Inferno Park
Author: J.L. Bryan
Date: 2014-08-11 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Paranormal; Fiction; Ghosts; Thriller; Fantasy; Young Adult
Description: Carter was only twelve when he witnessed the disaster that killed more than a hundred people at Starland Amusement Park. Five years later, Carter’s hometown is no longer a busy Florida panhandle resort, but a slowly dying town full of empty motels and attractions rusting behind chains and padlocks. Now something evil stirs in the ruins of the old amusement park...something with an alluring siren song drawing visitors into the dark mysteries of the forbidden world behind the gate. Something with an appetite for restless, yearning souls. Carter reluctantly returns to the old park in the company

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Other books by J. L. Bryan

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

From the author

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Chapter One

INFERNO PARK

by

J. L. Bryan

Inferno Park by J.L. Bryan

Copyright 2014 Jeffrey L. Bryan

All rights reserved

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Also by J.L. Bryan:

The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

Cold Shadows

(more coming soon!)

The Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)

Jenny Pox

Tommy Nightmare

Alexander Death

Jenny Plague-Bringer

Urban Fantasy/Horror

The Unseen

Science Fiction Novels

Nomad

Helix

The Songs of Magic Series (YA/Fantasy)

Fairy Metal Thunder

Fairy Blues

Fairystruck

Fairyland

Fairyvision

Introduction

When I was a child, our family vacations usually involved visiting beachside resorts like Hilton Head, South Carolina and Panama City Beach, Florida. We also traveled to tourist traps like Weeki Wachee Springs, best known for its mermaids and water slides. I also never missed a state fair if I could help it.

These childhood memories inspired Inferno Park. Particularly worth mentioning is the old Miracle Strip Amusement Park in Panama City Beach, which opened in 1963, closed in 2004, and was finally demolished in 2010. Looking at pictures of the old park lying in ruins stirred me to write this book, though inspiration is also drawn from other parks and carnivals of my childhood. For me, this novel is an expression of childhood loss and the pain of growing up and dealing with loss. (Don’t worry, there are also ghosts and monsters!)

Of particular note is the “Old House” that stood in Miracle Strip Amusement Park. It was a maze of a haunted house—you had to find your way through secret doors and hidden panels. This strongly influenced the Jenny Pox series, readers of which will remember the maze-like third floor of Barrett House, as well as the major role of haunted-house attractions in the first and fourth books.

The Old House was created by an artist named Vincent “Val” Valentine, who built a number of haunted houses around the country, including one at The Dells in Wisconsin and the Mystery Mansion in Gatlinburg, Tennessee (which is still open!). Val Valentine also created amusement attractions around Ocala and Panama City Beach in Florida, as well as around the country, but he’s most famous for his haunted houses.

I was fortunate enough to meet with Val Valentine during the course of writing this book, and he was generous enough to sit down and show me his decades of work that had shaped roadside America. I was excited and grateful to meet the individual who had created so much of the lost geography of my childhood.

This is a story that comes from the deepest chambers of my heart and soul. I hope you enjoy it.

-J. L. Bryan

August 10, 2014

Acknowledgments

This book took much longer to write and revise than usual. I appreciate most of all the patience of my wife and son while I spend so much of my time writing.

For editing and beta reading, I’m grateful to Vicki Keire, Robert J. Duperre, Daniel Arenson, and Michelle Muto, as well as my wife, who read this book multiple times. The cover art is by Damonza.com.

I’m also grateful to pop culture historian Tim Hollis, whose books helped me recall lost details of my own childhood and filled me in on the deeper history of Gulf Coast tourist resorts. His books Dixie Before Disney: 100 Years of Roadside Fun and Florida’s Miracle Strip: From Redneck Riviera to Emerald Coast were of particular importance.

In addition, Mr. Hollis put me in touch with Vincent “Val” Valentine, the artist who designed so many lost attractions that I remember from childhood (particularly his award-winning haunted houses). I am deeply grateful to Mr. Valentine himself for spending several hours showing me scrapbooks of his life’s work. The child in me was thrilled to learn the backstory of these major roadside attractions of yesteryear.

I also must thank all the book bloggers who’d supported my career for years, including Danny, Heather, and Heather from Bewitched Bookworks; Mandy from I Read Indie; Michelle from Much Loved Books; Shirley from Creative Deeds; Katie and Krisha from Inkk Reviews; Lori from Contagious Reads; Heather from Buried in Books; Kristina from Ladybug Storytime; Chandra from Unabridged Bookshelf; Kelly from Reading the Paranormal; AimeeKay from Reviews from My First Reads Shelf and Melissa from as Books and Things; Kristin from Blood, Sweat, and Books; Lauren from Lose Time Reading; Kat from Aussie Zombie; Andra from Unabridged Andralyn; Jennifer from A Tale of Many Reviews; Giselle from Xpresso Reads; Ashley from Bookish Brunette; Loretta from Between the Pages; Ashley from Bibliophile’s Corner; Lili from Lili Lost in a Book; Line from Moonstar’s Fantasy World; Lindsay from The Violet Hour; Rebecca from Bending the Spine; Holly from Geek Glitter; Louise from Nerdette Reviews; Isalys from Book Soulmates; Jennifer from The Feminist Fairy; Heidi from Rainy Day Ramblings; Kristilyn from Reading in Winter; Kelsey from Kelsey’s Cluttered Bookshelf; Lizzy from Lizzy’s Dark Fiction; Shanon from Escaping with Fiction; Savannah from Books with Bite; Tara from Basically Books; and everyone else I missed!

For all my friends lost to age and time

Chapter One

On the day of the Starland Amusement Park disaster, the one that would send the minor resort town of Conch Beach into its slow death spiral and destroy his family, Carter was only a week away from his twelfth birthday.

The day of the horror was beautiful, with bright blue skies glowing high above the sugar-white beach, the tourists crowding the sidewalks. They snapped pictures of one another in their swimsuits and bought frozen lemonade and airbrushed shirts from the brightly colored shanties along Beachview Drive. It was a day when all the doors and windows in town stood open to catch the sweet breeze off the ocean.

If the sidewalks, snack shacks, and video arcades were a bit less crowded with tourists than they’d been five or ten years earlier, it was much too nice of a day to grumble about it.

“Can I go yet?” Carter asked his dad. They stood by the go-kart course at seven in the evening, watching tourist kids fly past in the roaring vehicles, zooming around curves and over the single bridge. The course was a simple figure-eight shape, which had inspired Carter’s parents to name it the Eight-Track. Led Zeppelin’s “Dancing Days” blasted over the outdoor speakers, even louder than the dozen go-kart engines.

“You sweep up the shop?” his dad asked. His arms were crossed over his tie-dyed “Eight-Track Racing Course” shirt—tourists could buy their very own tie-dyed Eight-Track shirts inside the front shop for a mere twenty-five bucks each. His dad’s shoulder-length hair blew in the gasoline breeze from the engines, his mouth a serious flat line under his sunglasses.

“Yeah, I swept and dusted!” Carter said, impatient to slip out of work and have fun.

“Filled the candy display? Restocked the soda fountain?”

“Yeah, yeah! I did everything. Jared’s probably already out front. It’s his first day off grounding. Can I please go?”

Carter’s dad rubbed his chin as though deep in thought, but a hint of a smile was forming on his lips. He was toying with Carter.

“I don’t know...we could get hit with a lot of business,” he said. “It might not be responsible for you to wander off.”

“It hasn’t been that busy this summer,” Carter said. It was unfortunately true, and the comment chased the playful smile from his dad’s face.

“Why was Jared grounded, again?” his dad asked.

“He egged his sister during her birthday,” Carter said. “But she totally deserved it for being such a b...uh...” Carter stopped himself.

“A what?” His dad’s eyebrows raised behind his sunglasses. “What word beginning with ‘b’ were you about to say?”

“For being mean.” Carter shrugged. “She’s always mean to him, and me, too. Can I please go now?”

“And where are you going?”

“The beach. Maybe down the Starwalk,” Carter told him. Where else was there to go in town?

According to the town’s tourism brochures, the “Starwalk” referred to the long stretch of Beachview Drive just across the road from the motel-lined beach, a brightly lit row of attractions anchored by the enormous Starland Amusement Park.

Sprawling out in both directions from the amusement park’s high fences lay a wonderland of gaudily painted businesses jammed close together on the precious real estate—miniature golf and go-kart courses (including the Eight-Track itself, owned and operated by Carter’s parents), plus skee ball, an arcade, foods stands offering ice cream and greasy hamburgers, and junk shops that sold cheap souvenirs, postcards, and sandals that would fall apart after a week, just about the time the tourists who bought them returned home. All of these little spots fed off the tourist traffic drawn by the motels and the big amusement park.

Carter’s dad pretended to ponder Carter’s question, and then jogged over to meet a couple of tourists pulling their go-karts back into the yellow-striped starting lane. One of the kart-driving tourists was a fat kid, nine or ten years old, in a cheap yellow sun visor hat with the Starland Amusement Park logo, and the other was the kid’s father, also obese, in a camouflage-print Tennessee Volunteers hat.

“Did everybody have fun?” Carter’s dad asked them.

“I want to go again!” the kid demanded.

“We don’t have time,” the kid’s dad said, unwrapping his legs from the steering wheel and heaving himself onto unsteady feet. “We gotta go catch up with your momma.”

“I don’t want to!” the kid insisted. He remained in his go-kart, pouting. “I want to drive again.”

“We gonna have supper,” the kid’s dad said. “Fried catfish.”

The kid raised his eyebrows. “Can I have hush puppies and tarter sauce?”

“You got it, champ,” the dad told him.

Carter watched the boy and his father leave, then asked his dad, “Now can I go?”

“I guess we can survive one Wednesday in August without you,” Carter’s dad told him. “Gas ‘em up and wash ‘em down, and I’ll let you go.”

“Thanks!” Carter jumped behind the wheel of the first go-kart and pulled it around to the fueling and washing station.

Carter had worked at the track all his life, sweeping, mopping, and dusting from the time he was a toddler. As he grew older, he washed and polished the go-karts and helped touch up the paint on the flats that created scenery alongside the track—a desert scene here, city buildings there. It was a fun job for a middle school kid.

His dad generally supervised the track, keeping the karts gassed up, watching the figure-eight track for troublemakers, while his mom ran the front end, collecting admission money and selling overpriced candy and soda. His family worked hard, but they spent lots of time together. His dad, who had long ago moved down from Ohio to be a beach bum in the Florida panhandle, rarely woke up before eleven, since the business didn’t open until noon.

It was a fairly happy life, in many ways an idyllic one, and it was about to end.

His chores done, Carter hurried out through the little shop at the front of the track, where his mom was checking in a family of tourists—two parents with three boys around Carter’s age. His mom was in her late thirties, like his dad, her skin browned by constant exposure to the sun. She also wore the obligatory tie-dyed “Eight-Track” t-shirt.

“Where are you going?” she asked him.

“Out with Jared,” he said.

“Where’s ‘out’?”

“Probably just see who’s out along the Starwalk.”

“You’re done helping your dad?”

“He said I could go.” Carter lingered by the glass front door with its pink flamingo door chimes. He pretended not to notice the new handprint someone had left there—if his mom saw it, she would make him wipe it down with glass cleaner. He could see Jared in the gravel parking lot out front, sitting on one of the mildly decayed railroad ties that marked the boundary with the parking lot of the surf shop next door, reading a Batman comic.

“Come here,” his mom said, and Carter reluctantly walked back to the counter, wondering what new set of chores he would have to finish.

Instead, his mom gave him a twenty-dollar bill. He smiled as he reached for it.

“Thanks!” he said, but she held it tight, looking him in the eye.

“Stay out of trouble,” she said. “Stay safe.”

“I will.” Carter was unsettled by the serious look in her eyes. He knew she didn’t like Jared and considered him a little delinquent...which he was, but usually for a good cause. Jared had once convinced Carter to go spray paint profanity all over the trailer where the biggest bully in their grade lived. They’d gotten away with that one, just barely.

“I want you home by nine,” his mom said. Carter could smell the tequila on her breath—she’d been drinking in the morning again. “I got a bad feeling.”

“Okay. Thanks again,” he said, waving the twenty before he pocketed it.

“I love you, Carter,” she told him, which brought snickers from the three tourist boys. Why did she have to embarrass him like that?

“Thanks, Mom,” he mumbled, blushing. He pushed his way out the door.

“Hey, what’s up?” Jared stood up, grinning. He wore his favorite Joker cap, turned backwards on his head.

“Man, it feels good to be out on parole. Let’s see who’s out tonight.”

“Should be everybody.” Carter and Jared followed the sidewalk across the parking lot of Big Billy’s Surf Shop, which sold mostly boogie boards, snorkels, and t-shirts, since this stretch of the Gulf wasn’t great for actual surfing.

“Sucks that school starts next week,” Jared said. “My parents robbed me of like half the summer.”

“Yeah.” They were both going into eighth grade. “I hate middle school.”

“One more year, then things get cool,” Jared told him. “High school is all about the wild parties, the girls, the beer...”

“One more year,” Carter sighed.

“Forget school. I don’t want to think about it.”

They walked down the Starwalk, passing little knots of tourists enjoying the last week of summer. On this colorful stretch of Beachview Drive, densely packed with amusements, the “sidewalk” was just a series of short, hastily crafted wooden boardwalks connecting one parking lot to the next, raised a few inches above the weedy muck of drainage ditches. Many of the parking lots were simple patches of gravel and sand. All the fun spots had sprung up in the shadow of the amusement park, with no real planning.

Across the street, motels painted eye-snagging colors like pink, lavender, and screaming green sat along the beach, their tourist curb appeal enhanced by an array of oversized figures that crowded the roadside competing for attention, most noticeably the gorilla holding the lighted sun at one end of Sunny Breeze Motor Court, and also the two-story suit of reddish armor guarding the Good Knight Inn.

Being locals, Carter and Jared were savvy about the ways of the Starwalk. Sharkfin Pizza was delicious and only cost a buck a slice. A deep-fried sandwich at the Fish Bowl, a wooden stand painted with glittering goldfish, would make you sick for two days.

They passed an airbrush shop and a shed that offered temporary tattoos and face painting. Jared started nudging him every time a cute girl in a bikini passed, as though Carter would otherwise be blind to them.

Carter wasn’t interested in checking out the tourist girls, though. He peered into arcades and cheap jewelry shops as they walked, his mind distracted.

“Don’t tell me you’re looking for Tricia,” Jared said.

“Maybe. She could be out.” Carter passed a fried-chicken stand that looked like a small red barn with an oversized red rooster perched on its roof, its recorded voice crowing about “cheap prices” and “cluck-a-licious flavor.”

“That Tricia girl’s a freak. She probably doesn’t come out until after dark,” Jared said.

“She’s not a freak!”

“Anyway, who cares? You’ll be too chicken to talk to her. Come on, let’s get some pizza.”

Carter frowned as they walked into Sharkfin Pizza, where the big sign featured a shark and claimed the place was “Home of the World-Famous Salt-Crust Pizza.” They each bought a big, greasy wedge with pepperoni, plus a large paper cup of Coke to share. The outdoor dining area consisted of two picnic tables already crammed full of tourists, so Carter and Jared stood while they ate. The pizza crust, as advertised, was sprinkled with big chunks of salt.

