Carnival World Boxed Set (Episodes 1-3) (3 page)

“Yeah, I don’t think this is a hallucination either,” the blonde girl with the little boy said.

“What then?” Maddie asked. “Because this is pretty messed up.”

“Time warp,” said the mysterious dark-haired boy with the dark sunglasses from his perch on the railing.

“Shut up, freak. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The tall boy glared at him.

Justin stirred beside her and glanced at the dark-haired boy. Up until then, she wasn’t even sure he was lucid. He’d been staring off into the distance. She’d almost pinched him to see if he was awake. “What do you mean?”

The dark-haired boy swept his arm to the side, indicating everything around them. “It’s the same carnival.” He pointed at the Ferris wheel, then the candy floss trolley near the ride’s entrance. “All the same things in the same positions. But it’s obvious by the way the grass has grown and the plants have sprouted and wound their way about the machinery, that years have passed and not the ten minutes we were on the ride.”

“How is that possible?” Maddie asked.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s nutso,” the tall boy said. The girl beside him, clinging to his arm, had yet to speak. She had yet to move, for that matter. Maddie thought she looked like she was in a deep state of shock. She thought maybe someone should slap her across the face to wake her the hell up. She’d seen that in the movies and it always worked.

“Ryan’s better in science than I am,” the blonde girl said, “So I’ll listen to him. At least it’s something.”

“You can’t be serious, Summer,” the tall boy said, “The guy’s a nutter.”

“At this point, I will at least listen. No one else is offering up another explanation,” Summer said.

Maddie nudged Justin. “What do you think?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t a clue. Time warp sounds logical to me at this point.”

She nodded and turned to the dark-haired boy. She didn’t know him from Adam, but someone had to have some kind of answer. And she needed to hear something. Because the alternative that was rattling around in her brain was insanity.

“Okay, I’m game. I’ll listen to just about anything right now.”

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T
hey were all looking at Ryan for answers. Just to make sure he wasn’t imagining it, he shut his eyes and opened them again. It was all still there. No sense in denying it. Ryan had never been one to muck about. Straight to the heart of the matter. That was how he liked to do things. As Sherlock Holmes might have said, once the impossible was eliminated whatever was left, even if it resembled the latest Silent Hill game, must be true. 

“Looks like we have no choice but to play along,” he announced to the others.

A small voice piped up. “Play what?”

It was the kid, Summer Vaughn’s little brother. The girl pulled him close to her. The two twins with dark hair and olive skin gazed at him with curiosity. Ryan was sure he’d seen the girl twin somewhere before. Darien Burton and his girlfriend were looking down at him like he was a bug. It didn’t take long for the high school pattern to reassert itself in those two. But they were still listening at least, because they were scared. He could see it in their eyes.

Deep down, so was Ryan. The wrecked carnival stretched out in all directions. There was no noise, not even the wind. A heavy, musty smell hung in the air. It almost stuck to his skin. And yet Ryan felt certain they were not alone. The back of his neck had been tense since the moment they left the caterpillar. Someone or something was watching them from the trees nearby.

He had plenty of reason to be scared. But he didn’t let that show. Not when he had their attention. Not when he was in control.

“Nobody ever played a survival horror game on the Wii?” he asked.

“I did. Once. I’m not liking where this is going,” answered the boy twin.

“That’s not funny, Ryan,” said Summer.

Still spooked, Ryan watched the gloom for any sign of movement. He saw none but couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

“Wasn’t meant to be, Vaughn. Wasn’t meant to be.”

“Hey, why don’t you shut up, Mulvaney,” said Darien.

Ryan sighed. Burton and his girlfriend had been silent as well but no longer. Nicole screamed some more.

“Is anybody out there? Can anyone hear us?” she cried.

They all looked around. Her screams slowly died away, echoing off the rusted remains of the carnival. For a moment Ryan thought he heard something answer. It wasn’t a voice, just a small shuffling, something moving fast along the ground, but not human. No one else seemed to hear it. If they did, they weren’t freaking out about it.

They should. He didn’t make that survival horror reference for fun and giggles. Right now would be where something big and bad jumped out and ate the player.

