He laughed. "If you want someone to hold your hand," he said, "you should have brought a babysitter!"

That made me mad and I forgot for a moment how afraid I was. "All right," I snapped, stepping forward, surprising Steve. "If that's the way it is…" I walked forward quickly and pushed past the curtains.

I don't know what those curtains were made of, but they felt like spiderwebs. I stopped once I passed them. I was in a short corridor and another pair of curtains were draped across the walls a few yards in front. There was a sound behind and then Steve was by my side. We could hear noises on the other side of the curtains.

"Do you think it's safe?" I asked.

"I think it's safer to go forward than backward," he answered. "I don't think Mr. Tall would like it if we turned back."

"How do you think he knew all that stuff about us? "I asked.

"He must be able to read minds," Steve replied.

"Oh," I said, and thought about that for a few seconds. "He nearly scared the life out of me," I admitted.

"Me, too," Steve said.

Then we stepped forward.

It was a huge room. The chairs had been ripped out of the theater long ago, but deck chairs had been set up in their place. We looked for empty seats. The entire theater was packed, but we were the only children there. I could feel people watching us and whispering.

The only spaces were in the fourth row from the front. We had to step over lots of legs to get there and people were grumbling. When we sat down, we realized they were good seats, because we were right in the middle and nobody tall was in front of us. We had a perfect view of the stage and could see everything.

"Do you think they sell popcorn?" I asked.

"At a freak show?" Steve snorted. "Get real! They might sell snake eggs and lizard eyes, but I'll bet anything you like they don't sell popcorn!"