They went inside and came face-to-face with the queen and Prince Philip, both looking outraged to find themselves in the lobby of such a scruffy museum with its flyblown chandelier and threadbare red carpet. Next to the royals were the prime minister and someone who John said was the American president from twenty years ago. On the other side of the room stood the Beatles, Mick Jagger, and an Elvis who appeared to be screaming in pain.
The next room contained scenes from history, including the first man on the moon and the death of Nelson. The one after that had scenes from famous films, Marilyn Monroe getting her skirt blown in the air and a bald King Kong, whose fur had been almost completely devoured by hordes of hungry moths.
Marion and John were the only visitors that day in the Museum of Wax. Perhaps because no one else was there, John started fooling around in a way that was out of character. He stuck his head right up Marilyn’s skirt and then swapped Churchill’s cigar for a piece of the rock they had bought on the pier. Though she was happy that he was having a good time, this behavior made Marion nervous, and she wished he would stop before someone came in and caught him messing about.
At the end of the tour they came to a curtained doorway. Above it was a sign that said Dungeon of Fear, the letters written as if they were carved into stone. Just the thought of what might lie behind that thin green curtain made her shudder.
“Come on, Mar, let’s have a look in there,” said John.
“It says you have to be eighteen or over, John, and I’m only seventeen. We’ll get in trouble.”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby.”
He grabbed her hand in his; though well cushioned with flesh, his grip was as powerful as a strongman’s, and she had no choice but to let herself be pulled through the curtain. Inside the Dungeon of Fear there was a smell of pine disinfectant that didn’t quite hide the gloomy stench of drains. It was much colder than the rest of the museum. The lights were a dim greenish color, and the creepy singing of ancient monks echoed around the bare brick walls.
They stopped next to a stark-naked woman with red lips and long black nylon hair. She was tied to a stake that stood in the middle of glowing embers; ribbons of yellow and orange celluloid covered her pubic hair and bottom. The sound of crackling flames and screams played from a speaker.
Marion studied the sign in front of the display:
Witchcraft was common in 16th-and 17th-century Europe. Disciples, most often women, would celebrate the “Witches’ Sabbath” in order to worship the devil and gain demonic powers that could be used against their enemies. Since the Catholic Church had deemed the use of witchcraft heretical, around 200,000 witches were tried, tortured, and burnt at the stake. According to folklore, once a pact was made with Satan a mark would appear on the witch’s skin; if you look carefully you can see that the witch in our display has a mark above her right breast.
Marion saw the red claw mark on her chest; around it the “skin” had been applied in crude greenish-pink strokes, and little bubbles had formed beneath the paint so it looked like she had goose bumps.
John pointed at the witch.
“What do you think of those tits, Marion?”
“It’s horrible, John, I don’t like this,” Marion said, putting her hands over her eyes.
John sniggered. Marion almost wanted to cry when she realized part of his enjoyment was coming from the fact that she hated this place.
“The nips look like a pair of dried figs,” he said, and then he grabbed her arm and pulled her along to the next display. A murder victim was lying on the cobbles of a Victorian alley, guts spilled out like tinned spaghetti, while a caped man stood over her, wielding a knife.
Marion read the display:
Jack the Ripper was a serial killer active in London in 1888. Murders attributed to Jack the Ripper involved prostitutes who lived and worked in the slums of Whitechapel. The women’s throats were cut prior to evisceration and the skill evident in these crimes gave rise to the theory that the killer was a doctor.
Next they came to a man with a mustache standing over a woman lying in a bathtub. The woman’s head was completely submerged. Flowing brown hair veiled her face and her long pale legs stretched straight out of the water, feet resting on the edge of the tub.
George Joseph Smith murdered his three “brides” between 1912 and 1914. Bessie Williams, Alice Burnham, and Margaret Elizabeth Lofty were all found dead in the bath.
The final display was called the Prisoners in the Cellar. At the end of the dungeon there was an area surrounded by bare brick walls. Three women, dirty and emaciated, were lying on filthy mattresses, their arms and legs chained to the wall. This part of the museum was even gloomier than the rest, and Marion had to squint to read the description:
In the 1960s a German man called Otto Benz snatched three young girls off the streets of Hamburg, then kept them prisoner in his cellar for ten years. His wife, who lived with him in the house above, claimed to have no knowledge of the women. The bodies of the three victims were only discovered by a building worker years after Benz died from liver cancer; it was presumed they succumbed to starvation after their kidnapper was hospitalized.
Looking at the display, John’s face got shiny and red like when dad let him drink a bottle of brown ale.
The smell, the strange lighting, and the sight of those poor girls chained to the cellar wall, their sticklike bodies, rotten teeth, and thin straggling hair made Marion feel woozy. She tried to turn away from the scene, but John held on to her arms from behind, forcing her to look.
“I want to go, John, I don’t like it in here,” she said.
“Don’t be such a bloody wimp, Mar. They’re not real, they’re only wax models.”
“But, John, it’s horrible.”
Suddenly everything before her eyes went cloudy-white as if the room had filled with smoke. As she slumped against John’s body she felt something hard brush against her buttocks and lower back. It was as if some swollen, sluggy parasite had attached itself to her brother and was now attempting to attack her.
When she came to, she was sitting on a stool by the entrance with the attendant standing over her. He was wound up to the limit of his clockwork fury, yammering on at John for taking her into the exhibit. “She must have had a nervous fit. That’s what it can do to you. There’s a reason it says eighteen or over—you two are lucky I don’t call the police.”
“What if he tells Dad?” Marion had asked as they walked home down Northport High Street.
“Don’t be daft,” he growled at her, “the old bugger won’t tell, he would get in shit for letting us sneak in.”
Marion was mortified with herself for fainting. Now she was sure John would never invite her to visit him in Oxford, and she wouldn’t be going to any balls with Toby/Peter. John spent the next few weeks shut up in his room, even eating his meals there. Mother said he must be preparing for university, studying hard so he would have a head start on the other students, but Marion knew the real reason. It was because of what had happened at the wax museum. He had revealed some hidden part of himself to her, and now he felt angry and ashamed.
A WARNING