Inferno Park

by JL Bryan

  She’d left the message more than two hours earlier.

  He texted her back: Can we talk later? I’m dead now.

  What?? she replied.

  Dead tired, he texted back, realizing he’d forgotten a word. His brain was definitely not functioning. Glad there’s good news, he added, which wasn’t exactly true.

  Found articles about the park’s creation, she told him. Talk at lunch tomorrow?

  Can’t wait, he replied. That wasn’t exactly true, either. He could wait and wait—he wasn’t sure he was ready to learn more about Starland, and probably wouldn’t mind if he never had to talk about it again. He shuddered as he thought of his dream, Tricia’s headless body facing him from the tilted cypress stump, raising a finger to her nonexistent mouth to shush him.

  He lowered his head and focused on his homework—he hadn’t even scratched the surface of chemistry or biology yet, and he still needed to read the second half of Walden for English class. Homework and studying were the keys to escaping this town and his past, but the past wouldn’t stop haunting him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Carter trudged to the concrete courtyard for lunch break on Thursday, feeling a bit like a condemned man on his way to the gallows. He was drowning in school work, and he’d even quit soccer this year to focus on studying. He didn’t need the horrific distraction of the amusement park derailing him now.

  Victoria waved and smiled from the door nook as he approached, practically bobbing with excitement. As reluctant as he felt, the smile on her face made him want to learn what she’d discovered. Though Starland was a major part of his own personal history—the shaping influence of his life, really, between the trauma of seeing his first love die in such a brutal manner and the eventual closing of the Eight-Track, which had dealt a fatal blow to his parents’ marriage—he didn’t know much about the park’s history. It had simply always been there, as far as he was concerned, like all the bright, gaudy, loud attractions that had crowded the Starwalk. Until, of course, the day all the magic died.

  “You look happy,” he said as he sank down beside her.

  “How was your search party?” she asked.

  “Hot and full of mosquitoes, like any good party.” He decided not to mention the nightmare he’d had after nodding off in the boat. “I knew we wouldn’t find anything. Everybody else seemed to know it, too.”

  “That sucks. But I did find something at the library. Want to see?” She unzipped a side pocket of her backpack without waiting for him to answer, and she brought out a single folded piece of printer paper. “It’s a start, anyway.”

  Carter unfolded the page. It showed a portion of a Conch City Chronicle newspaper page dated July 8, 1978. Somewhere in the process of transferring from newsprint to microfilm to laser printer, the text had grown blurry and the accompanying picture had become grainy and fuzzy.

  The headline was clear, however: INFERNO MOUNTAIN AWARDED TOP TEN RANKING.

  “Can you read it?” Victoria asked.

  “Barely.” Carter squinted his eyes, trying to focus on the blurry text.

  Inferno Mountain, the newest attraction at Starland Amusement Park, is one of the top ten “dark rides” in the country, according to Amusements and Attractions magazine, an industry trade journal for amusements, carnivals, and circuses.

  “Combining the excitement of a roller coaster with the allure and mystery of a spooky funhouse, Inferno Mountain creates a thrilling experience unmatched anywhere else in the Florida panhandle,” stated the journal’s July edition, which ranked the ride number four among the best “dark” (or enclosed) rides in the United States.

  “We’re all very excited by this news, of course,” said Theodore Hanover, the park’s owner. “We always strive to provide a fun and unique family experience, and we invite everyone in the community to come visit us here at Starland. To celebrate this award, we’re giving everyone a dollar off admission all week.”

  Also happy with the news was Arthur “Artie” Schopfer, the designer of Inferno Mountain and other eye-catching attractions around the park.

  “It’s good to know people are enjoying what we built,” Schopfer said. “Each creation is unique, but I think we all felt something special when we put that big devil together. If you’ll pardon the expression, we think it’s one hell of a ride.”

  Schopfer is currently building a miniature golf course near Starland, which he says will be populated by “life-size dinosaurs.”

  Starland Amusement Park opened in 1968 and attracts more than eight hundred thousand visitors annually. It is located at 1066 Beachview Drive. Open 6 PM to 11 PM weekdays, noon to midnight on Saturdays, noon to ten on Sundays.

  The grainy photograph accompanying the article showed the devil’s two-story face perched on the front of the smoldering volcano, its jaw stretched wide around the steep black roller coaster track as though laughing while it looked down at a very 1970’s crowd: the men with big mustaches, the women with feathered hair, the remarkably skinny teenagers in tiny shorts and high tube socks.

  “Okay,” Carter said. “Now we know the name of the guy who built it. Sounds like he did Dinosaur Mini-Golf, too.”

  “And the guy who owned the park,” Victoria said.

  “I could’ve told you that. Everybody in town knows who the Hanovers are. They used to own a lot of stuff, when there was stuff worth owning.”

  “Oh. Anyway, the library didn’t have Amusements and Attractions magazines, but I went online and found where somebody had uploaded a bunch of PDF’s of old issues. There’s like a whole Internet subculture devoted to old amusement parks and carnivals.”

  “There’s probably a whole Internet subculture devoted to any weird thing,” he said.

