The Funhouse

stood.
        Conrad shut the suitcases, carried them past her, pushed open the trailer door, and threw the luggage outside. Her purse was on the kitchen counter, and he threw that out after the bags. He wheeled on her. “Now you. Get the hell out and don't ever come back.”
        She couldn't believe that he was going to let her live. It had to be a trick.
        He raised his voice. “Get out of here, slut! Move. Now!”
        Wobbly as a colt taking its first steps, Ellen walked past Conrad. She was tense, expecting another attack, but he did not raise a hand against her.
        When she reached the door, where windblown rain lashed across the threshold, Conrad said, “One more thing.”
        She turned to him, raising one arm to ward off the blow she knew had to come sooner or later.
        But he wasn't going to hit her. He was still furious, but now he was in control of himself. “Some day you'll marry someone in the straight world. You'll have another child. Maybe two, three.”
        His ominous voice contained a threat, but she was too dazed to perceive what he was implying. She waited for him to say more.
        His thin, bloodless lips slowly peeled back in an arctic smile. “When you have children again, when you have kids you love and cherish, I'll come and take them away from you. No matter where you go, no matter how far away, no matter what your new name may be. I'll find you. I swear I will. I'll find you, and I'll take your children just like you took my little boy. I'll kill them.”
        “You're crazy,” she said.
        His smile became a wide, humorless, death's-head grin. “You won't find a place to hide. There won't be one safe corner anywhere in the world. Not one. You'll have to keep looking over your shoulder as long as you live. Now get out of here, bitch. Get out before I decide to kick your damned head in after all.”
        He moved toward her.
        Ellen quickly left the trailer, descended the two metal steps into the darkness. The trailer was parked in a small clearing, with trees bracketing it, but there was nothing directly overhead to break the falling rain, in seconds Ellen was soaked to the skin.
        For a moment Conrad was outlined in the amber light that filled the open doorway. He glowered at her. Then he slammed the door.
        On all sides of her, trees shook in the wind. The leaves made a sound like hope being crumpled and discarded.
        At last Ellen picked up her purse and her muddy suitcases. She walked through the motorized carny town, passing other trailers, trucks, cars, and under the insistent fingers of the rain, every vehicle contributed its tinny notes to the music of the storm.
        She had friends in some of those trailers. She liked many of the carnival people she'd met, and she knew a lot of them liked her. As she plodded through the mud, she looked longingly at some of the lighted windows, but she did not stop. She wasn't sure how her carny friends would react to the news that she had killed Victor Martin Straker. Most carnies were outcasts, people who didn't fit in anywhere else, therefore, they were fiercely protective of their own, and they regarded everyone else as a mark to be tapped or fleeced in one way or another. Their strong sense of community might even extend to the horrid child-thing. Furthermore, they were more likely to side with Conrad than with her, for Conrad had been born of carny parents and had been a carny since birth, while she had been converted to the roadshow life only fourteen months ago.
        She walked.
        She left the grove and entered the midway. Unobstructed, the storm pummeled her more forcefully than it had done in the grove, it pounded the earth, the gravel footpaths, and the patches of sawdust that spread out from some of the sideshows.
        The carnival was shut down tight. Only a few lights burned, they swung on wind-whipped wires, creating amorphous, dancing shadows. The marks had all gone home, banished by the foul weather. The fairgrounds were deserted. Ellen saw no one other than two dwarves in yellow rain slickers, they scurried between the silent carousel and the Tilt-a-Whirl, past the gaudily illustrated kootch show, glancing at Ellen, their eyes moon-bright and inquisitive in the darkness under their rain hoods.
        She headed toward the front gate. She looked back several times, afraid that Conrad would change his mind and come after