Dean Koontz - (1980)

by The Funhouse(Lit)

  At last she walked to the door and opened it.

  Liz was waiting outside, in the night. She smiled at Amy and held out her hand.

  Conrad sent Ghost off to work at the grab joint, which was busier than the funhouse tonight. As soon as the albino was gone, Conrad shut the ticket booth and sent Elton to assist at the pitch-anddunk, which formed the third corner of Straker's three-cornered carnival empire.

  Elton gave him an odd look. The funhouse was much too busy to justify closing it down for the night. But unlike Ghost, Elton never asked questions, he simply did as he was told.

  When those marks who were already in the funhouse came out through the big, swinging exit doors and disembarked from their gondolas, Conrad shut down the power to the track. He didn't switch off the lights or the music, in fact he turned up the volume on the music and on the voice of the laughing clown as well.

  Gunther watched Conrad with puzzlement. But when the situation was explained to him, he understood at once, and he went into the funhouse to wait.

  Conrad took up a position by the shuttered ticket booth. He turned away the marks when they asked if they could buy tickets. For the rest of the night, the funhouse would be open for only four very special people.

  After they ate ice-cream bars covered with chocolate and nuts, Liz and Amy and Richie and Buzz went to the funhouse.

  , The barker, the man with the brilliantly blue eyes who had been on the elevated platform earlier, was no longer haranguing the people who passed by.

  He was standing at the ticket booth, which appeared to be closed.

  "Oh, no," Liz said disappointedly. "Mister, you aren't going to shut down for the night already?" "No," the barker said. "We just had a minor mechanical problem." "When will it be fixed?" Liz asked.

  "It's fixed already," the barker said. aBut I've got to wait for the boss to get back before I start up."

  - "How long will that be?" Richie asked.

  The barker shrugged. "Hard to tell. The boss likes, shall we say, to tipple.

  If he's tippled too much while we were fixing the motors, he might not be back at all."

  Ah, shit!" Liz said. "We saved this for last because it's my favorite."

  The barker looked at Amy, and she didn't like what she saw in his eyes.

  His gaze was so intent and somehow menacing, hungry.

  I should have worn a bra, Amy thought. I shouldn't have tried to be like Liz.

  I shouldn't have gone out in short shorts, a flimsy T-shirt, and no bra. I'm just advertising myself. No wonder he's staring at me like that.

  "Well," the barker said, sweeping them all with his gas-flame eyes, "I'll tell you what. You don't look like an ordinary group of marks to me. You look like you're with it and for it." "You bet your ass we are," Liz said.

  "Whatever that means--with it and for it," Buzz said.

  "It's a carny expression," the barker told them. "It means what it says and says what it means." Liz laughed. "Which makes everything perfectly clear." The barker grinned and winked at her.

  "You're a pretty sharp dude," Liz said.

  "Thank you," the barker said. "And you're a very sharp lady. But I'll take your money just the same."

  Richie and Buzz dug in their pockets for money.

  The barker glanced at Amy again. That same hunger.

  Amy crossed her arms over her breasts, so he couldn't see her nipples through the pale green T-shirt she wore.

  Joey had just about give up trying to find Amy in the crowd that surged around the midway-- and then he saw her. She was with Liz, Buzz, and another boy. The carny who had given Joey the free passes was helping them into a gondola at the funhouse boarding gate.

  Joey hesitated, remembering how weird the carny had acted this afternoon. But he was so eager to tell Amy about how he had fooled Mama that he shrugged off his misgivings and headed toward the funhouse.

  .- .

  '1.

  The gondola seated four: two forward, two behind. Liz and Richie took the front seats, Amy and Buzz sat in back of them.

  They started with a jolt that made Liz yelp and laugh. The phony castle doors opened, swallowed them, and closed again.

  At first the gondola moved rapidly into the pitch blackness, but then it slowed. A light popped on to the left of the track and above it, and a leering, grizzled pirate laughed and thrust a sword at them.

  Liz squealed, and Buzz took the opportunity to put his arm around Amy.

  On their right, just past the pirate, a very realistic-looking werewolf was crouched on a ledge, suddenly illuminated by a moon that lit up behind him.

