by JL Bryan
On the oversized chess board, with its maze of mechanical grooves running through each of its squares, Wes had only his spindly-looking white knight and his white king remaining. Four black pieces had staked out positions around the game board, closing in on Wes’s king.
The gearworks concealed beneath the board hummed and churned. The chess board vibrated as the black bishop stalked across the board. It thumped as it jerked from square to square, as though moved by an invisible hand.
Wes’s white knight sunk down into its groove and out of sight among the machinery below. The bishop advanced into the defeated knight’s place, and the humming machinery below fell silent.
“I believe that leaves you in checkmate, or it inevitably will,” said a voice from the shadows at the back of the booth, which made Carter and Victoria jump in surprise. “If one considers all possible moves from this point.”
The man in the striped hat stepped forward. Carter didn’t know how he could have missed the man standing only a few feet away. Fresh, cold fear rose inside him, but Carter forced himself to step forward, shielding Victoria in case the man attacked.
The man did not attack. He stood behind the counter in his pinstriped suit, arms folded, cold eyes watching Wes.
Wes studied the arrangement on the board, tapping his fingers in midair, clearly trying to calculate a way out of the situation, but even Carter could see it was hopeless. Wes’s king was unguarded, outgunned, and surrounded.
“I lost,” Wes finally whispered. He looked up at Carter and Victoria, panic all over his face. “I lost. You have to help me!”
Wes bolted up Haunted Alley toward Wishing Well Plaza, but he didn’t get far.
The man in the striped hat held up one hand, then snapped it forward as though casting a fishing line into a river.
Wes’s head jerked around toward the man, his mouth distended to one side as if he’d been hooked. His ankles twisted inside his shoes, and he grunted in pain.
He stumbled back toward the Beat the Devil game, drawn face-first by an invisible force. He tried to stand against it, but he kept moving forward, his feet dragging along the ground behind him. He wailed in pain as his cheek distended further.
“Nobody reneges on a deal with me,” the man said. There was an angry tremor in his voice, though his face remained placid. “The bargain must be honored down to the letter. Those are the rules.”
Wes moaned and muttered, possibly trying to protest, his words incoherent because the side of his mouth was still stretched unnaturally wide.
Carter hurried over, trying to figure out how to remove Wes from the invisible hook in his mouth. The man raised his hand higher. Wes levitated from the ground, his sneakers kicking in the air, and he screamed while foamy red spit drooled from his stretched lips.
Then he began to glow.
A white fire seemed to ignite inside him. Pinpoints of light beamed from a hundred thousand pores in his skin. The light inside his head glowed so bright his face became translucent, the eyes and nostrils and open mouth burning a phosphorescent white.
Then the distended side of his mouth ruptured open, along with half his face, and the white light flowed out in a stream of glowing, transparent fog. As if borne on a current of wind, it flowed down the alley, over the chess board, and into the man’s upraised, cupped hand.
The man’s mouth moved very slightly, giving a thin ghost of a smile.
Wes’s body shriveled and dried as it hung in the air. By the time the last glowing tendrils trickled out of the ruptured cave of his face, he looked like a mummified body that had baked in hot desert sand for centuries.
Wes’s shrunken corpse crashed to the ground. The last curls of glowing fog vanished into the man’s hand, which closed into a fist.
The man’s colorless eyes looked at Carter and Victoria, as though noticing their presence for the first time.
On the chessboard, all the pieces snapped back into starting position.
“Who’s next?” the man in the striped hat asked. “Who wants to make a wager?”
Carter and Victoria looked at each other, and they instantly knew they were both thinking the same thing. They turned away from the Beat the Devil game and ran up the alley.
“Stop them,” the man’s voice said behind them.
In an eyeblink, a crowd of people appeared ahead of them, blocking their escape. Dozens of children stood among them, staring at Carter and Victoria with colorless eyes. The gang of kids they’d seen earlier, led by a girl of nine or ten with blond hair and pink ladybug barrettes, were front and center. The girl stepped forward, pale and muddy, and her eyes turned solid black.
