by Val Crowe
It me hard, and it hurt in a way that I couldn’t quite explain. Because…
I had spent so long convincing myself she never loved me, and now I knew that wasn’t true. But she was still a liar. She was still running from the truth. And I needed to know the truth.
I was angry at her. Angry at her for loving me. If she had hated me, maybe it would be easier. Maybe then it would make sense. I straightened and stalked to intercept her. “What do you want?”
“Where did everyone go?” she said. “I was out looking for you and Patrick to see if I should fix some lunch, and I couldn’t find you anywhere. I’ve been all over the park, and I’ve seen… things.” She swallowed.
I squared my shoulders. “What kind of things? Have you seen yourself? Have you seen Negus inside you? Will you still deny it all?”
She held up both of her hands. “Stop, Deacon. Not now. Not here.” She looked around as if she expected something to leap out of the undergrowth and sink sharp teeth into us.
I grabbed her hands, encircled her wrists, trapping her. “You keep lying to me about it.”
“I didn’t mean to!” she protested. “I swear I didn’t remember. I guess I wouldn’t let myself.” A funny sob came out of the back of her throat. “Deacon, kiddo, let go of me.”
“You remember now?” I growled. I didn’t let go.
“Please, you’re hurting me.” Her voice cracked.
“You remember? Admit it!”
“Let go!”
My nostrils flared.
She flinched. “What’s happened to you?”
“I want information,” I said. “And no one seems to be willing to give it to me, no matter what I do.”
“Where are Patrick and Lily?”
I sucked in breath through my nose.
“Deacon?”
“Tell me about Negus.”
“I don’t know that name,” she said.
“Tell me about what happened.”
“I wanted to help you. I wanted to fix it. I promised you I would fix it.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Deacon, maybe I did always remember. Maybe I just couldn’t face it.” She let out another sob.
I shook. “Stop crying and talk.”
“Let go of me.” Her face was twisting and tears were spilling out over her cheeks, and—
I thrust her aside. I couldn’t stand being the cause of that. Not to her. Not even after everything. She was still my mother, and it was still against all nature to hurt her. “Are you going to tell me?”
“Just let’s find Patrick and Lily and let’s get out of this place,” she said. “Once we’re out of this park, then I’ll tell you everything.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “Why does everyone want to leave this park? I’m not leaving here.” I turned on my heel and started up the path toward the Ferris wheel.
CHAPTER TWENTY
But there was nothing at the Ferris wheel. It was covered in vines, and it hadn’t moved in decades. Several of the passenger cars had fallen off and were upended in the tall grass around the thing. They sat there like picked bones on the carcass of this place.
I dug my fingers into my eye sockets.
Everything was buzzing. Maybe it was insects who’d made this place a home. Maybe it was some kind of buzzing power inside the place. I didn’t know. The whole place suddenly seemed overexposed and too bright. It hurt my eyes. It was giving me a headache.
I blinked and there, under the Ferris wheel, something was standing.
It was Lily’s dad, in his crew cut. No, it flickered. Now, it was Jason Wick, smiling at me. “I have ice cream,” he whispered. He raised his hand and crooked his fingers to me.
I turned my head to one side, cracking my neck.
The buzzing was louder.
The figure flickered again. Now, it was the man who had been chasing Molly, carrying his gun. He took aim at me, and the pistol issued through the air with a loud, echoing boom.
I dove to the ground just in time.
The bullet went over my head.
Maybe it wouldn’t have been real. Maybe I could have mind-over-mattered the wound away. Maybe not. I didn’t want to take any chances.
I crawled on my knees.
Now the figure was standing over me, and it was my mother.
Of course it was my mother. Her dark hair was filthy. She pushed it out of her face, her movements clumsy. “Mommy’s hungry.”
“No,” I whimpered, suddenly back there, suddenly trapped in that motorhome—the motorhome where she still lived—so confused that my mother had changed, so hurt and so destroyed, a little boy whose innocence had been ripped away. “Please,” I begged.
She put her foot on my chest and pushed me backward.
I collapsed against the ground, air knocked out of me from the impact.
She was on me right away, hissing as she grabbed my face with both hands, put her nose to mine.
“No,” I said again.
But it was too late now. She was sucking at my essence, and it was all coming out of me, and the world was going blurry and gray.
I screamed and screamed, but it didn’t matter.
I couldn’t fight this.
When she was done, I was barely conscious.
She threw back her head and dragged her hand over her neck and collarbone, sighing in some kind of perverse pleasure. “Giving, Deacon. That’s more like it. You taste….” She groaned. “More giving, Deacon. More of that.” She swayed above me, as if drunk or high or…
I shut my eyes. I was tired.
When I opened them, the ghost of my mother was staggering away.
Only I noticed that she was leaving footprints in the dirt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A long time later, I managed to get up. I wasn’t sure if I had slept.
Must have.
