Dave rushed after her.
Debbie was nearly clear of Jasper’s freaks when a hand darted out and grabbed her ankle. She yelped, crashed to the floor, and skidded.
Dave pounced and gripped the back of her neck, holding her down as she struggled to rise.
He looked back. A bald man lifted his head and made a grim smile. He had no legs. But he had two muscular arms, and the hand of one was wrapped tightly around Debbie’s ankle. Andy the Amazing Torso Man.
“Thanks,” Dave said.
He winked.
Joan patted his shoulder, stepped over him, and crouched on the other side of Debbie. “Dumb kid,” she muttered. “Just stick with us and don’t—”
Debbie gasped and flinched rigid.
Squeals and grunts erupted behind them.
Dave snapped his head around. Jasper’s freaks were going wild, some pointing down the hallway, others rushing toward the ragged hole in the wall, some racing for the ruins of the mirror maze.
“Dave.”
Joan’s voice. A mere whisper.
“Dave?”
He looked at her.
Joan’s wide, stunned eyes met his for an instant, then looked away.
Toward the other end of the hallway.
Dave followed their lead.
And saw black arachnoid legs waving in the candlelight. They hooked over the edge of the floor. Claws clicking and scraping on the wood, a huge spider clambered up from the darkness below the trapdoor.
On its back rode Jasper Dunn, top hat perched rakishly atop his head, a revolver in each hand.
Can’t be.
Dave felt as if he’d been clubbed in the belly.
He gaped at the spectacle—the monstrous spider scurrying toward him, Jasper mounted up there like a crazed cowpoke brandishing six-shooters.
Can’t be happening.
Dave rose on numb, shaky legs, pulling Debbie up with him by the back of her neck. “Go,” he said. His voice sounded far away. “Run.”
She stood beside him, frozen.
Joan rose to her feet, going for her .38 in slow motion as Dave raised his Beretta and Jasper brought down both barrels in their direction. Gunfire roared through the hallway. Bullets snapped past Dave’s face. The hat sailed off Jasper’s head. Debbie, hit, flew backward. An eye of the beast exploded in a red mist. A slug smashed through Jasper’s right wrist, and his revolver tumbled away. At the same moment, one caught him in the face. It snapped his head sideways and tore off half his chin. But he stayed on the spider, blasting at them with his remaining gun.
The beast was less than six feet away. It would be on them in seconds.
Dave concentrated his firepower on it. A bullet slashed the side of his arm, but he stood steady, squeezing the trigger. One of the spider’s front legs broke. As his bullets pounded holes in its squat, bristly head, he saw Joan rush forward.
“No!” he yelled.
The spider seemed to stumble. Its abdomen dragged the floor, but it still scuttled closer, palpi coming at Dave like pincers.
The last shot from his Beretta exploded another of its eyes.
Reaching for his .38, he saw Joan, knife in hand, jump over two of the spider’s thrashing legs. She no longer had her revolver. Must’ve emptied it.
Jasper aimed at her face. He wouldn’t miss. A point-blank shot.
Dave drew his .38.
But raising it seemed to take so long…so long.
He heard Jasper’s hammer snap down.
A quick hard clack.
No blast.
It had fallen on a spent cartridge!
Now Dave’s gun was up, leveled at Jasper, but he held fire. Afraid of hitting Joan as she hurled herself against the bloated side of the spider, just behind Jasper. She vaulted onto the beast. Jasper, twisting, rammed an elbow into her. She hooked an arm beneath his ruined chin, jerked him backward, and her right arm swept in around him and plunged the knife into his chest. She pulled the knife out, rammed it in again, then flung him sideways. He toppled from his mount, sliding, falling headfirst among the spider’s legs.
As its pincers caught Dave.
They clamped him just below the knees.
How could it still be alive?
He fired, jerking the trigger fast, pumping round after round into its head as the beast squeezed his legs together and Dave toppled backward. He was hammering at spent shells when he heard Joan screaming. His back slammed the floor.
