by Brian Harmon
“Does she?” Eric wasn’t sure how she possibly could. Paul’s wife didn’t know the truth about these odd adventures. He never told her any of the crazy stories. He knew she wouldn’t believe it, not even with photographic evidence to back it up. She was a staunch skeptic about all things paranormal. So he just made up some mundane explanation for the times he had to travel outside of Creek Bend. The rest of the time, he simply didn’t say anything at all. She never knew anything ever happened.
It was difficult for Eric to understand how their relationship even worked. He and Karen were always open and honest with each other. They considered communication to be the foundation of a healthy marriage. But Paul and Monica were precisely the opposite. Half the time, neither of them even knew where the other was. And yet their relationship, at its core, was somehow just as solid as his and Karen’s.
“She’s fine,” Paul assured him. “She thinks I’m taking you to an AA meeting.”
Eric gawked at him, bewildered. “She thinks I’m an alcoholic?”
He shrugged again. “You have a problem, dude. Very sad.”
“I’ve barely ever been drunk!”
“Admitting you have a problem is the first step.”
“I don’t have a—” Eric rubbed his eyes, frustrated. “Jesus…”
Paul chuckled.
“So that’s what she thinks we’re doing when weird happens? That I’ve fallen off the wagon?”
“Actually, I started telling her that a few years before you started doing this weird shit.”
“What?”
“It’s handy. I told her it’s a secret. You and Karen don’t like to talk about it. So she doesn’t bring it up.”
Eric thought about it for a moment. “Is that why she started hugging me at family holidays? Because that’s never not been awkward.”
Paul just chuckled again.
Eric looked over the reclining skeletons, frustrated. “Why the hell would she think you’d be the person to call if I had a drinking problem? That’d be like going to Grandma if I had a gambling addiction.”
“She buys it. That’s all that matters.”
He understood that not everybody had the same kind of relationship that he and Karen had, but sometimes he wondered how his brother managed to stay married.
“It lets me come running when you need me, right?”
“I guess so.” Eric had a feeling that whatever Eliot wanted him to find wasn’t hidden in this room. For one thing, how the hell would he find it? He didn’t even know what he was looking for. Some kind of magic talisman hidden under the Christmas ornaments? No, it seemed to him that he must be looking for something more profound than a mere object. He turned and stepped back out into the hallway. “Let’s check out the rest of the basement.”
“Whatever you say.”
“You know you don’t have to rush over every time Karen snaps her fingers.”
Paul glowered at him, offended. “I don’t,” he growled.
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.”
“Okay.”
Paul was about as stubborn as they came. He didn’t let people tell him what to do or when to do it. He was his own man. He was even his own boss. But for some reason, when Karen asked him to do something, he almost always snapped to it.
Eric thought that a lot of it had something to do with Karen’s chocolate truffle cheesecake. She made him one every year on his birthday and served it at every family gathering. It was his favorite treat. And she did sometimes threaten to not make it for him anymore when she was upset with him.
He led the way down the hall to the next door.
“Besides…” said Paul. “I don’t do it for her.”
Eric glanced over at him.
“Come on.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, embarrassed. “I mean, when am I going to get another chance to see a ghost clown? That doesn’t come along every day.”
“You’ve got me there.”
“There’s always something brand new with you.”
“Yeah, I’m lucky that way,” Eric grumbled. He opened the next door and peered inside. The room was dark and empty. It was also huge. A vast darkness lay before him. “I don’t know why these things keep happening to me. I mean, who the hell put my name in the Goblet of Weird Shit?” He leaned into the room. It was cold. “Where’s the damn light switch? It should be right around—” He stood up straight again, his head cocked to one side. “Wait… Do you hear that?”
Paul looked around, confused. “Hear what?”
“Nothing.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing at all. I can’t hear the party upstairs anymore.” He stared into the dark void of the room. Something didn’t feel right. It was just like last time…
Paul stood motionless, listening, his eyes scanning the ceiling above. “Maybe they stopped for cake?”
“Something’s wrong,” said Eric. “We should get out of here.”
“Whatever you say, boss.”
He reached out to close the door and the lights in the hallway went out, plunging them both into utter darkness.
Chapter Seventeen
Eric froze. He stood there in the darkness, motionless, holding his breath, his eyes wide open but useless. He might’ve been struck blind, for all he could see in this blackness.
But the silence was worse than the darkness. It surrounded him, crushing down on him like the weight of the ocean, unsettling, unnatural.
“You okay?” he asked. It was barely a whisper, and yet to his own ears his voice sounded almost booming.
There was no reply.
He asked the question again, a little louder this time.
But again, there was no reply.
“Paul?”
Nothing but that unearthly silence.
Eric reached out into the darkness, feeling for his brother. For the doorway. For anything. But his hands found nothing but cold air.
This was definitely not right. Panic was rapidly overwhelming him. His heart was hammering in his breast. He had to calm down. He needed to get control of himself. Something was about to happen, and he was going to need his wits.
