by Brian Keene
“Now he tells us,” Maria moaned. “Very helpful.”
“I’m not dangerous,” Adam repeated. “They act like I’m fucking crazy or something.”
Maria glanced in the rearview mirror. Adam’s left eyelid was twitching and his lips were pulled into a scowl. She turned the radio off and tried to calm him.
“We know, Adam. It’ll be okay.”
Levi grabbed the door handle. “Come on.”
“You have to piss?” Adam asked him.
Levi didn’t answer. Maria activated the power locks a second before Levi opened the door. He turned to her in annoyance.
“Unlock the door,” he demanded. “And the trunk, as well, please.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the Ghost Walk,” he said. “Leave the car right here. We’ll hike there.”
“Are you crazy? We’re still five miles away.”
“I’ve walked farther.”
“I haven’t.”
“Me either,” Adam said. “I didn’t exactly get a lot of exercise in the hospital.”
Levi pawed at the door handle. “Unlock this. We’ll leave the car here. That might help slow down this progression of traffic.”
“No way,” Maria balked. “I’m not abandoning my car in the middle of some country road, especially with all these people around. If you want to make an even bigger traffic jam, then you get out there and conjure up a demon or something.”
Before Levi could respond, traffic began to move again, albeit slowly. Maria eased her foot off the brake and the car rolled forward.
“Look,” she said. “We’re moving again. See? No worries.”
“Unlock the door, Maria.”
“Levi, we’re moving!”
“Not fast enough. We don’t have a choice, Maria. Look at the sun.”
She gazed out the windshield. The yellow orb was just beginning its slow descent beneath the horizon.
“Sunset. I know. But it will be another hour and a half or so before it’s dark out, and you said the walls won’t thin until midnight.”
Levi gritted his teeth. “No, I said that they’ll be at their thinnest at midnight. They’re already thinning. I also said that the entity is already seeping through, and gathering strength. We have to stop it before midnight—before it’s completely here. If it breaks through all the way, none of us will be strong enough to stand against it.”
“What does that have to do with the sun?”
“The enemy breached our world via the doorway in the hollow. As more and more of it pours through the gate, the surrounding area will grow darker. The more mass that enters our reality, the farther it can spread, continuing to feed in preparation for what’s to come. This gathering darkness has nothing to do with the sun. It is a false darkness, a manifestation of the entity. And with all of these people heading to the Ghost Walk, your friend, Mr. Ripple, will welcome an early dusk.”
Maria gasped. “He can open early if it’s dark enough…”
“Exactly.”
“Shit.”
“Yes.”
Maria took a deep breath and fastened her seat belt. Her fingers tightened around the steering wheel. The brake lights on the car in front of her flashed. The pro cession stopped again.
“Both of you buckle up,” Maria said.
“I’m comfortable,” Adam said, still sprawled and reading the newspaper.
“Put on your seat belts and hang on!”
“What are you doing?” Levi asked.
Maria swerved left and edged out into the northbound lane. Spotting no oncoming traffic, she stomped the accelerator. The car shot forward. Behind them, annoyed drivers blew their horns and made obscene gestures.
“I’m not crazy,” Adam said, reaching for his seat belt. “You are.”
The speedometer crept higher.
“After the last twenty-four hours?” Maria said. “Yeah, maybe I am.”
Adam turned pale. “We’re all going to die.”
“Not yet,” Levi said. “But perhaps before the night is through…”
The darkness began to spread beyond the confines of the hollow, creeping over the burned-out wasteland and reaching for the surrounding forest.
The crowd was getting restless.