He looked over the crowd. Conch City attracted visitors from all across the Southeast, generally those who couldn’t afford to spend a fortune visiting the big Orlando resorts like Disney World. You saw a lot of run-down trucks and rusty cars, dads in the wife-beater tank tops, moms with big hair and fanny packs, kids in flip-flops and faded promotional t-shirts advertising country music radio stations or movies from three years ago. Carter had never been to Disney World or Universal Studios, but he doubted they could be as cool as his hometown.

Then Carter saw her—just for a moment, passing in the crowd along the street, but time seemed to stop for the half-second she was visible, before a big man in a t-shirt that read “Conch City: Come for the Beer, Stay for the Beer” blocked his view.

“That was her!” Carter nudged Jared. “Tricia.”

“Oh, come on.” Jared shook his head, chewing slowly.

“Let’s go.”

“I’m not done with my pizza.”

“Bring it with you.” Carter pulled his arm. “Let’s go after her.”

“So you can stalk her like a creep?”

“No...”

“You’re going to go up and talk to her?” Jared smirked.

“Maybe...come on, let’s see where she goes. I’ll talk to her when she gets there.”

Jared made a big show of sighing and rolling his eyes, then trudged along behind Carter.

“You’re moving too slow!” Carter whispered.

“You’re crazy.”

Carter caught another glimpse of her up ahead, passing by the parking lot for Dinosaur Mini-Golf, where tourists took pictures next to the big green concrete triceratops out front.

“There,” Carter pointed. Tricia Calhoun was a long way ahead. She wore a simple white dress she’d hand-painted with unicorns and dragons. Her pale blond hair was braided and hung with beads. Her skin was a ghostly color, probably the reason Jared said she only came out at night.

“I can’t believe you get all stupid and drooly over the weirdest girl in school,” Jared said. “There are tons of chicks hotter than her.”

“Like who?”

“Uh, Kelly Maples? Carly Overby? Morgan O’Shea? Anyone?”

“You’re just naming all the cheerleaders.”

“So? I saw Carly on the beach a few weeks ago. She’s really popping out.” Jared cupped his hands in front of his chest.

“Those girls are boring. Tricia...isn’t.” Carter couldn’t explain how Tricia made him feel—like he was sweating on the inside, like his brain was short-circuiting. She usually sat in the back of the classroom, doodling wild fantasy creatures in her notebook, ignoring everyone while she focused on her own little world. She didn’t seem to have a lot of friends. She didn’t giggle and gossip all the time like the popular girls Jared had mentioned. Carter knew there was something special about her.

He couldn’t put it all into words, and Jared would probably just make fun of him if he tried.

“You better hurry, man,” Jared said. “Looks like she’s going in.”

Ahead, Tricia veered into the sprawling blacktop parking lot at Starland Amusement Park, which was the center of everything along the glowing strip of attractions. High chain-link fence surrounded the park, enclosing a world of glowing lights and spinning rides. Directly ahead, a train of screaming riders raced down one tall hill of the Starland Express, the mammoth wooden roller coaster so long it took up the entire western edge of the park.

The front gate looked like a casino palace, the ticket booths topped with white castle towers glowing with rows of neon stars. Tricia stood in a short line, clutching her purple velvet purse, which also looked homemade—two pieces of material unevenly stitched together, the strap made from an old artificial-leather belt.

Carter stopped where he was, trying to work up the nerve to approach her.

“Go ahead,” Jared told him.

“What do I say?”

“You could start with ‘hi.’ Or maybe ‘hey’ if you want to be folksy about it.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know, but you’re almost out of time...” Jared nodded toward Tricia, already buying her ticket.

“Let’s go.” Carter hurried toward the star-studded front gate. He hoped to catch Tricia before she went inside, because admission to the park was twelve bucks. His mind was whirling, his nerves were jumping...but he was excited to go and talk to her.

Seeing her out on this perfect August evening felt like a happy kind of fate to him. Not many kids from school were out on the Starwalk this late in the summer. As with swimming pools and the beach itself, the gaudy strip of games, rides, and flashing neon, this permanent beachside carnival redolent of fried sugar and car fumes, had grown too familiar to most of the local kids by late August.

Carter never grew tired of it, though. This section of town was filled with magic. Even though he worked here every day with his family, and sometimes work was not fun, he never lost sight of the magical environment they were helping to create for all the tourists.

He reached the front gate of Starland, but he was too late. He could already see her inside, walking up the midway between the food stands and the game booths, her back to him.

“Tickets?” A gate attendant, dressed like a clown in a cop uniform with a Starland starburst logo in place of a badge, held out one hand.

Carter backed off, watching the girl thread her way into the crowd inside the park. Soon he would lose sight of her.

“Tickets,” the security clown said again, in a less friendly tone. “You’re blocking the way, kids.”

“Let’s go to the beach,” Jared said.

“No way.” Carter’s pulse was up. He had made his decision to reach out to the girl he liked, and he didn’t want to back down now. “Let’s go in.”

“Sorry, hombre, I only got six bucks,” Jared said.

Carter sighed. “I can loan you the rest.”

“Sweet!” Jared’s face lit up. “And let’s ride Inferno Mountain this time, okay?”

“Shut up.” Carter led the way back to the ticket booth, annoyed. Jared knew Carter was too scared to ride Inferno Mountain. The big devil face on the front of the ride had given him nightmares since he was little.

They waited in line, which seemed to take forever. Jared chatted excitedly, happy to visit the amusement park on somebody else’s dime—Jared himself was always short on money. Carter’s impatience grew and grew. The park was growing crowded, and it would be hard to find one girl in that mob.

When they finally stepped inside, the park had begun to glow with neon and flashing lights while the sun set over the Old West town of Fool’s Gold.

They walked along the crowded pavement, past the glowing green marquee of the Whack-A-Frog, the Lucky Darts balloon game with its jolly trombone music and slide-whistle sound effects, and the Knock ‘Em Dead bowling game, in which the balls resembled skulls and the bowling pins looked like bones.

Carter and Jared ignored the game operators trying to lure them with promises of huge prizes that were basically impossible to win. The smell of cotton candy, popcorn, and French fries washed over them, pushed by the warm, salty breeze off the ocean. For the rest of his life, Carter would associate those mingled scents with childhood and death.

“Ride the world’s greatest Tilt-A-Whirl!” shouted a ten-foot-tall woman in a jester hat, her stilts hidden inside super-long pants decked with glittering stars and moons. She juggled glowing green balls as she barked her spiel, and little kids gaped and pointed while their parents snapped pictures. “See the future in Space City! Ride the Starland Express, Florida’s fifth-oldest roller coaster! Or visit the Dark Mansion, if you dare...guaranteed to scare the pants right off your legs! And believe me, I know about legs, folks.”

They passed a booth selling glittering star-studded caps and t-shirts emblazoned with the fiery face of a cartoon devil, which bragged I SURVIVED INFERNO MOUNTAIN!

“Do you see her?” Carter asked, gazing anxiously at the thick crowd.

“Who?” Jared asked. “What do we ride first? The Swingin’ Scalawag?” He pointed toward the water attractions in the “Pirate Island” section of the park to their right—the Log Drop, Crashdown Falls, the green dome of the Jungle Land boat ride covered with fake tropical plants. The Swingin’ Scalawag was a pirate ship that swung back and forth, higher and higher, ultimately turning upside down.

“Come on, this might be my last chance to talk to her before school starts,” Carter said.

“So what? You can talk to her at school.”

“That’s different...tonight would be better.” Carter didn’t want to explain how awkward he felt talking to her at school, surrounded by everyone. His conversations with Tricia had never gone far, and he always felt like everyone was watching him. If he caught up with her tonight, they could actually have fun together. Almost like a date.

They passed under a temporary banner strung across the midway:

STARLAND AMUSEMENT PARK

“Forty Years of Fun in the Sun!”

Struggling to reclaim an ever-dwindling tourist trade, the park had advertised its forty-year anniversary all over the Southeast, which had brought a bumper crop of business this year. This had provided a slight but noticeable bump in visitors to the Eight-Track and other nearby attractions, too.

“I haven’t been to Starland all summer,” Jared complained. “I don’t want to waste the whole night helping you chase some girl.”

“It won’t take long.”

“Seriously? This place is huge.” Jared grinned and pointed ahead toward the space-themed attractions of Space City. “Hey, let’s go on the American Rockets! Then you can look down on the whole park at once. Maybe you’ll see her.”

“That’s actually not a totally bad idea...” Carter looked to left, toward Fool’s Gold, the “Old West” town that was the lamest area of the park besides Tyke Town. It was mostly food and drink stands, a few game booths like Shoot-Em-Up Puppets, one kiddie ride called When Pigs Fly, and a roofed pavilion with a stage where bands sometimes played country and oldies music. Fool’s Gold was clearly laid out to snag money from tourists on their way to and from the old-timey depot station at the mock town’s west end, which was the boarding station for the grand attraction, the Starland Express roller coaster.

“Or we could do Inferno Mountain,” Jared snickered.

Carter didn’t say anything. He glanced to his right as they passed Haunted Alley, which only had two real attractions. The first was the haunted-house maze called the Dark Mansion, a two-story structure with bats and spiderwebs hung from the eaves and ghosts and skeletons peeking out through rickety window shutters. Recorded screams and wolf howls boomed out from the imposing, ramshackle house. The line for the haunted house was already long, snaking back and forth through the graveyard waiting area out front.

Behind Dark Mansion loomed the black mass of Inferno Mountain, glowing red at its peak.

Aside from the Starland Express, Inferno Mountain was the park’s signature attraction. It looked like a towering black volcano, complete with fiery red light and smoke pouring out of the caldera at the top. The roller coaster train would climb a steep hill into the open, fanged mouth of a two-story devil face at the top, a face adorned with curving goat horns and vertical black pupils. The interior of the devil’s open mouth was dark, but it occasionally strobed with flickering red light accompanied by deep, devilish laughter and cheesy recorded lines like “I will eat your soul!” or “Who dares face the devil?” that echoed through the park as if to personally taunt every customer.

Carter had never ridden it, but he knew the mountain’s interior was a horror ride and the train spiraled down through alternating darkness and hellish scenery. When the pitchfork gates opened at the bottom, the riders on the train came out looking terrified, and there would always be a few crying kids among them.

He glanced up at the devil’s enormous face, which had an eerie way of always seeming to look right at you no matter where you stood. He quickly looked away.

“Scaredy-cat. Still scared of Hornsby,” Jared said, using a common local name for the big devil face.

Carter didn’t say anything, but his heart was racing. He felt stupid for being scared of something that everyone else above the age of ten seemed to find cheesy and funny, but his fear dated back to a very young and impressionable age. He didn’t understand why everyone didn’t find the giant horned face at least a little scary.

They reached Space City, which took up the northeast corner of the park, featuring glowing high rides like American Rockets and the big rotating Moon Robot. The line for American Rockets wasn’t too bad yet, so they only had to wait a few minutes before riding.

They climbed aboard a ride car shaped like a fat, silver 1950s-style rocket lined with rows of glowing light bulbs. The ride’s four rocket cars were arranged around a central tower, and Carter made sure to pick one that faced inward toward the park rather than out toward the highway and the ocean.

“This is going to be awesome,” Jared said as the safety bar descended to their laps.

A recorded voice played nearby, along with the sound of rumbling rocket engines: “Three...two...one...BLAST-OFF!”

The rocket cars shot upwards, gaining speed as they rose above the park. Teenage tourist girls in the next rocket over screamed—prematurely, Carter thought, since they weren’t even to the good part yet.

“First-timers,” Jared snickered.

The rocket moved up, up, up until the entire park spread out below them like a map, with the Starland Express roller coaster running across the far end. Carter couldn’t see some of the big Space City rides behind him, but he could see everything else. He found himself at eye level with the huge red devil face of Inferno Mountain. It still seemed to look right at him, even from this height.

Directly across the park, on the opposite side of the midway, a few tamer rides stood between Fool’s Gold and Tyke Town—the carousel, the Ferris wheel, the swings. If it had been a few minutes later, with the sun a little deeper behind the horizon, he wouldn’t have seen her at all.

Tricia rode one of the swings, her blond braids streaming out behind her. She wasn’t gripping the chains, either, but holding her hands above her head, whooping in excitement as she circled high above the park. The flashing neon lights painted her in flaming hues of red, orange, and yellow.

“That’s her.” Carter pointed. “On the swing.”

“How can you tell this far away?”

“I can tell.”

The rocket car soared up ten stories above the ground. Then it paused. Carter had a couple of seconds to feel his adrenaline pumping and his hands turning sweaty on the safety rail as he took in how high up they sat.

Then the car gave a loud squeal and tilted sharply forward as if it were about to spill them out and send them falling toward the pavement far below. The teenage girls in the next car screamed, and it was genuine this time—no need to fake or exaggerate their fear. It was the killer moment of the ride, that half a second when even veteran riders nearly believed the rocket car was about to break loose and plummet a hundred feet to the solid concrete below.

The rocket car dropped, blowing Carter’s hair back and sending his stomach up into his throat. It plummeted faster and faster toward the ground below, the wind whooshing past his ears, and he could feel his whole body cringing in anticipation of a sudden deadly impact.

At the last possible moment, the rocket car slowed for a soft, safe landing back on the launch pad.

“Oh my God!” screamed one of the girls in the next car. “I thought we were going to die!”

“Let’s ride it again,” said one of her friends.

“You’re crazy!” the third girl squealed. “I almost peed myself!”

The ride operator released them, and Carter hurried out of the car, jogging past the three tourist girls who were falling over each other, laughing.

He ran across the midway, dodging around sloth-like tourists. He was vaguely aware of Jared running behind him, but at the moment he didn’t care whether his friend was coming along with him or not.

Carter dashed past the Ferris wheel and the rotating carousel, where calliope music played as kids and senior citizens rode on gaudily painted horses, lions, and elephants.

“Slow down!” Jared breathed as he caught up to him. “You don’t want to be all sweaty and weird when you talk to her.”

Carter took the advice and slowed to a casual walk as he reached the exit gate for the fence around the swing ride. He wiped his sweat-damp face on his shirt. Despite the setting sun, it was still a hot day, and he was nervous.

“What do I say?” Carter asked.

“Compliment her on something,” Jared said. Jared had no more real experience with girls than Carter himself—between them, they’d had a total of zero girlfriends—but Jared did have two older sisters. “But don’t be like ‘you’re pretty’ because that’s cornball. Say something about her clothes. They think about their clothes all the time.”

“Okay. Just don’t make fun of me when I’m talking to her.”

“Don’t be such a wuss.” Jared rolled his eyes. “I bet she shoots you down, anyway.”

“Thanks.”

Carter froze when he saw Tricia walk out of the gate. She had a glowing smile. He looked her over quickly, trying to find something to say about her hand-painted dress, her sandals, the plastic spider on her toe ring.

“Now or never,” Jared whispered, nudging him forward.

Carter tried to look calm as he approached her. He’d spoken to her before, of course, but not about very much. They’d been seated next to each other during math class spring semester, and his crush on her had really begun in that last month of school. He had mainly asked to borrow her pencil, and once he’d said he liked the horse she’d been drawing in her notebook. She was really good at drawing.

“Hi, Tricia,” he said, and she gave him a startled look.

