Highway to Hell

by Val Crowe

  When I was done, my face looked naked and thin in the mirror. It was odd how quickly I’d grown used to my mountain man look.

  Now, I finally felt tired enough to sleep. I climbed into bed and I was asleep right away.

  Hours later, I awoke with a start.

  My eyes snapped open.

  A shadowy figure was standing at the foot of my bed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I sat up, heart in my throat. My first thought was that it was a ghost, maybe that man I’d seen before, the one who’d lured the kids into the park, and I felt an instinctive fear of him, a kind of crawling horror.

  But the figure moved, and it was too small to be that man.

  It was Lily.

  I licked my lips. “Lily? You okay?”

  “Come with me.” She held out her hand to me. Her movement was a little jerky, and when I looked at her face, which was half in shadow, she seemed to be staring through me, not looking at me.

  I got up out of bed. I was only in my pajamas, a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt. The floor of the Airstream was cold on my bare feet. “What’s going on, Lily?”

  “Come with me, Deacon. I have things to show you.” She was wearing pajamas too, a button-up shirt and matching pants.

  “You’re not, uh, sounding like yourself.” I put my face close to hers.

  She didn’t blink.

  “Maybe,” I said, “we should go and get your brother? What do you think? I think that’s a great idea. If you see Patrick, maybe you’ll snap out of this—”

  “I know about Negus,” she said.

  I froze. Okay, so up until now, I’d been trying to convince myself that maybe she was sleepwalking, and that she was just having a weird dream or something, and that I’d find Patrick, and he’d tell me that she’d always been a sleepwalker and laugh it off with some funny stories about things she did growing up, and then we’d wake her up for real, and she’d laugh too, and we’d all go back to bed, no harm done.

  But, no, it was pretty apparent that whatever had happened to Lily when she’d been knocked out under that roller coaster, it had done something to her. And now, Lily was probably possessed.

  I shouldn’t go with her, because I didn’t know what had control of her. I didn’t know if it was the ghost of Jason Wick. Maybe he was pulling her strings. And who knows what the specter might do to her.

  No, clearly the right thing to do was to wake everyone up and get Lily help as soon as possible.

  But…

  Negus.

  I had come to this place for information, and I had been thwarted at every turn. My mother wouldn’t talk to me about it, even in the face of proof that it had happened. And all the spirits in this place seemed to want to show me was stuff about that maze and Wick. Which was all very intriguing, but it wasn’t what I needed to know. It wasn’t going to help me.

  Still, I couldn’t use Lily like that. I couldn’t just let her body be fodder for some foreign spirit to screw with her and move her around and…

  “If you know about Negus, then just tell me here and now,” I whispered to her.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  I sighed. What the fuck was wrong with me? Why was I even considering this? “Can I change out of my pjs?”

  She turned and went for the door. “Follow me.”

  So, I guessed that was a no.

  I managed to get my boots on and get out of the door. She was already halfway to the arch into the park. I hurried to catch up to her.

  She walked in measured steps that were very even and precise, and she was very graceful. She almost seemed to glide over the ground. I walked next to her. She didn’t speak.

  I tried to talk to her a few times.

  “So, how do you know about Negus?”

  Nothing.

  “I know you’re not really Lily. Who’s in there? What’s your name?”

  Nothing.

  So, we walked in silence.

  She took us to the carousel. She climbed up on it and straddled one of the horses. She gestured to the one next to it.

  I found I didn’t want to get on that thing. It looked as if it had never moved at all, and it was still overgrown and strange, and it looked like an awful place to sit. “Why don’t we just sit on that bench or something?” I said.

  She pointed at the horse next to her.

  Damn it. I’d come this far, right?

  I swallowed hard, feeling guilty, and also beginning to think that I might be getting myself into something that I wasn’t going to like very much. “Uh… would you come back with me to the campers if I asked?”

  She pointed at the horse.

  Yeah, I had missed the opportunity to help her. I was using her. I was a dick. And there was going to be karma for that. I just knew it. Squaring my shoulders, I started for the carousel. I went around the tiny metal fence around it to the place where the gate had once been. Now the gate was lying on the ground, choked out by growth. I walked inside the fence and climbed up on the carousel.

  It swayed under my weight.

  I moved slowly, using the poles as handholds when I needed to. Finally, I reached Lily, or whatever the thing was that was wearing Lily. I sat down on horse that was next to her.

  Everything was still and quiet.

  She slowly turned to her face to me. Her neck moved. Nothing else did, including her eyes, which stared forward the whole time. When she was facing me, she was also looking at me.

  I shifted uncomfortably on the horse. “Negus,” I said. “Tell me about him.”

  “Negus wanted your power,” she said.

  “Yeah, I know that already,” I said.

  She reached out with one hand and ran her fingers over my chest. “You are bright. Like a furnace burning in the winter. So much heat and light and movement.” She sighed breathily.