They’d descended upon the midway, consuming cotton candy, funnel cakes, barbeque sandwiches, and candied apples. They spent money at the gaming booths, popping balloons with darts and tossing horse shoes and throwing soft balls at the elected officials in the dunk tank. They cooed over the baby animals in the petting zoo. They got free pens at the fire department’s booth, and free pamphlets from the Methodists’ table, and free bumper stickers from a congressional candidate stumping for votes. They stopped by the Baptists’ table, where a sign promised that they could find out if they were going to Heaven by answering three easy questions. They promised the representatives at the SPCA booth that they would spay and neuter their animals. They pointed at some of the people in costumes who walked amongst the crowd. But then, after all of these distractions, they purchased their tickets and got in line for the Ghost Walk. As the sky grew darker and the line grew longer, they milled about restlessly.
Ken watched them with growing unease. Some of the teenagers, and even a few adults, were starting to make trouble—roughhousing and annoying those around them. One man had already caused a scene, reacting belligerently when security pulled him out of line for being visibly intoxicated.
The volunteers were also growing impatient. The ladies running the bake sale weren’t doing much business because attendees didn’t want to carry a shoofly pie through the Ghost Walk with them. Therefore, customers were avoiding the stand, promising to come back on their way out. The folks selling tickets and policing the lines were dealing with a steadily growing mob. Tempers began to flare.
Ken hurried over to the ticket stand and pulled the person in charge, Sammi Horton, aside. She seemed frazzled and tired.
“Have you been in contact with the trail?” Ken asked.
“Yes. They want to know what the holdup is. They say it’s dark enough down there now.”
Ken checked his watch and the sky. “Really? The sun is still setting.”
Sammi shrugged. “That’s what they said.”
“Well, I wish someone had reported that to me. Where’s Terry at?”
“Haven’t seen him, Ken.”
“Shit.”
Ken stomped across the field and told the tractor and wagon teams to get ready. Then he returned to the head of the line, stepped over the stanchion, and advised his security volunteers to go ahead and open. He reminded them to let people go through in groups of twelve, with five-minute breaks between each group. Then he turned on his bullhorn and repeated the information to the people in line.
And then it was time. The sun disappeared below the horizon.
The Ghost Walk—Ken Ripple’s pride and joy, the project he’d worked on for over a year, the thing that had consumed his every waking moment, his testimony to his wife—was open for business.
His fears and misgivings vanished, along with his concerns for Terry and everything else—washed away by a tremendous swelling of pride.
The first group boarded the hay wagon. The tractor chugged forward, transporting them to the haunted attraction’s entrance. They reached it about the same time the second group boarded their wagon and set forth. The first group entered the woods.
Ken beamed. Blinking away tears, he watched them disappear into the shadows and waited for the screams to start.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The O’Bannon family—Liam, Connie, and their sons, Connor and Alex—had been looking forward to the Ghost Walk for the last two weeks, ever since they’d heard an ad for it on the radio. At ten and thirteen, respectively, both Connor and Alex were into scary video games and movies. Liam had been the same way as a boy, except that he’d been into horror comic books and movies. He’d never outgrown that infatuation, and he hoped his sons never would ei
ther. Connie wasn’t a fan of anything scary—be it comics, video games, movies, or books. She preferred the Lifetime Channel and A&E, and books by Nora Roberts and Nicholas Sparks. The closest she came to horror was the occasional Sherrilyn Kenyon novel. But she was a big fan of her family spending time together, and if this was what it took, then that was okay.
Liam had taken the afternoon off work so that they could arrive early. After sitting in the unexpected traffic jam and finally finding a parking spot, they’d made a beeline for the ticket booth, spying a chance to be among the first in line. While everyone else stopped on the midway, Liam purchased four tickets and they took their places, just inches from the stanchion—with nobody waiting ahead of them. While Liam and the boys held the spot, Connie had gone to a nearby stand and got them slices of pizza and cups of soda. Then they waited patiently for the fun to begin.
The hayride had been fun, if a little too short. So far, it had been Connie’s favorite part of the evening. Liam had put his arm around her when they sat down on a bale. She’d snuggled up against him. He was warm and the evening was chilly. She’d closed her eyes and smiled, remembering how it had been before the boys. Connor and Alex had bounced up and down impatiently, anxious to reach the trail.
