Chapter Five

 

 

 

Bell sat on one of the outdoor picnic tables where Elizabeth had been eating her meals instead of backstage. He sat the way he moved, the way he considered, the way he touched—all casual grace and deceptive danger.

“It’s time to show you where you’ll spend your weekends—a little tour of the funhouse before you become a part of it.”

“If you’re planning to take me into that haunted house, you’re going to have to drag me in by my cold, dead body.” She discarded the rest of her breakfast—seeing Bell stole any trace of appetite.

He jumped down from the table to join her.

“It’s always a pleasure to engage with the real you.” He brushed his fingers under her chin and lifted it to force her to look at him. “But nothing gets in the way of my circus, not even a rebellious woman resentful of her own rebellion.”

“The last time I got near that place, the outside was enough to make me shudder, and you fucking well know it.”

“Why do you think I’m putting you inside?” Bell’s crooked smile made her want to punch other parts of him crooked, too.

“Why not just put me on Oddity Row with the rest?” It wasn’t where she wanted to be, but it was worlds better than a haunted house.

“Oh, you’ll have your place there, in your own way.” His scrutiny stole the robe from around her body. No matter how tightly she wrapped her prime arms around herself, she couldn’t hide from the knowledge in those lantern eyes. She could have sworn they were a simpler hazel when she’d met him. “But not during the weekends. You’ll serve the house better. It’s where I want you when the circus opens today at two o’clock.”

“That’s in only three hours.” Everything was happening too fast. There weren’t enough years in the world for her to be ready.

“We have plenty of time for a tour. If I have to make you dance for me, I’ll do it, but I’m not fond of puppeteering.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Have it your way, Lizzie.” He curled his fingers as though playing an instrument she couldn’t see.

And she was the instrument. He jutted her hips forward, her spine moving on the hinge that hadn’t been there when she’d been normal. It eased some of the weight off her lower back and placed it on the secondary legs. They could only stand on the balls of their feet, but they were no longer on tiptoe to brace themselves on the ground.

As he dragged her along to walk with him—and as she tried to resist, with no effect whatsoever—she made a mental note on how he made her move, the way he’d created her to move, for her own ease and to appear more spiderlike in her gait. Her hips weren’t used to it yet, though, tired by the time they arrived at the haunted funhouse.

“Don’t call me Lizzie.” Elizabeth adjusted her robe, which had spread obscenely over her legs when Bell had taken the reins.

“Because that’s what your ex called you? Or because that’s what your father calls you?”

Elizabeth refused to dignify the question with a reply.

“I don’t call you that just because it irritates you. Elizabeth is your mask, my dear. She always has been. Lizzie may have lived the worst of you, but she’s truer than anything Elizabeth pretended to be.”

“Don’t you have a funhouse to show me?” Elizabeth crossed her prime arms. Her secondary set were still bound with a leather belt Troy had let her borrow so she could properly use the robe belt where it was supposed to be.

He swept his arm toward the entrance. “Absolutely. After you, milady. I’ll be at the bottom of the stairs in case you fall.”

What a goddamn gentleman.

After what she’d gone through over the last week, the haunted house seemed less imposing from the outside. If the Creature was there, he hadn’t yet made himself known. But she still hesitated at the door handle, because however cheesy the funhouse looked on the outside, the inside would be quite different. Bell wouldn’t accept anything less than terror in a haunted house of his own making. What would be the point of a demonic circus if the horrorful heart of its carnival side lacked bite?

And once she got in, any anger left for Bell would dissipate. Fear would return, as childlike and powerful as ever.

Elizabeth hadn’t always been afraid. Oh, there had always been things she was afraid of. Spiders had scared her since she was three, and she’d had an ongoing night terror about a monster living under her bed for most of her prepubescent life. But afraid hadn’t been her nature, not even after the stories Charity and Temperance had told her or the tales her father had spun at the pulpit in the name of love and truth.

Everything had changed once she’d changed—when she’d grown eight inches in a year, developed breasts, sprouted hair where it hadn’t been before—when everything had become awkward and the world had expanded. When the colors of the world had started to fade and lose their luster. When she’d finally understood what her existence meant in the center of their strict religious community.

