Funhouse (6 page)

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Tess cried, “I’ll go, I’ll go!”

The thought of entering the Funhouse again made her sick. But it was true—the keys were hers, she was the one who had lost them, and Gina shouldn’t have to look for them alone. She turned to follow her up the beach.

Entering the Funhouse, Tess wondered how they would ever find the key case. The place had so many little nooks and crannies, so many cracks in the wooden floors, and then there were all those open spaces between the whirling circles. The keys might even have fallen through to the beach. If they didn’t find the case in here, they’d have to sift through the sand next.

“Gina!” she called as she entered the rolling wooden walkway and clutched at the padded walls. “Gina, wait up!”

She had hurried through the tilting tunnel and was headed for the first of the open balconies, when a sound stopped her in her tracks.

It was a piercing scream that sent slivers of ice sliding down her back.

That scream wasn’t a normal part of the Funhouse. It hadn’t come from a witch’s cackling mouth or a dangling skeleton or a bloody corpse. That scream had been real.

And the voice had been familiar. Very familiar.

Although she didn’t want to believe it, the voice had belonged to Gina Giambone.

And it hadn’t been an Oh-gosh-I’m-scared Funhouse kind of scream. Tess could recognize a scream of genuine fear when she heard it.

Calling Gina’s name, Tess tried desperately to run. But it was impossible, given the footing underneath her as she entered the puffed-pillow passageway. She stumbled and fell several times before reaching solid footing again. Her breath came in ragged gasps, threatening to stick in her throat. Calls to Gina brought only silence in return.

Safer, more solid wooden walkways around each challenge brought her quickly to the chamber of metal saucers. They were separated by small spaces through which glimpses of the beach below could be seen. The spaces were so tiny they provided no danger, as only a toothpick-sized person could slip through and fall to the hard-packed sand below.

Unless … unless one of the large round circles was missing.

And one
was.

Tess stared at the gap in the flooring, her mouth open, eyes wide as she realized that she could see, quite clearly, to the beach below. She could see the tan sand, flat in some spots, mounded into little hillocks by the wind in other places. She could see a small green plastic pail left by a careless child. And she could see … Gina.

She was lying on the sand, her left leg sticking out at a sickening angle, her face, in profile, twisted in agony.

And she was lying very, very still.

S
TUPID
G
INA!
G
ETTING IN THE
way like that. If it hadn’t been for her goody-two-shoes helpfulness, it would have been Tess who fell through the hole, just as I’d planned. Slipping the key case out of her back pocket was a cinch, and the plan would have worked perfectly, if it hadn’t been for Tess’s weak stomach and Gina’s Girl Scout instincts.

It was Tess’s fault more than Gina’s. The keys belonged to Tess. And that hole was designed for her. She really screwed up my schedule. She’ll have to pay for that. I can’t let people get away with fouling things up for, me. I’ll have to think of something special for her. To punish her.

Like I wish I could punish that Buddy in Lila’s journal.

Buddy came to see me today. He says he knows a wonderful family who will give my baby a good home when it’s born. I couldn’t believe it! Does he think that just because Tully is gone, I would give away our child? I threw him out.

The next entry was several days later.

Buddy keeps pressuring me to give up my baby. He comes back every day, saying I’ll never get a job on The Boardwalk because the new owners don’t want me there. They think I’ll make the customers uncomfortable after what Tully did right there in the Funhouse. He says I’ll never be able to earn a living and support my baby. And then he said his friends, who want a child more than anything, could give my baby everything.

He keeps saying that if I really cared about my baby I’d give it up. What am I going to do?

A few days later:

Buddy was back again today. He told me this family that wants my baby has offered to pay my rent and my expenses until the baby’s born. The only strings attached, he says, are that they get the baby when it’s born, and I don’t let anyone know that I’m pregnant. When I asked him why, he said, “My friends wouldn’t want anyone to know the baby isn’t theirs. The woman has gone to Europe and expects to be given the child when she returns, and she’ll tell everyone she had the baby in England.”

I have to let him help me now. I have no choice. I have so little money left, and no one will give me a job. So I’ll have to accept their money for now, for my baby. But I’ll think of something before the baby’s born. I’m not going to give up my baby.

