Inferno Park (23 page)

The girl’s purple lips frowned. She glanced at Finn, then walked up to the counter and picked a pale ale. Becca stepped up to the counter beside her.

“Wait,” Jared told her. “We brought all this stuff.” He set his cooler onto a picnic table in front of the concessions area and opened the lid. “We’ve got Mickey’s, Miller, PBR...”

“Pour that trash out,” Finn said, raising his cup. “This beer is, like, straight from heaven.”

“Aw, you’re poetic,” Tamara said.

“It’s the Irish in me, lassie,” he said, and Tamara giggled.

“Lassie’s a
dog
,” Elissa grumbled. She chased her grumbling with another long swig of beer.

“Come on, I’m not carrying all this crap back to my car.” Jared opened a green bottle of Mickey’s malt liquor.

“Everyone else is doing it,” Becca said, with a little pout. “I want to try the cider.”

“It’s the best thing ever.” Tamara closed her eyes in apparent rapture as she guzzled the sparkling drink.

“Don’t do it,” Jared told Becca.

“You think you can stop me?” Becca asked. She picked up a cup of cider, sipped it, and smiled at him, her lips stained a deep red by the drink.

“I told you not to drink that,” he said.

“And now you have to punish me.” She walked toward him with a sway in her hips, her eyes bright in the night. Jared sat on top of the picnic table, drinking his bottle of Mickey’s, and she slunk forward between his knees. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Please don’t make us watch this,” Finn said.

“Have a drink,” Becca urged, holding the cider toward Jared’s lips.

“I don’t want it,” Jared said.

“Are you scared?” Becca asked. “It’s just apples.”

“I don’t care if he’s scared,” Derek said, grabbing himself a second beer. “More for the rest of us.”

“I’m not scared,” Jared told them. He took the cider, drank a cold, sweet sip, and handed it back. “Okay? It’s just...apples...” He gaped along the midway. “Look at that.”

The one sip of cider seemed to have opened his eyes to a thousand things he’d missed before. The entire midway glowed with neon and colored lights, every food stand and game booth open and fully lit, playing their clashing calliope and rock music. The lights of the high rides rose above the park, blotting out the stars above—the American Rockets, the towering oblong shape of Moon Robot, the glowing round spiderweb of the Ferris wheel, and beyond that, the high hills of the Starland Express, Florida’s fifth-oldest roller coaster and one of its longest, trimmed in glowing white lights.

“Oh, this is awesome!” Heath shouted. The nearby concession booths were now fully lit, with pulsing, flashing neon on the outside and warm, buttery light on the inside. Pizza slices glistening with grease on paper plates, crisp corn dogs piled in checkered baskets, and sweet golden-brown funnel cakes dusted with powdered sugar crowded the serving counters. The mingled aroma of the fair food made Jared’s mouth water.

The other guys wasted no time tearing into the deep-fried treats. Heath seemed to make it his mission to eat double helpings of everything. He wrapped a slice of pizza around a corn dog and held it up, proclaiming this dish “nature’s perfect food” before devouring it like an animal.

“Look, the Double Dutch House. I remember that.” Elissa pointed to a booth shaped like a cutesy European cottage. Two of its outer walls had folded away, revealing shelves and shelves of cookies and fudge, all of it illuminated from within by the same sweet yellow light.

Elissa dashed toward it, followed closely by Tamara, and the two sophomore girls squealed in delight as they helped themselves to chocolatey sweets.

Jared took Becca’s hand and led her down the midway, past the Lucky Darts game, where rows of bright balloons waited to popped, past the Whack-A-Frog, which was going through one of its intermittent demos where the frog heads popped up and down from holes in the slanted game table painted to look like a pond with lily pads. The bats hung upside inside the Bat-Ball game, their leathery wings wrapped around them, their velvety purple fur looking bright and new. Jared knew that, if hit with a baseball, the bats would spread their wings as they swung backwards, revealing a comical expression of surprise on their little rodent faces.

The games were fully lit, the neon display above the Knock ‘Em Dead bowling game flashing while the recorded sounds of clattering balls and pins played over the speakers. The Whack-A-Frog played a jazzy tune with intermittent croaks and cricket chirps.

“I wanted some of that chocolate,” Becca whispered.

