Inferno Park

by JL Bryan

  “I cannot restore dead flesh to life,” the devil said. “Not after so many years. She is dead. They are all dead.”

  “Then free their souls.” Carter was a little surprised at the anger and strength in his voice. He’d seen too many friends die or disappear. He’d ridden the train into Hell itself, and he wouldn’t be defeated now. Not when his adversary, though a monstrous and frightening entity the size of a mountain, turned out to be a prisoner himself with limited powers.

  Carter felt he’d pushed his way into some backstage area of the world, that he was seeing more than anyone was really supposed to see. The real world, the one behind the bright lights and scenery that entranced the living, was an unspeakably bleak nightmare, one that had waited for eons, slowly filling up with the souls of the lost and the damned.

  “You may have one soul,” the devil finally said. “Your poor, dead love who has called to you and irritated me these last five years. She may depart with you.”

  “I want them all.”

  “You may have only one. Take her with you or leave her here.”

  The black steel door under the EXIT sign squeaked as it swung open. Though it was mounted in a massive column of entangled and frozen human bodies, the door itself opened, incongruously, onto steep concrete stairs leading up through a dimly lit cinderblock stairwell.

  “Where is she?” Carter looked around at the enormous cathedral structure, the massive columns and archways of frozen bodies buttressing the cavernous vaulted ceiling a thousand feet above him. “I don’t see her.”

  “You will not see her until you depart,” spoke the massive face of the frozen devil. “Once you begin to climb the stairs, you may not look back. If you look back, you lose. I keep her soul, and I keep yours.”

  “That’s it?” Carter asked.

  “That is the only rule. You may go now, unless you wish to stay forever. The frozen multitudes will gladly accept your warmth.”

  The floor of frozen bodies bucked and screamed beneath him, and cold, grasping hands reached up through the creaking ice. They grabbed at his legs and feet, and he ran. Everything he saw was made of these not-quite-dead bodies, twisted and frozen together, their eyes open and bright with hunger as they reached for him.

  As he reached the open door, the massive column of bodies that held it tried grabbing for him. Arms and hungry mouths grabbed and bit at him from all sides as he ducked through the tilting doorway.

  Inside, he stood on a plain, packed-dirt floor. He hesitated before the first concrete stair, and he turned to look back.

  Cold blue arms and faces surrounded the doorway, groaning and hissing as they reached toward him. Beyond it, the colossal form of the devil stared forward impassively, like a statue, not appearing to watch Carter at all.

  “Where is she?” Carter shouted, but no response came.

  The steel door slammed itself shut, cutting off his view and leaving him alone in the moldy cinderblock stairwell. The groaning, lamenting voices outside vanished when the door closed. The cold stairwell was silent except for the slow, distant dripping of water somewhere high above.

  He stood in a space not much larger than a broom closet. There was nowhere to go but up.

  Carter took a final look around—still no sign of Tricia. He tried the steel door, but it was locked and cold enough to sear his skin.

  “Tricia?” he asked the shadows around him. “Are you here?”

  There was no response.

  He sighed and started up the concrete stairs. They took him to a landing illuminated by a flickering fluorescent bar dangling loosely on a chain. The next flight led to an identical landing, and so did the next. It was like ascending the stairwell in an underground parking garage, except there was never a door, only more stairs.

  He caught himself starting to look back, stopping himself at the last moment.

  “Tricia?” he asked.

  There was no answer. He’d heard no footsteps behind him, not one clue that Tricia had joined him or was following him out of the underworld. This only made him more eager to look back, but he resisted the urge.

  He walked up flight after flight of concrete stairs set at crooked angles to each other, so he couldn’t look up to see how much farther he had to go.

  He said Tricia’s name a few times, but she did not answer. There was no sign at all that she was actually following him. He forced himself to keep to the devil’s one rule.

  He climbed upward, while the steps grew steeper, narrower, and occasionally seemed to crumble under his feet.