“Carter?” She glanced from him to Jared, looking wary as though she expected some kind of ambush.

“I like your...spider ring.” He pointed at her foot. “It’s cool.”

“Thanks.” She glanced at the plastic toe ring. “So, do you need to borrow a pencil?”

Jared laughed behind him, and Carter felt himself blush.

“Not right now,” Carter said, hoping he didn’t look as nervous as he felt. “Have you been drawing a lot this summer?”

“Not too much. I’m more into making bracelets and necklaces.” She pointed to an arrangement of little plastic skulls and black cats around her neck. Half a dozen bracelets clacked together on her wrist, decorated with beads, seashells, and plastic butterflies.

“Those are cool,” Carter said.

“Thanks.”

There was an awkward pause where they didn’t quite look at each other.

“I was just wondering if you want to ride the...” Carter glanced up and named the first ride he saw. “The Ferris wheel?”

“Nah, it’s kind of boring. I was going to do the Brain-Scrambler next.” She looked up at him with her pale green eyes, and he was mesmerized for a moment. She wasn’t one of the girls who wore a lot of makeup or tried to dress sexy like the high school girls, but she was certainly pretty to him. Mostly, she was mysterious and different.

Jared gave him a not-so-subtle poke in the back, reminding him to keep talking.

“Do you want to ride the Brain-Scrambler together?” Carter asked.

“Okay.” She looked between Carter and Jared. “But I have to sit on the inside so you guys don’t crush me.”

“Yeah, of course.”

The three of them walked toward Space City. Carter glanced at Jared, who mouthed the word “Score!” and pumped a fist. Carter wanted to smack him—Tricia could easily have seen Jared do that.

Carter flailed around for something to talk about.

“It sucks we have to start school next week,” he said to Tricia.

“I hate school,” she said. “Everybody’s so stuck-up.”

“I know!” Carter agreed. Aside from Jared, he didn’t have any close friends, though he’d lived in Conch City all his life. “Do you know who you have for homeroom?”

“Mrs. Periwell.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Why? Is she mean?”

“I don’t know. I was just...I have Mrs. Hawthorne. So we won’t be in the same...” Carter shrugged, wondering if Tricia would think he was weird for wanting to be in the same homeroom with her.

Tricia just gave him a small smile.

They stood in line for Professor Atomic’s Brain-Scrambler, a ride covered by a weathered, dirty white dome. An eight-foot statue stood by the entrance ahead—“Professor Atomic” himself, with white-painted glasses and an oversized brain, holding a giant flask in which green glowing fluid slowly burbled like a lava lamp.

“I think that’s so sad.” Tricia pointed at the Professor Atomic statue.

“Why?”

“If you look close, all his paint is peeling and flaking. They don’t take care of him. A lot of stuff in this park is kind of old like that.”

“I guess you’re right. It hasn’t really changed since I was a little kid. No new rides or anything.”

“It’s like this whole Space City part,” Tricia said. “When they built it in the 1960’s or 1970’s, everybody thought going into space was a big deal. Who thinks about it anymore?”

“Space is boring,” Jared said. “We had to watch the whole moon landing in Mr. Teague’s science class. I feel asleep. Why didn’t they do it in color?”

“They didn’t have color back then,” Carter said.

“They had color, just not on TV,” Tricia said.

“I meant that. I know the whole world wasn’t black and white.”

“But what if it was?” Tricia gave another small smile. “No colors at all. Wouldn’t that be crazy?”

Carter wasn’t sure how to respond to that, but fortunately they were ushered into the dome with the next batch of riders. They crossed through a short corridor painted with atoms, goofy alien critters, and test tubes full of colored liquids, and now that Tricia had pointed it out, he couldn’t help noticing how faded and flaking those old murals looked.

Inside the dome, the Brain-Scrambler was a pretty normal scrambler or twist-style ride, with three clusters of spinning suspended cars. Funhouse mirrors lined the interior of the dome, stretching and distorting the images of the passengers.

Jared did Carter the unspoken favor of sitting on the outside edge of the car, while Carter sat in the middle and Tricia sat on the inside. This would matter a great deal when it began to spin.

The little cars filled up with riders, safety bars descended, and the ride operator checked them over quickly before leaving the room and entering the control booth.

The lights went out, leaving them in darkness and silence, aside from a few whispering voices.

“I love this ride so much,” Tricia whispered beside Carter.

The Scrambler began to move through the darkness, slowly spinning them as it picked up speed.

“Intergalactic” by Beastie Boys blasted over the ride’s sound system.

As the ride accelerated, colored lights began to strobe—eyeblink flickers of red, blue, and green that lasted only long enough for Carter to see other riders rushing toward them, or to catch distorted images of himself, Tricia, and Jared flying toward him from the funhouse mirrors on the walls.

Plumes of dry ice fog jetted from the walls, filling the place with cold white smoke, a refreshing break from the summer heat outside.

Carter clung to the safety bar, not out of fear but to try and avoid crushing Jared beside him as the centrifugal force of the ride shoved him sideways. It wasn’t much use, though.

On his other side, Tricia pressed against him, letting out a whoop as she raised her arms in the air, apparently not minding at all as her side and her leg pressed tight against Carter. This was probably the reason Jared had mouthed “Score!” when she picked this ride.

Carter, having never even kissed a girl, couldn’t believe his luck as the girl he liked was crammed against him. He could feel every place where her warm body touched his.

When the ride finally slowed to a stop, he felt a tinge of sadness. It could have gone on forever, as far as he was concerned.

“That was awesome!” Jared proclaimed as the safety bar lifted. He hopped down to his feet. “What’s next?”

“The Swingin’ Scalawag?” Carter suggested. He couldn’t help thinking that if they went over to the water-themed area, they might end up in on a boat in the dark, watery tunnels of Jungle Land, and maybe Tricia would grab onto him when the python dropped from the ceiling or the saber-toothed tiger leaped out from around a tight curve.

“Or the Dark Mansion,” Jared suggested, which wasn’t a bad idea, either, with its pop-up ghosts and groaning zombies.

“Inferno Mountain.” She gave Carter one of her small, mysterious smiles as she said it. “It’s my favorite one in the whole park.”

Carter felt his insides turn cold, and he tried to think of some way to get out of it as they exited the Brain-Scrambler dome.

Night had fully fallen now and the park had truly come to life, a chaos of glowing neon colors and clashing music from every direction—old-time calliopes, the steel guitars of country music, the loud drums of classic rock, digital beats pulsing from the UFO Spinner ride and the red-rock caverns of the Mad Martian Arcade and Laser Tag Arena.

“Inferno Mountain sounds cool to me,” Jared said, with an evil smile at Carter.

Carter looked up at the two-story devil face high above, with the steep black tracks like an incredibly long tongue between its open jaws. Little red lights glowed at the center of its vertical black pupils, and the interior of its mouth flashed red as it laughed: “Ahhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ahhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” A storm of deep-seated childhood fears roiled inside him, and his guts turned to water.

“Let’s hurry!” Tricia said. “The line’s getting long.”

The three of them walked past the howls and screams of Dark Mansion and approached the line for Inferno Mountain, which threaded back and forth through a red pitchfork fence that looked like a prison—once he stepped inside, there would be no escape. Carter’s legs turned rubbery, and cold sweat rose on his back, despite the hot August night.

“You two have fun. I gotta take a piss.” Jared clapped Carter on the shoulder and winked before walking off. Jared probably thought he was doing Carter a favor, leaving him alone with Tricia, and that would have been true if they’d been lining up for Jungle Land or any other ride in the park. In this case, though, it only made Carter feel frightened and helpless.

Tricia smiled up at Carter, and he forced himself to smile back as they got in line. The speakers in the roof above the waiting area played “Devil Inside” by INXS.

“This ride gives me the worst nightmares,” she said. “But I love it so much.”

“Me, too.” The first part, anyway, he thought. “Ever since I was little.”

“Oh, did you ride it as a little kid, too?”

“No...” He didn’t want to admit that he’d lived in Conch City all his life but never worked up the nerve to ride Inferno Mountain. He decided to change the subject. “I’m glad I ran into you.” As if I didn’t stalk you all the way here.

“Me, too.” Her new grin was warmer than the shy little smiles she’d been giving him. “I always thought you were nice.”

Carter’s heart skipped at that. “You, too. You’re really...” Don’t call her pretty, Jared said inside his mind. “You’re really cool.”

“Nobody’s called me ‘cool’ before. You should hear the stuff Kelly Maples and her friends call me. They think I’m a freak. I’m just trying to mind my own business, I don’t know why they always bully me.”

“Because they’re stupid. I’m glad you’re not like them. I’m glad you’re who you are.” Carter didn’t know if he sounded like a toolbag, but it was the truth.

She looked away from him, smiling and blushing. As they advanced in line, she whispered, “Want to hold hands?”

“Yeah.” He barely managed to get the word out—his brain and mouth were suddenly not working together very well. He wiped his clammy hand on his jeans before taking hers.

“Who dares face the devil?” the recorded voice boomed out above them as a trainload of six black cars climbed up into his open fanged mouth. The devil swallowed all twelve riders, and their screams echoed back a moment later.

“You’re shaking,” Tricia whispered.

“I’m not,” he whispered back, though he was trembling all over. He was terrified of getting on the ride, and his head was swimming with the recognition that he was finally making friends with Tricia—the cross-currents of fear and hope collided to make him more nervous, excited, and uneasy than he’d ever felt.

“Let’s ride in the front car,” Tricia suggested when they reached the head of the line. “It’s the scariest.”

“Okay,” Carter whispered, though he was not feeling okay with it at all.

The red pitchfork gate at the base of the fake mountain opened. The little black train with its dozen riders rolled out of a cave and around a tight curve into the station. As it braked, some of the passengers were laughing, but one young couple looked pale and terrified, and two kids younger than Carter were crying. He shuddered as he watched them climb out onto the wooden exit platform across the tracks.

“Come on!” Tricia jogged forward and hopped into the front car. She buckled her seatbelt and looked up at him expectantly.

“Welcome to my playground! Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” The red bulbs at the center of the devil’s eyes flashed down at Carter.

Carter felt himself crumple. He couldn’t make his feet take the three last steps toward the car. He froze where he was, staring helplessly at Tricia. There was no way his fear would let him ride Inferno Mountain.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Hurry up, kid,” said the ride operator, dressed in blue coveralls with glittering gold stars and a matching cap.

The train was fully loaded except for the seat next to Tricia. A few other passengers shouted at him to get onboard already.

“Carter?” Tricia asked, her eyes widening in concern. “Are you okay? You look sick all of a sudden.”

“You getting on or not?” the ride operator barked.

“I can’t,” Carter whispered. He took a step back. “I’m sorry, Tricia, I...”

“Next in line!” The operator waved forward a guy who looked about fifteen or sixteen, in a Seminoles cap.

“Hell, yeah!” the guy said as he elbowed past Carter and dropped into the seat next to Tricia. He was too old to be interested in Tricia, but his leering smile indicated that he might be, anyway. Carter felt a pang of jealousy, but not enough to overwhelm his fear.

“What’s up, girl?” the teenage boy asked Tricia with a smirk.

Tricia cast Carter a wide-eyed startled look, and he felt horrible for abandoning her to take the dark, scary ride in the company of a strange older boy. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to say. He’d let his own fear defeat him.

The train lurched forward, out from under the roof of the loading platform, and curved up onto the steep hill toward the devil’s waiting mouth. Tricia turned away from him.

Carter trudged back out to the pavement in front of the ride.

“Hey, where’s your girlfriend?” Jared stood up from a bench where he’d been waiting.

“Uh...” Carter looked up the steep hill as the train clacked slowly toward the devil’s jaws. In the lead car, the teenage boy in the Seminoles cap slid his arm around Tricia’s shoulders. Carter couldn’t see her face, but she didn’t slap the guy or push him off—either she didn’t mind or she was too afraid to reject him. Neither possibility made him feel good.

“Oh, no, you wussed out!” Jared said.

“I...couldn’t do it. I almost did it.”

“You ditched her?” Jared shook his head. “You blew it, man.”

“I don’t...do you think?”

“Yeah, I think. She wanted to go on the scariest ride with you. She would’ve jumped all over you, man. Then you could head to Jungle Land for some French kissing. Or French fingers, maybe.”

“I don’t even know what that means.”

“You won’t find out tonight, either,” Jared replied.

“Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” the devil crowed, eyes flashing as the black train climbed up into the devil’s wide, waiting mouth.

“Shut up!” Carter shouted at the devil’s face.

Then the world shuddered and broke open beneath his feet.

Carter staggered and fell as a chorus of high-pitched screams went up across the park. The first wave went silent as quickly as it had begun, but was quickly followed by a second, louder wave.

He crashed to the ground, scraping his arm and chin on the edge of a widening fissure in the concrete below. When he looked up, he couldn’t believe what he saw.

Living in Florida, he had naturally heard of sinkholes big enough to swallow a house, but his mind didn’t instantly make the connection. The word “sinkhole” itself sounded much too tame to describe what was happening. It felt more like an earthquake shaking the entire park.

On the other side of the midway, a gigantic black hole had opened in the earth and swallowed the entire carousel, leaving no trace of it behind.

The hole grew rapidly, cracking and breaking the pavement around it, and more tourists tumbled inside, screaming. Some of the people were trying to get away from the growing hole, but others in the crowd were pushing them back toward it—parents and grandparents shouting and shoving their way to the suddenly empty place where children had been gently circling on painted horses only a moment before.

“What the hell?” asked Jared, who’d toppled to the ground beside him. Carter just watched the spreading destruction, unable to move, feeling terrified.

The Ferris wheel tilted sharply toward the open chasm as its foundation cracked beneath it. The passengers screamed while the great hole widened beneath them. The sound of wrenching metal screeched through the park as an edge of the Ferris wheel struck the lip of the sinkhole. It slammed to a halt, leaning perilously to one side, leaving its riders trapped and screaming above the sinkhole.

On the other side of the sinkhole, the central spindle of the swing ride toppled, bringing down riders from thirty feet in the air. Some of the riders slammed into the pavement around the sinkhole, while the spindle and the rest of the riders fell directly into it.

Carter saw one college-age guy lying twisted on the pavement, still buckled into his swing, groaning for a moment before the chains of his swing pulled taut. Then the guy was scraped backwards across the ground and vanished over the edge of the sinkhole as the central spindle dragged him down.

Fresh screams rose from the riders trapped on the Ferris wheel as they watched the sinkhole slurp down the swing ride and all its passengers.

Carter wondered how deep the hole had to be if it could swallow a merry-go-round and still have room for the swing ride, too. He wondered if it would spread and swallow everything.

The entire park shuddered, as though it were balanced on the back of some great, heaving underground beast. Slabs of blacktop cracked and buckled upward at steep angles, turning the pavement into a jagged moonscape.

The Starland Express, the long wooden roller coaster with its high hills trimmed in light bulbs, cracked and snapped as the sinkhole spread beneath the support columns midway through the ride.

The train of screaming roller coaster riders charged down a splintered hill where the track had broken away. They tumbled off and corkscrewed down out of sight, landing somewhere in Tyke Town. Carter heard crunching metal and a fresh batch of screams at the impact.

