The Funhouse

know grace and spiritual comfort.
        After the first bitter shock had passed, Conrad began to see his mutant son in a different light. Victor hadn't come from Heaven. He had come from Hell. The baby was not a punishment from God, it was a great blessing from Satan. God had turned His back on Conrad Straker, but Satan had sent him a baby as a gesture of welcome.
        That might have seemed like tortuous reasoning to a normal man, but to Conrad, desperate to find release from his guilt and shame, it made perfect sense. If the gates of Heaven were forever closed to him, he might as well face the gates of Hell with eagerness and accept his destiny without remorse. He longed to belong somewhere, anywhere, even in Hell. If the god of light and beauty would not give him absolution, then he would obtain it from the god of darkness and evil.
        He read dozens of books about satanic religions, and he quickly discovered that Hell was not the place of brimstone and suffering that Christians said it was. Hell was a place, said the satanists, where sinners were rewarded for their sins, it was, in every respect, the place of their dreams. Best of all, in Hell there was no such thing as guilt. In Hell there was no shame.
        As soon as he accepted Satan as his savior, Conrad knew that he had made the right decision. The nightly dreams of fire and pain did not stop, however, he found a greater measure of peace and more contentment in his daily life than he had known since before that fateful Christmas Eve, and for the first time in memory, his life had meaning. He was on earth to do the devil's work, and if the devil could offer him self-respect, he was prepared to labor long and hard for the cause of the Antichrist.
        When Ellen killed Victor, Conrad knew she was doing God's work, and he was furious. He almost killed her. But he realized that he might be imprisoned or executed for murdering her, and that would keep him from fulfilling the role that Satan had written for him. It occurred to him that if he got married again, Satan might send him another sign, another demonic child who would grow up to be the scourge of the earth.
        Conrad married Zena, and in time Zena bore him Gunther. She was the devil's Mary, but she didn't realize it. Conrad never told her the truth. Conrad saw himself as Joseph to the Antichrist, father and protector. Zena thought the child was just a freak, and although she didn't feel comfortable with it, she accepted it with the equanimity with which carnies always accepted freaks.
        But Gunther wasn't merely a freak.
        He was more than that. Much more.
        He was holy.
        He was the coming. The dark coming.
        As the taxicab sped toward the fairgrounds, Conrad looked out at the quiet, suburban houses and wondered if even one person out there realized they were living in the last days of God's world. He wondered if even one of them sensed that Satan's child was on earth and had recently reached his brutal maturity.
        Gunther was just beginning his reign of terror. A thousand years of darkness would descend.
        Oh, yes, Gunther was much more than just a freak.
        If he were merely a freak, that would mean that Conrad was wrong in everything that he had done during the past twenty-five years. It would mean more than that, it would mean that Conrad was not just wrong but stark, raving mad.
        So Gunther was more than a freak. Gunther was that legendary dark beast slouching toward Bethlehem.
        Gunther was the destruction of the world.
        Gunther was the herald of a new Dark Age.
        Gunther was the Antichrist.
        He had to be. For Conrad's sake, he had to be.

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    11
        
        For Joey, the week prior to the county fair crept by like a snail. He was eager to become a carny and leave Royal City behind forever, but it seemed to him that the time for his escape would come only after his mother had murdered him in his bed.
        There wasn't anyone around to help make the time pass more quickly. He avoided Mama, of course. Daddy was, as always, preoccupied with his law practice and his railroad models. Tommy Culp, Joey's best friend from school, was away on vacation with his family.
        Even Amy was hardly ever around these days. She worked at The Dive every day but Sunday. And during the past week she had been out every night, dating some guy named Buzz. Joey didn't know what Buzz's