Inferno Park

by JL Bryan

  The steel bar swung down, and steel hoops snapped into place around all four of their wrists, handcuffing them into place. Elissa and Tamara shouted in protest.

  “I apologize,” the man said, walking around to look in at them from the open cage door. “New safety regulations, you see. People could not obey a simple instruction to grasp the old handlebars at all times during the ride. So now we have these.”

  With the two of them locked into place, the man leaned into the cage and reached his hands toward their faces, as if he intended to smother each of them with one hand. Elissa steeled herself, ready to bite his fingers if necessary, but he instead reached around behind their headrests, not touching them at all.

  He swung a steel semi-circle out from behind each of their headrests and closed it across their necks, locking their heads against the thick, padded headrests.

  “Whoa, hey!” Elissa protested.

  “I’m afraid the insurance company now requires these to avoid head injuries.” He locked the neck guards into place, and then his flat gray eyes looked into Elissa’s. His gaze filled her with a creepy, squirmy feeling. “It is unfortunate, if you ask me,” he said. “A ride is much more interesting when it includes the risk of serious injury or death, don’t you agree?”

  “Sure,” Elissa answered, feeling nervous now. She suddenly couldn’t believe she’d gotten on the ride, that she was trusting her life to this strange man.

  He stepped back out of the cage and closed the door, then gazed at them for a moment through the wire mesh.

  “Of course, I suppose injury and death are constant risks at every moment,” he said. “That is what makes life interesting.”

  He latched the door from the outside, then turned and walked away toward the fake Apollo capsule.

  “This is gonna be epic!” Tamara shrieked. She rocked back and forth, making the cage swing. If she did it hard enough, she could make their little cage flip upside down before the ride even started. Elissa remembered that from when they were kids.

  “I don’t know,” Elissa whispered. “Don’t you think that guy’s kind of scary?”

  “Should we be scared?” Tamara asked, her eyes widening. “This ride’s safe, right?”

  “Nobody’s ridden it in five years,” Elissa whispered. “Maybe we should get off.”

  A heavy chain clanked slowly somewhere behind them. Their little cage car rose, rocking back and forth as it climbed the side of the Moon Robot, up and away from the concrete below.

  “Hey, wait!” Elissa screamed down at the Apollo capsule. “Wait, we changed our minds! Stop!”

  “Yeah, stop!” Tamara screamed, echoing her.

  The strange rich guy either didn’t hear them or didn’t care, because they continued to rise, gaining speed. The countless bright, colored lights of the park spread out below them. Music flowed from every ride and game booth, colliding into a vibrant ocean of sound—rock, country, jazz, and the obligatory calliope from the glowing red carousel across the way, which was flanked by the drowsily rotating Ferris wheel and the spinning swings. People died on those tame little rides, Elissa thought, and I’m riding the freaking Moon Robot.

  Off to her left, she could see the eerie, swamp-like lights barely illuminating the peaked dormers and turrets of Dark Mansion, its name glowing in ghostly green letters above the front porch area. Inferno Mountain still lay dark and lifeless, as did the bumper boats and all of Fools’ Gold, but Tyke Town was lit up just as she remembered.

  She took in the Storybook Maze full of candy houses and fairy castles, the spinning teacup ride, and the flashing yellow and orange lights of the Funtime Firehouse whose gaping, rotating entrance tunnel led into a wonderland of slides and bouncy houses (socks only).

  Her heart lit up as the sight conjured a hundred lost memories of her own childhood. Then the cage whipped around one of the Moon Robot’s two colossal wheels, their cage flipped upside down, and she and Tamara screamed in terror at the ground far below. It was a long drop to the hard concrete.

  The entire ride shuddered and rumbled, as if wobbling on its support system. The girls screamed again as they rocketed forward, still hanging upside down, toward the other giant spinning wheel.

  “Is it supposed to do that?” Tamara screamed. “Elissa, tell me, is it supposed to—”

  They whipped around the wheel, gaining more speed, and immediately went into a series of spins as they dropped toward the ground. The entire ride structure heaved and swayed, and Elissa watched Tamara’s padded headrest rupture in several places.