The largest hills of the roller coaster broke apart and fell inside the park, smashing into rides, buildings, and the crowd watching the band or playing Shoot-Em-Up Puppets in the fake town of Fool’s Gold. A fire erupted somewhere in that direction—Carter could only tell by the sudden red glow above it.

From his vantage, there was a great deal that Carter couldn’t see, but he would hear about all of it in the days and months to come: how the two-story clock tower in Tyke Town fell over, crushing a couple of kids on the Tick-Tock Train. At the same time, heavy beams from the Starland Express rained down on the Tiny Teacups and the Funtime Firehouse, battering kids and breaking their bones.

Screams and cries sounded from all corners of the park, and a panicked mob rushed toward the front gate, many of them bleeding, burned, or clutching broken arms.

“Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” laughed the enormous face of the devil as the chaos and destruction spread below.

Carter watched as the black mass of Inferno Mountain heaved upward while everything else sank and toppled, the two-story devil face rising as if to survey the destruction with his glowing red eyes and frozen fanged grin. Cracks spread downward from the glowing caldera at the peak of the volcanic mountain, and Carter half-expected hot lava to come rushing down the side—though of course there was no lava inside, only fire-red lights and a smoke machine that seemed to be working overtime, chugging out clouds of dark gray smoke that curled up around the devil’s horns.

“Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” The devil’s maniacal laughter went on and on, as though the sound equipment had been jarred and the recording was stuck. That laughter would continue for hours while survivors and rescue workers dug through the wreckage in search of lost children.

“We have to get out of here!” Jared pulled Carter to his feet and tried to drag him along with the rest of the panicked crowd boiling past them, but Carter remained where he was, staring at the shuddering, shaking Inferno Mountain. He was waiting for Tricia.

“Come on!” Jared shouting, pulling his arm.

“Wait.” Carter’s voice was flat and cold, his eyes locked on the red pitchfork gate where the tracks curved out of the mountain. He ignored the overweight lady in the red “Roll Tide!” shirt who nearly flattened him in her panicked jog out of the park.

The pitchfork gates finally opened, and Carter took a sharp breath.

The train of six black cars rolled out of the gate. Ten of the twelve riders were screaming and shoving against their safety bars as the train pulled around and under the roof of the loading station.

The two riders in front were not screaming or shoving at all.

“Holy shit,” Jared’s voice hissed beside him.

Carter ran up through the now-deserted waiting area for the Inferno Mountain ride. Ten of the twelve passengers squirmed and pushed out of their seats as the train braked. They ran past Carter on either side, barely giving him a glance, their faces and shirts spattered with blood.

Across the tracks, the ride operator lay unconscious on the ground. It looked as though he’d lost his balance and knocked his head against something, maybe the ride control console.

In the first car sat Tricia and the teenage boy who’d joined her at the last minute. Neither of them moved. Their hands lay still in their laps.

Both Tricia and the boy had been decapitated.

On top of Tricia’s shoulders sat a shapeless mass of blood and gore encircled by her necklace of plastic jack-o’-lanterns and black cats. Bright red blood leaked in thin streams down her white dress and pale arms, pooling in her lap around her curled hands and her heavily bitten fingernails. Her homemade bracelets were soaked in red.

Her missing head was nowhere in sight. Neither was the boy’s.

“That’s insane,” Jared whispered behind him.

Carter stared at her headless, bloody body and said nothing. He felt hollow inside. He felt as if he’d lost his soul, as if he would feel nothing but emptiness for the rest of his life.

“Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” The devil laughed on and on above them, the small red bulbs glowing in his eyes.

“We have to go, man,” Jared insisted. “This place is falling apart.”

In the hours and days to come, wave after wave of fire and emergency workers would arrive from surrounding counties. Rescue workers would dig at the ruins for weeks, but scores of people would remain missing. More than a hundred people would eventually be counted among the dead, the majority of their bodies vanished into the sinkhole.

The sinkhole was estimated to extend hundreds of feet into the ground, its bottom filled with thick, swampy mud. Attempted excavation was declared too dangerous, and dozens of people, most of them children, would have their final resting place there, beneath the ruins of Starland Amusement Park.

The iconic picture that swept the national news the next day showed the devil’s huge laughing face leering over a burning ice cream stand as panicked, bleeding tourists ran by in the foreground. The entrance to the park’s signature ride was partially visible, high chrome letters spelling out the word INFERNO.

That first day, a simple error by a tired, shocked intern at the Associated Press caused hundreds of news outlets to mistakenly identify Starland as “Inferno Park.” The name stuck in the public imagination, until time passed and the event faded from the national mind, lost under the ever-growing layers of new disasters, dangers, and scandals.

While some of the details would fade from Carter’s mind, he remember the misery and horror of that day for the rest of his life. He would remember them most clearly in his nightmares.

Chapter Two

Exactly five years later, Carter stood again at the front gates of Starland. The fake castle towers of the ticket booths were no longer white but a weathered green and brown, sticky with mildew, and the neon stars lay dark. The ticket-taker windows were boarded up. Graffiti had been painted all over the towers and the sidewalk in front of the gate—mostly the names of the dead.

The gates themselves were chained and padlocked to keep out trespassers and vandals. High weeds and spindly trees had grown up along the fence, and the chain-link itself was thick with catbrier and other prickly vines, as well as poisonous vines like crab’s eye. The dense, overlapping growth had turned the chain-link fence into a jungle barrier blocking any view of the wreckage inside.

If Carter had ripped away a handful of the thorny growth and peered through, he might have seen a dilapidated food stand with painted starbursts advertising “Tasty Fries!” and “Frosty Drinks!” or maybe the Lucky Darts game booth with deflated, shriveled balloons still hanging across its cork wall.

He didn’t want to see any of it, so he didn’t try.

The front gates, and the sidewalk directly in front of them, were scattered with flowers, cards in sealed envelopes, little gifts and toys, and pictures, mostly of children. Some of the pictures were faded, hung carefully with twine and left there for years, to be slowly destroyed by wind and rain.

That first year, the fence had been papered with pictures of missing children, many printed on fliers with their family’s phone numbers and email addresses, in the thin hope that their kids hadn’t been sucked away down the sinkhole but were somehow lost in the chaos and still alive somewhere. The following August, the one-year anniversary of the park disaster had brought another wave of pictures, flowers, candles, and little gifts like teddy bears and plush bunnies, but no hopeful phone numbers.

This year, the crop of flowers and cards was smaller than ever. Most of the dead had been tourists from out of town, and a lot of those families had ceased making the pilgrimage—sometimes hundreds of miles—to pay tribute to the lost. Even the yellow signs on the fence reading NO TRESPASSING or CONDEMNED - HAZARDOUS SITE looked faded by time.

Carter carried a handful of fresh white roses he’d bought at the grocery store on the way to the park. He looked for Tricia’s picture, but didn’t really expect to find a new one. Her family had put up a different photograph of her each August for three years, but they’d since moved away, like countless other families in the dying town. It looked like Carter was the only one left to remember her this year.

He found a faded photograph of her from a previous year, clamped to the chain-link with a clothespin. The weather had almost worn the image and the photo paper itself away, leaving only a hint of her bright, intelligent green eyes and her sad smile.

He laid the flowers on the sidewalk in front of it, on top of faded farewell messages spray-painted in years past.

Carter knelt there a moment. As usual, he could think of nothing to say. He had nearly died alongside her—should have died alongside her, instead of leaving her in the company of some random out-of-town creep. He should not be here, with his heart still beating, drifting through his life like a ghost.

“Carter, we need to go,” his dad called from the truck. He was in the driver’s seat of a long green box truck with the MOOVIN’ ON cow logo on the side, the cartoon cow looking off into the distance as though expecting greener pastures ahead. Carter’s dad wore green coveralls with his first name, Henry, on a patch on his chest that also featured the MOOVIN’ ON cow.

Carter wore the identical outfit, as he had all summer. It was made of light cotton, but still grew uncomfortable in the Florida heat—any rational person would wear shorts and t-shirt when moving heavy boxes and furniture during the summer. His dad’s employer was a national company, though, and required the same uniform in every state, whether it was winter in New Hampshire or August in Florida.

For Carter, starting school the following week would be a relief from his backbreaking summer job. For his dad, though, there was no relief in sight. As Carter shuffled toward the truck, he felt sorry for his dad. Forty-one was just about too old to be moving heavy furniture for a living, and the job had naturally required his dad to cut off his trademark long hair, which had begun to gray.

“Ready?” his dad asked.

“Sure.” Carter climbed up into the passenger seat of the moving truck. An old gray station wagon with a Georgia tag pulled into the parking lot, driven by a miserable-looking woman in her late twenties or early thirties, probably another survivor coming to pay tribute to a lost family member. Carter imagined she’d lost a young son or daughter in the disaster.

“You all right?” Carter’s dad asked. He pulled out into the sparse morning traffic of Beachview Drive. Carter remembered when this road was crammed full on summer afternoons, with teenagers and tourists shouting at one another from their cars.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Carter said, though they both knew it was a lie. He felt shaken.

“On to work, then. Did I tell you we’re moving Dr. Larson today?”

“Really?” Carter pictured his old pediatrician, the kindly wrinkled man with Sesame Street toys in his waiting room. Carter’s mom used to take him for regular check-ups at Dr. Larson’s office, but of course those days were long gone. “Where’s he going?”

“Fort Walton Beach. We’re looking at a two or three hour drive along 98, if the traffic doesn’t screw with us.”

They fell silent as they drove past what remained of the Eight-Track. Their old go-kart business was chained up and boarded, like all the attractions that had once lit up this section of Beachview Drive. The bank had taken it and stripped it down, selling off the go-karts and anything else useful, then left it for dead.

The same fate had destroyed Dinosaur Mini-Golf and the other countless little businesses here—nobody called it “the Starwalk” anymore. Some called it Death Row, when they had to speak of it at all. The closing of Starland Amusement Park had dragged down all the minor attractions along with it, killing the tourism on which the town had depended.

Across the road, the carcasses of the dead hospitality industry lay strewn along the beach itself. Heavy storms and neglect had already reduced some buildings to rubble. Conch City had few true hotels, but roadside motels had sprouted like dandelions, painted eye-grabbing colors like salmon pink, citrus orange, and sky blue, their signs advertising such mind-blowing amenities as “Cable TV” and “Clean Bathrooms.”

Now those places were locked and boarded, their parking-lot swimming pools thick with slime.

Carter glanced back at the amusement park. Any motorist passing through town might have been confused or unsettled while passing the high fence choked with weeds and vines. The only elements of Starland visible from the road were a few chunks of roller coaster, the steeply tilted red-white-and-blue tower of the American Rockets ride, and a two-story red devil face looming high above the overgrown fence, his maniacal grin gloating over the wasteland of rusting attractions and dead dreams.

Carter’s dad steered them out to East Bay Road, into Conch City’s small cluster of upscale subdivisions. Dr. Larson’s neighborhood was lined with old-growth magnolia, cypress and red maple trees, the two-story and three-story houses set back from the road, many with wraparound porches and French doors. Some still had their lawns and flower gardens intact, while others had suffered a creeping invasion of wildflowers and weeds. FOR SALE signs sat in front of at least half the houses; some signs were additionally adorned with large red stickers reading FORECLOSURE or SHORT SALE.

The pediatrician’s front drive curved in to touch his front porch, then curved back out to the street. A hedge of hibiscus thick with pink blossoms followed the curve of his driveway, enclosing a grassy lawn area with a birdbath-sized seashell water fountain at the center. Hummingbirds were out in the golden dawn light, sipping at the fountain and feasting on the heavy pink blossoms, but they scattered as the big green box truck lumbered up the driveway.

“Put on your hat,” Carter’s dad said as they parked at the wide front steps.

“I hate the hat,” Carter replied, looking down at the green cap with the cartoon cow perched over the words MOOVIN’ ON.

“Corporate rules. You don’t want a citation. QA can check on you anytime. You never know when they’re around.” MOOVIN’ ON corporate headquarters sent out Quality Assurance spies in surveillance vans to check the behavior of franchisees and low-level employees all over the country, including such details as conforming to uniform requirements.

“I hate working for this company,” Carter said.

“You’re not the only one.” His dad pulled on his own green cow cap and stepped down from the truck.

Carter sighed as he put on the green cap. He glanced at himself in the mirror. On the ridiculous cap, the one that would keep his head swamped and dripping with sweat all afternoon, the cartoon cow looked eager to be MOOVIN’ ON to somewhere new and better. Carter understood how that cow felt.

He climbed down from the truck and joined his dad on the porch, just as Dr. Larson opened the beveled-glass front door. He wore the same horn-rimmed glasses that Carter remembered, though his gray hair had thinned back to a small fringe.

“Who is it?” a female voice called from somewhere deep inside the house.

“The movers!” Dr. Larson shouted back over his shoulder. When he turned back to face them, his eyes settled on Carter, then widened behind his glasses. “Is that Carter Roanoke?”

“It is,” Carter said.

The doctor took a breath, glancing back at Carter’s dad. “And you’re Henry. Used to have the go-kart place out on the Starwalk.”

Carter’s dad nodded and mumbled something nobody could hear.

“I remember when you were this high, Carter.” Dr. Larson held his hand down close to his knee. “How’s your mother?”

Carter and his dad glanced at each other.

“Haven’t heard from her in a while.” Carter shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about his mom running off. It was too embarrassing, among other things.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Dr. Larson leaned back, his mouth open a bit, the reaction of someone discovering his attempt at minor small talk had landed him in a tangled conversational briar patch.

“Hard to believe you’re moving out, too,” Carter’s dad said. “Seems like everybody’s gone or trying to be.”

“The practice has slowed considerably. I was lucky to have a good offer from a hospital in Fort Walton.” Dr. Larson wrung his hands. “There’s still Dr. Weisman, if you need pediatric care...”

“Doubt we will. You already sold this place, huh?”

“Unfortunately not, but we have some hope.” Dr. Larson nodded at a house down the street, and Carter followed his eyes to a two-story blue and yellow Queen Anne style house with gingerbread trim along the porch and balcony. “The Woodmans finally sold theirs. Took five months, but...it seems like a nice family that’s moved in.”

“Somebody actually moved into Conch City?” Carter asked. It was his second summer working with his dad at the moving company, and in that time, they’d only moved people away from the shrinking town.

“He’ll be chief administrator at the new nursing-care facility on Cypress Lane.” Dr. Larson nodded at the gingerbread house again.

“New nursing home? That’ll bring some fresh young blood into town,” Carter’s dad said, and Larson gave a polite laugh.

“He has a daughter your age. You should go meet her, Carter,” the doctor suggested.

“We should get started,” Carter’s dad interrupted, as though Carter were going to walk off the job and go knock on the new girl’s door.

Carter and his dad went to work, wrapping everything in plastic, packing it into green boxes (with the MOOVIN’ ON logo, of course), and finally carting it all out to the box truck, starting with the heaviest furniture. They moved like clockwork, speaking little, communicating with a language of nods and gestures developed during their years working together at the Eight-Track.

His once-boisterous dad had grown quiet and withdrawn over the years. The disaster at Starland had cast a deep shadow over the whole town, and his dad was no exception—around that time, he’d stopped having his friends over to play loud music in the garage, and started looking somber most of the time. Carter hadn’t immediately grasped that the death of the amusement park was also the death of the Eight-Track and the rest of the town, but he supposed his dad had understood that right away.