“Let me kill them,” she whispered.
Carter and Victoria stumbled to a halt. The girl giggled and stalked toward them, trailed by more pale, muddy children with empty eyes.
“Calm yourself, Kylie,” the man in the striped hat said. Carter turned to see that the man now stood in front of the Beat the Devil booth instead of inside it, which brought him several feet closer. He leaned back against the chess board, studying them. “Before the sinkhole, Kylie was just a girl with a sneaky streak. She’s grown into one of my most enthusiastic pupils.”
Kylie, the little girl with the pink ladybug barrettes, smiled with sharp little teeth.
“I told you, Carter, that if you returned to the park, I would not simply allow you to leave again. You came to challenge me. So challenge me. White moves first.”
Carter and Victoria, unable to move either forward or back along the alley, instead moved sideways, putting their backs to the black rocks of Inferno Mountain.
“You cannot refuse to play,” the man said.
“Chess...isn’t really my game,” Carter managed to say.
“Pick any game in the park,” the man told him. “Perhaps Harpoon Lagoon? You were always skilled at that one, weren’t you, Carter?”
“Any game?” Carter asked.
“Don’t do it,” Victoria whispered.
Carter looked at the Beat the Devil game and the Ghostly Gallery, where the balloon ghosts bobbed under their pastel sheets, glowing under black lights as they drifted past on their moving clothesline.
He thought about what Victoria had said about Becca’s ghost being trapped where she’d died. He didn’t know if that was true, but it gave him an idea. If he was right, then a number of things suddenly made sense.
“What about Inferno Mountain?” Carter asked.
The faint smile on the man’s lips faded away.
“That is not a game,” the man said. “Victoria, perhaps you would like to choose first.”
“I know it’s not a game,” Carter said. He tried not to let his fear show, but he knew his voice was trembling. He pushed onward anyway. “Why is it still closed? You’ve re-opened every ride and game in the park, but not the most famous and popular one. Why not?”
The man stared at Carter for a long moment, then looked up at the dark mass of the mountain as if assessing its value.
“I don’t care for this ride,” the man said. “It’s absurd. I do not have a giant puffy red face or horns or fangs, do I? And that obnoxious, nonstop laughter. It’s an insulting portrayal. I never laugh.”
Carter looked back at the crowd of dead children. “Where is Tricia?” he asked.
“Who? Ah, I remember, your little friend. She must be running wild somewhere.” The man shrugged. “She’s not important right now.”
“Maybe she is.” Carter nodded at the unlit mass of Inferno Mountain. “She’s resisting you, isn’t she? Tricia’s refused to become part of your little horde of murderous ghosts. That’s why Inferno Mountain is closed. She’s inside there, and you don’t control her, so you don’t have complete control of Inferno Mountain. Because it’s her place, it’s where she died...”
“You aren’t making any sense, Carter,” the man said.
Carter looked at Victoria. “She’s been trying to reach into my dreams all these years. She’s telling me to come and save her.
”
“She’s not telling you anything,” the man snorted. “She’s dead.”
“Then you won’t mind if I go inside and see her.” Carter gripped the skeleton key tightly and started toward the locked gate of Inferno Mountain, where the RIDE CLOSED sign still hung. This meant walking directly toward the man in the striped hat, and he shivered with fear at what the man might do.
Victoria followed close behind him.
“Are you sure about this?” she whispered.
“The ride is closed!” the man said. He was no longer reclining against the counter of the Beat the Devil game, but striding toward them. “I cannot allow you inside. You may choose anything else.” The man waved his hand, and a new game booth rose from the ground between Dark Mansion and Inferno Mountain. The asphalt pavement stretched to accommodate it, which made Haunted Alley longer and put Carter and Victoria back about twenty feet, lengthening the distance to the pitchfork gate of Inferno Mountain.
The newly arisen game booth took the shape of a two-story brick cube with a round steel bank vault door at the front. The wheel at the center of the door turned, and the enormous circular door heaved open.
