The Funhouse (11 page)

When Mama spoke at last, Amy jerked involuntarily.

“Get up,” Mama said coldly. “Go upstairs and wash your face. Comb your hair.”

“Yes, Mama.”

They both stood.

Amy’s legs were weak. Her skirt was rumpled; she pressed it down with her quivering hands, smoothed the wrinkled material.

“Change into fresh clothes,” Mama said, her voice flat and emotionless.

“Yes, Mama.”

“I’ll call Dr. Spangler and see if he has an opening in his appointment book this morning. We’ll go in right away if he can take us.”

“Dr. Spangler?” Amy asked, confused.

“You’ll have to take a pregnancy test, of course. There are other reasons why you might have missed your period. We can’t really be sure until we get test results.”

“I know I am, Mama,” Amy said shakily, softly. “I know I’m going to have a baby.”

“If the test is positive,” her mother said, “then we’ll make arrangements to take care of things as soon as possible.”

Amy couldn’t believe the implications of that statement. She said, “Take care of things?”

“You’ll get the abortion you want,” Mama said, glaring at her with eyes that contained no forgiveness.

“You don’t really mean it.”

“Yes. You
must
have an abortion. It’s the only way.”

Amy almost cried out with relief. But at the same time she was afraid, for she figured that her mother would extract a terrible price for this amazing concession.

“But . . . abortion . . . isn’t it a sin?” Amy asked, struggling to comprehend her mother’s reasoning.

“We can’t tell your father,” Mama said. “It’s got to be kept a secret from him. He wouldn’t approve.”

“But . . . I didn’t think
you
would approve, either,” Amy said, bewildered.

“I
don’t
approve,” Mama said sharply, a trace of emotion returning to her voice. “Abortion is murder. It’s a mortal sin. I don’t approve at all. But as long as you’ve got to live in this house, I won’t have such a thing as this hanging over my head. I simply won’t have it. I won’t live in fear of what might come. I won’t go through that terror again.”

“Mama, I don’t understand. You talk as if you know for a fact that the baby will be deformed or something.”

They stared at each other for a moment, and Amy saw more than anger and reproach in her mother’s dark eyes. There was fear in those eyes, too, a stark and powerful fear that transmitted itself to Amy, chilling her.

“Someday,” Mama said, “when the time was right, I was going to tell you.”

“Tell me what?”

“Someday, when you were ready to be married, when you were properly engaged, I was going to tell you why you must never have a child. But you couldn’t wait for the proper time, could you? Oh, no. Not you. You had to give yourself away. You had to pull up your skirts the first chance you got. Still little more than a child yourself, and you had to throw yourself at some high school boy. You had to rush out and fornicate in the backseat of a car like a worthless little slut, like the worst kind of pig. And now maybe
it’s
inside of you, growing.”

“What are you talking about?” Amy asked, wondering if her mother was completely mad.

“It wouldn’t do any good for me to tell you,” Mama said. “You wouldn’t listen. You’d probably even welcome such a child. You’d embrace it just like
he
did. I’ve always said there was something evil in you. I’ve always told you that you had to keep it in check. But now you’ve loosened the reins, and that dark thing is running free, that evil part of you. You’ve loosed the evil in you, and sooner or later, one way or the other, you’ll have a child; you’ll bring one of
them
into the world, no matter what I say to you, no matter how I plead with you. But you won’t do it in this house. It won’t happen here. I’ll see to that. We’ll go to Dr. Spangler, and he’ll abort it for you. And if there’s any sin in
that
, if there’s mortal sin for someone to bear the burden of, it will rest entirely on your shoulders, not mine. You understand?”

Amy nodded.

“It won’t matter to you, will it?” her mother asked meanly. “One more sin won’t matter to you, will it? Because you’re already destined for Hell anyway, aren’t you?”

“No. No, Mama, don’t—”

“Yes, you are. You’re destined to be one of the Devil’s own women, one of his handmaidens, aren’t you? I see that now. I see it. All my efforts have been in vain. You can’t be saved. So what’s one more sin to you? Nothing. It’s nothing to you. You’ll just laugh it off.”

“Mama, don’t talk to me like that.”

“I’m talking to you like you deserve to be talked to. A girl who behaves the way you’ve behaved—how can she expect to be talked to any differently?”

“Please . . .”

“Get a move on,” Mama said. “Clean yourself up. I’ll call the doctor.”

