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 ha mmering.
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.
aGo 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, aSsshh, 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." aDo you have any sisters?" "NO." "Brothers?" One .
"His name?" "Joey Harper." "His age?" aTen." I Ys your mother alive?" aYes." "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?" aGiavenetto," 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!n 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.
I "Madame Zena?" Liz said. "You mean to tell me you believe she really saw something in her crystal ball? Horseshit!n -.t,' They talked about it some more, and gradually ' t' 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 wordsLOSED/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. 1- "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." tWhat'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 Leon"?"
Zena blinked. "What? Why Leon"?"
"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 Leon"." 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.
"I saw something in the crystal ball," she said in a voice that contained fear and awe. "It's not even crystal. It's just a cheap piece of crap.
There's nothing magical about it. Yet . . . tonight . . . when those girls were here .
. . I saw images in the ball. It was awful, horrible. I saw the blond screaming, her hands thrown up in front of her face as if she were trying to ward off something hideous that was reaching for her. And I saw the other one . . . Amy . . . in torn clothes, all covered with blood." She shuddered violently. "And I think . . . the boys, too .
. . in the background of the vision . . . the boys who were with those girls . . . all bloody." "It's a sign," Conrad said. Y told you, I've been sent signs.
This is another one. It tells me not to wait. It tells me to get Amy tonight, even if I have to take care of the others as well." Zena shook her head. "No. No, Conrad, I can't let you do that.
You can't have your revenge. It's sick. You can't just go out there and kill those four kids." I "Oh, I probably won't kill any of them with my own hands," he said.
"What do you mean?" "Gunther will take care of them." "Gunther? He wouldn't hurt anyone." "Our son has changed," Conrad said. "I'm the only one who knows how much he's changed. He's come of age at last.
He needs women now, and he . takes what he needs. He doesn't just screw them, either. He leaves quite a mess behind. I've been covering up for him the last few years.
And now I'll be repaid. He'll give me the vengeance I've dreamed about for so long." "What do you mean when you say he takes women?" "Uses them and then rips them apart," Conrad said, knowing that she was the type who would feel morally responsible for the actions of her freakish offspring, smiling as he saw the pain flicker across her face.
"How many?" she asked.
"I've lost count. A few dozen." aMy God," Zena said, shaken to her roots. "What have I done? What have I brought into the world?" "The Antichrist," Conrad said.
"No," she said. "You're not in your right mind. You have delusions of grandeur. It's nothing as special as the Antichrist. It's just a vicious, mad beast. I should have had Ellen's good sense. I should have killed it like she killed Victor. Now . . . I'm responsible for everyone who has died and for everyone who will die before it's finished."
Standing over her, Conrad reached down, put his hands on her throat, and said, "I can't let you spoil everything."
Zena struggled. But she didn't have a strong enough desire to live, while Conrad had an exceedingly strong desire to kill her. He had never known such power and purpose as that which coursed through him now. He felt supercharged, crackling with a demonic energy. Zena thrashed and kicked and scratched his face, but she died much more easily than he had expected. He dragged her body into the darkest corner of the tent, later, he would figure out some way to get rid of it.
The raven squawked hysterically.
Afraid that the bird would draw someone to the body before it could be disposed of, Conrad opened the cage, thrust his hands inside, seized the raven, and broke its neck.
He left Zena's tent and hurried back to the funhouse. Amy Harper and her friends would be arriving shortly, and he wanted to be prepared for them.
Tonight Joey was a winner. He won sixty-five cents pitching pennies.
He won a small teddy bear by throwing darts at balloons. And he won a free ride on the carousel when he managed to grab a brass ring the first time around.
He was on the carousel, riding a black stallion like the one in the movie of the same name, when he saw Amy. He hadn't considered the possibility that her date had brought her to the carnival, but there she was, in dark green shorts and a pale green T-shirt. She wasn't with Buzz, though. She was with Liz, and the two girls were headed toward the edge of the midway. Joey lost sight of them as the carousel revolved, and when he came around again, they had disappeared in the crowd.
When he got off the merry-go-round a couple of minutes later, he went looking for his sister. He knew she would enjoy hearing how he had fooled Mama. She would think he was clever and brave for coming all the way to the fairgrounds on his own. He valued Amy's approval more than anything else, and he was eager to hear what she would say when she saw him here all by himself.