  “And I’m so glad there is. I found the article.” Victoria brought out two more sheets of paper folded together. One page showed grainy black and white pictures, while the other was mostly text. The headline read:

  #4: Inferno Mountain, Florida. “One Hell of a Ride”

  One picture was a shot of the ride’s front, the devil’s face framed by the clear sky, a trainload of riders on its way up to his open mouth. Another showed the ride under construction, when the mountain was just a skeletal framework of steel rods and wooden scaffolding. Two men stood in front of it. The caption identified the smiling rotund man in the white summer suit and matching fedora as Theodore Hanover, Park Owner. The other man, in horn-rimmed glasses, a dirty plaid work shirt, and scuffed jeans and boots, was identified as Artie Schopfer, Ride Designer.

  A third photograph showed three young, beautiful female models standing in front of the pitchfork-prison waiting area for Inferno Mountain, wearing horns and a high-collared cape (presumably red) over skimpy ballet leotards. They smiled and offered commemorative toy pitchforks to the passing crowd. A banner above them read, in fiery letters flanked by cartoon devils:

  INFERNO MOUNTAIN

  GRAND OPENING

  “RIDE IF YOU DARE!”

  “The article says more about him than the newspaper did,” Victoria said. “This one guy, Schopfer, designed several big things around the park—the Dark Mansion, Professor Atomic’s Brain-Scrambler, the jungle ride...”

  “All the cool stuff,” Carter said.

  “Exactly. He actually built stuff at little amusement parks all over the country, from Maine to California. Haunted houses, mazes, things like that. It says he started out building and running a small funhouse for a traveling carnival when he was just sixteen.”

  “Sounds like a great job. Better than moving furniture,” Carter said.

  “So I tried to find these guys.” Victoria tapped the picture of Artie Shopfer and Theodore Hanover. “There’s no ‘Schopfer’ in the local phone listings, though.”

  “If he worked all over the country, then he could be anywhere by now,” Carter said. “Why would he stick around here?”

  “I did find a Hanover Realty in an office building on 98, right in the middle of town.”

 
“That’s the family you’re looking for, but old Mr. Hanover died a few years ago. Right around the time of the sinkhole, I think. His son, Hanover Junior, is the one in charge now.”

  “We have to talk to him, then,” Victoria said. “We’ll say it’s for a school project. You have to come with me.”

  “I doubt he’ll meet with us.”

  “Maybe not if it was just me, but you’re local. Your family even had an amusement business like theirs.”

  “It wasn’t anything like theirs! We were tiny.”

  “But still...”

  “But still,” he agreed. “You’re right. He would think of you as an out-of-towner.”

  “Do you know him?” Victoria asked.

  “Not at all. I think my dad might.”

  “Can you check?”

  Carter felt less than comfortable with the idea of approaching the richest and most powerful individual in town to ask about the sensitive subject of the amusement park, but he didn’t want to look scared in front of Victoria.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

  Victoria stood up as the bell rang. “I’ll work on tracking down Artie Schopfer. I’ll try contacting that amusement-park magazine and the people who used to work at the local newspaper.”

  “Good luck. Maybe the guy’s still alive.”

  “I hope so. You know, I read that something like thirty million people visited Starland during the years it was open. It’s crazy how quickly the history of it can just disappear.”

  “My dad says everything disappears faster at the beach,” Carter said. “It’s all built on sand and water.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Carter was strolling to the bus after school when someone grabbed his arm. He jumped, his nerves badly frayed by recent events and his chronic lack of sleep.

  “Whoa, relax,” Victoria said. “You aren’t taking the bus, are you?”

  “It’s faster than walking home.”

  “Come on.” Holding his arm, she steered him away from bus loading area and toward the student parking lot. “So have you talked to your dad about getting in touch with Mr. Hanover?”

  “Um, no, I’ve been at school,” Carter pointed out. “I can ask him tonight.”

  “Can you ask him now?”

  “He’s at work.”

  “He has a cell phone, though?” Victoria asked.

  “You’re getting obsessed.” Carter opened the driver-side door of her Fiesta.

  “I’m not obsessed. Do you think you’re driving?”

  “Just getting the door for you.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “Get in.”

  “Admit you’re obsessed,” Carter said from the passenger seat as they pulled out of the parking lot.

  “Would you really be willing to forget all about it?” she asked him. “With those two kids still missing?”

  “Is it really just about the kids?”

  “Well...it wouldn’t be as urgent without them.”

  “But you’re really just obsessed with the park.”

  “Can you call your dad already?”

  Carter groaned. He called his dad’s cell phone.

  “What’s up? Everything okay?” his dad answered.

  “Hey, Dad, I’m okay. I was wondering if you knew the Hanover family at all?”

  “Sure. I play golf with the Hanovers at the country club on Thursdays,” his dad said sarcastically. “Why would you ask that, Carter?”

  “Oh. Um, I was hoping to talk to Theodore Hanover. For this school project. About...local history.”

  “Teddy Hanover Junior couldn’t care less about local history. His father did, but all Teddy sees is dollar signs.”

  “Okay,” Carter said. “So, you don’t know him? I was hoping you could call him for me...”

