by JL Bryan
The construction company was now an empty box of a corporation, a warehouse and sheds with equipment and tools and nobody to use them. It would have been evicted from the industrial lot by now if the Hanovers hadn’t also owned the land beneath it.
Teddy had gone into the shed and opened a padlocked crate. Six sticks of dynamite remained at the bottom, stored in a somewhat unsafe and illegal manner for the past two years. The nitroglycerine inside them had sweated badly, forming white crystals on the sticks’ paper skin. Old dynamite was extremely dangerous to handle in this condition, but Teddy wasn’t in a self-preservation sort of mood tonight, not at all.
The old crate rattled in his back seat now, the dynamite sticks rolling against each other as he rounded a curve. He’d also collected blasting caps and safety fuses, and he’d brought his lucky gold-plated Zippo lighter with the eight ball on the front. He normally used the Zippo for the occasional celebratory cigar when a deal went well, but recent years had brought him fewer and fewer causes for celebration.
Teddy’s idea had been simple. He would sit down in his home office, have one last cigar, and use it to light up the old dynamite. The explosion would not only end his suffering for all time, but would also burn down the family home, keeping it out of the hands of the cold-blooded hit man who’d killed Teddy’s father. A spectacular, fiery suicide to escape the lifetime of guilt, self-loathing, and poverty that lay ahead.
Then he’d had a better idea.
The devil had mocked him for five years, every time Teddy took Beachview Drive through the old strip. With its big red face, its immense horns, and most of all its huge, laughing mouth with the train tracks unfurled like a long steel tongue, the devil had seemed to mock Teddy every time he passed. You had your father murdered, and all you got was this lousy sinkhole, it seemed to say. And: I’ll see you when you’re dead. For all eternity. You’re mine.
The amusement park, Teddy now realized, was his real target. His father’s obsession with Starland had cost the family millions of potential dollars from the condominium developers. The moment his father had died, and Teddy was finally free to sell the beachfront properties, they had been rendered worthless by a sudden act of God. Or the Devil, Teddy thought. Nobody wanted to build anything near the largest and deadliest sinkhole in the history of Florida. Nobody wanted to vacation in a little town best known for disasters and dead children.
All of this spun in his mind as he turned off the Gulf Coast Highway and onto an overgrown, unlined road that ran behind a boarded-up gas station. He reached a rusty gate that blocked the road, and he left his car idling as he climbed out.
Teddy unlocked the gate, took another swig of whiskey, and drove on down the road. High palm trees and thick brambles walled in the road on either side, and the thorny undergrowth had swallowed up the edges of the pavement.
The service road ran across undeveloped property between Gulf Coast Highway and Beachview Road. If Teddy’s father had his way, he would have bankrupted the family trying to make all of this into the Panhandle’s Disney World.
In the long-lost past, delivery trucks had trundled up and down this road, filled with hot dogs, Coke, and cheap plush toys for tourists to win. Teddy was probably the first person to drive down it in the last five years.
He reached the back gate of Starland, which was made of chain-link and just as choked with weeds and vines as the rest of the fence. The cold rain poured more heavily now as he climbed out, opened the padlocks, and uncoiled the chains. The two big chain-link panels that made up the gate squealed as he pushed them open. He had to push hard to stretch and rip the tough vines woven through the gate’s hinges, but he finally separated them wide enough to let his car pass through.
He drove into the backlot of the park, where the administration trailers sagged into high weeds and the corrugated-metal storage and maintenance sheds had become rusty and overgrown. A tall privacy fence with solid wooden gates hid this area from the rest of the park.
Teddy sat and drank, his car idling while he stared at the rotten wooden gates ahead. They could open wide enough to allow a semi truck through, though that was usually only done when an attraction was being added or removed.
From here, he could see the dark fake-volcano mass of Inferno Mountain rising against the sky, the devil’s horns reaching above the cold crater at the top to blot out the stars.
