Ghostland

by Duncan Ralston

  Ben frowned. "What do you mean?"

  "You and Lilian used to be close…"

  "Oh. That."

  "If it's any consolation, she hasn't pushed you away because she doesn't like you."

  "I know," he said. "It's because kids call me names. Make fun of me."

  "Because they're afraid of you," Allison said, eyeing him as if to gauge his reaction.

  "Why would anyone be afraid of me?"

  "Because of what you represent. Teenagers think they're immortal. What happened to you reminds them they're not."

  He shrugged. "I don't know. With all those school shootings—"

  "Duck Falls is far enough removed from all of that. Trust me. They're afraid of you, Ben. Because you've lived through the most traumatic event a human being ever has to experience. Our common bond. Sooner or later, we all die." Allison looked around and chuckled darkly. "This place is proof of that, isn't it?"

  "I guess it is," Ben said. He shuffled awkwardly, uncertain if Allison intended to continue the conversation or not. He thought about the implements of fire in his bag and wondered what Allison would think of him when his business was done. Would she tell the news reporters she'd suspected him all along? Would she tell them he was likely a chronic bedwetter and had practiced setting smaller fires before burning Garrote House to the ground, which he hadn't? Would she say it was always the quiet ones you had to look out for? The desperate loners?

  After another long moment of silence Allison said, "When I was very young, I watched my grandmother die of Alzheimer's."

  "Jeez, I'm sorry," Ben said. Her comment had come out of nowhere. The kneejerk platitude he'd offered never seemed sufficient and felt even less so now, after everything they'd seen.

  The therapist smiled briefly. "Thank you. It traumatized me for many years, watching her lose her mind, wasting away to nothing, unable to do anything about it myself. Paper-thin skin draped over brittle bones. A decade of therapy later, I'm still somewhat numbed by the experience." She paused briefly, not leaving enough room for Ben to formulate a lame response. "That's why I wanted to come here with the two of you today," she continued. "I don't want Lilian to live through what I have. It picks away at you, trauma does. Like carrion on a corpse."

  Lil emerged from the bathrooms. Allison flashed Ben a beseeching smile.

  "Please don't tell her I spoke to you about this."

  "I won't," he said.

  Lil approached, her hair damp at the forehead and temples. She looked at them and scowled. "What? Do I have puke in my hair?"

  "Nope, all good."

  Her eyes narrowed. "Were you guys just talking about me?"

  "No," he said hurriedly.

  "Of course not, Lilian," her therapist said. "That would violate doctor-patient privilege."

  Lil studied their faces a moment longer before nodding. "Good. Let's get going then. The faster we get to Garrote House the sooner we can go home." She hurried on ahead.

  "I don't think I'm going to be able to put my glasses back on after what we saw on the tram," Allison said as they trailed along behind Lil.

  "That was pretty messed up," Ben said. "But I'm kind of excited to see some more ghosts."

  Beyond a small food court with a few of the typical theme park food stands—spiral fries and chicken fingers and candy apples and waffle cones—stood dozens of carnival games and rides—including a carousel and mid-sized Ferris wheel Ben was willing to bet were both haunted—along with several smaller exhibits set up down the middle of the road.

  People walked the promenade, gawking and pointing, reading maps, plopping gobs of sticky pink and blue cotton candy into their mouths, pushing strollers and holding hands with lovers. A crowd had gathered around a gallows where a Ghostland employee in a silver Hazmat-type suit stood below the hangman's noose. The suit crackled with static electricity and the employee held up their arms as if to protect someone. Ben put his headset back on and saw several filthy Victorian-era ghosts with nooses hung from their snapped necks tormenting a muscular, hooded hangman. The employee in the protective suit—a sort of zookeeper of the dead, Ben guessed—stood between them, bursts of static erupting from the crinkly silver fabric with each ghostly fist that struck it.

  "Whoa." Ben lowered the glasses. "I wonder what's up with that?"

  "I don't know," Allison replied. "But the technology here certainly is serious."

