“Get him!” Tanya yelled.
They charged the troll. He whirled away, camera swinging at his side by its strap, and vaulted the railing. He dropped toward the beach and vanished.
“Get him!” Tanya shouted again. She was first to reach the railing. She hurled herself over it. Samson rolled over the top bar, turned around, and leapt. Cowboy cleared the railing and held on to his hat as he plummeted. Karen and Liz climbed the railing while Heather squirmed under it. Jeremy started to climb. Shiner grabbed the back of his jacket.
“Don’t,” she said.
“The guy took a picture!”
“They’ll take care of him.”
He knocked her hand away and straddled the bar.
“Please. Dammit, please!”
He shook his head, climbed down onto the edge of the boardwalk, and jumped. The beach pounded his feet. His legs folded, and he rolled over the sand. As he pushed himself up, Shiner landed beside him.
“Leave me alone!” he snapped.
“I’m coming with you.”
“I don’t need you.”
But she stayed at his side as he rushed after the others into the darkness beneath the boardwalk.
“Where is he?” Tanya’s voice.
“Oh, God, we can’t lose him.” Karen.
“We’ll get him.” Cowboy. “We’ll nail his sorry ass.”
“Dance on his face.” Liz.
“Christ, it’s dark down here.” Samson.
“Everybody shut up,” Tanya said. “Maybe we can hear him.”
Off to the left, a patch of ruddy, shimmering light appeared in the blackness.
“There! There!”
“Judas priest, a fucking door.”
The huge form of the troll was silhouetted against it as he crouched and entered. Then he was gone, but the light remained.
They rushed toward it, dodging the thick pilings that supported the boardwalk.
The next shape Jeremy saw silhouetted against the light was Tanya. She didn’t hesitate for an instant. She lunged inside. The others followed.
As Jeremy stepped through the opening, he heard the faint, distant shrill of a whistle.
“That was Randy,” Shiner whispered behind him. “Joan’s here.”
Jeremy thought she would rush off to join her sister. But she put a hand on his back and entered.
“The cops are here,” Jeremy announced. “Randy just blew his whistle.”
“They won’t find us,” Tanya said. “Close the door.”
Shiner pulled it shut.
They were crowded into a small room lighted by candles on wall holders. The door at their backs was tight against a concrete wall. Another door on the left. Ahead of them was a staircase.
Cowboy tried the second door. “Locked,” he said.
“Where the hell are we?” Heather asked, her voice low and whiny.
“Looks like a basement,” Samson said.
“Brilliant deduction,” Liz muttered.
“Tha’s a fack,” came a dry, ancient voice from above. “Welcome t’ Jasper’s Funhouse.”
Tanya pulled a folding knife out of the pouch of her sweatshirt. She pried its blade out.
Jeremy dug into a pocket for his Swiss Army knife.
He saw Samson, Karen, and Cowboy produce knives of their own.
“Everybody ready?” Tanya whispered. She scanned the group, her eyes glinting and fierce in the candlelight, then turned around and began to climb the stairs.
Forty-one
Robin’s eyes were squeezed shut in pain and fear, but she opened them just a crack when she heard sudden shouts. The shapes of the trollers, far below, started running up the boardwalk.
Her stomach seemed to take a sudden drop.
God, she was so high!
A blink of light flicked a quick white glare over the tiny figures. It came from a big man ahead of them, who suddenly ran to the railing, leapt over it, and rushed out of sight under the boardwalk.
The kids, in pursuit, started throwing themselves over the railing.
Are they leaving me up here? she wondered.
Are they done hurting me?
No. No, they aren’t done. They’ll come back. They have to kill me. I’m a witness.
Oh, God, Nate.
Deader than shit.
They murdered him. Tanya did.
But why did she cuff him to the bed? Maybe she lied to that kid. Duke, she’d called him Duke. She wouldn’t have cuffed Nate if he was dead, would she?
Maybe.
Maybe he’s alive.
I can get help for him if I get down from here.