T
ESS’S ONLY THOUGHT AS
she struggled through the remaining passageways toward an exit was, No, not Gina. Not Gina! Fake bats swung down from the ceiling, diving for her head. Dragons on the walls breathed hot smoke in her face. Skeletons rattled their bones in a crazy dance. She brushed them all aside and kept going. Don’t be dead, Gina, she prayed. Don’t be dead like Dade Lewis!

What would she ever do without Gina?

Gina wasn’t dead. But she was unconscious. Tess’s companions had already gathered around her limp body. Beak was kneeling by her side, holding one of her hands, with Doss on the other side. Beachgoers gathered around the small group as the sun sank beneath the sea.

“Someone call an ambulance,” Beak cried as Tess, gasping for breath, her face tear-streaked, arrived and knelt at Gina’s side. Someone called, “I’ll go,” and Beak turned back to Gina, calling her name repeatedly.

She didn’t answer.

There didn’t seem to be any blood. But Tess hated the fact that the big dark eyes refused to open. The smoothly packed sand was almost as hard as wood, and Gina had fallen a long way.

Jim Mancini, The Boardwalk’s manager, pushed through the growing crowd. A short, squat man wearing tan pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, he made a soft sound when he saw Gina lying on the sand. “What happened?” he asked as he knelt beside her and lifted her wrist to check her pulse. “She’s alive,” he said. A murmur of relief rose from the crowd. Turning toward Tess, he asked, “Did she hit her head? How long has she been unconscious? What’s wrong with her leg?”

There was definitely something wrong with Gina’s leg. No normal bone could make such a crazy angle.

“It’s broken,” volunteered Sam, whose father was a doctor. “Fractured, probably. Doesn’t look like a clean break.”

“I don’t understand how this happened,” Tess said in a bewildered voice over the sound of an approaching siren. “Why was that circle missing?”

Mancini’s eyes narrowed. “Missing? What was missing?”

With tears in her eyes, Tess answered, “One of the spinning circles in the Funhouse. It was … gone. It had been there when we went through earlier. But this time, when I followed Gina into that passageway to see why she had screamed, one of the circles was gone. There was just this great big hole. Gina probably didn’t see it in time and fell right through.”

Mancini would have questioned her further, but the ambulance arrived just then. Tess wanted to ride in it with Gina, but the paramedics discouraged her.

“Call her parents,” one of them said, “and have them meet us at the Medical Center.” As he turned away to help carry the stretcher, he told his colleague, “I was on duty the other night when that roller coaster went. Some mess! And now this! I’m keeping my kids away from here from now on.”

Tess turned away, intent on going straight to her car and then to the Medical Center. She wanted to be with Gina.

But Mancini stopped her. “Look,” he said, “your friend’s in good hands. You can see her later. Right now, I need you to show me where this happened. So it won’t happen to somebody else.”

Tess realized he had a point. That missing circle was dangerous. And she probably wouldn’t be allowed to see Gina for a while, anyway.

She nodded. “Okay, come on. But I need to call Gina’s parents first.” She bit her lip anxiously. “They’re going to be so upset.”

“Someone already called,” Candace said softly, putting a sympathetic arm around Tess’s shoulders. “I heard someone say so.”

“Good!” Mancini said. “Then we can get right to it. Come on, miss, show me what you were talking about.”

Which Tess would have been happy to do, except for one thing. When she led Mancini and her friends into the chamber, there was absolutely nothing to see.

Because not a single circle was missing.

Tess stared at the spot where the gaping hole had been. It was now filled by a whirling, innocent-looking saucer, just as it was supposed to be. The disk stared right back at her as if to say, “But I’ve been here all along. You were imagining things!”

She could feel everyone’s eyes on her after they’d searched in vain for anything out of the ordinary. “I don’t believe this,” she said slowly, feeling a flush rise up out of her neck and spread to her face.

“Well,
I
don’t get it!” Mancini said, eyeing Tess suspiciously. “There’s nothing wrong here. What were you talking about down on the beach?”