The Eight-Track’s business had rapidly fallen off until it fell into bankruptcy. The family moved from a small but cheerful house with old hardwood floors into an even smaller apartment in a cheap complex called Sand Dollar Park. Carter’s mom drank more and more, spent nights away from home, and eventually stopped coming back. She’d moved away to Tampa two years earlier with some younger guy she’d met at a bar, and details were sketchy after that.

Carter enjoyed his summers working with his dad, because he understood his dad could lose himself in work, putting the disappointments and troubles out of mind for a while, accidentally becoming like his old self for an occasional minute or two. In good moods, he blasted his old classic rock CDs over the truck’s speakers, like he’d done in the long-lost days of the Eight-Track.

Carter kept busy—wrap, box, pad, repeat. Heavy items in small boxes, light items in large boxes. Seal each with packing tape and write KITCHEN or MASTER BEDROOM or DINING ROOM on two sides with black marker. Repeat. Pay attention and do a lot of nodding whenever the customer spoke. Never take off the stupid cow hat.

He was rolling a hand truck stacked with green boxes backwards down the front steps when he first noticed her. She snapped pictures—with an actual camera, not a phone—of a big white Colonial-style house down the street, set back in the shade of giant, sprawling old trees. It was one of the houses marked FORECLOSURE.

She had dark hair and dressed with a professional look, black pants and a crisp white buttoned shirt, which made him think she was older than him. By the time Carter returned inside and emerged again with the next load of boxes, she was walking closer, snapping pictures of houses along the way. She only seemed interested in those that were for sale.

He happened to take a little extra time unloading that particular stack of boxes, curious to see what the girl was doing. He watched her draw close and realized she was his own age, but he didn’t recognize her.

It was probably the new girl who’d moved into the old Woodman house. He wasn’t sure he was in the mood to meet her, or that he wanted to do it while sweating his face off under his stupid green cow hat, but she kept walking closer while he rolled the empty hand truck back down the ramp.

“Do you mind?” she asked, raising her camera.

“What are you taking pictures of? Houses for sale?”

“The implosion of Western capitalism.” She stepped onto the driveway and snapped a picture of Carter as he wheeled the hand truck—extra slowly—back to the front steps.

“Where did I fit into that implosion?” he asked.

“You’re part of the dissolving process of this neighborhood. Where did everybody go?”

“Away.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Probably that thing you already said. The decline of Western civilization.” Carter hoisted the hand truck up the steps. He definitely didn’t feel like explaining why the town was dying out.

“The old amusement park by the beach. That’s where all those people died, isn’t it? I remember it. I remember the devil’s face all over the news when it happened,” she said.

“That’s the place.”

“The devil’s still there. You can see him over the fence.”

“Yep. Satan watches over us all. I have to go get more boxes,” Carter said.

“Can I take pictures of you rolling them out?”

“You really don’t have anything better to do?”

“I’m making a photo essay about this neighborhood,” she said. “I’m moving in while everyone else is moving out. I want pictures of the old amusement park, too, all of that decay and desolation stuff.”

“Sounds fun,” Carter said. He did not want to talk about it at all, especially not after visiting the park’s front gate earlier in the day.

He brought out another stack of boxes, and the girl clicked several pictures of him towing it down the stairs and unloading it onto the truck.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Seventeen,” he said.

“I’m sixteen. You know, I thought you were older at first. I guess it’s the uniform.”

“It’s a very professional uniform,” he said. “You’ll notice the cartoon cows on the coveralls and the hat.”

“I like the cows. Are you going to be in school next week?”

“Where else would I be?”

“Just asking. I read the drop-out rate was super-high here.”

“More room for the rest of us,” he said. “I’m not dropping out. I don’t want to be moving people’s furniture when I’m forty.”

At that moment, he happened to see his dad wheeling his own stack of boxes across the front porch. His dad stopped for a moment and looked at him. He’d clearly been close enough to hear what Carter had said, and Carter suddenly felt awful.

His dad didn’t say anything as he lugged his hand truck down the front stairs and up the retractable ramp into the truck. When he’d unloaded his boxes, he looked from Carter to the girl, who was now only a few feet from the back of the truck.

“Hurry up. Long day ahead,” his dad finally said before returning inside.

“I better go,” Carter told her.

“It was nice meeting you.” The girl turned to walk back down the driveway.

“Did we meet? I’m Carter Roanoke.”

“Like the vanishing colony?” she asked.

“I’m not related to them.”

“I don’t think anybody is. I’m Victoria. See you at school.”

He watched for an extra second as she walked away. She seemed nice, but he wasn’t looking to expand his social world, now that he’d gone to all the trouble of shrinking it down to nothing. The world of his school was one of late-night parties and heavy drinking, but Carter was focused on the future.

* * *

Carter’s dad was quiet for a long time as they drove the fully loaded truck west toward Fort Walton. He didn’t even notice when the classic rock station on the radio slowly crumbled into static.

“I don’t want you doing this when you’re forty, either,” his dad finally said.

“I know.”

“You’ve got the right plans. You’re doing the right things. Just keep up your grades and we’ll find the money somehow.”

“Thanks.” Carter doubted his dad would come up with college money, but there were scholarships, plus the exciting world of student loans and lifelong debt.

They drove down the coastal highway, the dark ocean slowly rolling in on their left side, toward the houses of the daring souls who’d built their homes on the water’s edge.

Chapter Three

“This is a bad idea,” Kevin puffed, struggling to pedal his bike fast enough to keep up with Reeves, who sailed ahead on his skateboard, right down the yellow center lines of Beachview Drive. It was one in the morning, but still a risky move to skate down the middle of the road. Beachview was dark at night, with no sound but the slow crashing of the ocean beyond the abandoned motels. Thirteen-year-old Kevin was just barely old enough to remember when this part of the road brimmed with crowds and colored lights, when it had been called the “Starwalk.”

Reeves, skating up ahead, was Kevin’s next-door neighbor, fifteen years old but also going into eighth grade, having been held back two years earlier. Reeves, with his ever-present red do-rag and cocky smile, was much cooler than Kevin by anyone’s standards, and claimed to have already done it with a couple of girls from school. Even Kevin’s mom seemed to like Reeves better—she was always screaming at Kevin, but dropped everything to make Reeves a sandwich with a side of Doritos whenever he came over.

Years ago, Reeves had given Kevin the name “Beefball,” since Kevin was less than five feet high and more than two hundred pounds. Now all the kids at school called him that. Reeves only hung out with Kevin when no other kids were around, like tonight, when he had come knocking on Kevin’s window a few minutes past midnight.

“What’s going on?” Kevin had whispered after opening his window. He’d been glad to see Reeves, since he didn’t have any other friends, but scared Reeves would get them into some kind of trouble. He’d been right.

“Let’s go to the park,” Reeves had said through the screen, not bothering to whisper. Why should he? Kevin’s mom would probably just make him a sandwich.

“Anderson Park?” Kevin thought he’d meant the small public park in town, with worn-out playground equipment and a tennis court nobody used. Maybe the cool high school kids, the ones Reeves hung out with after school, were having an illegal late-night party there, he thought. Maybe Reeves was bringing him along.

“No, Beefball. The real park.” Reeves had given him a sharp grin, fully aware this idea would scare the hell out of Kevin. A hooting owl could scare the hell out of Kevin.

“You mean Starland?” Kevin whispered. “Come on, it’s too spooky. I don’t want to.”

“What are you, six years old?”

“I was the first time I went there,” Kevin said. “My mom’s boyfriend bought me a thing of cotton candy and gave me ten bucks to go do whatever I wanted for as long as I wanted.” That particular boyfriend had been Todd, who’d turned out to be a real class-A douche-clown, like all Mom’s boyfriends eventually did.

Reeves snickered. “Come out and plop your fat ass on your bike.”

Kevin had tiptoed his way out the front door of the trailer.

“Hurry!” Reeves shouted, already waiting down at the bottom of the stairs.

“Quiet! My mom!” Kevin whispered as he pulled the front door closed.

“Don’t be such a pussywillow,” Reeves said.

“Do we have to go there tonight?” Kevin asked. “We could just go to Anderson Park.”

“Are you scared?”

“No...”

“Little Beefball is scared of the ghosts.” Reeves made exaggerated pout with his lower lip.

“People say it’s really haunted.”

“That’s because they know you’re stupid enough to believe them,” Reeves said. “Follow me. I know the best way.”

Kevin had gotten his bike and followed, reluctantly.

The ride over was scary, the streets dark and lit mostly by moonlight. Kevin’s heart had been thumping as he thought of all the dead kids, the ones people said were still buried there. He knew it wouldn’t be the happy place he remembered from childhood—he knew it would be like an overgrown jungle in there, probably with lots of actual snakes and spiders, and if they didn’t watch out, they could fall into the big hole and land in quicksand with a bunch of dead kids.

Terrified as he was, Kevin hadn’t bothered to ask why Reeves wanted to go. Reeves had been talking about it for days, and Kevin had restless dreams about it for weeks before that. Sometimes in his dreams he saw it as a ruin haunted by the unhappy dead.

In other dreams, the park looked as it had when he was a kid, and he’d taken the dollars from his mom’s boyfriend and gone right to the big food stand shaped like an ice cream cone and ordered the very largest thing they had, a hot fudge and butterscotch sundae served over deep-fried bananas. And he’d eaten and eaten. Later, he’d realized he was too short for most of the rides and had no money left for games, and he ended up hiding behind the Funtime Firehouse, alone and crying to himself until the park’s security clowns found him and reunited him with his mom, who had only gotten pissed at him for ruining her date.

In the best of the dreams, all the games and food were free, and he was allowed on every ride and he loved them all. Those dreams made him want to go back to the amusement park, even if it was scary. He wanted to see it for himself again. He wanted to stand in Space City and see all the high space rides he could have ridden.

So when he rounded the last curve and saw the enormous face of the devil leering over the vine-shrouded fence, the whites of its eyes reflecting the moonlight, Kevin felt an exciting mix of fear and hope.

“Woo-hoo!” Reeves shouted ahead, raising his arms at the devil while he angled his skateboard at the cracked, weedy concrete sprawl of the Starland parking lot. “Hail Satan!”

“Hail Satan!” Kevin tried to shout as he pedaled along behind him, trying to be cool in solidarity with Reeves, but he was short of breath and could barely pant out the words. He’d worn his red Seminoles jersey, wishing he could be like Kevin and go shirtless without everybody seeing how flabby and gross he was. He looked at Kevin’s tanned back muscles with envy.

They stopped at the front gate, Kevin grateful for a chance to gasp for breath.

“Place is so creepy,” Reeves mumbled, kicking aside a bouquet of flowers and a small blue wrapped gift somebody had left.

“People treat it like a shrine,” Kevin said.

“What the fuck is a shrine?” Reeves approached the front gates, sealed with chains and padlocks.

“A place where Catholics and other religions go to pray,” Kevin told him.

“Yeah, blah blah, who cares about prayers?” Reeves shook the gates. “Let us in, you old devil!”

“Sh, don’t make him mad.”

“‘Don’t make him mad,’” Reeves repeated, but in the slow, dragged-out voice of a very stupid person. “Jesus Christ, it’s just a face on a roller coaster, Kevin.”

“I know.” Kevin shivered, his fear taking over his excitement. “Guess the gate’s all locked, though. We better go.”

“Of course it’s locked. Did you expect it to be open, Beefball? Did you expect some guy to sell us a ticket up front? Did you think we were gonna ride the fucking roller coaster?” Reeves took a pack of Basic cigarettes and lit one with a match. He coughed heavily, snorting it out his nostrils, but Kevin still thought he looked pretty cool. “Want a smoke, Beefball?”

“Yeah.”

“Too bad. When you learn to inhale and not waste it, maybe.” Reeves tucked the cigarettes back into his shorts pocket.

“I know how to inhale!”

“The only thing you know how to inhale is cake and pizza.” Reeves glanced down at the little blue present he’d kicked aside, and then a weird grin crossed his face and he picked it up. “What do you think’s in here? Could there be money?”

“Probably just more stuffed animals and crap,” Kevin said.

“Let’s find out.” Reeves tugged at the white satin bow on top of the gift box.

“We shouldn’t do that.” Kevin felt horrified at the idea.

“Why not?”

“It’s just...they left that for the dead kids. It’s not nice.” Kevin couldn’t even put into words how wrong it felt, like a kind of sacrilege.

“Well, if we don’t like it, we can take it inside and give it to the dead kids ourselves.” Reeves tossed the blue present to Kevin, who fumbled but finally managed to catch it.

Kevin studied the little box. The wrapping paper felt expensive, like thick silk, and with white satin ribbons tied in a bow on top. Somebody had spent a lot of money just on the wrapping paper—this wasn’t the cheap Wal-Mart crap with the cartoon reindeer that always tore into pieces around the corners of the box when Kevin tried to wrap his mom’s Christmas present.

Somebody had put a lot of thought and money into this small blue gift box and left it here like an offering on an altar. The idea of opening it scared him much more than the idea of sneaking into the old amusement park.

“If there’s money, we can split it. I promise,” Reeves said. “Go ahead. Rip that thing open.”

Kevin stared at Reeves. I’ll do anything you want, he thought. Just treat me like we’re friends when we’re at school. Don’t ignore me or pick on me in front of everybody.

“I want to go to one of those high school parties you talk about,” Kevin said. “Where they let you in because you’re fifteen. Where everybody gets drunk and girls sometimes take their tops off.”

“Whatever.” Reeves laughed. “Open the box, Beefball.”

Kevin wriggled the bow off the present and shoved the length of white satin into his pocket to get it out of the way. Then he slipped a finger underneath one tightly folded corner of the soft blue paper and ripped it open.

Inside was a small velvety black box.

“Holy crap,” Reeves said. “Maybe it’s jewelry. We could sell that for money.”

Kevin felt a glint of hope. While it felt wrong to steal from the dead kids, he could definitely use a few extra bucks.

He opened the box.

Inside was an oval picture frame, showing a mom, a dad, a girl, and a beagle sitting on a couch, none of them looking particularly happy. Along with it, a note:

DEAR LAURI. WE STILL LOVE YOU AND THINK ABOUT YOU EVERY DAY. LOVE, MOM, DAD, SIS, and YAPPY.

“Aw, it’s just garbage.” Reeves grabbed the box from Kevin’s hand and flung it out into the parking lot. It hit about ten yards away, the picture frame skipping like a stone across the weedy pavement, the note fluttering out of sight in the endless soft breeze from the ocean.

Kevin gaped after the scattered gift, shocked that Reeves had tossed it aside so thoughtlessly.

“You said we’d give it to the dead kids if we didn’t want it,” Kevin said. “We should have brought it in for the dead kids, Reeves!”

“Kevin.” Reeves clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a stern look. “You know how I’m always telling you not to act like a fat weirdo fruitcake, or else everyone will know you’re a fat weirdo fruitcake? That is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Seriously? The dead kids? Come on, let’s find a way inside.” Reeves took a small flashlight from his belt.

“You didn’t tell me to bring a flashlight!” Kevin said.

“What did you expect? Lights inside the park?” Reeves rolled his eyes and led the way along the high, overgrown fence.

Kevin tried to look through the fence, but he couldn’t see anything through the thorns and poison ivy that grew over it.