It was later in the day. Afternoon. The sun was hanging lower in the sky, and it was too yellow. It burnt its image onto my retinas, and it was bright and dull all at once. I retraced my steps back to the place where the path forked, where I had left my mother.
But she wasn’t there anymore.
I considered going down the other fork, toward the Tilt-A-Whirl, but I just went back to the roller coaster.
I found Lily there, sitting in the middle of the path. She was rocking, clutching her knees and humming to herself.
“Lily,” I said, and my voice came out scratchy, as if it hadn’t been used in a while.
She looked up at me.
There was blood spattered all over her face. Her hands were bloody too. So were her clothes.
“What happened, Lily?” I said, eyeing her warily.
She pointed.
I followed the direction of her finger to see that there was a bloody heap of something lying underneath the pirate ship ride. It looked like it was half her father and half my mother. It still had some stringy hair in the front, framing its ruined face, but the rest was a crew cut. It was twitching, and it was bleeding everywhere. Lying next to it was a metal pole, some piece of a ride. It was covered in blood.
“I killed Daddy,” said Lily in a tiny voice. “I didn’t mean to.”
The thing on the ground stretched out a limb—like a spider. It slammed it into the ground. It was getting up.
Lily let out a high-pitched noise.
The thing was up on all fours, but belly up, its head dangling down unnaturally. It turned its eyes on us, but not its head.
“Lily,” I said, holding out my hand to her. “Let’s go.”
She moaned, shaking her head. “I killed him.”
“Lily.”
She looked up at me, lower lip trembling. “Why won’t he stay dead?”
I grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. “Come on.”
We ran.
The thing came after us, surprisingly limber for not looking as though it should even exist. It was mangled and backwards and wrong. And yet it skittered over the ground for us.
What d
id it want?
I needed to figure this out.
More giving, it had said. It wanted to suck me dry, apparently. That was what they all wanted.
That was what Mads had said!
But then that thought faded, buried. I had to give it something else. I couldn’t let it drain me. There had to be something else it wanted.
Lily tripped, and she went down on the ground, sprawling. She cried out.
I doubled back and tried to take her by the hand.
She resisted, clutching her hands to her chest. She had skinned up her palms.
The thing was gaining on us. It scampered over the path. Its head hung down, swinging back and forth like the clapper on a bell, like a uvula in the back of your throat, but it was meat and sinew and bone and hair and it had a face and—
I yanked Lily up by one arm.
She pitched forward, colliding with my chest.
I took a step backward, my balance off.
The thing was less than five feet away. It was grinning.
I struggled to stand, to turn, to run.
And fell.
We both went down on the ground, both of us tangled in each other’s limbs, and I was trying to hold up my arms to ward off that thing, because I could see that it was gearing up to spring on us.
I shut my eyes, bracing for impact.
And then, nothing.
I opened my eyes.
It was gone.
Lily gasped.
* * *
“He was a terrible father,” Lily was saying as we walked through the park, heading back to the roller coaster.
I was only half listening to her. I was still trying to figure out what I could give to the park in exchange for information about Negus. I wasn’t having any brilliant ideas, and it was probably because Lily wouldn’t shut her stupid mouth.
“He hurt my mother,” said Lily. “He used his fists on her. On us, he was less physical. He would lock us in this closet—”
“I’ve heard about this,” I muttered.
“What?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said, sighing. She was determined to talk. What was I going to do about it?
“Anyway, when my mother decided to leave him, I was glad. I was really little back then. I was only five years old when she decided to run, but I remembered what he had done. We never talked about it, though. My mother wouldn’t mention it, and Patrick seemed to be oblivious to the whole thing, and Molly seemed happy enough to pretend it never happened. So, time passed, and he never found us, and I guess… it started to seem like a bad dream. But then we lost Mom. And they found him. They called him in to take us away.”
“I heard this too,” I said, but softly. Probably too softly for her to make out what I said.
“Did you say something?”
“Nope,” I said.
“Well, anyway, Molly said she was going to fix it. She was twenty years old, and I thought she was going to find some way to get custody of me and Patrick. When she left, I thought that was what she was doing. But she never came back.” Lily sniffed. “They were letting Patrick and me stay in the house that my mother owned under Molly’s supervision until my father got things ready for us to come home with him. And I waited and waited, and she never came back. It had been two days, and we couldn’t get in touch with her. What was I supposed to do?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I guess you broke into your father’s house?”
“How did you know?” She gave me a wide-eyed look, as if she thought I was mind reader.
“You just told me you killed your father.” I pointed in the direction we had come from. She had been referring to the ghost thing, but I figured it had some basis in reality, after all. That was the way this story seemed to be going.
“I had to,” she said. “Patrick was seventeen. He would have only had a year with him. But I… it would have been so long. I couldn’t do it. I had to fix it. Molly didn’t fix it, so I had to fix it.” Now, she was crying.
I was annoyed with this.
