Ben laughed. "I wouldn’t say 'bitch,' but… kinda, yeah."
She laughed with him.
Allison returned from the washrooms and gave them a curious look. "You two are in a cheery mood."
"We just needed a Snickers," Ben said.
Allison smiled but didn't seem to get the joke. "Good. Shall we press on?"
He zipped up his backpack and stood. "I'm ready if you are."
Lilian stood alongside him. "Are my glasses still in there?" He nodded and she held out her hand. "Give 'em here."
"You sure?" he asked with a look of uncertainty.
Lilian said, "We have to look out for each other, don't we? You got my six, I got yours."
He shrugged and nodded, opened his backpack and handed her the glasses. One of the lenses had cracked but they looked like they still might work. She slipped them on, blinked to adjust to the crack slightly blurring her vision, then flicked them back on. After a moment a message popped up on the undamaged right lens:
REBOOTING…
0% 100%
Once the progress bar had reached 100% another message appeared, with ellipses to indicate loading: dot-dot-dot, dot-dot-dot.
SEARCHING FOR SYSTEM…
Finally, it was replaced by:
HEADSET PAIRED WITH SYSTEM
Allison put her headset back on too. "All for one and one for all," she cheered halfheartedly.
Lilian clapped her hands together with far more enthusiasm than she felt. "Damn right," she said. "Now let's go check out some ghosts!"
Everyone laughed. Lilian took off her jacket and tied it around her waist as the sun came out from under a cloud, and the three of them left the food court in strangely good spirits.
VIRTUAL INSANITY
GUEST SERVICES WASN'T too far from the food court. Ben had pointed it out a short distance ahead after an almost five-minute walk to the southwest. Lilian glanced at the time on her cell phone. It wasn't getting any bars. No Wi-Fi, either. Sometimes the service was spotty on the outskirts of town, but usually it would flip back and forth between no service and full bars. This was just flat, like she'd flicked on airplane mode. It felt strange to be so completely disconnected from the world, even if she had no time at the moment for the internet.
"Hey, I heard they borrowed Annabelle for that exhibit," Ben said as they passed a low cinderblock building. The sign out front called it the Museum of Cursed Objects[xi]. "The original Raggedy Ann doll, not the stupid one from the movies. The haunted mirror from Myrtles Plantation too. And they even got the original Dybbuk box."
He sounded honestly disappointed to be missing it. She had to stifle a chuckle.
A few minutes later, they reached Guest Services. Lilian stepped into the small, air-conditioned building first, followed so closely by Allison it felt like her therapist was a helicopter hovering over her shoulder. Directly inside was a small waiting room and a counter with a few computer terminals. TVs behind it showed crossfading images of Ghostland's many exhibits along with the video of Rex Garrote from the park entrance on repeat, like a sales pitch in a travel agency.
Lilian headed straight for the counter and began tapping her fingernails on it, until the plump woman with a fluffy blond fringe and big brown doe eyes looked up from her computer terminal and did a double-take. The woman stood abruptly, her large breasts stretching out the red Ghostland tee she wore, and hurried around the desk. She plastered on a huge smile and said, "Hiiiiiii! Oh my goodness, what happened to your hands, baby girl? Are you okay?"
If it hadn't been for the intermittent dull burn shooting up her wrists, Lilian might have forgotten all about the injuries she'd sustained from the pavement in the midway. It was her knees that had taken the worst of the fall, and they still throbbed badly. She held her hands up to look at them for the first time since she'd left the funhouse. Rivulets of blood had seeped down, dried and cracking in the folds of her palms and between her fingers. "They're okay," she said. "Actually, is there anyone we can talk to about—"
"She's been harassed," Allison said over her.
Lilian glared at her until Allison noticed and offered an apologetic shrug.
"Oh my!" The Ghostland employee had the sort of chubby, rosy-cheeked face which only seemed to jibe with expressions of cheer or shock. The look of dismay seemed foreign, squishing up her features. "Honey, we take allegations of sexual harassment very seriously—"
Lilian felt her cheeks grow as red with embarrassment as Ben's would. "It wasn't sexual!" she cried. "Gawd!"