  I caught her wrist. “Hey, don’t make her do that.” Ghosts had taken control of me and forced me to do things that I didn’t like. Kissing things. I had remembered it all afterward. I had been unable to stop myself. It had been the worst feeling on earth, such a violation. And now I realized that Lily was probably in there, watching all of this. “Lily, I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry. I just need to know—”

  “We want you,” said Lily. “Many of us. You are like nothing we have ever seen.”

  Okay, this was starting to get weird. I tried to back off the horse, but she reached out and grabbed me by the knee, digging her fingers into me. “We have tried to please you. We have dispatched the one you hate, and we see the way you look at this girl. You can have her.” Lily started to unbutton her shirt.

  “Stop,” I said, my voice choked.

  “You will stay. You will have her. We will have you,” said Lily, continuing to unbutton her shirt. Since she was in her pajamas, she didn’t seem to have anything on underneath it. She was uncovering her bare skin, a triangle of pale skin opening between her breasts.

  “Stop,” I said again, and I grabbed her hands, trying to stop her.

  But she kept trying to unbutton the buttons, and my fumbling there only served to expose her. I caught sight of one of her nipples, puckered in the cool night air, and I was instantly aroused and ashamed all in the same moment.

  I scrambled off the horse and climbed off the carousel. “Let her go,” I growled. “Get out of her.”

  “Don’t fight,” said Lily, following me off the carousel, her shirt gaping, her breasts bouncing. “It’s so much nicer if you don’t fight.”

  Clenching my teeth, I went back to her, and I began buttoning her shirt back up. I did a bad job of it. It was crooked. But she was covered, that was the important thing. The idea of what was happening, the obscenity of being complicit in what was being done to her, it made me feel like vomiting. It made me want another scalding shower like the one I’d taken after the time I’d been taken over. I was trembling.

  “Don’t you want this?” said Lily.

  “No,” I bit out. I grabbed her by the
arm. “We’re going back. We’re going to get this thing out of you. Maybe if I use the oil I have I can dislodge it.”

  “It is the other, then,” said Lily. “The one you brought with you, the wraith. The one we cast out. She is the one you want.”

  “Are you talking about Mads?” I said, stopping. I grabbed Lily’s other arm, forcing her to face me. “What did you do to Mads?”

  Lily put her hands on my forearms. Her mouth twisted into a semblance of a smile, but it looked plastic somehow. Her fingers crawled over my arms, over my biceps. “You will stay.” And then she seized my face with both hands and her face loomed close.

  And it was happening again—

  I was being sucked at, my essence being drawn through my mouth and nose and ears and eyes. The world was so blurry that I could barely make anything out. I tried to fight her.

  But she held me firm.

  This had happened to me before.

  This was what Negus had done to me when he had possessed my mother. This was what had happened to me in Boonridge. The spirit of David Mosely had sucked me so dry, I had barely been able to move. Whenever this happened to me, I was helpless. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t even yell for help.

  So, I stood there, vainly trying to save myself, and the thing inside Lily continued to feed on me.

  The world went blurrier and blurrier and then gray and then cold.

  And then…

  Dark.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I dreamed I was back in the maze. I was running through the various pathways, and all the mirrors were broken and cracked, filtering back distorted reflections of me. I was running as fast as I could. Whenever I looked behind myself, there was no one there, but I could feel a presence pursuing me. I knew someone was there.

  Panic spurred me on, but my body was breaking down. There was a sharp pain in my side. My legs were screaming at me with every time my muscles lengthened or contracted. Everything hurt, and I was exhausted.

  But I couldn’t stop running. I knew that if that thing—whatever it was—caught me, I would be destroyed. So, I tunneled through the maze as quickly as I could, fighting through the pain.

  Then I rounded a bend and I came to a dead end. In front of me there was only a broken mirror. I couldn’t go through it.

  I skidded to a stop, and—desperate—began feeling at the walls, looking for an escape somewhere. A trap door. A secret passage. A doggie door. Anything.

  But there was nothing, and I could hear the thing approaching.

  I flattened myself against the far wall and waited, eyes wide, breath coming in harsh gasps, sweat pouring down my skin, soaking my pajamas.

  The shadow of the thing feel across the threshold, but I couldn’t see it yet.

  It took a step forward. The shadow moved. The shadow was massive, huge and menacing and dark. And now I could smell this thing, and it smelled like putrid death. Rotting meat, the stench of decay and sickness.

  I whimpered.

  “Please,” I whispered.

  But, said the walls, vibrating all together, this is what you wanted. Negus.

  The thing was Negus?

  We will give him to you. We promise. But you must let us in.

  I thrust up my hands to protect myself.

  Let us in. Let us help. Say it.

  “Help,” I whispered.

  The shadow crested around the corner. But it wasn’t Negus. It was Jason Wick, grinning from ear to ear like a jack-o-lantern. He held out a hand and he came for me.

  “No,” I said, trying to back away. “No.”

  He was on me, and he smelled like rot, and his hand went right through my chest, and I was screaming like a little child and—

  * * *

  I woke up.

  It was dark where I was. I couldn’t make anything out at first. I stood up. I could still smell that awful smell, the smell of decay and rot. I was in a dark place that smelled and I was still terrified from the dream I’d had.

