Paint It Black

by Val Crowe

  I took the lead as we moved through the room and through the door on the far end.

  Now we were in a narrow hallway, but this looked recognizable. There were cut-outs of the cartoon characters from Bunny Buster’s decorating the wall, and there were bathrooms for customers and two water fountains, one tall and one kid-sized.

  I remembered coming to these places when I was little. Not often. It was kind of pricey, and my mother never had a lot of money. This was before everything went sideways with her, when she was still pretending to be sweet and nice. I could spend hours in a Bunny Buster’s.

  I was kind of a solitary kid, and I would play alone, but I would create elaborate scenarios that involved me and a host of other imaginary cohorts. We would all talk and interact, but I would do it inside my head, not out loud, because if people saw you talking to people that weren’t there, they thought you were weird, even if you were a kid.

  I remember once, I pretended that the indoor playground was a space ship that I inhabited with my crew, like Star Trek, and we went through the various obstacles—the ball pit, the swinging bridge, the climbing wall—dispatching the aliens on the ship. Back then, I only had imaginary voices in my head, not real ones.

  Bunny Buster’s was a good place.

  It was full of good, positive energy.

  Would it work?

  At the end of the hallway, we emerged into the main room of Bunny Buster’s. It was all closed down and dark now, only a few blue lights on. The indoor playground rose up like a tall shadow, and it appeared almost menacing.

  Maybe this wasn’t going to be such a good idea after all.

  Wait, what? Someone beside me?

  I jumped, before realizing it was a life-sized Bunny Buster standing right next to me. The anthromoporphic rabbit was winking and tipping his hat. He wore his trademark red overalls and suspenders. He was grinning widely, and usually the bunny looked goofy and fun, but in this light, with my heart still pounding from being startled, there was something I didn’t like about the look of Bunny Buster.

  I gulped.

  “You okay?” whispered Rylan. There was no real reason for us to be whispering, but I was glad that she was. “You jumped.”

  “Didn’t see old Bunny here,” I said, patting the statue on the arm.

  Wade was surveying the room. Besides the playground, which was three stories tall, and went all the way up to the ceiling, there was a row of arcade-style games, including skee-ball and whack-a-mole. Between them were tables and chairs and booths and on the far wall was a counter where food was served. But there was a metal cage locked over it.

  “So,” said Wade, “what do we do? I mean, just wait for the positive energy to absorb what’s on you?”

  “Um… I was hoping,” said Rylan. “But I don’t feel any different.” She looked at me. “Do you sense anything? Do we still have the barnacles?”

  “We do,” I said. “And I don’t sense anything. It’s not really like that, anyway. It’s not as though I sense energy. It’s more that I see supernatural things. In here…” I looked around. “I don’t see anything.”

  “So, it’s a bust,” said Wade.

  I dug in my pocket and came out with the oil. “I did bring this. I use it to draw a lot of power to me. It’s a conduit for spiritual energy. I thought maybe if there was already energy here that it would flow through it?”

  “Okay,” said Rylan. “So what do we do?”

  “Let’s just stand together here,” I said, “and I’ll make a circle around us with the oil.”

  “You want me in there?” said Wade.

  I shook my head. “Not necessary.”

  Wade stepped back.

  Rylan and I joined together, and then I slowly sprinkled a circle of oil around us on the floor. I didn’t say any words or anything. I wasn’t trying to summon anything from far away. We’d already tried that, and it didn’t work.

  Once I was done, I recapped the bottle.

  We waited.

  I peered up at the big, spiral slide that went all the way from the top of the playground to the bottom and I thought about the simple joy of being a child, how something like a slide could keep me interested for hours on end. At some point, I remembered, toys and games just got… boring. It was hard to get the energy up to make them into whatever it was that had been so exciting before. And they got old. Been down one slide, been down them all.

  “Nothing’s happening,” said Wade.

  He was right.

  I peered down at the oil. “Maybe there isn’t anything spiritual here. Maybe things need to be haunted to—” I broke off as I saw a flood of blue light pouring down out of the slide and coming straight for the oil.