They bashed their way through thick, weedy growth taller than their heads and brimming with mosquitoes. The earth below their feet grew squishy and wet, the moonlight was cut off by trees and high structures inside the park, and Kevin couldn’t see a thing because Reeves was ahead of him with the only flashlight.

“There could be snakes back here,” Kevin whispered.

“Don’t be a little shiver-shit. Here.” Reeves jabbed his flashlight, and Kevin saw the loose section of fence, partially peeled away from the post. The rusty, loose panel of chain link sat in muddy wet earth.

Reeves swung his flashlight toward the weedy slope below them. Several large PVC pipes jutted from the ground, dribbling water toward a murky creekbed.

“This must be where the water rides used to drain,” Reeves said. “I bet we’re near Pirate Island. Come on.” He pushed up the loose section of fence, lay down on his stomach in the mud, and squirmed underneath.

“I’ll get my jersey all muddy,” Kevin complained.

“Then take it off.” Reeves stood up on the other side of the fence, his chest and stomach smeared with mud and filth. “I think we’re under Crashdown Falls. That’s why it’s so dark.” He shined his light up toward the massive underbelly of the waterfall ride several stories above them, where a hundred tiny holes leaked dribbles of sour water.

Kevin scowled and pushed himself through the fence, getting muddy from head to toe. His mom would be furious.

They walked through the damp wooden pillars and crossbars supporting the leaking ride above. They emerged into the moonlight near the Crashdown Falls passenger car, which could seat fifteen people, designed to look like a jaunty paddle-wheel steamship painted canary yellow and bright pink. The ship lay half-sunk in low, black water, as if it had sprung a leak, and was now almost buried by cattails and tall weeds.

Crashdown Falls was just one attraction in Pirate Island, the water-themed area of the park. They stepped out into the central plaza of Pirate Island, decorated by a model of a pirate ship standing on end, having crashed ashore onto a fake deserted island. The island had a single palm tree that shaded a few benches carved and painted to resemble open treasure chests.

They followed the broken remains of a pedestrian path past the shuttered Gone Fishing and Harpoon Lagoon games and the remains of a sandwich shack shaped like a crab, its shell rotten and collapsed. Its faded color-picture menu remained plastered inside one of the service windows, under a row of dead light bulbs.

“I could go for a shrimp po’ boy right now,” Kevin whispered. “And fries. Lots of fries.”

“Sh!” Reeves said. “Do you hear that?”

Kevin listened. At first, he could hear nothing except the endless blowing of the wind off the ocean. Then he heard it—a single quick note at first, then three in a row.

“Is it music?” Kevin whispered.

“Circus music.” Reeves gestured for him to follow.

Kevin stayed behind him, shivering, as they approached the central midway. It looked like chaos down there, uprooted dead trees, partially collapsed game booths thick with vines, moonlit clowns and lions peering out through the foliage. The entire walkway had shattered into a rough, rocky terrain thick with weeds. The night grew darker there, in the shadows of all the attractions around it.

He heard the music, too. The calliope was soft, nearly inaudible at first, but growing louder as they followed it.

They reached the midway. A soft yellow light glowed from somewhere near the park’s front gate.

They both turned toward it, and it seemed to sharpen and clarify as they looked at it. Every game booth and food stall along the midway was an overgrown wreck except for one silvery, gleaming food joint near the front, adorned with a band of dancing neon hamburgers, milkshakes, stars, and ringed planets. A neon sign at one end offered, in lurid burning red letters, TASTY FRIES. Blue neon letters on the opposite side promised FROSTY DRINKS.

“I smell French fries,” Kevin whispered. The place radiated the smell of hot, crispy potatoes.

“Let’s check it out,” Reeves told him.

The calliope music grew louder as they approached, and Kevin’s heart swelled. Warm, buttery yellow light flowed out from the wide-open central service window of the food stand. On the counter, just waiting to be taken, sat a row of four checkered paper baskets piled high with thick, golden-brown steak fries.

Kevin was in front of the stand before he knew it, somehow avoiding all the thick undergrowth and broken and uprooted chunks of pavement that should have tripped him along the way. Beside the baskets of fries sat a pair of pristine red and yellow plastic bottles for ketchup and mustard, clearly full but with no crust of ugly dried condiments around the tip.

Behind the fries stood a row of tall paper cups, each with a straw at the top poking out of a mound of whipped cream topped with a cherry. That meant milkshakes. It had to.

Kevin stood on his tiptoes to look inside the booth. There was nobody there. The deep fryer and grill weren’t even on, though he could swear he heard the sound of sizzling, gurgling grease. The interior was spotlessly clean, bathed in the soothing yellow glow of its overhead lights.

“Hello? Is anybody here?” Kevin asked.

“Don’t be stupid,” Reeves said in a distant, dreamy voice. He was looking up at the slow-blinking neon stars and planets as if hypnotized. “Nobody’s been here in years.”

“But someone just made this.” Kevin’s mouth was actually watering as he leaned over one big basket of fries, taking in the warm smell. They looked crispy, salty, and delicious.

“You’re not talking about eating those, are you?” Reeves looked at the food. “That has to be like five years old. Gross.”

“It’s not five years old.” Kevin picked up the basket, held it to his nose, and took a deep breath of the greasy fried-potato fragrance. “I’ll just try one.”

“Yeah, do that.” Reeves licked his lips as he stared at the fries. “You go first.”

Kevin selected one beautiful specimen—though they were all beautiful specimens, really—a particularly long, thin number dressed in sprinkles of salt and pepper. He bit into it, and it was just as he’d imagined. Crispy, golden crust. Glorious white mush on the inside.

“They’re good,” Kevin said. “They’re so good.”

That was all Reeves needed. He grabbed out a handful of fries, and they feasted, their hands and faces turning warm and wet with grease. They scarfed down the first basket before they remembered the ketchup, but Kevin added a puddle of it to the second basket. He reached for one of the tall cups to wash down some of the greasy taste.

“Is that safe to drink?” Reeves asked.

“Cup’s still cold.” Kevin took a quick sip to test it, and his eyes widened. “It’s root beer. And chocolate. I think it’s a root beer float.” He took another deep drink, just to make sure.

“Give me that.” Reeves snatched the ice cream drink away, but Kevin was happy to grab a new one off the counter.

“This one’s strawberry,” he said. “Strawberry ice cream and Coke.”

“Look at that.” Reeves waved his arm out at the midway, now lit by a glowing jungle of brightly colored flashing lights and neon tubes. Under the moonlight, everything had looked like a hopeless wreck. Now, under the park’s own carnival lighting, the midway didn’t look so bad at all. The pavement was still cracked and worn, but not treacherous and overgrown as Kevin had first thought.

The Lucky Darts balloon game looked open for business, with three rows of inflated balloons fluttering on its wall, stuffed animals and other prizes hanging from the rafters, a row of jumbo darts set out on green felt at the front of the booth. The plastic Whack-A-Frogs bounced merrily in and out of their holes, heedless of the oversized mallets roped just above them. A glowing shop window offered t-shirts with glittering stars and the Starland Amusement Park Logo, plus dark red shirts depicting the devil face of Inferno Mountain.

“Maybe they’re fixing it up,” Kevin said. “Maybe they’ll open the park again.”

Reeves surveyed the midway, then smirked. “Nah. Probably just some rich guy doing it all for himself. Let’s go check it out.”

They walked along the midway, nearly blinded by all the flashing, flickering lights offering games and thrills. Music played everywhere, but they saw no people at all. The booths seemed to have come alive by themselves.

Kevin focused on a place farther down the midway, shaped like a little German or Dutch village house, its open windows displaying shelves of fried pies, iced pastries, and rows of cookies—peanut butter, chocolate chip, sugar, he could smell them all.

When he got there, he wanted to stop and stuff his face, but Reeves walked right on past the shop and down the midway.

“Wait!” Kevin whined, grabbing a frosted pastry.

“We ate enough already. Let’s go see if any rides are open.”

Kevin took the pastry with him. The sweet crust was dusted with sugar over a layer of chocolate frosting, and the filling inside was rich buttercream. He longed to go back and try more, but he made himself follow Reeves instead.

Beyond the midway, the park appeared to be all ruins, the rides thick with vines and weeds. A distant snarl sounded in the overgrown jungle.

“That’s a mountain lion,” Kevin whispered. “My Gam-gam sees them all the time.”

“Your Gam-gam lives in North Carolina, Beefball,” Reeves told him. The snarl sounded again, and Reeves walked right toward it.

One feeble light burned beyond the midway, a spotlight on a green dome decorated with plastic tropical trees. The waiting area for that ride was a back-and-forth series of wooden boardwalks with rope handrails, which led up to a canal overgrown with cattails, presided over by an elevated Tiki hut. The green dome housed a boat ride, and the entrance and exit were fake caves, each with a gate of closed bamboo double doors.

Plastic statues surrounded the waiting area—an alligator, a tiger, a giraffe, and mannequins of a man in a ragged jaguar-print loincloth and a woman in a matching bikini. The man held a spear, while a snake coiled around the woman’s body and down her arm.

“Check out the balloons on her,” Reeves said. He hopped over the rope railing and into the weedy area with the plastic statues, and Kevin followed. Reeves felt up the girl mannequin, pawing at her jaguar-fur bikini top with both hands, and snickered to himself.

Kevin touched the plastic abdominal muscles on the male mannequin, feeling a little jealous of his cut muscles. He patted the front of the loincloth, wondering whether the guy had a big plastic wiener in there, but it felt flat and smooth rather than anatomically correct.

“You freaking perv,” Reeves said. “This tiger looks so fake.”

Reeves kicked the plastic tiger in its snarling face.

Green, swampy light appeared along the front of the dome.

“What’s that?” Reeves whispered.

“I don’t know.”

“Go look, Beefball.”

Shaking, Kevin walked up the end of the roped boardwalks and gaped into the canal. The water glowed green, illuminating the high cattails and the thick slime and pondweed that grew out of it. The recorded tiger-snarl played somewhere beyond the closed bamboo gate.

“What the hell?” Reeves whispered right behind him, making him jump.

“Maybe it has underwater lights, like a swimming pool,” Kevin whispered.

“Yeah...that’s probably it. Let’s go, this place smells like rotten fish.” Reeves snickered. “Hey, you know what else smells like rotten fish, Beefball? Your mom’s pants.”

More lights came on around them. Red bulbs glowed in fake torches built into the entrance and exit caves, and more fake torches lit up overhead. Red spotlights illuminated a huge wooden sign at the top of the dome, carved and painted with the words JUNGLE LAND.

Slow, rhythmic beats sounded deep inside the dome, like half a dozen people striking tight-skinned drums.

Across the canal from Kevin, among the dome’s fake tropical trees and stuffed parrots, more red torch bulbs flared to life around a straw hut painted with Tiki figures. Kevin guessed the hut probably housed the ride controls. An angry-looking Tiki face was painted on the hut’s front door. Wooden steps with rope handrails led down to a slimy, greenish patch of concrete walkway along the opposite side of the canal from which Kevin stood.

“Someone knows we’re here,” Kevin whispered. “We should go.”

“Maybe they’ll let us go on the ride,” Reeves said, staring at the closed Tiki hut door.

“Are you crazy? Why would they let us do that?”

The door to the hut swung open with a creak that startled both of them. The inside of the hut was dark, but Kevin thought he could just barely see the outline of a man in a hat.

“I see you’ve invited yourselves onto my property.” The man spoke in a low, flat voice.

Kevin and Reeves looked at each other. Kevin thought of the French fries and milkshakes they’d stolen, and he wondered if the guy had been watching them the whole time.

The smart thing to do was run, but Kevin felt rooted to the spot, along with a sudden fierce need to pee.

The man emerged from the control shack and stood on the little porch, looking down the short staircase at them. He wore an old-fashioned wide-brimmed white hat, candy-striped, and a white suit with red pinstripes. The suit’s red bow tie matched the folded silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. He didn’t look like someone who’d been working on the slimy, overgrown Jungle Land ride.

He had close-cropped sandy hair and might have been in his thirties or forties—it was hard for Kevin to judge his age. He regarded them with eyes that were a hollow, almost colorless shade of gray.

Reeves and Kevin gaped at him, waiting for him to speak. Kevin wondered what kind of trouble they were in now, whether this guy was going to let them go or if he would be a dick and call the cops. Kevin imagined how super-pissed his mom would be if he got arrested.

“I’m afraid you’ve caught us at a bit of an embarrassing time,” the man said. “We are still in the midst of our renovations. We haven’t opened for the season.”

“Oh,” Kevin said, nodding. “Are you the new owner? Sir?” He thought the “sir” might help keep them out of trouble.

“I am indeed.” The man nodded slightly. He looked at them coldly, but he did not seem particularly angry. Bored, almost.

“Are you re-opening the park?” Reeves asked.

“Not to the general public, though wouldn’t that be grand?” He peered closely at Kevin. “Only to a select few. Only those who are worthy. Are you worthy?”

Kevin shrugged. “Probably not.”

The man smiled just a little.

“How were your concessions?” He looked at Kevin a bit longer, then at Reeves. “The French fries? The milkshakes?” He looked back at Kevin. “The pastry?”

“Uh...” Reeves said.

“We would have paid for them,” Kevin squeaked. “If anyone was there. And...if we had any money....Right, Reeves?” Kevin nodded rapidly, as though in a hurry to agree with himself. Reeves didn’t say anything, just stared at the guy.

“We restored the food stands first,” the man said. “Because you must offer your guests refreshments first, followed by entertainment. That is the proper etiquette. Gifts from the guests are given upon arrival, at the beginning of the evening, while gifts from the host are provided at the end, just before departure. Am I understood?” The man’s flat gray eyes stared at Reeves.

“Uh, yes?” Reeves said, shuffling uneasily on his feet and looking away, like he was thinking about running. If he ran, Kevin would never be able to keep up with him.

“Good. But you’ve already helped yourself to gifts, haven’t you? From the shrine?” The man’s gaze shifted to Kevin, and his cold eyes now seemed a dark gunmetal color.

Kevin felt the horror and guilt of that sacrilege rising in him, the shame of sin, something he’d learned about during the handful of times his mom had dragged him to church.

“We didn’t mean to,” Kevin whispered. “Are you mad at us?”

“Of course not. In fact, it has brought us to this unique opportunity.” The man reached into the shack and pulled on something. “As I’ve said, the rides are not yet fully restored...but Jungle Land is up and running, if you don’t mind the actual swamp grass and live frogs. I think those add something to the experience, don’t you? I suppose you can tell us about it after your ride.”

The double doors at the ride exit may have looked like bamboo fencing, but they creaked with rust as they swung open. A plastic boat, decorated like a bark canoe on the outside, rolled out of the open gate, trundling through the heavily overgrown canal. It braked with a squeal in front of the roped platform where Kevin and Reeves stood. The boat had two plastic benches for seating, one behind the other, each with belt buckles for three people. Though the ride’s waterway was badly overgrown, the boat looked freshly restored with a new coat of paint.

“What do you say, gentlemen? Will you help with a little market research?” the man asked.

“Does that mean we get to go on the ride?” Kevin asked.

“Provided you keep your hands and feet inside the boat at all times,” the man said. “Climb aboard, and do remember to wear your seatbelts.”

Reeves and Kevin shared an excited look—there was no doubt, they were definitely taking the free ride.

