by JL Bryan
They listened carefully, but no voices answered them.
“Do you hear that?” Victoria whispered, but he shook his head. She pointed up along the midway. “Listen.”
Carter concentrated. He thought he did hear something in the distance, very faint little beeps and blats.
“Something like a video game?” he whispered.
“Yeah. Little lasers and explosions.”
“It has to be coming from Space City. There’s a big arcade there, and Martian laser tag.” He started up the midway.
“But it wouldn’t have electricity, would it?” she asked.
“I didn’t expect Harpoon Lagoon to work, either. Maybe they brought a generator.” Carter stopped walking. “Or maybe it’s not those two kids.”
“Who would it be, then?”
“Any crazy person who might have drifted down to Florida—they do that, you know, crazy people drift down here from all over the country. One of them might decide to live in a condemned amusement park. Maybe we’re not hearing the kids, but the psycho who killed them when they snuck in here. Did you ever think of that?”
“Of course I did,” Victoria said. “That’s why I needed you to come with me.”
“So I can get psycho-killed first?”
“You would die protecting me? That’s so sweet. Come on.” She started up the midway, and he walked along beside her.
The midway ended at a square central plaza with a wishing well and a few benches shaded by palm trees, all of it overgrown by thick vines. Colorful arrow signs pointing in different directions: TYKE TOWN, MERRY-GO-ROUND, FOOL’S GOLD....Victoria looked along the black arrow painted HAUNTED ALLEY in faded green ghost-letters. Dark Mansion was straight ahead of them, its waiting area full of fake gravestones. Inferno Mountain loomed behind it, the devil face grinning down at them over the peaked dormers and collapsing turrets of Dark Mansion.
“Is it just me,” Victoria whispered, “Or does it always seem like the devil is looking right at you?”
“It always seems like that.”
She looked in the opposite direction, along the weed-choked MERRY-GO-ROUND path, which was shattered into pebbles and sloped downward toward a large open valley, empty except for chunks of the roller coaster tracks visible on the far side. A row of decaying sawhorses wrapped in faded yellow police tape sat across the sloping path.
“Is that it?” Victoria whispered.
“That’s the sinkhole. We really need to not go over there.”
“I just want a closer look.” She started down the sloping path with her camera in front of her. The pulverized asphalt crunched like loose black gravel beneath her old sneakers.
“Be careful.” Carter walked a few feet behind her. The shattered path felt unstable beneath his feet, and it grew steeper as it approached the sinkhole.
“Look at that,” Victoria whispered, leaning over a sawhorse toward the darkness beyond. Carter reluctantly stepped up to join her.
The sinkhole was a broad, black pit fifty feet across, and they couldn’t see far into its depths under the gloomy late-afternoon clouds. Pebble-sized bits of asphalt rolled from under their feet and tumbled away into the open hole, making no sound after they fell inside, no echoing impact from the bottom. The air around the sinkhole felt much colder.
“I didn’t realize it was so big,” she said.
“Big enough to swallow a merry-go-round.” Carter felt a growing fear inside him as he gazed into the sinkhole, which seemed to go down and down forever. He glanced around the edges of the pit, where more sawhorses with yellow tape were scattered in a very loose ring with several wide gaps. “It looks like some of these things have fallen in. The sinkhole could still be growing.”
“It’s so creepy. Do you hear that?” She leaned her head a little farther over the sawhorse, listening. This close to the ocean, the breeze was almost constant. As it passed over the mouth of the dark chasm, it made a sound like a soft, endless sigh.
She took pictures of the sinkhole, though Carter didn’t know what there was to see except darkness. Then a voice shouted, startling them both.
“That’s two hits, Kevin! You’re going down, Beefball!”
The voice didn’t come from the open pit but from somewhere behind them, mechanically amplified into a booming shout.
Carter and Victoria looked at each other. “Kevin” was the name of one of the missing kids, the fat one.
