Funland by Richard Laymon Read Free Book Online

Goat Gruff.”
    No, the roller coaster did not race down and crush the life out of Harrison Bentley. No, it was not derailed by the impact and thrown off its tracks, hurtling its luckless riders to their doom. Harrison was discovered in time to prevent such tragedies.
    Near death from hypothermia, he was rushed to the hospital emergency room. He had multiple bruises and abrasions. A dislocated shoulder. Two cracked ribs. A broken nose.
    The damage to his body will heal, in time. But time is unlikely to mend the deeper wounds—the agony and humiliation of being stripped and brutalized, the terror of being lashed to the Hurricane tracks at a dizzying height above the boardwalk and left there through the long dark hours of the night, knowing that dawn would bring not only the welcome warmth of sunlight but also the roar of the descending Hurricane.
    Such wounds may never heal.
    Harrison Bentley has been scarred for life.
    Why?
    We know why, good folks of Boleta Bay. We all know why.
    He committed a crime, and he was duly punished for it.
    What heinous crime did this man commit?
    We all know the answer to that one too.
    He was guilty of being homeless.
    He was a “troll.” And he met rough justice from Great Big Billy Goat Gruff.
    He isn’t the first victim of the thugs who roam our town, especially our beach and boardwalk, “trolling,” visiting mayhem on the downtrodden of our society. He is only the most recent.
    Our local authorities have knowledge of at least twenty incidents in which indigents have been beset by roaming bands of teenage vigilantes. The earliest attacks, beginning last summer, were mild in comparison to the brutality apparent in the torture of Harrison Bentley. The victims, then, were bound and gagged and driven out of town. They were left miles away, terrified but unharmed. They were left with warnings never to return to Boleta Bay.
    Soon, however, the “bum’s rush” ceased to satiate the appetite of the adolescent mob. Instead of a swift ride out of town, transients were beaten senseless and left where they fell—in alleys, on the beach, in the darkness beneath the boardwalk, in the shadows among the rides and game booths of the “fun zone.” Always with a calling card proclaiming him—or her—to be yet another victim of Great Big Billy Goat Gruff.
    But even beatings, as vicious as they were, proved too tame for the pleasures of the brutes who roam our nights. Though the beatings continued, new and perverse elements have now been added to the repertoire.
    Four weeks ago an early-morning jogger found an indigent known only as “Mad Mary” handcuffed to the railing of the boardwalk. Like those before her, Mary had been thrashed. Unlike the others, she had been stripped naked. Every inch of her body had been sprayed with green paint.
    Biff, the next victim, was painted with red and yellow stripes.
    Lucy’s buttocks were glued to a boardwalk bench. The plastic bowl she used for collecting a few paltry coins from passersby was glued to her face.
    James was placed on a carousel horse, hands tied behind his back, a hangman’s noose around his neck. Had he fallen during the night or early-morning hours…
    Harrison was tied to the Hurricane’s tracks.
    It won’t stop with him. Our own local band of barbarians will strike again, commit more atrocities, fall with ever-increasing cruelty and ferocity on the homeless of our town.
    And we are to blame.
    We are their accomplices.
    We fear the “bums, winos, and crazies,” who seem to be everywhere, always with a hand out, begging for change. We treat them like carriers of a dread disease, spreading contagion by their mere presence.
    They do spread a disease.
    The disease they spread, my friends, is guilt.
    We have. We have homes, families, food, clothes, and countless luxuries. They do not.
    We hate them for reminding us of that fact.
    And we want them gone.
    The trollers want them gone too. The trollers, our children, react to the “bums” as