Ghostland

by Duncan Ralston

  "Fontaine County Correctional," Allison read off the map. "That name sounds familiar."

  "It's supposed to be the most haunted prison in America," Lil said before Ben could chime in. He was surprised she still remembered. "Remember that stupid Ghost Brothers episode where they went there?" she asked with a big grin. "We used to laugh at those guys all the time, 'member? They always took themselves so fucking seriously."

  Ben laughed. How many hours had they spent watching that show off the DVR before the days of binge-watching, he wondered. Too many to count, probably. He said, "I love how they were always going, 'Do you feel that cold spot?' or 'Did you guys just hear that?' Then they'd play back the footage and it'd just be some sound like the house creaking, but they'd put up subtitles like it was ghosts saying the stupidest random stuff."

  Lil laughed. Then her expression darkened. "Back then we thought it was all fake."

  "I still kinda think it was," Ben said, thinking of the Ghost Brothers specifically. But really any of those paranormal shows were all about the power of suggestion. "Just because we know ghosts are real now, that doesn't mean they weren't all faking it still."

  They both realized at the same moment Allison was studying them like some kind of experiment. "Don't mind me," the therapist said. "Just Allison, remember?"

  Lil rolled her eyes and turned back to the directory, visually mapping out the route with an index finger. "Looks like the fastest way to get there is through the Visitor Center. Then we can take this Ghost Tram thing to the midway and right to the prison." She popped her collar and turned to Ben with a supercool expression. "Let's go check out some ghosts," she said, mocking the dorky catchphrase the Ghost Brothers used to say on their show.

  Ben laughed and followed her toward the park interior. As they passed between two metallic pillars on either side of the directory, a message appeared in blue digital typeface on the inside of Ben's glasses. He blinked and the words came into focus:

  Exhibits within Ghostland pose no danger to our guests.

  However, if you believe you are being targeted by one of

  our exhibits, please contact Guest Services immediately.

  PRESS Y TO CONTINUE

  "Well, that's reassuring," Allison said.

  Ben fumbled with his headset and pressed the leftmost button, which he remembered was the green Y. The first message was then replaced by another:

  ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT SUICIDE!

  If you see someone you believe might be in trouble,

  find one of our Suicide Prevention Officers

  in purple T-shirts immediately.

  You could save a life!

  DO YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR OBLIGATION? Y / X

  "Suicide Prevention Officers?" Lil asked dubiously.

  Allison said, "There was a story on the news the other night, something about a suicide challenge scheduled for opening day. Supposedly one of those flash mob things kids used to do, but the police said it was internet trolls fooling around. I suppose the prevention officers are to cover their butts from lawsuits, just in case."

  Ben spotted one of them in the crowd, a young black man with a thousand-watt smile taking a selfie with the Japanese teens from the ticket booths. The guy looked to be only a few years older than Ben and Lil. He wore a purple T-shirt over his broad shoulders, with SPO printed on it in large white letters.

  Ben wasn't sure how anyone was supposed to decide if someone was thinking about killing themselves. Even if he saw someone who looked depressed, he couldn't just snitch on them. It wasn't like reporting a crime or an abandoned piece of luggage. How could you prove someone was suicidal?

  If I die in that house, that's what people will think about me, he thought. That I was suicidal, or some crazy superfan, burning myself to death just like Garrote did.

  A third message appeared. He was used to them already. They no longer startled him.

  HEADSET PAIRED WITH SYSTEM

  "Awesome," Lil said. "Now what?"

  As they approached a pair of tall monitors, Allison startled, then chuckled nervously and waved a hand in front of her face.

  Rex Garrote[ii] stood just a few feet away from her, not a ghost—at least Ben didn't think so—but a hologram. It was light years ahead of anything he'd experienced, including Twitch streams and walkthroughs of VR games he'd seen on YouTube. Comparing them to the man standing in front of them would be like pitting modern gaming graphics up against those old Pong machines. He could see individual pores on the writer's face, the tiny hairs on the mole beside his nose, the few flecks of green in his dark brown eyes, and the pulls on his trademark cardigan. This put some of the best CGI films to shame. If he hadn't known the man was dead, and if not for the slight shimmering quality to the image, the Garrote standing before him would have been indistinguishable from reality.