  How well had the weird rich guy actually restored the ride? Had he even tested it once before putting the two girls on it? Elissa’s heart raced, and she felt her skin grow hot as she went into an adrenaline-fueled panic, her thoughts racing as the cage spun her upside down again and again. She didn’t remember the ride ever spinning her this much before—it was lucky to go upside down just four or five times before the cage settled.

  The sense of enchantment—the one that had made it seem perfectly normal that the park was mostly restored, the rides were open, and food and beer were freely available to everyone, even teenage girls—was entirely wiped away.

  The idea of someone buying and restoring the park should have ignited a wildfire of outrage and controversy all over town. She should have heard something about it already.

  Maybe he wasn’t an eccentric rich guy at all. Maybe he was some murderer who lured kids into the park, drugged them with the free food and beer, and then sent them on the decrepit old rides just to watch them die. This seemed far more likely than the idea that he was an eccentric rich man who’d bought and restored the amusement park and now welcomed trespassing kids just for the heck of it.

  All of this flashed across her adrenaline-fueled brain in just a few seconds. She looked at Tamara to see if she’d realized it, too.

  Tamara had something else to scream about.

  Thin stainless steel rods slid out from the ruptures in Tamara’s headrest, surrounding her head like fence posts. Each one was topped with a different object—a round, compact-sized mirror, a syringe full of clear fluid teeming with strange little wriggling creatures, a tiny circular saw, a scalpel, and a few spinning mechanical objects she couldn’t identify. They were all miniature in size, as though they belonged to the world’s tiniest surgeon.

  Tamara shrieked as the rods moved in straight lines, back and forth in front of her face, as if the rods were driven by some primitive carnival mechanism. Their simplistic back-and-forth motion reminded Elissa of the up-and-down movement of horses on a carousel, controlled by unseen clockwork.

  Elissa screamed and tried to reach over to help her friend, but her hands were still cuffed to the safety bar, and her head was locked into place, just like Tamara’s. All she could do was uselessly kick her feet against the cage door in front of them.

  They rounded a wheel and leveled out, right side up again as they ascended the side of the Moon Robot.

  “What’s happening?” Tamara cried. “Elissa, do something!”

  “I can’t!” Elissa kicked her feet against the door in frustration. “I can’t do anything!”

  “You have to help me!” Tamara watched the little scalpel as it moved in close enough to brush her cheek, then moved back out in front of her face as its steel rod extended again. Tamara’s eyes widened, and she screamed.

  They rounded the other wheel on the big rotating axis of the Moon Robot, and their cage began flipping backwards, flinging them head over heels again and again.

  The rod with the syringe tip pulled in close to Tamara’s pretty face, and the needle punched into Tamara’s cheek, injecting her with the clear fluid brimming with tiny wormlike creatures.

  “No!” Elissa screamed.

  “Make it stop! Make it stop!” Tamara cried. Her entire face seemed to tighten against her skull, like a canvas being stretched. Her lips pulled back far enough to reveal her gums, and her eyelids drew back tight, leaving her eyes bulging open, unblinking.
Her tongue wiggled between her teeth as she screamed.

  The scalpels descended next, cutting into both of the high cheekbones that helped make her attractive—more attractive than Elissa, anyway. They pulled away, and the circular saw and drill bit descended next. The saw carved into her cute button nose, while the whining drill bit punched through her cheek and sheared off a corner of her tooth, stabbing her tongue before it drew back.

  While the other instruments cut and sliced at her, he little compact mirror remained fixed in one place, forcing Tamara to watch all that was happening to her. With the skin of her face drawn back, she was unable to close her eyelids.

  The little rods accelerated, in and out, their tools stabbing and carving at Tamara’s face while both girls screamed helplessly. A mist of blood spattered through the little cage car, showering Elissa like hot, salty raindrops.

  The car hung upside down, then went into a new series of forward flips.