  The stairwell grew darker. The walls, ceiling, and the steps themselves gradually changed from concrete to rough, unpolished rock as he ascended. The ceiling grew lower and the walls closed in from either side. Soon he was climbing up eroded shelves in a steep diagonal cave.

  The climb grew dimmer as he went on. The occasional hanging fluorescent bar became a very occasional rusty lantern dripping hot oil from overhead.

  He climbed on his hand and knees, scraping them on the rough stone ledges that passed for stairs. Soon there was no more light, and he was climbing in absolute darkness.

  Carter wondered how far underground he was. The train had plummeted downward for a very long time. He could easily be miles underground, buried deep in the earth.

  He imagined miles of rock and earth above his head, and saw himself stuck far beneath it, already exhausted from scrambling up the uneven steps, his hands already worn raw from the rough stone. The tunnel had only grown narrower, pressing in on his sides and back. The only sounds were his own breathing and his own rapidly beating heart. He could see nothing at all.

  A growing feeling of panic brought out cold sweat all over his skin. He could imagine himself trapped down here in the dark for days or weeks, trying desperately to escape.

  So far, he’d encountered no live creatures while climbing through the lightless tunnel. He began to wonder why he hadn’t gotten tangled in a spiderweb, squished a bug, or startled a rat while he crawled blindly forward.

  Maybe nothing can live down here, he thought. Maybe there’s not enough air, no water...

  That was how he would die. The tunnel would grow even smaller, and he would eventually suffocate on the stale air. Or maybe he would keep moving blindly in the darkness until he collapsed and finally died from thirst.

  He kept climbing. It was all he could do. If he stopped, the relentless darkness and silence would close in around him.

  He climbed up and up, scraping and cutting his hands on the sharp rock steps, his back rubbing against the low ceiling. Every part of him ached, and still he climbed. There was no telling how much time went by.

  He whispered Tricia’s name a few times, but there was no response. He’d begun to accept that he’d been tricked. He was just hoping to get out alive.

  In time, he began to slow his ascent. It was hopeless. He’d failed everyone—first Tricia, when they were kids. He was the one who’d convinced the others to come searching this time. Everything that had gone wrong, everyone who’d died...it was all his own fault.

  He let himself lie down and rest on the narrow, sharp stairs. His cheek lay on cold rock.

  He felt beaten. Maybe he was meant to die down here, far away from everyone.

  In the dark, as his breathing slowed, he could again hear the distant trickle of water somewhere above him.

  It wasn’t much, but it was a sign that things could change ahead, if only he kept forcing himself to move.

  As he climbed toward the sound, he began to see a hint of light ahead. It was only a slight suggestion, an area of dark gray barely discernible from the darkness around it, but it was there, and it gradually grew more pronounced as he climbed.

  The walls and stairs became brick, and the stairwell’s roof grew high enough that he could almost stand up straight as he walked. The dripping water sounded louder and closer.

  Swatches of dirty cloth hung at scattered spots along the walls like small, crude window curtains. Those he passed rustle
d and rattled, blown by a foul wind from somewhere beyond the wall. The rustling wind became hissing, barely audible whispers:

  “...she did not come with you.”

  “...you have been deceived...”

  “...you are alone...”

  “...look back...”

  “...look back...”

  Behind one of the fluttering cloths, he glimpsed a rotten face with hollow eyes, whispering to him to look back. He hurried onward up the stairs, and he did not look back.

  The gloom lifted more as the walls changed from brick to concrete molded and painted to look like black volcanic rock. The stairs became railroad ties. The environment suddenly resembled the Inferno Mountain ride, and though he was exhausted, Carter picked up speed, believing he had to be somewhere close to the exit.

  The air became warmer and fresher, too, though there was clearly some carbon monoxide mixed with it. It felt like living, moving air, not the stale old stuff he’d been breathing all the way up.

  The lights grew brighter—electric red bulbs wrapped in foil to suggest burning torches. The railroad-tie staircase curved up and around, and he took a deep breath, relieved at what he saw.

