visibly.
What the hell . . . ?” Richie said, perceiving the very real fear in
the phony Gypsy, baffled by it.
“Ssshh!” Liz said.
What a bunch of crap,” Buzz said.
Madame Zena was obviously reluctant to look into the crystal ball, but
at last she forced her eyes to it. She blinked and gasped and cried
out.
She pushed her chair back from the table and stood up. She swept the
glass sphere off the table, it crashed to the earthen floor, but it was
too ~ heavy to break that easily. “You’ve got to get out of here,” she
said urgently. “You’ve got to go. Get away from the carnival. Go
home and lock your doors and stay there until the carnival leaves
town.”
Liz and Amy stood up, and Liz said, “What’s all the malarkey? We were
supposed to get our fortunes told for free. You haven’t told us how
we’re going to be rich and famous.”
From the other side of the table, Madame Zena stared at them with wide,
frightened eyes. “Listen to me. I’m a fake. A phony. I don’t have
any psychic ability. I just con the marks. I’ve never seen into the
future.
I’ve never seen anything in that crystal ball except the light from the
flashlight bulb in the wooden base. But tonight . . . just a minute
ago . . . my God, I did see something. I don’t understand it. I
don’t want to understand it. My God, Jesus, Jesus Christ, who would
want to be able to see the future?
That would be a curse, not a gift. But I saw. You’ve got to leave the
carnival now, right away. Don’t stop for anything. Don’t look back.”
They stared at her, amazed by her outburst.
Madame Zena swayed, and her legs seemed to turn to mush, and she
collapsed into her chair again. “Go, damn you! Get the hell out of
here before it’s too late! Go, you goddamned fools! Hurry!”
Out on the midway, standing in a pool of flashing lights, with people
streaming past, with waves of calliope music breaking over them, they
looked at each other, waiting for someone to say something.
Richie spoke first. “What was that all about?”
“She’s nuts,” Buzz said.
“I don’t think so,” Amy said.
“A real looney-tune,” Buzz insisted.
“Hey, don’t you guys understand what happened?” Liz asked. She laughed
happily and clapped her hands with delight.
“If you’ve got an explanation, tell us,” Amy said, still chilled to the
bone by the look that had come over Madame Zena’s face when she had
peered into the crystal ball.
“It’s a scam,” Liz said. “The carnival security men spotted us smoking
dope.
They don’t want that kind of trouble on their lot, but they also don’t
want to call the cops. Carnies don’t truck with the cops. So they
arranged for the albino to give us free tickets to Zena’s, so she could
try to scare us off.” “Yeah!n Buzz said. “I’ll be damned. That’s it,
all right.” “I don’t know,” Richie said. “It doesn’t make a lot of
sense. I mean, why wouldn’t they just have their goons throw us out?”
“Because there’s too many of us, dummy,” Liz said. “They’d need at
least three bouncers. They wouldn’t want to make a big scene like
that.” “Could she have been sincere?” Amy asked.
I “Madame Zena?” Liz said. “You mean to tell me you believe she really
saw something in her crystal ball? Horseshit!n -.t,’ They talked about
it some more, and gradually ‘ t’ they came to accept Liz’s theory. It
seemed to make more sense by the minute.
But Amy wondered if it would make any sense L at all if they weren’t
half wasted on dope. She thought of Marco the Magnificent, Liz’s face
on the woman in the coffin, Buzz cutting his finger on the jar that
contained the monster. It was too much to think about, too scary.
Even if Liz’s explanation was thin, it was at least conveniently
simple, and Amy gladly accepted it.
“I have to pee,” Liz said. “Then I want some ice cream and a ride
through the funhouse. After that we can split for home.” She tickled