  Slowly, my eyes began to adjust, and I could make out my surroundings. I was in the maze.

  Like in it for real, not some dream. I wasn’t even sure how I could have gotten here. The maze wasn’t exactly close to the carousel. And where was Lily? Was she all right? And what was that smell?

  I wasn’t sure which way would get me out of this thing, since I didn’t have any clue about where I’d come in. I felt my way to the end of the corridor, and there was a distant light, which looked like daylight, so I followed that. I guessed it must be morning by now?

  But instead of coming out of the maze, I found a door, one that had been painted the same color as the wall of the maze, but now stood open, hanging off its hinges. The light was coming from inside there.

  I followed the light. That was the way out. Except… the stench was getting worse.

  I emerged into a room with several windows. There was a pegboard on the far wall with some wrenches and hammers hanging on it. A stack of buckets in the corner. But I didn’t give any of that much mind, because I saw Oscar, hanging from a rope in the middle of the room. His tongue was protruding from his mouth, swollen and blueish green. His eyes were bulging. His hands and feet were swollen too, his fingers like purple sausages. He was dead.

  I stared at him, and I couldn’t move.

  We have dispatched the one you hate.

  I shuddered.

  And then bile rose up in my throat, and I thought I would vomit. I backed up, back into the maze, running as far as I could get from the swinging body in there.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  They brought an ambulance for Oscar, even though it was obvious that he was gone, and there was no reviving him at all. I guess they do that just in case. Probably to avoid lawsuits. After all, it would be a shame if a person wasn’t saved that could have been, simply because no one bothered to send out the paramedics. The police came too. Two different squad cars and four officers. Three in uniform, one who was wearing a suit and had a big belly that hung out over his pants. He was chewing gum, and he seemed to have a nervous tick. Whenever he chewed his gum, he also raised his left eyebrow. It was a little unnerving. He was obviously the detective, though, and he was the one asking questions.

  I hadn’t called the police myself, because I hadn’t had my phone. I’d fought my way out of the maze—it actually wasn’t a very complicated maze after all, and it had only taken me a few minutes to get out of there. Then I’d somehow managed to keep myself from throwing up while I ran all the way back to the camping area and banged on the door of my mother’s motorhome.

  She’d called the police.

  Right after she did it, though, I think she regretted it, because she started fretting about whether we were going to get in trouble for trespassing. She started packing up everything she had set out in front of her motorhome—the grill, the table, the chairs. I guessed she didn’t want it to look as though we’d moved in.

  Anyway, before she could finish, the police showed up and the ambulance, and it was all flashing lights and sirens and panic.

  I showed them where they could find Oscar, and then my mother, Lily, Patrick, and I all ambled around outside the maze while they did their thing in there.

  Finally, it was time for the detective to interview me. “How did you find him?” he said.

  “I was in the maze,” I said. “I was trying to figure how to get out, and I followed the light. He was there.” I realized that I should have thought this through better, because I sounded like a crazy person.

  “Why were you in the maze?”

  I don’t know. I woke up there. I assume the ghosts dragged me there, or maybe they took control of my passed-out body and made me walk there myself. “Well, I was exploring. I mean, that’s what we’re doing here. Exploring.”

  The detective raised his eyebrow at me. It could have been the tick. It could have been that he didn’t believe me. “This Oscar Milton guy, he runs a podcast.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said.

&
nbsp; “It’s about haunted houses and stuff,” he said. “But you were just here exploring?”

  “Well…” I spread my hands. “I think Oscar was trying to put together an episode of his podcast. But I was exploring.”

  “And did Oscar seem… depressed to you?”

  “I really couldn’t say. We weren’t that close.”

  “You were camping here together,” said the detective, cracking his gum.

  “Well, yeah, but I just met him,” I said.

  One of the uniforms tapped the detective on the shoulder. “Looks self-inflicted.”

  The detective shot the uniform a withering look. “Thanks for telling me that, and for telling that to this guy here.” He jammed his thumb in my direction.

  “What?” said the officer. “It’s a suicide. No reason to detain anyone.”

  “I think that’s my call to make,” said the detective. He turned back to me. “Don’t leave town. But, uh, you can’t camp here anymore.”

  “So, you want us to leave the park, but stick around in the vicinity?” I said.

  “The park is technically private property,” said the cop. “That doesn’t mean that people don’t come in here all the time. We can’t catch them all. But if you’re camping right in the parking lot there, you’re a bit conspicuous. I could arrest you for trespassing if I wanted.”

  * * *

  No one wanted to stay, anyway. The death of Oscar had cast a pall over everything we were trying to accomplish there. Lily and Patrick were too upset about it to be worried about finding Molly or their mother’s jewelry. My mother had already started packing up.

  We all followed suit and began to pack as well.

  The police came back through on their way out, and they got cell phone numbers for all of us. The detective told us again that we needed to pack up and leave, but that he would like it if we stayed close. He said there was a campground with RV hookups a few miles out of town, and he hinted that we could come back to explore the park during the daylight hours if we were discreet about it, although no one was much in the mood to be in the park anymore.