Teddy intended to make that volcano erupt. He didn’t know if six sticks of dynamite would be enough to level it down to rubble, but he would do his best.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Carter followed Victoria up the ladder as fast as he could, inadvertently bumping his face against her rear end in his hurry to escape from Becca’s ghost slashing at his legs and feet.
Victoria banged the walls with her elbow as she ascended, searching for an escape from the narrow vertical crawlspace. A rectangular panel popped out of the wall beside her.
She toppled through the opening, and Carter scrambled after her, eager to get away from the malicious ghost. Before his feet touched the floor, he found himself tangled in what felt like spiderwebs. He flailed at the strings clinging to his face and arms, but they didn’t break.
They were in a workshop, the hammers and the jigsaw rusting under a layer of grime, the open paint cans filled with a long-dried crust. Little wooden heads and feet lay scattered along a workbench.
Carter had stumbled into marionettes hung from the ceiling, with sharp-looking wooden clapper mouths and creepy painted eyes. A knight marionette’s strings were tangled around his left arm, while the strings supporting a wooden monkey had wrapped across his face and around his head.
He pulled back from the puppets, glancing warily at the open hole halfway up the wall through which they’d entered the room. Becca hadn’t followed them out, but he could hear her voice muttering and giggling inside the shaft.
Carter took Victoria’s arm, and together they ducked under a dragon with a segmented body. They threaded their way among horses and jesters as they moved toward a red curtain at one end of the room, framed by a backstage wooden scaffolding with steep stairs and catwalks for the puppeteers.
Carter heard a wooden click just behind his left ear. He turned to see a wizard puppet hanging beside him, dressed in a pointy hat and robes with yellow moons and stars. Its gray beard framed a sharp wooden mouth with painted white teeth.
“I think that puppet just snapped at me,” Carter whispered.
Another wooden click sounded in the dark, somewhere past Victoria. She turned her light onto a princess wearing a tiara and a frilly pink dress, with long blond hair and dead blue eyes, its sharp notch of a mouth painted with pink lipstick. The puppet’s arms and legs hung limply, but its sightless eyes seemed to stare at them.
Creaks sounded ahead. A puppet that looked like a witch with a black hat and a long green nose swung back and forth on its strings as though someone had pushed it or bumped against it, but nobody else was in the room.
More marionettes began to sway on their strings, as if a strong breeze blew through the room.
“I hate this place,” Victoria whispered.
“Keep moving.” Carter took her hand as they hurried toward the red curtain. He pushed aside the stiff, musty cloth.
They both screamed at the sight of a man on the other side, his head concealed inside a burlap sack with two eye holes and a stitched slash of a mouth. His clothes were faded and tattered, and he clutched a butcher knife in one hand.
Carter and Victoria grabbed onto each other for a moment, before realizing that the man was just a life-sized marionette hanging limply on its strings, as boneless as a scarecrow.
“It’s Old Sackhead,” Carter whispered, stepping closer to it.
“Who?”
“He used to wave from the upper window at people waiting in line.”
“So what’s he doing down here?” Victoria whispered.
“I guess he’s kind of a puppet. Maybe he wanted to be with his own kind,” Carter wh
ispered back.
“That’s possibly the creepiest thing you could have said.” Victoria jabbed him in ribs with her sharp elbow.
Carter gave Old Sackhead a push, and the serial killer puppet swung back and forth on its creaking strings. They stepped around it, onto a narrow stage overlooking what appeared to be a nursery or daycare room. Faded letters and numbers decorated the walls. Tiny overturned chairs, abandoned stuffed animals, and threadbare hobby horses were scattered across the floor, covered by thick dust. A cartoon rabbit nightlight glowed from one outlet, providing what little light the room had. Near it, four small blankets lay in a row, as if the kids had vanished during nap time.
Old Sackhead gave another loud creak as its swinging slowed down. Carter looked at it again. Through the eye holes, he could now see two closed eyes inside the sack. The skin was paper-white, but it looked real.
Carter reached over and touched the hem of the sack pooled around the marionette’s shoulders.
