The Funhouse

out.”
        There was no light whatsoever between the green glow of the display on their left side and the front doors, thirty feet away.
        Liz looked down the tomb-black tunnel and said, “No. No, I can't walk through all that darkness. What if it's waiting there for us?”
        “You have matches in your purse,” Amy said. “We can use those to find our way.”
        “Good idea!” Buzz said.
        Liz rummaged through her purse with shaking hands and found two packs of matches, one full and one half-empty.
        Buzz took them from her. He walked off, into the darkness, struck a match, and was visible again. “Let's go.”
        “Wait,” Liz said. “Wait a minute. Maybe…”
        “Maybe what?” Amy asked.
        Buzz shook out the match as it came close to burning his fingers, and he stepped back into the green light.
        Liz shook her head to clear it. “I'm so damned wasted. I'm really wrecked. I can't think straight. So isn't it possible that maybe this isn't really happening? Isn't it possible that this is just a bad trip? That was PCP I mixed in the last two joints. You can have a bad trip on A-dust, you know. Some of the worst trips you ever had. Maybe that's what this is. Just a bad trip.”
        “We wouldn't all be having the same hallucination,” Buzz said.
        “How do I know you're even real?” Liz asked. “You might just exist in my mind. Maybe the real Buzz is sitting beside Amy in the back of that gondola, halfway through the funhouse by now. Maybe I'm in that car, too, so spaced out I don't realize where I am.”
        Amy gently slapped Liz's face. “Listen. Listen to me, Liz. This isn't a bad trip. Not the way you mean it. This is real, and I'm scared out of my wits, so let's stop fooling around and get the hell out of here.”
        Liz blinked, licked her lips. “Yeah. You're right. Sorry. It's just… I wish I didn't feel so wasted.”
        Buzz lit one match, then another and another, and they followed him down the dark tunnel toward the funhouse entrance.
        
        * * *
        
        Joey stood with the barker in front of the funhouse, trying to remember why he had been frightened of this man earlier in the day. Now the carny was as friendly as a person could be, and he had a smile so nice that Joey couldn't help smiling, too.
        “Have you been through my funhouse yet, son?” the barker asked.
        “No,” Joey said. “I've been on a lot of other things, though.”
        He had been avoiding the funhouse because he felt uneasy about Conrad Straker, even though Straker had given him two free passes.
        “My funhouse is the best attraction on the midway,” Conrad said. “Why don't you let me take you on a personally guided tour? How about that? Not just an ordinary ride like all the marks get, but a guided tour with the owner. I can show you the workings of it, the behind-the-scenes stuff that few people are ever fortunate enough to see. I'll show you how the monsters are built, how they're made to move and growl and gnash their teeth. Everything. All of it. I'll show you the kind of things that a with-it-and-for-it person would enjoy learning about.”
        “Gee,” Joey said, “you'd really do that?”
        “Certainly,” the barker said heartily. “As I'm sure you noticed, I closed the funhouse down for the night. The ticket booth is closed, as you can see. I just sent the last car through, four nice teenagers.”
        “One of them was my sister,” Joey said.
        “Oh, really? Let me guess. There was one who looked like you. The dark-haired girl in the green shorts.”
        “That's her,” Joey said. “She doesn't know I'm here tonight. I want to wait for her to come out… to say hello. Hey, maybe she would like the guided tour, too. Could she come along I'll bet Amy would really enjoy it.”
        
        * * *
        
        The front doors of the funhouse were designed to open inward on hydraulic rams. There were no handles on them, nothing by which they could be gripped or moved.
        “If I could get hold of an edge,” Buzz said, “maybe I could pry them open. But they're closed so damned tight.”
        “It wouldn't matter if you could get your fingers through a crack,” Amy said. “You wouldn't be able to pull the doors open anyway. I'll bet they're just like the automatic door on the garage at home. As long as they're hooked up to the hydraulic system, they can't be