Funhouse (39 page)

“Now I don’t know about that, but ya seem to me like a man who would benefit from settling down with a good woman and maybe having a few kids whilst your seed is still good.”

Although he was still afraid, his anger took control.

“Look Mr Candy, I appreciate you putting me up and all, but I’m uncomfortable with this.”

“
With what?” Clayton said, feigning surprise.

“
With this entire matchmaking thing. I’m happy as I am, and as much as she seems like a lovely person, I have no interest in settling down here in Candyland with your daughter or anyone else.”

Christine’s lip began to tremble, and she stood and hurried across the room, ornaments shaking as she hurried out of the room and upstairs. Norton knew he had gone too far, and he looked at Clayton, who was gritting his teeth and glaring at Norton with the most pure and uncompromising fury he had ever seen. In fact, Clayton Candy looked about ready to explode.

“Excuse me a moment.” He hissed, tossing his napkin down on his plate and following his daughter out of the room. He heard Clayton ascend the steps and attend to Christine, who was wailing loudly.

He made his decision then to leave. The entire situation was all wrong. And besides, he had heard those three words hissed by Candy to his daughter, and he didn’t intend to stay around long enough for it to happen. He glanced to the kitchen door, knowing that beyond was the back door and freedom. He could get to the road if he went straight across the desert, and he was sure that neither of the Candy’s was in any sort of physical shape to give chase. He got to his feet and hurried to the kitchen, pushing through the door.

His intention was to head straight outside, but what he saw froze him in his tracks.

Herb was in the kitchen. Or more accurately, what was left of
Herb. His upper torso was on the counter, the lower half absent. The over tray was on the kitchen table containing one of his legs, a huge chunk of the thigh missing which although he hated to acknowledge it, matched the joint that had just been served for dinner. He vomited, only just managing to get his hand up to his mouth, but his recently consumed meal still spattered on the kitchen floor. He realised then what Clayton had meant when he said the people of Candyland were entirely self-sufficient.

They were cannibals.

He staggered across the room, those three words he had overheard earlier made him even more afraid than he already was.

Just kill him.

That’s what Clayton had said, but whether it was meant to have been applied to him or a precursor of what happened to poor Herb, Norton wasn’t about to stick around to find out. He charged across the room, almost slipping over in his own vomit, yanked open the door and charged down the porch steps. It was cooler now, and he ran, the exhilaration of feeling the air against his skin reminding him of being back on the road, before Candyland even existed. He was moving across open land now, making for the road which was looming on the horizon. He looked behind, half expecting to see Clayton giving chase, but he was simply standing at his kitchen door, watching Norton run. He turned back to the task in hand. Keeping his eyes on the road and enjoying the physical exertion of running when his leg exploded in pain. He fell, screaming in agony, his calf feeling as if it were on fire.

The bear trap was locked in tight, its steel teeth embedded deeply into Norton’s flesh. Blood welled up and then spilled over, turning the sandy earth dark as it flowed. He had never known pain like it, and with shaking hands he tried to pry the jaws open, but even just to touch it sent waves of hot agony racing through him. He couldn’t move, and as he looked about him, he could see more of them. A minefield of bear traps set between Candy’s house and the safety of the road, all hidden and partially buried under the loose earth.

You ain’t never getting out of Candyland now.

Herb had been right. It seemed he knew well enough what happened in Candyland. Perhaps that’s why he was in a wheelchair; perhaps he had tried to escape from Clayton and had paid for it with a broken back, and eventually his life. Norton gritted his teeth and tried to drag himself across the desert, but movement of any kind reignited the fire in his lower leg, and he was forced to give up, lying there helplessly and watching as Candy strolled across the desert towards him. He was whistling and smiling, sidestepping on occasion to avoid one of his hidden traps. His shadow fell across Norton, and he was grinning that same lion’s grin, hands on hips as he breathed hard from the exertion.

“It didn’t have to be this way Mr Norton. I just wanted to make ma daughter happy. I know ya suspect what is happening here, but it ain’t like that. I love ma children, all of them. And you will learn to love ma daughter Mr Norton. I can guarantee ya that.”

“
I just want to go home.” Norton said, feeling light headed from the agonising pain in his leg.

“
You are home.” Clayton said with a sympathetic smile. “Ya will learn that eventually. They all do.”

Norton
blinked, the memories of that day still fresh in his head. His leathery hands worked the grill, making sure the meat was cooked. He had long ago stopped questioning where it came from, and tried not to think about it when he ate it. His eldest son, Jed, walked over to him, asking if he needed any help. He shook his head, watching as the fifteen year old returned to looking after his brothers. Norton’s other seven children frolicked and played. He wasn’t convinced that they were all his. At least two of them looked like their grandfather, Clayton. But that was how things worked here in Candyland, and he had learned the hard way not to question it. He stood and stretched, watching as his wife, Christine waddled towards him, her weight now over four hundred pounds, and the years doing nothing to help her looks. Norton’s youngest son was held against her flabby stomach, clinging to her dress and watching Norton with eyes which looked remarkably like Claytons. She was in charge now, and although Clayton was still alive, he was on his way out, and when that happened, he would return to the group. There were no funerals in Candyland, because nothing went to waste.

