The Collective

by The Collective [lit]

  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