  “Call him yourself,” Carter’s dad said. “He’s more likely to talk to you. I’ve already cussed him out to his face, back when he refused to lower the rent on the Eight-Track, even when the tourist business was dying fast.”

  “Oh...I didn’t know that.”

  “Yep. I’d do it again, too. Anything else? We’ve got to pack here...”

  “No, that’s okay. Thanks, Dad.” Carter hung up.

  “Well?” Victoria asked.

  “My dad isn’t friends with him. He said I might as well call him myself.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Right now?”

  “I don’t have the number...”

  “Hanover Realty. Look it up on your phone,” Victoria said.

  “You’re pushy when you’re obsessed.”

  “I’m not obsessed. Just...focused,” she told him.

  Carter found the number and called. A receptionist answered, and he told her he was a senior at the town high school and wanted to speak to Mr. Hanover for a local history project. She put him on hold. Easy-listening jazz played over the phone.

  “What did she say?” Victoria asked.

  “She told me to wait a minute. I guess she’s asking him.”

  The “minute” turned into more than five. By the time the receptionist returned, mercifully killing a long, drawn-out saxophone solo, Victoria had driven to Carter’s apartment complex and they sat idling in the parking lot.

  “Mr. Hanover can give you a fifteen-minute appointment,” she said. “I have tomorrow at nine-thirty available.”

  “I’ll be in school then,” Carter told her. “Is there anything after two-thirty?”

  “Not tomorrow. He has a very important golf game.” The receptionist said this in a deadly serious tone. “The only other time would be eleven forty-five tomorrow morning, for fifteen minutes. Or we could schedule something for next week.”

  Carter passed that information to Victoria. They could sneak away during away lunch, but they would have to hurry back to avoid being caught leaving school. It didn’t sound as though the man expected to speak to them very long, anyway.

  “We’ll do it, thank you,” Carter told the receptionist. After he’d hung up, he asked Victoria, “Are you happy and calm now?”

  “I’m a little better. We also need to plan our next trip to the park.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a good idea. Let’s just wait and see what we find out.”

  “But those kids—”

  “Okay, okay.” Carter thought about something the police chief had said. “I don’t think we should go in there alone. We need more warm bodies. Our own search party.”

  “Who could we bring?”

  “Some kids from school, I guess. We don’t want the police to find out.”

  “You’re in charge of that,” Victoria said. “I don’t know anybody.”

  “Great.” Carter couldn’t imagine talking anyone else into searching the park with them. Who would ever agree to go there? “I’ll try, but most of us locals avoid that park...”

  “Just give them your most charming smile.” She looked around the parking lot where they’d been sitting. “Do you want to hang out for a while?”

  “Wish I could, but I’ve got my police-ordered volunteer work and homework for five A.P. classes,” he said. “I’d rather be doing anything at all with you.”

  She smiled and gave him a one-armed hug, her arm across his back, the top of her head against his cheek. He wasn’t sure where his own arms fit into this particular hug configuration, so he touched his fingers to her side for a second, feeling her ribs and warm skin through her thin summer shirt.

  “I’m glad we met,” she said as she pulled back from him. “Most people would probably think I was insane by now.”

  “Me, too.”

  “You think I’m insane?”

  “Who isn’t?” He stepped out of her car. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for the ride.”

  Carter didn’t have much time to wait before one of the retired men from the search party picked him up in an old truck. They walked a hiking path at Dead Lake that afternoon, keeping to the flattest, easiest trails because of the age of the other men in the gr
oup. The young deputy muttered to himself much of the way, shaking his head, and little was accomplished. The deputy ended the day’s search an hour early, and nobody complained.

  Ned Willoughby, who hadn’t been strangled and tied to his boat with fishing line after all, offered to give Carter a lift home. Carter accepted, but had the man drop him off at a house a few miles north of town, next to a deep creek that fed into the town’s small, shallow bay. The house was wide, with two full stories and a wraparound porch, but its paint had gone gray and a number of patches of shingles were missing from the roof. Groves of enormous citrus trees surrounded the house.

  “Ain’t that George Islington’s place?” Ned asked. “He’s still living, ain’t he?”

  “He’s on home care, with a nurse.”

  “Why you coming here? Are you kin to him?”

  “I’m friends with his grandson, Jared.”

  “Hmph.” It was a small noise, but it told him Ned knew a bit about Jared’s reputation as a hard-partying troublemaker who’d had scrapes with the police.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Carter said.

  “Yep.” The man watched Carter climb down from the old truck, then asked, “You figure we’re ever going to find them two boys?”

  “Out at Dead Lake? I’d be surprised.”

  “Waste of time, ain’t it?”

  “Probably.”

  Ned nodded, and Carter closed the door.

  While the pick-up drove away, Carter walked up the gravel drive to the house, flanked by weeds and wildflowers. He didn’t approach the front door, but cut diagonally across the yard, passing under orange and lemon blossoms, toward a long barn that couldn’t be seen from the road. It had once been an actual working barn, housing actual pigs. More recently, it had been refurbished as a full-service workshop lined with tools, work counters, and tables with built-in clamps and saws. Even more recently, the place had fallen into disuse and become overgrown with thorny vines.