I screamed like a little girl because no one said these “tunnels” were going to lead us into a giant freaking warehouse. Bolting in ahead of the twins, I got the first benefit of bright light and a lot of noise. Manical laughter.
Oh, and a fifteen foot giant fortune teller who practically jumped out and blocked my path. Sure, I was expecting something like that. But this thig was huge, much too big. And it wasn’t some nice Gypsy or even an old crone. This was more like an Arabian genie, a leering monster with bad teeth. Oh, and no eyes. Fortune telling is always better without eyes.
And somehow his robes were flowing…and reaching out. So, scream was the order of the day. And, making a bad decision worse by running even further into the warehouse, looking for someplace that wasn’t all lights and recorded cackling.
Ellen was hollering somewhere behind me. I know she started out laughing, and she’d better not deny it, but now something was wrong. Wonderful. But I was getting away from that horrifying fortuneteller. There was a carousel or merry-go-round, I forget which is which, and I ran straight at it. Safe choice, I figured. Soon as I got there, it lit up and I could see it was the kind that has a deranged bear to ride on. A bear that lost an eye in a fight with a screwdriver. What was it with missing eyes?
Oh. It started spinning. Of course, and the music too. I’d seen an old movie with an out of control carousel. It ended badly. I jumped off but the fucking thing sped up, just enough to throw me off. I landed on my feet but crashed into a bunch of crates.
Which, naturally, started falling. How did I know? It’s not like I could see them. I heard. And I heard Ellen’s useless shriek: Ellis! Crates. Also heard this:
Ow! Ow! Ow! That was Ellis.
Crash, crash, crash. Presumably the crates, and since I was still alive, Ellis must’ve rescued me one more time.
I looked up. Ellis was holding his fist, then shaking off the pain. The crates were bigger than I thought.
“Hey!” I snapped. “No one can be that strong!”
“No one is,” Ellis said calmly, even though he was breathing hard. “I just hit them the right way.” The annoying carousel music was still going on. Insanely I wondered if the bear’s missing eye was on purpose. The mind is a funny thing…
Ellis’s comment was funny, too. Punched them the right way? Somehow, that seemed worse than if he’d caught them like one of Ellen’s superheroes. Three crates, all lined up, one-two-three, in a straight line. Three feet from my rather excellent landing. So, yeah. Ellis gave them real Goldilocks punches, yes sir. Just right.
Ellis’s breathing was normal again. He looked at me and I looked back.
Please, his eyes said. Please don’t ask any more questions.
Know what? That was just right for me. I’d had enough.
“Listen, you two, I am really super impressed with all of these monstrosities Manny dragged back from Europe.” And who wouldn’t be? I could now see some of the other exhibits and a few posters.
Das Puppentheater des Grauens, Puppet Theater of Horror, how lovely. Le Labyrinthe Maudit, French, but obviously referring to a maze guarded by half-rotted corpses standing at attention at the entrance. Dance of the Damned, another French thing with a lantern, a boat with dead people in it. More German treats…The Child of Evil and The Black Circus.
“The Black Circus isn’t that good,” Ellis said.
“Oh, of course not,” I said. “This isn’t a Midway! That’s where you know, get people to throw away beer money tossing ping pong balls into fishbowls. And, look, I didn’t bring a change of undies so maybe we can hold off on any more surprises for tonight?”
They looked at me, understanding the words but not really the meaning.
“Guys!” I snapped. “Can we possibly just go upstairs and just be kids at a carnival for a while?“ The light dawned. The twins smiled and gave me one of their trademark delighted looks. Like I’d suggested we go play a nice round of checkers.
“I know!” Ellis said, beating Ellen to the punch. “Hoops game. I’ll score us some beers.”
They were so competitive for my attention. Ellen was going to object, but the word beers won her over. Me, too. Of course, I would have bet anything that Ellis never used the phrase “score us some beers” in his life.
“Fine,” Ellen said. “Haunted Factory next, though. I’ll take Ronnie and get a soda.”