"It was a ghost," Ben explained, looking embarrassed himself. "And it wasn't… it wasn't sexual," he finished unenthusiastically, then gave Lilian a pained, quizzical look as if to ask, Right?
The woman said, "Oh." She sounded almost disappointed, letting her shoulders slump for a moment. She glanced over her shoulder toward a closed door. "Let me just see if Demont is done his break."
"Can't you help me?"
"Demont is one of our SPOs," the woman said hurriedly, already heading toward the back room. "He's far more qualified to deal with situations like this."
"She's not suicidal," Ben said.
"I'm not suicidal. He pushed me." Lilian held out her hands palms up and demonstrated.
"Pushed," the woman said dubiously. "By one of our ghosts?"
Lilian didn't like the woman's tone but other than storming out and tweeting a complaint once she got back within network range, there was little she could do about it. Besides, they'd already come this far. She needed somebody to take her seriously. She hoped this Demont guy would be the one.
"He was a mental patient, I think," she told the employee. "He was wearing a green gown and had a scar across his forehead."
"A prefrontal lobotomy scar," Allison said.
"And he had a cleaver," Lilian added, annoyed by Allison trying to speak for her again. "He followed us from the tram ride."
"Which was pretty cool, actually," Ben said. Lilian gave him a look that wiped the smile off his face and he shrugged. "What? It was."
"After the ride, I went ahead on my own," she said, ignoring Ben. She didn't want to dredge up what had happened to her inside the funhouse, but she knew talking about the maniac was the only way to get these people to take her seriously. "Somebody pushed me. I thought it was just some random in the crowd but when it happened again, I turned around and saw… him." She swallowed hard, on the verge of tears just thinking about him standing over her, blood-drenched and drooling. "He swung at me with the knife and that's when I ran into the funhouse."
"We found her in one of the rooms practically catatonic," Allison said.
"And you believed her," the woman said. It wasn't a question.
"Why wouldn't she believe me?" Lilian snapped.
"I'm her therapist. I've been treating Lilian for over a year, and I have no reason whatsoever to believe she'd be lying to me, nor do I believe she's been hallucinating. If she says she was harassed by one of your—whatever these things are—I believe you people need to take that seriously."
The Ghostland employee exhaled heavily through her nose. "Okay," she practically moaned. "It's just that we've never had to deal with something like this before. I mean, there were the stories during the construction…" The woman raised a hand to her mouth as if to cram the words back inside, but she clearly knew it was too late.
"Something happened during construction?" Ben asked.
"Let me get Demont," she said, continuing to the door. "Don't go anywhere."
Allison said, "We won't."
As the door closed behind the woman, Lilian turned to Allison. "I don't think they're going to believe me."
"What happened during the construction?" Ben asked again.
"Who cares what happened during the construction?"
He shrank away from her. "Well, if someone died or got injured," he said, his voice small, his head nearly swallowed by his shoulders, "don't you think that might explain what happened to you? What if someone got attacked like you did?"<
br />
Lilian thought it over. If he was right, they were talking about multiple incidents. That would mean there was a much bigger problem here than singling her out. Before she could respond the woman returned with a young black man in a purple T-shirt, slim with broad shoulders. He was still chewing whatever he'd been eating on his lunch break and wiped his hands together to rid them of crumbs. He stuck one out as he approached her, ran his tongue over his teeth and smiled. "Hi, I'm Demont. And you are?"
She shook his hand, recognizing him from when they'd first entered the park, where he'd been taking selfies with visitors. "I'm Lilian. This is Allison. That's Ben."
"Hi," Demont said, waving at them casually. "Have a seat." He directed them to the waiting room chairs where they all sat down, looking anxious. He took one of the chairs, flipped it around backwards and straddled it like a dancer in an '80s music video with his forearms draped across the back. "So," he said finally, holding direct eye contact with Lilian until she felt herself blush. "You met Morton."
"Morton?" Allison asked.
