by Diane Hoh
“Not in this house.”
Sighing heavily, she went on to her bedroom, planning to look for her old yearbooks. Gina would get a kick out of them.
They weren’t there. Maria must have moved them. Put them somewhere out of the way, thinking Tess wasn’t coming back.
Well, if she was going to have to search the house, she’d take her Walkman with her. That way, George Michael could keep her company and she wouldn’t be disturbing Guy Joe’s much-needed sleep. Clamping the headphones over her ears and snapping the cassette player on the metal chain belt circling the waist of her jeans, she began her search.
It took a while. The last room she entered was large and dark. New raindrops slid down the small windows. She switched on the overhead light, a bare bulb with a chain pull. But she had no idea where to begin looking. The yearbooks could be in any one of a dozen boxes and trunks. There, that trunk in the corner, maybe?
Before she could open it, she’d have to unload all that junk on the lid. What were all those things, anyway? Humming to the beat pounding in her ears, she bent over the trunk and picked up the first object: a Santa Luisa High School class ring. Without the usual blue stone. And … her red leather key case! What was that doing here? Beside it lay a paper napkin, pale blue, exactly like the ones Trudy had brought to her birthday party. Her initials swirled across one corner: T.S. The tiniest traces of chocolate cookie crumbs clung to one edge.
A pulse in Tess’s throat began to beat double-time, out of synchronization with the drums pounding through her headphones.
Then she saw one more object: a large, fat, purple Magic Marker.
She stood stock-still in the corner of the room, holding the key case in her hands.
After a minute, she remembered that she was wearing the same red top she’d worn to the party. Reaching into one pocket, she pulled out the blue gem she’d found in the sand. She placed it carefully into the hollow of the ring on the trunk.
It fit perfectly. As she had known it would.
What did all this stuff mean? What was it doing lying there so neatly, so well-ordered, like … like …
“It’s like a shrine,” she said aloud, lifting the earphones from her head as she picked up the ring to look for initials inside it.
“Well, good for you,” a voice said from directly behind her. The headphones had prevented her from hearing footsteps on the attic stairs.
“Because that’s exactly what it is,” the voice, hoarse from stomach-pump tubes, said. “A shrine. To my mother, actually.”
Tess whirled to meet the voice.
It belonged to her brother, Guy Joe Landers, Jr.
Chapter 26
A THOROUGHLY BEWILDERED TESS looked up at Guy Joe. “A shrine? To our mother?”
It was amazing then, the way his face changed, twisted into something strange and terrifying, his gray eyes cold with contempt, his upper lip raised in an ugly sneer. “Not our mother, stupid! My mother!” Then, more calmly, he added, “We didn’t have the same one, you know.”
“Guy Joe, what are you talking about? Of course we did!”
He shook his head. “That’s what you think. I know better.” He leaned forward, grabbing one of her wrists and clutching it tightly. “They stole me,” he hissed in her face, “stole me right out of my mother’s arms. And now they’re paying for it! And you’re going to pay, too. Because it was your father who kept the truth from me. He was the one who adopted me and never told me.”
Tess felt dizzy. What was he talking about? Guy Joe was adopted? He wasn’t her real brother? That was crazy. She would have known. Wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t he? People told adopted children the truth now, didn’t they?
But there was something in Guy Joe’s eyes that told her he believed every word he was telling her. And it was making him crazy.
Her eyes went to the top of the trunk. The ring, the key case, the napkin with brownie crumbs … Guy Joe had put them there. Each of them had something to do with one of the accidents. Which meant … which meant …
“Yes, I did it,” he said triumphantly, reading her mind. “I did all of it, and it was easy. So easy! This town is full of fools! Greedy fools. They wouldn’t close The Boardwalk because they were afraid of losing a few dollars, so they made it easy for me.”
“No, Guy Joe,” Tess said softly, “you wouldn’t …”
“Wouldn’t what? Wouldn’t kill Dade Lewis and send the others to the hospital? Oh, wouldn’t I? It was justice, Tess, pure and simple. They had it coming, all of them. They asked for it. They were all in on it. Your father and his friends. They stole me and then they kept that truth from me. All of them.”