  His eyes glowed red, there was blood on his huge teeth, and his claws, which he raked at the gondola, gleamed like splinters of a mirror.

  "Oh, protect me, Richie!n Liz shouted in make believe terror.

  "Protect my virgin body from that horrid beast!n She laughed at her own performance.

  The car slowed even more, and they came to a display in which an ax-murderer was standing over one of his victims. The ax was buried in the dead man's skull, cleaving his forehead in two.

  The gondola came to a complete stop.

  "What's wrong?" Liz asked.

  "Must have broken down again," Richie said.

  They were sitting in purple-brown shadows. The only light came from the ax-murderer exhibit beside them, and that was an eerie, greenish glow.

  "Hey!" Liz shouted into the darkness and into the waves of creepy music that crashed over them. "Hey, let's get this show on the road!" "Yeah!" Buzz shouted. "Hey, out there!"

  For a minute or two they all called to the barker, who was on the platform outside, beyond the closed doors of the attraction, no more than thirty or forty feet away. No one responded to them, and at last they gave up.

  "Shit," Liz said.

  "What should we do?" Amy asked.

  "Stay put," Richie said. "It'll start moving again eventually." "Maybe we should get out and walk back to the doors," Buzz said.

  "Absolutely not," Richie said. "If we did, and then the ride started up again, our gondola would go offwithout us. And if another car came through the entrance doors, it would run us down." "I hope we don't have to wait in here too long," Amy said, remembering the way the barker had looked at her. "It's spooky."

  "What a pain in the ass," Liz said.

  aBe patient," Richie said. "We'll be rolling soon."

  "If we've got to just sit here," Liz said, "I wish they'd shut off that fuckin' music. It's way too loud.

  . .

  .

  , i_ .

  Something creaked loudly overhead.

  1What was that?" Amy asked.

  They all looked up in the darkness.

  "Nothing," Buzz said. "Just the wind outside." "There isn't any wind tonight," Amy said.

  The creaking noise came again. This time there were other loud sounds with it: a scraping, a thud, an animal-like grunting.

  "I don't think we--" Richie began.

  Something flashed out of the darkness and seized him by the throat. An arm thrust down from the low, unlighted ceiling over the gondola, an arm that ended in a large, long-fingered, furcovered hand that was tipped with murderously sharp claws. Though the arm moved fast, they all saw it in the backwash of green light from the ax-murderer exhibit, but they couldn't see what was in the blackness above, at the other end of the arm.

  Whatever it was, its claws pierced Richie's throat, hooked deep into his flesh, and the thing hauled him up, off his seat. Richie kicked frantically, his shoes drumming on the front of the gondola for a second or two. Then he was out of the car, up, up, dragged through a hole in the ceiling, as if he weighed only a few pounds.

  Overhead, a trap door banged shut.

  The attack had transpired in only three or four seconds.

  For a moment Amy was too stunned to move or speak. She stared at the darkness above, where Richie had disappeared, and she couldn't make herself believe what she had seen. It had to be a trick, part of the funho
use tour, an incredibly clever illusion.

  Apparently Liz and Buzz thought the same thing, for they, too, were mesmerized.

  Gradually, however, Amy realized that Richie was really gone and that no carnival in the world would risk injuring a customer with a trick as dangerous as that one.

  Liz said, "Blood."

  That single word broke the spell.

  Amy and Buzz looked at her.

  Liz was turned part of the way around in the front seat. She was holding up her arms. They were spattered with something wet and dark.

  Even in the green light, it was obvious that Liz was spotted with blood.

  Richie's blood.

  Amy screamed.

  As SOON AS Conrad switched off the power to the tracks, stranding the carload of teenagers, he went down the boarding ramp toward the midway.

  He intended to walk around to the back of the funhouse, enter by the rear basement door, lock it after him, and locate Gunther. He wanted his son to kill three of those kids, but not Amy Harper. Amy, of course, would have to suffer for several days before she died, she would have to be well used, perhaps by both himself and Gunther, that was the way Conrad wanted it, the way he had dreamed of it for twenty-five years. He had instructed Gunther carefully, but he wasn't sure that Gunther would be able to control himself once the killing began. Gunther needed to be reminded, he needed constant guidance through the next critical hour.