Whatever. Anything to get out of here. Ellis headed further into the warehouse. He practically vanished, moving so fast the shadows out there didn’t have time to light up. There will be questions, Ellis. Next time.
But for now, Ellis was gone, and Ellen led me back the way we came. I turned for one more quick look behind. The crates…one of the ones I’d knocked over rattled a lot when it landed and almost opened a bit. You could tell it had been opened plenty of times and renailed, possibly with Ellis’s head. The labels were weird, like they were written by someone who didn’t know German.
Achtung! Vorsicht! Behandle, als wär’s dein eigenes.
Warning! Be Careful and handle as if it were your own! March 11 (or November 3, I guess) 1974 was scrawled in the corner.
I grabbed all those details without losing my place right next to Ellen. I didn’t care how or if those pieces fit the Foster puzzle. Nearly a week, and no solution. This was…some vocabulary word…unprecedented. Yes, that was the word. And no point in asking what was in the crates. The twins were way too cagey. Paranoid, like their mother.
.***
I was relieved to see that there was a real Midway after all. Even ping pong ball goldfish games. Ellen bought a large soda without asking me if I wanted one. She poured a bit of it into a trash can and put the lid back on loosely. Well, there was some secret plan here.
She gave me a little smile.
“You’re not going to believe what he can do,” she said. She was probably right about that. This was a clue, too. Second only to her finding a boyfriend, she was quite invested in Ellis getting paired up. No mystery there. What did that guy say? Sometimes a cigar is a dick, or something like that.
“They are perfect,” Ellen said, indicating the shambling crowd. “Excited, full of drugs and alcohol, excited, and ready to be plucked,”
“Wait. Stop. Are you telling me you deliberately interact with these cretins?”
No answer. We sailed down the row of games until we found the basketball shoot. I’d always heared this was a totally rigged game, and it drew guys who could shoot a real ball into a real basket, but…well, they were suckers.
And unless I was mistaken, Ellis had a little crowd of them going. I was ready for that change of pants all over again. He was surrounded by a small thong of young men you could spot anywhere. Recent high school grads who were, for now, on top of the world and unaware that incarceration was their destiny. The biggest of them, Future Inmate One, had a girl with pink hair on his arm. Pink Hair couldn’t have been older than us. Pretty clear, then, what kinda charges Future Inmate One would be dealing with.
Right now he was pissed at Ellis.
“Come on, man!” Future Inmate snapped. “You were doing so well.”
“Be quiet,” Ellis said, more pissy than I’d heard him. “You want the doll or not?”
Pink Hair spoke up just as Ellen and I sidled up to Ellis. She stated that she very much did want that doll, thank you. Pink Hair drolly added that her boyfriend would take it out of Ellis’s hide if he didn’t come through.
Future Inmate looked a bit uncomfortable. So did the skinny, acne-faced kid running the Hoop Shoot, as it was called. Ellen was up to something.
She spilled what was left of the soda on the ground.
“Damn it!” she shouted. The acne-faced kid looked around for a towel. Moving with surprising quickness, Ellen snatched a paper posted within the booth before the kid turned around with a roll of paper towels. She palmed in on me. Apart from her C- acting job, it was all pretty well done. I looked down at the paper.
It was a grainy picture of Ellis. Oh, how could I miss this? They were hustling. Amazing. The Foster twins were hustling a little group of juvenile delinquents. Which made them – us – J.D.s in our own way. I was more of a smart mouth than a rulebreaker, but I was totally impressed.
However, something had caught Ellis’s eye. I couldn’t see that far, but it was like someone or something was heading our way.
“We need to make this fast,” Ellis said. It was amazing how he did that, I would swear only Ellen and I could hear him.
Ellis popped two shots in a row. All net. He got a well-earned nod of appreciation from the model citizens we apparently were working for.
“Great shot, one more round and you win the big prize,” the skinny operator said, handing Ellis a stuffed snake. Pink Hair wasn’t having that.