Confused by the several twists that events had taken, baffled by her mother’s certainty that the baby would be deformed, wondering about Mama’s sanity, Amy went upstairs. In the bathroom she washed her face. Her eyes were bloodshot from crying.

In her bedroom she took another skirt and a clean blouse from the closet. She stripped off her sweat-streaked, wrinkled clothes. For a moment she stood in bra and panties before the full-length mirror, staring at her belly.

Why is Mama so certain that my baby will be deformed? Amy asked herself worriedly. How can she know such a thing for sure? Is it because she thinks I’m evil and that I deserve this sort of thing—a deformed baby, a sign to the world that I’m the Devil’s handmaiden? That’s sick. That’s twisted thinking. It’s ridiculous and crazy and unfair. I’m
not
a bad person. I’ve made some mistakes. I’ll admit that. I’ve made a lot of mistakes for someone my age, but I’m not evil, damn it. I’m not evil.

Am I?

She stared into the reflection of her own eyes.

Am I?

Shivering, she dressed for the visit to the doctor’s office.

7

On Sunday the
carnival moved to Clearfield, Pennsylvania, by highway and rail, and on Monday the sprawling midway was erected again with military efficiency. Big American Midway Shows gave its own people and its concessionaires a four o’clock show call for Monday afternoon, which meant that every attraction—from the least imposing grab joint to the most elaborate thrill ride—was expected to be operational by that hour.

Conrad Straker’s three enterprises, including the funhouse, were in place and ready to receive the marks by three o’clock Monday afternoon. It was a cloudless, warm day. The evening would be balmy. “Money weather,” the carnies called it. Although Fridays and Saturdays were always the best for business, the marks would flood in on a mild, breezy night even if it was at the beginning of the week.

With an hour of free time before the fairground gates were opened to the public, Conrad did what he always did on the first afternoon of a new engagement. He left the funhouse and walked next door to Yancy Barnet’s ten-in-one Freak-o-rama, a name that some carnies found offensive, but that drew the marks with greater efficacy than honey ever drew flies. A luridly illustrated banner stretched across the front of Yancy’s tent:
HUMAN ODDITIES OF THE WORLD.

Yancy had as much respect for show calls as Conrad did, and except for the fact that the human oddities would not arrive from their trailers until four o’clock, the joint was ready for business well ahead of schedule. That was especially commendable when you knew that Yancy Barnet and a few of his freaks always played poker Sunday night, into the wee hours of Monday morning, accompanying the game with a considerable amount of ice-cold beer and Seagram’s, which were combined into murderously potent boilermakers.

Yancy’s place was a large tent, divided into four long rooms, with a roped-off walkway that serpentined through all four chambers. In each room there were either two or three stalls, and in each stall there was a platform, and on each platform there was a chair. Behind each chair, running the length of the stall, a big sign, colorfully illustrated, explained about the wondrous and incredible thing at which the mark was gawking. With one exception, those wondrous and incredible things were all living, breathing, human freaks, normal minds and spirits trapped in twisted bodies: the world’s fattest woman, the three-eyed alligator man, the man with three arms and three legs, the bearded lady, and (as the barker said twenty or thirty times every hour) more, much more than the human mind could encompass.

Only one of the oddities was not a living person. It was to be found in the center of the tent, halfway along the snaking path, in the narrowest of all the stalls. The thing was in a very large, specially blown, clear glass jar, suspended in a formaldehyde solution; the jar stood on the platform, without benefit of a chair, dramatically lighted from above and behind.

It was to this exhibit that Conrad Straker came that Monday afternoon in Clearfield. He stood at the restraining rope where he had stood hundreds of times before, and he stared regretfully at his long-dead son.

As in the other stalls, there was a sign behind the exhibit. The letters were big, easy to read.

VICTOR

“The Ugly Angel”

T
HIS CHILD, NAMED
V
ICTOR BY HIS FATHER,

WAS BORN IN 1955, OF NORMAL PARENTS.

V
ICTOR’S MENTAL CAPACITY WAS NORMAL.

H
E HAD A SWEET, CHARMING DISPOSITION.

H
E WAS A LAUGHING BABY, AN ANGEL.

O
N THE NIGHT OF
A
UGUST 15, 1955,

V
ICTOR’S MOTHER,
E
LLEN, MURDERED

HIM.
S
HE WAS REPELLED BY THE CHILD’S

PHYSICAL DEFORMITIES AND WAS

CONVINCED HE WAS AN EVIL MONSTER.

S
HE WAS NOT ABLE TO SEE THE SPIRITUAL

BEAUTY WITHIN HIM.