Ryan struggled to keep up his calm appearance. If something did happen, there was no other option but to run. The sky was growing dark and the fairground became more ominous by the second.

Nicole was about to scream again when Darien snapped at her.

“Just stop, okay!”

Nicole backed away from Darien, a little stunned.

“They would have heard you in the next county,” Ryan said. He wanted her to shut up. The last thing they needed was attention drawn to them.

He now focused on the task at hand. He needed a weapon. He was sure help wasn’t going to arrive. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t have some company. He was certain something was with them, and it wasn’t friendly. Ryan headed to the rusted hulk of the Ferris wheel and yanked on the long metal lever.

“You break it and they’ll throw you in jail,” said Darien, offering another bit of useless advice.

Ryan pointed to the ruins around them. “Look around! Does it look like anyone’s coming to throw me in jail? Does it look like somebody’s coming to our rescue?”

He went back to work and leaned in. The lever broke off with a loud KLANK. He felt the weight of it in his hands.

This will do, he thought.

He made a few practice swings with it. It wasn’t like any weapon he’d ever handled before. It was unbalanced, heavy and would probably break if he hit anything solid. It wasn’t tempered steel, after all. Ryan remembered the time he’d slammed an iron fireplace poker on the flagstone hearth. The tip had broken off, much to his surprise. His parents hadn’t been happy about that.

Ryan made a few more cuts and thrusts in the air. The rough metal was rubbing his hands raw already. He picked up a rag and wrapped it around the end for a better grip. He tied it down at the end. The balance was still off, but Ryan was willing to sacrifice control for reach. He swung it around his head one last time. It whistled while it moved through the air. It’d be a bad day for anything or anyone who got hit with a stroke like that.

He glanced back at the group. They were all looking at him. Maybe they were waiting for him to say something. With his “sword” in hand, he felt confident and steadier. He was still freaked out, probably more freaked out than any of them except for the little kid. But the hard iron in his hands allowed him to hide that.

“Just to be clear, we are all seeing the same thing, right? There’s no people and this place looks like it’s been left to rot,” Ryan said.

“That’s what I’m seeing,” said the olive-skinned girl.

“Me too,” said Summer.

“Well, just how long do you think it takes for metal structures like this one to corrode? Here’s a hint—it’s a lot longer than five minutes.” Ryan ate up the attention. At school they had avoided him. Now they were hanging on his every word.

“What’s your point, Mulvaney?” asked Darien.

Ryan told them, as much as anything to gather his own thoughts. Saying it all out loud made it seem more real.

“There’s only a couple of things that could have happened. One, we’re all trapped in the same delusion. Not very likely. Two, everyone disappeared and someone hit this place with an aging ray or something. That’s downright impossible. Three, everything is fine, it’s just that we’re in another place.”

“Another place?” asked Summer’s brother in a small voice.

The dark-skinned boy chimed in. “You mean we went through something like a space warp? Like on Star Trek?”

“Yes, exactly like that,” said Ryan.

Darien added his two cents, naturally. “You are a total freaktard.”

Ryan nodded. He’d always been the freak at school. Now he was the freak with the answers.

“This total freaktard rides the bus for an hour every day to take special classes at the university in Cedar Falls. I’m being totally serious about the space warp or whatever you want to call it, people. Physicists think the universe is full of wormholes and tunnels into other universes. Labs all over the world study tachyons, micro-gravity, the Casimir effect.”

Ryan had been in the advanced computer-science lab. Physics wasn’t where his passion lay. His plan had been to get rich in computers and come back to Crooks a wealthy man. That would have shown Darien and Nicole and all their friends.

But he also took a few university courses in physics to round things out. He understood some of the theories. He’d taken some course on quantum theory and the possibility of parallel worlds. He didn’t understand everything and wasn’t even close to grasping the math behind it all, but he certainly wasn’t going to tell Darien Burton that.

“So the university has a time warp machine and it zapped us?” asked the girl twin.

“I admit it’s a stretch, but they were working on a quantum computer. I saw the thing for myself. Maybe something went really, really wrong. It’s possible something happened there and it kicked us out of our own universe and into this one.”