  “What?” said Rylan.

  “Something’s happening,” I said.

  The blue light was attracted to the oil. It dove into it and settled there around us. Now the oil shimmered blue, like the serene blue sky.

  And that wasn’t all. More light was coming too. Purple and pink and yellow, surging from the games and the playground and the chairs. It was coming for us. It too dove into the oil, so that now the oil was a shimmering rainbow, bright and dancing at our feet.

  I knelt down and touched the oil and a flood of euphoria went through me.

  I let out a laugh, the kind of laugh that I hadn’t laughed in years, not since before things happened with my mother and everything changed.

  “What?” said Rylan.

  I beckoned for her to kneel.

  I took some of the shimmering oil—I knew she couldn’t see how bright it was—and ran my finger over her barnacle.

  It hissed, dissipating into smoke and then reforming. But it seemed a little smaller than it had before.

  I tried putting some on my barnacle, but it evaded my touch.

  Instead, I rubbed the oil against the back of my neck. “Maybe if we put it where they’re attached, it’ll help them absorb into it,” I said.

  “Is it working?” said Rylan, who was picking up the oil herself and rubbing it on the back of her neck.

  “I’m not sure…”

  “Deacon!” said Wade, sounding worried.

  “What?” I turned to him.

  He pointed.

  It was the Bunny Buster statue.

  It was moving.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I turned, and now I could see that the barnacle on my neck had gone strangely rainbow colored. Only it wasn’t the bright, easy colors from before. These colors were saturated and old and tattered. The barnacle was writhing around above my head, coughing out rainbow colored smoke from its mouth, which was touching things in the Bunny Buster’s, bringing it all to life.

  Bunny Buster was only the first of its victims.

  There were dancing chairs and tables and the spiral slide was moving and slithering, like an enormous snake.

  Bunny Buster’s grin widened as he strode across the floor to us. “Get back here, you little shit,” he said.

  “Oh, hell,” I said.

  “This isn’t working, is it?” said Rylan. “The barnacles are infecting Bunny Buster’s, not the other way around.”

  “Yeah, looks like,” said Wade.

  Bunny Buster picked up one of the chairs and hurled it at Wade.

  It caught Wade in the chest, knocking him over. He went down, letting out a yell of surprise.

  “Wade!” I rushed forward.

  Bunny Buster caught me, grabbed me by the front of my shirt and tossed me aside. Thing was strong.

  I landed in a heap against the rock climbing wall. The little hand holds dug into my back. It didn’t feel great.

  Bunny Buster grabbed Wade. Still wearing that awful grin, the statue slammed his face into Wade’s.

  Wade’s nose started to bleed.

  I got to my feet and ran back for the thing. “Hey, it’s me you want.”

  “Yes,” said Bunny Buster. “Deacon.”

  “Come and get me, then,” I said. I took off running. I ran into the
indoor playground, ducking inside the opening, which was way too short for me now that I was grown up. I careened through the first obstacle, the ball pit. It wasn’t easy to fight my way through it, and balls of various colors flew everywhere as I rushed through.

  On the other side, I climbed out.

  Bunny Buster was coming into the ball pit after me.

  I raised my voice. “Rylan! Wade! Get the hell out of here!”

  “What about you?” yelled Wade.

  I was climbing up the ladder to the next level of the playground. “I’ll meet you at the truck.” I didn’t have anything like a plan, not really. But if the barnacle was powering this, then if I left, then everything should go back to normal, right?

  Great, so why had I run into an obstacle course again?

  I scrambled onto the next level. The floor swayed beneath me. Wasn’t made for grown ups.

  Bunny Buster’s hand grabbed my ankle. He was below, on the ladder, making a sinister chortling noise.

  I fell down on my hands and knees. I tried to kick him off.

  He held tight. He yanked, and my body was scraped over the floor, and I came down the ladder, hitting my chin against the rungs.