They scrambled into the boat, buckled their seatbelts, and stared at the bamboo doors set into the cave entrance ahead. A safety bar dropped over their laps and locked into place.

The man finally descended the stairs and approached them. His smile was almost warm now, though his eyes were not. He stood on the edge of the canal, looking down at them.

The drumbeats sounded louder and faster inside the dome.

“Watch for snakes and alligators,” he said. “And the jungle natives and their dark rituals. Sometimes they need a human sacrifice or two to prime the pump.”

He gave them his first real smile, full of perfectly straight, bleach-white teeth.

“Enjoy the ride,” he added. “I know I will enjoy watching.”

The boat jerked to life, rolling forward on its underwater tracks. It nosed through cattails and slime toward the entrance cave, where the bamboo doors were already swinging open to admit them.

Kevin and Reeves shared a smile—and for the moment, Kevin felt like they were real friends, that Reeves might even stop picking on him in front of other people after tonight.

The boat followed a tight curve through a cave full of stalagmites jutting up through the water, under stalactites thick with moss—possibly real moss. The ride still smelled dank, the water swampy and dark. It was hard to tell what was part of the ride and what was real Florida jungle creeping back to swallow the old amusement park.

They reached a spacious, tropical cavern resplendent with Jurassic-sized flowers and trees thick with blooming vines. A waterfall spilled into one side of the boat canal. Beside it, a big Venus flytrap munched on an insect the size of a seagull. The insect, with most of its body trapped in the flytrap’s jaws, kept rolling its cartoony eyes as though to say just my luck or ain’t that life?

In one of the tree limbs, a pair of miniature pink monkeys playfully wrestled a banana back and forth between them. Brightly colored mechanical birds occupied other tree limbs, and as the boat approached, they waved their wings and whistled overlapping rounds of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

“This is lame,” Reeves said. “It’s so fake.”

Kevin kind of liked it, though. The look on Reeves’s face said he was enjoying the ride, too, even though he was pretending it was beneath him.

The boat moved closer to the whistling tropical birds, some of them perched on flowery, leafy limbs that extended out over the canal.

“Okay, we get it, birds and flowers,” Reeves said. “This the most boring--”

Three dinosaur-sized alligator heads lunged up out of the water, their jaws opened wide to reveal rows of teeth. There was one on each side of the boat and a third straight ahead, all of them close enough to bite. The whistling-bird sounds above turned into frightened, confused squawking.

Reeves and Kevin screamed and pulled close to each other, away from the monsters menacing the sides of the boat. It took a moment to realize that the gator heads were fake, the open jaws were not even moving, and the deafening snarls were actually blasted from hidden speakers in the rocks along the tropical shoreline.

“You were totally scared,” Reeves snorted, pushing Kevin away as though he hadn’t been clinging to him. “Wuss.”

“You were scared, too!” Kevin squeaked.

“They could have been real.” Reeves watched the three alligator heads sink back beneath the dark, slimy surface. The boat resumed its slow glide through the water. “There could be real snakes or anything in this place.”

“But they’ve been working on it,” Kevin whispered. “Fixing it. That guy said.”

“Maybe he’s lying,” Reeves said. “We don’t know who that guy is. Maybe he’s just a random freak who kills kids in old amusement parks.”

“Don’t say that!”

The boat passed through a narrow, dim cavern, its walls and ceiling shaggy with green growth. Unseen things slithered and hissed among the cattails. Kevin glimpsed an enormous water moccasin near one of the sparse underwater lights, but it dove away before he could tell whether it was fake or not.

The cave grew darker as the boat advanced. When it grew a little brighter—just a little—Kevin saw they were traveling through a rocky cave with no greenery. Instead, hundreds of black spiders with strange red markings scurried among the rocks, spinning thick webs overheard.

“That’s not real, right?” Reeves was pale. “I hate spiders. I really hate spiders.”

“They can’t be,” Kevin whispered, but he thought that there seemed to be an awful lot of them, and their movements were pretty quick and nimble for cheap mechanical contraptions.

The cave grew dark again, leaving no light at all.

“Oh, come on, not with all the spiders,” Reeves said. The sound of narrow, hairy spider legs rustled in the shadows all around them.

Kevin and Reeves felt the sticky filaments of webbing all over them, as if the boat had carried them directly into the dense tangle of thick spiderwebs. They screamed again, but then the boat continued on, leaving the spiderwebs behind.

“I think that was part of the ride,” Kevin whispered. “The little strings.”

“It wasn’t funny,” Reeves said.

Ahead, Kevin could see the narrow tunnel widen into another cavern with more jungle trees and high grasses, lit by moonlight. On the canal bank a few yards away, pairs of glowing yellow eyes watched from the high grass. Kevin gradually discerned the shapes of giant jungle cats waiting to pounce.

As they pulled out of the narrow channel and into the wider jungle-cat cavern, a saber-toothed tiger struck around the side of the boat with a roar, its claws extended. The mechanical tiger ripped through Reeves’s shirt, scratching four red lines into his shoulder.

“Ow!” Reeves yelled and tried to pull back from the thing’s claws, but he was locked into place by the seatbelt and safety bar.

The mechanical tiger swung back out of the way, retreating among giant plastic leaves to lie in wait for the next boat. Reeves scowled back over his shoulder while the boat continued onward.

“That thing scratched the shit out of me!” he said. “They need to fix that. Damn.”

The boat floated along the high grass where the other tigers crouched, watching. Kevin kept waiting for these other fake beasts to pounce or attack somehow, but they only stared and growled at the passing boat.

The next display was lit from behind by dim red light. Kevin could see the outlines of three shaggy, apelike creatures, all of them swinging what looked like sticks at some indistinct dark mass in front of them. The primal drumbeats sounder closer, louder, and faster now.

The boat eased closer to the hairy ape-shapes, mechanically swinging their sticks over and over again. Even two feet away, Kevin couldn’t see exactly what was happening.

An overhead spotlight flicked on, revealing that the three apes were actually swinging large, blood-stained bones, the femurs of some giant animal. They were repeatedly bashing a fourth ape, one of their own kind, who lay facedown on a boulder, its head a shapeless, bloody mass from the repeated, relentless pounding.

When the light turned on, the three bashing apes all swiveled their heads toward the approaching boat. All three apes wore huge, happy, blood-spattered grins, as if they were having the time of their life.

“Sick, dude,” Reeves said. Then, as an afterthought, “That’s pretty cool, though. That’s how life really is, you know?”

“Yeah,” Kevin replied, though he wasn’t sure exactly what Reeves meant. If he asked for an explanation, Reeves would probably just thump him in the head and call him stupid.

The next section of the jungle had a little village of straw huts decorated with totem poles carved to resemble stacks of animal skulls. Red-bulb “torches” lit the scene. The drumbeats were loudest here, accompanied by chanting voices, but there was no sign of the village’s inhabitants.

The words TURN BACK NOW were painted in red on the side of the hut closest to the boat canal, followed by a skull and crossbones.

The boat continued on, and the village grew stranger. The totem pole carvings started to resemble stacks of human skulls overlooking low, glowing-red fire pits, probably lit from underneath with more red light bulbs.

They reached a stone temple area lit by skull torches, with very real-looking human skulls heaped in its alcoves and niches. A large stone skull overlooked a raised altar, which appeared stained with a fresh pool of blood. A bloody stone knife lay near the head of the altar.

The boat stopped here, as though the ride wanted them to contemplate this scene. It was as if a blood sacrifice had only just happened, and all the people involved had scattered for some reason.

The boat slid forward again, taking them into a darker jungle area lined with high grass. Kevin’s eyes had to adjust to the dimness before he saw the mannequins lurking in the grass on both sides of the canal, their face painted like skulls as though they were some kind of death cult, holding long bamboo blowguns pointed right at the boat.

If they were real, Kevin knew, those blowguns would be loaded with poisoned darts.

A series of short compressed-air blasts fired from the blowguns, and Kevin felt sharp little impacts on his face, arm, and hip. He and Reeves both screamed, and then the boat turned out of the dim jungle into a much brighter cave. Kevin realized they were unharmed—the blowguns had fired no darts, just air.

The bamboo doors of the exit lay straight ahead. Beyond them glowed all of the lights outside. Kevin and Reeves broke down laughing, both of them feeling relieved.

“That wasn’t bad!” Reeves said as the boat carried them toward the light. “Kind of cheesy, but it had good parts.”

“It was awesome,” Kevin breathed.

“It’s still broken. I’m going to show him where it scratched the hell out of me.” Reeves touched the torn shoulder of his shirt.

The boat squealed to a halt, its prow three feet from the still-closed bamboo doors.

“You think it broke down?” Kevin whispered after a few seconds.

“Probably. This thing’s a piece of junk.” Reeves pushed against the safety bar on their laps. “Help me out here, Beefball.”

Kevin pushed the safety bar alongside Reeves, until he was grunting and sweating, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Hey!” Reeves cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey, mister...dude! We’re stuck here!”

An ear-scraping sound like rusty metal gnashing on gears boomed from beneath their boat. The boat turned sideways while sinking lower in the water, as if changing from the main track to another one. It creaked forward down a short, dark tunnel with paint-primer walls. The water lapped against a gray door marked with the words MAINTENANCE and DO NOT ENTER in plain red stencil.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Reeves twisted to shout toward the still-closed exit gate.

The boat jerked and shuddered through the tunnel until its prow hit the gray maintenance door. The gray door swung open, and the boat plunged forward and down a steep ramp into darkness, riding a wave of putrid water.

The boat track flattened out abruptly, jarring and rattling Kevin’s spine. The boat drifted forward into a lightless, sour-smelling cinderblock tunnel, following some kind of underground track. Rivulets of slimy water drizzled down from the ceiling above.

In the initial gloom, Kevin could see an array of rusted tools hanging on the tunnel walls. There were hand saws, strange curved blades, long needles, and things resembling jagged-tooth scalpels. Chains hung from the ceiling, tipped with hooks gone red with rust.

“This must be where they worked on the boats,” Kevin whispered. “Right?”

Reeves didn’t say anything. He shivered as the boat rolled forward into darkness.

Kevin thought he saw new, softer shapes along the edges of the canal, but it was too dim to make out what they were.

The boat thudded to a halt, shuddering against some kind of underwater obstacle. As if by an automatic signal, the big gray maintenance door through which they’d entered gave a rusty squeal and slammed shut high above and behind them, blocking out all the light.

Kevin drew a big breath to yell for the guy to come get them, but then he heard something splash in the water near the boat. Then he heard another splash somewhere ahead of them.

“Do you hear that?” Kevin whispered.

“We have to get out of here,” Reeves whispered back. “Push on the safety bar again.”

They pushed, but it was locked tight, trapping them in the boat, which had come to a complete halt inside the pitch-black tunnel.

A third splash sounded, then another, and another.

“Fish couldn’t live in here, could they?” Kevin whispered.

“I can’t even unbuckle my seatbelt,” Reeves told him. “It’s stuck. I can’t see what’s wrong with it.”

“I can’t see anything.” Kevin tried his own seatbelt, but his clasp seemed stuck, too. The air in the tunnel grew icy cold, and Kevin trembled.

“Why would it get cold in here?” Reeves whispered in the dark. “Kevin? Why the hell would it get cold? Tell me!” Reeves was panicking, and Kevin felt the same way.

Kevin started to cry. He suddenly wished his mom was here to save him, but she was a couple miles away, and there were no security clowns to rescue him this time. There was nobody in the park except the psycho guy in the red-striped hat.

A little splash sounded right beside him, and then a small, wet, mud-dripping hand brushed the back of his neck. It was much too small to be Reeves.

Kevin screamed and kicked, and the boat sloshed a little, but there was nowhere to go. Reeves screamed and pounded the safety bar that trapped them.

“Something touched me!” Reeves screamed. “Kevin, something touched me!”

The cold hand lay on the back of Kevin’s neck again, and this time the ragged, sharp tips of its icy fingers dug into his flesh.

“We’re still down here,” a little girl’s voice whispered, almost too soft to hear. “We’re all still here.”

Kevin’s blood turned cold, and he wanted to scream but couldn’t.

The safety bar quietly lifted away from his lap.

A dozen little hands, all of them cold and muddy, seized his neck, his arm, and his leg and pulled him sideways over the edge of the boat. He heard Reeves scream, and then the hands dragged him down into the dark water. He felt small bodies, cold and stiff, swimming around him. As the thick, foul water filled his ears, nose, and lungs, he thought he could hear the echoes of the little girl’s voice giggling underwater.

Gifts from the host are presented at the end, just before departure, the man in the pinstriped suit had said. Kevin could see the man’s bland face in his mind, the dull dead eyes looking out under the brim of the cheerful candy-striped hat.

The little hands covered Kevin’s face and dragged him to the bottom, holding him under the dirty water until he stopped struggling.

Chapter Four

I’m stalking you, said Carter’s new Facebook message. It came with a friend request from VICTORIA SAMARIS, from GROSSE POINTE, MICHIGAN, with a picture of the dark-haired girl he’d met at Dr. Larson’s house a couple of days earlier. Want to be ‘friends’? she asked.

Sure, Carter replied, and he accepted her friend request.

He got out of bed and stretched. It was almost ten in the morning, and he felt sore from a week of hard work, but it was Wednesday and he had the day off. He glanced out the window of his small bedroom at spindly palm trees lining the parking lot. He’d had another bad dream about the amusement park, and he was eager to get busy doing something, any activity to put the nightmarish memories out of his head.

His phone chimed, and he checked it.

I want to go here, Victoria had typed. She’d linked a Google map set to an address he recognized, the AA Flea Market just north of town. Come with me?

Now? he asked.

I can pick you up in 20 mins. What’s your address? she texted back.

Carter sent his address and apartment number, then hurried to take a shower. The apartment was cluttered, dirty, and embarrassing, especially compared to the tall, cheery gingerbread house where Victoria lived.

Carter’s dad was leaning against the kitchen sink, eating a bowl of generic Frosted Flakes and wearing a faded Journey t-shirt and boxer shorts. Carter decided to wait outside.

“Where you going?” his dad asked as Carter headed for the door.

“That girl Victoria wants to hang out.”

“Who?”

“Moved into the old Woodman house.”

“Have fun. Stay out of trouble.” His dad tilted up the cereal bowl and slurped the sugar-and-corn-flavored milk.

Carter sat on the concrete outdoor steps, feeling a little nervous. If the girl liked him, he wasn’t sure how he would handle it. Tricia’s death had traumatized him so much that he’d avoided relationships since then, and even lost what friendships he’d had. He told himself that he was focused on his future, but he knew he was also scared to get close to anyone.

She doesn’t like you, he told himself. She just doesn’t know anyone else in town yet.

A polished black Ford Fiesta pulled into the spot beside his dad’s elderly Toyota pick-up, which was marred by paint and scratches from the odd jobs his dad had taken for extra money over the years. The Fiesta wasn’t an expensive car, but it looked brand new. Victoria was behind the wheel, wearing oversized dark sunglasses that made him think of old-fashioned movie stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn.

Carter opened the passenger-side door.

“Ready?” she asked.

“I’m ready,” he said as he dropped into the seat beside her. “I don’t get why you want to go to the flea market, though. It’s depressing.”