They turned and dashed up the path, with little spills of pulverized asphalt sliding away beneath their shoes. Video-game sound effects echoed ahead, with lots of digital explosions and high-pitched laser fire.
It was easy to follow the sounds to the Space City attraction called Mad Martian Arcade, a sprawling place covered in fake red rock. One black-tinted entrance door was shattered and its black glass lay all over the ground.
Through the door, they glimpsed the wreckage of the old video arcade, with plastic seats shaped like motorcycles and race cars facing large, cracked video screens. Carter had been carrying the flashlight so Victoria could focus on taking pictures, but he didn’t need it to see inside the arcade. A red strobe light pulsed at the cave-like entrance to the laser tag game—clearly identified by the glowing red neon sign above it: MARTIAN TAG.
More laser sound effects thundered around them, along with the heavy breathing of an out-of-shape kid trying to run. The sounds and voices weren’t coming from inside the arcade, but from outdoor speakers mounted around the outside of the arcade, as though to advertise the laser tag game to the whole park.
“I killed you! You’re dead!” shouted the boy’s voice they’d heard earlier.
“No...you’re dead!” answered the labored, panting voice of another boy.
Carter and Victoria looked at each other again, and then a wrenching, rusty squeal echoed across the park. It wasn’t coming from the speakers.
“Over there,” Victoria whispered. She led the way toward the American Rockets ride, its high central tower just a black shadow outlined against the deep gray clouds above. The day had grown very dark.
The four rocket cars had been stuck at the top, but now the black shape of one rocket was sliding down the tower, giving off an ear-puncturing rusty squeal as it descended. It picked up speed as it rushed toward the ground, and the squeal grew louder. The entire support tower rocked forward with it. Victoria snapped pictures.
“Watch out!” Carter took her shoulders and drew her back from the swaying tower, which seemed ready to topple over.
“It looks like there’s something hanging from it,” she whispered.
The rocket car squealed its way down. Rather than braking and slowing as it approached the ground, it picked up speed until it crashed right into the base of the tower. The tower swayed with a metallic echo, then grew still.
Carter and Victoria made their way around the tower to see the crashed car. Her hand clutched his forearm.
Carter aimed the flashlight directly at the front of the rocket, and they both screamed.
Two bodies were mounted on the front of the car, their arms splayed out and bolted to the upper rocket shell as if they’d been crucified. They were smeared with dark filth and mud from head to toe, but they were clearly young teenage boys. One was short and wide.
“It’s them, isn’t it?” Victoria whispered.
Carter took a careful step forward and reached out toward one of the bodies.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“Just checking.” Carter wanted to know whether he needed to call an ambulance. He touched one of the dangling legs, then recoiled. It was stiff and cold. He looked up and pointed at the kid’s face. “What is that?”
Victoria stood beside him and followed his gaze. The fat kid, Kevin, was blindfolded with a long strip of dirty white satin tied into a bow over his eyes.
“Somebody wrapped him like a present,” Victoria whispered. She snapped a picture without even looking through her camera to line up the shot, as though it were an automatic
reflex.
The voices boomed over the arcade’s outdoor speakers again:
“You’re so dead, Kevin! Just admit it!” a kid’s voice shrieked.
“We’re both dead,” the other voice panted back.
“How are they still talking in there?” Carter whispered.
“It must be a recording...” Victoria’s eyes widened, and he was pretty sure they were both thinking the same thing. Someone must have recorded the two kids, then killed them, then bolted them to the front of the rocket car. That person must now be inside the arcade, playing the recording over the outdoor sound system, as if he knew Carter and Victoria were here and wanted to attract their attention. “We have to get the hell out of here,” she whispered.
“No kidding.” Carter took her hand as they jogged as fast as they could over the broken, sharply uneven pavement of the midway. He kept glancing back, expecting the psycho killer to emerge from the arcade.
Maybe he’s not even in there, Carter thought. He could have just played the recording and left...he could be anywhere.
