“If I knock you off here,” she said, “you’ll be broken to pieces.”
He began to make soft whimpery sounds.
Oh, no, Jeremy thought. We forgot the camera.
It was back there somewhere, hanging around Cowboy’s neck, the incriminating film still in it.
He decided not to tell Tanya.
She might insist they return for it. They’d come a long distance, winding their way through the total darkness, bumping into mirrors, often backtracking when they found themselves at dead ends. To go back now…
To be in the same place with those bodies again…
Jeremy shivered as he remembered falling onto Liz and Cowboy. Trying to get up, he’d pushed a hand into something sodden and mushy.
Besides, he told himself, the film doesn’t matter. Most of the kids in the pictures are already dead.
There’re just the two of us. And Heather. Lucky Heather. She’d fled down the stairs before it got bad.
We should’ve gone too.
If only I’d listened to Shiner.
I got Shiner killed.
It seemed like ages ago, and the pain and guilt of it were muffled by all that had happened since.
It was probably fifteen minutes ago, he thought.
The head of his ax bumped glass. He swung it slowly to the left, met no resistance, and turned in that direction. Tanya followed, her hand tight on his shoulder.
If we had a candle, he thought, we’d be out of this thing by now.
We could’ve smashed straight through with the ax, fuck the maze.
But doing that without light would’ve been disastrous. They’d discussed it, and both agreed that they’d be cut to pieces if they tried.
This was taking forever, but at least they might get through with their skin intact. If they didn’t get jumped by more trolls.
Jeremy turned, and turned again.
And saw a glimmer of light.
“All right,” Tanya whispered.
The faint glow ahead of them turned out to be a reflection. The ax thudded the mirror. Jeremy turned, and the light was stronger.
Instead of a mirror, there was suddenly a hallway to his left. Candles on the walls. He stumbled free of the maze and took a deep breath.
“Made it,” Tanya whispered. She hugged herself against his back, then stepped around beside him.
Along the left side of the hallway were barred windows like those they’d passed in the corridor above. Jeremy saw no trolls behind the bars.
“So where the hell’s our audience?” Tanya said.
“Maybe they all cleared out. Maybe the fire scared them off.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Midway down the hall, on the right, was a door. Another door waited at the end. “What’ll we do?” Jeremy asked.
Tanya said nothing. She looked from one door to the other and frowned.
“The one at the end,” Jeremy said, nodding toward the far door. “It might be the one at the stairway.”
“If it is, you can bet they’ve got a nasty surprise waiting for us.”
“Yeah. They aren’t gonna let us just walk away from this.”
“Fuck the doors,” Tanya said. “Let’s chop our way out.”
“Yeah!”
“No more playing by their rules. We’ve got the ax, we can play the game our own way.” She took a few strides forward, turned to the right, and tapped the wall with the point of her knife. “There’s probably some kind of a room through there. All we’ve gotta do is bust in, then we can knock a hole in the wall and maybe step right out onto the boardwalk.”
“Sure hope so.”
Tanya moved aside. Jeremy raised the ax overhead and swung with all his strength. Its heavy blade bit into the wall. As he tore it loose, a thick splinter of wood split away and dropped to the floor. He put his eye to the narrow gap.
Darkness on the other side.
Stepping back, he chopped again. The entire head of the ax broke through the wall.
“It’s going to work!” he blurted.
“Damn right!”
As he struggled to free the trapped ax head, a sudden sharp tug yanked the haft from his hands.
In the instant it took him to realize what was happening, the entire length of the handle vanished into the hole.
“Oh, Jesus,” he gasped.
“We’d better get…”
They both jumped as a chunk of the wall flew at them. Jeremy glimpsed an inch of the ax blade before it withdrew.
Now they’ve got it. And they’re coming for us.
Jeremy heard maniacal laughter.
It came from him.
Tanya tugged his arm, and they ran down the hallway.
Ran until the floor dropped out from under their feet.
Then, side by side, they dropped into the black chasm of the Funhouse basement.
Forty-six
Whirling away from the three corpses in the mirror maze, Debbie hunched over and vomited. Joan rubbed her back while she heaved.
The poor kid had been through hell. And it wasn’t over yet.
The worst is over, Joan told herself. The worst had to be in that closet upstairs, alone and fighting for her life. Debbie was damn lucky to have survived. With her mind in one piece, too. A lot of people might’ve flipped out, having to deal with something like that.
She was holding up pretty well.
Losing her dinner was probably a good sign. Showed she was still in touch with reality.
“This one must’ve come down a goddamn beanstalk,” Dave said. His trembling voice sounded astonished and disgusted.
Debbie finished. She straightened up, sobbing, and wiped her mouth with the front of her sweatshirt.
“Two of them are kids,” Dave said. “One’s a girl. The other’s the guy from the fight.”
“Our fight?” Joan asked.
“The one with the ear.”
“Oh, no.”
She’d saved his ear for this. So he could get his head split open in this mad perversion of a funhouse.
Debbie turned around. She sniffed and rubbed her eyes. “That’s Cowboy,” she said. “And Liz. God!” She slapped a hand to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut.
“Is anybody left?” Joan asked her.