And when they did, Connie’s fun ended and the boys’ and Liam’s began. They’d laughed at the various scenic locations along the path—the pterodactyl’s nest, a guillotine, and a reproduction of a windmill from some horror movie that the three of them recognized and Connie didn’t. They’d elbowed each other and shouted in excitement at each stop while Connie recoiled in disgust. Worse was the people in costumes who hid along the trail at random intervals. Some of the costumed monsters jumped out in front of them. Others waited until the O’Bannons had moved past. A man with a chainsaw and a face like a leather sack had chased her twenty yards up the trail while Liam and the boys howled. Somehow, the people hiding along the path seemed to know she was an easy target. Sometimes they acted alone and a few times they had teamed up, trapping the family between them. During one prolonged period of this, Connie had been trapped between Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger. She screamed while her husband and children laughed. When it was over, Connie had laughed with them.
It was a good evening.
They just couldn’t believe how dark it had gotten already—so early in the evening.
The O’Bannon family, for the most part, loved monsters and ghosts.
But it was their real-life ghosts that threatened to tear them apart.
When Connie was pregnant with Alex, Liam had cheated on her with a temporary worker from his office. The girl, Tasha, had left two weeks later, assigned to the next job. She’d e-mailed him once since then, to tell him she was pregnant and getting an abortion. He’d responded, but Tasha hadn’t answered. He’d never seen her again—but the guilt remained. Both for what he’d done to Connie and what he’d done to Tasha.
During her final year of college, Connie had been unfortunately saddled with a manic-depressive roommate named Celeste. While Connie enjoyed all that her final year had to offer, Celeste usually sat in the room with the lights turned off, listening to Depeche Mode—or, as Connie called them Depressed Mood—and getting high. Once a week, Celeste would threaten to kill herself, but after a half-dozen false alarms, Connie and her friends chalked it up to cries for attention, and ignored her further threats to do the same. Until the night when Celeste did it. Connie had been going to a party. Celeste had begged her to stay and talk. Said she was feeling low. Connie had left anyway, telling Celeste to just get some sleep. Instead, Celeste had sliced her wrists open, straight down, palm to elbow. She’d bled out on the bathroom floor, her blood congealing on the tiles before anyone found her. Connie had never forgiven herself for not staying. For not listening. For not being a friend.
Even at their young age, Connor and Alex had ghosts, as well.
Two years ago, Connor had shot a bird out of a tree with his BB gun. When he walked up to it, he heard frightened chirping above his head. The bird had been a mother, and her four babies trembled in their nest, cold and hungry and scared. Connor felt sick to his stomach. He didn’t know what to do. The babies wouldn’t stop squawking. So he knocked the nest out of the tree and killed them, too. That night, he hadn’t eaten dinner. His stomach hurt too badly.
Although his family didn’t know it, Alex was a thief. He stole his brother’s toys, change from the jar on top of his father’s dresser, and bills from his mother’s purse. He stole at school, at church, and even last year at summer camp. At his bravest moment, he’d stolen a video game from a neighbor’s yard sale. He liked how it made him feel. Liked the illicit thrill. But late at night, he worried what would happen if he ever got caught.
These were the ghosts they kept from each other—their most private, secret torments. This was what kept them apart, even on nights like this when they thought they were happy and having fun and loved.
Eventually, they entered the maze house. It was pitch-black inside. The boys led the way, stretching out their arms and touching the walls with their fingertips. Connie and Liam followed behind. In the darkness, Liam playfully squeezed her butt. Connie elbowed him in the stomach. They moved slowly, feeling their way along, and hitting many dead ends. Backtracking, they eventually found their way to the center of the building. A flashing strobe light hung from the ceiling. The entire room had been painted in a black and white checkerboard pattern—the floor, all four walls, and the ceiling. As they crossed the room, the O’Bannons marveled at the effect. It appeared as if they were moving in slow motion. It made Connie dizzy. She reached for the wall to steady herself, and noticed that the wall had eyes. And a mouth.