What’s she screaming about? Dave wondered.
Shoving himself up with his elbows, he saw Joan still on top of the spider. Shrieking like a banshee as she thrust her knife into the hump of its back.
She’s screaming about me.
As he twisted and tried to kick free, the pincers began to pull him. He slid over the floor toward the spider.
It raised its head.
What was left of its head. A hideous oblong thing shattered by bullets, caved in, cracked and split, red and yellow fluids gushing from its wounds.
The fucking thing’s dead in its tracks! Dave’s mind screamed. Why’s it doing this to me?
It dragged him.
Squealing, he rammed his right foot against its single dripping fang. He shoved at it, trying to keep himself back.
Antonio leapt past him, swung the ax down with both hands, and split the spider’s head in half. The pincers loosened their grip. Dave tore his legs free and scrambled backward as the man chopped again.
He rolled onto his side.
Face-to-face with Debbie.
As they stared into each other’s eyes, the wet crunching sounds of the chopping went on.
She scooted closer to Dave.
He put an arm around her back, pulled her against him, and felt the girl’s face press the side of his neck.
“The bullet hit your vest?” he whispered.
He felt her nod.
Robin kept singing as the troll inched closer. Then she stopped, and reached out to him. He gripped her hand. She held it tightly as he climbed onto the seat.
Gasping and shuddering from the ordeal, he sat down beside her. With one hand he clutched the side of the gondola. The other held Robin’s hand against his leg.
She pressed her legs together, wondering if she’d been crazy to let this troll in with her. She used her free arm to cover her breasts. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re safe now.”
He flinched as gunfire erupted again.
Robin looked away from him. The shots sounded as if they might be coming from inside Jasper’s Oddities or the Fun-house, which were on the far side of the boardwalk, about halfway between the Ferris wheel and the main entrance. The last time, the shots had sounded like rapid fire from a single gun. Now it seemed that several weapons of different calibers were firing at once.
The troll released her hand. He slid an arm across her shoulders and drew Robin against the side of his quaking body.
It’s all right, she told herself. He’s just scared.
She realized that the gunfire had stopped. Then came a quick series of blasts, and the shooting ended again.
Slowly the troll relaxed. She could feel his shudders fade. He began to caress her arm from shoulder to elbow. His touch made her skin crawl.
She faced him. “That was the police,” she said. “They’ll be coming out soon.”
I hope, she thought.
God, what if the cops had lost that shoot-out?
“When they come out,” she said, “they’ll get us down from here. So you’d better not try anything, you understand?”
He turned toward her, a knee pushing against the side of her leg. Though his eyes were hooded with shadow, she could feel their gaze roaming her body. “Denny likes you,” he said. His voice wasn’t high and childish, as Robin had expected from this man who looked like an overgrown boy. It was low, raspy.
Holding her shoulder, he slid his other hand up her thigh.
“Soft,” he said.
Robin grabbed his wrist. “Don’t,” she w
hispered. “Please.”
“Denny likes you,” he said again.
“Then don’t.”
He took his hand off her leg, and she released it. His other hand left her shoulder. He fumbled with the buttons of his filthy, ragged trench coat.
“Denny, no.”
He opened the coat. He wore a sleeveless undershirt and baggy trousers. The tight shirt bulged over massive muscles.
I won’t stand a chance.
He’ll only hurt me worse if I struggle.
Dammit, I’m not gonna let him rape me!
This is what I get for helping him.
Denny pulled the coat off his arms and tugged its tail out from under his rump.
He draped it over Robin’s shoulders.
Her throat tightened. As she slipped her arms into the sleeves, the man cupped a hand gently over her right breast. “Soft,” he said. Then he took his hand away, drew the coat shut, and began to button it.
When he finished, Robin leaned against him.
“Thank you, Denny,” she said. “Robin likes you.”
He put an arm across her shoulders.
“Sing?” he asked.
“Sure.”