“You were supposed to get the doll, dummy,” Pink Hair said. Future Inmate One, still a bit embarrassed by her mouthing off, shushed her. I could tell right away this guy really wanted the big prize and wasn’t going to get physically hostile. I liked that. They were all bigger than Ellis, but no doubt Ellis could handle any one of them. Three, plus the little brat? Not interested.
“Fine,” Ellis said to the skinny guy. He put another five bucks down, and nine phony basketballs rolled his way. Ellis turned to Future Inmate. “I get you two big dolls, we get two rounds of beer. Deal?”
Future Inmate laughed. “Sure,” he said. “You bet, guy. You sink all nine, and we’ll work that out.”
“You mean you’ll do it,” Ellen said. Future Inmate nodded.
“That’s a total of six,” I said.
“It spoke!” Pink Hair said.
Ellis froze. Everyone froze. Even Future Inmate One, who noticed the look on Ellis’s face.
“Quiet, Brooklyn,” he said. “Past her bedtime.”
That got a laugh, except from Pink Hair.
“It’s Brooke!” she snapped.
Ellis looked over his shoulder. Then he stepped back.
“All right,” Ellis said. “Here we go.”
“Uh, there’s a limit of two big prizes per person,” the operator said. Everyone glared at him, except for Ellis, who just smiled. He handed the skinny guy back the stuffed snake.
Ellis stepped back. There was a reason for it, not just showing off. It put a lot more people between us and whoever was heading our way.
“Here’s my four shots,” Ellis said.
He popped them in as fast as Ellen could get him the ball. Then Ellis turned to Pink Hair.
“Over here, Brooklyn,” he said.
“It’s Brooke!” But she trotted out to where Ellis was, not forgetting to wiggle her ass.
Ellis placed the ball in her hands.
“Just hold it,” he said.
“What the hell?” I asked Ellen.
“I don’t know,” Ellen said. “Maybe he’s going to toss her through.”
“Wouldn’t mind seeing that.”
Instead, Ellis stepped to the side and tapped the ball from underneath. It sailed out of Pink Hair’s hands and banked into the hoop. He did it three more times. The next shot would win “her” the doll.
“Uh oh,” Ellen said. “Hurry up, Ellis.”
Two Carnaval Midway guys were heading in our direction. One of them, an overweight guy with a whistle under his neck, was looking right at Ellis.
Ellis ignored him and tapped the ball out of the girl’s hand again. It sailed in, a swish.
“You won!” Ellen shouted. “Way to go, Brooklyn!” She waved at us to take up the chant.
Way to go Brooklyn! Way to go Brooklyn!
Whoever the overweight guy was, he didn’t have much of a chance of fighting through the crowd. The skinny kid handed over a second absurdly large Barney doll and shrugged at the overweight guy, who was fighting to get through.
We bailed, following Ellis’s warning to Future Inmate One not to forget about our beer.
“I can only buy one round at a time,” he said.
“We’ll wait,” Ellen said. “Don’t forget about us, though.”
We bailed. Sure enough, the smallest of the young thugs brought three beers. I tried it. It was pretty strong by my standards. Ma had the typical Old World attitude that beer was liquid bread and good for children. But I was used to small beer. This went right to my head.
“You guys were amazing,” I said. “Especially you, sport,” I said. I swear he blushed. “So is this Haunted Factory as scary as the European Midway?”
“Worse,” Ellen said.
“Then I’ll need to hit the little girl’s room before we go,” I said, finishing my beer. Ellis pulled me aside for a second. I could hear what he said, but Ellen couldn’t.
“Ellen is just really, really cautious. Next time, Electron space. You’ll see Lincoln. I promise.”
Whatever that meant. But…a ‘promising’ start. A pun…oh, God. Anyway, Ellen wasn’t fooled. She glanced back at us suspiciously, but didn’t comment. So on to the Haunted Factory.
It wasn’t scary – it was terrifying. Chaos, zombie workers shambling around and running after people. Like the scairdy chick I now knew I truly was, I spent most of the ride with my face buried in Ellis’s chest. But that wasn’t so bad. And next time, I was gonna see Lincoln.