Inferno Park (33 page)

“Who do you think he is? The man in the striped hat?”

“I don’t know. I told the cops to search the park.”

“Do you think they will?”

“I hope so,” Carter said. “Somebody needs to go in there and figure out what’s happening.”

He turned his head slightly, trying to look at her, and found his lips grazing the top of her head. She looked up at him for a long moment, then pulled away and drew up her knees in front of her.

“Sorry if I’m being weird,” she said. “I’m going to call that Hanover guy’s office right after school and see if they can put us in touch with Artie Schopfer. Maybe he can tell us why the amusement park he designed is full of angry ghosts.”

“That would be convenient,” Carter said.

After school, Carter went home to study. Happily, the volunteer search parties had been temporarily suspended while the police tried to deal with eleven new missing kids, so he had time for both homework and a full night’s sleep.

At a few minutes past ten, he tossed his clothes on the floor and climbed into bed. He left his desk lamp on, but found he was still too scared to close his eyes. He considered looking around for some NyQuil to knock himself out, and then his phone rang.

He assumed it would be Victoria, since they’d been texting each other all night, but instead it was a call from UNKNOWN NUMBER. He answered it.

A recorded voice informed him that someone was trying to make a collect call, and told him to press one if he would accept the charges.

Then another brief recording played, and it was a voice he recognized: “Carter, it’s Jared. You have to answer the—”

Then it cut off with a beep. Carter’s finger shook as he pressed one on his phone. He had no idea what to expect—good news that Jared was alive, or maybe the menacing man with the flat monotone, taunting him.

“Jared?” Carter asked.

“Dude, you have to pick me up,” Jared said. “I lost my wallet, I lost all my shit, somebody towed my car—”

“Where are you?”

“The Q-Mart. Come get me, okay? I lost my fucking phone, and the only phone numbers I know by memory, are yours, my parents, and my grandfather’s, and I’m sure as hell not calling them.”

“Okay, I’ll borrow my dad’s truck. Where have you been?”

“In Starland. Didn’t you get my message?”

“I haven’t heard from you since Friday,” Carter said. He hurried to get dressed again while he talked.

“What day is it now?”

“Monday. Monday night. You’ve been missing for three days.”

“What about Becca? Is she okay?”

“Nobody knows. Everybody’s still missing, thirteen kids missing. Um...twelve, now, if you’re back. I’ll be right there,” Carter told him. “The Q-Mart at West Beachview and 98?”

“That’s the one. And bring some money. I’m fucking starving. And pants.”

“You said pants?”

“Just hurry.”

Carter went to the kitchen, where his dad was assembling a small remote-control go-kart at the table and asked to borrow the truck keys. His dad had recently begun wearing glasses, and Carter still wasn’t used to the sight of them.

“Are you going to see that girl?” His dad looked at him over his glasses. “Kind of late, isn’t it?”

“I just have to give somebody a ride home. Because of, uh, a flat tire. I’ll be right back.”

“Keep it quick.” His dad handed over the keys.

Carter drove to the Q-Mart and parked under the big white sign with a yellow duck driving a convertible. In its day, the Q-Mart had been like a twenty-four-hour general store, selling everything from beer to bathing suits, but it had since shrunk, renting out half its space to a dry cleaner, and now closed at eleven every night—just a boring, rundown gas station with really disgusting bathrooms.

Jared emerged from behind the convenience store. He wore one shredded sock, badly tattered boxer shorts, and a crisp new t-shirt that read I SURVIVED DARK MANSION AT STARLAND AMUSEMENT PARK. Except for the shirt, he was smeared from head to toe in filth, as if he’d been crawling through chimneys and sewers.

“Jared, what the hell happened?” Carter asked.

“I’ve been inside Dark Mansion,” Jared said. “Three nights, three days. That place is different inside now, Carter. It’s huge. It goes on forever. I know that sounds crazy, but...Becca’s still in there. You have to help me get her out.”

“I’ll believe anything you tell me about Starland,” Carter told him. “I’ve seen the most insane things there, too.”

“What’s wrong with that place?”

