Inferno Park (32 page)

Carter shivered at the recognition. The man had walked right out of his nightmare and into the middle of Starland Amusement Park.

“Where did everybody go?” Victoria asked. She looked calm, but Carter could feel her hand trembling in his.

“Your friends have all purchased their tickets and boarded their rides,” the man replied. He stepped down from the shop porch and walked to the center of Haunted Alley, facing them. “We will find permanent positions for them here at the park.”

“What does that mean?” Carter asked him, trying not to look as scared as he felt.

“We have closed for the evening,” the man said. As if to illustrate his point, the galaxy of lights in Space City vanished, followed by the bright lights of the roller coaster, the carousel, and the Ferris wheel. Darkness rushed in around them as the midway lights disappeared like ten thousand candles blown out at once.

Only the Haunted Alley lights remained, and they were growing dim around the man in the striped hat.

“I want to see Jared,” Carter said.

“You can see him eventually.” The man’s voice fell to a quiet whisper, but Carter could hear him clearly, as if the man stood just behind Carter’s shoulder, whispering into his ear. “When the park is open, perhaps you can visit.”

The remaining lights turned red and went very dim, leaving a thin glow like a fire that had burned to its final coals.

A sound like a hundred whispering voices rose in the dark alley, and then a black fog rose from the pavement. It resolved into the shadowy shapes of dozens of people, most of them the size of children.

“As you can see, we are all staffed up for the season,” the man said. “Soon all the rides and attractions will be open to the public—nearly all, in any case. Be sure to tell your friends.” He gave a faint hint of a smile.

The crowd of dark shapes swelled toward Carter and Victoria, whispering louder, creating a shadowy wall in front of the man. They grew more distinct, their skin pale, many of them smeared in dark mud, their eyes colorless and dead.

Carter thought he recognized Tamara and Elissa, two girls who’d hung out in Jared’s barn, among the shadows. He pointed and began to open his mouth to tell Victoria about them, but they melted away into darkness.

“I recommend you depart through the nearest exit,” the man said, “Or I will be forced to contact security.”

A security clown grew more distinct among the whispering shadows, his orange wig filthy under his blue hat, his rotten face streaked with remnants of white and red paint.

The crowd of shadows swelled closer, their whispers growing into shrieks and howls, pale and muddy hands reaching out like hungry claws.

Carter and Victoria looked at each other for a second, and then they ran.

Pirate Island lay dark, and Victoria had to shine her flashlight so they could find their way to Crashdown Falls. As they ran, voices whispered in the darkness around them. He clutched Victoria’s hand tightly, afraid the hissing, whispering ghosts would seize her and drag her away. He expected to be grabbed and ripped to pieces at any moment.

They made it to the fence, and the door opened easily for them. It slammed shut behind them, and Carter noticed the sign had changed from STAFF ONLY to KEEP OUT.

They didn’t even check for traffic before bolting across the road. They hurried into Victoria’s car.

“I think that place is really haunted,” Carter panted as he dropped into the passenger seat.

“No shit.” Victoria started the car and punched the gas.

Chapter Twenty-Two

They sat in the parking lot of Sand Dollar apartments, Victoria’s engine idling.

“I have to go home,” she said. “Curfew.”

“Yeah.”

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” He told her about glimpsing the ghosts of the two girls. “Maybe Emily was right. It’s a dark place, a trap for souls.”

“So if you die inside the park, you become one of the ghosts haunting it. And the park just killed seven people.”

They didn’t speak for a minute, and then he climbed out of the car.

She called him almost immediately as she drove home, and they stayed on the phone together for more than an hour, sometimes talking about what they’d seen, sometimes just staying silently connected so neither had to face their thoughts alone.

When they were done, Carter took down the yearbook from a shelf in his closet. It was from seventh grade, and it fell open to the customary place, the only reason he ever looked at the old book at all.