  Ahead, at the top of the wide wooden stairs, light poured in through the closed gate of red pitchforks. At first he thought it might be sunlight, which wouldn’t have surprised him. He’d lost all sense of time since stepping on the roller coaster. As he walked up the stairs, he saw it wasn’t the sun, but the headlights of an idling car.

  He staggered up the last step toward the gate, wondering if he would be locked inside. He lay his hands on the crossbars—they felt like molded plastic—and leaned against the gate for a moment, trying to catch his breath. He felt like collapsing, but he only needed to take a few more steps.

  There was no sound behind him except the distant dripping of water. He resisted the urge to take one last look back.

  Carter pushed open the red gate and stumbled out along the roller coaster tracks, through the high weeds toward the bright headlights of the idling car ahead.

  “We did it,” a voice whispered behind him.

  He turned.

  Tricia stood just outside the open gate behind him. She looked alive and healed, her dress and necklaces free of bloodstains, a thin smile on her lips.

  “You were there the whole time?” Carter asked.

  “I was. He wouldn’t let you hear me, but I was just behind you all the way.”

  “Are you...?” He wanted to ask if she was alive, but couldn’t bring himself to say the word. It was too strange. He reached for her, and his hand passed through her shoulder. She felt like a patch of sunlight.

  Her body began to break apart, splitting into threads of glowing light that slowly unraveled and flowed up toward the dark sky above.

  “I’m free,” she whispered. “You set me free...and you broke his trap.”

  “Wait,” Carter said, but she only unraveled faster, multiple threads of bright white light rising up and away. “Don’t go,” he whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice spoke in his mind as her face unspooled into long, glowing filaments that crawled and twisted their way toward the sky.

  “Carter?” Victoria’s voice asked.

  He turned to see her slide off the loading platform and onto the tracks. She hobbled toward him as though injured, and he ran over to help her.

  “What happened to you?” Carter asked. The right side of her shirt was bloody. He reached an arm around her shoulders to help support her.

  “Teddy Hanover shot me.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s not as bad as it looks. It just grazed my side. Hurts like hell.” She looked pale and weak. He would have to get her to a hospital.

  “Where did he go?” Carter asked.

  “I knocked him out. What’s that?” She looked past him, staring at the ribbons of lights curling away toward the sky.

  “It was Beatrice. I think I freed her.”

  “Maybe you did more than that.” Victoria pointed toward the two-story, collapsing ruins of Dark Mansion. Brilliant white starbursts of lights floated silently past it toward the sky, trailing long bright threads. Carter felt he was watching scores of the strange, glowing creatures that lived in the darkest depths of the ocean, but these drifted into the sky like bright, transparent balloons released from some shining celestial fair.

  “It’s kind of beautiful,” Victoria whispered.

  They left the pitchfork enclosure of Inferno Mountain and walked over the lightless, shattered ruins of Wishing Well Plaza. Victoria pointed out Theodore Hanover, lying unconscious on the broken asphalt near the blasted ruins of the wishing well, his form illuminated by the swarm of bright, ghostly lights rising ahead.

  The lights were emerging from the sinkhole itself. As Carter and Victoria approached the sawhorses and debris at the edge of the giant hole, he heard a kind of music from the rising, glowing cloud, as if each of the hundred or so clusters of bright threads emitted a gentle tone of its own, and all of the tones flowed into each other like ripples on a pond, creating a melodic constellation of sound ringing among the floating lights.

  The rising lights mesmerized him, leaving him unable to think, watching and listening in pure awe. He’d had a horrifying glimpse of Hell tonight, and now he was seeing something that felt just the opposite, a glimmering garden of living lights escaping from the sinkhole.

  “What are they?” Victoria whispered.

  “She told me I broke his trap.”

  “So these are souls.” Victoria tilted her head back to watch them rise higher and higher. They reflected in her eyes like bright stars. “All the captured souls. Aren’t they?”

  “Such a waste,” another voice said. It was low and flat.

  Carter jumped, his sense of wonder broken by fear.

