D

by George Right

  What became of the ill-fated boy was unclear. Some said that he died in the hospital of blood poisoning. Others said that doctors saved him, but, as they added, mournfully shaking their heads, "It would have been better for him if he had died, much better.” It was known for sure only that soon after his accident his family left town.

  This terrible story–and the mass outrage of the town's parents caused by it—made the city authorities demolish the scorched ruins at last. The grounds remained vacant for many years, enclosed by a chain link fence; the tin plates fastened to it which promised a penalty for trespassing and for garbage dumping rusted and peeled off so badly that their stern warnings became almost unreadable. Several times the site was offered for sale, but the town's businessmen, knowing its history, weren't eager to set up their businesses there. Over the years, however, the gloomy story of the meat factory was remembered less and less and many young people of the new generation, including Jane (who had just reached her eighteenth birthday), never even heard about it. And now, apparently, the grounds were leased to the traveling carnival.

  The idea to come here in the morning also belonged to Jane, as she hoped that mornings would have fewer visitors. And she had been right–the carnival was almost deserted. Most likely, the reason was not so much the almost-forgotten reputation of the grounds as much as the cloudy and windy weather and the lack of advertizing. There were no lines to get on any of the rides, but it was necessary to wait for another reason: the workers didn't want to run their whirligigs and cars half-empty and wouldn't start the rides before a number of customers had gathered.

  This didn't discourage Jane. Nothing prevented her from chatting cheerfully with Mike, who of course wasn't content with the role of purse keeper and willy-nilly accompanied her on her dizzying rides. The young people consistently paid their tribute to all spinning and twisting units, excluding only the simplest carrousels for little kids (but, certainly, including "Sky Ship" on the long bar which made the loops so disliked by Mike; at the top point, hanging upside down in an open cabin, Jane shrieked, and then began to laugh loudly; Mike only nervously squeezed the safety bar and thought "when will this end?”); practiced in accuracy, shooting with air-rifles and crossbows and throwing balls in a ring; tried to walk inside transparent plastic spheres floating in a pool (it turned out, naturally, not so much walking as falling); made a "space flight" in a cabin with a screen, which was shaking and heeling in all directions according to the action on the screen; ate cotton candy and popcorn; were photographed dressed as pirates and cowboys with the corresponding scenery in the background; wriggled in front of fun house mirrors and...

  "Well, looks like we've done everything here," Mike uttered, glancing towards the exit.

  "Wait," Jane objected, once again stopping at the carnival map near the cash booth. "Hmm, it does look like everything," she disappointedly concluded.

  "So, let's leave?”

  "First I need to pee," declared Jane; she didn't trouble herself with euphemisms like "to powder my nose." Having found the restroom icon on the map, she resolutely moved in the chosen direction.

  Mike didn't have the same need. While cola was sold at the carnival, it was ice cold, and on this overcast day Mike hadn't wanted any, while Jane drank up a big plastic cup. So he remained in place, absent-mindedly looking around. By 3 p.m., the carnival gradually had become filled with visitors. They were mostly parents with little children or they were small companies of boys about twelve or thirteen years old. Adult guys with their girlfriends, like Mike and Jane, were still rare–they would come closer to the evening... Reacting to the increase in visitors, disguised barkers appeared in the thin crowd. One of them, a fat clown with a red smile drawn on his white face, seemed to feel Mike's gaze from a distance of several yards and suddenly turned to him, conspiratorially winked and beckoned him with a finger.

  Mike politely smiled as if to say, “Thanks, mister, but I already visited your tent.” The clown nodded as if he understood, turned and moved away, but then looked back and beckoned again.

  "What does he want from me?" Mike wondered and even looked back, checking whether there was somebody behind him to whom the clown had been gesturing. But he didn't see anybody looking towards the clown. Mike looked towards where the clown had been, but didn't see him any longer–probably the barker had disappeared behind the backs of the walking visitors or entered the nearest tent. Very well, let him disappear. There was something unpleasant about this character, though Mike couldn't say what exactly. However, he had disliked clowns since his childhood, finding their appearance not at all funny but ugly.