The mouth was grinning.
Shrieking, Connie jumped backward, hiding behind Liam. As they watched, a figure detached from the wall and moved toward them. It was another Ghost Walk volunteer. His clothing had the same checkerboard pattern as the rest of the room. Even his exposed skin—his hands and face—had been painted in the same fashion. Connie smiled in smug satisfaction as the boys and even Liam fled, screaming.
They plunged down another dark hallway, and were back to feeling their way through the impenetrable gloom. Eventually, they reached the maze house’s exit and emerged back into the night. This part of the trail had been strung with twinkling orange lights. They reflected off the white lines on each side of the path. After pausing to laugh about their encounter, the family moved along. Behind them, they heard another group screaming as they encountered the checkered man.
“That was awesome,” Liam said.
“Yeah,” Connor agreed. “Can we do it again?”
“There are people behind us, buddy. We have to keep moving. But maybe after we get to the end, we can go back through if the line isn’t too long.”
Both boys cheered. Connie groaned. They moved on. Connor and Alex ran ahead. Liam and Connie held hands.
Running footsteps pounded toward them. A man dressed like a werewolf rounded the corner, clutching his rubber mask in his hands. His eyes flashed terror.
“It’s my grandma,” he shouted, racing past them. “She’s down there!”
Liam reached for the fleeing man. “Is she hurt?”
The volunteer werewolf brushed by him, barely stopping.
“No, man. She ain’t hurt. She’s fucking dead! Has been for twenty years.”
He ran past them and disappeared into the woods.
“That guy was weird,” Connor said, staring in confusion.
“It’s just part of the show,” Liam said, trying to reassure his family. “It’s all an act.”
Connie frowned. “Well, I definitely don’t approve of his language.”
“Come on,” Alex urged. “Let’s keep going.”
More screams and laughter drifted out of the maze house as they started down the trail again. Curiously, there were now screams ahead of them, as well.
“I thought we were the first ones through,” Connor said.
&n
bsp; “We are,” Liam assured him.
“So who’s screaming?”
“It’s just the people hiding up ahead. They’re trying to psyche us out.”
The trail sloped downhill and then began to curve around, heading in the other direction. Liam guessed they must be at the halfway point. The trail grew darker as they reached the bottom of the hill. The white lines on both sides of the path faded, as if eaten by the dark. It was colder here. Connie and the kids shivered. The string of orange lights flickered. The screams increased in pitch and intensity, and then abruptly ceased.
Liam frowned. “What the—”
As they watched, the lights began to go out, one by one. Then they realized that they weren’t going out—they were being blacked out. Something was creeping across them. Something that moved like smoke.
It was the night.
The night was moving.
“Look at that,” Alex gasped.
Darkness flowed across the forest floor like water and wound between the trees like a snake. Everything it touched disappeared, encased in an impenetrable, obsidian shroud.
Connor grabbed his mother’s hand and squeezed.
“T-this is part of the show, too, right, Daddy?” Alex asked.
Liam couldn’t answer him because Liam was speechless. Tasha, the girl he’d had the affair with, stepped out of the darkness, naked and glistening with ebony liquid. The dark matter dripped from her pores. She reached for him, breasts heaving, and Liam gasped, terrified that his worst nightmare—Connie finding out about Tasha—had now come true.
Except that Connie didn’t notice because Celeste was gripping her hand. A second ago it had been Connor. But when she glanced down to reassure her son, she saw Celeste’s arm instead, sliced from palm to elbow, flayed skin hanging down in flaps, and black blood dripping from the wound.
For Connor, the darkness sounded like a flock of baby birds. Their wings beat against his upturned hands.
For Alex, the sky rained black coins, all stolen from his father’s dresser. They pelted his skin, their impact like bullets.