  The man in the striped hat approached slowly, watching the lights rise out of reach as he ambled around the ragged, crumbling edge of the sinkhole.

  Victoria tensed and grabbed Carter’s hand, but he remained where he was. He’d already beaten the devil, and he didn’t feel the need to run away now.

  “This took an investment on my part, you know,” the man in the hat said. He finally turned to regard the two of them with his dead gray eyes. “And where is my profit? Just a few scattered souls, not much more. I’d hoped to leave the park with better prizes.”

  As the cloud of lights ascended into the sky, the ground rumbled beneath them. The edges of the sinkhole crumbled, spilling loose soil and black pebbles of broken asphalt into the distant darkness below.

  Carter and Victoria held onto each other, backing away as the earth shook.

  Muffled, agonized groans rose in a strained chorus from the sinkhole. The ground around it trembled, shaking loose rivulets of dust, as if the sinkhole was about to swallow up another huge piece of the park.

  A tower of flesh emerged from the deep darkness like a swaying tongue. It was made of pale, naked human beings stitched together into a long tube formation that pawed at the edges of the sinkhole like an elephant’s trunk. Their eyes and mouths were sewn shut, which kept their pained moans to a low rumble.

  The huge trunk of human flesh made Carter think of how he’d sometimes imagined the sinkhole as a kind of giant dinosaur of a worm, hungry to swallow up the world above.

  One large man extended out of the heap of stitched bodies and lay prone over the abyss below, bridging the gap from the tower of bodies to the edge of the sinkhole. Chains rattled through eyehooks embedded in his arms and legs, stretching him until his was firmly in place. His screams barely escaped the metal rings that stapled his lips together.

  “Give my regards to Artie Schopfer,” the devil said. “Tell him I will kill him for giving you that key.”

  He strolled across the blinded, chained man, using him as a bridge to the tower of bodies. The top layer of bodies arranged themselves into a wide throne, and he sat upon it, his polished shoes resting on a row of living heads. He l
ooked out at the rotten husks of the amusement park’s attractions and gave a slight sigh, like someone who’d had a disappointing evening at the gambling table.

  The bridge-man was retracted by a chain running through eyehooks along his spine. He let out a muffled cry of pain as he coiled back against the other groaning bodies.

  The tower of bodies lowered back into the sinkhole, the devil riding down on top of them all. His blank face watched Carter and Victoria as he sank out of sight. For a moment, he scowled, his eyes glowing red, his teeth long and sharp, and then he was lost in the shadows.

  The groaning voices of the damned echoed a little longer before falling silent.

  The earth shifted beneath them again, knocking Carter and Victoria off their feet.

  The broken asphalt flowed toward the sinkhole, carrying them along like a river of shattered rock. He thought they would be swept down inside, but the sinkhole itself grew smaller and smaller as the tide of earth and broken pavement swept him toward it. The overgrown sawhorses around it clattered into each other and collapsed into rotten pieces as the perimeter shrank.

  The giant hole was closing, and the ground around it was knitting itself together.

  At last the earth finally stopped moving. They regained their feet, leaning on each other for balance, both of them wounded, bloody, and exhausted.

  Only a small depression of loose, sandy dirt remained to mark where the center of the sinkhole had been.

  “Is it over?” Victoria whispered.

  Heavy, rusty squeals sounded from the sagging ruins of attractions thrown off-balance by the closing sinkhole and shifting earth. An overgrown column of the Starland Express roller coaster toppled and crashed into the remains of Fool’s Gold. The rusty tower of American Rockets twisted and fell against the last standing supports of the old Moon Robot ride.

  Carter and Victoria ran into the open plaza and waited while the rides fell apart. Hanover lay without moving near the old wishing well. They avoided him—if the man was crazed enough to shoot at Victoria, Carter didn’t see any reason to wake him up. They could call an ambulance once they were safely out of the park.

  They checked the ruins of Dark Mansion and Haunted Alley, but did not find Sameer or Emily, nor any sign of Jared and Becca’s bodies. The park seemed to have absorbed them like all the others.