If I don’t get down, they’ll come back and kill me. Tanya or Duke will. Maybe they won’t do it in front of the others, though.
All they had to do was start the wheel going again, make it stop once more, and she’d probably go flying.
The last stop had almost torn her loose.
It was like being yanked downward by a mighty giant. The steel edges of the bracelets tore at her, and she’d thought her hands might rip off. Her fists had been clenched all the way up and over the top. If they hadn’t been, she was sure she would’ve been jerked out of the cuffs.
The end of Robin.
Even now, her fists were all that kept her from falling.
Open your hands, she thought, and it’s all over.
Out of your misery.
Just one big pain, and that’s it. All the pain gone.
I don’t want to fall!
A numbness was starting to replace the pain in her hands. She felt blood trickling down her arms and sides. The breeze off the ocean turned the blood cold. It also chilled the long raw wounds on her back, but those didn’t seem to be bleeding now.
The hands get numb enough, she thought, or you lose enough blood to pass out, and it’s all over.
She knew that her nose and lips had bled, but that had stopped. So there was just her wrists and hands, and a single dribble of blood working its way down her left breast from the damn pin hole.
Like to pull the pin out and stick it in Tanya’s fucking eye!
Robin tucked her head down, thinking it might be possible to pluck out the pin with her teeth. But she couldn’t quite reach it. Her chin was in the way.
Worried about a pin.
Gonna fall to my death any second, and I’m worried about a goddamn pin.
Her chin brushed a corner of the card. She winced as its slight movement jostled the pin under her skin.
Then she saw, far below her, three dim figures shambling over the boardwalk. They came from three different directions, as if each, on its own, had spied the morsel suspended from the Ferris wheel.
One halted directly below her. His bald pate gleamed in the moonlight. When he looked up, Robin saw that one eye was covered by a patch. His mouth drooped open.
Gooseflesh rushed up her skin. She pressed her legs together.
While the one-eyed troll gazed at her, another shuffled through the gate. The third followed him into the fenced area beneath the wheel.
Robin heard a quiet whimper escape from her throat. She heard the rush of the surf. And she heard the far-off blast of a whistle.
“What was that?” Dave asked.
“Sounded like a police whistle,” Joan said.
“Did it come from the boardwalk?”
Joan shook her head. “I don’t know. It seemed to come from that direction.”
“Maybe whoever belongs to that car…”
She frowned at him. “Somebody might be in trouble,” she said, and started to run.
Dave broke into a sprint and caught up with her.
They raced up the sidewalk alongside the Funland parking lot.
If someone is in trouble, he thought, it might be over before we get there.
He suddenly regretted that their cars had been disabled, and wished he hadn’t taken such delight in their brief reprieve.
Jeremy stepped onto a landing. We must be at the ground floor, he thou
ght. A door was there. Tanya tried to turn its knob, shook her head, and started up the next flight of stairs. Samson climbed them at her side. Karen went next, followed by Cowboy and Liz.
“I don’t like this,” Heather whispered. She was behind Jeremy, holding on to the bottom of his jacket.
“I think we were supposed to come in after that guy,” Shiner said.
Jeremy’s grimace made the wounds on his face stretch and sting. He wished Shiner hadn’t said that. It was bad enough, being inside the Funhouse, without having to worry about the possibility that they’d been lured into it. He thought about how gloomy the boarded old place looked from the boardwalk. And it was right beside Jasper’s Oddities. His mind lingered on what he’d seen in there—the Gallery of the Weird and those monstrous displays. Jasper’s Oddities was part of the same damned building. It might even open into here.
At the next landing, the stairway ended. Those ahead of Jeremy halted. He climbed the final step. Looking past them, he saw a dark hallway.
“Wish we had some flashlights,” Samson whispered.
Tanya stepped to the wall and lifted the single candle out of its wrought-iron holder. She started slowly forward, and the others followed. Shiner, clutching Jeremy’s left arm, pressed herself against his side and matched his small strides.
Tanya gasped, “Jesus!” and lurched away from the wall as a hand darted out at her.
“Two bits, ducky?”