She nodded. “Jeremy,” she said through her hand. “And Tanya. Only them.” She took her hand away, pressed her face to Joan’s shoulder, and hugged her tightly. “Jeremy’s my friend, Joanie. I tried to stop him. I don’t want him to die.”
“Okay,” Dave said. “We’re going through this thing the fast way.” He drew his pistol. He shouted, “Anybody can hear me better hit the deck! Hit the floor! Bullets are coming!”
Standing at the feet of the giant dead troll, he clamped the flashlight between his legs, aimed at the mirror in front of him, and fired.
Debbie jumped as the shot blasted the silence. She stuck her fingers into her ears.
Joan covered her own ears.
Dave kept firing, the Beretta roaring, jerking in his hand, walls of mirror exploding in front of him as the 9mm slugs smashed through them. Disintegrating glass flashed in the beam of his flashlight. He swept the muzzle just a bit from side to side, blasting a corridor straight through the maze.
Some forty feet ahead, a glow of candlelight appeared. The size of the lighted area grew as Dave kept firing, knocking apart more mirrors.
After thirteen shots he dropped the magazine into his palm. He shoved a fresh one up the pistol’s handle and jacked a cartridge into the chamber.
Joan and Debbie stepped carefully around the bodies. They stopped beside Dave. Looking past him, Joan saw the dark rubble of shattered glass, then a lighted hallway.
And bodies sprawled on its floor.
Dave rubbed a trembling hand across his mouth. “God,” he muttered. “I warned ’em to duck.”
“Then they should’ve ducked,” Joan said.
“Maybe they couldn’t hear me.”
“Let’s go.”
She pulled the flashlight from between Dave’s legs, ducked under jagged teeth of glass, and started walking through the litter of demolished mirrors. The glass crunched under her shoes. “Be careful back there,” she said.
She proceeded slowly.
Sometimes, before stepping through a panel, she knocked hanging shards out of the way with the barrel of her revolver. She heard Debbie and Dave close behind her, glass tinkling and popping under their shoes.
Ahead, some of the people in the hallway began to move.
Roll over, crawl, stand up.
At least three bodies stayed down.
Those Joan saw rising were not kids.
Nor did they look like trolls.
She felt a chill squirm through her. Her skin began to crawl.
She remembered that Jasper Dunn used to be the proprietor of a freak show. He’d been forced to close it down after some of his freaks got loose and attacked people in the Funhouse.
He’d closed the show.
Obviously, he’d kept his freaks.
Made a home for them in the Funhouse.
Behind Joan, Dave groaned.
A hand clawed at the back of her T-shirt, peeled the wet cloth away from her skin, tried to pull her backward. In a low, shaky voice, Debbie said, “I wanta go back. Please, Joanie. Can’t we just go back?”
As Jeremy dropped into darkness, he expected his descent to be stopped with a bone-jarring crash. Instead, he landed on something springy. A net? It sank under his back, then lifted him. The taut lines quivered as he tried to untangle his arms and legs from them.
They felt gluey.
They stuck to him.
He heard Tanya gasping. To his right, and not far away. Her struggles shook the netting.
“You okay?” he whispered.
“What is this shit?”
In front of Jeremy and off to his left, a door opened.
That’s the other door, Jeremy realized. The one at the foot of the stairway.
The way out is right there.
Someone entered, carrying a kerosene lantern. Jeremy squinted as the harsh glare from the lamp’s twin mantles stabbed his eyes.
He saw that the tall cadaverous man wore a top hat and tails. Jasper Dunn.
Trolls poured through the doorway behind Dunn, crowding the small balcony on which he stood. They were oddly silent.
As Jeremy’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw more.
He saw too much.
He felt as if he were collapsing inside, shriveling into a black ruin.
The sticky cords that held him trapped were the strands of a web spread across the Funhouse basement. A spiderweb. Hanging in it, suspended several feet above the sand, were the crushed husks of people wrapped in transparent gray silk.
Tanya shrieked.
He twisted his head toward her.
Saw her writhing and bucking.
Saw the spider scurrying over the top of the web, rushing in from a corner of the basement.
A spider like the one he’d seen in Jasper’s Oddities.
But bigger. Much bigger.
Jasper’s Giganticus. Jeremy heard Cowboy’s voice deep inside the abyss of his mind. Discovered in the jungles of New Zealand.
The one in the display might’ve been this spider’s baby.
“No!” Tanya yelled. “No!”
The web swayed and bounced under the weight of the rushing black beast.
Its eyes were yellow. Its mouth looked like a huge open sore. Its fangs dripped.
The bloated black thing danced over the web.
And onto Tanya.
Her shriek ripped his ears.
The spider’s mouth muffled her scream. Jeremy saw its fangs sink into her face.
Her tangled body flinched rigid, jerked with spasms.
Jeremy twisted sideways, freeing his right arm from the trapped sleeve of his jacket. He reached to his shirt pocket. For the razor blade he’d put there after giving the handkerchief to Tanya.
A quick slash across the throat.
Maybe he could die before the spider came for him.
The pocket of his shirt was empty.
He’d lost the razor blade. Maybe while going down the slide.