She smiled, showing a little gap in her teeth, her pale blond hair drawn back in braids for picture day. The faces around her had aged into teenagers, and many of them had moved out of town with their families, but her face would never change, and she would never grow up and escape this town.

This was how he needed to remember her, young and full of life. He was determined to keep this vision in his memory instead of the headless ghoul who haunted him in his nightmares.

He touched the name printed under her picture: BEATRICE CALHOUN.

“I’m sorry, Tricia,” he whispered. It was not the first time he’d said it.

On Saturday, he began his weekend volunteer duties at the hospital, spending half the day delivering flowers and pushing wheelchairs. The work relieved the insanity in his brain. When he returned home, he immediately dug into his pile of homework. It helped him avoid thinking about anything else.

He tried Jared’s cell number a few times, but only reached his voice mail.

He spent the rest of the weekend absorbed in schoolwork, getting frustrated with how often Victoria called and broke his concentration. He wanted to deal with this situation by keeping his mind on other things, but she clearly wanted to deal with it by talking it over again and again. He turned down her invitations to hang out, and by eleven p.m. on Sunday, he was almost entirely caught up with homework. It helped that he couldn’t sleep at night, and could only manage short naps during the day. Closing his eyes meant seeing the ghosts again, either Tricia or the horde of dark shadows in Haunted Alley.

Seven new MISSING posters hung in the front hall at school on Monday, featuring Jared and his friends.

Carter expected a grim scene when he walked into biology class. Wes
McKinley’s younger brother Finn was among the missing, and he was startled to see Wes rolling his eyes and rambling in his usual condescending tone.

“Finn’s a stupid pecker,” Wes was telling Sameer, while David Huang and Emily Dorsnel listened closely. “All he does is lift weights, drink beer, and try to hook up with girls.”

“Sorry about your brother,” Carter said as he sat down.

“Don’t be sorry. He’s not
dead
. They’re probably all off on a road trip in a stolen car, that’s what I think,” Wes said. “Finn and his stupid pecker-brain friends.”

Carter nodded, not sure what else he could say. Wes was the last person who would believe him if he started talking about ghosts and supernatural carnival barkers.

It was far from a normal day at school. The police were on campus, interviewing students about all the missing kids.

Carter himself was pulled out of class during third period, AP American History, where they were studying The Federalist Papers, and sent to the principal’s office. Chief Kilborne himself waited there, having taken over the office for the day.

“Mr. Roanoke,” Kilborne said, looking him over as he sat down. Kilborne turned to a female deputy sitting at the side of the desk with a laptop. “Why don’t you take a break, Deputy Patterson?”

She frowned, but left the room without protest, closing the door behind her.

The police chief took his time reading over some notes before he looked up at Carter. “I assume you know why we’re here,” he said.

“The missing kids?”

“Jared’s mother listed you as one of his best friends. Is that right?”

“We were friends in elementary and middle school. Not in the past few years, really.”

“Why not?”

Carter shrugged. “I guess I focused on school, and he was more focused on...having fun or whatever.”

“I’ve seen his academic records and I’ve seen yours. You’ve got plans for the future, don’t you? College?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And your buddy Jared has his own file folder down at the police station. His discipline file here is a whole lot bigger than his academic one.” Kilborne spat tobacco juice into a foam cup. “You have any idea just where this gang of delinquents might have gone and disappeared to?”

“You might check Starland.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Lots of people are talking about it this year.”

“You mentioned that last time we spoke. When you showed up with a picture of Shoot-Em-Up Puppets and said they were the bodies of those first two boys.”

Carter didn’t know how to reply.

“Tell me something, Carter. Is ‘everybody’ talking about it because of you and that new girl? You been going around bragging about how you broke into the old place?”

“No, sir.”

“And your girlfriend? Has she been going around showing folks pictures she took inside the park?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you want to finally explain to me just what the hell you two were doing in there? Why you really came to the police station last week?”

