The Funhouse

WORLD.
        Yang 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 Yang 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.
        Yang'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 F 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 e 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”
        
        This child, named Victor by his father, was born in 1955, of normal.
        
        Victor’s mental capacity was normal. He had a sweet, charming disposition. He was a laughing baby, an angel.
        
        On the night of august 15, 1955, Victor’s mother, Ellen, murdered him. She was repelled by the child’s physical deformities and was convinced he was an evil monster. She was not able to see the spiritual beauty within him.
        
        Who was really the evil one?
        The helpless baby?
        -Or the mother he trusted, the woman who murdered him?
        
        Who was the real monster?
        This poor, afflicted child?
        -or the mother who refused to love him?
        Judge 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 Yang 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,