She couldn’t blame it all on her biological father, her mother or her mother’s husband, who’d been little more than a resentful authoritarian figure in her life in comparison to his real daughters. Something inside her had changed. She didn’t know what it was, but it was as though her child’s curiosity had wobbled then turned topsy-turvy. Anything unknown no longer filled her with wonder and questions but with creeping dread that had tightened the muscles in her back into tree branches, while the rest of the fear dug its roots in deeper every year.

She’d leveled out about the time she’d run away, when her fear seemed this close to being controlled. Then she’d learned there was no controlling it. It just lay in wait before it attacked.

Seven years later, she’d begged to return to her parents’ world. There was fear there, too, but the Petrosian world was smaller, and so her fears became smaller, too—as long as she didn’t think too hard about what she was doing.

Nothing to do here in Arcanium but think, and what came after every thought was fear. Because Bell brought the wonder, the awe, the curiosity, the amazement that a cynical YouTube world couldn’t always understand, with its virtual reality and CGI and video hacks. As a member of the cast now, Elizabeth saw the other side of the awe. For all the old-fashioned tricks and sleights of hand, Arcanium was real.

And when she walked into the haunted funhouse, that would be real, too.

She turned the handle and stepped in. Bell came in right behind her to close the morning light away. The darkness of the funhouse wasn’t absolute—where would the fun be in complete darkness where you couldn’t see what might kill you?—but it was close enough. Once her eyes had adjusted, she could discern the distinct, dark-colored lights illuminating the halls, beams of blue, green, red, purple, strobes to disorient.

“I turned off the sound system.” He slipped past her into the narrow hall. “For you, I’ve no need to preserve the illusion that the screams aren’t genuine. What I do need is for you to know what I didn’t do to you. There might be a hell here, but while you’ll be a part of it, it won’t touch you. It matters to me that you understand this.”

“Lots of pretty words, Bell. Not going to make me believe you.” She darted her gaze from corner to corner, where the colored lights had been strategically focused to avoid, and where the strobe lights only illuminated in partial-second glimpses.

“I know. Follow me. Nothing would hurt you even if I wasn’t here, but if it makes you feel safer if I stand between you and my haunts, I will walk before you.”

He called them ‘haunts’, as though they were little more than ghosts in his crazy carnival ride. And he called them ‘his’.

“Here we go,” he murmured.

When they rounded the corner, her body threatened to freeze up. He took her hand to keep her moving forward. She stumbled through each plodding step as they approached a man in the shadows.

The man was tall, his bowler hat brushing the acoustic tiles on the ceiling, and his arms and fingers long, reaching to his knees. His frame was far too slender to be that of the Tall Man, who was only a little taller but more proportional. The man’s funereal black suit had been tailored to his alien form, accentuating rather than normalizing his elongated limbs. Lack of limbs, extra limbs, long limbs, short limbs—the universal shorthand for weirdness seemed to be a funhouse mirror perspective mingled with mangled anatomy.

The tall gentleman leaned down from his great height, his pale face clarifying the closer he came, but no matter how clearly she could see him—down to fine hairs and pores and even a few freckles—a face never came into view. He had a brow ridge, cheekbones, chin, eye sockets… No face.

He made no sound, but his non-face came within inches of her own, and if Bell hadn’t been jinn, she might have broken the fingers holding onto her hand. She might have broken them on purpose if he’d tried to reassure her once more that there was nothing to be afraid of, which was probably why he didn’t. He just moved her forward and around another bend.

They passed a few doors and interior windows that had been boarded up.

“I like to keep my options open for new inspiration to strike. We’re always under construction here,” he said. “I think it adds to the uncertain atmosphere.”

“If I die of shock, I’m coming back and tormenting you for eternity.”

“I welcome the company, my dear.”

Cobwebs and thin fabric draped from the ceiling—no point messing with the classics, especially with the full-sized rope web that had been constructed to cover an entire wall where guests rounded a corner. Eerie black spider legs emerged from the shadows, but no spider emerged with it.