“I don’t understand.” She tried to back away from him, really frightened now. Because she believed him. It hadn’t been Doss or Trudy, after all. It had been Guy Joe all along. And now, suddenly, it wasn’t safe to be around her own brother. Only … only he was telling her now that he wasn’t her brother. How could that be?
“You don’t have to understand,” he sneered. “All you have to do is come with me. I have plans for you.”
She pulled against his grip on her wrist. “Guy Joe, tell me what this is all about. What’s going on? I’m your sister. You can tell me. I won’t hate you, I promise.”
He laughed, a harsh sound that echoed throughout the attic. “Sister? Don’t you get it? Weren’t you listening? You’re not my sister. You’re not anybody’s sister! Because I’m not your brother. I’m not even a Landers. My real parents were named Lila and Tully O’Hare.” He paused and took a deep breath. “And that’s all I’m telling you. You don’t need to know the whole story. All you have to do is come with me.”
“No!” she cried, every instinct telling her he meant her real harm. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”
His hand lashed out and slapped her across the face.
“You will do,” he said coldly, “exactly what I tell you to do. You’ve made enough trouble for me already. Fouling things up in the Funhouse that day! You almost ruined everything.”
Tess shifted nervously, eyeing the attic stairs. Could she get to them before he could stop her? Probably not. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
“We’re going to have some fun,” he said with an evil grin. Then he pushed her ahead of him, toward the stairs. “And if you’re thinking of screaming, go right ahead. Maria went home, and your father, in case you’ve forgotten, is at one of his precious board meetings. So yell your lungs out if you want to.”
When they reached the top of the narrow attic stairs, he gave her another push, shoving her down the stairs. He retained his tight grip on her wrist and said casually as he hurried her along, “When we’ve finished having our fun, we’re going to meet my real parents. You’ll like them, Tess. They’ll be mad at you, at first, because of who your father is, but they’ll get over it.”
Deciding that the best approach might be to humor Guy Joe until she could think of something else, she said innocently, “Where do your real parents live?”
“Live?” At the top of the wide, curving staircase, he stopped and forced her to face him. “They don’t live, Tess! Your father and his wicked friends drove both of my real parents to suicide! They’re dead!”
Then, as she stared at him in stunned dismay, he added emphatically, “And what was good enough for them is good enough for me. And you, too.”
He was talking about two people who had committed suicide. Two people who were dead. He was talking about joining those dead people, and taking her with him.
Tess’s knees gave and she slumped against Guy Joe.
He yanked her upright. “Cut it out, Tess!” he said sharply. “Come on, now. I don’t have all night. Let’s get this show on the road.”
Numb with shock and fear, Tess let Guy Joe pull her down the stairs. When he yanked open the front door, windblown rain attacked them. “Can’t I grab a jacket?” Tess pleaded. “I’ll get soaked!” If he’d let go of her wrist for just a second, she could make a run for it. Sam’s house
wasn’t that far away. Sam. How could she ever have suspected Sam?
Guy Joe snickered and pushed her out onto the porch. “You’re worried about getting wet? You really are stupid!”
When he’d shoved her inside his car and taken the wheel, he used his electronic control to lock her door. Then he yanked her seat belt across her chest, and snapped it into place. “If you try to unhook it,” he warned as he started the car, “I’ll break your arm.”
She knew he meant it. Just as she knew he’d been telling the truth about being adopted. How had he found out? Why hadn’t someone told him a long time ago? Wouldn’t that be a horrible thing to learn when you were eighteen years old? Like … like your whole life wasn’t what you thought it was. It would be a terrible shock, wouldn’t it? In Guy Joe’s case, it must have been enough of a shock to send him over the edge.
Her mind felt fuzzy, as if it were wrapped in cotton. She had to think, but she couldn’t.
“You pushed me into Trudy’s pool?” she asked, shivering in her seat.
He nodded, peering into the rain-slicked windshield.
“And the brownies, you did that, too? And then ate some, so no one would suspect you, right?”
