Funland

  Joan stuffed her hand into his pocket.

  “Hey! You don’t have a search warrant. I’ve got my rights!”

  “You’ve got the right to shut up,” Joan said.

  “Please!” the girl whined. “Our friends!”

  “Your friends are trollers,” Dave said. “If they’ve gotten into a mess, too damn bad. Let’s go back to last night.”

  Joan pulled a knife from the boy’s pocket. She thumbed a button on its handle. The blade sprang out and locked. “Switchblade,” she said. She closed it and tossed it underhand to Dave. He glanced at it, then pushed it into a pocket of his jeans.

  “You kids are in deep shit,” he said. “Now, I want to hear everything you know about a woman you and your friends nailed here last night.”

  Done frisking the boy, Joan stepped behind the girl and started to pat her down. Her flesh felt loose and soft under the velour jumpsuit.

  “We weren’t here last night,” the boy said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The girl began to sob. “They’re gonna be killed! They’re all gonna be killed! I just know it!”

  “She’s clean,” Joan said.

  “Okay. Well, we’ve got this one on a weapons charge.”

  Joan stepped in front of them. “Where are the others?”

  “They want to bust me. Don’t tell them.”

  “I have to! It was so bad! You weren’t there, you don’t know how bad it was.”

  The boy’s face twisted with indecision.

  “They aren’t gonna bust you, Randy. They can’t. If they bust you, they’ve gotta bust her sister, and—”

  Joan’s heart lurched. “Whose sister?”

  “Yours,” the boy said.

  “Shiner,” the girl said. “Betty.”

  “Debbie,” the boy corrected her.

  Joan went cold and rigid.

  “Jesus Christ,” Dave muttered.

  Debbie. A troller. No, that was impossible.

  Trolls in the walls.

  They’re gonna be killed! They’re all gonna be killed!

  “Show us where they are,” Joan said.

  “No.” The kid grabbed the girl’s sleeve and glared at Joan. “First you have to promise you won’t—”

  Joan’s open hand hit his face. His head snapped sideways. His glasses flew off and skidded across the boards.

  “Move it!” she yelled in the girl’s face.

  The girl swung around and trotted toward the stairs, Joan close behind her.

  “It’ll be all right,” Dave said.

  “No!” Robin shouted. “Come back!”

  But they didn’t hear her. They’d heard none of her yells. They’d never even glanced in her direction.

  She was just too far away, too great a distance down the boardwalk, and too high up for her voice to reach them through the sounds of the wind and surf.

  Clinging to the side of the gondola, she watched the fat girl rush down the stairs to the beach, followed by the woman and man. The kid bent down. He picked up his glasses and put them on, stood there for a few moments as if he didn’t know what to do, then ran to catch up with the others.

  All four of them disappeared beneath the boardwalk.

  Robin groaned.

  She leaned further out over the side of the gondola and peered down.

  The platform beside the Ferris wheel was deserted.

  Where had the trolls gone?

  Twisting her head around, she saw them.

  On the wheel. Climbing its struts and spokes. Coming for her.

  Forty-three

  “You won’t do Shiner any good crying about it,” Tanya said. She pulled Jeremy to his feet. Through his tears, he saw Cowboy step to the door, jerk its knob, shake his head. “We’ve gotta keep going,” Tanya said. Her open hands rubbed his chest.

  “She was just here ’cause of me.”

  “She was a troller like the rest of us. She took her chances, month after month, before you even came along.”

  “Can’t we do something?”

  “She’s likely dead as monkey shit by now,” Cowboy said.

  “You’ve gotta be brave,” Tanya said. “For me. You’re my soldier. You’re my lover.” She pulled him gently toward her. She lifted the bloody front of her sweatshirt. Though Cowboy and Liz were right there, probably watching, neither of them said a word. Tanya rubbed her breasts against him. They felt a little sticky from the blood that had soaked through her sweatshirt, but they were smooth and soft.

  This is wrong, Jeremy thought. Wrong for her to do this…everything that’s happened…Shiner…Shiner’s gone…I couldn’t save her…Shouldn’t be doing this to me…

  Even as tears rolled down his cheeks and his breath hitched with sobs, he felt heat spreading low inside him.

