FantasticLand

by Mike Bockoven

  One night, out of the blue, the banging started. Remember me telling you how I would lock myself in a room at night and feel pretty safe until the sun came up? Well, one night about a week or so after they got to the hotel, they just started banging on doors once it got dark. I’m sure you’ve had folks tell you how dark it got out there? I think that goes double for the hotel. We didn’t even have stars overhead, and then, one day, I’m sleeping without saying a word or making a noise for a long-ass time, and I hear bang bang at around floor three. I’m in a suite up on eighteen, right? I mixed it around so I was on different floors and different styles of rooms, but the banging started on three and I counted it. They hit every room. Sometimes I would hear a bang, and a second later the door would hit the back of the wall and other times the door would be locked and you’d just hear them banging on it.

  Real quick, when the hotel lost power all the doors automatically opened because no hotel wants a bunch of guests trapped in their rooms, right? I started to realize that the doors that were locked, they were the ones I had slept in because once I shut the door, the lock reengaged for some reason. Sure enough, I started doing the math in my head about where I had been and where they were and the locked doors were all places I had slept. Then I was trying to figure out if there was a pattern, and there was because I have this thing about odd numbers. Don’t like them. Stay away from them if I can. So when they got to the fifth floor it was bang! and then you’d hear the door hit and then another bang! and nothing. I don’t know what they were trying to do other than get me to make some noise, which I didn’t. I stayed quiet and they banged on doors for about three hours by my count. They made it up to twelve before they packed it in. So then, I’m thinking, do I find another room? An odd-numbered room? A room I’d been in before? I know the locks reengaged, but I had this thingie from the front desk in my bag that could reopen the locked rooms. Should I use that? Suddenly, everything was a mind game, man. Everything was a “if I do this, what happens” sort of thing in my head. I started getting nervous, and that’s when I started making mistakes.

  The first big screwup happened in the kitchen of the restaurant on the top of the hotel. It was lovely during the day. Just prettier than a picture, man. I knew where the food was, and I was a little nervous and moving a little fast, and my arm bumped a row of pots that was above one of the sinks, and suddenly all of them just started falling, one after another. It was more noise than I’d heard in a long time, and I heard a quick little “fuck” come out of my mouth before I grabbed the food and took off. The restaurant up top, it only had one way in or out, so I immediately ran out there, and then there’s only two stairways, one for the public and another for staff, and I used the staff entrance and just moved down as quickly and as quietly as I could. I swear to you, man, it wasn’t thirty seconds later I heard them up there, and they were talking and yelling. I was far enough away to where I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but I could tell it was a frustrated yell sort of thing. Shortly after that, I started hearing them everywhere. They would tromp around, they would leave and come back, they would pretend to leave to see if I’d come out, and of course, every other night or so, they’d start banging on doors again. To call it creepy was the understatement of the fucking year, man. I was scared pretty much all the time.

  One day, I actually saw them leave out the main floor. I was in the fourth floor laundry, which is pretty hard to find if you’re not looking for it, and I hear splashing in the main floor. I was kind of sick of hiding all the time, and I was in some sort of mood, so I decide to sneak a quick look, and I go to the ledge overlooking the main lobby, and there they are, one guy and one girl in these fucked-up pig mask things, leaving out the front. The girl turns around, looks right at me, and makes this really big, exaggerated waving motion, just to make sure I knew they saw me, and then off into the muck they went. It would be friendly if they weren’t dressed like killers from the movies and hadn’t been hunting me for a while, man. That killed any bravery I had been saving up right quick, and I was up on twenty-one again to hide out. The next night, the banging started again.