From the other wall, a hand snatched the hat off Cowboy’s head. Blurting “Shit!” he grabbed it back and stumbled against Liz.
“Oh, jeez!” Liz cried out. “Jeez!”
Jeremy felt his guts shrivel. In front of him, trolls were inside the walls, faces pressed to barred openings, arms stretched out, hands grabbing for the kids as they hurried along. The trolls laughed, jeered, squealed with delight, and yelled.
“Two bits! Gimme two bits!”
“Suck me, sweets!”
“How’s about a buck!”
“Fun ’n games, fun ’n games!”
“Ours now!”
“Whee, yes!”
“Fuck me, fuck me!”
“Dead meat! You’re all dead meat!”
Heather shrieked. Jeremy whirled around. A toothless crone, both arms outside the bars, had Heather by the sleeve of her jumpsuit. Jeremy slashed one of the hands. The old woman yelped and let go. Heather, still screaming, stumbled away and ran for the stairs. She bounded down the stairway and out of sight.
“Let’s go with her!” Shiner shouted close to his ear.
“No!” he gasped. “You go if you want. I’m sticking with Tanya.”
“Idiot!”
He went after the others. In the glow of Tanya’s candle he saw them hurrying single file down the middle of the hallway, troll arms straining to reach them through the bars. A hand grabbed his shoulder, and he sucked a harsh breath before he realized it was only Shiner.
The hallway went dark.
Tanya’s candle had gone out.
“A door!” he heard her yell over the frenzied voices of the trolls.
Reaching into the black, Jeremy touched cloth. Cowboy’s denim jacket? He blurted, “It’s me,” and held on.
“Everybody in!” Tanya called. “Quick, quick!”
“Jumping Judas!”
Jeremy lost his grip on Cowboy’s jacket. His shoulder bumped something. A door frame? He stepped forward. His feet sank into a soft, springy substance.
“What is this?” Samson’s voice.
“Foam-rubber floor,” Liz said. “It’s a funhouse thing.”
“Some fun.”
“I want to get out of here!” Karen whined.
“Last one in, shut the door!” Tanya ordered.
He felt Shiner’s hand release him. “I’ve got it,” she said. He heard a door thump shut and latch, and the wild voices of the trolls faded to a dull murmur.
“Okay.” From Tanya. “Everyone here?”
“Heather ran off,” Jeremy said.
“Reckon she’s the smart one,” Cowboy said.
“Let’s get out of here,” Karen pleaded.
“It’s like they were waiting for us,” Samson said. “I say we scram.”
“Yeah,” Liz agreed.
“We have to get the camera from that guy.”
“What for?” Samson asked. “So he’s got pictures. Kids on the boardwalk. Big deal. They don’t prove nothing. This is bad shit here.”
“Ain’t worth it,” Cowboy said.
There was silence for a moment. Jeremy heard only his heartbeat, and the breathing of himself and others all around him.
All around him.
Shiner was at his side, and he thought the rest of them were ahead of him. But quiet sounds of breathing seemed to come from everywhere. The hot, stuffy air smelled foul.
“Okay,” Tanya said. “We’ll go back the way we came and get the hell out of here.”
Shiner held on to Jeremy’s arm and stepped behind his back. He heard a harsh metallic rattle. Her ringers tightened their grip. “The door’s locked,” she whispered.
“Oh, shit.”
“I don’t think we’re alone,” Liz said, the pitch of her voice climbing with panic.
Something soft and wet lapped the back of Jeremy’s hand. His right hand. The one that held the knife flat against his leg.
Something licking it like a dog.
“Yaaah!” He jerked his hand up.
The black room erupted with gasps of alarm, yelps and shrieks and curses.
Shiner’s hand flew away from his arm.
He wheeled around to find her. His leg was clutched, hugged tight to a body. He staggered, trying to stay up, but his feet sank into the deep rubber and he fell.