  Jane had disappeared somewhere, too. Why is she dawdling so long? Probably there is a line waiting to get into the restroom. Mike slowly moved in the same direction his girlfriend had gone–and in the same direction, as he understood a second later, the clown had beckoned him. Mike gazed around in order not to miss the girl and realized he would feel calmer if he could see to which attraction the clown enticed people. Fun house, probably? But it was in the opposite direction... For an instant it seemed to Mike that he saw the clown directly ahead once more, but in the next moment the barker disappeared again.

  Without having seen either the red-lipped fat man or Jane, Mike reached the restroom area located in the farthest corner of the carnival. There were mobile booths, not a stationary building. And there was no waiting line there. Actually, there was not a single person.

  Mike looked around. Just a moment ago the crowd around him had rustled, rides' mighty electric motors had roared, girls had shrieked as they rose head over heels to the sky, wild buffoonery tunes had played–and suddenly he found himself absolutely alone, in a completely desolate part of the former waste grounds. Actually, why former? Here it didn't look former at all... No, the fun was still near; choral squeals, persuasive melody and the clap of air-rifles reached his ears–but he was separated from all this joy by the wall of a long shed with a stenciled black inscription "Employees only" across the door, a trailer with lowered window blinds nearby, a long truck next to it (probably one of those which carried the equipment), one more behind it... This part of the grounds overgrew with rigid bushes which were cut only partially; toilet booths were, of course, on the cleared patch, but right behind them the thickets shot up above human height. To the left of the booths, a recently embedded wooden post stuck out, which, however, had neither a lamp nor a loud-speaker. In the grass under Mike's feet a plastic bottle unpleasantly crackled–apparently it had lain here for years. Slightly farther a yellowish scrap of an old newspaper could be seen... But where was Jane?!

  "Mike!"

  He startled and looked about. The girl appeared from behind the booths.

  "Good that you came. I knew that we hadn't visited everything here yet!" she stated with a happy look.

  "Yeah, exactly, we hadn't visited the toilet," Mike grinned.

  "Forget the toilet! Come here.”

  The young man took several steps, bypassing toilets at the left, and saw behind them a narrow pass which led somewhere into the thickets. But Jane pointed to the post. Now Mike made out a small sign hanging on it. On a plywood sheet a thick black contour of an arrow was drawn, and inside it it was written in deliberately sloppy red letters: "CAVE of HORROR" Below the arrow was a very naturalistic print of a blood-stained palm. The arrow pointed directly to the pass.

  "One more attraction? Here?" Mike skeptically looked at the narrow path between prickly bushes. Usually such paths lead, at best, to a garbage dump.

  “Yes. Let's go!" she impatiently grasped his hand and pulled him along.

  "What for?" Mike resisted. "Like, you've never seen anything similar before. They'll just ride you in a car through a shed filled by plastic skeletons and vampire dummies, flashing red lights and howling loudspeakers... it seems to me, such a primitive display doesn't affect even children anymore. In the movies all that looks much more plausible.”

  "Well, now that we're here, shouldn't we look? Maybe it has s
ome good special effects!" Jane was quite decided about it and the young man, having sighed, followed his girlfriend.

  As far as Mike understood, the surrounding fence should have been very close, but the path appeared longer than he expected–for some reason it was wedged through the interlacing prickly branches in a very winding way. But then, at last, bushes parted–and the couple indeed saw a chain link fence. Behind it, the same bushes densely grew, too. But on the inner side a wide spot was cleared, and there stood one more building.

  It looked like all of them in any carnival. A long shed decorated with paper-mache stones in an effort to make it look like a cave; the forward wall was covered with garish images of corpses, skulls, bats and freaks with blood-stained hatchets. Above this all–the attraction's name in convex red letters, stylized to blood streaks and obviously highlighted from within in the evening. Below–the rails on which cars enter the "cave" at the left and exit it from the right.