  After that I started hearing really nasty noises at night, like they weren’t shy about making noise anymore. I couldn’t figure out what the hell they were doing down there, and I had a suspicion that if I poked my head out for a gander, one of them would have been ready to … I don’t know. Catch me? Kill me? Well, fuck me if I was going to find out. I just heard noises that did a number on my head. There was banging and there was sawing, I knew those two sounds. Then there was this wet sort of thwacking noise, I don’t know what that was. And then a sawing one night. No idea, but that one sort of got to me. Then, one night, clear as day, there was the male voice who was begging and screaming. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, exactly, but it was obvious something was happening, and whatever it was, the guy was none too happy about it. That sort of took it all to a whole new level. The way I figure it, one of two things was happening. Either two crazies were putting on a show to try to get me down to where they were, or they were … you know … batshit crazy psycho murderers who were finding people in the park and dragging them to the hotel and butchering them alive. Not to put too fine a point on it. I kind of made up my mind that night that I needed to find out which one it was.

  The first time I heard the guy screaming and begging, I didn’t work up the nerve to get out of the room. It wasn’t easy, sometimes, because of curiosity and all, but I stayed put. Then the next afternoon I didn’t hear the screaming, but I heard a power tool, and it was louder than anything they’d used before, probably a chainsaw by the sound of it, and my brain started doing the math. I figured I was up high, on seventeen at that point, and I had a pair of binoculars I had found in the same suitcase as this huge rubber dong. At least one of those weirdos was down there in the main lobby running the machine, whatever it was, and the second one, if he or she was on the lookout for me, where would they be? My guess would be about middle of the road, maybe on ten. Maybe a little higher because if I showed up between the two of them, they would have a pretty good shot at tracking me down. I figured I was high enough to go for a peek, and after a while I talked myself into it. I had a serrated knife hung on my belt and I could have brought a baseball bat or a hockey stick or something, but I figured if they saw me, I would want to Road Runner it back to the room or to a hiding place or something. That was my thinking, I guess.

  I was in a room about twenty feet away from the main hallway, where you could see all the way down to the flooded first floor if you stuck your head over the railing. Using what I had learned over the last month or so about keeping quiet, I snuck up and peered over the edge. I don’t know exactly what I saw because I never got a good look. The second my head peeked over the top, I heard someone on the first floor give a loud whistle, and suddenly I see her. The girl with that fucked-up mask on, she’s on my floor. I don’t know if it was luck or it was them planning or whatever, man, but the main hallway was in the shape of, like, a rectangle, and she was on the other side of it. My head did the math. I knew I could run up to seventeen in about three minutes if I was really booking, and homeboy was probably already on the way, so I knew I needed to get the hell out of there. The stairways were on the sides, and the girl hadn’t taken off after me. She was kind of hanging out to see which way I decided to go. I tried cutting right, and she mirrored me, totally. Then I cut left and the same thing. This was also the first time I got a clear look at either one of them. She was skinny and probably faster than me and was wearing all black except for her mask which was, like, this weird mix of circus and animal and gooey shit. It’s hard to describe, but it looked a lot like painted meat with a horn or two where there shouldn’t have been a horn. I could have probably made it to the stairs, but then what? Then she’s maybe twenty-five feet away from me, if I’m lucky, and coming for my blood with that scary-ass mask, man, and God knows what else. I was probably two minutes away from being double-teamed, and they
had me. They had waited for me, and they had put themselves next to me, and I came out. I felt totally stupid, man. Like a total bonehead. The last straw was when she gave me that same wave she gave me earlier, like she was saying, “See, told you we’d get you.”

  I was out of options, so I went back into my room, locked the door, and moved every piece of furniture there was against it. I moved the beds and the TV and the dressers, and by the time they started knocking, I couldn’t even see the door. The knocking was all quiet-like at first. Then it stopped, then the chainsaw started. In the room, I had my knife and I had a good bit of food and drink, so I was hoping I would have the chance to, like, wait them out, but no luck. They were coming in. My only hope then was that I could cut them as they tried to get in, maybe hurt them enough to leave me alone. Then my eyes went to the window.

