Highway to Hell

by Val Crowe

  “Don’t break the circle!” screeched my mother.

  And right at that second, something burst through the tent. It came right through the wall as if it was nothing, so I knew it was a ghost. The ghost was a running young woman, her hair streaming out behind her in a braid, but pieces were falling out of it. Her face was red, and she was breathing hard. She glanced over her shoulder in terror, as if she was being chased.

  “Molly!” Lily reached for her, but her hand went right through Molly.

  And then Molly’s pursuer came after Molly, but the pursuer was difficult to make out. At first, he was a man I’d never seen before, one with a gun and a bald head and a dark beard. But then the features of the man twisted and changed and he was the man I’d seen earlier, the one who had grabbed Theo, Jason Wick.

  Molly went past us, and then disappeared through the other side of the tent.

  The man went after her.

  Mid-stride, the man changed from a man to a woman. She had long, matted, dirty dark hair and her teeth were bared. “Get back here, you little shit!” She was my mother, only my mother years ago, when she had been possessed by Negus.

  She dove out of the tent as well.

  My mother—my real mother—let out an audible gasp.

  I turned to her.

  She was sitting stock still in her chair, her face frozen in a look of shock, of disturbance.

  “What the hell was that?” said Patrick. He was shaking.

  “Mom.” I went to her. Knelt down next to her. “You saw that. Now that you’ve seen it, you can’t deny that it happened.”

  My mother didn’t answer. She didn’t even blink. She was practically catatonic.

  “Mom.” I nudged her.

  “Molly,” said Lily, and she picked up her feet and sprinted out of the tent.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Wait, Lily, what are you doing?” Patrick screamed.

  I grabbed my mother by the shoulders and shook her. “Mom!”

  She shied away from my voice. I was screaming too. “Don’t yell, Deacon.”

  Patrick took off out of the tent after his sister.

  My mother gestured. “Go. Go after them. Get them back.”

  I hesitated, looking from my mother to the door of the tent. Then, not even sure why I cared one way or the other about Patrick and Lily, and I ran out of the tent after them.

  I was just in time to see Patrick veering left to go under the archway into the park. Picking up my speed, I huffed and pushed myself to catch up with him. And after several minutes, I did.

  We were now deep into the heart of the place. I grabbed him by the shoulder and stopped him. “Patrick!” I gasped. I was out of breath.

  He was panting too. “You scared the hell out of me, Deacon.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Where is she?”

  “Lily?” I said. Or did he mean Molly?

  He nodded. He had started to move again, but he wasn’t running now, just walking quickly, looking this way and that.

  “Did you see what direction she went when she came into the park?” I heaved.

  “I didn’t see her at all when I got out of the tent. She was too far ahead of me. She could be anywhere.”

  “Let’s check the carousel,” I said, and I changed direction so that we were heading toward it.

  It took Patrick a second to switch too and then to catch up. “The carousel? Why?”

  “She had a dream about it,” I said. “She made me come out here with her to look for Molly, but, uh, we didn’t see anything.” No way was I going to tell them that I had gotten distracted by debating whether or not it was okay for me to make a move on his sister or not. I doubted that would go over well.

  “You think this dream meant something?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Really, I don’t know anything. I’m as clueless as you are.”

  “Well, your mother acts like she knows what’s going on,” said Patrick.

  “She doesn’t,” I said flatly.

  Patrick didn’t react to that.

  We continued to walk through the lit-up park. We went past a haunted house ride, and the upper windows were lit up with a greenish light. The lower lit up purple. The house looked cartoonish, and it shouldn’t have been creepy at all, but there was something unearthly about it, as if it was watching us, as if there was a secret grin on an unseen mouth. I didn’t like it there, and I didn’t like to turn my back on it.

  I actually turned and walked backwards when we went past it, keeping my eyes on it for several paces before turning around.

  “You see something?” Patrick’s voice had become a hoarse whisper.

  “No,” I said. I was whispering too.

  “Why is it all lit up like this?”

  “I told you, I don’t—”

  “You know know,” he muttered. “No one knows anything.”

  We reached the carousel. The lights were all on around the top of the thing, except a few which had been shattered or fallen off. They were spots of darkness in the pattern. The carousel stood there, overgrown and still, trees coming up through the floorboards, choking out the faded horse figurines, and when we saw it, we stopped too.

  Neither Patrick nor I spoke. We stared at the carousel for a moment.

  And then Patrick lurched forward.

  I reached out to stop him. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I didn’t like the way he was moving. Maybe he seemed different now, sort of robotic and out of it. But my fingers didn’t reached him.

  So, he went forward anyway.

  And he laid a hand on the carousel, on one of the figurines. He flattened his palm against the horse’s flank.

  The carousel made a groaning noise, and then it started to move.

  Patrick cried out. He stumbled backwards, struggling to keep his balance.

  I should have gone to help him, but I was rooted to the spot, watching this thing.

  It was moving, and the trees and vines that had been growing over it for years were ripping free. A distorted music was starting to play, carousel music, only it was like someone had stretched it out in some place and bunched it up in others. And whatever the case, it was tinny and distant, as if it had been filtered through the years to reach us.

