The Funhouse

all.” Holding the stake in his left hand, he raised the mallet in his right. “Absolute silence! Those of you who are squeamish, avert your eyes. She will feel no pain… but that does not mean there will be no blood!”
        “Huh?” Jenny said. “Hey. wait. I-”
        “Silence!” Marco shouted, and he swung the mallet hard against the stake.
         No! Amy thought.
        With a sickening, wet, tearing sound, the stake sank deep into the woman's chest.
        Jenny screamed, and blood gushed from her twisted mouth.
        The audience gasped. A couple of people cried out in horror.
        Jenny's head slumped to one side. Her tongue lolled. Her eyes stared sightlessly over the heads of the people in the tent.
        Death miraculously transformed the face of the volunteer. The red hair turned to blond. The eyes changed from green to blue. The face was no longer that of Jenny, the woman who had walked onto the stage from the audience. It was now Liz Duncan's face. Every plane, every hollow, every feature, every detail belonged to Liz. It wasn't just a trick of the light and shadows. It was Liz in that coffin. It was Liz who had been impaled. It was Liz who was dead, blood still oozing from between her ripe lips.
        Having trouble drawing her breath, Amy looked at the girl beside her and was amazed to see that her friend was still there. Liz was in the audience-yet somehow she was also on the stage, in the box, dead. Confused, disoriented, Amy said, “But it's you. It's you… up there.”
        Liz-in-the-audience said, “What?”
        Liz-in-the-coffin stared into eternity and drooled blood.
        Liz-in-the-audience said, “Amy? Are you all right?”
        Liz is going to die, Amy thought. Soon. This is some sort of premonition… clairvoyance… whatever you call it. Could that be true? Could it? Will Liz be killed? Soon? Tonight?
        Marco's look of shock and horror, which he had assumed the instant that blood began to spurt from his volunteer's mouth, now melted into a grin. The magician snapped his fingers, and the woman in the box suddenly came to life, the pain vanished from her face, she smiled dazzlingly- and she no longer resembled Liz Duncan.
        She never did look like Liz, Amy thought. It was just me. The drugs. Hallucinations. It wasn't a premonition, Liz isn't going to die soon. God, am I out of it!
        The audience sighed with relief as Marco pulled the stake out of the hole in the lid of the box. The magician had ceased to look sinister. He was the same shabby, pudgy, inept man who had stumbled through the canvas flap ten or fifteen minutes ago. The omniscient, evil personality no longer looked out through Marco's eyes, his resemblance to the Devil was gone.
        Imagination, Amy told herself. Delusions. It meant nothing. Nothing at all. Liz isn't about to die. None of us is going to die. I've got to get hold of myself.
        Marco helped Jenny out of the box and introduced her to the audience. She was his daughter.
        “Another cheap trick,” Liz said, disgusted.
        As she left Marco's tent, Amy sensed the disappointment in her three companions. It was almost as if they had hoped that a woman really would be pierced through the heart or have her head chopped off by a guillotine. The spice that Liz had added to the last joint of grass was something extremely powerful, for already it was making them fidgety, restless, they required more and bigger thrills to dissipate their newfound, nervous energy. A decapitation and some spilled blood were apparently just the sort of things that Buzz and Liz, if not Richie, needed to see in order to burn off the chemicals bubbling in their bloodstreams, the sort of thing they needed to experience in order to mellow out again.
        No more dope tonight, Amy vowed. No more dope ever . I don't need drugs to be happy. Why do I use them?
        They went to a sideshow called Animal Oddities, and the bizarre creatures in that attraction gave Amy the willies. There was a goat with two heads, a bull with a three-eyed, triple cranium, a disgusting pig with eyes on either side of its snout plus two more eyes higher in its head, greenish drool trickling over its cracked and leathery lips, two extra legs coming out of its left side. They finally came to a pen that contained a normal-looking lamb, and Amy reached out to pet it, but when it turned toward her, she saw it had an extra nose and a bulging,