Nothing
but the insect whine of
chemicals moving between
refrigerator walls:
the mind becomes CONFESSIONAL
(enamel)
murder
lurks
I stand with books in hand
the feary silence of fury
waiting
for the furnace to kick on
Skybar
by Brian Hartz &
Stephen King
The following story was written from a contest with Doubleday
books to promote the 1982 "Do it Yourself Bestseller" book edited
by Tom Silberkleit and Jerry Biederman.
There were many authors featured in the book, including Belva
Plain and Isaac Asimov. Each writer provided the beginning and
ending to a story.
It was up to the reader to provide the middle, hence the name "Do
It Yourself Bestseller."
As part of the promotion, Doubleday books held a national contest
to see who could write the best middle portion.
Each winner was chosen by the individual writer - in this case,
Stephen King. Brian Hartz was 18 at the time it was written.
This story contains strong language and material that may be
unsuitable for younger readers.
There were twelve of us when we went in that night, but only two
of us came out - my friend Kirby and me. And Kirby was insane.
All of the things I'm going to tell you about happened twelve years
ago. I was eleven then, in the sixth grade. Kirby was ten and in the
fifth. In those days, before gas shot up to $1.40 a gallon or more
(as I recall the best deal in town was at Dewey's Sunoco, where
you could get hi-test for 31.9 cents, plus double S&H Green
stamps), Skybar Amusement Park was still a growing concern; its
great double Ferris wheel turned endlessly against a summer sky,
and you could hear the great, grinding mechanical laugh of the fun-
house clown even at my house, five miles inland, when the wind
was right
Yeah, Skybar was the place to go, all right - you could blast away
with the .22 of your choice at Pop Dupree's Dead Eye Shootin'
Gallery, you could ride the Whip until you puked, wander into the
Mirror Labyrinth, or look at the Adults Only freak tent and wonder
what was in there...you especially wondered when the people came
out, white-faced, some of the women crying, or hysterical. Brant
Callahan said it was all just a fake, whatever it was, but sometimes
I saw the doubt even in Brant's tough gray eyes.
Then, of course, the murders started, and eventually Skybar was
shut down. The double Ferris stood frozen against the sky, and the
only sound the mechanical clown's mouth produced was the lunatic
hooting of the sea breeze. We went in, the twelve of us, and. . .but
I'm getting ahead of myself. It began just after school let out that
June; it began when Randy Stayner, a seventh-grader from the
junior high school, was thrown from the highest point of the
SkyCoaster. I was there that day - Kirby was with me, in fact - and
we both heard his scream as he came down.
It was one of the strangest ways for a person to die - the shadowed
Ferris wheel turned in the sunlight, the bumper cars honked and
sparked the roof and walls of Spunky's Dodge 'Em, the carousel
spun wildly to the rise and fall of horses and lions, and the steady
beat of its repeating tune echoed throughout the park. A man
balancing his screaming son in one hand, ice cream cones in the
other, little kids with cotton candy racing to see who's first to get
on Sandee's Spinning Sombrero, and in the midst of all the
peaceful confusion, Randy Stayner performing a one-time solo
swan dive 100 feet into the solid steel tracks of the SkyCoaster.
For a while, I wasn't all too sure the people around me weren't
thinking it was just an act - a Saturday afternoon performance by a
skilled diver. When blood and bone hit, however, it was clear the
act was over. And then, as if to clear the whole thing up with a
final attempt to achieve his original goal, he rolled lazily over the
bottom rails of the SkyCoaster into the brown murky water of
Skybar Pond, swirls of red and grey following him.
The SkyCoaster was shut down the day of Randy's dive, and
despite weeks of dragging the pond's bottom, his body was never
found. Authorities concluded that his remains had drifted under a
sandbar or some unmarked passageway, and all search ceased after
four weeks.
Skybar lost a lot of customers after that. Most people were afraid
to go there, and other businesses in the town began to boom
because of it. In fact, Starboard Cinema, which showed horror
movies to an audience of four or five during the parks better days
now showed repeats of "I was a Teen Age Werewolf" to sell-out
crowds. More and more, people drifted away from Skybar until it
was shut down for good.
It was during those last few weeks that the worst accidents started
happening. A morning worker, reaching under a car on the Whip
for a paper cup, caught his arm on the supporting bar between two
clamps just as a faulty circuit started the machine. He was crushed
between two cars. Another worker was fixing a bottom rail on the
Ferris wheel when a 500 pound car dropped off the top and
smeared him onto the asphalt below. These and several other rides
were shut down, and when the only thing left open was Pop
Dupree's .22 gallery and the Adults Only freak tent, the spark ran
out of Skybar's amusement, and it was forced to shut down after its
third year in operation.
