It laughed hysterically for about ten seconds, and then its head stopped spinning and its voice returned to normal. “If you ever want to leave, you’ll have to get the four keys! Win them! Find them! Sniff ‘em out! Have fun! Bleed well!”

The light in the clown’s eyes went out and it stopped moving. I almost chopped its head off with the machete, but gratuitous destruction just seemed wrong. We started down the sawdust path.

To the left, a mechanical skeleton fired at a shooting gallery consisting of mechanical puppies and kittens. If I saw a Post-It on that one, I was going to be seriously outraged.

Suddenly the skeleton swiveled 180 degrees and fired with machine-gun rapidity as Roger and I ducked out of the way. After a moment, the skeleton swiveled back around and resumed shooting at the gallery.

On the other side, there was another artificial-I think-corpse resting in the seat above a dunking booth. A sign read “ Dunk The Stiff And Win A Key! ” But it wasn’t really a dunking booth…rather than water, the aquarium under the corpse was filled with spikes.

I assumed that corpse would be replaced with the real thing, too. And then I had a horrible thought. What if the actual keys weren’t part of the exhibits yet?

Well, not worth worrying about until I found out for sure. Boards covered with needles to discourage cheating surrounded the area ten feet around the target. I picked up a baseball-sized squishy eyeball from the bucket next to the sign, leaving two more inside. “You want to try or should I?” I asked.

“You go first,” said Roger.

I took aim, and then threw the eyeball as hard as I could. It splattered against the aquarium, missing the target by a good three feet.

Roger picked up the second eyeball, spent a ridiculously long moment planning out the perfect angle at which to throw, and then hurled it. It hit almost exactly where mine had.

“Stop distracting me,” said Roger, taking the last one.

He threw the eyeball…and almost hit the target, but not quite. Appalling fake eyeball goo slid down the wooden display.

“Are we allowed to cheat?” asked Roger.

“I don’t see why not.”

He picked up the bucket and threw it, striking the target. The corpse fell onto the spikes and practically exploded into an outrageously disgusting display of reds and yellows that made me think it had been filled with water balloons.

There was a sound like a cash register opening, and then a small golden key dropped into a slot where the bucket had been.

“Wasn’t so hard,” Roger said.

We walked past a slow-moving carousel with a black canopy. Mechanical children were on the fire-breathing horses, their bodies shriveled and covered with cobwebs, and their echoing laughter sounding through a pair of speakers.

Next up was a Test-Your-Strength game. At the top of the pole rested a severed head. Maybe fake. A strong enough hit upon the plate would send a dagger sailing upward into the head’s mouth. On the pole, the mallet hits were ranked as Goner, Dead Meat, Cooked Goose, Shit Out Of Luck, and Potential Survivor (But Probably Not).

“Time to cheat again,” I said. Roger nodded, and on the count of three we both jumped into the air as high as we could and came down upon the metal plate with both feet, sending the dagger all the way to the top and ringing a bell. Another golden key dropped into a slot down by the plate.

“Half done already,” I noted.

“We bad,” Roger agreed.

On the other side was a “Guess Their Weight” display. About nine or ten hugely obese fake corpses were lying in a giant pile. Next to them was a small booth with a four-digit readout in red numbers, currently 0000. A metal joystick apparently let you raise or lower your guess.

“Where in the world does he buy all these corpses?” Roger asked. “These things aren’t cheap, you know. I’ve priced them around Halloween.”

I turned the joystick to the right, increasing the number on the display. Ten corpses at, what, four hundred pounds each? Of course, they didn’t necessarily weigh as much as a real body, but I had to start somewhere. When the display read 4000 I pressed the button on the joystick.

And got an electric shock so severe I fell to the ground, gasping for breath.

After Roger helped me up, I saw that the display now showed an arrow pointing up. “Your turn,” I told Roger. “Guess higher.”

Roger took off his shirt, wrung it out, and wrapped it around the joystick. I nodded with approval. “Oh, sure, everybody knows electricity and water are a delightful combination.”

He glared at me and put his shirt back on. “Fine, whatever.” He increased the display until it read 5000, then pressed the button.

After his yelp, he ended up on the ground as well. The display now showed a down arrow.

“So what, we just do this until we’re baked?” he demanded.

“We could wait for Charlotte.”

“Wait for Charlotte to what?” she asked, scaring the absolute living shit out of us.

“Hey, in the mood for a nice refreshing electric shock?” I asked, when I could breathe again.

“I’m always in the mood for a nice refreshing electric shock,” she replied.

We explained the setup to her, and she set the display to 4500. She pressed the button, and a third golden key dropped into the slot.

“I’m pretty sure that’s not fair,” Roger observed, flexing his aching hand.

At the end of the path was a large, gold plated door. There were four locks, one on top of the other, but we only had three keys.

We went back down the path, but as far as we could tell we’d hit all the available games. The carnival probably wasn’t finished yet. The shooting gallery skeleton tried to kill us again, but we were expecting it and ducked well before the bullets came our way.

“So…” said Roger. “What next?”

“If we could get those overweight corpses rolling, we could probably break the door down with them,” I said.

“Did anybody check to see if the door was actually locked?” asked Charlotte.

“Of course the door is locked.”

“Uh-huh. I take night classes…well, I did a year ago when I had a life…and I’ve seen groups of twenty-five people standing outside of an unlocked classroom door because they all just assumed that the first person was standing there because it was locked.”

“That’s a fascinating insight into human psychology,” Roger said. “I vote we test it out.”

We returned to the gold-plated door. It was locked.

I inserted the three keys into their proper locks and tested the door again, but it still wouldn’t open.

“So what do we do?” I asked. “It could be hidden somewhere around here, or it could just be missing altogether. Maybe when he adds the Bumper Car Bloodbath it’ll have the fourth key.”

“Maybe the clown knows,” said Roger.

“Maybe you should…” I trailed off as I thought of something. “Maybe you’re right! Remember what the clown said?” I asked, hurrying back down the path.

“He said ‘die’ a few times,” Roger recalled.

“He also said to find them, to sniff them out.” We stopped, ducked under the skeleton’s fire, and stood in front of the clown. Its red nose popped right off. Inside was the fourth golden key.

“You are the coolest human being on the face of the earth,” said Roger.

It fit the fourth lock, and we moved into the next area.

It contained only a small passageway, low enough that we’d have to crawl through it. Another fake corpse was standing over the entrance, so we’d have to crawl between its legs. I never wanted to see another artificial cadaver for the rest of my life.

Dripping red letters proclaimed “Welcome To The Fun-Filled Maze Of Amusement And Splatter!”

“I’ll go first,” I said in a moment of bravery that passed as quickly as it had come. I got down on my hands and knees and crawled into the tunnel. Roger followed, and Charlotte followed him.