Around another corner, a man too tall and too slender, with his head brushing the ceiling, took up the entire corner, skewing her sense of perspective all the more. His expensive suit had been expertly tailored to his dimensions. His skin was the color of white greasepaint, eerily smooth, and he had no face, just lumps and dips where his features should have been, like bleached leather stretched over a grinning skull.
He reached out for her with long, long fingers as she passed him. He had four knuckles on each finger instead of three, and they made little cracking sounds as he closed them over her shoulder. Neve ducked under his touch. The thin man followed her, stretching and grasping like fog.
“Holy crap.” She scrambled down the length of the hall, giggling madly on the edge of hysteria. She pressed her face against the wall to convince herself to stop, but it took a minute, and she kept having to look behind her to make sure the thin man wasn’t coming after her.
The funhouse seemed to go on forever, longer than Neve would have expected for its size, each corridor and turn expertly arranged to make best use of the space available.
There was one turn where the whole wall was shadowed.
“That one is yours,” Bell said.
But she couldn’t tell what was in that darkness, and he wanted her to keep going, keep taking in the horrors that he’d made.
In spite of herself, she had to admit—it was a hell of a funhouse. Like the rest of Arcanium, it was much better than any expectations, better in its details than from a distance. But she would have enjoyed it much more if she’d believed it was fake. Neve tried to convince herself that there were crimes and sins deserving of such an end, otherwise there wouldn’t be a hell, but she couldn’t. No one deserved hell on Earth. Not even the worst of men deserved some of these torments.
A man had barbed wire wrapped around his limbs, piece by piece, down to his fingers. A machine tightened each section of wire bit by bit until, one by one, something sliced through. Blood dripped like sand in an hourglass onto the tiled floor and down a drain. The man’s lips were cyanotic, but he didn’t die, though he looked like he should have.
A man with scales over his body—not scale armor like a crocodile or alligator, but the smooth plates of a serpent—sat on a throne adorned with snake skins. He wore a leather loincloth over his waist, but his lower body was all snake, a giant king cobra with a man’s torso and arms and face. His thin smile glinted with fangs. A body that appeared half-digested lay slumped at the foot of his throne.
A man posed among mannequins. Parts of his outer flesh and even a section of his skull had been removed so that he looked like an anatomical figurine.
Another bedroom-sized diorama held a collection of people who were the sum of each other’s parts. Where they lacked one, another person was sewn to them with thick black thread to make up for the lack. Neve counted seven separate bodies, but not the correct total of parts. Naked but covered with half-leotards that matched their flesh tones, they were a rubber band ball of people, a gruesome sculpture. She hadn’t seen them backstage, but it was probably difficult for them to move on their own, hard to do anything on their own. They clutched at the taut iron chains that held them in place.
She continued, peering into each window as she reached it.
A man was half-melted, a candle made of human fat and tissue, the soundtrack to his tableau one of sizzle on a skillet.
A cage encircled the head of a woman with self-inflicted scratches on her arms and legs. Her girlish dress was stained brown, red and black with unidentifiable fluids. The rubber room was torn and stained as well. The woman’s eyes were bloodshot, her teeth broken, her tongue chewed, scarred, infected. She screamed, pounded against glass, bloody murder burning in her eyes.
The man Neve recognized as Carlo hung upside-down from the hall ceiling. He swung like meat from hooks that appeared to have been put into his hips. Fake legs had been made up to look as though they’d been sliced off of him. In this case, Neve knew it was makeup, because she’d seen the stumps where his legs ended, and they were smooth, not scarred, which meant they were probably congenital.
The hall was too narrow. She’d have to duck under him or plaster herself against the wall to pass without touching him. Neve knew the gag before it happened, but she still jumped when Carlo opened his eyes wide and shouted at the top of his lungs, reaching for her. He laughed, though, when she screamed.
“Hey, pretty lady. Maybe I’ll get my hands on you next time.” He winked. “Right now, the blood flow’s all going the wrong way, but you sure do test it.”