  The carousel came round, and there was a man standing on it. He had a crew cut and he was wearing a stained white undershirt.

  When Patrick saw him, he flipped out. He ran to me and grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out of there.

  I didn’t want to turn my back on the carousel either, or on that man, but it was either that or trip over my feet, because Patrick was pulling me away, and I had to go with him.

  I turned forward, and the music cut off.

  I looked back, over my shoulder.

  The carousel was still lit up, but it was as if it had never moved. The trees and vines were all back in place. There was no breakage.

  “Come on,” hissed Patrick.

  I went with him.

  When we were out of sight of the carousel, he stopped. He let go of me. Bending down, he breathed noisily.

  “Who was that man?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” said Patrick.

  “Bullshit,” I said. “You recognized him.”

  Patrick looked up at me. “I think… it was my dad.”

  “Your father?”

  “I don’t know.” Patrick straightened, nostrils flaring. “There’s something there. Some memory right on the edge of my consciousness, but whenever I try to prod it, there’s nothing to remember. My brain shuts down and won’t function. And I feel this… terror. Sweaty, heart-pounding terror like nothing I’ve ever even imagined. It’s too much terror to feel and survive.”

  Um… okay. Well, what the hell did that mean?

  * * *

  We met my mother, who was striding down one of the paths in the park with her arms crossed over her chest, looking like an exasperated schoolmarm. “There you are,” she said. “You should have wa
ited for me. I don’t think it’s a good idea to split up.”

  “You told me to go after them,” I said defensively.

  “Well, I wasn’t thinking clearly,” she said.

  Patrick was still walking. He’d barely acknowledged my mother, only giving her a nominal wave. He was still bent on finding Lily.

  “We’re going to to the roller coaster,” I told my mother. “The one where you tried the seance.” I went after Patrick.

  “Oh, you think she’s there?” said my mother, falling into step with me.

  “We can’t search the entire park,” I said. “It would be good if she’d gone to a place that had already seemed significant.”

  “But she was chasing Molly,” said my mother. “She would have gone wherever Molly led.”

  “Well, hopefully Molly’s already led us to these places before,” I said.

  Patrick cupped his hands around his mouth. “Lily!” he called. “Lily, where are you?”

  My mother hunched up her shoulders. “I don’t know if he should be yelling like that. We’re not even really supposed to be here, you know.”

  “We have to find Lily,” I said.

  “You’re right,” said my mother, letting her arms drop to her sides. She raised her voice. “Lily? Lily, are you there?”

  “Answer us!” yelled Patrick.

  Only silence greeted us.

  We kept walking and calling out for her, but we got no response.

  Finally, we arrived at the roller coaster.

  Underneath a tall, banked turn there was a huddled figure lying in a heap on the ground. We couldn’t make out any features, but it looked human-shaped.

  Patrick ran for the figure, screaming Lily’s name.

  I hurried after him. I didn’t know what was there, but I could imagine all kinds of awful things. I wasn’t sure it would be good for Patrick to get there first. I needed to see it, not him.

  Drawing on what energy I had left, I surged forward in a burst of speed and went past him to skid to my knees next to the motionless heap.

  Now that I was close, I could see the shape of a woman’s body. I could see that she was lying on her side, and her hair was spilled out all over the grass. She was still, so still. She looked like a doll.

  There were no wounds I could see. No damages.

  Carefully, I reached down and nudged her hair away from her face. I sucked in breath. It was Lily. Her eyes were closed.

  Patrick arrived next to me, also on his knees. “Lily?” He sounded practically on the verge of tears.

  “Wait,” I said to him, and my voice was thick too.

  “Is she…?” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

  My mother arrived too. She peered over Patrick at Lily’s body. She didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, hell,” said Patrick. “What happened?”

  “I… I don’t know,” I said. Uh, what should I do? I needed to take her pulse or something, right? Well, that was all well and good, except I’d never taken a pulse in my life. I remembered that I had tried to figure out how to do it when I was in high school, so that I could check my heart beat before I gave blood. If it was beating too fast, they wouldn’t let you give blood, and they sent you back to class, which was not cool. But half of the time, I would feel around on my wrist for an age, and I never found anything, and I knew I was alive. So, how good would I be at verifying Lily’s death?

  I had to try anyway.

  Carefully, I reached over and lifted her wrist. It was tiny. She had such delicately small wrists and hands. Her fingers were thin and long and elegant. She seemed so lovely here, lying motionless in the lights of the amusement park, displayed for us. Her skin was warm. I encircled her wrist with one hand, my fingers probing, feeling for a pulse.

  Lily’s eyelids fluttered.

  I was so stunned, I let out a cry and dropped her wrist.

  She blinked hard. “What…?” She sat up, looking around wildly. “Molly?”

  Patrick grabbed her and hugged her hard. He was crying. “Lily, oh God, Lily, I thought—”

  She pushed out of his arms. “Where is she? I was following her. He had a gun.”

  “Who had a gun? What?” I said.

  Lily got to her feet and she started to walk. Ahead of us, there was nothing but the fence that encased the park. It was on the other side of the roller coaster, maybe thirty feet away. She shook her head. “She was going this way. She was going to get out.”