  There were only two cars and they were just preparing for departure; the forward one was occupied by a mother with a boy about eleven, who surely was a big fan of horror movies and the initiator of the ride (the woman herself had a displeased look); in the back car a single young guy, swarthy, with long black hair, was taking a seat. The attraction worker–thin, with a loppy dark mustache, dressed in an old-fashioned black suit–a living image of a provincial coffin maker from an old movie–was waiting, with his hand on a knife switch, until the last passenger sat down.

  "Wait!" Jane shouted, quickening her pace. "Wait for us! " The cars were four-seater so there still was room for them.

  The "coffin maker" raised his head and looked at her and Mike; the girl, approaching, stretched to him a ticket bought at the cash booth which granted the right to ride all attractions in the carnival during this day. But he only shook his head:

  "A separate ticket is required for us, miss.”

  "Separate? What the hell? We paid for everything..." Jane began to argue, but the worker mildly interrupted her:

  "Those are the rules, miss. There are some formalities. You have to sign a paper," he smiled an apologetic mournful smile, clearly showing that personally he, of course, considered all this as nonsense, but this was the will of his bosses. Mike noticed that there was something old-fashioned in his manner of speech, too.

  "Paper?" Jane became puzzled. "What paper?”

  "You see, our attraction is really frightful," he highlighted the word "really" with his voice. "Some clients consider that it is too frightful. Therefore, in order to avoid complaints...”

  "Well, all right," the girl gave up. "Where can we get tickets and sign this paper?”

  "At the cash booth, miss," he pointed with his hand, emphasizing that he meant not at all the main cash booth of the carnival. "At our cash booth.”

  Jane and Mike turned right and indeed saw a booth with a window. The "coffin maker" meanwhile turned the switch and the cars, having abruptly started, disappeared in the black mouth of the “cave.”

  Mike and Jane approached the cash booth and bent to the window. The person sitting inside seemed unpleasant to Mike from the very first look. Unshaven and tousled, he looked too slovenly even for his modest position and his left eye, significantly squinting somewhere aside from under the heavy eyelid, only strengthened the unpleasant impression.

  "Twenty dollars," he responded to a request for two tickets. "And you have to sign here," he offered them two sheets of paper.

  "I am visiting the attraction 'Cave of Horror' of my own will, having received this warning and assuming all risks," Mike's eyes slid through his copy of the text. "Except for cases of technical malfunction of the attraction, the administration and employees of the carnival bear no responsibility for possible moral, mental or physical damage which may become a consequence of my visit to the attraction, as well as for the case of my disappearance..."

  "What kind of bull is this?" Mike exclaimed indignantly.

  "Oh, never mind," Jane waved his objection away with the look of a life-wise person. "It's an advertizing gimmick, don't you understand? To frighten us in advance... Do you have a pen, mister?" she addressed the cashier. He gave her a pen with an indifferent gesture.

  "Wait a moment, don't sign! " Mike exclaimed. "What do you mean by 'advertizing gimmick?' Do you understand that these pieces of paper relieve them from any responsibility for any accident there inside?"

  “Oh, what accidents?" Jane objected. "That's not a roller coaster or a 'Sky Ship' after all. You said yourself–they'll give us a ride in a car between dummies... what can happen to us?”

  "You never know! Short circuit, for example. Or some scarecrow could fall on our heads...”

  "But it says here–'except technical malfunction!' And also, do you really think that if somebody really disappeared here, they would have gotten away with it, whatever pieces of paper we've signed?"

  "And how often here do, well, disappearances happen?" Mike asked the cashier, trying to give a derisive tone to his voice.

  "Time to time," the squinty-eyed man unperturbably answered. Jane burst into laughter and put a flourish on the sheet.

  "Come on, Mikey," she jabbed her elbow into his side. "Don't be chicken."