  Stunned, I lay on my back beside the ball pit, Bunny Buster looming over me.

  He snatched me up, holding me in front of his face, and I dangled like a rag doll.

  Then his face was in front of mine, and everything was a motion blur of confusion. I felt as though Bunny Buster was sucking something out of me. It was coming out of my mouth and my eyes and my nose. I couldn’t break out of it. I was stuck.

  And all the while, I could see a little boy running through the ball pit, his face bleeding, sobbing. Stop it, Mommy.

  I wanted to struggle. I wanted to fight. I wanted to try and slam my fist into this statue come to life. Because I needed to get free and I needed to hurt that thing, whatever it was. Damn it for taking the form from my childhood, damn it for twisting that into something perverse. But I couldn’t move. I was trapped here, and now everything was starting to go gray around the edges.

  A crash.

  Bunny Buster stiffened, and I saw that a chair had hit the back of him and fallen back into the ball pit.

  “Hey, you fucker!” yelled Wade, who had obviously thrown the chair. He was coming in through the ball pit, teeth bared, blood from his nose trickling down over his upper lip into his mouth.

  “Wade, what the hell? I told you to go,” I said, scrambling to my feet.

  “Like I’m leaving you here,” he said.

  Bunny Buster grabbed for me.

  I scrambled backwards and pushed to my feet. Man, this was insane. I’d never seen anything like this before. Usually spirits couldn’t do things like this. They couldn’t take corporeal form and they couldn’t make people bleed. The blood on Wade’s face seemed so red.

  Why was this happening? Was it because of me somehow? They were getting power from me? That was what Mads had said, that was the only thing that could have happened, and I had seen the power coming out of the barnacle attached to my neck. So, yeah, it was me.

  Bunny Buster was coming for me.

  Wade leaped up out of the ball pit and onto the demented bunny’s back.

  “Wade!” I screamed, getting to my feet.

  Wade and Bunny Buster fell backwards. The balls closed over them.

  For a minute, it was still and quiet.

  But then the ball pit started to move. Arms and legs were coming up out of there.

  This was shit. If I had so much power, why couldn’t I use it?

  I dove into the ball pit.

  There. That was Bunny Buster’s leg. I grabbed it and dragged him backwards. He turned on me with his huge, disturbing grin and reached out a hand for me. I knew what he wanted. He wanted to suck the power out of me.

  I kicked him in the face instead. “Wade?”

  “Yeah?” Wade was struggling to stand.

  “You gotta go.”

  “Not without you,” he said. “It wants you. You go.”

  I hesitated. But maybe he was right. Maybe if I left, this all stopped, winked out of existence like it had never happened.

  Bunny Buster tugged me down into the ball pit.

  We struggled, grappling in the balls.

  He held me under, and I couldn’t breathe, but he wasn’t sucking at my essence or whatever, so I drove my leg into his chest and pushed him backward.

  He fell.

  I got up and staggered backwards through the balls.

  Wade was coming too.

  I climbed out of the pit and hurled myself out of the indoor playground.

  Wade was right behind me.

  Bunny Buster was getting up.

  He wasn’t real. That thing wasn’t real. Ghosts couldn’t do that. They couldn’t touch things or hit people or make statues come to life. I glared at the outline of the giant rabbit, stalking toward us.

  Wade caught me around the waist, propelling me ahead of him. “Go, go!” he roared.

  And I went. I turned my back and I ran for the hallway, and Rylan was running too, ten feet in front of us. We were all running as fast as we could until Rylan collided with the back door and was working at the handle.

  “Open it!” yelled Wade.

  And then I turned and looked back over my shoulder and…

  No Bunny Buster. I mean, yeah, there he was against the wall, like a statue should stand, but he wasn’t coming after us, and the oil that I’d used was just spilled on the floor, not rainbow-colored or shimmering or—

  Rylan got the door open.

  Humid night air rushed in, making everything seem unreal.

  We tumbled out of the door.

