Blaze

On the left was the House of Fun with its mechanical clown out front, rocking back and forth in clockspring gales of hilarity. Its mouth was turned upward in an expression of humor so large it was like a grimace of pain. Its lunatic laugh played over and over again from a tape-loop buried deep in its guts. A huge man with a blue anchor tattooed on one bicep threw hard rubber balls at wooden milk bottles stacked in a pyramid; his slicked-back hair gleamed under the colored lights like an otter’s hide. The Wild Mouse rose and then went into a clattering dive, trailing the shrieks of country girls packed into tube tops and short skirts. The Moon Rocket rolled up, down, and all around, the faces of the riders stretched into goblin masks by the speed of the thing. A Babel of odors rose: French fries, vinegar, tacos, popcorn, chocolate, fried clams, pizza, peppers, beer. The midway was a flat brown tongue, littered with a thousand shucked wrappers and a million stamped cigarette butts. Under the glare of the lights, all faces were flat and grotesque. An old man with a runner of green snot hanging from his nose walked past, eating a candy apple. Then a boy with a plum-colored birthmark swarming up one cheek. An old black woman beneath a blonde beehive wig. A fat man in Bermuda shorts with varicose veins, wearing a tee-shirt saying PROPERTY OF THE BRUNSWICK DRAGONS.

“Joe,” someone was calling. “Joe…Joe!”

Blaze turned and tried to pinpoint the voice from the crowd. And then he saw her, wearing that same nightgown with her cakes practically falling out of the lace top. Joe’s pretty young mother.

Terror seized him. She was going to see him. She couldn’t help but see him. And when she did, she would take his baby away. He held Joe tighter, as if embrace could insure possession. The little body was warm and reassuring. He could feel the flutter of the child’s life against his chest.

“There!” Mrs. Gerard screamed. “There he is, the man who stole my baby! Get him! Catch him! Give me back my baby!”

People turned to look. Blaze was near the merry-go-round now, and the calliope music was huge. It bounded and echoed.

“Stop him! Stop that man! Stop the baby-thief!”

The man with the tattoo and the slicked-back hair began to walk toward him and now, at last, Blaze could run. But the midway had grown longer. It stretched away for miles, an endless Highway of Fun. And they were all behind him: the boy with the swarming birthmark, the black woman in her blonde wig, the fat man in the Bermuda shorts. The mechanical clown laughed and laughed.

Blaze ran past another pitchman, who was standing beside a huge guy wearing what looked like an animal skin. The sign over his head billed him as Leopard Man. The pitchman raised his microphone and began to speak. His amplified voice rolled down the midway like thunder.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry! You’re just in time to see Clayton Blaisdell, Jr., the noted babynapper! Lay that kid down, fella! He’s right over here, folks, direct from Apex where he lives on the Parker Road, and the hot car is stashed in the shed out back! Hurry, hurry, hurry, see the live babynapper, right here —”

He ran faster, breath sobbing in and out, but they were gaining. He looked back and saw that Joe’s mother was leading the posse. Her face was changing. It was growing paler, except for her lips. They were getting redder. Her teeth were growing down over them. Her fingers were hooking into red-tipped claws. She was becoming the Bride of Yorga.

“Get him! Catch him! Kill him! The babynapper!”

Then George was hissing at him from the shadows. “In here, Blaze! Quick! Move, goddammit!”

He veered in the direction of the voice and found himself in the Mirror Maze. The midway was suddenly broken up into a thousand distorted pieces. He bumped and thrust his way down the narrow corridor, panting like a dog. Then George was in front of him (and behind him, and to either side of him) and George was saying: “You have to make them drop it from a plane, Blaze. From a plane. Make them drop it from a plane.”

“I can’t get out,” Blaze moaned. “George, help me to get out.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do, asshole! Make them drop it from a plane!”

They were all outside now, and peering in, but the mirrors made it seem as if they were all around him. “Get the babynapper!” Gerard’s wife shrieked. Her teeth were now huge.

“Help me, George.”

Then George smiled, and Blaze saw that his teeth were long, too. Too long. “I’ll help you,” he said. “Give me the baby.”

But Blaze didn’t. Blaze backed away. A million Georges advanced on him, holding out their hands to take the baby. Blaze turned and plunged down another glittering aisle, bouncing from side to side like a pinball, trying to hold Joe protectively. This was no place for a kid.

Chapter 15

BLAZE CAME AWAKE in the first thin light of dawn, at first not sure where he was. Then everything came back and he collapsed on his side, breathing hard. His bed was drenched in sweat. Christ, what an awful dream.

He got up and padded into the kitchen to check on the baby. Joe was deeply asleep, lips pursed as if he was having big serious thoughts. Blaze looked at him until his eyes picked up the slow, steady rise of the kid’s chest. His lips moved, and Blaze wondered if Joe was dreaming about the bottle, or his mother’s titty.

Then he put on the coffee and sat down at the table in his long underwear. The paper he had bought yesterday was still there, amid the scraps of his kidnap note. He began to read the story about the kidnapping again, and his eye once more fell on the box at the bottom of page 2: Appeal to Kidnappers from Father, Page 6. Blaze turned over to page six, where he found a half-page broadside, outlined in black. He read:

TO THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE OUR CHILD!

WE WILL MEET ANY DEMANDS, ON CONDITION THAT YOU CAN PROVIDE US WITH EVIDENCE THAT JOE IS STILL ALIVE. WE HAVE THE GUARANTEE OF THE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) THAT THERE WILL BE NO INTERFERENCE WITH YOUR COLLECTION OF THE RANSOM, BUT