“None of this should be here,” Jared said, half terrified, half in awe. “It’s just like when I was a kid.” Deep down, in some completely irrational part of himself, this was exactly what he’d hoped to find—the park somehow still alive, his happier childhood memories waiting intact for his return. He wished Carter were here to see it, but that guy hadn’t even bothered answering his phone when Jared called.

“I had some good times here when I was little,” Becca said. “My whole family would come once a summer, back when my brother still lived at home. On my eighth birthday, my mom let me bring a couple of friends here. We had such a good time...” Becca’s eyes were glazed over as they reached the central plaza, with the benches and palm trees clustered around the wishing well, the colored arrow signs pointing in all directions.

To their left, the Ferris wheel stood above them, a giant lighted structure against the dark sky, slowly turning even though all its seats were empty—it should have been leaning steeply over the giant black pit of the sinkhole, or have already fallen in during the passing years, but it looked polished and new.

Past the Ferris wheel, the carousel itself rotated around and around, its horses and dragons rising and falling, while pumping out cheerful calliope music that made Jared think of old cartoons. The carousel’s roof flared out like a gold and royal red tent to the elaborate golden filigree designs on its perimeter. The entire structure was lit as lavishly as a palace, every inch of it bright and glittering.

“That
really
shouldn’t be here,” Jared whispered, pointing. “The entire thing was swallowed in one quick gulp when the sinkhole opened. And where is the sinkhole? It’s gone.”

“Do you think your friend Carter was right?” Becca asked, squeezing his hand. “Is this place haunted?”

“
Haunted
would just be seeing a ghost.” Jared shook his head, his whole body trembling, but he didn’t want to show fear in front of anyone, especially Becca. “This goes way beyond haunted. This is a...fucking miracle. Or a dream.” Jared realized he’d stumbled across the only explanation that made sense, and he nodded to himself. “That has to be it. I’m dreaming all this.”

“Then we’re dreaming it together,” Becca said, smiling. “Let’s enjoy it while it lasts. Do you want to ride the carousel?”

“Definitely not that,” Jared told her. He turned to look the opposite way, along the black arrow with HAUNTED ALLEY in ghostly green letter, and he led her in that direction instead.

Dark Mansion was as he remembered it before the sinkhole, the waiting area winding through a graveyard with dry-ice fog crawling across it, the fake tombstones painted with names like DeCade Boddee and epitaphs like
Here lies poor Jill / Went uphill with Jack / Jack had an ax / Jill never came back.

Dim lanterns cast patchy low light onto the facade of the two-story building, designed to look like a rotten old mansion with loose shutters and mossy balconies. In one window, a skeleton swung on a noose and held a cardboard sign that read HANG IN THERE! That sign had changed frequently over the years. Jared remembered it saying JUST HANGIN’ OUT and NO NOOSE IS GOOD NOOSE!

From another second-floor window, a character nicknamed Old Sackhead looked down at the waiting area, his mask a gunnysack with two eyeholes and stitched-up mouth slit. He waved a bloody butcher knife back and forth to greet people waiting in line.

Beyond Dark Mansion, Haunted Alley looked restored to life, too. The fake gas lamps glowed outside the Haunted Souvenir Shop, which was the only exit from Dark Mansion, displaying Dark Mansion and Inferno Mountain t-shirts in its window. The Devil Dogs booth, its logo a Dachshund in a devil costume, offered foot-longs with chili and onions. The red neon pitchfork glowed above the Beat the Devil game, and eerie pipe-organ music played from the Ghostly Gallery, a game where players shot BB guns at “ghosts” made of brightly colored cloth draped over helium balloons. Glowing green footprints led up and down Haunted Alley, bright and clear as though freshly painted.

Inferno Mountain, though, was just a towering, lightless mass, all its lights off, no red glow from the volcanic caldera at the top. The lower half of the devil’s enormous face glowed in the festive colored lights from the park below, casting deep shadows upward across its eyes. Its horns were only visible where they curled up against the night sky, blacking out the stars.

The red front gate to the pitchfork-prison waiting area for Inferno Mountain was locked. A metal sign on the red gate read:

RIDE CLOSED TODAY

Sorry for the inconvenience!

In his mind, Jared could see the pitchfork gate at the base of the mountain opening, the black train rolling out. Tricia Calhoun in the front car, her head torn off, blood all over her white dress.