He glanced up at the Dark Mansion and the enormous grinning devil face of Inferno Mountain. He half-expected the devil’s eyes to light up and laughter to boom out of its open jaws, but none of that happened.
They hurried past collapsed and burned buildings, and it wasn’t hard to imagine a crazed killer lurking in the shadows with a sharp knife, or a gun, or a chainsaw.
They turned off the midway into Pirate Island, past the collapsed crab shack and Harpoon Lagoon. The shadows under the water rides were almost pitch black now, and the mud was slippery. Someone could easily be watching them, perhaps hidden behind one of the heavy support columns, or merely standing against it, invisible in the deep gloom.
Their feet slipped and slid in the mud as they ran, and they finally stumbled against the fence. They searched along the chain-link in the darkness, trying to find the hole where they’d come in.
It’s gone, Carter thought wildly. He sealed it up somehow, or maybe it just closed itself up and trapped us inside...
Then they found the loose flap of chain-link Victoria had cut open. While she crawled through the mud, Carter watched back over his shoulder, expecting someone to emerge from the dark, grab him, maybe cut his throat before he had time to react. Whoever had killed the kids and mounted up their bodies was clearly a sick, twisted individual.
When Victoria was on the other side, he passed her the flashlight, then crawled out on his hands and knees, expecting someone to seize his foot from behind. Instead, Victoria seized him under the arm—she was already standing, and she helped him to his feet.
They stomped through the overgrown, swampy woods, and Carter cursed when he remembered how far they still had to go before they reached her car.
They reached the open expanse of the parking lot and broke into a run. He glanced back to see if anyone was following them, but only saw the dark shape of the devil’s face, its horns outlined against the gloomy sky.
They ran across the road to the Fancy Flamingo Lodge. Victoria’s car keys slipped in her wet, muddy hands, but she managed to press the remote button on the key fob. At the moment, Carter could imagine no sound more lovely than the little thunks of the car doors unlocking.
They scrambled inside. Victoria’s trembling hand inserted the ignition key, and she had to turn it twice with her slippery fingers before the engine grumbled to life.
In her hurry to escape, she peeled out across the motel parking lot, leaving a smoking tire track. She punched the accelerator as they reached Beachview Drive, not even pausing to check for oncoming cars.
She sped away, pushing the little Fiesta as fast as it would go. Carter glanced back at the broken ruins of the retreating amusement park, but he didn’t see anyone chasing after them. It definitely felt like someone was watching, though.
In his mind, he could hear the devil’s laughter, but there was nothing unusual about that. He heard it every time he thought of Starland.
Chapter Eight
“What do we do?” Victoria asked. She turned down her stereo, since the loud proto-surf sound of The Ventures did not exactly fit their panicked mood.
“We have to go to the police.” Carter’s heart was still thumping fast as they turned onto Gulf Coast Highway, where most of the strip-mall town of Conch City was located. Night had fallen, and the street was lit by glowing signs offering fast food and liquor.
“Didn’t you say we’d get in a lot of trouble for going into the park?” she asked.
“This is too important. Some kind of psycho freak is hanging out in there, killing kids.”
Victoria nodded, taking a deep breath. “Of course. This is all just so bizarre.”
He directed her to the low brick strip mall housing the municipal complex with the police, fire, and water departments. They parked in front of the police station and waited a moment. Things would get crazy once they stepped inside and told their story.
“Thanks for coming with me.” Victoria spoke quietly. “If I’d gone in there without you, I might be dead right now.”
“Would you have gone without me?”
“Yes. But what would have happened if I did?” She rubbed her forehead, smearing mud into her hair. “Why was I so obsessed?”
“You were right,” he said. “The kids were in there.”
“I’m freaking out right now, Carter.”
He took her trembling hand with his own trembling hand.
“Let’s do it,” he said.
They climbed out of the car and trudged toward the brightly lit plate glass door of the police station. He held open the door for her.
“Oh, my goodness,” said the middle-aged policewoman eating an apple behind the front desk. “What happened to y’all?”