W
HO WAS REALLY THE EVIL ONE?

T
HE HELPLESS BABY?

—
O
R THE MOTHER HE TRUSTED,

THE WOMAN WHO MURDERED HIM?

W
HO WAS THE REAL MONSTER?

T
HIS POOR, AFFLICTED CHILD?

—
O
R THE MOTHER WHO REFUSED

TO LOVE HIM?

J
UDGE FOR YOURSELF.

Conrad had written the text of that sign twenty-five years ago, and it had expressed his feelings perfectly at that time. He had wanted to tell the world that Ellen was a baby killer, a ruthless beast; he had wanted them to see what she had done and to revile her for her cruelty.

During the off-season the child in the jar remained with Conrad in his Gibsonton, Florida, home. During the rest of the year, it traveled with Yancy Barnet’s show, a public testament to Ellen’s perfidy.

At each new stand, when the midway had been erected again and the gates were about to be opened to the marks, Conrad came to this tent to see if the jar had been transported safely. He spent a few minutes in the company of his dead boy, silently reaffirming his oath of revenge.

Victor stared back at his father with wide, sightless eyes. Once the green of those eyes had been bright, glowing. Once they had been quick, inquisitive eyes, filled with bold challenge and self-confidence beyond their years. But now they were flat, dull. The green was not half so vibrant as it had been in life; years of formaldehyde bleaching and the relentless processes of death had made the irises milky.

At last, with a renewed hunger for retribution, Conrad walked out of the tent and returned to the funhouse.

Gunther was already standing up on the platform by the boarding gate, dressed in his Frankenstein monster mask and gloves. He saw Conrad and immediately went into his snarling-pawing-dancing act, the one he put on for the marks.

Ghost was at the ticket booth, breaking rolls of quarters and dimes and nickels into the change drawer; his colorless eyes were filled with the flickering, silvery images of tumbling coins.

“They’re going to open the gate half an hour early,” Ghost said. “Everyone’s set up and eager for business, and they say there’s already a crowd of marks waiting outside.”

“It’s going to be a good week,” Conrad said.

“Yeah,” Ghost said, pushing one slender hand through his spiderweb hair. “I have the same feeling. Maybe you’ll even get a chance to repay that debt.”

“What?”

“That woman you owe a debt to,” Ghost said. “The one whose children you’re always looking for. Maybe you’ll be lucky and find her here.”

“Yes,” Conrad said softly. “Maybe I will.”

* * *

At eight-thirty Monday
night, Ellen Harper was sitting in the living room of the house on Maple Lane, trying to read an article in the latest issue of
Redbook
. She couldn’t concentrate. Each time she reached the bottom of a paragraph, she couldn’t remember what had been in it, and she had to go back and read it again. Eventually she gave up and just leafed through the magazine, looking at the pictures, while she sipped steadily from a glass of vodka and orange juice.

Although it was not late, she was already under the spell of the booze. She didn’t feel
good
. Not by a long shot. Not bad, either. Just numb. But not yet numb enough.

She was alone in the room. Paul was in his workshop, out in the garage. He would come in at eleven o’clock, as usual, to watch the late news on television, and then he would go to bed. Joey was in his room, working on a model of his own—a plastic representation of Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera. Amy was upstairs, too, lying low. Except for a brief, fidgety appearance at the dinner table, the girl had been holed up in her room ever since returning from Dr. Spangler’s office this afternoon.

The girl. The damned, defiant, wanton girl!
Pregnant!

They didn’t have the test results yet, of course. That would take a couple of days. But she
knew
. Amy was pregnant.

The magazine rustled in Ellen’s tremulous hands. She put
Redbook
aside and went out to the kitchen to mix another drink.

She wasn’t able to stop worrying about the bind she was in. She couldn’t allow Amy to have the baby. But if Paul found out that she had gone behind his back to arrange an abortion, he would not be pleased. For the most part he was a meek man at home, gentle, easygoing, willing to let her run the house and, generally, their lives as well. But he was capable of anger if pushed far enough, and on those rare occasions when he lost his temper, he could be tough.

If Paul learned of the abortion after the fact, he would want to know why she hadn’t told him, and he would
demand
to know why she had approved of such a thing. She would have to be able to provide a cogent explanation, a passionate self-defense. Right now, however, she didn’t know what in God’s name she would say to him if he ever found out about the abortion.