He nodded. "Morton Welles[xii]. A psychiatric patient at Bright Falls Sanitarium in the early-1900s. Violent psychopath, revenant-type haunting. And very dangerous outside of his Recurrence Field loop, I'd imagine."
"So what was he doing on the tram ride?" Ben asked.
"Well, Ben…" Demont turned to him. "Legend has it, Mr. Garrote thought it would be fun to put a little jump scare on the Ghost Tram. I personally don't like jump scares. I think they're cheap. But if you've ever seen his TV show, you'd know he was a big fan."
Ben nodded as if he knew very well, which of course he did.
"Morton has taken a liking to women around your age before," Demont continued. Lilian took note of the term "woman," and tried not to let her blush deepen. "I guess you'd say it's his M.O. When the park was still being built, one of the student psych volunteers—a white girl around your age, dark hair with freckles—she disappeared."
"Disappeared?" Allison said.
"Just for a few hours. When they found her again, in the operating theater of the asylum, she was… disturbed, I guess." He gave them a brief, unhappy smile. "She described pretty much what you experienced. Said she'd been pushed. Had her hair pulled. Then he swung the cleaver at her. I don't want to put more of a scare to you than you've already got but when they found her, she had slashes on her arms." He held out his left forearm, palm up and made slashing gestures with his right hand. "Where she claimed Morton had cut her," he added.
Ben muttered, "Jesus."
Demont turned to him briefly. "I don't think Jesus was anywhere near the asylum that day." His comforting gaze returned to Lilian. "This woman was under the impression she was only able to escape Morton Welles because of where she hid. She said he wouldn't cross into the operating room, for some reason. That he stayed outside the doors looking in through the windows until help arrived."
"They would have performed his lobotomy there," Allison suggested.
Demont nodded without looking away from Lilian. "That's what I thought too. Most people dismissed her. Said she'd made the cuts herself, that it was a cry for help. I've never believed that, personally. I've always thought something did come after her. And now he's come after you. A full-bodied revenant. Morton Welles. You saw him with or without your glasses?"
"With," Lilian said.
"That’s good. If he'd shown himself to you without the glasses that have would been something further to worry about."
Allison shook her head in frustration. "So you've had violent incidents in the past and they still opened this place to the public?"
"Like I said, nobody believed her. As far as park officials are concerned, this place is one-hundred percent safe."
"People thought that about the Titanic."
Demont gave her a weary smile. "You're absolutely right." He stood, spun the chair around and pushed it back into place. "And I think it's time we go see the wizard," he said.
Lilian shook her head in confusion. "The wizard?"
Demont nodded. "Sara Jane Amblin. If there's a problem with the Recurrence Field, Miss Amblin needs to know about it. And sooner, rather than later, I'd say." He turned to the blonde woman as she reemerged from the back. "Lola, do me a favor: call in to the control room, tell them we're on our way to see the boss lady. This young woman's been harassed by one of our ghosts."
The woman nodded, bug-eyed with apparent fright. "I'll call right away." She turned abruptly, bumped into the desk, and stumbled on her way to the backroom.
Demont frowned briefly, then ushered the three of them to the door.
While the others went on ahead, Lilian watched Rex Garrote repeat his walk toward the camera on the television screens, each a half-second out of step with the other. She was close enough to read his lips as he asked: "…what are you afraid of?"
You, she thought. I'm afraid of you, Rex Garrote.
For a moment she considered telling them she'd seen Morton Welles change, that right after murdering the family in the tram he'd transformed into Rex Garrote. But the murder had been part of the show. If she told them what she thought she'd seen, they would begin to question her story. They would question her sanity.
Better to not say anything, she thought.
On the televisions, Rex Garrote smiled as if he agreed.
THE GARROTE CODE
A SILENCE HAD fallen as the Suicide Prevention Officer drove them along the thoroughfare in a red Ghostland golf cart, honking its tiny-sounding horn here and there at pedestrians. Ben watched the exhibits go by. Lilian stared at the back of his seat. It was Allison, sitting in the back with Lil, who finally broke the silence.