  Just beyond the gallows was a small building no larger than a trailer, where people waited in line to get their photo taken to look like a ghost. Ghostland employees directed attendees to individual photo booths, and above each one a monitor showed the finished products, which looked similar to those lenticular photos that changed depending on the viewing angle, the kind Ben used for Halloween decorations. The sign said "Ghost Your Selfie!" and promised to send the images as gifs to the attendee's email address.

  "Neat," Ben said.

  Nearby, a smaller crowd had gathered around a magic show, where a woman in chains drowned during a water escape trick and a magician emerged from a cabinet painted with the words THE MAGNIFICENT QUENTIN[viii]. Without the glasses the water inside the empty tank splashed and the lock and chains rattled on their own.

  Ben glanced around. "I think we lost Lil."

  Allison, who stood half a foot taller than him, pointed through the crowd ahead. "There she is." As he followed alongside her, she turned to him. "She prefers Lilian, you know."

  "We grew up together," Ben said. "She just prefers Lilian because calling her 'Lil' reminds her of when she used to be a geek like me."

  "You don't strike me as a geek."

  He gave her a stern look. "I'm home-schooled, my mom still kisses me when I leave the house and I read for fun. If that's not a geek, I don't know what is."

  "I read for fun," Allison said.

  "It's okay when you're an adult, I think."

  She smiled. "Still, you should humor her. She'll respect you more."

  "I'll try. It's just habit."

  "Old habits die hard." She rose on her tiptoes and frowned. "Oh. She just ran into the funhouse."

  "She loves funhouses," Ben said. "Wait, she ran?" He couldn't imagine why Lil would run into the funhouse without telling them where she was going. Could she be in trouble? Whatever the case, he picked up his pace through the crowd. "Come on, we'd better catch up."

  Lilian had just passed the drowned escape artist when someone shoved her from behind. She'd stumbled forward and almost lost her balance, scuffing the shell toe of her left Converse. When she turned to look, a few people in the crowd eyed her strangely but no one appeared to be the guilty party. Some rando had definitely shoved her, but that someone had likely already ghosted into the crowd.

  Without a suspect, Lilian pressed forward. At this point all she wanted was to get in and out of Garrote House quickly so Ben could make his peace, and right now he and Allison were holding her up. She spotted them still at the hangman exhibit. Ben had his glasses on and Allison waited patiently at his side. She locked eyes with the woman for a brief moment, long enough for Dr. Wexler to smile in response to her scowl. Then someone pushed her again and she stumbled forward into the crowd, bumping into a large woman in a floral-print muumuu.

  "Sorry," she muttered, looking around for her attacker. No one stood out. Again, a few random people gave her looks as they passed, and a kid eating nachos heaped with melted cheese and jalapenos giggled, wearing a fake cheese mustache. It could have been any one of them or none of them. Whoever it was, she couldn't imagine why a stranger would choose her to pick on of all people. Did she look like an easy target? Was she wearing a sign that said Kick me?

  She kept walking, glancing over her shoulder every so often, even though she kept telling herself to ignore it. Whoever it was would get bored and go pick on someone else. She spotted a massive building with a domed glass roof behind a stone wall at the far end of the fairway and recognized it as the prison. According to the map at the entrance, Garrote House wasn't far beyon
d that, which meant she would only have to suffer through two more exhibits before they could get the hell out of here.

  She literally could not wait to put this day behind her, although she was kind of glad she'd allowed herself to relax around Ben. He was a good kid. Strange but fun, in a dorky sort of way. They'd had a lot of good times together in the past, and she felt sincerely bad about having ducked him all this time. Before the day was through, she promised herself she would apologize. But first they had to get to Garrote House and then get the hell out of this place.

  A carnival funhouse stood between Lilian and the prison, multicolored lights spelling out ROCKY'S FUN WORLD[ix] on its wacky-looking sign. The exit was a spinning tunnel with disorienting spirals painted on the inside, nestled between the legs of a giant gorilla taller than the building itself, which slowly pounded its chest as it swayed from side to side.

  Lilian had a ton of fun memories of funhouses. Her favorite was always the mirror mazes and the wobbly stairs. The only things she didn't like were the fat mirrors and the circus music, and it blasted from the speakers loud enough to wake the dead, although at least this song had a kind of jazzy sound to it.

