by Scott Tracey
She had the locks opened in a matter of seconds. Even Jenna was impressed.
It was obvious that the park had been closed forever, and the forest had started its reclamation. Concrete slabs that had probably once been impressive and orderly were now broken and overturned and had cracks shot through with darkened greenery. The ticket office to our right was now a hollow shell with only two and a half walls, and a trio of pine trees growing up through the middle.
Everywhere we looked it was a blend of old and new, a real-life version of those TV shows about a world after people were gone. Garbage spread in all directions, there were remnants of chairs and ladders scattered on the ground, and evidence of ancient graffiti on every available surface.
“What’s the plan?” Jenna asked. “How are we taking this thing down?”
Oh Jesus. She thought I’d brought them here for some sort of epic beatdown. Of course that was the conclusion she’d come to. It was exactly what she and Justin were hard-wired to do. Run towards the danger. Stop the bad guy. Justin had done his part stopping Luca, and now it was her turn. It didn’t matter that three dozen Witchers couldn’t defeat the Abyssal. What were two-fifths of a rag-tag coven and a pair of idealistic Solitaires going to do?
“We’re not taking down anything,” I said. “If it shows up, don’t go after it.”
Her lips pressed inwards, but she huffed out an attempt at agreement. “Okay, fine.”
“I mean it, Jenna. He got Justin to fillet himself for no good reason, and when I pissed him off, he talked a kid into severing his femoral artery. He did that by talking.”
We crept around something that looked remarkably like a tar pit, but had probably been a pond or a fountain. There was a wheelchair half-submerged in the muck, and a decrepit clown statue missing half its head. The mud was settled and thick, but it looked more like the middle of some spring showers instead of deep winter.
“I don’t think there’s anything here.” Kevin had pulled up short by the ruined fountain, and when I turned back, Maddy had stopped with him. Neither one looked like they were willing to take so much as another step. But Jenna was still at my side.
“There’s probably a spell somewhere,” Jenna said, abruptly taking charge. “You go take the left side, I’ll take over here.”
Jenna on a power trip was something I should have been prepared for. But we’d been getting along decently well in recent days, so I thought maybe I’d lucked out, and she’d turned over a completely new leaf.
I walked back the way we’d come, around our stalled companions, and circled around the far side of the tar pond. Here there were trees from outside the park that had become heavy and overgrown, dipping down into the park space like streamers. A rusted, broken-down snack truck sat against one the fences, almost completely obscured by the trees.
I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for. After a moment, I shouted that very thought over my shoulder.
“Look for spells,” Jenna called back helpfully. “Anything out of place. Maybe something carved into the ground, or on an object or something.”
That was certainly helpful. I crouched down on the ground, try looking under the snack truck. I could already smell something foul and sickly sweet from here, and if Jenna thought I was going to climb through the truck, she was out of her mind. There was no telling what kind of nastiness was in there, percolating over the last thirty years. I had no intention of finding mutant ice cream that had evolved itself a brain because someone forgot to turn the freezer on.
There was nothing else nearby that screamed magic to me. Just a lot of weeds, renegade grass growing up between the slabs of concrete, and general din and decay. I covered my eyes with a hand and looked for Jenna, but she’d disappeared back inside the ticket office.
She was definitely braver than I was.
So much braver that she emerged from inside the office, up to where the roof would have been if the building hadn’t already started falling down. Jenna braced both her hands on the side of the wall, and looked over the surrounding area. Then with a triumphant laugh, she vanished out of sight. For a second, I thought I’d heard the laugh wrong, and she’d tumbled down twelve feet to the ground, but before I could even make it halfway to the ticket office, she emerged with a “Whoo!” and ran back towards the pond.
Jenna was a girl on a mission, and she hopped right up to the edge of the pond where the fences still blocked the way. “Mal, help me move that.”
“Are you okay?” I asked, ignoring her and checking her for injuries. Other than a few layers of dust caked to her clothes, she looked unhurt.
“Help me with that,” she repeated through her teeth. I guess it was too much to hope that her good mood would have lasted until we were done.
Since I had literally no idea what the that was that she wanted me to help move, all I did was to cup my hands low and give her a boost when she tried to climb up over the fence. She perched at the top long enough for me to return my attention to the pond to figure out what in the hell she was after. But just in case something bad was about to happen, I grabbed the top bar and vaulted myself over and behind her.
If one of us was going to get in the mud, it was only fair if we both did. Even though the idea of ruining my running shoes made me want to just turn around entirely. But it wasn’t the pond she was interested in. It was the clown head. The creepy, broken clown head.
“I have … no idea where you’re going with this.” Still, this was almost worth it just to watch Jenna spend precious seconds trying to find the best spot to step in to keep her shoes as mud-free as possible.
I wiped my sleeve across my forehead, surprised at the trail of moisture it absorbed. I was sweating, and not only that it was hot over here. Not like a warm thaw in the middle of a harsh winter. Like actual heat. I could strip down to just a pair of shorts and it would still be too hot.
“That’s what … I’m trying … to tell you,” she grunted, reaching one side of the clown head. Of course she took the side that was clean and free of gunk. I got the muddy hepatitis side. “Come on. Help me pull this out.”