“What are you thinking about?” Becca asked.

“Nothing.”

“You can talk to me, you know.” She touched his arm. “You can trust me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. What’s everyone else doing?” Jared looked up and down the midway.

Tamara and Elissa had reached the wishing well, where Elissa looked like she was digging for coins in the pocket of her denim shorts.

Heath, the quiet lumbering sophomore—God knew how that guy had attached himself to their group, but they seemed stuck with him—was bashing at the Whack-A-Frogs with a giant mallet.

Farther back, Derek steered Finn into the dim Old West ruins of Fool’s Gold, which didn’t look restored at all as far as Jared could see, except for the light-trimmed track of the big Starland Express roller coaster.

Tamara and Elissa laughed and dashed on from the wishing well, toward the lighted retro-futuristic landscape of Space City.

“Want to go into Dark Mansion?” Becca asked. “That was always my favorite. All the secret doors.”

Jared looked up at the haunted house. He didn’t want to go inside. He felt like he was the only one who realized just how crazy all of this was. Maybe it was because he was the only one who’d been here the night it happened, the only one with any firsthand experience of the park’s destruction.

Or maybe it was because he’d only had a small taste of the amusement park’s free beer, while everyone else had guzzled it.

“We don’t have to go if you’re scared,” Becca said, with a concerned look on her face, but he knew it was just an act. If he didn’t go, she would think he was weak or a coward, and she would pick on him for days or weeks about it. Having the beautiful Becca around made him feel bigger than he was, like more than just another loser around school. If she lost respect for him and they broke up, he knew it would wreck him.

“Sounds like you’re the one who’s scared,” Jared told her. “You’d probably rather go to Tyke Town and ride the teacups.”

“I would not!” Becca started up the walkway through the graveyard, past the headstone of I.C. Feet (
Took a walk / Out in the snow / Wore no boots / Now lies below
). “Race you to the front door!” she called, and she took off running.

Jared raced after her, pressing himself to his top speed, determined not to lose even this most minor of competitions.

They were dead even by the time they reached the wide, decrepit-looking front steps, and Jared leaped up three steps at a time, across the little porch where a park employee, often in a cape and fangs or werewolf mask, used to manage admission into the Dark Mansion. As with many of the rides and booths they’d seen tonight, it appeared unmanned yet fully operational and open for business.

Jared slapped the horned face of the oversized door knocker two seconds before Becca arrived.

“I win,” he said. “Where’s my prize?”

“It’s waiting inside,” Becca said, raising her eyebrows.

Jared grasped the door handle, his thumb lingering on the top latch. The door was wide, peaked, with snarling gargoyles and stone brickwork painted above it. He was starting to tremble, scared to look any deeper into the park’s mysteries.

It’s only a dream
, he reminded himself.

But if it was a dream, then anything could happen.

“Are you scared of what I’m going to do to you in there?” Becca whispered in his ear.

Jared pushed the door open with a loud creak. He took Becca’s hand and led her into the darkness.

Chapter Fifteen

On the midway, Elissa stood with Tamara at the Double Dutch House, eating the most delicious, intoxicating square of chocolate fudge she’d ever tasted. Tamara ate her chocolate with her eyes nearly closed, trembling with pleasure at each nibble.

“Hey, girls,” Finn said as he approached, though he was only looking at Tamara, and he touched her briefly on the lower back when he arrived. Elissa felt an instant pang of jealousy.

“Oh, Finn.” Tamara opened her eyes, laughing a little. “Sorry, I’m totally lost in this chocolate. You should try some.”

“Hell, yeah. Hey, do you want to go explore the park? It looks fucking crazy out there,” Finn said. As an afterthought, he glanced at Elissa. “You can come, too. It’ll be fun.”

“Sounds great,” Tamara said, returning his smile and his long stare.

You can come, too
. Elissa felt stung, and she looked away.

“Hang on, Finn.” Derek caught up with them, looking scummy as always, clapped Finn on the shoulder, and steered him west, toward Fools’ Gold. “We have work to do.”

“Work?” Finn looked back over his shoulder at Tamara. “I came here to
not
work, man.”

The two of them fell into a whispered argument as they walked off toward the Old West town, which looked completely dark.