"What made you want to work in a place like this?"
Demont glanced over his shoulder, seemingly surprised by the question. "I'm a BSW student. Taking my Masters in Social Work the fall. Ghostland was looking for student help and I figured I could use the experience."
"Then you have no issue with its content?"
"Its content?" Demont scowled slightly, his grip tightening on the wheel. "You've been listening to the GRP2 folks, haven't you?"
The comment seemed to offend Allison. "My opinions are my own, thank you," she said.
"Of course. I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of its presentation. A lot of the exhibits are… well, exploitative, to say the least. But I do think what Ghostland is doing is important, even if they may be doing it in a way in which I don't necessarily approve."
Allison arched an eyebrow. "How so?"
"As in 'those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.'"
Demont glanced at Ben before returning his gaze to the path ahead. They passed an old, rambling one-story cinema, APACHE THEATER spelled out in red lights on the marquee. Two showings tonight: The Shining at 7PM and House of the Zapper at 9:30. Ben recalled the story Garrote had told during the tram ride. Zapper was the movie the theater owner had rigged to electrocute his entire audience. Ben hadn't seen the film but he'd of course watched The Shining multiple times, the classic Stanley Kubrick film based on the Stephen King novel. He'd even seen the miniseries once or twice, and while he loved the movie, he thought the miniseries was truer to the book.
"Care to elaborate?" Allison asked.
"Think about World War II," Demont said. "Those death camps in Poland. An anti-Semite or a Holocaust denier strolls into Auschwitz, maybe thinking about how Hitler's 'master plan' wasn't all that bad. Then he sees that room full of hair shaved off the prisoner's heads. Another one full of glasses. Another with shoes. Maybe then it starts to hit him how truly awful the place was. Now, imagine he's standing there among all the prisoners, watching them starve, watching them being gassed—"
"Can we not talk about this?" Lilian said from the back.
"Sorry." He drummed his fingers on the wheel a moment, contemplating. "What I mean is, would he start to feel sympathy toward them? Any sane person would. Personally, I believe bigotry is a form of tempora
ry insanity." He smiled at the notion. "Sometimes not so temporary, unfortunately. But it is something that can be overcome. That's been proven. It's learned behavior. Like cult indoctrination. In a way, Ghostland could be considered cultural deprogramming," he added with a chuckle.
Allison hummed thoughtfully, much louder than she would have if the powerful little electric engine wasn't whining so loudly. "I'm not sure I fully agree," she said. "But it is an interesting theory."
"Hey, believe what you want. I'm an optimist, personally."
"I'm a realist," Allison said.
As the two of them continued their debate, Bright Falls Sanitarium[xiii], a red brick building with multiple towers and green weathered copper roofs, stretched on and on to their left. Ben tried to imagine the operating theater Demont had mentioned, where the maniac Morton Welles had been lobotomized, and the student had hidden from him. It made perfect sense that Welles wouldn't have wanted to go into that room. If he'd been lobotomized there, as Allison suggested, he would have wanted to avoid the scene of his mutilation. Thinking this, Ben peered over his shoulder and saw Lilian glowering at the building.
"Are we almost there?" she asked, her eyes narrowing.
"Just about," Demont said.
They passed what looked like a Civil War fort on the right, followed by a massive pool containing the galleon they'd seen from the tram, rising and falling on artificial waves. Ben looked up at the ragged, flapping sails to see if he could spot a pirate ghost, but the plastic roof of the golf cart blocked his view. There were strange shapes rising from the water, which from the distance looked more like hands than waves. He turned to get a better view and Allison caught his eye, giving him an inquisitive look. He forced a smile, eager to appear compos mentis. He didn't need to be under her scrutiny any more than he was already.
Demont turned the cart to the left and pulled up alongside what looked like a squat government building, two stories constructed of cinderblock with no windows and a single door at the far left that looked like it might be made out of steel. There was a single camera bubble above the door and one on each corner of the building. Several of those metallic poles had been placed every few feet around its perimeter.
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