“It’s just what we said,” Carter replied. “We saw the bodies of two kids. I still don’t understand what happened with the pictures—”

“I don’t have time for crazy bullshit,” Kilborne interrupted. “Do you know Paul McCorter? Gavin Lassiter?”

“No, sir. I don’t recognize those names at all.”

“They’re sophomores here at your school.” Kilborne brought out four pages from a folder and spread them out on the desk, facing Carter. They showed black and white images of four younger boys, labeled with names he didn’t know. “What we have here is four kids who went missing Saturday night. Two sophomores, two freshman. You know any of them?”

“No, sir.”

“I gather that Reeves Mayweather was known to associate with Jared and his crowd,” the police chief said. “So that’s a connection. What about these four? Were they friends with anyone you know?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Carter said. “I don’t know those kids at all.”

“Apparently the four of them...you ever heard of this thing called LARPin’?”

“Live action role playing?” Carter asked, after thinking it over for a second.

“Apparently these four boys like to go out in the woods and dress up like wizards or some crap like that. They were heard to say they were planning a ‘campaign’ in Starland. Guess that’s what they call their games. Anyway, these four weird, nerdy kids bragged to all the other weird, nerdy kids about it. Then they disappeared.”

“Four more?”

“A total of thirteen missing,” the police chief said. “I knew this was going to be a bad year when you showed up at the station like that—local boy babbling about craziness in the old park. I hoped it was the last I’d hear of Starland, but it just keeps coming up. So tell me again: why do you think these seven kids went into the park? Did you give them the idea their two missing friends might be in there?”

“Maybe,” Carter said.

“Either you did or you didn’t.”

“All I said was they could have gone into the park.”

“When did you say this?”

“Last week, I think.” Carter felt very uncomfortable and sweaty in his chair. He wanted to help find the missing people if he could, but there was no way the police would believe the truth.

“All last week? Day after day? Or was there a specific day?”

“I’m not sure exactly, sir. I think it’s worth searching the old amusement park, but you’ll want to bring a lot of people if you do. It’s crazy in there.”

“How do you mean?”

“I think...it could be haunted.” Carter felt stupid for saying it. He knew it was true, and that whatever was happening at the park was a hell of a lot more than a simple ghost or two, but it still sounded absurd in the light of day, in the principal’s office at school.

The chief glared at him for a long moment.

“Get the hell out,” Kilborne finally said. “Expect to hear from me again.”

“Yes, sir.” Carter didn’t waste any time leaving. He was shaking. School no longer felt like an island of normality and order. It felt as though whatever had happened in the park was reaching out to engulf the whole town. He imagined the sinkhole quietly spreading underneath the roads and buildings of Conch City, like a mouth widening until it was ready to swallow everything at once.

He’d often thought of the sinkhole as a living thing, a kind of gigantic primordial worm with a ring of rocky teeth, eyeless and blind, drawn up from its deep subterranean lair by the music and laughter, the screams of delight and the smell of fresh meat.

At lunch, Victoria was shivering when he sat down beside her. She stared past him into the courtyard.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Look. You can tell they’re gone,” she whispered. “It’s like a hole in the crowd.”

He followed her eyes to the wide concrete planters where Jared and his friends usually sat. The space was occupied by a couple of freshman in black concert shirts, who looked around blinking like cows that had lost their herd. Everybody in the courtyard was quiet, an extremely rare thing at lunch time.

“How are you feeling?” Carter asked.

“Like you’re avoiding me.”

“I seriously had a ton of homework. I told you about my AP classes. I barely slept.”

“I barely slept, too.” Her knees were bouncing nervously. “I don’t want to sound freaky right now, but you’re kind of the only person who makes me feel sane, after what we saw. The rest of the time, I feel crazy. So I sort of need to know you’re not pulling away from me. At least not this week, or this month. Okay?”

“I’m not.”

“Seriously?”

He put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close, and she rested her head on his shoulder, the top of her hair grazing against his cheek.

“Are we going crazy?” she asked after a minute.

“Yes.”