  Patrick grabbed her again. “Jesus, you scared me. You scared the hell out of me.”

  * * *

  Lily seemed okay physically, but it took a long time to get her to respond to us normally. She seemed preoccupied with finding Molly, who she seemed to think would appear at any moment again. But Molly didn’t come back.

  And after a few more moments of us trying to redirect her, and Lily attempting to get free so that she could go after the ghost of her sister, the lights in the park abruptly shut off, bathing us in darkness, as if to say, “Show’s over, folks.”

  We made our way back through the park to the campers, and it was awful, walking through that dark, dead place. Everything seemed to be whispering at me. I got the distinct impression that all of the rides were coming to life when I wasn’t looking at them and then when I turned to see them, they stopped, only to get moving again when my back was turned.

  And that feeling of everything being awful, of the place being rotten and horrid, it was the undercurrent to everything.

  We finally got through, though, and we got Lily to sit up and have some hot chocolate, which my mother made for her. Swathed in blankets and sipping from her mug, Lily started to calm down enough to speak to us.

  “I ran after her,” said Lily. “And that thing that was chasing her, it kept changing.” She looked at Patrick. “I think sometimes it might have been Dad.”

  Patrick’s face seemed to get paler at this news.

  “But other times,” said Lily, “it was a man with a gun, and Molly was screaming.” She turned to me. “We need to find more about this place’s history. I don’t know who that guy was the ghost of, but maybe besides the molestation, there were also murders here?”

  “Honestly,” said my mother, “it would be a perfect place for a mob hit, wouldn’t it? Who goes looking for dead bodies in an abandoned amusement park?”

  I shivered.

  “We need to go back in,” said Lily. “Maybe try the seance under the roller coaster. We need to reach Molly again.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” I said. “When it’s light.”

  “But I think it’s better in the dark,” said Lily. “Maybe if we all went back now—”

  “No,” said Patrick. “There’s been enough excitement for tonight. Lily, you need to get some rest. I’m putting you to bed.”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t need you to treat me like a baby.”

  Patrick looked away. “When I saw you lying on the ground like that, I thought… I just can’t let anything happen to you.”

  “Hey,” said Lily, her voice soft. “I’m okay. It’s okay.”

  “You’re all I got left, Lily,” said Patrick. “We don’t have Mom or Dad. We don’t have Molly. It’s just you and me.”

  “I know that,” she said.

  “So, don’t do crazy things, okay? Please?”

  She didn’t suggest we go back into the park again that night. And not too much later, both Patrick and Lily went back to their RV to turn in for the night. Leaving me alone with my mother.

  “Listen,” I said. “I know you saw it.” We were sitting outside her motorhome, and we were both drinking hot chocolate as well, only our hot chocolate had a dollop of whiskey in it.

  She stood up. “I’m going to go check on Oscar.”

  “Mom, don’t run away from this,” I said.

  She set down her mug on the picnic table and started to walk towards his tent.

  I came after her. “You saw it. You have to acknowledge that. You saw the ghost turn in
to you. It was you, the way you looked when Negus had possessed you.”

  She walked faster.

  “Mom, come on. You did see it. You reacted. Now, you can’t tell me that it’s all in my head.”

  “Oscar!” she called. “You doing all right?”

  “Mom, please.”

  She had reached Oscar’s tent. She tried to knock, but of course that didn’t work. “Oscar, I’m going to open this up. If you’re in there, just give a yell, and I can leave you here, undisturbed.”

  I came to a stop, folding my arms over my chest.

  My mother unzipped Oscar’s tent. She poked her head inside. Then she removed her head. She turned to me. “He’s not in there.”

  I shifted my gaze to the dark amusement park. “He’s still in there.”

  We were quiet.

  My mother spoke, finally. “We should go after him.”

  “It’s dark, and the park is huge,” I said. “We should wait until morning.”

  “But if he’s still out there—”

  “We won’t do him any good in there tonight,” I said.

  She snapped her head over to glare at me. “You don’t like him. You wanted him gone, and now he is. So, you’re pleased about this.”

  “I’m not,” I said, and I was telling the truth. I didn’t like Oscar, but I didn’t wish him any ill will or harm. I wanted him to leave, not get stuck in that place. “Look, maybe I could go in on my own and look for him?”

  “No,” said my mother. “Too dangerous.” She sighed. “I guess you’re right. We should probably wait until morning. Then we can have help from Patrick and Lily.” She walked past me and headed back to her motorhome.

  I trailed behind her.

  She went to the door and started inside.

  “Mom, I was talking to you about what you saw tonight,” I said.

  She paused, hand on the doorknob. She didn’t look at me. “How do you know that I saw what you saw?” And then she opened the door and flung herself inside.

  I gazed after her, feeling frustrated and annoyed. Why wouldn’t she talk to me about this? How could I make her talk?

  No answers to that question swam to the forefront of my brain. So, I went back to the Airstream. I was tired, but I was also keyed up, too antsy to sleep. So, instead of crawling right into bed, I shaved. It took a while, because my chin growth was at a stage where you might fairly call it a beard. I had to hack everything back before I could get a smooth shave against my jaw.