  He almost felt like he could reach out and touch the man. He wondered if he dared.

  Because looking at Rex Garrote right now, his former idol, all Ben wanted was to choke him until his eyes popped out of his head.

  I hate you, he thought, struggling to hold back tears. You ruined my life.

  The writer remained passive, devoid of emotions, an AI in mid-loop. Then the hologram glitched slightly and gestured toward the park interior. "Welcome to Ghostland, the most terrifying place on Earth," Garrote said. And with a knowing smirk, he recited the words he was most famous for, which had opened the old Ghost World anthology series: "Tell me… what are you afraid of?"

  You, Ben thought. You're still the scariest man in the world. But I'm gonna find you in that house, and I'm gonna burn it to the ground while you watch.

  He felt the bottom of his backpack, and the secret pocket the security guard hadn't noticed when he'd been distracted by the man with the tiny gun. The can of lighter fluid was still there. As were the Kitchen God matches, the same brand Garrote had used to immolate himself. Ben had planned to squeeze out the can on the old books in Garrote's private library, on the drapes and the carpets. He would leave the last few drops to spatter on his Garrote paperback, and use its brittle pages to set the house ablaze.

  He smiled at the simple beauty of his plan.

  And for the briefest moment, it seemed as though Rex Garrote's hologram smiled back.

  KNOW YOUR GHOSTS

  JUST PAST THE maps and the 3D screens featuring Rex Garrote's hologram, wide concrete steps led to the Visitor Center, a large, glass and chrome one-story building. Signs at the foot of the stairs said Start Your Interactive Tour Here!

  The inside was noisy, with people milling around various exhibits. Not packed, but still a big crowd for ten in the morning. Already Lilian could feel a headache coming on. She hated crowds. On both sides of the doors were racks of guidebooks. Ben grabbed one. Lilian picked one up herself. It was called Know Your Ghosts, written by the infamous Ghost Brothers, whose photos were on the cover with their black-leather-clad arms crossed over their chests, looking like wannabe rock stars.

  "Friggin' doofuses," Lilian said. She laughed and slipped it back into its slot. The three of them moved into the crowd.

  The interior was laid out like a museum, with exhibits on podiums or in cases or behind glass. TV monitors were stationed throughout: the monitor closest to the doors showed a time-lapse clip of the massive Fontaine County Correctional building being taken apart in large blocks by hundreds of workers and giant machines, then reassembled at Ghostland. She saw Garrote House hauled to its place on a hill, and the grass and trees and large stone gates placed around it in fast motion. Furniture was positioned in various exhibits, seats arranged in a darkened theater, a dingy circus tent going up, an old covered bridge lowered over a small manmade creek—all of this happened in the span of thirty seconds, with a timeline from 2012 to 2020 on the lower right corner.

  They entered the SPIRITUALISM section. The first exhibit was titled "Spirit Rooms." Behind glass, candles illuminated a seance with several Victorian-era men and women seated at a table. The table began to wobble,
then to rise and fall. It was obvious the medium was moving it with his knee. Suddenly a portly gentleman in a three-piece suit began to float, while the others watched in astonishment. Coins seemed to materialize from thin air, clattering to the table below. It wasn't until Lilian lowered her headset that she realized they weren't actors but part of the "interactive tour." Were they ghosts or just holograms? She didn't know, and the exhibit sign didn't specify.

  "Neat," Ben said.

  Lilian snorted laughter, but Ben had already moved on to a small group gathered in front of another glass case, this one on a podium. Inside was a strange-looking sailor doll on a wooden chair. Its face and feet resembled the cartoon monkey, Curious George. Below the case was a sign: Robert the Enchanted Doll[iii], 1904 (Poltergeist) – Owned by Robert Eugene Otto. On loan from the East Martello Museum. Under this was a brief outline of the doll's history, which Lilian had very little interest in.

  The small crowd jerked away from the glass, gasping and chuckling nervously. Ben chuckled nervously. As she approached the doll, it let out a high, squeaky laugh she heard in her headset earbuds. She thought it must use GPS location in addition to surround sound to be able to judge her position in regard to the exhibit, which she had to admit was pretty impressive.

