The Funhouse

this time. She hated herself for her lack of willpower.
        But I don't want to lose Liz, she thought. I need Liz. Who else do I have?
        When they walked back onto the midway, they nearly collided with an albino. His thin, cottony white hair streamed behind him in the warm June breeze. He turned transparent eyes on them, eyes like cold smoke, and he said, “Free tickets to Madame Zena's. Free tickets to get your fortunes told. One for each lady, compliments of the carnival management. Tell all your friends that Big American is the friendly carnival.”
        Surprised, Amy and Liz accepted the tickets from the worm-white hands that offered them.
        The albino vanished in the crowd.

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    13
        
        The four of them crowded into the fortuneteller's small tent. Liz and Amy sat in the two available chairs, at the table where the crystal ball was filled with lambent light. Richie and Buzz stood behind the chairs.
        Amy didn't think that Madame Zena looked much like the Gypsy she was supposed to be, even dressed up in all the colored scarves and pleated skirts and gaudy jewelry. But the woman was very pretty, and she was suitably mysterious.
        Liz got her fortune told first. Madame Zena f: asked her all sorts of questions about herself and her family, information that she needed (so she said) in order to focus her psychic perceptions. When she had no more questions to ask, she peered into the crystal ball, she leaned so close to it that the eerie light and the shadows it cast made her features look different, hawklike.
        In four glass chimneys, in the four corners of the tent, four candles guttered.
        In its large cage to the right of the table, the raven shifted on its perch and made a cooing sound in the back of its throat.
        Liz glanced at Amy and rolled her eyes.
        Amy giggled, giddier than ever from the dope.
        Madame Zena stared into the crystal ball with a theatrical scowl, as if she were struggling to pierce the veils that concealed the world of tomorrow. But then the expression on her face changed and became a look of genuine puzzlement. She blinked, shook her head, and leaned even closer to the glowing sphere on the table.
        “What is it?” Liz asked.
        Madame Zena didn't respond. Her face held a ghastly look, so real that Amy was unnerved by it.
        “No…” Madame Zena said.
        To Liz, apparently, Madame Zena still seemed to be putting on an act. Liz evidently didn't see the uncontrived horror in the fortune-teller's face, which Amy was sure she saw there.
        “I don't…” Madame Zena began, then stopped and licked her lips. “I never…”
        “What am I going to be?” Liz asked. “Rich or famous or both?”
        Madame Zena closed her eyes for a moment, slowly shaking her head, then looked again into the crystal. “My God… I… I…”
        We should get out of here, Amy thought uneasily. We should go before this woman tells us something we don't want to hear. We should get up and leave and run for our lives.
        Madame Zena looked up from the crystal ball. All the blood had drained from her face.
        “What an actress!” Richie said softly.
        “Bunch of mumbo-jumbo,” Buzz said sullenly.
        Madame Zena ignored them and spoke to Liz. “I… I would rather not… tell your fortune… just yet. I need… time. Time to interpret what I've just seen in the crystal. I'll read your friend's future first, and then… I'll come back to yours, if that's all right.”
        “Sure,” Liz said, enjoying what she thought was a con game of some sort, a way to prime the customer for a joke or a request for money to pay for a more detailed reading. “Take as long as you want.”
        Madame Zena turned to Amy. The fortuneteller's eyes were not what they had been a few minutes ago, now they were haunted.
        Amy wanted to get up and leave the tent. She was experiencing the same kind of psychic energy that had electrified her at Marco the Magnificent's show. A chill, clammy sensation swept through her, and she saw stroboscopic images of graves and rotting corpses and grinning skeletons, nightmare flashes as if clips of film were being projected on a screen behind her eyes.
        She tried to stand up. She couldn't.
        Her heart was hammering.
        It was the drugs again. That was all. Just the drugs. The spice Liz had added to the pot. She wished she hadn't smoked