“We’ll come back for this once you’re all dressed. The web is for you, little Spider. The Gentleman unsettles them. The Spider gives them a good jump scare. And now things really get interesting.” Bell led her beyond the spiderweb, dragging all four of her feet along the dark linoleum tiles.

“I don’t want to see.”

“I know.” Compassion infused his voice, more insulting than if he’d been cold and unforgiving. “But you will.”

When they didn’t have boards to cover them, the windows weren’t windows so much as walls that had been cut away and replaced with Plexiglas. As they crossed the threshold between wall and window, surgical lights switched on to show a body strapped to a metal table. The young man struggled helplessly against leather bound taut across him. He’d been stripped down to his boxers. Tears streamed down his temples.

“Please, please, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please let me out! Don’t cut me! Don’t cut me again!”

When the ambient soundtrack was on, the cries probably blended in with assorted screams, wails and cackles. But without any other sound to detract, anguish strained through the broken voice.

A figure stepped forward—a doctor wearing a mask that covered the lower half of his face and black-edged goggles over his eyes. His white scrubs and white latex gloves were sterile and blinding under the lights. He brought with him a gleaming surgical tray lined with scalpels.

“No. No, you can’t do that,” Elizabeth said. “You let children in here.”

“You’d be amazed what you can get away with when people think it isn’t real,” Bell replied.

Eating breakfast seemed like a terrible idea now. She placed a hand on the wall behind her to brace herself against the creeping, quivering wave of nausea. Shivers ran up her spine and over her scalp. She managed to swallow back the urge to vomit, but she didn’t know how long that would last. “I let Todd walk through here.”

“He’s a well-adjusted boy with a solid grasp of what’s real and what isn’t—or at least what shouldn’t be. What he didn’t know didn’t hurt him.”

“But it is real.”

“He couldn’t know that.”

He pushed her free hand away from covering her eyes as the doctor lifted a scalpel from the surgical tray, brought the edge to the concavity beneath the ribs, then sliced down the middle of the guy’s abdomen. The blood was too red, the line too perfect—too easy to dismiss what she saw as fake. But the boy’s screams became less coherent. He sucked in his belly, as though that would help him escape from the blade.

Elizabeth turned away again, only to be confronted by a woman in a bloodstained old-fashioned nurse’s uniform. Her mouth had been split open to her ears and forced into the semblance of a smile. There was pain in her eyes, which was the only way Elizabeth knew this was a real woman rather than a demon, but Elizabeth still screamed and scrambled around Bell, tripping over her own bare feet. The nurse stretched her dripping, bloody hands to both Bell and Elizabeth in imploration, but Bell cast her away, holding his palm up to her like a vampire hunter with a cross.

The nurse bowed back into the shadow, pleading silently with Elizabeth. But she lowered her eyes when she noticed the four legs beneath the hem of the robe. Help wouldn’t come from another victim.

The light in the operating theater darkened on the doctor making a horizontal incision under the ribs, his goggles and mask splashed with a line of blood.

Bell led her onward. They passed a boarded door frame then stopped in front of the next illuminated window.

Another man had been bound, but this time shackled to the ceiling and floor, stretched taut as though prepared to be quartered. The roar of a chainsaw heralded the entrance of a large man in ripped clothing and a black butcher’s apron.

The chained man was also gagged, but Elizabeth spoke for him. “No. No, please, no. Don’t…”

The chainsaw split through the man’s thighs, adding new stains to the already blood-soaked room. The light in this room wasn’t nearly as clear and clean as in the operating theater. A dark, rich red glow camouflaged the full extent of the splatter from an unknowing gaze, and it made the exposed flesh and bone seem much more unreal. The way the legs jittered and kicked on the ground added to the unreality.

All eight of Elizabeth’s limbs, not to mention her entire abdomen, seemed filled not with their own flesh and bone but cold jelly. If Bell hadn’t urged her forward, she would have collapsed. Then she might never have been able to stop watching the man unable to scream as the triumphant butcher cut him down into parts.

