The Funhouse Read Online Free PDF Page B

community might even extend to the horrid child-thing. Furthermore, they were more likely to side with Conrad than with her, for Conrad had been born of carny parents and had been a carny since birth, while she had been converted to the roadshow life only fourteen months ago.
    She walked.
    She left the grove and entered the midway. Unobstructed, the storm pummeled her more forcefully than it had done in the grove; it pounded the earth, the gravel footpaths, and the patches of sawdust that spread out from some of the sideshows.
    The carnival was shut down tight. Only a few lights burned; they swung on wind-whipped wires, creating amorphous, dancing shadows. The marks had all gone home, banished by the foul weather. The fairgrounds were deserted. Ellen saw no one other than two dwarves in yellow rain slickers; they scurried between the silent carousel and the Tilt-a-Whirl, past the gaudily illustrated kootch show, glancing at Ellen, their eyes moon-bright and inquisitive in the darkness under their rain hoods.
    She headed toward the front gate. She looked back several times, afraid that Conrad would change his mind and come after her.
    Tent walls rippled and thrummed and snapped in the wind, pulling at anchor pegs.
    In the sheeting rain that was now laced with tendrils of fog, the dark Ferris wheel thrust up like a prehistoric skeleton, weird, mysterious, its familiar lines obscured and distorted and made fantastic by the night and the mist.
    She passed the funhouse, too. That was Conrad’s concession. He owned it, and he worked there every day. A giant, leering clown’s face peered down at her from atop the funhouse; as a joke, the artist had modeled it after Conrad’s face. Ellen could see the resemblance even in the gloom. She had the disconcerting feeling that the clown’s huge, painted eyes were watching her. She looked away from it and hurried on.
    When she reached the main gate of the county fairgrounds, she stopped, abruptly aware that she had no destination in mind. There was no place for her to go. She had no one to whom she could turn.
    The hooting wind seemed to be mocking her.
    * * *
    Later that night, after the storm front passed, when only a thin, gray drizzle was falling, Conrad climbed onto the dark carousel in the center of the deserted midway. He sat on one of the gaily painted, elaborately carved benches, not on a horse.
    Cory Baker, the man who operated the merry-go-round, stood at the controls behind the ticket booth. He switched on the carousel’s lights. He started the big motor, pushed a lever, and the platform began to turn backwards. Calliope music piped loudly, but it wasn’t able to dispel the dreary atmosphere that surrounded this ceremony.
    The brass poles pumped up and down, up and down, gleaming.
    The wooden stallions and mares galloped backwards, tail-first, around, around.
    Conrad, the sole passenger, stared straight ahead, tight-lipped, grim.
    Such a ride on a carousel was the traditional carnival way to dissolve a marriage. The bride and groom rode in the usual direction, forward, when they wanted to wed; either of them could obtain a divorce by riding backwards, alone. Those ceremonies seemed absurd to outsiders, but to carnies, their traditions were less ridiculous than the straight world’s religious and legal rituals.
    Five carnies, witnesses to the divorce, watched the merry-go-round. Cory Baker and his wife. Zena Penetsky, one of the girls from the kootch show. Two freaks: the fat lady, who was also the bearded lady; and the alligator man, whose skin was very thick and scaly. They huddled in the rain, watching silently as Conrad swept around through the cool air, through the hollow music and the fog.
    After the carousel had made half a dozen revolutions at normal speed, Cory shut down the machine. The platform gradually slowed.
    As he waited for the carousel to drift to a stop, Conrad thought about the children Ellen would have one day. He raised his hands and stared at them,