The Fun House
It was late October, the last weekend for the Fun House, the featured attraction of the regional Eventree Carnival, a fixture in Southern Illinois during the1960s. We made our way past the farmland and the lakes, through the trees with their scarlet and orange and brown leaves, visible by moonlight. We drove down Interstate 55--which climbed up all the way from St. Louis to Chicago--to an abandoned wheat field, where the Eventree Carnival was held each fall. En route, Patty goosed me, said, "This was your bright idea, Kev; what if they're closed?" The air became a little hazy as a light rain began to fall, hiding the full moon.
"They can't be closed," I insisted. "They got two paying customers here." And I goosed her back. Finally we turned into the fair grounds, parked in the abandoned lot. Strings of orange lights encircled the field. At the entrance to the carnival was a large placard, emblazoned with the word, "Freaks," and featuring a picture of the star attraction: the Fat Lady. It was late and so they would be preparing to close, but we thought we had just enough time to have a little fun. Besides. this was our last chance for the season. I glanced around the grounds, saw not a soul besides Patty and myself; we had the place to ourselves. Cool. Alighting from Patty's yellow and rust '61 VW Bug, we approached the ticket booth and I leaned through the window, but no one was present. Even cooler. We embarked across the muddy, straw-strewn field, straight to the Fun House, our favorite.
"There's nobody around," I said in my best spooky voice. "Maybe someone escaped from the State Hospital and murdered everyone." Patty punched me. "Jerk," she said.
Inside the Fun House, we walked up precipitous inclines and through low-ceilinged, attenuated corridors, where almost-human hands stretched out to wrap our ankles with supple fingers. Rubber spiders dangled from the ceiling and bedeviled our faces. Everything here was in total darkness, increasing the shivers and the prickly feeling down our spines. Finally we came to a lighted area: the hall of mirrors. There I pointed to Patty's eggplant-shaped reflection and she to my green bean physique. We mugged in front of a hundred bizarre, crazy mirrors, just having a ball. Overhead, a multicolored glass globe sprayed dazzling colors everywhere. Calliope music blared out of hidden speakers.
Then we heard a sizzling and snapping sound, like a short circuit, and suddenly all the lights went out and we were plunged into inky blackness.
"What happened?" asked Patty, less afraid than annoyed. She was enjoying her ten foot reflection.
"Search me," I replied.
"I can't see, Kevin," she said. "How are we going to get out of here? It's getting late!" We literally couldn't see our hands n front of our faces.
"Just lean against a wall and follow it to the door," I suggested. But the walls were convex and concave and bulging and covered with latex snakes and spiders and jazz, and often led into blind alleys or dead ends.
"Kevin, help me," cried Patty from a distance and she sounded panicked. Totally, not like her. I heard a sound like a door slamming, then took off running towards the sound of her voice, only to slam into one of the many full-length mirrors, which shattered spectacularly. A shower of glass rained down upon me. I bounced off and landed on my backside, my mind spinning. I touched my forehead, felt the bloody abrasion from where I'd smashed into the mirror.
"Kev..." Her voice sounded very distant now. Scrambling to my feet, I moved blindly towards the sound, my hands extended before me. Feeling my way I came at last to a corner, and beyond it a small lighted space. A single dim bulb hung pendulously from the ceiling, casting a weak light over the straw-covered floor; there I found Patty--or what was left of her. Lying upon one side, her blond hair was drenched in vivid scarlet: her blood. And protruding from her chest was a hunting knife of some kind. I gaped, started to hyperventilate, was dragged back to the present by a scream--Patty's voice! Checking the victim a second time I discovered it was in fact a mannikin. The blood looked real, though. It reminded me of a quotation from Shakespeare about there being so much blood.
I hastened away. Reaching the back of the vast tent, I charged through, came face to face with the figure on the poster at the entrance to the carnival--The Fat Lady. She was even bigger in real life than in the artist's rendering. No more than five feet tall, she must have tipped the scales at 600 pounds! And she had Patty in a death grip, clutching her round her abdomen. Surely her ribs must fracture into splinters!
The Fat Lady kept repeating, over and over, "You'd better pay for them tickets!" Yikes! Seeking to loosen the freak's grip, I pulled on her arms and shoulders, but she was terrifically strong. I couldn't budge her. She shook off my efforts.
"I'll get to you next, Cookie,"she snarled. Looking round, I saw nearby a High Striker, one of those gizmos where you slam a sledge hammer to test your own strength.
Taking up the cudgel, I slammed it as hard as I could into the back of the Fat Lady's skull, which was covered by ringlets of orange hair. There was a sound like breaking concrete. Suddenly the Fat Lady quivered, then went limp, collapsing to the ground. Patty inhaled rapidly, starved for breath.
"You alright?" I asked stupidly.
"Come on," Patty gasped. "Let's get out of here!"
"Don't you think we should call the cops?" I asked incredulously. (This was decades before the cell phone and calling would have meant finding the nearest pay phone). Patty shook her head no.
"Shes not alone, Kev." I looked frantically around, saw no one. "There are eight or ten midgets who keep her company," Patty explained. "And they're mean little turds, too! Quick, to the car." We hightailed it to the parking lot, found the old VW and climbed inside. You might think I'm making this up, for dramatic effect, but the damn car wouldn't start! No Vroom, no turnover at all, just "click, click, click." Then I noticed that the engine cover was up. The engine in a Bug was always in the rear, so I hurried to the back of the car and peered inside. A screw fastening the power cable to the starter was askew. I quickly righted it. I climbed back into the car, just in time to watch an army of scurvy-looking midgets descend on our vehicle. We quickly locked the doors and braced for the assault, uncertain how all this would eventually play out.
None of those nasty little men, all of whom were clad in lurid carnival garb and seemed to be chewing on big black cigars, appeared to be armed with anything more formidable than a rock. Suddenly one of the little devils climbed atop the shoulders of a second and then a third handed the uppermost midget the enormous sledge from the High Striker. I must have dropped it after I conked the Fat Lady. Once or twice the elevated midget tumbled from the shoulders of his compatriot, cursing fluently, but finally he gained purchase, drew back and smashed the windshield of the VW into a zillion shards of glass. He was strong for his size. The midgets next began crawling over the trunk lid, seeking to enter through the hole in the glass. But the surface of the car was slick from the rain and the assailants tumbled off again and again.
So fascinated was I at the spectacle generated by the maniacal midgets that I'd completely forgotten about starting the car. In the next instant, the engine turned over with a loud Vroom! I threw the VW into gear and we were off. The mob of horrible midgets swarmed after the car, throwing themselves before the vehicle.
I heard a couple of "thunks," indicating we'd run over several of the treacherous throng, but we'd only passed through several potholes; looking through the rearview mirror I spotted the entire army, chasing after us but growing smaller in the distance. We sped away, not pausing till we reached the Interstate and safety. On the journey home we were quiet, lost in our own thoughts.
Recovering from the shock, we moved slowly through town and saw by the clock in the square that it was nearly midnight. We were exhausted. "What should we do now?" I asked Patty. We both stared at the gaping hole where the rest of the windshield used to be, then at one another. She felt experimentally her ravaged ribs and gingerly touched the wound upon my forehead. Her hand felt warm.
"I think we should just forget all about tonight," she said unexpectedly.
"But, don't you think we should tell anyone? A cop, maybe?" I asked. She regarded me with her sky blue eyes. "Look at it this way, Kev: if you were a cop would you believe us? Besides," she added, "Let's not ruin it for next year; I can't wait to get back to that fun house!"
- © Bill Tope 2023
Bill Tope lives in Illinois with his mean little cat Baby; he has been published several score times.
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