“What are you doing?” Victoria whispered.
“It looks like somebody’s in there,” Carter said, taking the rough burlap in his fingers. “We have to take off the mask and see if it’s one of the missing people.”
“Do we have to?”
“We can’t just leave someone trapped here like this.”
“I hate that you’re right,” she whispered.
Carter began to lift the mask, revealing a pale white throat underneath.
The eyes opened, revealing pale, colorless irises. A moan sounded behind the stitched-up mouth hole.
Sackhead swung his bloodstained butcher knife. It wasn’t a rubber or plastic prop, but a real blade, as Carter realized when the sharp point stabbed through his shirt and into the side of his arm.
Carter yelled and stumbled back, but Old Sackhead came after him, swinging forward on the strings that held his arms and legs. The butcher knife slashed at Carter’s throat, barely missing him. He toppled backwards off the stage. Victoria jumped down alongside him to avoid the swinging knife.
While he regained his feet, Old Sackhead twisted back and forth on the stage above, slashing his butcher knife at empty space, grunting through its stitched mouth as if frustrated.
“I think I see a door over there,” Victoria whispered, pointing to the far side of the room.
A rubbery squeaking noise sounded from above them. A grid of wires lined with rubber wheels was inset into the ceiling, as if the room had been designed so the marionettes could fly out above the audience.
One row of wheels squeaked as it turned, pulling a wire taut. It towed the wooden cross of Old Sackhead’s control handle toward Carter and Victoria.
Old Sackhead advanced over the lip of the stage, his feet dangling loose in the air. The overhead line sagged under his weight, bringing him lower and closer to them. He stabbed at Victoria’s head, and she screamed and ducked away from his butcher knife.
Carter and Victoria ran, and Sackhead picked up speed as he rolled forward on the overhead wire, jabbing his blood-stained knife.
They raced toward the door while the rubber wheels shrieked overhead and the Sackhead marionette picked up more speed.
Carter’s shin cracked into something hard. He toppled forward, sprawling across the musty old carpet. A small rocking horse had hooked around his lower leg. He hadn’t seen it in the dim room.
Old Sackhead stopped where he was, swinging back and forth, his mushy burlap head turning to watch them. The ugly marionette’s control bar dropped from one line to another in the spiderweb of overhead cables, bringing his rotten boots closer to the floor. A different set of rubber wheels screeched overhead, and the puppet rolled directly toward Carter.
“Carter!” Victoria reached down to help him up, and then screamed as the marionette’s knife slashed across her back, cutting open her shirt and leaving a deep red slash across her pale skin. Carter had a quick flash of Tricia rolling out of Inferno Mountain on the black train, the bright red blood on her lifeless white body.
Victoria ran to the door, pulling on the handle, and then banging on it while Carter pulled himself free of the rocking horse.
“It’s locked!” Victoria shouted. She spun aside as Old Sackhead caught up and stabbed at her again. The puppet thrashed and squirmed on its control lines as if trying to break free.
Carter tossed her the skeleton key, then picked up the little rocking horse. He swung it into Old Sackhead’s torso. One of the horse’s legs splintered on impact, and Old Sackhead let out a grunt and slashed at Carter. The tip of the blade stabbed through Carter’s shirt and gouged his chest, leaving a long, shallow cut.
Beside him, Victoria inserted the skeleton key and struggled to turn the doorknob.
Old Sackhead swung forward on his strings. The knife lashed Carter’s arm, cutting him open.
“The strings!” Victoria shouted.
Carter looked up and realized what she meant. He flung the rocking horse over his head with both arms, and it slammed into the five strings supporting Old Sackhead, sending the hideous puppet swinging backwards.
The door finally scraped open, and Victoria stumbled through it, pulling Carter behind her. Old Sackhead was already swinging back his way. The butcher knife lunged at Carter’s head, but Carter was already outside the room, standing in a dark hallway. He slammed the door at the approaching marionette. Old Sackhead crashed into the other side of the door, rattling the entire doorframe.
