straker said. aBut it doesn't cost me anything to keep an eye out for kids who resemble her.

  And crazier things happen."

  The albino looked into Straker's eyes, searching for signs of deception or truth.

  Straker was not able to read anything in Ghost's eyes, for they were too strange to be interpreted. Because they were without color, they were also without character. White and faded pink. Watery.

  Bottomless eyes.

  The albino's gaze was piercing but cold, emotionless.

  At last Ghost said, "All right. I guess if you're just trying to find someone to repay an old debt . . . there's nothing wrong with me helping you." "Good. It's settled. Now I've got to talk to Gunther for a minute, and then I'm going over to Zena's. You take over the pitchman's roost for me," Straker said, finally managing to pull free of the albino's moist hand.

  Inside the funhouse a new chorus of girlish voices wailed in a shrill imitation of horror.

  As the huge clown's face spat out another mechanical laugh, Straker hurried across the barker's platform, beneath a banner that proclaimed THE BIGGEST FUNHOUSE IN THE WORLD! He descended the wooden steps, went past the red-and-black ticket booth, and paused for a moment near the boarding gate where sever al ticket holders were stepping down into the brightly painted gondolas that would carry them through the funhouse.

  Conrad looked up at Gunther, who was standing on a six-foot-square platform to the left of the boarding gate and four feet above it.

  Gunther was waving his long arms and growling at the marks below him, pretending to threaten them. He was an impressive figure, better than six and a half feet tall, more than two hundred and fifty pounds of bone and muscle. His shoulders were enormous. He was dressed all in black, and his entire head was covered by a Hollywood-quality, Frankenstein monster mask that disappeared under his collar. He was also wearing monster gloves--big, green rubber hands streaked with fake blood--that extended beneath the cuffs of his jacket.

  Suddenly Gunther noticed Conrad looking up at him, and he turned, favoring him with an especially fierce growl.

  Str
aker grinned. He made a circle with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, giving Gunther a sign of approval.

  Gunther capered around the platform in a clumsy monster dance of delight.

  The people waiting to board the gondolas laughed and applauded the monster's performance.

  With a fine sense of theater, Gunther abruptly turned vicious once more and roared at his audience. A couple of girls screamed.

  Gunther bellowed and shook his head and snarled and stamped his foot and hissed and waved his arms. He enjoyed his work.

  Smiling, Straker turned away from the funhouse and walked into the river of people that flowed along the midway. But as he drew nearer to Zena's tent, his smile faded. He thought of the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl he'd seen from the barker's platform a short while ago. Maybe this was the one.

  Maybe this was Ellen's child. After all these years, the thought of what she'd done to his little boy still filled him with a fiery rage, and the possibility of revenge still made his heart beat faster, still caused his blood to race with excitement. Long before he reached Zena's tent, his smile had metamorphosed into a scowl.

  Dressed in red and black and gold, wearing a spangled scarf and a lot of rings and too much mascara, Zena sat alone in the dimly lighted tent, waiting for Conrad. Four candles burned steadily inside four separate glass chimneys, casting an orange glow that did not reach into the corners. The only other light was from the illuminated crystal ball that stood in the center of the table.

  Music, excited voices, the spiels of pitchmen, and the clatter of the thrill rides filtered through the canvas walls from the midway.

  To the left of the table, a raven stood in a large cage, head cocked, one shiny black eye focused on the crystal ball.

  Zena, who called herself Madame Zena and pretended to be a Gypsy with psychic powers, had not a drop of Romany blood in her and actually couldn't see anything in the future other than the fact that tomorrow the sun would rise and subsequently set. She was of Polish extraction.

  Her full name was Zena Anna Penetsky.

  She had been a carny for twenty-eight years, since she was just fifteen, and she had never longed for another life. She liked the travel, the freedom, and the carnival people.

  Once in a while, however, she grew weary of telling fortunes, and she was disturbed by the endless gullibility of the marks. She knew a thousand ways to con a mark, a thousand ways to convince him (after he had already paid for a palm reading) to shell out a few more dollars for a purportedly more complete look into his future. The ease with which she manipulated people embarrassed her. She told herself that what she did was all right because they were only marks, not carnies, and therefore not real people. That was the traditional carny attitude, but Zena could not be that hard all the time. Now and then she was troubled by guilt.

  Occasionally she considered giving up fortunetelling. She could take a partner, someone who had done the palm-reading scam before. It meant sharing the profits, but that didn't worry Zena. She also owned a bottle-pitch joint and a very profitable grab joint, and after overhead she netted more each year than any half-dozen marks earned at their boring jobs in the straight world.

  But she continued to play Gypsy fortune-teller because she had to do somethirlg, she wasn't the kind of person who could just sit back and take it easy.

  By the age of fifteen, she had been a welldeveloped woman, and she had begun her carnival career as a kootch dancer. These days, as she became increasingly dissatisfied with her role as Madame Zena, she frequently considered opening a girl show of her own. She even toyed with the idea of performing again. It might be a kick.

  She was forty-three, but she knew she could still excite a tentful of horny marks. She looked ten years younger than she was. Her hair was chestnut-brown and thick, untouched by gray, it framed a strong, pleasing, unlined face. Her eyes were a rare shade of violet--warm, kind eyes. Years ago, when she'd first worked as a kootch dancer, she'd been voluptuous. She still was.