“You sick motherfucker, let me out of here. I’ll sit in a tent. You can even bring out the spider legs and the rope, but I can’t be in here. I can’t. I just can’t.” She scratched at her face, at his arm where he held her, at his hand, over her scalp. She didn’t know why it all made her itch, but she paused when she realized she’d scratched through skin, collecting stained patches underneath her nails.

“They’re trapped here for as long as I decide to have them.” Tenderly taking the scratching hand in his own to keep her from doing any more damage, Bell moved them back into darkness that now seemed unbearably soothing—unbearable, because she knew what was on the other side of the darkness. Just because the rooms went dark didn’t mean the violence ended. “They’re here because they tried to hurt or kill the people of Arcanium, the ones I swore to protect. They would have disfigured, crippled, raped, slaughtered what belongs to me, for the sole reason that they dared to be different.”

“So you punish them like this for doing exactly what you do?”

“You and I disagree on definitions. I alter those I bring into the circus by idle or deliberate wishes, but I only disfigure the punished ones. I will not rape, and although some trespassers become fodder for those who consume human meat, I do not slaughter. If you cannot yet see the difference between what I do to you and what happens to them, give me more time.”

A little girl—or something that appeared like a little girl—ran down the hall, but when it looked up, its face was that of a bearded man with his mouth closed around a pink plastic pacifier.

“The foolish believe that because we wander, because we differ, we must be weak. I have lived many lives. My memory provides as clear a picture of the past as of the future. When I look at these…pigs, I see what they tried to do to my people. I see what would have happened if they had succeeded. The Ringmaster once accused me of not understanding the purpose of a dungeon. A dungeon was never something I wanted to make of Arcanium, but watching their suffering pleases me. It might also alleviate their debt more quickly than the others, although I doubt that reassures them.”

He trailed his fingertips over the next window. Bodies had been strewn over each other in a dehumanizing tangle, their diseased skin disintegrated, twisted, fused with the others. They were naked, but the flesh fusion hid where nudity would have been prohibitive. Giant cockroaches crawled over and through them, inside them. Maggots squirmed in the open wounds, wriggling over the deadened flesh.

The chorus of their groans tortured Elizabeth’s ears. Bell let her cover them, but only because it didn’t shut the sounds out.

Puffs of air that mimicked tiny paws ran over her bare feet and legs to introduce the next room, where giant rats with glowing red eyes crawled on and nibbled at hooded men tied to chairs over a drain, a single pendant bulb swinging over them.

The halls continued with uneven, distorted perspective like German expressionist hallucinations, with sloped floors and ceilings and corner angles not quite at ninety degrees. It seemed impossible that all of this could exist within the size of the haunted funhouse, but Bell probably wouldn’t confine himself to something as plebeian as square footage.

A man covered in thick, coarse fur lumbered through the hall like a werewolf.

A man—so many of them were men, and Elizabeth didn’t think that was a coincidence—fought against the straitjacket that strapped him to a wall. He screamed and wrenched from things Elizabeth couldn’t see.

A woman with a tentacle-like tree vine thrust down her throat hovered above the ground, kicking against the tendrils that tangled around her and emerged from her skin, from her nostrils, from her ears, from under her fingernails, as though it grew out of her. Her arms, legs and face had broken out in rashes wherever the oils of the vines touched her skin.

Three zombies shuffled past, snapping their teeth as though they could smell flesh but couldn’t see where it came from.

After a while, each actor and tableau blended together like the pile of flesh-eaten bodies. There was always another corner, another window, another open door, another shadow. Elizabeth begged him to stop, stop hurting them, stop making her see it, nearly incoherent pleas spilling from her lips. But like those of the victims, they fell upon deaf ears.

“And here’s the reason the Ringmaster quite happily remains at Arcanium now, in addition to the privileges afforded him with Kitty and Maya. It seems fitting that most of the men I collected for the funhouse come from the night their ringleader came for Kitty.”

A darkly attractive man with tan skin and facial hair like the devil himself stood above five subjects, their shirts removed and trousers low on their hips to provide a broad expanse of flesh. The victims knelt with their hands bound close to a metal hitch made of plumbing pipe. One of the boys looked directly at her, sweat shining on his pallid face, his light brown curly hair matted and tangled, his fingernails dirty. Their mouths were all duct-taped.