  “You’re my brave lover,” Tanya said.

  Jeremy took one of her breasts in his hand and caressed it.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, feel me. I’m alive. I’m yours.” She squeezed him gently through the front of his pants. “When we’re out of here, you’ll have me.”

  He sniffed and nodded.

  “That’s in case savin’ your own hide ain’t incentive enough,” Cowboy said.

  Tanya backed away from Jeremy. She pulled her sweatshirt down and turned to the opening low in the wall. She squatted. “Samson?”

  No answer.

  Jeremy hadn’t noticed any sounds from Samson since the moment Shiner opened the door and…

  He saw it all again in his mind—the horrible troll, the stunned, pleading look on Shiner’s face, the cleaver flying by, the door slamming. To be locked in a room with that monster…Oh, God!

  She’d told him once that her greatest fear was to be caught by trolls. Now it had happened.

  Jeremy hoped she was dead. Hoped that she had died quickly. So much better than to be alive while that hideous troll did things to her.

  I’m sorry, he thought. God, Shiner, I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. If only I’d gone to your house tonight…

  “Samson must’ve bit it,” Cowboy said.

  “This is our only way out,” Tanya said

  “I’ll go down,” Jeremy said. He sniffed and wiped his eyes. “I’ll go first.”

  Tanya nodded. “Okay. Good man.”

  “Let’s try to lower him down,” Liz said. “You know, hang on to him.”

  “Good,” Tanya said. “Go down headfirst, I’ll hang on to your feet and go down after you. Liz, you take my feet.”

  “I’ll be the anchor,” Cowboy said.

  Tanya gave her knife to Jeremy. She took a candle off the wall and gave it to him.

  Holding the knife and candle out ahead of him, Jeremy lay on the floor and squirmed forward, thrusting himself along with his elbows and knees. The metal sheet of the slide below his face shimmered golden in the candlelight. There were wooden walls on both sides, a wooden ceiling about three feet above the ramp. Not far down the slide, darkness swallowed the meager light. He squinted, but saw nothing in that darkness.

  “Can you see him?” Tanya asked.

  “No. I can’t see much.” He scooted forward, bending at the waist. First his elbows and chest, then his belly met the cool slick surface. He felt Tanya’s hands wrap around his ankles. They held him, pushed him, and in seconds the entire length of his body was stretched flat against the slide.

  For a few moments he didn’t move. Then he started downward again. He pictured Tanya above him, being lowered as he’d been.

  “See anything?” Tanya asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Here I come,” Liz said.

  Jeremy slid lower, lower.

  At the dim border of his candle’s glow, he saw the head and shoulders of Samson. “I see him! Samson? Samson?” The boy neither answered nor moved. “It’s like he’s stopped here.”

  “Is he dead?” Tanya asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess so.”

  “Can you tell what happened to him?”

>   “Huh-uh.”

  He stretched his arms out. His fists pushed against the tops of Samson’s shoulders. He shoved at the body. It shook slightly but didn’t slide away. “He’s stuck,” Jeremy said.

  “Can you get past him?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’d better let go of my feet.” He felt Tanya release him. He raised his head. Samson’s eyes and mouth were wide open. The arms were raised from the elbows, fingers hooked down, as if he had died clawing at the darkness.

  “Do something,” Tanya said.

  “Yeah. Okay.” He lifted his fists and slid until his throat pushed against the top of Samson’s head and his elbows met the dead boy’s shoulders.

  There, with the candle high, he gazed down the length of the body. He saw no wounds. But Samson’s legs were spread, and below them the slide gleamed with blood.

  Not far beyond Samson’s feet was the end of the slide.

  “I see the bottom,” Jeremy announced.

  “What happened with Samson?”

  “I think there must be knives or something under him. I think they’re in the slide.”

  “Jesus,” Tanya muttered.

  “Okay, I’m going over him.”