“We found them.” Carter pointed to the MISSING flier on the bulletin board with the pictures of the missing kids. “Kevin Gordy and Reeves Mayweather. They’re both dead.”
The middle-aged policewoman raised an eyebrow at them and bit into her apple. “Well, my goodness,” she said through a mouthful of juicy mush.
Minutes later, Carter and Victoria sat in the office of Police Chief Jud Kilborne, who spoke with a heavy South Alabama accent. His hair was graying, and he regarded them across his desk with frost-blue eyes. A frown seemed permanently carved into his face. Carter remembered that the chief had lost his own son in the disaster—the kid had been elementary age, around seven or eight years old.
The police chief looked between the muddy teenagers currently ruining the chairs in his office.
“I recognize you,” he said to Carter. “You’re Henry Roanoke’s boy, aren’t you? Used to run the Eight-Track.”
“Yes, sir,” Carter said. He couldn’t help shivering a little at the thought of confessing that he’d broken the town’s largest taboo, going into the old park.
“Don’t recognize you, ma’am,” the chief said to Victoria.
“I’m Victoria Samaris.”
“You from out of town?”
“My dad just moved us here. He’s the chief administrator at Cypress Lane Long-Term Care.”
Kilborne nodded. “Now, Bertie tells me you two have some information about them missing kids?”
“Yes, sir,” Carter said. “We...found their bodies.”
“Where?”
Carter gulped, readying himself for the chief’s angry response.
“In Starland.” Carter’s voice was just slightly louder than a whisper.
“I couldn’t hear you there,” Chief Kilborne said.
“We found them in Starland,” he repeated, a little bit louder.
Kilborne stared, his mouth a flat hard line. By his silence, Carter knew the man had heard him correctly.
“How did y’all come to be there?” the police chief asked.
“We were looking for the kids.”
“We thought they might have snuck in there,” Victoria added.
“And what gave you that idea?” Kilborne’s eyes
narrowed. They hadn’t moved from Carter’s face, and he had a feeling the man wanted to pound his face until he bled.
“Everybody’s been talking about the park at school,” Carter said, which was only a little bit of an exaggeration. “It just seemed like a possibility.”
“And instead of coming to the authorities with this idea, you decided to break into the park yourselves. Trespassing into that park is something we take seriously around here.” His sharp blue eyes watched Victoria while he raised a Styrofoam cup from his desk, spat a little stream of brown chewing-tobacco juice into it, and set the cup down again. She glanced at the crumpled, spit-stained napkin inside it, and her nose wrinkled for a second.
“But the point is, we found those kids, and there’s some kind of psycho in the park—” Victoria began.
“I’ll decide what the point is here, ma’am,” Kilborne said. “If you’re witnesses to something, I want to know how you came to be there. Especially in a place where’s nobody’s allowed.” His cold gaze shifted back to Carter. “Local boy like you already understands that.”
“Yes, sir.” Carter nodded.
“Why does this even matter?” Victoria, clearly feeling impatient, brought out the camera from her bag and turned it on, calling up the last picture she’d taken. She held it out to Kilborne. “Look!”
The police chief’s eye shifted to the display screen on her camera.
“Why the hell you showing me that?” he asked.
“Because...” Victoria gaped at him, at a loss for words. She turned the display screen back toward herself. Her brow furrowed, and she shook her head. Carter leaned over to look.
Two figures were tacked to the front of the American Rockets car, their wrists bolted into place as if they’d been crucified: a blue horse wearing a feathered headdress, its face striped with war paint, and a pig wearing a ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots. A white satin bow was tied over the pig’s eyes like a blindfold.
“What are those?” Victoria whispered.
“Shoot-Em-Up Puppets.” Carter and the police chief said it at the same time, in the same quiet voice.
“I don’t understand.” Victoria flipped back through the last several pictures, but they only showed the crumbling red-rock sprawl of the arcade and the deep emptiness of the sinkhole itself. “We saw them. Right?”