The Ringmaster, resplendent in gilded red regalia, lifted the bullwhip clutched in his fist. He brought it down with practiced precision upon each boy’s back, one after another. He grinned with wicked joy, black eyes an even greater contrast against perfect white teeth. His victims twisted, writhed, shouted as welts appeared on their previously unmarked skin. Blood seeped to the surface, smearing when the whip would strike them again.

“Most of my prisoners rotate among the funhouse horrors. I never let them become comfortable or accustomed to any one scenario. Of the many I punished before creating the funhouse, only the Cyclops and the Rotting Man have failed to flourish. The human mind is capable of adjusting to almost anything.”

Elizabeth staggered away, toward the bright red Exit sign. She climbed down the stairs leading out of the haunted funhouse, gasping as though all the air had been sucked from the building. She swiped at Bell for trying to help her down, then fell to her knees, retching. She didn’t throw up. The heaves dissolved into coughs that wracked her like sobs.

At the leathery flutter of wings behind her, she grabbed a hard clump of dirt from the ground, twisted back toward the funhouse and threw it right at the Creature’s forehead where he reposed over the exit. The dirt missed him, but he scurried back on the roof with speed that belied his size.

Bell jerked her back to her feet by an upper arm before she could find another projectile, holding her almost off the ground with one hand alone. “None of that. If you insist upon flinging your feelings at things, throw stones at me, not the Creature, who has done nothing but follow his nose.”

“He reaps suffering. Something that does that can’t be good, can’t truly be harmless.”

“Spoken as someone who shed their vegan principles as soon as I stripped away the guise of religion.” He let her down but didn’t let her go. “Does suffering taste better these days when seasoned with your own?”

“I’m not going back in there. I’m not going to be a part of this. You can’t force me to do that to other—” She stopped herself.

“I’m glad you realized better on your own. I would have truly hated to demonstrate my mastery of your body once more.” He pulled her back around the haunted funhouse and toward Oddity Row. “You have until opening to collect yourself. If I thought you’d get into your costume yourself, I’d let you go, but as it is, Kitty’s ready to help you whether you like it or not. And if you resist or engage in the sort of childish nonsense you’re entertaining, which I assure you Kitty would not appreciate, I’ll put you back under my control until I’ve bound you to the spiderweb.”

“I was right the first time.” Elizabeth didn’t actively pull back, but she also forced him to pull her forward. She’d show him childish. “You’re a monster.”

“I’m inhuman. There’s a slight difference.” He pushed her into the back of Kitty’s tent, but the gesture seemed playful rather than impatient. “This one is not having a good day, Kitty. She needs a brisk pace and a gentle hand.”

The whole back of the tent was like the funhouse, bigger on the inside than it seemed on the outside, and it was filled to the brim with costume racks, a mirrored Hollywood vanity and tubs and tubs of makeup and accessories. Behind the costume racks was a large cot that indicated Kitty also slept there.

Kitty glanced up from where she was putting the finishing touches on the conjoined twins’ conjoined hair. “I’ve already talcumed the latex. I’ll be right with you. If you want something approaching privacy, you can undress and start pulling on the suit behind the costume racks.”

“I’ll be waiting for her outside.” Bell stepped back and lowered the tent flap.

Elizabeth considered it. She really considered shoving Kitty into the vanity, throwing her makeup all over the costumes and fleeing out of the front of the tent. She considered finding something sharp and mortally wounding anyone who got in her way. But Bell staying outside the tent quashed any thought of rebellion, because she knew he was as good as his word. She’d walked through an entire funhouse of torture chambers to that effect.

 

* * * *

 

She would have thought that a full latex bodysuit would be its own brand of hell, but as soon as the clearly custom black latex had been put in place over her four arms and four legs and the mask had been pulled over her bald head, the material melted against her skin like butter and moved easily with her. The material didn’t breathe and it threatened to trigger her claustrophobia, but it wasn’t quite as uncomfortable as she knew latex could be.