Twenty years ago, when she had married Paul, she should have told him about her year with the carnival. She should have confessed about Conrad and about the repulsive thing to which she had given birth. But she hadn’t done what she should have done. She had been weak. She hid the truth from him. She was afraid he would loathe her and turn away from her if he knew about her mistakes. But if she had told him back then, at the very beginning of their relationship, she wouldn’t be in such serious trouble now.

Several times during the course of their marriage, she had almost revealed her secrets to him. When he had talked about having a large family, there were a hundred times when she almost said, “No, Paul. I can’t have children. I’ve already had one, you see, and it was no good. No good at all. It was a horror. It wasn’t even human. It wanted to kill me, and I had to kill it first. Maybe that hideous child was solely a product of my first husband’s damaged genes. Maybe my own genetic contribution wasn’t to blame. But I can’t take a chance.” Although she had been on the brink of making that confession countless times, she had never given voice to it; she had held her tongue, naively certain that love would conquer all—somehow.

Later, when she was pregnant with Amy, she almost went out of her mind with worry and fear. But the baby had been normal. For a short while, a few blessed weeks at most, she had been relieved, all doubts about her genetic fitness banished by the sight of that pink, giggly, supremely
ordinary
infant.

But before long it occurred to her that all freaks were not necessarily
physically
deformed. The flaw, the twisted thing, the horrible difference from normal people—that could be entirely in the mind. The baby she’d borne for Conrad was not merely deformed. It was wicked; it radiated wickedness; it reeked of malevolent intent, a monster in every sense of the word. But wasn’t it conceivable that her new girl-child was just as wicked as Victor, except that there were no outward signs of it? Perhaps a worm of evil nestled deep within the child’s mind, out of sight, festering, waiting for the proper time and place to emerge.

Such a disturbing possibility was like an acid. It ate away at Ellen’s happiness; it corroded and then destroyed her optimism. She soon ceased to take any pleasure in the baby’s gurgling and cooing. She watched the child speculatively, wondering what nasty surprises it would spring on her in the future. Perhaps, one night, when the child was grown tall and strong, it would creep into its parents’ bedroom and murder them in their sleep.

Or perhaps she was crazy; perhaps the child was as ordinary as it appeared to be, and the problem was in her own mind. That thought did occur to her rather frequently. But each time she began to question her sanity, she remembered the nightmarish battle with Conrad’s vicious, bloodthirsty offspring, and that grisly, vivid memory never failed to convince her that she had good reason to be wary and afraid.

Didn’t she?

For seven years she resisted Paul’s desire to have another child, but she got pregnant in spite of her precautions. Again, she went through nine months of hell, wondering what sort of strange creature she was carrying in her womb.

Joey, of course, turned out to be a normal little boy.

On the outside.

But inside?

She wondered. She watched, waited, feared the worst.

After all these years, Ellen still wasn’t sure what to think of her children.

It was a hell of a way to live.

Sometimes she was filled with a fierce pride and love for them. She wanted to take them in her arms and kiss them, hug them. Sometimes she wanted to give them all the affection that she never had been able to give them in the past; but after so many years of guarded feelings and continuous suspicion, she found it virtually impossible to open her arms to them and to accept such a dangerous emotional commitment with equanimity. There were times when she
burned
with love for Joey and Amy, times when she ached with a surfeit of unexpressed love, times when she wept at night, silently, without waking Paul, soaking her pillow, grieving for her own cold, dead heart.

At other times, however, she still thought she saw something supernaturally wicked in her progeny. There were terrible days when she was convinced they were clever, calculating, infinitely evil beings engaged in an elaborate masquerade.

Seesaw.

Seesaw.

The worst of it was her loneliness. She could not share her fears with Paul, for then she would have to tell him about Conrad, and he would be devastated to learn that she had been hiding a checkered past from him for twenty years. She knew him well enough now to understand that what she’d done in her youth would not upset him a tenth as much as the fact that she’d deceived him about it and had kept on deceiving him for so very long. So she had to deal with her fear by herself.

It was a
hell
of a way to live.

Even if she could make herself believe, once and for all, that they were just two kids like any other two kids, even then her worries wouldn’t be at an end. There was still the possibility that one of Amy’s or Joey’s children would be a monster like Victor. This curse might strike only one out of every two generations—the mother but not the child, the grandchild but not the great-grandchild. It might skip around at random, raising its ugly head when you least expected to see it. Modern medicine had identified a number of genetically transmitted diseases and inherited deficiencies that skipped some generations in a family and struck others, leapfrogging down the decades.