Forty-seven
She was singing “Amazing Grace,” Denny holding her and slowly rocking their perch high above the boardwalk. The song took Robin back to her father’s funeral. Her dad’s old buddy, Charlie MacFerson, had played the bagpipes at her side while she stood by the grave with her banjo, strumming the tune and singing the melancholy words.
This time, the song was for Nate.
Her voice trembled. Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Denny looked at her and cocked his head. Then he pulled off his ball cap. He put it on Robin. It was way too big for her. It slipped down, covering her eyes. She kept singing as he slid it back on her head and turned it sideways.
Over the tremor of her voice, Robin heard a quiet thud. A chunking sound. A chopping sound.
She went silent.
Off to the left, a slat of wood flew off the front wall of Jasper’s Funhouse and clapped the boardwalk. The pale beam of a flashlight probed through the narrow gap.
The chopping went on. Wood flew and clattered down.
Soon the opening was the size of a doorway.
People began to emerge from the Funhouse.
Denny pointed. He began to laugh.
Robin could hardly believe what she saw. A woman down there seemed to have two heads. A man clutching his shoulder had a growth on his chest that looked like a small arm. A man—one of the cops she’d seen earlier—stepped through the break in the wall, carrying a man who had no legs.
Denny slapped his leg and pointed as a tall lean man helped a woman through the opening. The woman, clad only in bikini pants, seemed to have three breasts.
A man, or two men, sidestepped through the gap. They looked as if their hips were glued together.
A girl with a flashlight came out, turned to the opening, and shone her light on it while a woman ducked through, carrying a limp body.
Robin’s stomach clenched as she gazed at the boy cradled in the woman’s arms. She was too far away to make out the features of his face, but she knew him. She knew him by his size and dark hair and clothes, by the raw wound on his chin—made by her teeth.
That bastard Duke.
Dead?
Where’s Tanya? she wondered. Where are all the others?
Did they get away?
The woman crouched. She set Duke’s body down on the boardwalk in front of the Funhouse. As she started to rise, the kid suddenly grabbed the front of her T-shirt and tried to pull himself up. The woman fell to her knees. Duke screamed in her face.
Denny yelped with alarm and flinched.
Robin, patting his leg to soothe him, watched the woman twist Duke’s hands from her shirt and pin them to the boardwalk. Still screaming, he writhed and bucked and thrashed his legs.
The girl gave her flashlight to the male cop, squatted, caught Duke’s kicking feet, and helped to hold him down.
Robin took off the ball cap. She put it on Denny’s head and tipped the bill up the way he liked it. “Time we let them know we’re here,” she said.
“Denny likes it here.”
“I guess there are worse places to be,” she told him.
The gondola rocked back as she leaned forward and gripped the safety bar.
It tipped wildly when Denny did the same.
She shouted, “Help! Up here!”
Denny shouted, “Help! Up here!” He grinned at her.
Down on the boardwalk, heads turned.
Forty-eight
“Are you ready for my big finale?” called Maxwell the Somewhat Magnificent.
The crowd in the stands yelled and cheered.
“I’ll require a courageous and beautiful volunteer from the audience. No men need apply.” Even as arms went up, he pointed at someone in the third row. “You. I think you’ll do just fine.”
As the young woman rose from her seat and started making her way forward, men in the audience whooped and whistled their approval.
Joan said, “Oh, my God.”
“It’s Debs!” Kerry blurted, and bounced on Dave’s lap. “What’s she going to do?”
“Watch and find out,” Dave told her.
“Doesn’t Steve get to go up too?”
“Boyfriends probably get in Maxwell’s way,” Dave said.
“But he’s all alone.”
“They wanted to sit by themselves,” Joan explained to the four-year-old.
“Can’t imagine why,” Dave said.
“’Cause you’re old farts,” Kerry said.
Dave gently cuffed the side of her head. “Watch your language, young lady.”
She laughed.
