The Funhouse

been when he first stumbled onto the platform. His crude makeup no longer seemed like a joke, second by second he looked increasingly demonic, and there was a new, terrifying, evil gleam in his eyes. His nervous smile had become a knowing, wicked leer. When his eyes met Amy's, she felt as if she were staring at twin windows that offered a glimpse of Hell, and she was cold all the way through to the marrow.
        Don't be ridiculous, Amy told herself, shuddering. Marco the Magnificent hasn't changed. It's only my perception of him that's been altered. I'm having a mild hallucination. Tripping. Flying. It's that damned joint. The drugs. What spice did Liz add to that grass?
        Marco held up a two-foot-long, pointed wooden stake. “Ladies and gentlemen, I promise you'll enjoy this illusion more than you would have enjoyed the guillotine. It's really much, much better.” He grinned, and there was something dark and unwholesome in that Cheshire-cat expression. I need a volunteer from the audience. A young woman.” His malevolent eyes slowly swept the faces below him. He raised one hand and pointed ominously at each woman, one after the other, and for a breathtaking moment he seemed to stop at Amy, then he moved his hand again and stopped even longer at Liz, but finally he chose an attractive redhead.
        “Oh, no,” the redhead told him. “I couldn't. Not me.”
        “Of course you can,” Marco said. “Come on, folks, let's give this charming, brave young lady a hand.” The audience applauded on cue, and the woman reluctantly walked up the steps to the stage.
        Marco took hold of her arm as she reached the platform. “What's your name?”
        “Jenny,” she said, smiling shyly at the audience.
        “You're not afraid, are you, Jenny?”
        “Yes,” she said, blushing.
        Marco grinned. “Smart girl!” He escorted her to the coffin. It was standing on end, tilted back slightly on large metal braces. Marco pulled open the lid, which was hinged at the left side. “Please step into the box, Jenny. I promise that you will feel absolutely no pain whatsoever.”
        With the magician's help, the redhead stepped backwards into the box, facing the audience. Her neck fit into a U-shaped cutout in the top of the box. Because the coffin was short, her head stuck out of it when Marco closed the lid.
        “Comfortable?” Marco asked.
        “No,” the woman said nervously.
        “Good,” Marco said. He grinned at the audience, then secured the front of the box with a large padlock.
        A premonition of disaster, a feeling that she was in the presence of Death, seized Amy in its invisible, icy hands.
        Just the damned drugs, she told herself.
        Marco the Magnificent spoke to the audience. “In the fifteenth century, Vlad the Fifth of Wallachia, known as Vlad the Impaler to his frightened subjects, tortured tens of thousands of male and female prisoners, mostly foreign invaders. Once, the Turkish army turned back from a planned invasion when it encountered a field where thousands of men were propped on spikes that had been driven all the way through their bodies by Vlad's hand-picked death squads. Tiring of his name, Vlad selected a new one, that of his father, an equally nasty man known as Dracul, meaning the Devil.” Adding the letter A,' he became Dracula, the son of the Devil. And so, my friends, are legends born.”
        “Cornball,” Liz said again.
        But Amy was mesmerized by the strange, new, and dangerous creature that appeared (at least to her eyes) to have taken possession of Marco's body. The bottomless, all-knowing, evil eyes of the magician met Amy's eyes again and seemed to see all the way through her before they looked away.
        Marco displayed the two-foot-long, pointed wooden stake once more. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present… The Impaler.”
        “About fuckin' time,” Liz said.
        Marco picked up a small but heavy mallet. “If you will look at the front of the box, you will see that a small hole has been drilled through the lid.”
        Amy saw the hole. A bright red heart had been painted around it.
        “The hole lies directly over the volunteer's heart,” Marco said. He licked his lips, turned, and carefully inserted the stake into the hole. “Do you feel the point of the stake, Jenny?”
        She giggled nervously. “Yes.”
        “Good,” the magician said. “Remember… there will be no pain at