  Here was my thinking. I was twenty floors up. I had a choice between two crazy motherfuckers armed with a chainsaw trying to get in and either a twenty-foot drop to the next floor or figuring something else out, I didn’t know. So, as quietly as I could, I took the screen off the window and rolled it out as far as it would go while the chainsaw was cutting the door in the background. I cannot tell you how happy I was to see that floor eighteen was suites and had big white wrought-iron balconies. Sturdy bastards, too. Thought was, if I could drop two stories, not kill myself or break my leg, and do it without Thing One and Thing Two knowing I wasn’t in the room, I could wade back through the muck and get back to the park. It was time to check out, I figured.

  Turns out, hotels don’t like you opening windows long enough to drop out of them, so I took the hockey stick and broke the window in the quietest way you can break a window. I don’t know if they heard it, and at that point, I didn’t really care. They had carved out the top of the door and were working on one of the mattresses. I also tied one of the sheets to one of the bed frames and propped it against the window, so it would hold if you didn’t jostle it too much. I figured it was about a fifteen-foot drop and with the sheet I cut it down to about twelve. In case my colorful language ain’t conveying it, that’s a fucking long way. That’s “I shouldn’t be doing this” long. No, that’s “what the fuck am I doing I’m going to die right now” long. That’s what it is. So I climb out the window, I shimmy down the bedsheet, I say all the prayers I remember, and I aim myself, and I drop. Well, obviously I made it. I’m talking to you, ain’t I? I don’t want to brag, but the worst of it was I scraped my arm kinda bad and had a huge bruise on my leg the next day. That’s all.

  All the doors open from the outside, so I rip open the door, hoping their chainsaw would cover up my footsteps. Hell, truth of the matter was I was sick of creeping around and being quiet. I wanted to move and to thump around and yell. I wanted to give them the finger on my way out the door, but the two crazy masked assholes, they were so intent on getting that door down I was able to break a window, drop two floors, and slam down seventeen flights of stairs and out one of the service entrances without them ever turning off the chainsaw. They never even, like, stopped and said, “What’s that noise?” I was sloshing through thick, nasty-ass water on my way back to the park before they knew what happened. I have fantasies about them getting to the other side and screaming in disappointment like the bad guys do in the movies, just letting out a big YEAAAAAARG with their hands up in the air.

  Sometimes the deer gets away, right?

  Of course, the park was no picnic, but it was a damn sight better than getting hunted by psychos. There are some folks who tell me the Warthogs, that’s what they call them, they tell me I’m either making this up or that no one was actually killing anyone else like that. They believe the tribes were fighting but not that there were killers out there doing it for, like, fucked-up joy, right? I don’t know, man. I never saw any bodies for sure, and it makes sense that they were trying to flush me out, but you don’t take a chainsaw to a man’s door unless you’ve got serious business on the other side, is what I’m saying. If I hadn’t vamoosed out that window, they’d be wearing my skin on their faces, is my best guess. I don’t know what to make of them. I don’t know if they were two absolutely crazy motherfuckers who found each other or if they went crazy in the park or if they were just playing or what. No idea. And something tells me if I did know, I’d wish I didn’t.

  So, let me ask you what you make of this. I still have my wallet and everything. I like to think I didn’t leave anything behind in that hotel. I decided on telling you what happened in part because it makes me seem like kind of a ninja badass, but the other thing is, whoever was behind those masks … they figured out who I am. I get postcards from them, about once every month or two. I know it’s from them because these postcards, there’s nothing written on them, and the only place I ever saw them was in the hotel. They’re super cheesy, too. They’ve got a picture of the Dreamland tower and the words “Fantastic in Every Way” on it. Sometimes the postmarks are closer to me, sometimes they’re further away. Shit, man, I’ve moved three times since I got out of that park and the postcards always know where I am. What do you make of that?

  Are they coming for me, or are they just saying “hi”?

  INTERVIEW 19: GEMMA ALBERS

  First Aid Station Chief.