  Something struck her right foot and she went sprawling, scraping her hands and knees on the concrete. "What the hell!" she shouted up from the ground at the people passing by, most of them oblivious. "Whoever the fuck keeps messing with me, you'd better stop it right now!"

  A cute boy in a Letterman jacket reached out to help her up. Lilian slapped his hand away.

  "You think it's real funny pushing girls around? You think that's gonna get you laid?"

  The boy looked at her like she'd gone crazy. His dark pompadour flopped animatedly as he spoke, a strand of hair falling out of place. "I don't know what you're talking about, man. You just tripped."

  "I didn't trip," she snapped back. "You tripped me."

  "I was watching you, man," he said with a sneer. "You tripped over your own feet. I thought maybe you had like epilepsy or somethin' but I guess you're just nuts."

  "I'm not nuts," she called after him as he walked away shaking his head. "You're nuts!" She shot to her feet, muttering, "Stupid asshole." Her knees felt bruised and where her jeans had been fashionably ripped, she saw that she'd skinned them. Her palms burned, the skin raw and bleeding lightly in places. She brought her right hand close to her face to tweeze a small stone from an open wound with her fingernails, sucking a breath through her teeth.

  Someone grabbed her wrist and made her slap her own forehead so hard her vision filled with stars. Stunned, she gaped open-mouthed at her hand. She peered around wildly, trying not to whimper, angry and afraid all at once, searching the crowd for her attacker as she unconsciously thumbed the beads on her bracelet.

  "What's her problem?" the muumuu woman said, passing by with a sour expression.

  Lilian slipped a badly shaking hand into the lapel pocket of her jean jacket and took out the glasses. Her hands trembled as she put them on.

  The maniac from the asylum stood before her, panting and grinning through a mask of blood, so close she could see the burst capillaries in his zombified eyes, the various shades of brown and yellow in his rotting teeth and the frayed stitches in the scar along his forehead. Slowly, he raised the dripping cleaver above his head. Lilian staggered back as the blade arced down, cutting through the space she left.

  "Leave me alone!"

  The killer shuffled forward, slippers scuffing on the concrete, blood and drool spilling from his lips. As the surging crowd gawked at her like she was some sort of carnival freak, she realized nobody else could see him. And if she didn't run away right now, she was dead.

  She bolted, pushing through the opposing bodies, spinning and rebounding her way through the crowd until she reached the entrance to the funhouse. With a single glance over her shoulder, she dashed up the aluminum steps, hoping like hell she could lose the freak inside the house of mirrors.

  ESCAPE

  BEN PAUSED AT the entrance to Rocky's Fun World, wondering if the thirty-foot-tall gorilla towering over the exit tunnel was supposed to Rocky or what. The exhibit sign set him straight: Rocky had been the owner of the traveling midway in which this funhouse had been featured, not the gorilla.

  In 1985, Rocky Arnault had killed himself in a bizarre fashion within his own mirror maze. He'd cut pieces off of his body—small at first, then progressively larger and more vital—and left them at the base of the mirrors at each dead end so that the pieces of himself had lain against their reflections. By the time he'd crawled legless to the stairs leading up to the second level, he had bled out and died, his remaining hand slick with blood, still holding the sawblade. None of Rocky's colleagues or friends could explain this seemingly ritualistic form of suicide and it was later chalked up to the funhouse itself being cursed.

  Allison caught up to Ben at the entrance and brushed past him, uninterested in the funhouse's history, the soles of her dock shoes clanking rapidly up the metal stairs. Her anxiety put Ben on edge. Earlier she'd told him it looked like Lil had been chased into the funhouse but she hadn't seen anyone run in after her. Whatever had happened, it wasn't like Lil to run off the way she had, even considering how often she'd personally ghosted him in the past. If she'd been planning to go into the funhouse, she would have told them.

  He followed Allison into a mirrored hallway that seemed to stretch off into infinity. Angles had been painted on the pillars and the floor tiles were marked off with phosphorescent triangles. The lighting switched between normal, blacklight and darkness, the last of which illuminated only the triangles on the floor, while "Baby Elephant Walk" boomed over the sound system. Laughter drifted from deep inside the maze.