She dissolved into giggles again, holding her hand over her heart. “You know, they say if you look at things upside-down long enough, you start seeing things right-side up.”
“I’ve never done this long enough for that to happen, but Bell keeps it from becoming a problem. Keeps blood pumping where it needs to be.” Carlo ran his hands over his chest then a little farther down, but he resisted his clear impulse to touch. “Except that. Something about crotches at eye level needing to be controlled. Can’t complain, though. This place is the only place I really calm down. When there’s not a guest coming through, it’s like meditation. Hey, boss.” He nodded at Bell as he passed.
“I don’t suppose you’re going to turn me off while I’m in here, too,” Neve said.
“Not with what I have planned for you. Go on. More to see.”
A still living and breathing man lay spread like a feast on a fancy dining room table while a polite and refined cannibal horde ate him.
A chainsaw-wielding man in a butcher apron stormed down the corridor after her, stopping only once she turned the corner.
It went on and on and on, until…
Three men had been tied down onto metal piping in front of them. In the Ringmaster’s hand rested a cat o’ nine tails. When the light in his tableau came on, he raised the whip with a livid happiness that would haunt Neve far more than any of the gore. He laid into the backs and legs of the men in front of him, sparing none of his strength. The violent sound of the heavy whip striking each man with deadly accuracy was somehow worse than the screaming.
Daylight seemed doubly bright after the persistent darkness and strain on Neve’s eyes.
Bell stepped out behind her with clear pride in his work. If he’d been going for evil, then he’d done splendidly.
“Can I ask questions now,” she said, “or am I to contemplate the mysteries while you trap me with the rest of the prisoners in your house of horrors?”
“As you already know, not all of the people who work in the funhouse are prisoners. A few of our prisoners reside on Oddity Row or walk the circus, and some of my oddities and performers participate in the funhouse. Carlo you’ve met. The Serpent King also isn’t a prisoner, and he’s one of my few temporary oddities. You’ll see more of him in due course when we start our Funhouse events.”
“That wasn’t the funhouse?”
“Different sort of Funhouse, love. Don’t let the torment of some make you believe that I put you on their level. You’ll have your own torments, I suppose, but don’t we all?”
“You believe yourself tormented?” Neve asked.
“All those who walk the Earth and beneath it are tormented. To live is to struggle.”
“How very Buddhist of you. Are you just saying that because you’re not presently having sex with someone and you think that means you suffer?”
She regretted it as soon as she asked, but instead of looking like he was going to kill her with a thought, he laughed.
“Perhaps you believe close-to-omnipotent beings shouldn’t or can’t have troubles, but you’d be wrong. You might also think that because an immortal doesn’t die, he cannot possibly experience pain. If, like Carlo, you take your hours serving in the haunted funhouse as an opportunity for contemplation, I think you’ll discover that being immortal has its own tribulations when everything else, even the Earth itself, is mortal.”
“So you’re functionally omn
ipotent and immortal. Good to know. They didn’t cover that in the Quran.”
“I am limited only by the limitations I give to myself.” He brushed the little hairs at the back of her neck that had resisted the ponytail she’d put up while Kitty had done her makeup. “The modern world has not sought demigods for many an age. It just wants a man with magic in his hands.” He slid his fingers up to the rubber band holding her hair back and pulled it loose.
She leaned her head back into his fingers, but though he arranged her hair over her shoulders, he didn’t pursue anything more, only led her to the funhouse entrance and gestured her back inside.
This time, the extra shadows weren’t present, and the soundtrack and strobes had been turned off. It was just like walking down a black-painted hall. When Neve passed Ivy Girl, she was sagging into the vines, resting, although the blood dripping down her thighs and from the corner of her mouth was real.
“The Gentleman will be your guardian. He played that role for the Spider, and he’s more than happy to do the same for you.” Bell nodded to the tall, thin, well-dressed man in the corner. The Gentleman raised his long fingers in a creepy, insectile wave.
“Is he an actual Slenderman or just something you created? I thought he was made up as an experiment in urban legends, not an actual mythological thing.”