“I never knew what happened to her,” she said, still sobbing. “Why did Molly come here? What was she trying to do? Why didn’t she come back? I have to know the truth.”
“Believe me, I understand,” I said. “I’ve been trying to get some information for a while now. And I’m getting nothing.”
“Molly!” she suddenly yelled in her tearful voice. “Molly, where are you?”
And then, there she was.
Molly, just as I’d seen her before, holding out two handfuls of jewelry.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“We had a deal, girly,” growled another voice. The man with a gun flickered into view right in front of her. “I asked you for cash to kill your father.”
“He’s nothing to me,” said Molly, jutting out her chin. “And this is worth more than what you asked for.”
“This ain’t the deal,” said the man. He apparently chewed tobacco, because he spit out a thin line of brown liquid.
Molly moved her foot just in time to keep from getting hit by it. “I couldn’t get cash. I tried, but this was the best I could do. I swear to you it’s real.”
“And what’s that worth to me, huh? You swearing you got real pearls?”
“These are my mother’s jewels,” said Molly. “And she’s gone. It kills me to let them go, but I know she’d want him gone, the one I’m hiring you for. You are going to take them, aren’t you?”
He eyed her, cocking his head in consideration. Then he nodded. “Sure, girly. I’ll take your jewelry.” Then he yanked out his gun and cocked it.
Molly’s eyes widened.
He shot at her.
She turned and ran. “You double-crossing bastard!” She careened through the park as the bullets tore through the air behind her. She rounded a corner, kept going.
Lily and I went after her.
So did the gun man.
It the distance, we saw her, still running. But his bullet caught her in the back and she stopped short. She fell forward, and the jewelry went everywhere, scattering against the pavement.
The man stalked over and began scooping up the rings and necklaces.
Lily ran over to the man and began to try to pick up the jewelry, to keep it from him. But her hands went right through the pearls. “You asshole.” She turned on the gunman. “You killed my sister. And for what?”
“I know, right?” I said. “She was going to give him the jewelry anyway.”
Lily tried to slap the gunman.
Her hand went right through him, and he didn’t even acknowledge she was there. It was a loop, apparitions reliving something. They were stuck in their own time.
“You fucking asshole,” she said again, and she stood up. She looked over at me. “He did it so that he didn’t have to kill my father. He reneged on the deal and killed her. He was a dirty double crosser.”
I thought that it still didn’t make sense. Why not take the money and promise to pop the dad, but then just never show up? What was the point in killing Molly?
But then the gunman turned to her, leering. He ran his fingers over her lifeless cheek.
Eew. So, it was like that. Probably got more of a thrill after killing a pretty twenty-year-old girl than an old abusive guy with a crew cut.
“Stop it!” said Lily, horrified. “Stop it now.”
Of course, the gunman didn’t.
Lily seemed determined to try, though.
I gave up watching her or the ghosts, and mused over what I could possibly figure out to give them besides me. “You want a sacrifice?” I murmured. Who could they want?
Well, there were limited options, and I didn’t think I could stomach giving them my mother. Furthermore, I didn’t even know where my mother was.
Sighing, I went over to Lily and dragged her to her feet.
“Deacon, what do you think he did with my sister’s body? Do you think it’s buried out here somewhere?”
I didn’t answer her. I just dragged h
er to the shed where I’d locked up her brother. I had a moment of panic, because I wasn’t sure how I was going to open the padlock. But then I realized that the key was in the bottom of it.
Had it always been there?
Must have been.
Handy.
I smiled. I unlocked the shed.
“Deacon?” came the voice of Patrick.
Before he could rush me, I shoved Lily into the shed and shut the door.
“Hey!” Patrick collided with the other side of the door.
We struggled. He was trying to push it open. I was trying to keep it closed.
He seemed to have the upper hand.
My muscles screamed at me, and I clenched my teeth.
And then I got another bit of strength, and I managed to get the door closed. I snapped the lock back on.
Panting, I stepped back.
“Take them, then,” I yelled at the sky. “I’ve got them here for you. Practically gift-wrapped.”
There was no reply but the persistent buzz.
* * *
The sun beat down on my head. My mouth felt dry. Earlier, I had gone back to the camper before for lunch and eaten that sandwich, but I hadn’t gotten anything to drink.
I began to daydream about water.
I should go back and get some.
Why hadn’t I brought some with me in the first place?
Maybe, if I went and got water, by the time I got back, the park would have eaten Lily and Patrick, and then the spirits would be ready to tell me all about Negus.
I decided that was a great idea.
I went back to the Airstream and got some water out of my refrigerator. I guzzled it. Grabbing another bottle, I headed back into the park. I didn’t see my mother anywhere. I wondered where she was. She must still be in the park somewhere.
Whatever.
I got back to the shed.
Patrick and Lily were still in there. They were talking.
“What do you mean, you killed Dad? It was an intruder. A robber. Someone who broke into his house.”