“It was gone!” she cried. “It was!” She knew, even as she said it, how crazy that sounded. After all, the circles were huge. Someone couldn’t just lift one out and walk away with it without being seen. “The one in the middle was missing. There was a hole there! That’s how I could see Gina, lying on the beach.”

No one said a word. And that silence told her, very clearly, that no one believed her.

“Honestly, Tess,” Trudy said lazily, “first you see some dark spirit under The Devil’s Elbow and now you’re seeing missing saucers. I thought people like you always saw
flying
saucers.”

And even though Candace said, “Trudy, don’t be so mean!” and Sam moved closer to Tess and said, “Take it easy, Tess. You’re upset about Gina,” Tess began to shake violently. Her arms and legs trembled and Sam had to take hold of her with both hands to keep her upright.

“I know what I saw,” Tess managed to say. “And if I didn’t see it, then exactly how
did
Gina end up on the beach?”

Mancini shrugged toward the passageway up ahead. “Tumbled over the railing, maybe.”

The railing was high, to protect small children from accidental falls. And Gina wasn’t clumsy. “She couldn’t have fallen over that railing,” Tess argued. “It’s too high.”

“I think you’d better talk to the police, miss,” he said coolly. “Something fishy here. I had my assistant give them a call. They should be here by now. You were the only person in here when your friend fell. They’ll want to talk to you.”

The police? A chilly fog descended upon Tess. “But I want to go to the Medical Center,” she argued as they all left the Funhouse, taking the wooden stairs.

“That will have to wait,” the manager said sternly, taking her elbow as they reached the foot of the stairs. Dusk had fallen and the air had turned chilly. Tess shivered. But she wasn’t really cold. She was frightened. “We need to clear this up right now. I don’t want any questions,” Mancini went on, “about The Boardwalk’s safety.”

“Too late,” Sam said drily. “Two accidents in one week makes for a lot of questions.”

Ignoring his remark, Mancini gripped the sleeve of Tess’s yellow sweatshirt and led her to his office. Her friends followed, grumbling their support for her to themselves. Candace looked even more pale and frightened than usual, and Guy Joe’s lips were drawn together tightly in anger. Tess could feel people along The Boardwalk staring at them, and knew that by nightfall the story of Tess Landers being dragged into Mancini’s office would be all over town. Her face felt feverish, and she kept her eyes on the ground.

The police questioning wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. There were only two uniformed men and they were more polite than Mancini had been. They asked her to take them back to the Funhouse and point out the spot where Gina had fallen. When they could find no evidence of any circle having been tampered with, they walked away from her, talking in low voices. But Tess heard every word.

“Isn’t this the girl who brought that note in?” the taller one asked his partner. “You know, the one in purple crayon that Boz showed us?”

Boz. The desk sergeant, Tess guessed, and her cheeks burned with humiliation as the second policeman answered, “Yeah. One of those rich kids, lives up on the hill. Broken home and all that. Probably gets everything at home except attention, know what I mean?” He shook his head sadly.

She couldn’t just let them dismiss her as some kind of attention-getting kook. “Excuse me,” she said politely.

They turned around.

“If the saucer really wasn’t missing,” she asked them, “how could Gina have fallen? There isn’t any place here for her to fall through to the beach. Not with all the saucers in place.”

“Good question,” the tall policeman said heartily. “And you have our word, miss, that the matter will be investigated thoroughly. We may have to call on you again.”

They wouldn’t call on her again, and she knew it. But she also knew there wasn’t any way to convince them that she was telling the truth. She had no proof.

“Look, kid,” the taller policeman said, “you can go collect your friends now. We’ll look into this, I promise. You’re probably anxious to find out how your friend is.”

He was being nice. Trying to smile, she admitted that she was anxious to get to the Medical Center. Now if only Gina was fine.

Gina wasn’t fine. And they weren’t allowed to see her, Tess was informed by the emergency room nurse. “You can wait in there,” she said crisply, pointing toward a room at the end of the hall. Tess, seeing Mr. Giambone pacing the hall outside of the waiting room, ran to see if Gina’s parents knew anything about her condition.

They didn’t. No one had told them anything.