“It’s full of ghosts. Here, have some pants.” Carter tossed him a pair of khaki shorts. “I could have brought shoes.”

“Ghosts?” Jared asked as he dressed. “They were all over the mansion. Can we eat?” He pointed at the blue International House of Pancakes sign across the street. “I’ve been staring at posters of pancakes for at least twenty minutes. I haven’t eaten since Friday. You got any smokes?”

“Nope.”

“Damn it!” Jared climbed up into the truck.

Carter drove across the highway to park at the pancake house. It was open all night, but the hostess refused to seat them, pointing to Jared’s one sock and citing their policy regarding shirts, shoes, and service.

They ordered take-out and waited in the parking lot, sitting in the bed of the old pick-up.

“So what happened in there?” Carter asked him. “By the time Victoria and I got there, everybody was gone.”

Jared told him about the copious amounts of free beer and food. “I don’t know what happened to everybody else after that. Me and Becca snuck off to Dark Mansion to get away from everybody, right? And then this trap door opens and the haunted house basically swallows her up. So I keep searching for her, for hours, and I realize that the mansion’s a lot bigger now, somehow. I don’t know how many rooms I walked through full of bookshelves, rugs, paintings, fireplaces, and there’s always a secret door in the fireplace or a staircase hidden behind a painting or a trap door under the rug. Always more doors and stairs and rooms, and the rooms got really weird, decorated with skulls and coffins and....” Jared took a breath and shook his head. “I spent hours in crawlspaces and attics full of old chests that opened onto ladders leading into hidden rooms...the goddamn place just went on and on, and I couldn’t find the entrance or the exit. And it’s darker and I’m seeing faces in the shadows and the mirrors and weird whispering voices and this one girl giggling like she’s going to eat my brain.”

“That’s where you’ve been?” Carter asked. “Three days inside Dark Mansion.”

“Yeah, and I’d get tired and almost fall asleep somewhere, and these cold little hands would come out of the darkness and claw at me, rip at my face, my clothes, my shoes...” Jared said. “I never saw them, it was always dark. They always got me as soon as I closed my eyes.”

“You haven’t slept in three days?”

“Slept or eaten. How long does it take to make a fucking omelet and pancakes, anyway?”

“I’ll go check.” Carter went inside and collected their to-go boxes and Styrofoam cups filled with cola. When he brought it back to the truck, Jared tore open the baggie of plastic silverware and dug into his meal—a big omelet stuffed with ham and cheese, plus six pancakes, hash browns, and a little container of bacon. Carter slowly ate the hamburger he’d ordered while Jared gorged himself, not speaking again until every bite was gone.

“I gotta get some people together,” Jared said. “We have to go back in there and search for Becca. Would you help me do that?”

“Things are a little different now,” Carter told him. “The police are all over it. Lots of people are missing.”

“I don’t want to go to the cops. Chief Kilborne already hates me.”

“If you don’t, they’ll come to you when they realize one of the missing people is back. They’ll have a ton of questions.”

“They won’t believe me.”

“So tell them something they can believe,” Carter said. “Tell them there’s some crazy guy living in the park, and he locked you into a room in Dark Mansion until you escaped, and you don’t know what happened to anybody else.”

“I
don’t
know what happened to anybody else. That’s why we need to go look for them.”

“That’s why you need to convince the cops to do a big search of the park.”

“They won’t do that just for me,” Jared said. “The park is like the most forbidden place in town.”

“They’re desperate for something to do, and they won’t be able to ignore what you say. The sooner you talk to them, the sooner they’ll open up the park and search it.”

Jared rubbed the sides of his head with his fingers, like he was developing a bad headache.

“But what’s really happening?” Jared asked. “That’s what I don’t understand.”

“Victoria and I have been trying to figure that out. You know Emily Dorsnel?”

“Is that Emily Dork Smell?”

“She’s into parapsychology. She told us that some places are just a little haunted, like you might see or hear a ghost for a second. Other places are much worse. They trap souls inside, and they’re called dark places.”

“Starland is definitely some kind of dark place now,” Jared said.

