The Funhouse

size that they might potentially pose a threat, but the dead, harmless thing in the jar, no possible threat to anyone, was the most unsettling of all. Its large green eyes stared blindly out of its glass prison, its twisted, flared nostrils seemed to be sniffing at Amy, Liz, Buzz, and Richie, its black lips were parted, and its pale, speckled tongue was visible, and it looked as if it were snarling at them, at nobody else but them, as if it would close its mouth after they walked away.
        “Creepy,” Liz said. “Jesus!”
        “It isn't real,” Richie said. “It wasn't ever alive. It's just too freaky. No human being could give birth to that.”
        “Maybe no human being did,” Liz said.
        “That's what the sign says,” Buzz observed.” Born in 1956, of normal parents.”
        “They all looked up at the sign on the wall behind the jar, and Liz said, “Hey, Amy, its mother's name was Ellen. Maybe it's your brother!”
        Everyone laughed-except Amy. She stared at the sign, at the five large letters that spelled her mother's name, and yet another tremor of premonition passed through her. She felt as if her presence at the carnival was not happenstance but destiny. She had the uncanny and distinctly unpleasant feeling that her seventeen years of life could have led her nowhere else but here on this night of all nights. She was being maneuvered, constantly manipulated, if she reached overhead, she would feel the strings of the puppetmaster.
        Was it possible that this thing in the bottle actually had been Mama's child? Was this the reason Mama had insisted that Amy have an abortion immediately?
        No. That's crazy. Absurd, Amy thought desperately.
        She didn't like the idea that her life had been funneled inexorably to this tiny spot on the surface of the earth, at this minute among the trillions of minutes that composed the flow of history. That concept left her feeling helpless, adrift.
        It was just the drugs. She couldn't trust her perceptions because of the drugs. No more grass, ever again.
        “I don't blame its mother for killing it,” Liz said, peering at the thing in the jar.
        “It's just a rubber model,” Richie insisted.
        “I'm going to get a closer look,” Buzz said, slipping under the restraining rope.
        “Buzz, don't!” Amy said.
        Buzz approached the platform where the jar stood and leaned close to it. He reached out, put a hand to the glass, slowly ran his fingers down across the front of the jar, beyond which rested the face of the monster. Abruptly he jerked his hand away. “Son of a bitch!
        “What's the matter?” Richie asked.
        “Buzz, come back here, please,” Amy said.
        Buzz returned, holding his hand up for them to see. There was blood on one of his fingers.
        “What happened?” Liz asked.
        “Must have been a sharp seam on the jar,” Buzz said.
        “You better go to the first-aid station,” Amy said. “The cut might be infected.”
        “Nah,” Buzz said, determined not to let a crack show in his macho image. “It's only a scratch. Funny, though, I didn't see any sharp edges.”
        Maybe you didn't cut it on the glass,” Richie said.
        “Maybe the thing in there bit you.”
        “It's dead.”
        “Its body is dead,” Richie said, “but maybe its spirit is still alive.”
        “A minute ago you told us the goddamned thing was just a rubber fake,” Amy said.
        “I've been known to be wrong,” Richie said.
        “How do you explain it biting through the jar?” Buzz asked sarcastically.
        “A psychic bite,” Richie said. “A ghost bite.”
        “Don't give me the spooks,” Liz said, hitting Richie on the shoulder.
        “Ghost bite?” Buzz asked. “That's stupid.”
        The thing in the bottle watched them with its clouded, emerald, moon-lamp eyes.
        The name Ellen seemed to burn brighter on the sign than any of the other words.
        Coincidence, Amy told herself.
        It had to be a coincidence. Because if it wasn't, if this really was Mama's child, if Amy had been brought to the carnival by some supernatural force, then the other premonitions might also be true. Liz actually might die here. And that was unthinkable, unacceptable. So it was coincidence.
         Ellen .
        Coincidence, damn it!
        Amy was relieved when they left Freak-o-rama.
        They rode the Shazam and