The one in the display might’ve been this spider’s baby.
“No!” Tanya yelled.
“No!”
The web swayed and bounced under the weight of the rushing black beast.
Its eyes were yellow. Its mouth looked like a huge open sore. Its fangs dripped.
The bloated black thing danced over the web.
And onto Tanya.
Her shriek ripped his ears.
The spider’s mouth muffled her scream. Jeremy saw its fangs sink into her face.
Her tangled body flinched rigid, jerked with spasms.
Jeremy twisted sideways, freeing his right arm from the trapped sleeve of his jacket. He reached to his shirt pocket. For the razor blade he’d put there after giving the handkerchief to Tanya.
A quick slash across the throat.
Maybe he could die before the spider came for him.
The pocket of his shirt was empty.
He’d lost the razor blade. Maybe while going down the slide.
When didn’t matter.
It was gone.
Jeremy heard gunfire as the legs of the spider wrapped around Tanya, squeezing her like a monstrous lover.
Robin heard the faint hard claps of gunshots. She looked over her shoulder. Saw nothing except the deserted moonlit boardwalk. The muffled tone of the shots made her wonder if they came from under the boardwalk, or maybe from inside one of Funland’s buildings.
After a few seconds they stopped. The only sounds she heard were her heartbeat, the rushing wind, the wash of a comber hurling itself at the beach, and the troll whimpering quietly behind her.
She turned her head forward again.
The troll was still four or five feet away, hugging the steel beam.
He’d frozen there.
He’d come this close, and lost his nerve.
Obviously the height had suddenly gotten to him.
Robin remembered her own experiences with climbing. Shinnying up trees when she was a kid, once in a while working her way up bluffs and mountainsides during her travels. You could go along just fine for a while. Then, sometimes, it just hit you. Stark, paralyzing fear. You knew you were going to die. All you could do was hang on, waiting to fall.
Until something broke the spell.
Killed the curse.
And you were suddenly able to function.
This guy, she thought, will either fall or come to his senses.
If he comes to his senses, I’ll be fair game again.
But she didn’t want him to fall.
The troll raised his head when Robin began to sing.
I climbed a mountain peak last night
To see what I could see,
To take a peek at the moon so bright
And the stars in the midnight sea.
He sat up and stared at her.
On his way through the broken mirrors, Dave saw enough of those in the hallway ahead to know they were the remnants of Jasper Dunn’s freak show.
He’d heard stories about them, seen their photographs a number of times in the Gallery of the Weird.
Supposedly they had scattered and left town after the show was shut down.
Six years ago. Shortly before he arrived from Los Angeles.
All that time, they’d been living here in the Funhouse?
Those who hadn’t been hit by his bullets were standing in the hallway only a few yards beyond the last shattered mirror. Standing motionless, watching.
Dave didn’t want Joan to be first out of the maze.
First to face this crowd of deformities.
He hurried past her.
Without Joan’s back blocking the way, he had a clear view.
On the floor, her throat torn open by a slug, lay Donna the Dog Woman. Sprawled beside her, writhing in pain, was a shirtless man with a withered brown arm in the middle of his chest. Julian, the Three-Armed Man. His little brown hand was clutching the bullet wound near his left shoulder. Wonderful Wilma lay near him, naked except for leopardskin bikini pants. One hand was clamped to her bleeding thigh. Her other arm pressed in modesty across her two normal breasts, the third mound uncovered, pale and sweaty below her wrist.
Only Donna was dead, Dave thought. Could’ve been worse.
But, God, he wished he hadn’t hit any of them.
Stepping through the last shattered mirror, he aimed his pistol at Snake-Tongue Antonio. “Drop the ax,” he said.
The man’s tongue slid out of his mouth. As he glared at Dave, the pink slab of his tongue slithered from one side of his face to the other, licking tears from under his eyes.
“I don’t want to shoot you,” Dave said.
“Drop it,” Joan snapped, coming up beside him, also taking aim at Antonio.
The two-headed woman, who had a name for each head, but which Dave couldn’t recall, turned both faces toward the man. She reached out a hand and patted his shoulder. He glanced at her, retracted his tongue, and made grunting sounds.