He glanced down at his one good leg, then at the other, which was absent above the knee. That one was his own fault, he had tried to escape again, and that time when they caught him, they made sure he would never be able to try again. He set down his tongs, picked up his crutches and limped out of the green, moving towards the rusted shell of his Cadillac, as he always did on the anniversary of his arrival in Candyland
, he then stared at the road, which cut across the horizon and looked open and full of possibilities for those who were free. Every time he saw a shimmer, a flash of metal reflected by sunlight, he prayed that whoever was driving paid no heed to the signs or the demanding way in which they were written, and drove past Candyland and onto wherever they were heading. Christine stood beside him, and linked her flabby arm through his thin one, and helped him back to the barbecue, back to his life in Candyland, which was now all that Bill Norton would ever know.

I always used to like reading author notes in short story collections. I used to enjoy hearing a little bit about the thought process behind the stories and gain a little insight into the mind of the author. I wasn’t sure if I was even going to include notes of my own. They had been in and out of the book in various forms during the editing process, which actually took a hell of a lot longer to do than I initially expected.

Even when I was young, I loved writing short stories. There is something about being able to leap straight into the meat of the story without waiting for two hundred pages for things to get going. Even though my first book,
Dark Corners
was a collection of short stories, they were interconnected, which meant that I wasn’t afforded the kind of freedom to pretty much go and do what I wanted to in the same way as a regular collection of stories.

It was during the process of working on my first (and only at the time of this writing) feature length novel,
Whisper
, that I started to think about putting a new collection of shorts together. I had plenty of them kicking around in the archives, stories which I thought people might like to read. During the early stages of editing
Whisper
, I took a closer look at what I had.

Some stories had aged well, others, not so much. I put together a rough manuscript containing eighteen stories, and gave it a name – Destination Nowhere. As edits to
Whisper
dragged on, I put it aside with every intention of coming back to it. Long story short, Whisper became a pain to edit, and I duly didn’t come back to Destination Nowhere until February of 2013. With eyes well rested and fresh, I looked over the manuscript which I couldn’t wait to get out to my readers…

And I hated it.

The problem was that, although the stories, which had seemed fine at the time of putting that first manuscript together, now looked less good in light of the fact that I had grown as a writer. Although it would have been easier (and, in hindsight, a lot less stressful) to just release it, I didn’t want to do that. Firstly, because I didn’t want to send out substandard work just for the hell of it, and second, because I wanted my reader to enjoy my work the way I enjoyed the short stories of my peers.

With much grumbling, I started to edit. Then cut out huge chunks of the various stories, then, inevitably, delete then in full. I trimmed the initial eighteen stories down to twelve, and the new edit became what I naively thought to be the final version of Funhouse. I set it aside again and dived into working on a new novel. It was sometime in May or June that I next looked at the manuscript, and found to my dismay that I still wasn’t happy with it. The simple fact was that some of the older works, even after a thorough edit, just didn’t hold up. I did what any self-respecting and slightly insane author would.

I started again.

I wrote new stories from scratch. Incidentally, one story and one alone has survived from that initial Destination Nowhere manuscript, and that one is Cabin Fever. Although it could be a bit long for a short story collection, there is something in there that I like, and like an underdog Sylvester Stallone in the Rocky movies, it always managed to avoid that knockout punch. Eventually, after what felt like an eternity of adding, removing, editing, deleting and rewriting, the book you have just read was pretty much in shape. Of course, by now you will know if you enjoyed it or not, and I sincerely hope you have.  In the vein of those who came before me, I would like to take this opportunity to leave a few notes on each of the included stories for those interested in a little background info. For those who couldn’t care less, I invite you to close the book here, and will say thanks again for reading. For those who share my nerdy desire to peek behind the curtain as it were, here are my own personal notes on the included tales.

Mr Ghoul’s Quaint Little Ghost Train

I have to confess to not being the greatest fan of funfairs. I find them a little bit creepy. I like clowns even less, so decided in my infinite wisdom to write about them. I always saw Mr Ghoul a little bit like Captain Spaulding from Rob Zombie's, The Devils Rejects, and the idea that this timeless travelling circus moving from place to place and showing people their hidden past was a strong one which made for pretty interesting subject matter. At its most basic level, this story is about consequences of actions, and how one day they might just come back to bite you.

99.9am

Whenever a famous musician dies, I find it odd how the media always bring out the line about how they are now ‘playing music in heaven’. That got me thinking about how this would play out if not only was this true, but if we could somehow tune into these heavenly broadcasts and listen in. That was literally all I had idea wise when I started writing the story, and just really let it take me where it wanted to go. I thought it came out as a pretty good story in the end, even if it might have all been a figment of poor Doyle’s imagination.

The Eye

I like the idea that sometimes things can just happen for no real rhyme or reason. There are no real secrets in the world anymore, no surprises, and I’m not entirely sure that’s a good thing or not. ‘The Eye’ is a story about a world that just may have a few secrets left to share.