  Suddenly Robert the Doll stood and began to dance a jig. Its limbs flopped and its head lolled, but it didn't appear to have strings attached to it, and its movements were too jittery to be animatronic.

  It's a ghost, Lilian thought. A real ghost.

  She took a keen interest in the doll's history then, reading the words "unknown Bahamian girl" and "poltergeist" and "curse" as she skimmed the sign. Then she hurried to catch up to Ben and Allison, who had already moved on.

  Another monitor showed an interview with Sara Jane Amblin. It was difficult for Lilian to hear the woman talk about her invention over the noise of the crowd, but Closed Captioning had been provided. "We wanted to create as authentic an experience as possible," the inventor said. "Ghostland was never just about frights and entertainment for me. First and foremost, it's an educational tool. A window into the past. A way for us as a society to look back at our collective mistakes and achievements and learn from—"

  The topic didn't interest Lilian much. She'd hoped to hear—or read—about the technology. How it worked. How they'd trapped the ghosts and how they kept them contained. Again, Ben and Allison had moved ahead. She caught up to them at a large exhibit called "Pepper's Ghost," which showed the classic illusion of a ghostly figure projected into a scene using a mirror.

  From there, they moved on to a glass case of old photos, labeled "Photographic Hoaxes." Most were portraits where gauzy apparitions appeared to hover near the heads of the subjects, created using double exposure, papier-mâché masks, coat hangers and cheese cloth. The majority of them looked like Halloween decorations made by kids. How anyone could have thought they were real made Lilian marvel at how far civilization had come in a little over a hundred years.

  Beside these were modern photographs labeled "Orb Photography." In them, various subjects and settings—mostly cemeteries and basements—were marred by fuzzy circles, blobs and streaks. Lilian knew it was probably caused by dust on the lens, or within the camera itself. She'd taken a photography course last year, and learned about all kinds of old cameras. Some of the more recent snapshots in the collection were more believable. But even the so-called "Grey Lady" photo had been debunked as a botched iPhone panoramic, the "ghost" nothing more than motion blur.

  In the "Mediums and Skeptics" exhibit they saw paintings of seances and "Mesmerism & Somnambulism," along with old books written by old dead people like Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer. A diorama called Seances in the White House? displayed images of Abraham Lincoln and his family. Another cluster of images and articles was titled "The Ghost Club, 1862," which Lilian discovered by skimming the sign below had been a group of paranormal investigators in the mid-1800s, including the famous writers Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  Alongside this was a diorama spotlighting Harry Houdini. Lilian knew him as a famous magician and escape artist, but she hadn't known he'd devoted much of his life to debunking spiritualists. There were photos of him demonstrating the trickery used in the Photographic Hoaxes and Spiritualism displays, along with posters for live shows and books with titles like Houdini's Spirit Exposés and "Do Spirits Return? Houdini Says No and Proves It!"

  As a skeptic since her mid-teens, the exhibit pleased Lilian. When she was little, she and Ben had been obsessed with ghosts and monsters and mysteries of the unknown. The two of them had often talked about traveling the world together, solving unexplained mysteries. When she'd grown older and wiser, she'd abandoned their childhood dream. At that point in her life, anything that couldn't be explained by science was a hoax. Eyewitness testimony was inherently faulty. Stories were often recanted. Like a young Dana Scully, she'd required hard proof, whereas Ben—the Mulder of their duo—had merely wanted to believe.

  When the Amblin woman claimed scientific proof of the "spirit world," it had shaken Lilian. First Ben had been brought back from the brink of death, and now she had to contend with the fact that ghosts were real. The news had dropped like an atomic bomb. While grateful for proof of the existence of a human soul (if it could be called that—Sara Jane Amblin called it "dead energy"), many church groups resented the idea that spirits "lived" among the living, although Catholics and Lutherans began to claim it proved their long-held belief in purgatory or limbo. And while data-minded scientists demanded peer-reviewed papers, psychics and paranormal researchers had cheered the legitimization of their work, whether they were wide-eyed idealists or blatant frauds.