One head nodded at him. The other’s face smiled gently.
He dropped the ax to the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Dave said. “I’m sorry about the shooting. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hit.”
“We didn’t know you were here,” Joan said. She holstered her revolver and gave the flashlight to Dave. Bending down, she started to untie the red bandanna knotted around her leg.
Dave lowered his pistol but kept it in his hand. He doubted that these people would try anything. They seemed wary, confused, sad. And he saw something like hope in the eyes of a few.
“We’re trying to find my friends,” Debbie said. “Did you see them? Do you know where…?” Her voice faltered. “Their throats,” she whispered.
Some of the people nodded. Others grunted. Jim or Tim, one of the Siamese twins, touched a finger to the scar on his throat and mouthed a breathy, voiceless noise. “Haaaspaaa.”
“Jasper?” Dave asked. “Jasper Dunn?”
Nods, more grunts.
“He cut your vocal cords?” Joan blurted.
“Hyesss, hyesss, haaaspaaa.”
“Jesus,” Debbie muttered.
“He was keeping you prisoners here?” Dave asked.
The two-headed woman pointed at a door-size opening someone had chopped into the corridor wall.
“We’re gonna get you out of here,” Joan said. Dropping to her knees, she wrapped the bandanna around Wilma’s leg wound and knotted it tight.
“What about Jeremy?” Debbie asked, her voice high and pleading. “We have to find him!”
“We will, don’t worry.” Joan looked at the others. “Two kids,” she said. “A boy and a girl. Did you see them? Do you know where they are?”
The crowd parted, turned. A few hands pointed down the hallway.
Dave saw a door on the right, another at the far end.
But between here and the hallway’s end was a square of darkness where the floor should have been.
A trapdoor?
Debbie bolted. She leapt the body of Donna the Dog Woman and dashed through the break in the group.
“No!”
Joan shouted.
Dave rushed after her.
Debbie was nearly clear of Jasper’s freaks when a hand darted out and grabbed her ankle. She yelped, crashed to the floor, and skidded.
Dave pounced and gripped the back of her neck, holding her down as she struggled to rise.
He looked back. A bald man lifted his head and made a grim smile. He had no legs. But he had two muscular arms, and the hand of one was wrapped tightly around Debbie’s ankle. Andy the Amazing Torso Man.
“Thanks,” Dave said.
He winked.
Joan patted his shoulder, stepped over him, and crouched on the other side of Debbie. “Dumb kid,” she muttered. “Just stick with us and don’t—”
Debbie gasped and flinched rigid.
Squeals and grunts erupted behind them.
Dave snapped his head around. Jasper’s freaks were going wild, some pointing down the hallway, others rushing toward the ragged hole in the wall, some racing for the ruins of the mirror maze.
“Dave.”
Joan’s voice. A mere whisper.
“Dave?”
He looked at her.
Joan’s wide, stunned eyes met his for an instant, then looked away.
Toward the other end of the hallway.
Dave followed their lead.
And saw black arachnoid legs waving in the candlelight. They hooked over the edge of the floor. Claws clicking and scraping on the wood, a huge spider clambered up from the darkness below the trapdoor.
On its back rode Jasper Dunn, top hat perched rakishly atop his head, a revolver in each hand.
Can’t be.
Dave felt as if he’d been clubbed in the belly.
He gaped at the spectacle—the monstrous spider scurrying toward him, Jasper mounted up there like a crazed cowpoke brandishing six-shooters.
Can’t be happening.
Dave rose on numb, shaky legs, pulling Debbie up with him by the back of her neck. “Go,” he said. His voice sounded far away. “Run.”
She stood beside him, frozen.
Joan rose to her feet, going for her .38 in slow motion as Dave raised his Beretta and Jasper brought down both barrels in their direction. Gunfire roared through the hallway. Bullets snapped past Dave’s face. The hat sailed off Jasper’s head. Debbie, hit, flew backward. An eye of the beast exploded in a red mist. A slug smashed through Jasper’s right wrist, and his revolver tumbled away. At the same moment, one caught him in the face. It snapped his head sideways and tore off half his chin. But he stayed on the spider, blasting at them with his remaining gun.