  But when Conrad reached the bottom of the ramp, as he was about to head for the walkway between the funhouse and Freak-o-rama, he saw the boy.

  Joey Harper. Amy's little brother was standing over by the second set of castle doors, through which the gondolas exited the funhouse.

  He must have seen his sister go inside, Conrad thought. He's waiting for her.

  When she doesn't come out, what will he do? Go for help? Seek out a security guard?

  Joey glanced at him.

  Conrad smiled and waved.

  He would have to do something about the damned boy, and quick.

  Buzz climbed onto the ledge where the axmurderer display was bathed in green light, and he pulled the ax out of the skull of the mannequin that was crumpled at the foot of the mechanical madman. Ax in hand, he jumped down into the gondola channel, where Amy and Liz were huddled together, waiting for him.

  "It's a real ax," he said. "Not very sharp, but it ought to be of some use."

  "I just don't understand," Liz said shakily. "What is going on here?

  What the fuck is this all about?"

  "I don't know for sure," Buzz said. "I can only guess. But you saw that hand .

  . ."

  "It wasn't a hand," Liz said.

  "Claw, paw, whatever you want to call it," Buzz said. "Anyway, it was just like the hands on the thing in the jar, that dead freak we saw pickled in formaldehyde over at Freak-o-rama. Only this hand was a lot bigger."

  Amy had to make an effort to speak. She was surprised she could talk at all.

  "You mean . . . you , think we're trapped in here with a freak that kills people?" "Yeah," Buzz said.

  "It didn't kill Richie!" Liz said, her voice cracking. aRichie isn't dead. He's alive. He's. . . somewhere . . .

  and he's alive." "It's possible," Buzz said. "Maybe it's just a kidnapping scheme or something.

  Maybe they're just going to hold Richie for ransom. It's possible." He and Amy exchanged looks, and although it wasn't easy to read his expression in the green light, Amy knew that Buzz felt the same way about it as she did.

  Richie couldn't possibly be alive. There wasn't one chance in a million that he would ever smile at them again. Richie was dead, gone, forever.

  aWe've got to get out of here and call the cops," Liz said.

  UWe've got to save Richie."

  - "Come on," Buzz said. "We'll walk back to the t'' entrance doors.

  If we can't open them, maybe this ax is just sharp enough so that I can chop a way out." There was no light whatsoever between the green glow of the display on their left side and the front doors, thirty feet away.

  Liz looked down the tomb-black tunnel and said, "No. No, I can't walk through all that darkness. What if it's waiting there for us?"

  "You have matches in your purse," Amy said. "We can use those to find our way."

  "Good idea!" Buzz said.

  Liz rummaged through her purse with shaking hands and found two packs of matches, one full and one half-empty.

  Buzz took them from her. He walked off, into the darkness, struck a match, and was visible again. "Let's go."

  "Wait," Liz said. "Wait a minute. Maybe . . ."

  "Maybe what?" Amy asked.

  Buzz shook out the match as it came close to burning his fingers, and he stepped back into the green light.

  Liz shook her head to clear it. "I'm so damned wasted. I'm really wrecked. I can't think straight. So isn't it possible that maybe this isn't really happening? Isn't it possible that this is just a bad trip? That was PCP I mixed in the last two joints. You can have a bad trip on A-dust, you know.

  Some of the worst trips you ever had. Maybe that's what this is.

  Just a bad trip." aWe wouldn't all be having the same hallucination," Buzz said.

  "How do I know you're even real?" Liz asked. "You might just exist in my mind.

  Maybe the real Buzz is sitting beside Amy in the back of that gondola, halfway through the funhouse by now. Maybe I'm in that car, too, so spaced out I don't realize where I am."

  Amy gently slapped Liz's face. "Listen. Listen to me, Liz. This isn't a bad trip. Not the way you mean it. This is real, and I'm scared out of my wits, so let's stop fooling around and get the hell out of here."

  Liz blinked, licked her lips. "Yeah. You're right. Sorry. It's just . . . I wish I didn't feel so wasted."

  Buzz lit one match, then another and another, and they followed him down the dark tunnel toward the funhouse entrance.

  Joey stood with the barker in front of the funhouse, trying to remember why he had been frightened of this man earlier in the day. Now the carny was as friendly as a person could be, and he had a smile so nice that Joey couldn't help smiling, too.