  Through diet and exercise, she had maintained her splendid figure, and nature had even cooperated by miraculously sparing her large breasts from the downward drag of gravity.

  But even as she fantasized about returning to the stage, she knew the hootchie-kootchie was not in her future. The kootch was just another way of manipulating the marks, no different from fortune-telling, in essence it was the very thing that she needed to get away from for a while. She would have to think of something else she could do.

  The raven stirred on its perch and flapped its wings, interrupting her thoughts.

  An instant later Conrad Straker entered the tent. He sat in the chair where the marks always sat, across the table from Zena. He leaned forward, anxious, tense. "Well?"

  No luck," Zena said.

  He leaned even closer. "Are you positive we're talking about the same girl?"

  "Yes."

  "She was wearing a blue and gray sweater."

  "Yes, yes," Zena said impatiently. "She had the ticket that Ghost had given her."

  "What was her name? Did you find out her name?"

  "Of course. Laura Alwine."

  "Her mother's name?"

  "Sandra. Not Ellen. Sandra. And Sandra is a natural blonde, not a brunette like Ellen was. Laura gets her dark hair and eyes from her father, she says.

  I'm sorry, Conrad. I pumped the girl for a lot of information while I was telling her fortune, but none of it matches what you're looking for. Not a single detail of it." "I was sure she was the one."

  "You're always sure."

  He stared at her, and gradually his face grew red. He looked down at the tabletop, and he became rapidly, visibly angrier, as if he saw something in the grain of the wood that outraged him. He slammed his fist into the table.

  Slammed it down once, twice. Hard. Half a dozen times. Then again and again and again. The tent was filled with the loud, measured drumbeat of his fury.

  He was shaking, panting, sweating. His eyes were glazed. He began to curse, and he sprayed spittle across the table. He made strange, harsh, animal noises in the back of his throat, and he continued to pound the table as if it were a living creature that had wronged him.

  Zena wasn't startled by his outburst. She was accustomed to his maniacal rages. She had once been married to him for two years.

  On a stormy night in August, 1955, she had stood in the rain, watching him ride backwards on the carousel. He had looked so very handsome then, so romantic, so vulnerable and brokenhearted that he had appealed to both her carnal and maternal instincts, and she had been drawn to him in a way she never had been drawn to another man. In February of the following year, they rode the carousel forward, together.

  Just two weeks after the wedding, Conrad flew into a rage over something Zena did, and he struck hen-repeatedly. She was too stunned to defend herself.

  Afterward he was contrite, embarrassed, appalled by what he had done.

  He wept and begged forgiveness. She was certain that his fit of violence was an aberration, not ordinary behavior. Three weeks later, however, he attacked her again, leaving her badly bruised and battered.

  Two weeks after that, when he was seized by another fit, he tried to hit her, but she struck first. She rammed a knee into his crotch and clawed his face with such frenzy that he backed off. Thereafter, forewarned, always watching for the first sign of one of his oncoming rages, she was able, after a fashion, to protect herself.

  Zena worked hard at the marriage, trying to make it last in spite of her husband's explosive temper. There were two Conrad Strakers, she hated and feared one of them, but she loved the other. The first Conrad was a brooding, pessimistic, violence-prone man, as unpredictable as an animal, with a shocking talent and taste for sadism. The second Conrad was kind, thoughtful, even charming, a good lover, intelligent, creative. For a while Zena believed that a lot of love and patience and understanding would change him. She was convinced that the frightening Mr. Hyde personality would fade completely away, and that in time Con
rad would settle down and be just the good Dr. Jekyll. Instead, the more love and understanding she gave him, the more frequently he became violent and abusive, as if he were determined to prove that he was not worthy of her love.

  She knew that he despised himself. His inability to like himself and be at peace in his own mind, the frustration generated by his incurable selfhatred-that was the root of his periodic, maniacal rages.

  Something monstrous had happened to him a long, long time ago, in his formative years, some unspeakable childhood tragedy that had scarred him so deeply that nothing, not even Zena's love, could heal him. Some horror in his distant past, some terrible disaster for which he felt responsible, gave him bad dreams every night of his life. He was consumed by an unquenchable guilt that burned in him year after year with undiminished brightness, turning his heart, piece by piece, into bitter ashes. Many times Zena had tried to learn the secret that gnawed at Conrad, but he had been afraid to tell her, afraid that the truth would repel her and turn her against him forever. She had assured him that nothing he told her would make her loathe him. It would have been good for him to unburden himself at last. But he could not do it.

  Zena could learn only one thing: the event that haunted him had transpired on Christmas Eve, when he was only twelve years old. From that night forward, he had been a changed person, day by day, he had become ever more sour, increasingly violent. For a brief spell, after Ellen gave him his much-wanted child, even though it was a hideously deformed baby, Conrad had begun to feel better about himself. But when Ellen killed the child, Conrad sank even deeper into despair and self-hatred, and it wasn't likely that anyone would ever be able to draw him out of the psychological pit into which he had cast himself.

  After struggling for two years to make their marriage work, after living in fear of Conrad's rage all that time, Zena had finally faced the fact that divorce was inevitable. She left him, but they didn't cease to be friendly.