There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (34 page)

Tubby looked up; for a moment he thought they’d left the building. A canopy of stars had replaced the low overhead ceiling in the tunnel. Or so it appeared. Upon closer examination, you could tell the twinkling lights overhead were in reality pinpoints of electric light running across a vaulted ceiling. A low wispy fog eddied and flowed around them, rising and falling, as if the very ground had lungs. On either side of the tracks, a cemetery wandered off into the undulating distance. Or so it appeared. Weathered tombstones leaned every which way amid a garden of weeds and gnarled trees. Crickets chirped in concert. Whether real or digital, Tubby couldn’t tell. He saw a pair of golden hued eyes peering down at him from a leafless wreck of a tree, and was about to point them out, when the eyes flew right past him, resulting in yet another girlish shriek.
“Golly! What the
heck
was that!?”

WHO! WHO!
was the ghostlike reply, accompanied by a chorus of laughter from the three wiseguys in back. The large tawny owl stared sternly at Tubby from atop the perch of a marble cross.

Tubby grinned and managed a pallid laugh of his own. Mr. Brown gave him a pat on the back, letting Tubby know they were laughing
with
him and not
at
him—a distinction of monumental proportions.

             
“Don’t sweat it, son. Boris always rattles the first timers. That’s why I put him in here. That and he’s become a guard dog of sorts. Kids sometimes try hiding out in here, but old Boris always sniffs ‘em out.”

“He makes for good atmosphere, Mr. Brown. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear this was a real graveyard.”

“Thank you, Ralph,” Bill Brown said, genuinely touched by the compliment. “This lonely cemetery, however, isn’t the main attraction…”

Bill paused long enough for Tubby to hear the sound in the background: A shovel digging into the midnight soil. All heads turned to the source of the disturbance—the yawning hole of a grave. “The strange little man desecrating that earthly resting place is our first stop on our tour tonight…”

Tubby tried to get a better view of the ghoul but all he could make out was the business end of a shovel, as it lifted above the edge of the grave. The actual shovel sounds came from the unseen speakers, in synch, sorta, with the digging implement. The net result was like stepping into an old horror film. The depth of the set astounded him. Despite the size of the building, Ralph hadn’t expected anything near this scale inside. He reminded himself that the tour had just begun. As his mom liked to say, you can’t judge a house by its front porch.

“Who’s that digging over there?”
Tubby whispered, as if the grave robber might overhear him.

Bill smiled. Ralph’s reaction was the equivalent to a four-star review. “That, my friend, is Edward Theodore Gein. As in
Fiend.
Grave robber. Ghoul. Necrophiliac. Murderer. This cowardly little fellow was the inspiration to some of the greatest horror movies ever made.”

             
“Really?” Tubby said, nonplussed. “Like what? I’ve never heard of him.”

“Let’s see…how about Hitchcock’s
Psycho
? Or Tobe Hopper’s
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
or maybe
The Silence of the Lambs?
Have you heard of those?”

“Gee! Sure I have! Those were really based on
this guy Gein?” Tubby strained to see the user of that shovel. “Why isn’t he more well known, like Jack the Ripper?”

“His continued anonymity
is a puzzling thing,” Mr. Brown conceded. “Although every year it becomes less so. This unlikely monster, Ralph, came to light in what was to become America’s last innocent decade: The Nifty ‘50’s. In the small, Rockwellian town of Plainsville Wisconsin, where Eddie Gein grew up, the disappearance of Bernice Worden, the proprietress of a local hardware store, caused the citizens there great alarm. When the townspeople found the store empty in the middle of a workday—and more ominous, a pool of blood discovered on the floor—they fanned out in search of Miss Worden. Witnesses claimed that the town oddball, Ed Gein, was the last one seen in the hardware store before the owner’s disappearance. While others remembered seeing his truck parked right outside the store. The Sheriff and his Deputy drove out to the old Gein farm straightaway…. And what those lawmen saw in that house of horrors, and in particular the
shed
outside the house, would stay with them ‘til the day they died…”

Tubby was reminded of Rod Serling, the way Bill Brown’s voice both soothed and startled at the same time. The man was a natural born storyteller. Ralph turned to the open grave again and was so shocked to see someone staring back at him that he didn’t at first realize Mr. Brown had stopped speaking. The grave robber had ceased his excavation and was watching Tubby
watching him
!

The top half of his head was now visible over the edge of the hole. It moved slowly from side to side. A ratty hunter’s cap topped off his small skull, into which a pair of beady eyes rolled loosely in their sunken sockets.

He kinda looked like that Ernest T. Bass character from the
Andy Griffith Show.
Squirrelly and nut like.

Tubby half expected the little fella to wave at him—instead the ghoul returned to the task at hand. The shoveling sounds resumed and so did Bill Brown’s spiel.

The ride pushed through the fog-enshrouded cemetery and into a series of room-sized tableaus where Bill Brown’s realistic creations played out one infamous crime after another. The set pieces looked like the real thing, too. Each one seamlessly connecting with the next, despite the different time-periods. It didn’t take Tubby long to realize that the murderers featured in the Browns’ wax museum were all on the cartoonish side of madness. More myth than men. They had also long since moldered in their graves. So far there were no wax effigies of Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer or John Wayne Gacy. Nor for that matter any living madman currently residing on Death Row.