He pulled out his cell phone and mashed the button with his thumb, desperate for light. Its glow was weak, but welcome. He thrust it forward, holding it in both hands like a weapon, and shined it into the darkness.
There was nothing there.
Absolutely nothing.
An empty void surrounded him.
Daring to raise his voice a little more, he called out for Paul again, and again he didn’t answer.
This all felt very wrong.
An icy chill was settling in his veins as he looked out into the blackness.
This wasn’t the basement. This was someplace else. Someplace…beyond. He’d even been here before, he realized. It was like the bizarre, coffin-sized mirror prison the clown trapped him in.
It went far beyond being dark and creepy. There was a presence here, something dark and ancient, something profound. It loomed over him, powerful, almost godlike.
Terror was rapidly welling up within him. Was it irrational? Was it all in his head? Or was it perfectly rational, like the primal fear of an apex predator in the wild?
It was hard to tell anymore.
He needed to calm down. He needed to clear his head.
He licked his lips. He ran his hand through his hair. He rubbed at the back of his neck. He did all those little, fidgety things he always did when he was uncomfortable. They didn’t help anything. But slowly, with considerable effort, he managed to subdue the crippling panic that was rising inside him, threatening to overwhelm his senses.
Staying here wouldn’t do anybody any good.
He began to walk.
Almost immediately, things began to stir in the darkness all around him. Footsteps shuffled along behind him. Half-seen shadows flitted in and out of view at the edge of his light. Something rattled. Something sighed. Something murmured. And greater than all th
e rest was that dark and profound presence that seemed to loom over everything.
He glanced down at the screen of his cell phone.
I’M HERE
That was good. He was going to need her. Without her, he’d be alone. And he couldn’t handle being alone in this place. He wasn’t sure he could handle being here at all…
He was no stranger to fear. He’d been frightened by a great many things now. But this was something different. The fear that was now slithering its way up from the depths of his twisting guts was strangely…well…primitive. If that made any sense at all. Which, of course, it didn’t.
His instincts told him to run, to get away from this place as fast as he possibly could.
But he had no idea how to get out of here.
He shined the light down at the ground around his feet. When did the concrete disappear? How long had he been trudging on rocky soil?
Where the hell was he?
IT’S IN YOUR HEAD, Isabelle assured him. DON’T LET IT GET TO YOU
Right. All in his head. It only seemed real.
Of course, that was close enough, as far as he was concerned. What did it matter if it wasn’t real if your mind couldn’t tell the difference? What was real, anyway? Was it something you could see and touch? Something you could hear? Smell? Taste? Something tangible? Because this was all those things and more.
He shined the light up at the ceiling, but it, too, was gone. All of Bellylaugh Playland seemed to have vanished. All of the world. There was nothing in any direction but utter blackness.
What was this place?
How did he get here?
YOU’RE IN THE BASEMENT
But was he?
IT’S JUST A TRICK
How could he be sure?
He heard a noise behind him. Footsteps. Approaching rapidly. Running at him! Startled, he turned to face it, his heart racing, the hair on his arms and neck standing on end.
But nothing appeared. There was nothing there.
And yet as he stood there, staring into the empty darkness, he became aware of something standing right behind him.
He spun around again.
Again, there was nothing.
Or was there?
A sick sort of certainty was growing within him. Not only was this place real, it was someplace he desperately didn’t want to be.
As he swept his light back and forth, trying to catch a glimpse of the things that he heard stirring all around him, something appeared. It was visible for only an instant as the light swept past, but it was real.
A ghastly, white face.
A wide smear of a crimson grin.
But when he pointed the light at the same place again, it was gone.
Nothing… Yet not his imagination. He was sure of it.
SNAP OUT OF IT!
Eric squeezed his eyes shut.
Focus. This wasn’t the first time something toyed with his mind. He was stronger than this.
When he opened his eyes again, it was still dark. But the emptiness had vanished.
He was back in the basement again. But not back where he was standing when the lights went out. Instead, he was back in the storage room, surrounded by those goofy holiday decorations.
Only they didn’t look so goofy now. That cartoonish whimsy was gone. It wasn’t just the darkness, or the fact that he had no idea how he got here. It was more than just his overactive imagination. Things were different now.
The skeletons didn’t look like happy, plastic decorations anymore. They weren’t the same bleached white color they were before. They were darker, stained, almost bloody… And they no longer wore their friendly grins. Instead, they seemed to be screaming in agony, like the gruesome remains of the victims of some horrible tragedy.
The witches had undergone similar transformations. Their cheerful, trick-or-treat smiles had been replaced with hungry, sinister sneers. Their eyes, so big and shiny before, were now bulging and bloodshot. Their skin was pallid and blotchy, translucent. He could see bruises and streaks of tiny, purple veins below the surface, details he was quite sure weren’t there before. They seemed to be watching him from the side of the room, patiently hunched, waiting for him to turn his back.
