said through her hand. “And Tanya. Only them.” She took her hand away, pressed her face to Joan’s shoulder, and hugged her tightly. “Jeremy’s my friend, Joanie. I tried to stop him. I don’t want him to die.”
“Okay,” Dave said. “We’re going through this thing the fast way.” He drew his pistol. He shouted, “Anybody can hear me better hit the deck! Hit the floor! Bullets are coming!”
Standing at the feet of the giant dead troll, he clamped the flashlight between his legs, aimed at the mirror in front of him, and fired.
Debbie jumped as the shot blasted the silence. She stuck her fingers into her ears.
Joan covered her own ears.
Dave kept firing, the Beretta roaring, jerking in his hand, walls of mirror exploding in front of him as the 9mm slugs smashed through them. Disintegrating glass flashed in the beam of his flashlight. He swept the muzzle just a bit from side to side, blasting a corridor straight through the maze.
Some forty feet ahead, a glow of candlelight appeared. The size of the lighted area grew as Dave kept firing, knocking apart more mirrors.
After thirteen shots he dropped the magazine into his palm. He shoved a fresh one up the pistol’s handle and jacked a cartridge into the chamber.
Joan and Debbie stepped carefully around the bodies. They stopped beside Dave. Looking past him, Joan saw the dark rubble of shattered glass, then a lighted hallway.
And bodies sprawled on its floor.
Dave rubbed a trembling hand across his mouth. “God,” he muttered. “I warned ’em to duck.”
“Then they should’ve ducked,” Joan said.
“Maybe they couldn’t hear me.”
“Let’s go.” She pulled the flashlight from between Dave’s legs, ducked under jagged teeth of glass, and started walking through the litter of demolished mirrors. The glass crunched under her shoes. “Be careful back there,” she said.
She proceeded slowly.
Sometimes, before stepping through a panel, she knocked hanging shards out of the way with the barrel of her revolver. She heard Debbie and Dave close behind her, glass tinkling and popping under their shoes.
Ahead, some of the people in the hallway began to move.
Roll over, crawl, stand up.
At least three bodies stayed down.
Those Joan saw rising were not kids.
Nor did they look like trolls.
She felt a chill squirm through her. Her skin began to crawl.
She remembered that Jasper Dunn used to be the proprietor of a freak show. He’d been forced to close it down after some of his freaks got loose and attacked people in the Funhouse.
He’d closed the show.
Obviously, he’d kept his freaks.
Made a home for them in the Funhouse.
Behind Joan, Dave groaned.
A hand clawed at the back of her T-shirt, peeled the wet cloth away from her skin, tried to pull her backward. In a low, shaky voice, Debbie said, “I wanta go back. Please, Joanie. Can’t we just go back?”
As Jeremy dropped into darkness, he expected his descent to be stopped with a bone-jarring crash. Instead, he landed on something springy. A net? It sank under his back, then lifted him. The taut lines quivered as he tried to untangle his arms and legs from them.
They felt gluey.
They stuck to him.
He heard Tanya gasping. To his right, and not far away. Her struggles shook the netting.
“You okay?” he whispered.
“What is this shit?”
In front of Jeremy and off to his left, a door opened.
That’s the other door, Jeremy realized. The one at the foot of the stairway.
The way out is right there.
Someone entered, carrying a kerosene lantern. Jeremy squinted as the harsh glare from the lamp’s twin mantles stabbed his eyes.
He saw that the tall cadaverous man wore a top hat and tails. Jasper Dunn.
Trolls poured through the doorway behind Dunn, crowding the small balcony on which he stood. They were oddly silent.
As Jeremy’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw more.
He saw too much.
He felt as if he were collapsing inside, shriveling into a black ruin.
The sticky cords that held him trapped were the strands of a web spread across the Funhouse basement. A spiderweb. Hanging in it, suspended several feet above the sand, were the crushed husks of people wrapped in transparent gray silk.
Tanya shrieked.
He twisted his head toward her.
Saw her writhing and bucking.
Saw the spider scurrying over the top of the web, rushing in from a corner of the basement.
A spider like the one he’d seen in Jasper’s Oddities.
But bigger. Much bigger.
Jasper’s Giganticus. Jeremy heard Cowboy’s voice deep inside the abyss of his mind. Discovered in the jungles of New Zealand.
The one in the display might’ve been this spider’s baby.
“No!” Tanya