He’d paid more attention to the two shapely graduate research assistants assigned to the project than the computer itself. Samantha and Ginny were their names. But that was something else the others didn’t need to know.

Most of the kids were taking this in, but not Darien. He balled up his fists and his neck tensed.

“Says who?”

“Says Einstein, moron,” answered Ryan. Ryan could feel it building. Darien was slipping back into his old high school self. This time Ryan wasn’t going to back down.

“You want to die?” It was the standard lunchroom threat. This time there wasn’t going to be a lunchroom response.

A nearby wooden sign declared “You Must Be This Tall.” Ryan took a swing at it with his new “sword.” The heavy iron bar whistled through the air again. Ryan felt a slight jolt as it hit. The sign broke in two. That shut Darien up fast.

“That’s right. You don’t have your offensive line blocking for you.”

“Put that away and fight,” Darien said. He’d already taken a step back.

Ryan was enjoying this.

“I ain’t putting this away. Not ever. Don’t you get it? This ain’t home. I’m playing for keeps.”

“All right, say I believe you. What are you suggesting?” Summer asked.

It was just like Summer Vaughn to be a buzzkill. Ryan had loved being in charge. But now he had to think about what to do next. That was a lot scarier, and Ryan wasn’t sure. But he couldn’t tell them that.

“Head to Cedar Falls. Even if I’m wrong about the space warp, they’ve got the university there and all these old civil defense facilities.”

“That’s stupid,” said Darien.

“What’s your idea, then?” asked Ryan.

Then it was Darien’s turn to struggle with coming up with a plan. He stuttered for a few seconds before he spoke.

“We... We stay right here. Somebody will come get us.”

“That doesn’t sound like a plan,” said the girl twin.

Darien remained defiant. “Yeah well, that’s what we’re doing.”

Darien waved Nicole over. She looked around timidly and slowly sidled next to him.

“You can wait here if you want. That sounds perfectly safe,” said Ryan.

The girl twin walked toward Ryan. Her brother grabbed her arm.

“You’re not thinking of going with that guy, are you?”

“It’s all right. I think I know him,” was her reply.

Ryan smiled at her. There was something familiar about her. She stood by Ryan. Her brother reluctantly joined them.

“Maddie,” she said. “This is my brother Justin.”

“I’m Ryan.”

Everyone now looked to Summer and her brother. Summer gulped, realizing they expected her to say something. The little kid grasped her hand.

“I have to get my brother home safely,” she said. With that, she walked toward Darien and Nicole.

“Thought you were smarter than that, Summer,” said Ryan.

Darien grinned at him as if he won. Truthfully, Summer did represent the tiebreaking vote.

But the idiot obviously wasn’t watching his girlfriend, Ryan said to himself. I don’t think Nicole was too pleased at all.

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N
icole was trying to keep from screaming again. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real. She kept hoping that someone would jump out and yell, “Surprise! We fooled you!” Maybe it was some crazy new show from MTV. But with every second that it didn’t happen, Nicole grew more and more panicked.

Nicole stared at all the rust around them. When she was a little girl she’d seen a small advertisement in the paper for an automobile sealant. It showed a cartoon car with a little girl and her puppy inside. The car was being devoured by a big red blob with the words “rust” on it. Nicole went to bed that night and had nightmares that the rust monster was going to eat her too.

To this day, it made her edgy just to see metal turn red and crumble away. In her mind she knew it was just oxygen and metal binding. She’d learned that in science class, but it still freaked her out. To her it always looked like the rust was growing, spreading and eating the metal, like some monstrous slime mold or cancer. That’s what it looked like here.

The carnival looked like it had been attacked by the rust monster. She could see the tracks it made across old rotted wood and dried-up plastic as it crawled from one metal victim to the next. It spread like a cancer, eating away at everything it touched. She knew it was harmless—well, at least as long as you didn’t cut yourself. People didn’t rust. But maybe they did and no one knew about it? People had iron in their blood, after all. Maybe rust just waited until no one was watching, then jumped out and attacked. Maybe that’s what it was doing now. Maybe it was about to spring out and take them all.