  The little spinning mechanical gadgets descended and gathered the butchered flaps of Tamara’s once-pretty face. They stitched and stapled her face back together in a new configuration, sewing her own skin over her eyes, nose, and mouth.

  Tamara grunted, obviously unable to breathe, unable to do more than shift in her seat and kick her shoes at the cage door.

  “Tamara!” Elissa cried, yanking her wrists against the steel cuffs that trapped them. “Tamara, no!”

  Tamara grunted more desperately behind the mask of rearranged skin that blocked her nose and mouth.

  The array of steel tools retracted into her headrest, leaving smears of blood as they slipped out of sight.

  Tamara’s struggles grew louder, then quieter, then fell silent as the ride went on and on, flipping and spinning them and spattering Elissa with more and more of her friend’s blood.

  Elissa was helpless to do anything but shriek Tamara’s name again and again.

  The ride finally slowed, and their cage inched its way downward. The ride’s big central axis stopped spinning and settled into its upright resting position.

  Tamara wasn’t moving or making a sound, and Elissa kept screaming her name, trying to get a response.

  The cage finally reached the lowest point of the ride and stopped. All the safety gear remained locked into place.

  “Help!” Elissa screamed. “Let us out! Let us out!”

  The man in the striped hat emerged from the Apollo, strolling toward their cage, clearly in no particular hurry.

  “You have to help us! She can’t breathe!” Elissa shouted.

  The man walked up to their door with his hands tucked casually in his pockets. He looked over Tamara’s butchered, wildly re-stitched face, the blood-spattered interior of the cage, and then finally turned his cool gray eyes on Elissa.

  “Anyone would agree,” he finally said, his voice as flat and empty as ever. “You are much prettier than she is now. Do you dispute this? Was it not your wish to be prettier than Tamara?”

  Elissa gaped at him as the meaning of his words sunk in, and she remembered her passing jealous thought as she flung the coin into the well, annoyed with always losing boys to her more attractive best friend. She remembered her feeling of shame immediately afterward, too.

  How did this man know her wish, though?

  Given the situation, her face and body freshly soaked with her friend’s blood, Elissa made the only possible intelligent response.

  She screamed, long and loud, right into the man’s impassive face. He watched her, making no response.

  When she finally ran out of air, he sighed a little, as though he had to get on with a tedious but necessary chore.

  “No need to weep for her,” he said. “She died as she chose to live. Passively, uselessly, taking no action on her own part. Letting others decide her fate. Letting you decide it.”

  “I didn’t want...I didn’t mean...” Elissa blubbered, then she broke down into sobs. “Help her! Please!”

  “I have helped her,” he said. “I’ve granted her wish. Do you want to know what she wished for, Elissa?”

  Elissa was still crying, unable to stop. Tamara had fallen completely still, and was either dead or dying, and this man obviously had no intention of helping.

  “Let me go,” Elissa whispered through her sobs. It was the best she could manage.

  “Dear little Tamara wished that the two of you would remain best friends for the rest of your lives,” he said. “Isn’t that sweet? And so very typical of her, too, unable to imagine anything beyond life in this town, staying close with her best friend from high school. Is that what you wanted for your future, Elissa? Stay in your dead little town, get knocked up, drop out of school, only to grow old and die over in Sandy Road Trailer Park? Because that was her future, I can assure you. Until you changed it.”

  “How do you know my name?” she whispered. “Who are you?”

  “Both your wishes came true,” he said, and he finally unlatched and opened the cage door. “It must be a lucky night for us all.”

  “Stay away from me,” Elissa said. “Get away.”

  “As you wish.” He tipped his hat at her and bowed formally before walking back into the Apollo and closing the door.

  She strained against the safety bars, but nothing would budge.

  “Let me out!” she yelled.

  The neck guard and the wrist cuffs unlatched, and then the safety bar rose off her lap. She grasped the bloody mesh of the cage wall and pulled herself to her feet, which made the entire cage rock back and forth.