“Clever, huh?” he said. “Miserable experience,” he added, shaking his head. “But necessary.”
“The saucer. How did you get the saucer up? And what did you do with it after you took it out?”
He laughed, obviously enjoying himself. “Those things wear out so fast they have to be replaced a lot. So they’re easy to lift up and out. A baby could do it. The one I took was right there under your feet the whole time. I just slid it onto the one beside it. Afterward I said I was going to call Gina’s parents, and on the way I slipped into the Funhouse and replaced the saucer.”
Tess remembered the humiliating walk to Mancini’s office, and burned with rage. She made one last, desperate attempt to reason with him. “Guy Joe, I don’t know how you found out what you think you found out, but you could be wrong. And even if you’re right, it doesn’t matter to me that you’re adopted. I mean, I’ll always think of you as my—”
Before she could finish he had slammed on the brakes. “It matters to me!” he shouted. “You stupid, selfish little witch, it matters to me! If you don’t understand anything else before you die, understand that!”
When they arrived at The Boardwalk and he had pulled her out into the parking lot, she felt a sudden surge of hope. She might see someone she knew, someone who could help her.
But the amusement park was deserted. Attendants in the booths and the arcades, passing the boring hours reading or watching tiny portable televisions, never even looked up as Guy Joe dragged her toward the Funhouse. No one paid the slightest attention to them.
Except Doss Beecham, who looked up from the high stool he was sitting on in one of the shooting galleries. But when he saw who was passing by, he barely nodded. She couldn’t blame him, after the way she’d treated him. He looked unusually pale after his ordeal of the night before. If only she could signal him that Guy Joe had been behind all of it. But Doss was no longer looking her way.
“Don’t you even look at him!” Guy Joe ordered under his breath. “He can’t help you.”
Maybe if she’d been nicer to Doss, he would know her well enough to sense that something was wrong, and come to her rescue.
Too late now.
Too late, too late, too late …
The attendant in the ticket booth for the Funhouse never took his eyes off the baseball game on his portable television as Guy Joe quickly paid for two admissions and pushed Tess ahead of him.
“Go ahead and scream,” Guy Joe said cheerfully when they were inside the empty Funhouse. “Screaming in here doesn’t mean a thing. No one will even notice.”
She knew he was right. And now she was alone in this dark and frightening place with someone who had caused the death of one person and had hurt a lot of others. And there was no one to help her.
“Take your shoes off!” he commanded.
“What? Guy Joe, I can’t go through the Funhouse in my bare feet. It’s hard enough with sneakers on.”
He laughed. “You’re so stupid. You’re worried about your feet?”
She waited, knowing instinctively that she wasn’t going to like what was coming.
“Tess,” he said softly, his cold eyes on hers, “didn’t I make myself clear?” He stooped to untie and slip off first one of her sneakers and a sock, then the other, using only one hand. His free hand imprisoned her ankle as he performed his task.
When she was barefoot, he stood up, recapturing her arm. “Little ex-sister,” he said in that same soft voice, “this Funhouse is the last place your feet will ever touch.”
He smiled down at her. “Because this is where you’re going to die.”
Chapter 27
AS THEY CAME OUT of the dark entryway into the first lighted chamber, Tess fought desperately against Guy Joe’s grip, tears of frustration and fear streaking her face. “No!” she screamed as he dragged her into the nylon-padded tunnel with the rolling wooden floor. “No, Guy Joe, stop!”
But he ignored her, pushing and pulling at her until her bare feet slid onto the rolling boards.
She tried to plant herself firmly in one spot, but without shoes it was impossible. Clutching at the billowing black nylon fabric that made up the tunnel’s sides was equally useless. The loose, black, silky folds waved this way and that, eluding her grasp.
Feeling like a helpless puppet, she continued to struggle. Guy Joe stood on the wooden walkway, watching her, amusement on his face. “I don’t know exactly where my father died,” he said in a friendly voice, “so I’ll just have to pick my own spot. But first,” he added with a wicked grin, “we’ll have some fun. Isn’t that why they call this place the Funhouse?” He chuckled, a sound that sent shivers of fear down Tess’s spine.