When didn’t matter.
It was gone.
Jeremy heard gunfire as the legs of the spider wrapped around Tanya, squeezing her like a monstrous lover.
Robin heard the faint hard claps of gunshots. She looked over her shoulder. Saw nothing except the deserted moonlit boardwalk. The muffled tone of the shots made her wonder if they came from under the boardwalk, or maybe from inside one of Funland’s buildings.
After a few seconds they stopped. The only sounds she heard were her heartbeat, the rushing wind, the wash of a comber hurling itself at the beach, and the troll whimpering quietly behind her.
She turned her head forward again.
The troll was still four or five feet away, hugging the steel beam.
He’d frozen there.
He’d come this close, and lost his nerve.
Obviously the height had suddenly gotten to him.
Robin remembered her own experiences with climbing. Shinnying up trees when she was a kid, once in a while working her way up bluffs and mountainsides during her travels. You could go along just fine for a while. Then, sometimes, it just hit you. Stark, paralyzing fear. You knew you were going to die. All you could do was hang on, waiting to fall.
Until something broke the spell.
Killed the curse.
And you were suddenly able to function.
This guy, she thought, will either fall or come to his senses.
If he comes to his senses, I’ll be fair game again.
But she didn’t want him to fall.
The troll raised his head when Robin began to sing.
I climbed a mountain peak last night
To see what I could see,
To take a peek at the moon so bright
And the stars in the midnight sea.
He sat up and stared at her.
On his way through the broken mirrors, Dave saw enough of those in the hallway ahead to know they were the remnants of Jasper Dunn’s freak show.
He’d heard stories about them, seen their photographs a number of times in the Gallery of the Weird.
Supposedly they had scattered and left town after the show was shut down.
Six years ago. Shortly before he arrived from Los Angeles.
All that time, they’d been living here in the Funhouse?
Those who hadn’t been hit by his bullets were standing in the hallway only a few yards beyond the last shattered mirror. Standing motionless, watching.
Dave didn’t want Joan to be first out of the maze.
First to face this crowd of deformities.
He hurried past her.
Without Joan’s back blocking the way, he had a clear view.
On the floor, her throat torn open by a slug, lay Donna the Dog Woman. Sprawled beside her, writhing in pain, was a shirtless man with a withered brown arm in the middle of his chest. Julian, the Three-Armed Man. His little brown hand was clutching the bullet wound near his left shoulder. Wonderful Wilma lay near him, naked except for leopardskin bikini pants. One hand was clamped to her bleeding thigh. Her other arm pressed in modesty across her two normal breasts, the third mound uncovered, pale and sweaty below her wrist.
Only Donna was dead, Dave thought. Could’ve been worse.
But, God, he wished he hadn’t hit any of them.
Stepping through the last shattered mirror, he aimed his pistol at Snake-Tongue Antonio. “Drop the ax,” he said.
The man’s tongue slid out of his mouth. As he glared at Dave, the pink slab of his tongue slithered from one side of his face to the other, licking tears from under his eyes.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” Dave said.
“Drop it,” Joan snapped, coming up beside him, also taking aim at Antonio.
The two-headed woman, who had a name
for each head, but which Dave couldn’t recall, turned both faces toward the man. She reached out a hand and patted his shoulder. He glanced at her, retracted his tongue, and made grunting sounds.
One head nodded at him. The other’s face smiled gently.
He dropped the ax to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Dave said. “I’m sorry about the shooting. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hit.”
“We didn’t know you were here,” Joan said. She holstered her revolver and gave the flashlight to Dave. Bending down, she started to untie the red bandanna knotted around her leg.
Dave lowered his pistol but kept it in his hand. He doubted that these people would try anything. They seemed wary, confused, sad. And he saw something like hope in the eyes of a few.
“We’re trying to find my friends,” Debbie said. “Did you see them? Do you know where…?” Her voice faltered. “Their throats,” she whispered.
Some of the people nodded. Others grunted. Jim or Tim, one of the Siamese twins, touched a finger to the scar on his throat and mouthed a breathy, voiceless noise. “Haaaspaaa.”
“Jasper?” Dave asked. “Jasper Dunn?”
Nods, more grunts.
“He cut your vocal cords?” Joan blurted.
“Hyesss, hyesss, haaaspaaa.”
“Jesus,” Debbie muttered.
“He was keeping you prisoners here?” Dave asked.
The two-headed woman pointed at a door-size opening someone had chopped into the corridor wall.
“We’re gonna get you out of here,” Joan said. Dropping to her knees, she wrapped the bandanna around Wilma’s leg wound and knotted it tight.
“What about Jeremy?” Debbie asked, her voice high and pleading. “We have to find him!”
“We will, don’t worry.” Joan looked at the others. “Two kids,” she said. “A boy and a girl. Did you see them? Do you know where they are?”
The crowd parted, turned. A few hands pointed down the hallway.
Dave saw a door on the right, another at the far end.
But between here and the hallway’s end was a square of darkness where the floor should have been.
A trapdoor?
Debbie bolted. She leapt the body of Donna the Dog Woman and dashed through the break in the group.
“No!” Joan shouted.