The assailant scurried up his legs. A stench of rotten garbage filled his nostrils. His shirt was torn open. Hair tickled his belly. A face pushed against him, and he felt its nose and whiskers, its dry lips, its quick wet tongue. He grabbed a handful of greasy hair, tugged the face away from him, and rammed his knife down. The blade punched in deep—somewhere near the middle of the back, Jeremy thought. The attacker cried out, jerked rigid, and twisted away, rolling off Jeremy but wrenching the knife from his grip.
He sat up fast and stared at the blackness in front of him. He blinked to make sure his eyes were open.
All around him were sounds of struggle.
Off the floor, he thought. It’s the worst place to be.
He got to his knees. Someone tumbled against his back, knocking him forward. He scrambled, kicking at the body, freeing his legs. Gasped as his face met skin. He lurched backward. A hand clamped his raw chin and tried to shove him away. As pain streaked from his wound, a voice in front of him said, “Jeremy?”
The hand flew from his chin to his shoulder and pulled him closer. Shiner flung her arms around him.
Holding each other, they struggled to their feet. They took a few staggering steps and bumped the rubber of a wall.
Off to the side, a vertical band of light appeared. Faint yellowish light. Suddenly the band spread wide.
“A door!” Shiner whispered.
Beyond it, a hallway glowed with candlelight.
Someone lurched through the doorway, escaping.
“Let’s go!” Jeremy gasped.
Hanging on to each other, they rushed for the door. The way ahead of them was cluttered with the faint silhouettes of bodies struggling on the floor, others kneeling, some up and staggering. They dodged, leapt. Hands grabbed at them, and they kicked and twisted their way free. Someone lunged in from Shiner’s side. Her elbow sent the troll hurling backward.
A dark shape blocked the doorway.
Jeremy threw himself at it.
Hands clutched his jacket, yanked him forward, and flung him into the lighted corridor. Tanya caught him. Turning away from her, he saw Samson tug Shiner out of the black room.
Cowboy was leaning against a wall, Liz sobbing against his chest.
The door slammed shu
t.
Samson tried the knob, then hit the door with his shoulder. It didn’t give. He rammed it again.
“For Godsake, don’t!” Tanya blurted.
“Karen’s not out.” He shot his foot forward, smashing it against the door just beside the knob. Still the door stayed shut.
Samson turned around and leaned against the door frame, shaking his head. His face was twisted with an expression of horror.
Shiner put a hand over her mouth. She stared at Jeremy. Her eyes looked wide and dazed. She was breathing hard. Her white blouse was open to her belly, twisted and hanging off her left shoulder. Her shoulder was streaked with scratches. She had a bloody handprint on the white cup of her bra.
Jeremy went to her. Gently he lifted the blouse onto her shoulder and drew the front shut. He put his arms around her. She was panting for air, trembling.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s all right.”
Vaguely he wondered why he had gone to Shiner instead of Tanya.
It felt good, though.
“Poor Karen,” she whispered.
“Let’s worry about us,” Tanya said from somewhere behind Jeremy.
Shiner squeezed herself tightly against him.
Then they separated. Shiner took hold of his hand.
Cowboy and Liz were still embracing. He had lost his hat. He still had his knife, though. It was a folding buck knife with a wicked-looking blade. The blade was slick with blood. So was the hand that held it flat against the small of Liz’s back while his other hand stroked her hair.
A rear pocket of her jeans hung like a flap below her rump. She had lost one of her sneakers.
Except for his mussed hair, Samson looked as if he hadn’t been touched. But his arms were wrapped tightly around his chest, and Jeremy could see that he was shaking. If he still had his knife, it didn’t show.
Tanya’s knife was at her side, clenched in her right hand. The sleeve of her sweatshirt was drenched in blood to her elbow. The front of her sweatshirt, dark and sodden, clung to her breasts and belly. Her pants, too, looked drenched in blood from her waist to her knees.
A corner of her mouth turned up. “Don’t worry, Duke. It’s not mine. Just this,” she added, and touched a knuckle to a torn crescent of skin over her left cheekbone. That side of her face was sheathed with blood. Trickles spilled off her jaw and ran down her neck.