They ran down a twisting, narrow wooden hallway. Entire segments of the hallway shifted from side to side, trying to trip them as they ran. They passed another room where two mannequins of teenagers sat on a ratty couch. One had long, red strings connecting his empty eye sockets to the broken screen of the television several feet away like long optic nerves. The other held a cell phone near her ear, connected to her face by nerves and tendons.
In the next chamber, a corpse in a tricorner hat sat in an old wooden chair, surrounded by treasure chests overflowing with heaps of gold and jewels. The corpse had an eyepatch, a long black beard and a hook hand, and in general looked like the weeks-old corpse of a dead pirate. A wooden rail separated the scene from passing visitors.
“Oh, thank God,” Carter whispered. “We’re near the end of the maze.”
The pirate’s eyes glowed red.
“Stay away from my gold!” his recorded voice hissed.
Carter led the way to a door that appeared to be made of driftwood planks randomly nailed together. He pulled on the brass loop of the handle, but the door didn’t budge. Victoria stepped forward and unlocked it with the skeleton key.
The door led out onto a small landing overlooking a short staircase with a rotten red carpet. The stairs led down to a pair of black glass double doors. Spiderwebs and puppet bats hung above them, the little bat wings rustling as they flapped.
“That’s the Haunted Souvenir Shop ahead,” Carter whispered. “It’s the only way out.”
“Should we leave? Or go back and look for everyone?”
“We’re lucky if anyone else is still alive. Let’s check outside, maybe someone else escaped.”
They descended the creaking stairs. They had to use the skeleton key again to unlock the black glass doors. He wondered how long they would have been trapped inside the haunted house if not for the key. They would have died without it.
The souvenir shop was brighter than the rooms and corridors from which they’d emerged, and the merchandise looked shiny and new: skull-shaped candle holders, black cat sunglasses, a few bobble-head devils with suction cups on their hands and feet. It looked as though the shop were open for business, and Carter half-expected a clerk to step out behind the cash register.
They were alone for the moment, and it was their first chance to catch their breath.
“We’re lucky Becca didn’t follow us out and cut us to pieces,” Carter said, glancing at the black-glass door.
“Maybe she can’t,” Victoria said. “Maybe she’s stuck in there where she died.”
&nbs
p; “Maybe she’s stuck...” Carter echoed. In his mind, he saw Jared suspended near the ceiling, run through with wires and countless sharp instruments. He couldn’t believe Jared was really dead—it was too shocking to accept. He tried to stop thinking about it.
“You’re bleeding all over.” Victoria’s warm fingers touched his arm, his chest, and then his face.
“How’s your back?” he asked.
“Everything feels terrible, and I’m bleeding from everywhere,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Look, remember these?” He pointed to a pair of salt and pepper shakers shaped like cartoon ghosts.
“Like the ones from the flea market.” She lifted one up and checked the price. “$4.99. I told you fifty cents was a good deal.”
The front door of the souvenir shop was unlocked, so they stepped out into the reddish glow of Haunted Alley, where the attractions still looked brand new and brightly lit, except for the immense dark mass of Inferno Mountain overshadowing the game and food booths. The alley smelled of chili dogs and a sulfurous tang like burnt onions.
“Wes!” Carter shouted, waving.
Wes stood at the Beat the Devil game, his whole body washed in the glowing red and yellow lights. He did not acknowledge Carter and Victoria as they approached him. He stared at the chess board in front of him, his eyes bulging, his lips pale and shaking as though he were about to vomit. His legs wobbled beneath him.
“Wes?” Victoria waved a hand in front of Wes’s face. He blinked a few times and seemed to finally notice her and Carter, but he didn’t say anything.
“Have you seen anyone else?” Carter asked. “Emily or Sameer? Anybody?”
Wes’s brow furrowed as though he couldn’t quite grasp the question. His gaze dropped back to the chess board.
“I’m losing,” Wes whispered.