  Suicides had spiked in the months following the news. The afterlife had to be better than this reality.

  Even now, Lilian wasn't sure whether she believed in ghosts or not. She wondered what Houdini would have made of the discovery, whether he would have scoffed at the idea, or if it would have shaken him as much as it had her.

  Whichever, she saw no proof here, only more holograms and hoaxes. And while the exhibits themselves were informative and entertaining, she wasn't about to be swayed by digital smoke and mirrors.

  They approached a crowd surrounding an old car with round wheel coverings, circular headlights and white rims on the tires. Where the black metal wasn't riddled with bullet holes, it was in good condition, buffed to a high shine. Black smoke spewed out from the back. She could hear its engine rumble.

  As they reached it, a man in a flat cap leaned out the driver's window, puffing on a cigar. He held a long gun with a flat cylinder she supposed must be where it held the bullets. Neither the cigar nor the exhaust had any smell, and Lilian realized they must be part of the "AR experience" promised to them out front. Even the sound of the engine was fake.

  The exhibit sign said Joe "Schmo" Russo[iv] (Apparition) – Died Oklahoma City, 1935. Joe Schmo cackled as he squeezed the trigger. A burst of flame shot from the barrel and phantom shells ejected into the gasping crowd. Still laughing, the gangster stepped out of the car without opening the door and began firing at the spectators. Several of them shied away, holding up their hands to protect themselves. A young boy started crying, slung over his mother's shoulder.

  Then the gangster vanished, reappearing behind the wheel.

  Ben said, "That was boss!"

  "'Boss'?" Lilian sneered in Ben's direction. She didn't find it all that spectacular. It was basically a 3D movie without any plot.

  If Ghostland intended to impress her, they would need to seriously up their game.

  MANIACS

  THERE WAS ALREADY a huge line at the Ghost Tram station by the time they got there. Lilian grumbled at the sight. At the front of the crowd, the Japanese goths wedged themselves into a tram car and it rose into the air. Twenty minutes later, Lilian and the others stood at the front of the line awaiting their turn. Passengers disembarked on the other side as the cars returned. A middle-aged couple wearin
g horror movie T-shirts and blue jeans hugged each other tightly, laughing nervously. The two dudebros with them sighed relief and ran their hands through their slicked-back hair as though they'd just been through Hell and back.

  "Well, well, whaddaya know?"

  Lilian recognized the man's voice before turning to see the retired detective standing behind her, wearing a smirk, fanning his sparse blond hair with the crumpled fedora.

  Ben said, "Hey, it's the Map Man."

  "What a pleasant surprise," Allison said with obvious sarcasm.

  "We all enjoying the park so far, boys and ghouls?"

  "Not as much as I thought I would," Ben said. "I just can't get over the fact these ghosts were real people."

  Lilian agreed. On their way to the tram station they'd passed a handful of exhibits: a clock tower where a man shot at people in the crowd, a circus tent that had burned down with the show in full swing, a "hanging bridge" with ghosts swinging from the rafters. Each exhibit had been introduced by Rex Garrote's hologram with a pun-filled monologue worthy of his old TV series, each one creepier than the last.

  Truth be told, Lilian wasn't sure how much more of this place she could stomach.

  "Feels a bit like dancing on a mass grave, doesn't it?" Stan said, hunching up his shoulders and heaving a sigh.

  Allison raised an eyebrow at him. "For once, you and I agree on something."

  "Hey, that calls for a toast." Stan slipped a flask out of an inner coat pocket, twisted off the cap and raised it. "To good health."

  "It's not even noon."

  "Hey, do I tell you when to take your medicine?" He winked and swigged from the bottle. "You never did say what brought you here," he said, screwing the cap on his flask and slipping it back into his pocket.

  "We came to see Garrote House," Ben said.

  "Oh yeah? You know, I was the detective on that case."

  "Seriously?" Ben said, his eyes practically twinkling with excitement. Lilian bet he would have loved to sit down and pick this guy's brain, if he had the time. He'd been inside Garrote House. He'd investigated the man's death. He probably knew things about Rex Garrote nobody else in the world was privy to. Ben was Rex Garrote's number one fan. He would definitely go nuts over it.