  Tamara, not moving and already turning cold, was still locked in the seat by her steel neck guard. Elissa couldn’t pull it loose.

  “Tamara?” she said, touching the girl’s cooling face, now a bloody patchwork of skin.

  “All riders must now exit,” the man’s flat monotone said over the Apollo unit’s exterior loudspeakers.

  “Let her go!” Elissa yelled back.

  “Unless you would like to ride again.” The heavy unseen chain clanked again, and Elissa’s cage jerked forward and upward.

  “No!” Elissa screamed. She jumped out of the cage as it continued onward and upward, carrying Tamara’s body away with it.

  “Come ride the Moon Robot. It’s out of this world,” the man said over the speakers, his voice still flat and emotionless even while making his sales pitch. “Chills and thrills, ride it if you dare, it’s a killer.”

  Elissa looked at the Apollo pod, wondering if the guy was going to run out and kill her, and then decided that it might not be best to take a wait-and-see approach on that.

  She climbed over the exit gate and ran back toward the midway, her mind filled with panic, expecting the man to come after her any second. She didn’t dare to look back, but kept her eyes focused on the colored lights and open space ahead.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Finn slurped down his second corn dog. He normally didn’t find the things appealing, but these were by far the best he’d ever tasted, the crust golden and crispy, the corn mush inside delicious, the wiener thick and beefy with some kind of unusual spice.

  He chased it with cold beer, then popped out his compact mirror to check his teeth. Satisfied that his teeth looked clean, he approached the girls pigging out on chocolate at the Double Dutch House. His eyes were on Tamara’s denim-sheathed ass, her back pockets edged with red glitter. She was shivering with delight as she ate her chocolate, so it seemed like a good time to make his approach.

  “Hey, girls,” Finn said, touching Tamara on the lower back to get her attention.

  “Oh, Finn.” Tamara opened her eyes, laughing a little. “Sorry, I’m totally lost in this chocolate. You should try some.”

  “Hell, yeah. Hey, do you want to go explore the park? It looks wild out there,” Finn said. He wanted to get her away from the others. The old amusement park was full of good places to sneak off and make out. As an afterthought, he told Elissa. “You can come, too. It’ll be fun.”

  “Sounds great,” Tamara said, returning his
smile and his long stare.

  I’m in, Finn thought. She totally wants me. I hope that Elissa chick doesn’t get in the way.

  “Hang on, Finn.” Derek caught up with them, looking scummy as always, and clapped Finn on the shoulder. He pulled Finn away from the girls, toward the dark wreckage of Fools’ Gold. “We have work to do.”

  “Work?” Finn looked back over his shoulder at Tamara, who was still smiling at him. “I came here to not work, man.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I came here to hook up with one of those girls tonight.”

  “One of them?” Derek snorted. “You don’t care which one?”

  “Tamara’s hotter, obviously. But if Elissa wants to paint a purple lipstick ring around my dick, then I’m not going to stop her.”

  “Those girls are just skanks,” Derek whispered. “Who cares?”

  “I thought you liked skanks.” Finn frowned as they approached Fools’ Gold. The ghost town clearly hadn’t been restored yet. Several of the buildings were charred or falling down. Broken timber and glass littered the sawdust street. The dark buildings were lit only by the lights of the Starland Express roller coaster above.

  “Hell, yeah, it’s just what I hoped,” Derek said.

  “So you’re cock-blocking me to show me some burned-out buildings,” Finn said.

  “Naw, this is business,” Derek said, walking into the dark, littered street. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since we started talking about coming here.”

  “What do you know about business?” Finn snorted. “You’ve never even kept a job for more than a month.”

  “Jobs are for suckers,” Derek said.

  “Is that why you’re always broke?” Finn asked. Finn himself had worked at Captain Scoop’s Ice Cream for almost a year and a half, ever since he was fifteen.

  “Least I don’t have to scoop Rocky Road for screaming kids,” Derek grumbled. He kicked at a rotten hitching post in front of the “Triple-Z Saloon,” which had once served beer and hot wings.