  He'd never been great with mazes. Lilian had always taken the lead when the opportunity came up in games. She had a natural instinct for them, and seemed to enjoy possessing a skill he didn't himself, often lording it over him. Calling him a "noob," with a sardonic smile he'd been able to sense over the headset. Back then he would never have been able to imagine how much he would miss those times. How he'd wonder what she was up to while he played their favorite games with strangers, kids who called games "vidya" now and every other word was "rekt" or a personal attack.

  Thinking this, he bumped face-first into a glass wall and Allison crashed into him. "Sorry," he said.

  "My fault," she said.

  He slipped past her and headed down a different path. He had to keep his mind on the maze. Lilian was in here somewhere. If someone had chased her, she could be in danger. She needed their help.

  He paused, feeling for glass to his left and right like a mime in a box. To the immediate left was a mirror, its surface flat and cold. His reflection stared back at him, the fear in his eyes amplifying it, making it sharp as broken glass. He turned right.

  "Mirror," a guy somewhere up ahead of them said. "That's a mirror."

  A moment later a young couple walked by holding hands. They jumped back in fright and cursed at something at their feet. Ben saw the severed hand and forearm, lying limp against its reflection like a strange plant or a table lamp in a pool of tacky blood. The couple walked away from the sight, heading deeper into the maze.

  Ben headed toward them, hands held out. His wrists jammed up hard against cold glass. Another dead end.

  Come on, Ben, concentrate!

  The couple was behind them now. There were two more mirrors to his left and his right. Stood against the right was a foot, still within its scuffed and paint-stained work boot, severed above the ankle. He jerked back in horror, expecting to see Rocky's ghost in the mirror when he looked up. But there was only his reflection, with Allison looking at her own reflection over his shoulder. She looked as confused and uneasy as he felt.

  "I've never been much for carnival rides," she said with a nervous chuckle.

  "We'll find her," he said. He sidled by her and followed the young couple, hoping it wasn't their reflection. They screamed and hugged each other, likely spotting anot
her piece of Rocky Arnault's ghost. Ben turned right, left, then left again, avoiding mirrors and glass, trying to steer clear of dead ends and the bloody appendages he knew had been left there, all the while glancing behind himself to make sure he hadn't lost Allison. He didn’t trust just seeing her reflection, even if she was right at his feet. Something about the maze made him think he couldn't trust his own eyes.

  "Leave me alone!"

  He stopped and listened. Allison gave him a quizzical look, her mouth fixed in a grimace of anxiety. It was hard to hear much over the music, the laughter and screaming but he was pretty sure he recognized the voice. "I think I just heard Lil."

  "That scream?"

  He nodded.

  "We have to find her," Allison said, her eyes big with worry.

  The lights went out again, illuminating only the tile markings. Ben stumbled ahead, hands in front, palms forward. He touched glass. In the dark he couldn't tell if it was a window or a mirror. He felt along the frame for an opening and stepped through.

  Glass to the left and right. He moved forward another tile. Glass again to the left and right. A severed ear at his feet, a splash of blood on the glass. Cold sweat dripped down his ribs from his armpits and his heartbeat quickened. It wasn't quite bad enough to worry about, not yet, but he'd have to keep a handle on his breathing or he'd need to take a pill. The pills made him dizzy, groggy and unalert. Sometimes they gave him migraines so bad he'd have to lie down in the dark with a cold cloth on his forehead. He couldn't allow for that. He needed to be wide awake and focused.

  Lil needed him.

  When the blacklight came back on, Allison was right behind him and the mirrors on either side stretched their reflections into infinity. Ben turned back and slipped past her, heading down another corridor. He turned right again, following number one of Lil's unwritten rules for escaping mazes: turn right whenever possible.

  At the end of the corridor, a set of janky stairs led up to the next level, where a man with no legs hovered, his mouth a lipless grimace, his lidless eyes forever staring, a blood-drenched hacksaw gripped in his remaining hand.