  "Have you been through my funhouse yet, son?" the barker asked.

  "No," Joey said. "I've been on a lot of other things, though."

  He had been avoiding the funhouse because he felt uneasy about Conrad Straker, even though Straker had given him two free passes.

  aMy funhouse is the best attraction on the midway," Conrad said.

  "Why don't you let me take you on a personally guided tour? How about that?

  Not just an ordinary ride like all the marks get, but a guided tour with the owner. I can show you the workings of it, the behind-the-scenes stuff that few people are ever fortunate enough to see. I'll show you how the monsters are built, how they're made to move and growl and gnash their teeth. Everything.

  All of it.

  I'll show you the kind of things that a with-it-and-for-it person would enjoy learning about." "Gee," Joey said, "you'd really do that?" "Certainly," the barker said heartily. "As I'm sure you noticed, I closed the funhouse down for the night. The ticket booth is closed, as you can see. I just sent the last car through, four nice teenagers."

  "One of them was my sister," Joey said.

  "Oh, really? Let me guess. There was one who looked like you. The dark-haired girl in the green shorts." "That's her," Joey said. "She doesn't know I'm here tonight. I want to wait for her to come out .

  .

  . to say hello. Hey, maybe she would like the guided tour, too. Could she come along I'll bet Amy would really enjoy it."

  The front doors of the funhouse were designed to open inward on hydraulic rams. There were no handles on them, nothing by which they could be gripped or moved.

  "If I could get hold of an edge," Buzz said, "maybe I could pry them open. But they're closed so damned tight." "It wouldn't matter if you could get your fingers through a crack," Amy said.

  "You wouldn't be able
to pull the doors open anyway. I'll bet they're just like the automatic door on the garage at home. As long as they're hooked up to the hydraulic system, they can't be opened manually." "Yeah," Buzz said. "You're right. I should have thought of that." Amy was surprised that she was holding up so well. She was scared, and she got a sinking feeling--part grief and part disgust--when she thought of what happened to Richie. But she wasn't coming apart at the seams. In spite of the dope she had smoked, she was in control of herself. In fact she was thinking faster and clearer than Buzz. She didn't consider herself to be a strong person, Mama always told her that she was weak, flawed. Now her fortitude amazed her.

  Liz, on the other hand, was rapidly breaking down. Her eyes brimmed with a steady flow of tears. She looked drawn, years older than she had looked minutes ago. She mewled like a scared kitten.

  "Don't panic," Buzz said. "I've still got the ax."

  Amy lit a series of matches while Buzz swung the ax at the door--six, eight, a dozen blows.

  At last he stopped, breathing hard. "No good. There isn't any edge on the damned blade." "Someone must have heard all that pounding," Liz said.

  "I doubt it," Amy said. "Remember, the actual funhouse entrance is set back at least fifteen feet from the ticket booth and the midway, beyond the boarding ramp, at the end of the entrance channel. No one passing by is likely to hear the ax, not above all this music and that laughing clown." aBut the barker's out there," Liz said. "He'll hear it." "For Christ's sake, Liz," Buzz said, "get your head together. The barker's not on our side. He's obviously part of it. He lured us in is what he did." "sO some freak could kill us?" Liz asked. "That doesn't make sense.

  That's ridiculous. The barker doesn't even know us. Why would he choose a bunch of kids at random and throw them to . . . that thing?" "Don't you listen to the news on TV?" Buzz asked. "Things don't have to make sense anymore. The world's full of crazies." aBut why would he do it?" Liz demanded.

  "Maybe just for kicks," Amy said.

  aWe'll scream," Liz said. aWe'll scream our fuckin' heads off." "Yeah," Buzz said.

  "No," Amy said. "That's useless, too. The music is louder than usual, and so's the clown's laugh. Nobody's going to hear us--or if someone does, he'll think we're just having fun in here. People are supposed to scream in a funhouse." "So what are we going to do?" Liz asked. "We can't just wait here for that thing to come back. We've got to do something, damn it!" aWe'll go around to some of these mechanical monsters and see if we can find anything else like the ax, stuff we can use to defend ourselves," Buzz said.