  Jeremy pushed himself up, clamped Tanya’s knife in his teeth to free his right hand, and began to move forward, squirming, lifting himself onto the body. The head turned sideways under his chest. He felt the tickle of Samson’s hair, the bristle of his whiskers. He had a sudden fear of the clawed hands, so he pushed Samson’s arms down before squirming further. The body wobbled under him. It slipped a few inches, and he heard wet ripping sounds as he rode it. When the body halted, Jeremy studied the bloody slide to make sure there were no blades waiting for him, then scurried over the rest of Samson, wanting off him fast, no matter what might be in the darkness below. He felt the head press against his groin. He felt the cool damp of Samson’s jeans against his chest, then the slippery metal of the slide. He grabbed the boy’s leg as if it were a banister, using it to ease him along, to slow his descent and prevent the candle from blowing out.

  Holding on to Samson’s shoe, he glided to the lip of the slide. He listened. He heard nothing except his thudding heart, his gasping breath, and sounds of movement on the slide behind him.

  If trolls were waiting for him, they were being very quiet.

  Candle in front of him, he dragged himself forward. The floor was a yard below his face. He raised his head and swung it from side to side. In the light of the candle he saw a section of hallway.

  He saw no trolls.

  He scurried off the slide and stood up. He scanned the darkness beyond the candle’s glow. Then he turned to the slide. “I’m down,” he called, his voice rasping and shaky. “I don’t see anyone. It looks okay.”

  “I’m on my way,” Tanya said.

  “Hurry.”

  “There,” the girl said. She pointed. Dave swept his flashlight past a piling. It lit the concrete wall of a building’s foundation. The wall was scribbled with graffiti. “More to the right,” the girl said. He moved the light. The pale disk of its beam found a patch of boards. “It’s a door. It opens up. They went in there. It’s the Funhouse. We were chasing some guy.”

  Dave stepped past Joan and rushed to the wall. He clamped the flashlight under his arm and pulled at the edge of the boards. They swung outward. He leaned into the opening. A small enclosure. Lighted candles on the walls. A staircase leading upward. He looked over his shoulder but couldn’t see anyone back there. “They went up the stairs?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” came the girl’s voice. “We all did. But I chickened out and ran. All those trolls.”

  “All right,” Joan said. “You two get out of here. Go home.”

  “Aren’t you arresting me?” the boy asked.

  “No. Go home.”

  “Jeez. Thanks.”

  “Sorry I hit you, kid. Now, go!”

  Seconds later, Dave saw the dim shape of Joan rushing toward him. She came into the faint light from the candles, reached under her sweatshirt, and pulled out her revolver. Her face, smeared with grime from the tire of her car, was intended to make her resemble a troll. Instead, she looked like a commando camouflaged for a night raid. Dave saw fear in her eyes. And outrage.

  “We’ll get her,” he said.

  “Bet your ass we will,” Joan said, and rushed past him.

  “Hold it!” he snapped.

  She stopped and looked around.

  “I go first. Stay with me. Stay glued to me, dammit.”

  Joan nodded.

  Flashlight in one hand, pistol in the other, Dave bounded up the stairs, taking them three at a time. At the first landing he covered Joan while she tried the door. It was locked. They raced up the stairway to the second floor.

  In front of Dave was a dark hallway. He swept it with his flashlight. Nobody ahead. But his blood seemed to freeze when he saw barred windowlike openings along the walls.

  Trolls in the walls.

  He saw no trolls, though.

  He flinched as something nudged him. Just Joan. Pressing against his back.

  “Don’t stop,” she whispered.

  He started forward, shining his light from wall to wall. Faces rose behind the bars. The dirty, leering faces of men and women. A small whimper came from Joan.

  All along the corridor ahead, arms reached out, flopping and waving like the tentacles of a beast that lived in the walls.

  Dave rushed forward, Joan at his back.

  The trolls in the walls laughed and jeered, begged for coins, tittered, snapped obscenities and threats. Fingertips brushed Dave’s arms, plucked at his sleeves. Someone yelped, but it was the outcry of an injured man, and Dave guessed that Joan had struck one of the reaching hands.