When Elizabeth had been encased in her bodysuit, Kitty stepped back, tilting her head. “You have a remarkable complexion. I’m only trying to figure out the best direction to go with your makeup.”

Elizabeth brushed past her to the vanity and started searching through the giant makeup kits that some of the people in her other life might have envied. Normally, she wouldn’t go through another woman’s makeup, but as far as she’d been able to tell, disease wasn’t something Bell would allow in his perfect machine of a circus unless he’d been the cause of it.

“If you told me what you were looking for…” Kitty began.

“I said I didn’t want your help. I can do this myself.”

After Elizabeth found everything, she got to work. The vanity lights were as good as the ones she’d used for Dez’s photoshoots. Nothing but the best for a jinni’s pet cat, apparently. The makeup was even better quality than she’d once used.

Once she’d finished, Elizabeth stared at her reflection. Her skin wasn’t as smooth as it had once been, but avoiding sun and eating a cruelty-free diet had done her more than a few favors—in spite of her usual evening vice. With the help of makeup specially made for skin some liked to call porcelain, plus generous application of black liquid eyeliner and black lipstick, she almost couldn’t tell the difference between what she’d looked like under Dez’s lights and now in Bell’s circus. Looking at herself in the mirror was like meeting a stranger for the second time.

“That’s more dramatic than one might have expected from someone who clothed herself so modestly,” Kitty said. “If I hadn’t already suspected you had a more extreme background…”

Elizabeth resisted the urge to wipe the lipstick off with the back of her hand. “I told you, this isn’t the first time I’ve done this.” She tossed the lipstick onto the vanity with the liner, mascara and foundation. “I’ll need these again.”

“I’ll put them in a case for you. The rest will be available if you want them. Elizabeth, are you going to be—?”

Elizabeth shoved herself away from the vanity and left the tent without another word. As she passed Bell, he fell into step behind her, all the way back to the funhouse.

She froze at the foot of the stairs leading to the entrance. She couldn’t go back in. She just couldn’t. Her legs wouldn’t move.

Bell said nothing about it. Forcing her to adopt the easier but foreign spider walk up the stairs and into the funhouse again seemed more an act of pity than punishment.

At the spiderweb, the rope bindings unwound down to take Elizabeth by all eight of her limbs, wrapping around wrists, ankles, elbows and knees then drawing her into the spiderweb like tentacles. She settled perfectly into the slight concavity of the ropes, like leaning into an upright hammock. The spider legs from the darkness seemed to come from her, a too-many-legged creature shrouded in shadow.

“You won’t get away with this forever,” she said.

“I’ve been traveling the world in my little circus for a few centuries. Even before acquiring the circus, I was always an entertainer, granting wishes for my own amusement and the amusement of those around me. I could quite literally get away with this forever.” He smoothed his hands down her prime legs, from thigh to ankle. She twitched all the way down. “When a guest comes down the hall, the spiderweb will automatically tilt toward them. All you have to do, my dear, is scream.”

“Why did you want me to get my new arms and legs tattooed if you were just going to put me in a latex fetish suit that covered them?” Elizabeth asked.

Bell raised his eyebrow in a sardonic arch. “Would you prefer to show them off in the slightest of your wardrobe?”

She just glared.

“The time to expose your limbs will come soon. But this is where you’ll stay during the carnival’s open hours. At eight o’clock, when the circus performances begin, your bindings will release you.”

“Do I get a break? How am I supposed to use a bathroom in this web? Hell, how am I supposed to use a bathroom in this suit?”

“You won’t need anything from the moment the web takes hold of you to the moment of your release. I’m not that sadistic, not even to my prisoners.”

If he kept making her glare at him like this, her face was going to stick that way. It especially felt like that under the latex.

“Just like that, little Spider. Just like that.” He stroked the boning in her latex corset. She jerked against her bindings, snapping her sharpened teeth. Bell didn’t jump or indicate any kind of surprise. “Good girl. Scare my guests well.”

She was going to kill him, even if she had to use a plastic fork in order to do it. God would forgive such a death.

“Remember. You’re here to enjoy yourself.”