Then laughter erupted from the crowd as Maxwell the Somewhat Magnificent tried to mount his unicycle, clinging to Debbie, pretending to lose his balance as the wheel rolled and twisted under him. He fell against her, hugging her, squeezing her rump through the seat of her white jeans. Finally, perched unsteadily on the high seat, he lurched away. He careened around the stage, spinning and jerking as if out of control.
At last he seemed to find a semblance of balance. He mopped his brow with a red bandanna.
Debbie turned to leave, but he said, “Wait, wait! You don’t get off that easy!”
Maxwell’s assistant appeared with three flaming torches. He gave one of them to Debbie.
“Dear thing,” Maxwell said, “she’s carrying a torch for me.”
He kept up the banter, telling Debbie, “You really light my fire,” making nervous queries about her throwing arm, then instructing her to toss the torch to him. “To me, not at me. I’m gentle, but I’m not tinder.”
The audience didn’t respond to the pun, so he swept an open hand above his hair. Dave knew what the gesture meant—that the joke had gone over the heads of the crowd. He’d seen a lot of performers make the same sign during the years he’d been bringing his family to the Funland Amphitheater. He always found it annoying.
It didn’t go over our heads, he wanted to yell. It just wasn’t funny.
Debbie tossed each of the three torches to Maxwell the Somewhat Magnificent. The third went high. Maxwell swept backward on his unicycle and made a catch that Dave considered Truly Magnificent.
While he juggled the torches, he thanked Debbie and suggested that she meet him after the show to help him “put the fires out.”
Her long blond hair flew from side to side as she shook her head. Still shaking her head, she turned around and waved to the cheering audience. Then she rushed down the stairs as if eager to escape Maxwell’s further remarks.
Kerry leaned sideways and tugged the sleeve of Joan’s sweatshirt. “Mommy, why don’t you go up?”
“No, thanks, honey.”
“Come on, it’d be fun.”
“I don’t think Maxwell needs another dupe just now,” Joan told her.
“What’s a dupe?
”
“Somebody to poke fun at.”
“Besides,” Dave said, “Mommy’s already done it. She went onstage once with Fred the Magician. So did you, kiddo.”
“Me?”
“You were in Mommy’s tummy.”
“God, don’t remind me,” Joan said. “The worst experience of my life.”
“Were you a dope?”
“I sure felt like one, honey.”
“You’ve gotta admit,” Dave said, “the guy had an amazing assortment of bun jokes.”
“He was pregnant with quips,” Joan added.
Maxwell finished his routine, leapt from his unicycle, and bowed. Then he did an encore. Blindfolded by his assistant, he juggled the torches. He ended by dropping onto one knee, reaching under his leg, and catching the last torch before it hit the floor of the stage.
Putting his arms around Kerry, Dave clapped in front of her stomach. She grabbed his wrists and helped.
Maxwell the Somewhat Magnificent left the stage after many elaborate bows.
The lights went out. The audience fell silent. Dave heard the faint sounds of calliope music, voices, and laughter from the boardwalk. He heard the distant roar of the Hurricane.
“Is it time for Robin?” Kerry whispered.
“I imagine so,” Dave said.
“Is she going to sing ‘The Land of Purr’?”
“She promised you she would.”
“Hope she doesn’t forget.”
In the darkness, a voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Funland Amphitheater is proud to present a very special attraction. Our next performer has just returned from her most recent engagement at the Grand Ole Opry.”
Dave heard eager murmurs from the audience.
“You may have heard her songs on the radio. You may have seen her on the Dolly Parton special last month.”
Let’s get on with it, Dave thought.
“Our own Boleta Bay songbird, Funland’s Banjo Queen, Miss Robin Travis!”
The audience went wild. Joan’s shoulder pressed against Dave. Her breath tickled his ear as she said, “Nate sure laid it on pretty thick.”
“What do you expect?”
The crowd roared as brilliant lights hit the stage. Robin stood motionless in front of her band, smiling.
She wore an outfit that Dave hadn’t seen before: a buckskin jacket with fringe swaying in the breeze, a shiny white blouse, and a short leather skirt that left her slim legs bare to the tops of her white boots.