Tubby wondered if the exclusion of the more recent psycho killers was intentional. He also thought it strange that a family so horribly victimized should want to immortalize this breed at all! No matter how entertaining it might be to the general public at large.

As the ride pushed through a set of prison bars and into the next series of exhibits, the answers to some of these questions were about to be revealed. In the previous section, crimes committed by Albert Fish, Charles Starkweather, and the inevitable Jack the Ripper were all fairly gore free. I
n
The Chamber of Retributio
n
part of the ride, however, the Fates of these killers took Center Stage. Some quite graphically. As if the artist took great pleasure in watching these sinners get their karmic comeuppance. Starkweather, who looked a little like James Dean, jitterbugged on the electric chair. Smoke flew from his nose, mouth and ears, as if he was a teakettle on the boil. Tough guy Al Capone gibbered incoherently from his cell on Alcatraz, while fellow prisoners pointed and laughed at the once powerful man, brought to his knees by the gutter disease syphilis. Albert Desalvo, the notorious Boston Strangler, meeting his Fate at the ignominious end of a toothbrush shank. And even though they hadn’t made it int
o
Murderer’s Ro
w
, the gruesome ends of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy. Bundy dragged to ol’ Sparky, screaming, somewhat ironically, like a little girl (ironic, because Bundy’s last victim, according to Mr. Brown,
had
been a little girl), begging for a mercy that he himself never lent his innumerable victims. Gacy strapped to a steel chair in the gas chamber. His eyes rolling maniacally in their sockets, as the cyanide pellets dropped behind him. The chamber filling with noxious fumes, Gacy convulsing in the chair, foaming at the mouth, like the rabid dog he was.

Too real. All
too real.

But the scariest part of any exhibit was the part they all shared in common. In the background of eac
h
Retributio
n
set—though hidden deep in the shadows where no stage lighting existed—lurked a visage of demon eyes, barely visible in the dark—yet
there
all the same.

Oh, yes, most certainly there. Waiting, watching, biding their time, when they could collect their due.

The first time they appeared, beneath the feet of this country’s first celebrity serial killer, H.H. Holmes, standing on the trapdoor just moments before the Hangman released the lever, Tubby heard Josie gasp aloud, as if noticing them for the very first time. They were obvious in some exhibits, while in others you had to look real hard to find them—kind’a like a
Where’s Waldo
of the Underworld.

The reason for their inclusion seemed patently obvious to Tubby: these evil men weren’t paying for their crimes in whatever form of execution that State was currently providing. No, sir. Their deaths were a
mercy
compared to those they’d inflicted on their poor victims! What awaited them
after
death was where True Justice prevailed. The demon eyes were there to escort them to Hell. Where they would pay for their acts of evil in a timeless void. The idea was so horrifying that it almost made you feel sorry for the poor bastards—though Tubby felt no such empathy from the man sitting beside him.   

             
He was relieved when th
e
Chamber of Retributio
n
exit finally loomed ahead. The good humor that had preceded this part of the tour vanished like the misty fog in the graveyard. Tubby stole a glance at Mr. Brown and noted the grim look on his handsome features. He realized that the museum was probably an outlet for the Brown family. First, by making light of these deranged individuals, and then by showing the just deserts they’d received at the end of their murderous careers—summed up by the epigraph carved over the Retribution
exi
t
:

                      Hell’s infinite fury awaits humanity’s traitors

            
 
The prison bars banged open and the cars made an abrupt left turn. Out in the open again, they passed a wooden sign on the side of a mountain road. 

             
  
 
DANGER! TURN BACK NOW!

“Dang!” Rusty swore, laughing. “I know it’s coming, and it
still
gets me every time!”

Up ahead in the purple gloom a pair of dark castles stained the far horizon. Irregular forks of lightning further illuminated them. What followed was the world of horror as seen through the lens of Hollywood. After the depressin
g
Chamber of Retributio
n
it was a relief to get back to the simple escapist side of their beloved Genre.

The castles all featured fantastic set pieces, starring those hallowed monsters of Universal Studios. While a certain mad scientist held his arms aloft and screamed his blasphemy at the heavens:
‘It’s alive! It’s alive! Now I know how God feels! IT’S ALIVE!!’
the monster sat up straight on the table and stared malevolently (Or was it beseechingly?) at the passing caravan.

Before Tubby could see what happened next in Castle Frankenstein, the ride had carried him past, and into the even more forbidding realm of Count Dracula.

A cobwebby hall, which seemed to go on and on, to an unseen ceiling far above them, spilled out cold unearthly air on the curious visitors. A long, sinuous staircase took up the better part of this stony hall.

The ride stopped and Bill Brown put a finger to his lips, gesturing for silence. Goosebumps came out in record numbers on Tubby’s arms. The suspense was delicious—the payoff so much better…

Portentous footsteps echoed grittily from far away. They seemed to be coming from the upper reaches of the staircase. With no railing on either side, the flight plunged to the cold, granite floor below. A long shadow fell down these precipitous stairs, announcing the arrival of the infamous Count. Bill had stayed true to the Universal concept, even if Bela Lugosi’s interpretation was almost embarrassingly tame by today’s sophisticated standards.

For a time, anyway…

Despite the echoes of his footfalls, Dracula floated down the stairs, making his entrance far more thrilling than the 1931 film version. More in tune to Coppola’s rendition. In this case, the set piece was more interesting than the monster inhabiting it. Still, Bill had given Bela his due.