 

* * * *

 

Elizabeth knew the second the gates opened, because that’s when the screams stared. Not the real screams, the ones that had branded themselves forever in her mind, but the ones that came from the speakers—screams of the damned, moans of those driven hopelessly insane, wails of a million sorrows, enhanced by creepy music that shifted from music box to harpsichord to string quartet to theremin. It was the Halloween soundtrack of the century, and it added a patina of artifice to the house of horrors Bell had created.

Personally, Elizabeth didn’t understand why he called it a funhouse. Who exactly was it fun for? Not the victims cursed to play out their mortal violence again and again, yet denied the mercy of death. Not the guests who went through to scare themselves silly—at least not a funhouse kind of fun. Only the Ringmaster could be said to have any sort of fun in a place like this. Maybe the Creature, who stayed outside the building but enjoyed the fruits of it nonetheless.

It took some time for the guests to show up after the soundtrack began. They had to pass Oddity Row, the midway, the fortune teller tent and the food booths before they could reach the funhouse.

Screams quite different from those coming from the tableaus or the sound system woke Elizabeth from her half-doze. She’d been hanging her head with her chin almost to her chest, but now she looked up. Anger was exhausting, and too many screams all bled together after a while. These differed because they were interspersed with nervous laughter and the sound of conversation—a few members of the group ribbing the ones the Gentleman had scared more.

Within her shadows, she saw them before they saw her.

Once they noticed something in the darkness and squinted to see it better, the strobe lights switched on and the spiderweb thrust forward. The spider legs clacked against the walls, her struggling, bound limbs meant to look more arachnid in the shiny black latex.

She tried to tell them, “Get out! Everything is real! Get out and get help! Call the police!”

But Bell had taken her words. All she could do was scream with all of her might, her voice among the real and false that permeated the funhouse. The group of young women stumbled back, shouting, clutching their chests. Then they laughed in relief and stared at her, taking in the sight of this banshee-like Arachne. They marveled at every last of Bell’s details before moving on. She screamed after them, writhing against the rope binding her to the web, but they paid her no more mind, not when there were other haunts to see.

And so it went, from solo scares to couples clutching each other close to boys who really deserved to be poked by the business end of one of the spider legs when they tried to poke her. She actually had to nod at the Gentleman, unsure whether he could see or acknowledge her, for corralling the boys away. Oh, she’d scared them silly when the screams had ripped from her throat, but once they’d realized she was bound to the web, that had made her easy prey for revenge-bothering by boys posturing for their friends.

Bell was true to his word in all other ways. She never needed to pee. Her stomach never growled. No matter how still the bindings kept her, her muscles never ached or protested. And despite the violence of her screams, they did nothing to damage her throat.

It horrified her that she was part of a torture chamber. But when the lights dimmed further, the sound system turned off and the bindings released her to fall to the floor—somehow easier with more hands and feet to break the fall—what she hadn’t expected was how cheap she felt.

She lowered herself into a sitting position, her four legs splayed out and her secondary arms limp at her side. The limitation upon her tongue had loosened along with her ropes, but she still couldn’t speak. She just slumped there in the shadows and struggled to breathe as she cried. Muffled sobs from the other released victims in the funhouse rose and fell through the corridors like the moaning of ghosts.

As soon as there was nothing left to cry, she climbed shakily to her feet and stumbled back out of the entrance instead of going all the way through to the exit. The Gentleman had disappeared or already left, so she didn’t have to endure anything or anyone as she escaped the funhouse and ran past the booths, tents and big top to the caravan. Christmas lights hung between posts around the RVs and trailers. It was all so cheery, false, brown, solitary. She slammed her hands against the side of her RV and threw up next to one of the tires.

When she climbed into the RV and turned on the light, there was a bottle of her whiskey on the kitchenette counter. The note beside it read, No hangover.

“You bet your ass there won’t be a fucking hangover. You owe me that much,” she muttered.

She peeled the latex from her body as though shedding skin. Any sliminess she felt came from emotions rather than sweat. Naked and unable to care, she took the bottle with her to bed and didn’t bother to count the swallows.