The Funhouse

undiminished brightness, turning his heart, piece by piece, into bitter ashes. Many times Zena had tried to learn the secret that gnawed at Conrad, but he had been afraid to tell her, afraid that the truth would repel her and turn her against him forever. She had assured him that nothing he told her would make her loathe him. It would have been good for him to unburden himself at last. But he could not do it. Zena could learn only one thing: the event that haunted him had transpired on Christmas Eve, when he was only twelve years old. From that night forward, he had been a changed person, day by day, he had become ever more sour, increasingly violent. For a brief spell, after Ellen gave him his much-wanted child, even though it was a hideously deformed baby, Conrad had begun to feel better about himself. But when Ellen killed the child, Conrad sank even deeper into despair and self-hatred, and it wasn't likely that anyone would ever be able to draw him out of the psychological pit into which he had cast himself.
        After struggling for two years to make their marriage work, after living in fear of Conrad's rage all that time, Zena had finally faced the fact that divorce was inevitable. She left him, but they didn't cease to be friendly. They shared certain bonds that couldn't be broken, but it was clear to both of them that they couldn't live together happily. She rode the carousel backwards.
        Now, as Zena watched Conrad venting his rage on the table, she realized that most, if not all, of her love for him had been transformed into pity. She felt no passion any more-just an abiding sorrow for him.
        Conrad cursed, sputtered through bloodless lips, snarled, pounded the table.
        The raven flapped its shiny, black wings and cried shrilly in its cage.
        Zena waited patiently.
        In time Conrad grew tired and stopped thumping the table. He leaned back in his chair, blinking dully, as if he were not quite sure where he was.
        After he was silent for a minute, the raven became silent, too, and Zena said, “Conrad, you aren't going to find Ellen's child. Why don't you just give up?”
        “Never,” he said, slightly hoarse.
        “For ten years you had a bunch of private detectives on it. One after the other. Several at the same time. You spent a small fortune on them. And they didn't find anything. Not a clue.”
        “They were all incompetent,” he said sullenly.
        “For years you've been looking on your own without any luck.”
        “I'll find what I'm after.”
        “You were wrong again tonight. Did you really think you'd stumble across her kids here ? At the Coal County, Pennsylvania, Spring Fair? Not a very likely place, if you ask me.”
        “As likely as any other.”
        “Maybe Ellen didn't even live long enough to start a family with another man.
        Have you thought of that? Maybe she's long dead.”
        “She's alive.”
        “You can't be sure.”
        “I'm positive.”
        “Even if she's alive, she might not have children.”
        “She does. They're out there-somewhere.”
        “Damn it, you have no reason to be so sure of that!”
        “I've been sent signs. Portents.”
        Zena looked into his cold, crystalline blue eyes, and she shivered. Signs? Portents? Was Conrad still only half-mad-or had he gone all the way over the edge?
        The raven tapped its beak against the metal bars of its cage.
        Zena said, “If by some miracle you do find one of Ellen's kids, what then?”
        “I've told you before.”
        “Tell me again,” she said, watching him closely.
        “I want to tell her kids what she did,” Conrad said. “I want them to know she's a baby killer. I want to turn them against her. I want to use all of my power as a pitchman to convince them that their mother is a vicious, despicable human being, the worst kind of criminal. A baby killer. I'll make them hate her as much as I hate her. In effect, I'll be taking her kids away from her, though not as brutally as she took my little boy.”
        As always, when he talked about exposing Ellen's past to her family, Conrad spoke with conviction.
        As always, it sounded like a hollow fantasy.
        And as always, Zena felt that he was lying. She was sure that he had something else in mind, an act of revenge even more brutal than what Ellen had done to that strange, disturbing, mutated baby