“Guy Joe, please …”
“Guy-Joe-please, Guy-Joe-please,” he mimicked cruelly. “Please what?” He stared at her, his upper lip curled in a menacing sneer. “Is there something you want, Tess?”
As Tess tried to cross the chamber, she fell twice, landing first on her back, then on her elbows, smacking them sharply against the wood. Guy Joe laughed each time. When she had finally made her way across, she stepped onto the solid wood floor to find Guy Joe waiting for her. He pushed her onward.
The padded rolling tunnel was next. Her bare feet slid on the nylon fabric underneath them. She was tossed to the floor repeatedly as the tunnel bucked from side to side. She felt dizzy, her head was pounding, and her whole body ached from falling down.
“Guy Joe,” she gasped as she fell again, “why are you doing this? I never knew you were adopted. I would have told you if I’d known. I wasn’t keeping anything secret from you.”
“I’m doing it because you’re his child!” he shouted. “His real child! Can’t you see that I’m really punishing him, or are you too dense to make the connection?”
“But he’s not even here,” she argued. “He doesn’t know anything about this!”
“Ah, but he will.” Guy Joe smiled angelically. “It’s all in a journal I left behind. Everything that’s happened is in there, including our little adventure in here. In graphic detail. He’ll know what fun we had before the end.”
The end? She didn’t want to die.
“Now get up!” he shouted, angry again. “Quit stalling!”
She stayed where she was. Why should she make it easy for him? She stretched out on her stomach, full-length, on the tunnel’s padded floor. Let him come and get her. Maybe in a struggle, she could somehow get the upper hand.
“I’ve decided to hang both of us from those two skeletons in the middle chamber,” he said, friendly again, as if they were planning an outing. “Won’t that be a hoot for whoever finds us?”
“Hang us?”
“Sure. Like father, like son, right? My father did it. Said so in his obituary. I looked it up at the library. Didn�
��t say where, exactly. The writer was too squeamish, I guess. So I get to pick the place. And I choose the skeletons.” Taking a penknife from his back pocket, he ripped a long, narrow strip of nylon from the tunnel’s side. Then he tore a second strip and stuffed it into the pocket, along with the knife.
Suddenly, without warning, he jumped onto the padding and grabbed Tess, looping the nylon strip around her neck.
“Now get up!” he commanded, tugging on the strip around her neck. “Or I’ll finish you off right here!”
They entered the chain-walk tunnel.
“Guy Joe,” she croaked, the nylon pulling too tightly on her throat, “I can’t go across those chains in my bare feet. I can’t!”
Still holding the nylon strip in one hand, Guy Joe gave her a shove, sending her onto the links. Balancing properly was impossible and she fell again and again into the meshed circle of metal links.
“See,” Guy Joe said happily, “what I’m going to do is tie this end of your rope to that hook the skeleton dangles from. You’ll be standing on the railing when I do that.”
Tess tried desperately to grip the metal with her toes. It was impossible. Down she went again, slicing one of her toes as she fell. She cried out, but Guy Joe ignored her and went on talking.
“Then you’ll jump,” he went on matter-of-factly. “Bye-bye, Tess, easy as that. Then it’ll be my turn. Isn’t it nice that there’s one skeleton hook for each of us?”
“I won’t jump!” Tess cried. “I won’t!”
Guy Joe shrugged. “Okay. You don’t have to. I’ll just push you.”
He meant it. She knew that. Whatever Guy Joe had learned about himself, it had stolen the brother she knew and replaced him with this person who had no conscience, no qualms whatsoever about taking her life and his own. She had to do something to stop him.
Tess struggled across the remaining chains. When she was on the wooden platform, she said, “I can’t walk, Guy Joe. I’ve cut my foot.”
Guy Joe bent to glance down at her foot, giving Tess just enough time to grasp the chain belt at her waist, unsnapping the clasp. In one smooth motion, she yanked the metal belt free from its loops and swung hard, whipping it down across the back of Guy Joe’s head.