“The Tall Man—quite different from Ciarán, by the way—has been a figure in many tales of terror throughout history. The faceless horror is another. Slenderman and creations similar to him are basically the progeny of the original bogeyman. I did not create him. He found me. Like the clowns, he prefers children, so I provide him teenagers to provoke. Unlike the clowns, his feed is far less messy. He’s not necessarily harmless, but in this environment, he’s controlled.”
“If he’s not harmless, what does he do that isn’t harmless?” Neve glanced over her shoulder, disquiet like ice chips in her lower abdomen. “He doesn’t have a mouth, not like the clowns. How does he feed?”
“Oh, he has a mouth. It emerges. But though the clowns feed upon the body, the Gentleman feeds on the mind, soul, spirit—whatever you want to call it. One can die of fright, of course, but fear and hopelessness ravages in other ways, and the Gentleman enjoys these ways. Here in the funhouse, he can’t feed properly, but he has plenty of opportunities to happily graze, so he remains. Most monsters love easy meals, and the Gentleman is no exception. Neither is the Creature, although his feed doesn’t have the Gentleman’s deleterious effect. It’s much more work for him to cause fear the way the Gentleman does without effort.”
“Monsters, then,” she said. “They’re not demons.”
“No.”
“Difference, please? This is fascinating.”
Bell smiled. “Monsters aren’t born of fire, nor are they immortal or invincible. They’re beasts shot through with what your kind would call the supernatural—magic inside them like veins of gold in stone. Some believe they come not from the evolutionary chain but from the minds of man, as much a product of his presence as pollution—the manifestations of his fears, his furies, his hatreds, created like dark pearls over the course of centuries.”
“A precipitate of human imagination. Interesting.”
“You have no idea.”
She’d been so distracted thinking about where things like the Creature and the Gentleman belonged in the great biological tree of life that she’d barely noticed Bell maneuvering her into the wall of shadows, shadows that settled around her like a blanket. She didn’t notice until his breath was warm against her cheek and he ran his hands up her arms to lift them above her head.
“Bell…” If he kissed her again, she didn’t know whether she’d be able to tell him to stop. After five days without anyone touching her and no hope for satisfaction on her own, with a man’s hands now on her skin and his body not an inch from hers, her dress so short and easy to discard, the darkness ideal for a man to take her without anyone else seeing them… It all sounded like the perfect handbasket to hell right now. Just shove her against the wall, push up her dress and slip into her without preamble or aid, kiss her breathless, touch her everywhere, take her. Smooth as a good margarita.
He didn’t kiss her, but there was indescribable tension to his body, a sense in his position that he wanted to. “You should ask our odd chef to make you one of his tequila worm margaritas, if that’s to your taste tonight.”
Neve didn’t know what to do as Bell continued to lift her hands up toward the ceiling, bringing himself closer. She was afraid he’d use that against her, but though he was playing with the fire he’d lit, he hadn’t blown on it or added kindling. Not yet.
“Do you call him an odd chef because he’s a chef who’s odd or because he’s a chef who makes odd things?” She hated how breathless she was.
“Yes.” There, the press of his lips to the corner of her mouth. But then he retreated from the darkness into the light behind him. Sweat gleamed over his forehead and his neck, though the funhouse was cool. Except for that and the dilation of his pupils, he seemed otherwise composed. “Don’t be alarmed.”
Despite his warning, she still gave a little cry as several hands grabbed hers. Then, from all sides, others grabbed her body, her waist, her ankles, her knees, her thighs, her breasts, her shoulders, her hair. Large hands, slender hands, strong grips, fondles, caresses, all at once. A light switched on, dispelling some of the shadows. It bathed her in grayish green light that matched the tone Kitty had set near her eyes.
The dress—which had been nothing but prop hands hanging from the cotton jersey—came alive and connected to a mass of writhing, stretching, reaching bodiless arms clamoring for her from all directions, seeking to pull her down into whatever abyss they came from. The prop hands weren’t rubbery anymore. They flexed, kneaded her through the cotton, every last one of them the hands of a persistent lover. They strained, yearned, savored her flesh. Moans, male and female, low enough to be appropriate for horror but easily confused for pleasure, made up the soundtrack that played by her little open tableau.
