eyes is a short, squatty young woman with a pencil neck and an extra mouth. It’s me. So is the spindly figure in the second mirror who is taller than Shaquille O’Neal.
Turning a corner, I nearly slam into another illusion of myself. I jump back. So does my double image.
The crying is more faint now.
“Lacey.” My shaking voice competes with the music, the animal cries and the never-ending laughter. “Lacey, where are you?”
No answer. I speed up, past mirrors where I look demented and mirrors that give the illusion that my body has been sliced in half. While I’m deciding which way to go, colored lights flicker on and something jumps out of an oversized box.
It’s a life-sized clown, its red lips pulled back in an unnatural grin.
A memory flashes through my brain. I’m sitting in a hard-backed chair with rope cutting into my bound hands and feet. A hood covers my head, effectively blinding me. I feel groggy but know I’m outside, because I can hear the crescendo of cicadas and the nearby wail of some sort of animal, maybe a fox.
Sharp pain explodes inside my head. Bile rises in my throat, and I fight nausea. The pain is relentless, like something is assaulting my brain. My head jerks back and forward, back and forward, sending fresh waves of agony through me. If it goes on much longer, that will be the end. I can’t survive this. No one could.
And then, suddenly, it’s over. I slump forward, my head falling below my knees, the loosened hood coming free and dropping to the ground. Fresh air reaches my nostrils. I lift my throbbing head at the same time something sharp stabs me in the right shoulder. The groggy feeling immediately intensifies.
With every ounce of willpower I possess, I fight the wooziness, managing with great difficulty to turn my head. Through lids growing heavier by the second, I get a glimpse of whatever’s doing this to me.
Holding an empty syringe is a clown, its face cloaked in white makeup and its oversized nose and mouth painted blood-red.
CHAPTE R THREE
My eyes drift closed, but I can still see the clown’s taunting grin. Something is shaking me. From a distance, I hear a familiar voice I can’t quite place. The shaking gets harder. My teeth rattle like they sometimes do during the scariest parts of a horror movie.
“Jade!” says a loud voice near my ear. “Jade! Snap out of it!”
I blink and the image of the evil clown fades to black. One more blink and the interior of the funhouse comes into intermittent focus, depending on whether the lights are flashing on or off. I’m on the floor, slumped against the cool glass of one of the mirrors.
Becky leans over me. In the artificial funhouse lights, her face appears as chalk-white as the clown’s. “Are you all right?”
I can’t make myself nod. I’m not all right. I haven’t been since last summer, when something so terrible happened to me that I buried the memories. Until now.
Because deep in my gut I know that what I just had was a memory. Even now, I can almost feel the ropes cutting into my wrists, smell the earthy richness of the outdoors and taste the acid rising in my throat along with the dread.
Becky sticks out a hand to help me up. She’s so small and my legs are so rubbery that I have to anchor my free hand against the mirror so I don’t fall.
“Come on,” she says when I’m upright, keeping hold of my hand and winding through the maze of mirrors like she’s navigated it dozens of times. Without her guidance, I’d never find my way outside where the ocean air sweeps away some of the cobwebs in my mind. Darkness is encroaching and the lights of the midway are on, the Ferris wheel outlined in a circle of white.
White. Like the clown’s face paint.
“I thought someone was dying in there!” Becky hasn’t let go of my hand. Nobody is within ten yards of us besides the guy working the ticket booth while listening to his iPod. “Why were you screaming like that?”
“I was screaming?”
Turning a corner, I nearly slam into another illusion of myself. I jump back. So does my double image.
The crying is more faint now.
“Lacey.” My shaking voice competes with the music, the animal cries and the never-ending laughter. “Lacey, where are you?”
No answer. I speed up, past mirrors where I look demented and mirrors that give the illusion that my body has been sliced in half. While I’m deciding which way to go, colored lights flicker on and something jumps out of an oversized box.
It’s a life-sized clown, its red lips pulled back in an unnatural grin.
A memory flashes through my brain. I’m sitting in a hard-backed chair with rope cutting into my bound hands and feet. A hood covers my head, effectively blinding me. I feel groggy but know I’m outside, because I can hear the crescendo of cicadas and the nearby wail of some sort of animal, maybe a fox.
Sharp pain explodes inside my head. Bile rises in my throat, and I fight nausea. The pain is relentless, like something is assaulting my brain. My head jerks back and forward, back and forward, sending fresh waves of agony through me. If it goes on much longer, that will be the end. I can’t survive this. No one could.
And then, suddenly, it’s over. I slump forward, my head falling below my knees, the loosened hood coming free and dropping to the ground. Fresh air reaches my nostrils. I lift my throbbing head at the same time something sharp stabs me in the right shoulder. The groggy feeling immediately intensifies.
With every ounce of willpower I possess, I fight the wooziness, managing with great difficulty to turn my head. Through lids growing heavier by the second, I get a glimpse of whatever’s doing this to me.
Holding an empty syringe is a clown, its face cloaked in white makeup and its oversized nose and mouth painted blood-red.
CHAPTE R THREE
My eyes drift closed, but I can still see the clown’s taunting grin. Something is shaking me. From a distance, I hear a familiar voice I can’t quite place. The shaking gets harder. My teeth rattle like they sometimes do during the scariest parts of a horror movie.
“Jade!” says a loud voice near my ear. “Jade! Snap out of it!”
I blink and the image of the evil clown fades to black. One more blink and the interior of the funhouse comes into intermittent focus, depending on whether the lights are flashing on or off. I’m on the floor, slumped against the cool glass of one of the mirrors.
Becky leans over me. In the artificial funhouse lights, her face appears as chalk-white as the clown’s. “Are you all right?”
I can’t make myself nod. I’m not all right. I haven’t been since last summer, when something so terrible happened to me that I buried the memories. Until now.
Because deep in my gut I know that what I just had was a memory. Even now, I can almost feel the ropes cutting into my wrists, smell the earthy richness of the outdoors and taste the acid rising in my throat along with the dread.
Becky sticks out a hand to help me up. She’s so small and my legs are so rubbery that I have to anchor my free hand against the mirror so I don’t fall.
“Come on,” she says when I’m upright, keeping hold of my hand and winding through the maze of mirrors like she’s navigated it dozens of times. Without her guidance, I’d never find my way outside where the ocean air sweeps away some of the cobwebs in my mind. Darkness is encroaching and the lights of the midway are on, the Ferris wheel outlined in a circle of white.
White. Like the clown’s face paint.
“I thought someone was dying in there!” Becky hasn’t let go of my hand. Nobody is within ten yards of us besides the guy working the ticket booth while listening to his iPod. “Why were you screaming like that?”
“I was screaming?”