  At least she’s not blowing the bastards away, he thought.

  He was tempted, himself, but he kept his finger off the trigger.

  He batted a hand away with the barrel of his flashlight.

  As the beam of his flashlight skittered through the dark, it lit a door in front of him.

  Robin knelt on the seat of the gondola, clutching its back. She gazed down through the maze of wires, unlighted bulbs, struts, and spokes at the three trolls who were slowly climbing the Ferris wheel.

  “Pritty, pritty,” called the nearest one. He was about twenty feet away, climbing a spoke that would lead him to the highest gondola. Once there, he would be able to come at her along the outer wheel, which had only a gradual slant before it met the side of Robin’s carriage.

  He was lean, gray-faced, bald except for a fringe of hair around his ears. He wore a dark suit coat and slacks that looked as if they’d been made to fit a much larger man. The wind fluttered his clothes, and he was near enough for Robin to hear their quiet flapping. “Gonna getcha!” he squealed. “Yessir. Don’ go nowhere, pritty!” He wheezed out a laugh, as if he thought that was a great joke.

  “I get her first, you piece of shit,” snapped the man below him. The one with the patch on his eye.

  His voice was strong. He didn’t sound crazy or loaded.

  The third troll was lower than the other two, apparently climbing with more caution. He seemed like a distant threat.

  These creeps will get to me long before he does, Robin thought.

  The one in the oversize suit grabbed the side of the uppermost gondola. He turned his face to her and grinned. “Ooooo, yer all mi—”

  He shrieked as the one-eyed troll tugged a cuff of his trousers, yanking him downward. He kicked and squirmed for a moment, then lost his hold and tumbled away. Robin caught her own breath as she watched him fall, twisting through the moonlight. He landed headfirst on the platform. The Ferris wheel shook with his impact.

  The one-eyed troll climbed to the side of the upper gondola. Instead of getting into it, he pulled himself onto the narrow steel beam of the outer wheel. Straddling the beam, he began to work his way toward Robin.

  On the floor at the foot of the slide, Jeremy found another
candle. He supposed Samson had dropped it. He used his candle to ignite its wick. The light seemed to double around him. He spotted the meat cleaver. It must’ve flown off the end of the slide, for it lay in the middle of the hallway.

  Holding both candles in his left hand, he squatted and snatched up the cleaver and hurried back to the slide.

  He watched Tanya crawl out. She pulled herself forward, walking her hands over the floor. Her sweatpants hung around her knees. Her bare rump and the backs of her legs looked wonderful in the soft glow of the candles.

  She dropped onto the floor, rolled onto her back, and lay there gasping.

  Jeremy felt as if his breath were being sucked out.

  “Looky there,” someone whispered.

  “Yummmmy, yum yum yum.”

  “Poke her, young fella,” urged the raspy voice of a woman.

  Jeremy’s stomach clenched. Tanya gasped, jerked the sweatpants to her waist, and bolted up.

  “Awww.”

  “Havin’ fun yet, kiddies?”

  Raising his candles high, Jeremy looked up.

  Grates on the ceiling. Faces pressed to the strips of metal.

  “Fucking trolls!” Tanya snapped.

  A string of drool spilled onto her forehead. She wiped it off with a bloody sleeve, grabbed Jeremy’s arm, and pulled him close to the wall so they no longer stood beneath any of the grates.

  “I’d like to kill ’em all,” he whispered.

  His remark brought laughter and jeers down from the ceiling.

  As they waited, he handed Tanya’s knife back and gave her one of the candles.

  Liz crawled out of the opening, stood up, and joined them.

  “Another girlie.”

  “More the merrier.”

  “Hurry it up, Cowboy!” Liz called.

  “Cowboy?” A troll giggled. “They got ’em a cowboy.”

  “Strip down, gals. Gimme a peek. C’mon, be nice.”

  “Eat shit,” Liz snapped.

  “Lemme eat you!”

  Finally Cowboy came out. But not headfirst, like the others. His boots appeared. He crawled backward, dragging Samson after him. The huge body tumbled off the slide, smashing Cowboy to the floor.