The Funhouse

worth of living expenses in her savings account. She already had enough for five months.
        Soaking up the color and glamour of the carnival as she walked, Chrissy headed toward the amusements that stood at the fringe of the midway, behind which she expected to find a comfort station within a couple of hundred feet. The public restrooms were in cinder-block buildings scattered around the perimeter of the fairgrounds.
        As she made her way through the crowd, a pitchman at a duck-shoot game gave her a loud wolf-whistle.
        She grinned and waved in reply.
        She felt terrific. Even though she was temporarily stuck in Coal County, she had a wonderful, sparkling future. She knew she was good-looking. She had a lot of smarts, too. With those qualities she could carve out a niche for herself in the big city in record time, easily within six months. Currently she was a typist, but that was strictly short-term.
        Another pitchman, this one working a wheel of fortune, heard the first barker's whistle, and he whistled at her, too. Then a third carny joined the fun, whistled, called to her teasingly.
        She felt as if she would live forever.
        Ahead of her the big clown's face atop the funhouse laughed shrilly.
        The funhouse, which stood next to Freak-o-rama, was at the eastern edge of the midway, and Chrissy figured there would be a comfort station somewhere behind it. She turned in beside the big, rambling structure, with the freak show on her right, and she walked through the narrow alley between the two attractions, away from the crowds and the lights and the music.
        The air was no longer redolent with cooking food. It smelled of wet wood shavings, grease, and gasoline from the large, thrumming generators.
        Inside the funhouse, chains clanked, banshees howled, ghosts laughed spookily, ghouls cackled, the wheels of the cars clattered incessantly along the winding track, and haunting music swelled and faded, swelled and faded. A girl screamed. Then another. Then three or four at once.
        They're acting like little kids, Chrissy thought scornfully. They're so pathetically eager to be thrilled, so willing to accept the shabby illusions in there, anything to be briefly transported from the drab reality of life in Coal County, Pennsylvania.
        An hour or two ago, when she had ridden through the funhouse with Bob Drew, she had screamed, too. Now, remembering her own hysteria, she was a little bit ashamed of herself.
        As she stepped over cables and ropes, cautiously picking her way toward the rear of the funhouse, she realized that, a few years from now, after she had had a chance to experience classier thrills, after she had grown accustomed to more sophisticated excitements, she would find the carnival tawdry and juvenile instead of exotic and glamorous.
        She was almost at the end of the long, narrow passageway. It was darker here than she had expected.
        She stumbled over a fat electric cable.
        “Damn!”
        She regained her balance, squinted at the ground ahead.
        There was just enough light to create impenetrable, purple-black shadows on all sides.
        She thought of turning back, but she really had to pee, and she was sure there was a bathroom nearby.
        At last she reached the end of the alley and turned the corner into the darkness behind the funhouse, looking for one of the brightly lighted comfort stations.
        She almost walked into the man.
        He was standing against the rear wall of the funhouse, in an exceedingly deep pool of velvety shadows.
        Chrissy yelped in surprise.
        She couldn't see his face, but she could see that he was big. Very big. Huge.
        An instant after she registered his presence, even as she gasped in shock, even as she saw how large he was, she realized that he was waiting for her. She started to scream.
        He struck her on the side of the head with such brutal force that it was a miracle her neck didn't snap.
        The scream died in her throat. She dropped to her knees, then toppled onto her side in the dirt, stunned, numbed, unable to move, struggling desperately to remain conscious. Her mind was a dully glinting blade skating on a crescent of silvery ice, with mile-deep, black water on both sides.
        She was vaguely aware of being lifted and carried.
        She couldn't resist him; she had no strength at