The Funhouse

Freed, issued her a badge with the letters VIP on it, so that all the carnies would cooperate with her.
        For most of the morning and afternoon, wearing a hard hat, carrying a big flashlight and a notebook, Janet prowled the grounds, watching the midway rise like a phoenix, inspecting bolts and rivets and spring-locked joints, crawling into dark, tight places when that was necessary, overlooking nothing. She discovered that Frederick Frederickson had been telling the truth, Big American was conscientious about maintenance and more than conscientious, downright fussy , about the erection of rides and sideshows.
        At a quarter past three she came to the funhouse, which appeared to be ready for business a full hour and fifteen minutes before the gates were scheduled to open. The area around the attraction was deserted, quiet. She wanted someone to give her a guided tour of the funhouse, but she couldn't locate anyone associated with it, and for a moment she considered skipping the place. She hadn't found even one major safety problem anywhere else on the midway, and it wasn't likely that she would uncover a dangerous construction-code violation here. She'd probably just be wasting her time. Nevertheless…
        She had a strong sense of duty.
        She walked up the boarding ramp, past the ticket booth, and stepped down into the sunken channel in which the gondolas would move when the ride was started up. From the boarding gate the channel led to a set of large plywood doors that were painted to resemble the massive, timbered, iron-hinged doors of a forbidding castle. When the ride was in service, the doors would swing back to admit each oncoming car, then fall shut behind it. At the moment, as she approached the entrance, one door was propped open. She i peered inside.
        The interior of the funhouse wasn't as dark now as it would be when the ride was in operation. A string of work lights ran the length of the track and disappeared around a bend fifty feet away, when the place was open for business, those lights would be extinguished. Yet even with that chain of softly glowing bulbs, the funhouse was gloomy.
        Janet leaned through the doorway. “Hello?”
        No one answered.
        “Is anyone there?” she asked.
        Silence.
        She switched on her flashlight, hesitated only a second, and stepped inside.
        The funhouse smelled damp and oily.
        She knelt and inspected the pins that joined two sections of track. They were securely fastened.
        She got up and moved deeper into the building.
        On both sides of the track, slightly elevated from it, life-sized mechanical figures stood in secret niches in the walls: an ugly, leering pirate with a sword in his hand, a werewolf, claws coated with silvery, day-glow paint that would make them look like glinting blades in the dark, phony but realistic blood on his wolfish snout and on his two-inch-long fangs, a grinning, blood-drenched ax-murderer standing over the hideously wounded corpse of one of his victims, and many others, some more gruesome than those first few. In this light Janet could see that they were only clever, lifelike mannequins, but she felt uneasy around them. Although none of them was animated, as all of them would be when the funhouse was in operation, they looked as if they were about to pounce on her, to her chagrin, the damned things spooked her. But her dislike of them didn't prevent her from inspecting the anchor bolts on a few of them to make sure they wouldn't topple down into a passing gondola and injure a rider.
        Walking along the passageway, looking up at the monsters, Janet wondered why people insisted on referring to a place like this as a funhouse .
        She turned the bend at the end of the first length of track, moved farther into the funhouse, turned another corner, then another, marveling at the richness of invention that had been employed in the design of the place. It was huge, as large as a medium-sized warehouse, and it was crammed full of genuinely frightening things. It wasn't the sort of amusement that appealed to her, but she had to admire the work, the craftsmanship, and the creativity that had gone into it.
        She was in the center of the enormous structure, standing on the track, looking up at a man-sized spider hanging overhead, when someone put a hand on her shoulder. She gasped, jumped, jerked away from the unexpected contact, turned,