The beast was less than six feet away. It would be on them in seconds.
Dave concentrated his firepower on it. A bullet slashed the side of his arm, but he stood steady, squeezing the trigger. One of the spider’s front legs broke. As his bullets pounded holes in its squat, bristly head, he saw Joan rush forward.
“No!”
he yelled.
The spider seemed to stumble. Its abdomen dragged the floor, but it still scuttled closer, palpi coming at Dave like pincers.
The last shot from his Beretta exploded another of its eyes.
Reaching for his .38, he saw Joan, knife in hand, jump over two of the spider’s thrashing legs. She no longer had her revolver. Must’ve emptied it.
Jasper aimed at her face. He wouldn’t miss. A point-blank shot.
Dave drew his .38.
But raising it seemed to take so long…so long.
He heard Jasper’s hammer snap down.
A quick hard clack.
No blast.
It had fallen on a spent cartridge!
Now Dave’s gun was up, leveled at Jasper, but he held fire. Afraid of hitting Joan as she hurled herself against the bloated side of the spider, just behind Jasper. She vaulted onto the beast. Jasper, twisting, rammed an elbow into her. She hooked an arm beneath his ruined chin, jerked him backward, and her right arm swept in around him and plunged the knife into his chest. She pulled the knife out, rammed it in again, then flung him sideways. He toppled from his mount, sliding, falling headfirst among the spider’s legs.
As its pincers caught Dave.
They clamped him just below the knees.
How could it still be alive?
He fired, jerking the trigger fast, pumping round after round into its head as the beast squeezed his legs together and Dave toppled backward. He was hammering at spent shells when he heard Joan screaming. His back slammed the floor.
What’s she screaming about? Dave wondered.
Shoving himself up with his elbows, he saw Joan still on top of the spider. Shrieking like a banshee as she thrust her knife into the hump of its back.
She’s screaming about me.
As he twisted and tried to kick free, the pincers began to pull him. He slid over the floor toward the spider.
It raised its head.
What was left of its head. A hideous oblong thing shattered by bullets, caved in, cracked and split, red and yellow fluids gushing from its wounds.
The fucking thing’s dead in its tracks!
Dave’s mind screamed.
Why’s it doing this to me?
It dragged him.
Squealing, he rammed his right foot against its single dripping fang. He shoved at it, trying to keep himself back.
Antonio leapt past him, swung the ax down with both hands, and split the spider’s head in half. The pincers loosened their grip. Dave tore his legs free and scrambled backward as the man chopped again.
He rolled onto his side.
Face-to-face with Debbie.
As they stared into each other’s eyes, the wet crunching sounds of the chopping went on.
She scooted closer to Dave.
He put an arm around her back, pulled her against him, and felt the girl’s face press the side of his neck.
“The bullet hit your vest?” he whispered.
He felt her nod.
Robin kept singing as the troll inched closer. Then she stopped, and reached out to him. He gripped her hand. She held it tightly as he climbed onto the seat.
Gasping and shuddering from the ordeal, he sat down beside her. With one hand he clutched the side of the gondola. The other held Robin’s hand against his leg.
She pressed her legs together, wondering if she’d been crazy to let this troll in with her. She used her free arm to cover her breasts. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re safe now.”
He flinched as gunfire erupted again.
Robin looked away from him. The shots sounded as if they might be coming from inside Jasper’s Oddities or the Fun-house, which were on the far side of the boardwalk, about halfway between the Ferris wheel and the main entrance. The last time, the shots had sounded like rapid fire from a single gun. Now it seemed that several weapons of different calibers were firing at once.
The troll released her hand. He slid an arm across her shoulders and drew Robin against the side of his quaking body.
It’s all right, she told herself. He’s just scared.
She realized that the gunfire had stopped. Then came a quick series of blasts, and the shooting ended again.
Slowly the troll relaxed. She could feel his shudders fade. He began to caress her arm from shoulder to elbow. His touch made her skin crawl.
She faced him. “That was the police,” she said. “They’ll be coming out soon.”
I hope, she thought.
God, what if the cops had
lost
that shoot-out?