“That’s what Victoria and I think. We already spoke to Mr. Hanover, and Victoria’s trying to get in touch with Artie Schopfer, the guy who designed all the big rides, including Dark Mansion. Victoria and I—”

“‘Victoria and I, Victoria and I,’” Jared repeated, mimicking him. “Is she your girlfriend now or what?”

“We’re just friends.”

“Like actual platonic friends, or that thing where
she
thinks it’s platonic, but
you
think it’s going to lead somewhere?”

“Shut up,” Carter said. “We’re just investigating the park together. Do you want a ride to the police station or not?”

Jared sighed and slumped.

“I feel dead,” he said. “But yeah, take me to the fucking cops, I guess. They might as well do something useful around town for a change.”

They drove up the highway toward the strip mall housing the police station.

“Let me off here,” Jared said. “I’ll walk in by myself.”

“You sure?”

“No reason to drag you into it. Thanks for coming to get me.”

Carter felt he should insist on going in with Jared, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d had enough problems with the police lately.

“If you think that’s best...” Carter said.

“Yeah, I’ll just walk in off the streets, more dramatic or something that way.” At the next red light, Jared opened the door and hopped out. Carter watched him dash across the street, then turn back and wave before stepping into the police station.

Good luck
, Carter thought, and then he drove back home.

He texted Victoria to tell her Jared was back from the park, and she immediately called him for all the details.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jared wasn’t at school on Tuesday. By lunchtime, a rumor had swarmed through the school that the police were going to open up Starland for a full-scale search. Carter knew it was true, because Jared had texted him about it early that morning.

Like many of the students, Victoria and Carter decided to drive over to Starland after school and check it out. Hundreds of other people had done the same, creating a weird sort of carnival atmosphere around the place, the crowd pushing up as close to the front gate as the police barriers and yellow tape would allow, newspaper reporters, a FOX affiliate van shooting footage, and cars parked at all the old attractions, where vandals and scavengers had long since removed the orange cones and sawhorses blocking off the parking lots.

Everybody seemed to be whispering and taking pictures.

Carter and Victoria arrived just in time to see the event unfold. Theodore Hanover Junior stood at the front gates, sweating copiously under his curly toupee, looking like a nervous, hunted animal. Town and county police had assembled for the search, along with a number of firefighters, EMS workers, and three police bloodhounds. Jared stood next to Chief Kilborne, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. He was too far away for Carter to speak to him.

“I wonder what they’ll find,” Victoria whispered. She took a few pictures of her own as the professional search party quietly moved aside the accumulation of presents, cards, and pictures at the front gate.

The crowd fell silent as Theodore Hanover Junior fumbled out a thick spool of keys and opened the padlocks on the front gate, pausing between each lock to search for the next key. By the time he opened the final lock, the only sound was the surf rolling against the beach across the street, beyond the old motels.

Hanover removed the chains and set them aside. He stared at the thick vines shrouding the gate for a moment, took a breath, and pushed it open. A long, rusty squeal pierced the silence. It was a sunny afternoon under a blue sky, not a cloud on the horizon, but a chill seemed to spread through the crowd.

Dozens of cameras snapped pictures, and people began to whisper. For a moment, Carter was reminded of the whispering crowd of shadows rising from the ground in Haunted Alley, and he shuddered.

The amusement park’s midway was a wreck, the pavement shattered into uneven pieces, some of them jutting up like sharp boulders. Waist-high clumps of weeds sprouted through the broken asphalt. The concessions and games were unidentifiable, many of them collapsed, most of them buried under thorny vines and spindly plants, their once-bright paint faded and peeled away. It looked just as it had when Carter and Victoria had gone inside the first time, a dilapidated and forgotten ruin.

“It’s hiding itself,” Victoria whispered as the police advanced inside. “I bet they don’t find anything at all.”

“You’re right,” he whispered back.

She raised her camera and took a picture of the wreckage along the midway.

“I wonder why he let us go,” Victoria whispered. “The carnival barker guy.”

“Let us go? He threatened to kill us.”

“And then he let us go. Why? If the park swallowed up everyone else, why did it spit us back out?”

“I don’t know.” Carter thought it over. “He said something like ‘we’re all staffed up for the season.’ Right?”