And the formerly lovable vampires with their fatherly, laughing faces were suddenly pale and gaunt, their eyes sunken and cloudy like corpses. Their smiles were now gruesome snarls, revealing long, needle-like fangs.
Even Santa and his reindeer looked menacing. Gone was the jolly, laughing smile, replaced with a strained and terrifying madness.
Was it just the shadows sliding across the walls as he shined his cell phone light around, or was something moving in the darkness, darting back and forth in the corners of his eyes?
He wanted to tell himself it was only his imagination. But who the hell was he kidding? This was just like the midway.
He hurried to the door, but it was locked. He was trapped in here with these things, helpless to escape whatever horror was in store for him this time.
Pressing his back to the door, he fumbled with his phone. Until now he’d been merely using the light from the screen, which wasn’t very bright. And it kept threatening to turn off on him. His hands trembling with frightened anticipation, he fumbled with the menu at the bottom of the screen until the actual flashlight came on.
But even the brilliant, white shine of the phone’s flash didn’t wash away the sinister quality of the room. It still looked like a horror movie set.
He glanced down at the screen, intending to ask Isabelle if she felt anything, but before she could reply, Paul’s number appeared on the screen and it began to ring. Startled, but relieved, he accepted the call and pressed it to his ear. “Where the hell did you go?” he said.
“What do you mean where’d I go?” replied Paul. “I never moved. Where’d you go?”
“I’m locked in that damn storage room.” Displacement, Isabelle called it. The clown had separated them. It brought him back to this room and locked him in. But why? He glanced around again, paranoid. Were the vampires standing that close to that witch a moment ago? It was difficult to be entirely sure. “Where’re you at now?”
“I have no fucking idea! It’s like a cavern in here! It’s dark as shit and I haven’t found a wall yet!”
A cavern? Was he talking about that vast emptiness he’d experienced for himself a moment ago?
Before he could wrap his head around it, he fixed his gaze on the reindeer. He was sure one of them had moved. It was facing the other way before. Wasn’t it?
Now that he was thinking about it, maybe two of them had moved…
It was so hard to remember. There were so many things to keep track of in here.
“What the hell do I do?” asked Paul.
He didn’t have an answer. He didn’t know. He didn’t even know how he was going to get out of this storage room. His keys were worthless. There was no keyhole on this side of the door.
“The fuck was that?” blurted Paul.
“What?”
“Something’s moving around in here!”
Eric turned, distracted. Something had scurried across the top of the stack of bins closest to him. By the time he turned his head and cast the light in that direction it was gone, but it was time enough for his imagination to insist that it was one of the rats from the midway, the ones that had nearly eaten him alive.
“This shit’s getting a little too real for me,” said Paul.
“Welcome to my world,” replied Eric.
“What do I do?”
“Try not to panic. It’s probably all in your head.”
“How the hell is this all in my head? It’s a whole bunch of nothing!”
“What’d you think was going to be inside your head?”
“This is me we’re talking about! Shouldn’t there be at least a few naked women? Some beer? Maybe a Packers game?”
“You said you wanted to see something new. Welcome to something new.”
“I changed my
mind!”
The skeletons had all somehow turned their heads and were staring at him.
One of the witches was definitely creeping closer to him each time he looked away.
And was that blood dripping down that vampire’s chin?
He needed to get out of here.
“It’s cold as hell in here, too,” said Paul.
“Try to keep moving. Don’t trust anything. None of it is real.”
“If you say so…”
“I do say so. Now I’ve got to let you go.”
“What?” yelped Paul, his voice shrill.
“You’ll be fine. Isabelle can talk you through it.”
“What about you?”
“I think Halloween is trying to eat me.”
“Huh?”
Something was moving behind the boxes to his right.
Another shadow flitted across the back wall.
“Good luck,” he said into the phone, then disconnected the call before Paul could protest and held it out in front of him, shining the light at the menacing holiday decorations as he pressed his back more firmly against the door.
I’M ON THE LINE WITH HIM, promised Isabelle.
“Dark energy?” he asked.
TONS OF IT
Eric nodded. “It’s all in my head, right? Nothing to be afraid of?”
SURE, IF IT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER
“If it makes me…? What?”
IF IT’S ANYTHING LIKE THE MIDWAY, IT’S NOT REAL
“But…?”
BUT WHAT THE HELL DO I KNOW?
“Right.” He scanned the room again. The place was alive with the sounds of scurrying, unseen things.
And that witch just kept getting closer to him.
He could do this. They were only plastic. How tough could they be?
He did a quick count. Five screaming skeletons, four rabid reindeer, one mad Santa, three hunched witches and two hungry vampires.
No problem.
He squinted at the room. “Wait a minute…”
Where did the werewolf go?
An icy chill crept up his spine as he swung the light left and right, scanning the room all around him.
It was nowhere to be seen. From this vantage point, he could make out every corner of the room.
Except…
Slowly, he lifted his head and looked up.