THE COMFORT STATION was brightly lighted. It smelled of damp concrete, mildew, and stale urine. The sinks were stained by years of dripping, mineral-rich water.
After Amy and Liz washed their hands, as they were leaning toward the mirrors, fixing their makeup, two older women left the restroom, and the girls were alone.
"You feeling high?" Liz asked.
aYes."
"Me too. All the way up. I'm fuckin' wired, for sure. Are you just high, or are you really wired?"
"I'm totally wasted," Amy said, squinting into the mirror, applying lipstick with a shaky hand.
"Good," Liz said. "I'm glad you're really wrecked. Maybe you'll finally loosen up." "I'm loose as a goose," Amy said.
"Great," Liz said. "Then I won't have to sell you on it." "Sell me on what?"
The orgy," Liz said.
Amy looked at her, and Liz grinned almost drunkenly, and Amy said, "Orgy?" - "I've already sold the idea to those two pussyhounds out there," Liz said.
aBuzz and Richie?"
"They're both game."
"You mean . . . the four of us in one bed?"
E . "Sure," Liz said, putting away her own lipstick, , snapping her purse shut.
"It'll be fantastic!" "Oh, Liz, I don't know about that. I don't--" "Let it slide, kid."
"I've got college and_n "You've got the pill. You won't get knocked up again. Don't be so damned prim.
Go with the flow, kid. Be what you are. Stop pretending you're Sister Purity." "I couldn't--" "Of course you could," Liz said. "You will.
You want it. You're just like me.
Face facts and enjoy yourself."
Amy put one hand on the sink to steady herself. It wasn't just the dope that made her feel woozy.
' She was dizzied by the prospect of just letting go, being like Liz, forgetting about the future, living just for the moment, incapable of guilt or remorse. It must be nice to live that way. It must be so relaxing, so free.
Liz moved close to her and said, "My place. As soon as we leave the fairgrounds. The four of us. My parents have a king-size bed. Think of it, honey. You can have both those guys at the same time. They're both dying to slip the old salami to you.
It'll be great. You'll have a ball. I know you will because I'll have a ball, and you're just like me." Liz's melodic, rhythmic voice was draining all the energy and all the will out of Amy. Amy leaned against the sink and closed her eyes and felt that warm, seductive voice pulling her down, down into a place she wasn't sure she wanted to go.
Then Amy felt a hand on her breast. She opened her eyes with a start.
Liz was touching her intimately, smiling.
Amy wanted to push the other girl's lewd hand away, but she couldn't find sufficient strength to present Liz with eve
n that small token of resistance.
"I've always wondered what it would be like, you and me, just us two girls," Liz said.
"You're wasted," Amy said. "You're so high you don't know what you're saying." "I know exactly what I'm saying, kid. I've always wondered
.
. .
and tonight I can find out. We can make some real memories, kid." She leaned close, kissed Amy lightly on the mouth, tongue flicking like the quick tongue of a snake, and then she left the restroom, twitching her bottom as she went.
Amy felt dirty, but she also experienced a tremor of pleasure that oscillated through every inch of her.
She looked in the mirror again, squinting because the bright fluorescent lights stung her bleary eyes. Her face looked soft, as if it were melting off her bones. Searching once more for that wickedness that others could see in her, she stared into her own eyes. All of Amy's life, her mother had told her that she was filled with a terrible evil that must be repressed at all costs.
After years and years of listening to that hateful line, Amy didn't like herself very much. Her self-respect had been whittled down to a fragile stick, Mama had wielded the whittling knife. Now Amy thought she finally could see a hint of the evil that Mama and Liz saw in her, it was a peculiar shadow, a writhing darkness deep in her eyes.
No! she thought desperately, frightened by the speed with which her resolution was dissolving. I'm not that kind of person. I have plans, ambitions, dreams.
I want to paint beautiful pictures and bring happiness to people.
But she could vividly recall the thrill that had snapped through her like an electric current when Liz's tongue had licked her lips.
She thought of being in bed with Richie and Buzz, both of them using her at the same time, and suddenly it wasn't impossible for her to picture herself in that situation.
Standing there in the harshly lighted comfort station, acutely uncomfortable in the stink of mildew and urine and rotting hope, Amy felt as if she were waiting in the anteroom of Hell.
Dean Koontz - (1980) Page 20