Inside, the large vault was crammed full of bales of cash, stacked all the way to the ceiling. Neon letters sprouted at the top of the brick cube and flickered to life: BREAK THE BANK.
“You could win more money than you’ve ever imagined,” the man said. “More than you’ve ever dreamed. Just imagine what your father will think when you bring home all this cash. Let’s play Break the Bank, Carter.”
“No.” Carter kept walking, Victoria just behind him.
“Tori! I have a treat for you.” The man waved his hand, and another attraction rose beyond the Break the Bank game. Again, the alley grew longer to make room for it, putting Carter and Victoria back another twenty feet, but they kept walking.
The new attraction was a glass-walled building. Enormous photographs, each one several feet tall, hung inside it—a close-up of Victoria’s eye, another of her mouth, another of half her face. A shadowy crowd formed beneath the pictures, looking up at them, pointing, whispering, drinking wine. A banner reading THE EYE OF TORI hung above the exhibit.
“For you, Tori,” the man said. “Everything you could want—your work showing at the finest galleries in New York and London, your photography world-famous. I can give you all of this. And let’s be honest, it’s not as though you have the talent to succeed on your own. For that, you’ll need my help.”
“Keep walking,” Carter whispered.
“I know...” Victoria slowed to look at the exhibit, but she didn’t stop.
A third new attraction rose from the ground, featuring a wooden bar with racks of glasses overhead and a row of barstools, all lit by neon beer signs. A woman with bleached hair sat at the corner, drinking a double vodka and smoking a Pall Mall. She was turned away from Carter, her midriff shirt revealing the dragonfly tattoo on her lower back. Her tanned but pudgy belly jutted out a little over the sides of her jeans shorts.
He knew who it was even before she turned her head and smiled at him.
“Carter?” she said. “Come on over here and give your momma a hug.”
“Mom?” Carter asked.
“It’s not,” Victoria whispered
“Carter, I know I’ve been gone a long time, but I miss you so much.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “I miss my little boy.”
“It’s not her, keep moving,” Victoria whispered.
They hurried past the bar as another attraction sprang up beside it—a circle of Corinthian columns, three stories high, which grew a marble dome roof. A towering statue of Carter appeared inside it, surrounded by a shadowy crowd of admirers.
“I can give you power, Carter,” the man hissed. He was starting to look angry now. “Immense power. I can make you a lord of nations, a king of kings...I can do this easily, Carter.”
Carter and Victoria ran faster, finally reaching the pitchfork gate. Carter slid the skeleton key into the lock, but the lock was stiff and difficult to turn.
The man was instantly at Carter’s side, leaning in close. He looked different now, his face covered with deep red and purple patches so dark they seemed almost black, as if he’d suffered severe frostbite. His lips looked rotten and flaked away from his teeth as he spoke.
“Nothing awaits you in there but a wretched and painful death,” the man hissed. “There is no prize to be won.”
“I thought you wanted me to die.” Carter winced as he applied more pressure and the edges of the key cut into his fingers and palm. “I just want to see Tricia again.”
“She’ll kill you,” the man said. “I’ll order her to do it. The truth is, she hates you for abandoning her, for leaving her to die on her own. There is no escape, Carter.”
The key finally completed its turn, and the lock squealed. Carter opened the gate.
“Don’t go in there,” the man repeated, the corner of his rotten lips drawing back to reveal blackened gums and crooked, decaying teeth.
Carter stepped through the gate into the pitchfork-fenced prison of the ride’s waiting area. Victoria followed close behind, clearly eager to get away from the decaying man in the striped hat.
“You’re a fool!” the man shouted. “A dead, rotten fool.”
Carter and Victoria walked back and forth through the line, approaching the loading platform for Inferno Mountain. He noticed the man wasn’t following them, but remained outside the fence, shouting.
“What are we going to do in here?” Victoria whispered. They climbed onto the moldering, uneven wooden platform. The entire ride was still a ruin, with high weeds growing up through the rusty tracks.
“I’m not sure,” Carter whispered back. “If she’s been trying to reach me, maybe she knows what I need to do.”