It had only been closed for two months when Brant Callahan came
up with his plan that night. We were in a group of five camping in
back of John Wilkenson's dad's workshop, in a single five-man
Sportsman pup tent illuminated by four flashlights shining on back
issues of Famous Detective Stories, when he stood up (or rather
scufffled on his knees, due to the height of the tent) and proposed
we all do something to separate the pussies from the men.
I tossed aside my Mystery of the Haunted Hearse, leaned teach in
the glow of Dewey Howardson's light, and squinted halfway at the
hulking shadow crouching by the double-flap zipper door. No one
else appeared to pay any attention to him.
"Come on, lard-asses!" he shouted. "Are ya all just going to sit
around playing Dick-fucking-Tracy all night?"
Kirby slapped at the bugs attacking his glowing arm and looked
from Brant, to me, to the rest of the guys still gazing with mild
interest at their Alfred Hitchcock tales of suspense, unaware of any
other activities going on in their presence. I gazed at my watch. It
was 11:30.
"What the hell are you raving about, Brant?" His face came to life
now that he was being noticed, and he looked at me with great
excitement, like some dumb little kid who was about to tell some
terrible secret and was getting the great flood of details together to
form a top-confidential plan.
"The SkyCoaster."
Dewey looked over the top of his magazine and shot
Brant a look
of mild interest.
"Skybar's SkyCoaster?"
"'Course, ya damn idiot. What other roller coaster ya gonna find in
Starboard? Now the way I figger it, we could make it over the
barbed wire and inside to the SkyCoaster easy enough."
"What the fuck for?" I asked. Brant was always pulling stunts like
this, and it was no telling what the crazy bastard was up to this
time. I remember one year when we were out smashing coins on
the BY&W tracks by Harrow's Point, Brant got tired of watching
trains run over his pennies and dimes and dared us to take on a real
challenge. Whenever Brant came up with a real challenge, you
could almost always count on calling up the You Asked For It or
Ripleys Believe It or Not crews for live coverage. Not that the
challenge was anything like that man from Brazil who swallowed
strips of razor blades, or that fat lady from Ohio who balanced fire
sticks on her forehead - Brant's dares were far more challenging
than those. And, as young volunteers from his reluctant audience,
we were obligated to take part in them or kiss our reputation for
bravery goodbye.
Brant reached into his pants pocket that day and pulled out a small
cardboard box wrapped tightly with a red rubber band.
Unwrapping it, he revealed four or five shiny copper bullets, the
kind I used to see on reruns of Mannix when Mike Conners would
stop blasting away at crime rings long enough to load up his
revolver again. They were different from T.V., though. On the tube
they appeared to be no more than tiny pieces of dull plastic
jammed into a Whamco Cap Pistol. In front of me then, they sat
mystically in Brant's hand, the shells glittering bright rays of light
in the late afternoon sun, the tip of greyish lead heavily refusing to
reflect any light at all.
Then Brant clapped them all together in a fist and headed up the
bank toward the tracks. I started after him, half expecting him to
wheel out a gun for them at any minute, hoping he was just going
to relieve himself rather than starting to open fire on something, or
trying some other dangerous stunt. It was dangerous, as it turned
out, but I didn'tsay anything. I just stood there by the rails, taking a
plug off the chewingtobacco Dewey brought along, my mind
watching from some faraway place as he set them up single file on
the left rail.
"The train wheels should set 'em off the second they hit," he smiled
smugly, eagerly forming his plan. "All we have to do is stand here
by the rails until they do. How's that for a challenge, huh? Oh, and
the first one to jump is pussy of the year."
I didn't say anything. but I thought a lot about it. About how stupid
it was, how dangerous it was, and how weird a persons brain had
to be to think things like that up. I thought about how I should bug
out right then, just yell "Screw you, Brant!" and take off for home.
But that would have made me green. And if it was one thing we all
had to show each other back then, it was that we were no cowards.
So there we were, Brant, John, Dewey, me, and Kirby, although
Kirby wouldn't set foot near the tracks, bullets or no bullets, with a
train coming (he began to conveniently get sick on the tobacco and
had to lie down). We lined up next to the rails, determination in
our eyes as the bullets gleamed in front of us. John was the first
one to hear the train, and as we stepped closer to Brant's orders, I
could hear him softly muttering a short prayer over and over to
himself. Dewey stood on the far right side of me, the last person in
our Fearless Freddy Fan Club
Then the first heavy rumbling of the cars came, John reeled as it
got louder, and I thought surely he was going to collapse over the
tracks, but he didn't, and we all stood still as the train came on. The
churning squeak of the wheels hit our ears, and I stared blankly at
the bullets in front of us, thinking how small they seemed under
the wheels of the 4:40. But the more I looked, the larger they
began to appear, until it seemed they were almost the size of
cannonballs. I shut my eyes and prayed with John.
