The Midnight Tour by Richard Laymon Read Free Book Online

that, but the town did pass an ordinance prohibiting children under the age of sixteen from going in.
    “As the weeks went by, though, a funny thing happened. Local merchants began to notice they had more money in their cash registers at the end of the day. Pretty soon, it dawned on them that the extra cash had come from the pockets of strartgers. There seemed to be a regular flow of visitors coming into town. They spent money at the gas station, the cafe, the ice cream parlor, the pharmacy, the grocery store. You name the business, and out-of-towners were spending money there. And what was behind this influx of visitors?”
    “BEAST HOUSE!” a girl shouted, beating Derek to the punch.
    Derek frowned over his shoulder at her.
    “That’s right!” Patty said. “Beast House! People were coming to Malcasa Point from nearby towns and farms, even all the way from Marin County, San Francisco and the East Bay, just to take the Beast House tour. But they didn’t only take the tour; they were spending their money all over town. Suddenly, nobody had a bad word to say about Beast House and nobody wanted to shut it down anymore. Also, the restriction against kids was removed. Everyone was allowed to take the tour, regardless of age.
    “Ever since then, Beast House has been drawing visitors to Malcasa Point. Not always in great numbers, though. For the first couple of decades, the numbers were pretty low, especially by today’s standards. Some old records show that somewhere between thirty and fifty people per week were taking the tours.
    “But Beast House’s popularity grew during the 1950’s, probably because a couple of kids broke in one night and ran into trouble. According to the survivor, the trouble was a beast. He escaped, but his friend wasn’t so lucky. You’ll hear all about it during your audio tour of the house, so I won’t go into the details. Because of the attack, however, interest in Beast House really surged in the fifties. Then it tapered off a little, but not very much. The House continued to pull in a steady stream of visitors until 1979.
    “Everyone knows what happened in ‘79. If you didn’t know about it, most of you wouldn’t be riding on this bus today.”
    “And wouldn’t that be a shame,” Monica whispered.
    “To make a long story short, in 1979 a lot of very nasty business hit the fan. And the fan was Beast House.”
    Several passengers chuckled.
    “It’s all on the tour and in the books and movies, so I won’t pile the details on. Suffice it to say that the summer of 1979 was a festival of disappearances, abductions, rapes, rescues, and brutal murders.
    “To top it all off, the actual corpses of three beasts were discovered after the smoke cleared in ‘79. Two of them quickly disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The third body, though, was preserved by a taxidermist. It was displayed at Janice Crogan’s Beast House Museum for several years until it was stolen in 1984. The museum still has photographs of it, and they can also be found in both of Janice’s books.”
    Someone near the back of the bus must’ve raised a hand, because Patty nodded and asked, “Question?”
    A man said, “Is it true that the stolen beast turned up in some sort of a freak show?”
    Patty grinned. “And your name is?”
    “Marv.”
    “Well, Marv, you’re probably speaking of the Hairless Orang-utan of Borneo. It wasn’t exactly in a freak show, but in an exhibit called Jasper’s Oddities at the Funland amusement park.”
    “Where’s Funland?”Derek asked.
    “It’s in Boleta Bay,” Patty explained. “On the coast just south of San Francisco.”
    “And it’s got the beast?”
    “Well, it bad a creature on exhibit that might’ve been a beast. I saw it a long time ago, myself.”
    “So did I,” said a man sitting a few rows ahead of Owen. “Name’s Wayne. Do you think it was the actual beast, or some kind of fake? I heard it was a fake.”
    “I can’t say for sure. Nobody can.