  "I'm not chicken at all!" Mike was indignant. "I simply don't like this silly piece of paper or all this foolish business. To pay them twenty bucks moreover... it's actually a swindle–when we bought the tickets, we weren't warned that there are rides for which they can't be used..."

  "Well, let me pay for you," Jane pulled out her wallet from a pocket of her jeans. The unsaid end of the sentence–"if you are such a cheapskate"–was as clear as if it were written in the air in an oval near her head, like in comics; so Mike muttered "no need" and with an angry look wrote his signature.

  At the very same time a heart-breaking scream came from within the “cave.”

  The pen jerked in Mike's hand, leaving a virgule on the paper.

  "Aha, and you said–even a child wouldn't be scared! " Jane vindictively reminded him.

  "Well, of course–recorded screams from loudspeakers," grumbled Mike. "Only it was too loud and unexpected. If it was so loud here, I bet those inside were totally deafened."

  Actually there was something else that confused him. The shout full of horror and pain sounded too natural. Well, however, if the owners of the attraction had hired a good actor... Yes, that was the main strangeness–an actor, not an actress. Such cries are always female: the girl in monster's claws is the tritest cliche of the genre... But this shout was male.

  Having received the money and the signed papers, the cashier issued them two tickets. On a low-quality gray paper it was printed:

  CAVE OF HORROR

  You will SCREAM!

  We guarantee it.

  Below small letters added:

  Discount at revisit. Bring your friends!

  Mike hemmed, derisively shaking his head, and the young people went towards the building. Just when they approached, the exit doors of the "cave" swung open, and the car rolled out. Only one car.

  The one in which mother and son sat. The child's face and rounded eyes shone with excitement. The woman, on the contrary, was deadly pale and looked as if she was barely constraining nausea.

  "You shouldn't show such things!" she said between her teeth to the "coffin maker" as she tried to get out from the seat; her long dress hindered her. "Especially to children!"

  "Ma'am, you signed the paper that you were warned and have no claims," the worker sadly reminded. "And it seems to me your son doesn't have any complaints, too"

  "Wow, it was cool!" the boy immediately confirmed.

  "Keep the ticket," the worker smiled at him. "You will be able to ride again at a discount. And if you also bring a friend..."

  "No riding again!" the woman angrily interrupted. "And you, Cyril Parker, I'll talk with you at home! About what you read and what you watch if you can like... such..." she, at last, coped with her dress and stepped from the platform to the gro
und. Immediately after that she turned towards Mike and Jane. "Get out of here before it's too late, you two," she uttered categorically. "It's... disgusting. Now I probably won't be able to eat for several days..."

  But Mike didn't look at her. He was looking at the second car which, at last, left the “cave” at high speed, crashed with a clang in the already vacated first one and stopped.

  The car was empty. And all splashed with blood.

  On the seat where the guy once had sat, sleekly gleamed a whole pool which seemed almost black. And from the board of the car something hung down, long and fibrous... Hair. Black tufts stuck together with blood.

  That's not real blood, Mike reminded to himself. Just paint. All this is scenery, part of the attraction. But where did the guy go?

  "Ma'am! " Mike called the woman who was already stepping away, without looking back, dragging her child by hand; even her back expressed outrage. "Where is the young man who sat behind you?"

  "But isn't he..." she turned back; her glance fell to the second car, and her eyes widened, though from such a distance she hardly could have made out the details. "I don't know what's going on here," she murmured. "You had better demand your money back."

  "Didn't you hear his scream? It was he who screamed, wasn't it?" Mike insisted.

  "There were many screams... Come on, Cyril!"

  And they disappeared among high bushes.

  "Okay then," the young man turned to the "coffin maker." "Let's consider that you almost frightened us. Now where did you put that guy after all?"

  "I am afraid that he has gone," the “coffin maker” made a helpless gesture with an apologetic smile. "This happens sometimes."

  "What do you mean by 'has gone?' Where has he gone?"

  "It is a cave of horror, you know. Sometimes people don't come back from there. Especially if the car detaches or gets trapped in the tunnel."