In the distance. the whistle rang out a terrifyingly loud Hooooo-
HOO Hoooo, and I was sure it was on top of us, sure that I would
feel the cracks of lead pounding in my ears any second, feel the hot
metal in my legs. Then the steady thud-thud-thud of its wheels
grinding closer bit into my ears, and I screamed. turned, and fell
down the slope to where the black gravel ended and the high
meadowy grass began. I ran and didn't stop or look back until I
was what felt like at least a mile away, and then collapsed in the
stickery high grass, my hands and knees filling with sharp pain.
Behind me, five or six bullets roared into the air consecutively, and
I wondered vaguely how Mike Conners could stand such a loud
sound every time he squeezed the trigger. My ears filled up with a
steady EEEEEEEEEEE, and I lay back in the grass, my hair full of
stickers, my pride full of shame.
Then Kirby was in front of me, telling me I was all right. I sat up in
the grass, and down the hm about ten or fifteen feet from me,
Brant, Dewey, and John sat puffing loudly, laughing, out of breath.
The air filled with smoke and I collapsed again into the high sea of
shrub and stickers, feeling fine.
Brant admitted time after time that we were all brave for going
along with him that day, but he never brought up the fact that we
all had run away, he and Dewey in the lead. Somewhere in my
mind, the fact appeared to me that somewhere in Brant, his ego
ended and his brains began. That's why I listened along with the
others, and why we all wound up going with him that night when
he began scheming up another mastermind stunt.
"First we make it over the fence. When we do, we head for the
SkyCoaster. Here's the trick: we'll all meet in the station and start
up the tracks - not the wooden beams - the tracks, and, in single
file, climb to the King drop, then back down." "You're fuckin nuts,
Brant." "Maybe. But at least I'm not fuckin' pussy." "Who's
pussy?" I asked, pulling my Converse All-Star tennis shoes on.
"You in?" asked Kirby, his lower jaw shaking. It was almost like
that shaking jaw and those glassy, scared deer eves of his were
trying to pull me back, to help me forget about the dare and get
back to reading another chapter in Amazing Detective Stories - as
if that once shaking jaw were a sonar, bouncing off waves of
detection and coming up with the same reading: Dangerous Barrier
Ahead.
"Don't be ridiculous, Kirb. 'Course I'm goin"' I shot a glance at
John and Dewey, who both gave me nods of bravery and
confidence, mixed highly with regrets of Brant's ever being with us
that night. We left the flashlights on in the tent in case John's dad
peeked out the back windows of his house to check on us. It turned
out he never did.
Skybar can be pretty damn dark at night with no lights on. Few
peopl
e know that like I do since most have only seen it in the
daytime with sunlight bouncing off of the metal roofs of Pop
Dupree's and the Adults Only freak tent or at night with the
magical lights blazing lazily around on the Ferris wheel and bulbs
flashing crazily in single file, creating a racing form of neon
display up and down the hills of the 100 foot high SkyCoaster.
There were no lights that night, however. No lights, no moon, no
light clouds, zilchamundo. Brant had stopped on the way to pick
up a couple of his friends from the White Dragons. The Dragons
were a street gang that held a high position in thc field of respect
with all wise kids back then, and luckily they brought spare
flashlights, matches for their cigarettes, and 5-inch steel Randell
switchblades (in case some maniacal drunk or thug was claiming
the park space as a home base for his operations).
Both of the White Dragon members appeared to be gods in the
eyes of all of us that evening - their hair slicked back to their scalps
James Dean style, black leather jackets with pale, fire breathing
dragons on them, a general air of confidence and security beaming
off them as if they were more protective beacons for us than
general good company joining us in the daredevil fun.
Five more members of the Dragons were to meet us after a field
party they were having up on Grange's Point. Brant hadn't let us in
on that fact at first, but when I found out they were supposed to
meet us at the front gate at 12:30. more confidence rose in me, and
it began to feel more like we were heading toward a late game of
craps or penny ante poker instead of a 100 foot climb on slick
poles. What we didn't know was that they were practically carrying
the party with them, each with a bottle of Jack Daniel's Black
label, or Southern Comfort, or Everclear, and each was singing in
rackety unison the agonizing 75th stanza to "99 Bottles of Beer."
Excitement heaved up my chest to my throat as we approached the
outer gate, and I can still remember how mystic and strange the
park looked in the dark night air. The chain fence stretched onward
in both directions to what seemed infinity, sealing us out from its
unknown hidden powers, and I recall that it almost seemed that it
was shielding Skybar inside, preventing it from wielding its wrath
on the innocent people living outside its domain. Once you crossed
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