The hands pulled her head back by her hair, caressed her throat with a threat, squeezed her breasts and taunted her nipples with their palms, clutched at her thighs—but nothing direct. Hands brushed just underneath the bottom of the dress’s skirt, but no farther. The hands over her breasts could only use their palms in broad strokes, but no fingers on her nipples.
“We have to keep our funhouse teen-friendly. We show gore because they assume the gore isn’t real. But when we go too sexy, that’s when we get complaints about little Johnny getting an eyeful of pornography. I can suggest ivy running from one end of my cheerleader to the other, but it’s okay as long as she suffers. I’m afraid I can’t have you feeling pleasure so obviously. No direct contact. And that should satisfy your scruples as well, right, Neveline? No adultery with amputated limbs.”
“You really are a bastard, aren’t you?” She clenched her teeth against the sudden, unexpected stimulation from so many hands at once, when Bell’s had been the first since the strongman. When she so wanted to be touched, but more. More. But she couldn’t ask anyone to do that for her, and she couldn’t get what she wanted from disarticulated arms, because Bell wouldn’t allow her that.
“I was born of fire. It’s impossible for me to be a bastard.” But he was back to his old amusement. “You’ll find no satisfaction here, my dear, but I won’t leave you so unsatisfied forever. Until then, it’s your own resistance that denies you, not me.”
“We all have our struggles.” Neve fought not to moan with the soundtrack, which stimulated her ears the same way the hands awoke her skin in a hundred thousand mini fires to join the one that Bell had lit. “Sex is apparently mine either way.”
Bell sighed. “Human self-denial is something I will never understand. If you didn’t deny yourselves so often, I wouldn’t have to grant so many wishes. Calm down, appendages. You have all day.”
“You son of a bitch.” When she tugged against the hands holding
her arms, they held on all the harder.
“Also impossible, my dear. Ah, this brings back so many memories. You remind me of Lizzie up there, spouting obscenities at me. Can I trust you not to scream for help if I let you have your tongue? No soliciting guests while working.”
“I’m not going to scream for help, but I may be screaming death upon your head by the time the day is over.”
“Well, that’s available at the end of the day, too, should you want it.” Instead of flirtatious, though, he sounded reserved, the amusement slowly dissipating. “I’ve already told you there is pleasure in the foreplay, in anticipation, in knowing that you will not be satisfied. Use this time to revel in the pleasures you were never able to know. This tension you feel does not always have to be snapped.”
He brushed her chin with his thumb, smiling when the hand near her neck swatted him away. “They’ll also protect you from anyone who thinks that because these appendages get you, they should, too. The Gentleman will move any gawkers and voyeurs along. In every way but one, you will be taken care of. Just relax, love, and enjoy the ride.”
Chapter Six
Neve was going to lose her God-given mind. This was worse than trying to take care of herself with the toys under her bed.
Every weekend Arcanium was open, that was three straight days of teasing, of tiny shocks to every cell in her body overloading her senses.
The hands became more grasping and groping as customers passed, but when darkness returned, they softened yet intensified their efforts, the fingers slipping under her skirt just short of her panties. No matter how she tried to dip, how she sometimes begged in a whisper for them to just touch her, stroke through her folds, rub her clit, fuck her pussy, they always stayed just short of what she needed. They obeyed Bell, not her, and they had only two directives—to drive her crazy and to keep anyone else from finishing what they started.
And people did try. No matter how desperate the hands made her, Neve was astonished that people would try. The arms lunged at boys and men who laughed at their own daring. The fingers curled into hooks, blunt nails tearing at exposed skin. The visitors would yank their offending hands back, as though they’d tried to pet the nice tiger in the zoo and were surprised they’d gotten scratched. A few of them had the nerve to call her ‘bitch’ for it. If the guests didn’t go on their own, the Gentleman came around the corner, his long arms and legs oddly graceful, to chase the lingerers off.
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