  * * *

  “I’m going to call that a fail,” said Rylan from the back seat of my truck.

  “You think?” said Wade, leaning his head against the window in the passenger’s seat. He had a napkin that he’d found in the truck pressed to his bleeding nose. For that matter, the shiner I’d given him wasn’t completely healed either. He was kind of a mess.

  I gripped the steering wheel. “Sorry guys. If I had known that was going to happen, I wouldn’t have suggested it.”

  “It’s not your fault, man,” said Wade. “We had to try something.”

  We were quiet.

  “I’m never going to look at Bunny Buster the same way again,” said Rylan, sounding vaguely shell-shocked.

  “Yeah, you’re telling me,” I muttered.

  “Why do you think it didn’t work?” said Wade.

  “No freaking clue,” I said. “Maybe it’s like when I tried the oil. Whatever we summoned then wasn’t strong enough. Maybe this energy wasn’t either.”

  “Okay,” said Rylan.

  “Okay,” I said, thinking about it. “But this wasn’t the same thing. There was energy there, and it was strong, but it was like the energy from the barnacles—from me—tainted it. And then, whatever was making that Bunny Buster statue move, it was trying to suck my energy out of me, and that doesn’t make any sense unless it was energy outside of us, not the barnacle. Because the barnacle can feed on me, and—”

  “I have legit no clue what you are saying,” said Rylan.

  “Doesn’t matter,” I sighed.

  “What do we do now?” she said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  Wade scrunched down in the front seat. “Isn’t there someone we could go and talk to? Don’t you know some wise, white-bearded man who lives in out in the middle of nowhere, who knows everything there is to know about ghosts?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t know anything about anything.”

  “Maybe like attracts like,” said Rylan.

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “You said that the energy from the barnacle tainted the positive energy at Bunny Buster’s.”

  “That was just a theory,” I said.

  “So, what if we went somewhere where there was strong energy, but it was already nega
tive,” she said.

  I considered. “Might work, I guess. Then it would maybe absorb the barnacle and take it away from us. But it would only strengthen that negative place, so we wouldn’t be doing anything good for anyone.”

  “Unless there’s a way to destroy a spirit, we may not have any choice,” said Rylan.

  “True,” I said. “Okay, then, where do we go from here?”

  “Do I have to think of everything?” said Rylan. “I came up with that theory. You guys think of a place with a lot of negative energy.”

  “Okay, fine, we’ll think about it,” I said.

  * * *

  When I got back to the Airstream, I wanted to ask Mads about what had happened to see if she had any idea what was going on. Maybe she could cast some light on the entire situation. Maybe she could tell us if going to a place with negative energy would help us get rid of these barnacles.

  But Mads was nowhere to be found.

  I yelled her name a couple of times, but she didn’t show up, and I kind of felt like I was calling a dog or something, so I stopped.

  Honestly, I didn’t know where she went when she wasn’t with me. I didn’t know much about her at all, and it kind of wasn’t fair, considering she knew everything about me.

  I was exhausted, and the barnacle hung around my neck, making my back ache and my neck sore. I ended up falling asleep.

  The next morning dawned gray and cloudy, but still hot as balls. In fact, it seemed even hotter, like the clouds were trapping the heat inside.

  Everything was hard. Getting out bed was hard. Pouring myself some cereal and milk was a Herculean task. Brushing my teeth felt like doing hard labor. It was the barnacle, I knew. It was drawing out my strength.

  It made me think of a story I’d heard once. Samson and Delilah. When you thought about it, that story was really the same thing. Punishment for sex. Samson was tempted by Delilah. She tricked him and took away his strength. Then he got it back, but he still didn’t get to live. He had to be fully punished. He could push down the building but only to be buried under its weight.

  I peered out into the gray morning, and I felt a certainty click into place in my mind. I was going to end up just like Samson. The only way out would be to take the building with me. But in my case, the building was my body.

  Maybe I’d end up jumping out of a window after all. If it was the only way to stop the thing that was attached to me, I’d do what I had to do.