  If you take the number of people that I helped while I was stuck in the park versus the number of people who were hurt because of me, I think I come out about even. The whole thing was senseless, I’ve accepted that. It took me a long time to come to “senseless.” For the longest time, it felt more like I was responsible for the deaths of about twenty people. That’s a pretty heavy burden, and it took a long time to let it go. Since I got out, I’ve been able to focus on the good I did, but it’s a struggle. Every day, it’s a struggle.

  I don’t mean to be rude, but do you know what “first aid” refers to? It’s the first line of medical care, with the implicit understanding that one will then proceed to the next level, where a trained medical professional can deal with them if that is what is called for. At no point is first aid supposed to solve “every medical problem anyone has ever had ever,” and it certainly isn’t “field hospital for an amusement park full of sick and injured people.” That was not part of the job description, but it’s what I ended up doing.

  Let me back up—there were supposed to be seven of us, that’s what the protocol called for. Seven first aid workers, functioning as a team to meet all the needs of the employees until rescue occurs. But five of them who were supposed to stay, they piled on the buses and never gave us another thought. I felt for the longest time like I was the one who stayed, and I was the one who should be called a hero. I don’t think that anymore. I should have gotten on the bus. I should have run, but I didn’t, and it was just me and Morgan, this twenty-one-year-old girl we had hired just a month or so earlier. I had been on the job for two years and thought it was a pretty good gig. There were a lot of scrapes, a bit of heat exhaustion, that sort of thing. Plus, and I cannot stress this enough, there were trained doctors and RNs on hand who knew what they were doing and who could take over when my skills were exhausted. Guess what? When the hurricane hit, they all ran or didn’t come into work, too. So it was me and Morgan kind of looking at each other, thinking, “This could get really bad really fast.” And it did.

  The tunnels? About a dozen sprained and broken legs and arms. Then we started getting rashes, lots of them. We were in the heat of Florida, and it never stopped raining, so no one ever got truly dry, and next thing you know, people were coated over 40 percent or 50 percent of their body with red bumps and later gray and green bumps. It was really gross. People didn’t have the good sense to try drying off first, so they would come to us wanting a cream or something, but we went through the supply of ointments and creams in the first three weeks. So then we started seeing infections where people scratched their rashes until they bled, and then the pustules would scab over but the rash would still be there, so you wouldn’t have just a rash on your skin, you’d have an infection
and a fever and maybe even a blood disease—genius. This one kid came to me with red streaks under the skin headed straight from his arms into his chest toward his heart. I’m no doctor, as I told everyone every day, but I knew I was probably looking at a dead guy unless I started him on antibiotics. We had run out of antibiotics before we ran out of ointment.

  We’re out of antibiotics and we’re out of ointment, so what do these morons do? They start fighting with each other and sending me battle injuries. Then the fighting got bad, and I started having to go to patients. For most of them, there was very little I could do. Sure, I could stop bleeding. Sure, I could clean and dress a wound. But then what? Then they need the next level of care is what, and that was something neither Morgan nor I could come anywhere close to providing. So all these Pirates or ShopGirls or Robots or whatever are looking at me expectantly, like, “Please save our friend,” and there’s nothing I can do. The bleeding would start up again, or the wound would get infected, or the rash would come back, and there was nothing to be done. It was a … it was a shitty situation. There. I said it.

  I remember this one poor guy, he came to us early on because he had punctured his face on part of a ride or something, I forget exactly. He had a decent-sized puncture wound, but he didn’t even need stitches. It wasn’t bleeding. I gave him some Neosporin and told him to keep that on there as much as he could and he should be fine. Four days later his friends bring him back in, unconscious. His face had swelled to where he could only see out of one eye, and the smell coming off his wound was this sick, kind of thick and meaty smell, not at all like the “almond” smell they tell you about in training that means infection has set in. A hospital could have saved his life. He had me. So we used antibiotics and kept him in the little triage center we had set up, and he died anyway. His fever got worse, and one morning he was gone. Now take that story and apply it to kids swinging sharp rusty metal pieces at each other, and you get an idea of the sort of thing I was dealing with.