The overhead lights stuttered to life. With a shower of sparks, the giant red devil head above illuminated for the first time in five years, the light bulbs in its eyes glowing.
“I’ll eat your soul!” the recorded voice shouted. “Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Outside the fence, the man in the striped hat shivered in clear disgust.
“Tricia!” Carter shouted. “Tricia, are you here?”
“Maybe we should just try to escape,” Victoria said.
The tall volcano rumbled, and heavy machinery groaned deep inside of it. The shrill, rusty squeals were so loud they seemed to claw into Carter’s eardrums. He winced and covered his ears.
The red pitchfork gate at the end of the ride screeched open, tearing through a thick overhang of vines. The rumbling grew closer.
Victoria clenched Carter’s hand more tightly.
The train lurched out of the darkness inside the mountain, trudging forward through the thick weeds that choked the tracks. Carter turned ice-cold inside as the last five years of nightmares became real. Here he was again, on the platform, watching the train approach, the devil laughing at him from high above. He wondered if it was real this time, or if it was just one more nightmare.
“Is that her?” Victoria whispered.
“Yes.”
Tricia sat in the front car, the lone passenger on the train as it pulled into the station. Fresh, bright red blood soaked her dress, as though she’d only just died.
The train braked to a rusty stop at the loading platform. Tricia was only a few feet away, in easy reach, but she didn’t stir. Her blood-soaked necklaces sat on her shoulders, surrounded the gory stump of her neck.
Carter was struck by how much she looked like a child now. He’d grown up over the last five years, but she never would.
“Tricia?” he whispered.
Tricia did not speak—it wasn’t like his dreams, when he heard her soft voice inside his head.
Instead, she held out one pale, lifeless hand, spattered with bright blood.
“She wants me to get on the ride,” Carter whispered. “That’s what she always wants in my dreams.”
�
�That can’t be a good idea,” Victoria said. “That ride is obviously falling apart. And she might...do what Becca did to Jared.”
“I was supposed to be with her,” Carter said. “I was supposed to die, but I was too afraid to join her. I’ve been living like a ghost ever since.”
He took a step toward Tricia.
“Wait,” Victoria said. “There’s no way this is the right thing to do. You could die, Carter.”
“By now you must know this is no simple amusement anymore. It’s real.” The man still stood outside the high pitchfork fence that encircled the mountain.
The crowd of ghosts had followed him, but they didn’t look so menacing at the moment. Their colorless eyes were upturned toward the enormous laughing devil head, their faces entranced as though it were a sacred bell calling the faithful to worship.
Carter considered what he knew about the ride. It was supposed to be a high-speed ride through Hell, filled with damned souls, demons, and other monstrosities. The idea of the ride had terrified him enough as a child. Now it had fallen into disrepair and rust, and if that didn’t make it dangerous enough, he would be riding it alongside the ghost of the girl he’d abandoned to die on her own.
And the man rumored to be the devil himself was telling him it wasn’t a ride, it was real.
“Let’s just leave,” Victoria whispered. “We can escape.”
“I have to do this.” Carter stepped to the edge of the platform, looking into the blood-splattered seat next to Tricia. He took her stiff, cold hand, her palm wet with gore.
“I’m coming with you, then.” Victoria took in a shaking breath and sighed, looking over the dilapidated black train.
“No. I need to do it alone.” Carter leaned toward her and whispered in a low voice. “It looks like he doesn’t want to come inside the fence. Maybe he can’t. Just wait here for me. The ride only takes a few minutes.”
He dropped into the car next to Tricia and buckled his seat belt. A shower of rust scraped free as the safety bar lowered across their laps.
Victoria looked down at him, shaking her head.
Another rusty squeal sounded, followed by the chattering, laughing voices of children. Ten of them, led by the giggling Kylie with pink ladybug barrettes in her blond braids, came screaming across the platform, flickering in and out of visibility. Victoria scrambled aside, looking horrified as the pale, muddy children with colorless eyes clambered into the train cars behind Carter.