We counted down from three together, and at one we both started to pull. The clown head was heavy, bogged down underneath an unknown amount of mud, and had probably settled in there three decades ago. It barely moved an inch except for right there at the end.
We counted down again, and this time, we found some leverage. The clown head was mired in the muck, but once we started, it began to rise inch by inch. We managed to roll it over onto its face and out of the pond, darting out from under it at the last second before it rolled over our shoes.
“Now what?” I wiped at my face again with the back of my hand, but I was more careful now that my hands were spackled with mud.
“Over the fence,” Jenna directed as I groaned.
Together, we heaved the thing up over our heads and tossed it onto the concrete. I turned to the pond, trying to figure out whatever it was that Jenna had seen that made the clown so interesting. Only when I turned back around, she’d hopped the gate again and had gone back to Kevin and Maddy.
I followed suit, confused as I watched her reach down and yank up a handful of weeds, tearing them all along one of the cracks and making it stand out against the faded gray stone.
“It’s the Moonset symbol,” Jenna said, gesturing with her hand. “Dark pond, a fiberglass head broken in half for the crescent, and then these.” I stepped back to see what she’d seen.
The Moonset symbol was something we’d learned about after coming to Carrow Mill. The symbol that defined Moonset, that they left behind after every one of their crimes. Luca haunted us with it: carving into lockers, infecting our phones, even burning it into doorways. It was a message to the Congress demanding our presence, and a warning to us of what was to come.
The symbol itself was fairly simple. A circle shaded in darkness ex
cept for a crescent moon of white at the side, and rays like the sun extending from all around it. Six of them, one for each of the six members of Moonset.
“You think it’s the spell?” I squinted, feeling like the day was suddenly a whole lot brighter. The temperature hadn’t eased up since leaving the pond. In fact, it was nearly sweltering now.
Kevin tugged on his hoodie a couple of times, like getting some extra air flow was going to solve the problem. Maddy, on the other hand, adapted quickly. After seeing how Jenna and I had stripped out of our layers, she did the same. She had on a dark-red camisole that was almost identical to Jenna’s in every way but color. And before anyone could interject, she started walking forward, past the pond that barred her way.
“Seems like it,” she said to me, shrugging.
Now that I was looking for it, I saw the trailing black and green breaks between the concrete, and the way they arced around the pond like waves. Just like the rays in Moonset’s symbol.
“Now we know they were here,” Jenna said. There was a waver in her voice that didn’t match the hard light in her eyes. Our parents had walked this same path. It was something to think about. If Moonset really had set up shop here, there had to be something in the park that would pinpoint exactly what they’d done with Kore.
The problem was that the Enchanted Forest was no small park. For as many attractions as were still standing—there was still a Haunted House of Mirrors though it looked to be sadly lacking mirrors—there were empty spaces where the earth had overtaken what had once been there.
The decapitated body of the clown slumped against the Tunnel of Love, hunched over and posed like he was taking a leak. Only one of the swan-shaped cars was still on the track. “I’m not going in there,” Maddy announced, a sentiment that was unanimous. The water was brackish or possibly even solid, thick like sludge that had time to settle.
Past the tunnel was a junkyard’s worth of garbage strewn in a line, a barricade against intruders. Jenna and I shared a look. If the symbol at the pond wasn’t enough, the blockade was a definite sign. It seemed like the exact sort of thing an adolescent group of know-it-all punks would have conjured up. I bet Jenna was just pissed they thought of it first.
“Here, grab that board,” Kevin directed. He and I started shifting around some of the salvage, creating a gangplank up one side. He went first, turning back long enough for a simple, “There’s a bench!” before he leaped out of sight.
The rest of us followed, climbing to the top of the mound and then jumping down to a bench that was still standing upright. Once we were at the bottom, Maddy surged ahead, only to scream and fall back. The three of us surged forward, only to be confronted with … a giant, plastic spider the size of a VW Bug.
Jenna looked down at Maddy, hands on her hips. “Oh, calm down, Little Miss Muffet, I’m pretty sure it’s non-violent.” I don’t know how Jenna managed a straight face, because once Kevin started laughing I lost it. Maddy, on the other hand, just got redder and redder.
“I just hate bugs,” she muttered.
The temperature continued to rise until it was rainforest hot. “Maybe we should have tried this at night.” I used the sweatshirt over my face and hair like a towel, trying to soak up at least some of it. Not that it would do much good. None of us had brought supplies. This was supposed to be a simple “sneak into the park and see what we find” mission. Not one requiring snacks and hydration.
And then things took a turn on the creepy side. It wasn’t just the spider. Along the wrought iron gate, someone had skewered baby doll heads at regular intervals. Sometimes the dolls were in decent, if weathered, condition, and sometimes they were mutilated: heavy makeup, hair now a faded gray but obviously had once been black. But all of them, from the perfect blond-haired child to the dark devil-spawn versions a few rows away, had completely black eyes.
And every so often, just in case we still weren’t sure which way we were headed, someone had glued or melted some of those dolls’ arms onto the horizontal bar of the fence, pointing their way towards the carousel.
Wings rustled, and once in a while I heard the faded caw of a crow, but every time I looked, I couldn’t find any sign of it, or them. Definitely more than one bird, and yet the skies were clear. This part of the park was clear of trash and debris, and looked like it could have been abandoned only yesterday. There were no wayward plants, no weeds growing up through the ground. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t anything growing at all.
There wasn’t much of anything as we approached the carousel. Up near the top of it, there was a symbol drawn in spray paint. It clawed at my eyes, something that sent my chest yearning for something it couldn’t have. Some spells could be boiled down to their basest parts, a sigil of intent and force. This one was like that, a metaphoric punch to the spirit. How could a few lines of spray paint want so much? It burned against the metal frame of the carousel with barely repressed need. I tore my eyes away before the pull got any stronger. There were enough things trying to work their way into my head.
Beneath our feet, the bricks and concrete crumbled down into dirt. The fences fell away, twisted and deformed like plastic brought too close to the flame.
“What is this?” Kevin was the first to voice his concern, but we were all feeling it. None of us were stupid. The setting around us had every indication of bad mojo and it would be the smart thing to do to back away and let the adults handle it.
I was ready to do that, to call it a day and convince everyone to leave with me, when I saw it. Right there at the edge of the metal circle holding up a variety of real and imagined equine breeds, some with horns and others with painted black eyes, was a very human intrusion. A dark-blue sleeping bag, recently used. A lantern. Empty beer bottles, and a bigger bottle, clear and nondescript that housed barely an inch of clear liquid. I doubted it was water.
“’Bout time, you little shit-stain. Been out here for days.”
I sighed and straightened my back. “Charlie Denton, ladies and gentlemen. The drunk and only.”
How long has he been here?
“Thought you’d come alone.” Charlie spat out a hunk of something brown and vile.
“This is your long-lost uncle?” Jenna’s skepticism was well deserved. Charlie looked more like someone’s long-lost homeless person than family.
“I’m calling the Witchers,” Kevin, the boy scout, said immediately. But he barely had his phone out and in his hand before Charlie snarled a drunken word and the phone went flying. He made a gun with his hand and fired, and the phone exploded into a ball of green fireworks.
Jenna and Maddy were a half second away from starting a fight they wouldn’t win. I stepped in front of the others and held out my hands to either side, fingers spread and pointed towards the ground. Everyone hesitated, like they expected some great big magic show of force. I probably could have done something, tapped into the darkbond and pulled out a bit of fancy ubermagic to knock everyone in line.
But that wasn’t who I was.
“How long before Illana figures it out?” I asked him.
Charlie squinted at me. He still had the finger pistol for-med, only now it was halfway towards me. “Not long. Never really thought it would last as long as it did, though.”
Seeing the token in his house, finding out that Moonset had ties to the amusement park, knowing what I did about Luca’s mother. Charlie had even told me the truth from the first time I met him. Bad blood is bad, no matter how hard you pray.
Charlie had been the one who summoned the Abyssal Prince to Carrow Mill. Charlie got his girlfriend possessed. Killed, really. Charlie who hated his brother beyond all reason. Not because Cy joined Moonset and became a monster, but because even as a monster, he’d protected his brother. I had no doubt that Cyrus knew what his brother had done, and yet he’d covered it up. No one had ever questioned what really happened to the Abyssal Prince, or one insi
gnificant girl.
“She’s still down there, waiting for a Prince to wake her up again. Even dead’s better than the Abyss,” Charlie said. “Sometimes, when I’m here, she talks to me in my dreams. Roots around my head and makes me suffer.” His lips widened in a smile, and I saw the crazy up front for once. Charlie liked it. Whatever happened to him here, whatever the Abyssal Prince could still do in death, whatever torture she put him through was a relief to him. She was like maggots to the poison in his head.
“I thought Moonset killed the last one,” Jenna whispered at my side. “If she’s alive, then what’s she still doing here?”
Charlie heard, though, and he laughed. “You think it’s that easy? That there’s only two kinds of people: living and worm-meat? Some things don’t die the same way you will, little girl. Oh yeah, I see you, Diana’s little demon. The dead don’t do quiet. They scream, and shout, and rattle their chains. Ain’t nothing left but a need to be heard. You’d best remember that.”
“I’d text myself a reminder,” she said sweetly, “but you nuked my friend’s phone.”
Charlie lifted up the bottle of clear fluid. Vodka or gin, I was pretty sure. He only got really talkative when there were a few drinks in him. “Ain’t that the truth,” Charlie crowed, lifting the bottle towards her in a salute. “You dig her up, you’ll see what I mean. Bitch ain’t dead. Clawed her way into my baby and won’t give it up no matter what. Savannah always loved horses. Best place for her.”
“They buried her alive,” Jenna said slowly. “Jesus.”
“He ain’t got nothing to do with it.” Charlie drained the rest of the bottle and then tossed it away. It clattered and spun on the dirt after bouncing off the ground, but managed not to break.
“So what are you doing?” Maddy called out. “Why wait out here? You think she’s going to come back?”