“I don’t mind depressing.” She drove to the parking lot exit and double-checked her phone before pulling out onto the main road, which was virtually deserted. While most of the girls around town would be wearing shorts and tank tops this time of year, she wore black jeans and a matching blouse, as though indifferent to the summer climate. That made him think of Tricia, how she’d held her own identity against all the lame popular kids picking on her.

“Flea markets are the best spots to find super-cheap prices on old vinyl,” Victoria said. “That’s why we’re going.”

“Old vinyl?” Carter asked.

“Records?”

“Oh. Why would you want those?”

“Seriously? I have to explain the difference between full analog waves and chunky digital bits?”

“Not if you don’t want to,” Carter assured her.

“Anyway, I bet some other interesting stuff washes up at the flea market around here, with this town’s history.”

“There’s not really much history here.”

“Are you kidding? All the tourists that used to come, and then everything suddenly closing down...What does it look like in there?”

“Where?”

“The old amusement park.”

Carter stiffened, glancing out the window as they passed a closed building that still had a big smiley-face DVD sign out front, with the words VIDEO PLANET: Movies and Games! just barely visible.

“Did the sinkhole swallow everything?” Victoria asked.

Everything that mattered, he thought.

“It’s all still there,” he told her. “The rides, the games...they said it was too dangerous to get the equipment in there and tear it down. I guess there’s nobody to pay for it, either.”

“So it’s all just sitting there condemned?” she asked.

“Condemned,” he agreed.

“That’s wild. You can’t see anything through that overgrown fence. Just...the devil, looking out at everyone driving by.”

“Hornsby,” he said. “People used to call him Hornsby.”

Victoria laughed.

“What are you listening to?” he asked, hoping to change the subject to something other than the worst possible thing to talk about. Her stereo blasted a girl’s voice singing over a sharp, jagged electric guitar.

“The Breeders,” she said. “Do you like them?”

“Oh, yeah.” He hadn’t heard of them before.

The gravel-drive entrance to the flea market was guarded by a tall black wooden bear holding a green fish in one paw and waving at visitors with the other. The bear’s paint was flaking, and it looked like the fish had been infested with termites, its belly rotten and perforated.

The market was mostly an outdoor jumble of old picnic tables shaded by slanted roofs on bare wooden columns. A long, low ramshackle shed near the back was the only indoor area.

After parking, they walked toward a table cluttered with cardboard boxes, random pieces of clockwork, and a couple of old birdhouses. A thin man with a long gray beard sat in a folding chair behind it, smoking a cigarette. He said nothing as Carter and Victoria approached, just watched them with small, suspicious eyes.

Victoria peered hopefully into the cardboard boxes, but she frowned at their contents. One box held dirty, dusty stuffed animals, including several of the purple and black plastic-winged bats that used to be offered as prizes at Starland Amusement Park’s Bat-Ball game, where customers would pitch a baseball at a row of stuffed bats hanging in front of a painted cave backdrop.

The other box held a chipped assortment of old Christmas-tree decorations and knockoff Hummel figurines. Carter reached inside it for a matching set of salt and pepper shakers, one shaped like a cartoony white ghost with black eyes, the other identical but with the opposite color scheme.

“These are pretty cool,” Carter said.

Victoria leaned closer to him, and he held them up for her inspection.

“That...is a pretty sweet find,” Victoria said.

“Dollar-fifty for the both of ‘em,” the thin, gray man said, possibly his first words of the day.

“Is that a good price?” Carter asked her.

“An excellent one.” She nodded with a calm, very serious look on her face.

“Probably came from the Dark Mansion’s Haunted Souvenir Shop,” Carter said as he paid for the ghost shakers. The old bearded man didn’t say anything. Carter had no intention of putting actual salt and pepper into the questionable receptacles, but they looked neat.

“Here we go, jackpot,” Victoria said as she drifted to the next table, operated by a large Mexican woman in her fifties or sixties, reading a Spanish-language romance novel that featured a shirtless man and a girl in a nightgown riding horseback on the cover.

Victoria approached the four cardboard liquor boxes on the table, all packed with battered and dusty record sleeves. She browsed them gently with her fingertips, treating them like delicate antique treasures.

“Records cost...” the lady began. She looked over Victoria’s outfit and shoes. “One dollar each. You buy more than ten, gets cheaper.” Her attention returned to the romance novel.

“Look at this,” Victoria whispered. “The Best of Bread. Infected by The The. Coven—they were the first rock band to use the devil horns at concerts.” Victoria held up her left hand with her index and pinkie fingers extended.

Victoria bought a few of the worn albums.

The next table was much less promising—two guys in their thirties, possibly brothers, definitely meth heads by their sunken, scabbed faces, offered a table full of random junk, including coils of copper wiring, a few cell phone chargers, a very used waffle iron, assorted lengths of PVC pipe, and a car stereo.

Carter stared at the backdrop of their booth—a city street scene, the emphasis on the traffic signs and traffic lights. He’d dabbed it with paint countless times, keeping it fresh against the effects of rain and go-kart exhaust. Now it was faded and dirty.

“What is it?” Victoria asked, looking from Carter’s face to the backdrop.

“Fifty dollars,” one of the guys said. His smile lacked several teeth.

“That’s from the Eight-Track,” Carter finally managed to say.

“Maybe could be.” One of the meth brothers scratched his scalp under his cap.

“The what?” Victoria asked him.

“It was a go-kart track, down on the Starwalk,” Carter said. “My parents owned it.”

“Hey, now, we got this from the landfill,” the other brother said. “Nobody owns anything once it goes to the landfill.”

“Give it you for forty,” the first one said.

“Let’s go.” Carter led the way down the tables, and Victoria followed closely. He kept his back to her, since he didn’t want her to see how upset he suddenly felt. He swallowed it back and tried to look normal.

“Twenty-five bucks, final offer!” one of the brothers called after him.

“That’s what you call that place with all the old attractions?” Victoria asked. “The Starwalk?”

“Or Death Row, depending on what year you’re living in.”

“That’s harsh.” Victoria slowed to look at some dusty, possibly antique picture frames on one table.

“The town got harsh. Used to be the best place you could live...now I just want to get out.”

“And go where?”

“College.”

“Which one?”

“Maybe Florida. Any one with a teaching hospital.”

“You’re going to be a doctor?” She raised her eyebrows.

“If I survive a hundred years of school, yeah.”

“Really?” Victoria looked at him with what seemed like new interest, smiling a little. “That’s great.”

“What about you?” Carter looked at a remote-controlled car, no battery plate on the bottom, no actual remote control in sight.

“Photography,” she said. “Any kind, but I really like getting pictures of remote or lost places, desolate places, forgotten places...”

“So you want to take lots of happy pictures.”

“That’s just what I like to document. I’m from Detroit...”

“Facebook says Grosse Pointe.”

She blushed. “Near Detroit. That’s what I started taking pictures of...boarded-up restaurants and stores, these giant old Art Deco buildings nobody uses anymore. It just seems...” She shrugged. “There’s a certain feeling. All this life that used to be there, and now you can see it all dying.”

“If you like dying towns, you’ll enjoy Conch City.”

She bit her lip for a moment, then spoke rapidly. “I was hoping you might show me all those old places down by the beach. What did you call it? Death Row?”

“It’s not good for out-of-towners to call it that,” Carter said. “It’s different when a part of you died with it.”

“Oh, sorry.” Victoria glanced around, probably noticing how the flea market vendors and the sparse customers were glaring at them. She strode quickly toward the long enclosed shed building. “What’s in there?”

“Hot dog stand, nacho stand, boiled peanuts place,” Carter said. “Or it was a couple years ago. I doubt it’s changed much.”

“Huh.” When they were away from other people, she started talking low and fast again. “Will you show me around down there? I really want to take pictures.”

“We can’t go into the amusement park,” Carter said, and her hopeful smile faded noticeably. “The cops are serious about that. If you’re a teenager, it’s better to be caught drinking while driving a stolen car, with a dead body full of cocaine in the trunk. The police chief’s kid died in the sinkhole.”

“That’s sad.” Victoria said. “What about the other places?”

“There’s not much to see. It’s all ruins.”

“That’s what I want to see. Please, Carter?” She touched his arm, gazing up at him with eyes that were dark and lovely and openly begging. “It would mean a lot to me.”

“I guess we could,” Carter said, immediately wishing he hadn’t. “But we can’t go inside anywhere. You can take pictures from the outside.”

“You said your family owned a go-kart track? Can we can see that?”

“Only from the outside. It belongs to the bank now.”

“That sucks.” She squeezed his arm before letting go. “Stand right there.”

She raised her camera and snapped a picture of him standing in front of the flea-market barn, under a sign offering BOILED PEANUTS and HOT WINGS.

“Want to try the hot wings?” He grinned and pointed at the open door to the dim shed, fairly certain the idea of eating here would gross her out. “They’re good.” He had never actually eaten here, either. He just wanted to see her reaction.

“Not hungry,” she said., clearly trying not to look queasy. “Take me to the...what did you call it?”

“The Starwalk. It’s not what it used to be.”

“I’m interested in what it is now.”

They reached Beachview Drive about fifteen minutes later, and Victoria pointed to the first large, dilapidated structure, located on the west end of the old strip.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“The Spotted Octopus.”

“We’ll start there.” She pulled into the weedy parking lot. The entrance had once been blocked off by orange cones and a boulder, but some earlier explorers or vandals had moved these aside. She parked in the shadow of the building and grabbed her camera.

She left the car and took snapshots of the building’s facade, where a purple octopus with blue spots loomed as a roof over the front entrance, some of its tentacles serving as its support columns. The building was shaped like a wooden two-story amphitheater, one wing of it already collapsed by the weather into an impenetrable mass of timbers and floorboards. The entryway doors had been kicked open, and broken, rusty chains hung from one door handle.

“What was this place?” Victoria asked.

“College kids would drink here, and they’d have wet t-shirt contests and stuff like that. You could hear it from the beach. It sounded pretty wild.”

“You never went inside?”

“I was like thirteen when it closed down, so no...”

She turned the camera on him and backed away, framing him up against the building. “Then you don’t have any personal memories here.”

“Nah.” He didn’t tell her about conversations at the middle-school lunch table, the young adolescent male fantasies of what happened inside the forbidden Spotted Octopus. “Nothing personal.”

They continued on foot through the old parking lot. Victoria took pictures of an almost unrecognizable snow-cone stand and the Fishbowl, a round building painted blue (badly peeling now) on the outside, with goldfish and aquarium-tank decorations. The serving window was nailed shut.

“Tell me about that place,” Victoria said. An amused smile played on her lips as she took pictures of it.

“The Fishbowl. Probably the worst place to eat on the whole beach. They were open later than anyone else, so the drunk college kids would go there when the bars closed. The next day, they’d get sick but blame it on the drinking. Pretty good racket.”

They eventually reached the Eight-Track, now just a ribbon of concrete and a small, boarded-up building locked inside chain-link fence. Carter drifted up to the fence, staring inside.

“This was your go-kart track?” Victoria asked.

“This was it.”

Victoria looked over the area, taking it in before she raised her camera.

As Carter looked along the bare asphalt track, he imagined he could hear, very distantly, the sound of a dozen roaring little engines, the air scented with their exhaust.

“My dad bought it from old Mr. Sheffield...possibly won it in a poker game. We all worked here together, keeping it all running. We took good care of it. My dad, my mom.” He had a glimpse of his childhood, a bright and sunny day with both his parents at the track, all three of them racing against each other while they were closed to the public. Laughing, his dad when he had his long hair, his mom when she had a real smile, not the waxy drunken corpse-smile of later years.

He heard a soft click as Victoria took a picture of him.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked softly.

“How it used to be.” My dad, my mom. “Let’s keep walking. There’s nothing left here.”

They passed the collapsed tiki shack of Big Billy’s Surf Shop and continued on into the parking lot of Dinosaur Mini-Golf, where Victoria stopped to admire the triceratops out front, its green paint faded down to bare concrete in some places, moss growing in every crevice of its plates and horns.

“Who made all this?” she asked.

“All what?”

“Everything. The big octopus, the triceratops, the devil face. All the crazy stuff along this road.”

“I don’t know.” Carter had never really thought of people making them. The oversized crabs, fish, cowboys, pirates, and leprechauns around town seemed to him as much a part of the local ecosystem as the beach and the palm trees. “This stuff’s always been here.”

“Always? Even a thousand years ago, there were big clown statues with neon bow-ties selling donuts?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said.

She took pictures of the Dinosaur Mini-Golf course, which was an artificial hill full of plastic trees and assorted dinosaurs lurking among foam boulders, all locked behind a chain-link fence hung with NO TRESPASSING signs.

“Did you ever come here for a game of dinosaur golf?” she asked.

“Yeah. The best part of the course was the cave through the middle. You can’t see it from here.”

She took a few more pictures and kept walking. The remaining columns of the old Starland Express roller coaster jutted up above a chain-link fence so thick with thorny vegetation it looked like a solid, living wall.

“We should stop here,” Carter told her as they reached the weedy, sandy parking lot for Starland.

“Looks like it’s okay to go to the front gate.” Victoria walked toward the castle towers with their dead neon stars and the shrine of pictures, flowers, burned-down candle stumps, cards, and other offerings. She wore a look of dazed fascination, her eyes glancing up at the devil until she was too close to the fence to see it. Then she studied the disorganized shrine to the dead. “It’s crazy how these things spring up whenever there’s an accident or a tragedy. It’s like this nameless organic religious practice.”

“It makes sense, though,” Carter said. He was very uncomfortable to be standing in this place talking about it. He’d already made his visit for the year. “Especially when something really bad like this happens, and when a lot of the bodies are still here.”

“They are?” Victoria suddenly looked at the overgrown gates with horror instead of fascination. “Are you serious?”

“The sinkhole’s too deep, and the bottom’s like quicksand,” Carter said. “They couldn’t get down there to dig them up.”

“Oh, God.” She covered her mouth. “So this is really a graveyard, too. It didn’t mention that on Wikipedia.”

“You can see why the police take it so seriously. We should move on.”

Victoria backed up until she could see the devil peering over the fence. Its eyes still pulled the same old trick of seeming to follow you wherever you went. She snapped a picture of it, and the glint of fascination was back in her eyes.

“I want to go inside,” she said in a low voice.

“Definitely not,” Carter said. “It’s awful in there.”

“I want to see it.” Victoria was almost whispering.

“You said you wanted to see the empty motels across the street, too. Maybe we should go back and look at those.”

“Please, Carter.” Victoria lowered her eyes from the devil to look right at him, begging. “Please. Take me inside the park.”

Chapter Five

Carter looked up at the looming dark shape of the devil’s face, its horns still visible against the purple sky. The small red bulbs at the center of its vertical pupils seemed to flare for a moment, probably reflecting a passing headlight on the highway.

He couldn’t believe he’d let the girl bring him here.

They’d clearly lost track of time. The sun had sunk behind the wooden ghost town of Fool’s Gold while the devil watched in silent glee.

Victoria had slipped away from him, lost in her vision of capturing the sad ruins of other people’s memories. Or maybe it was Carter who’d gotten away, drawn by the horrific lure of this place, this ride in particular, where Tricia had been one of the final twelve riders, dying somewhere within the ride while the opening of the sinkhole shook the park.

He stood alone now, looking up at the dark mountain. The back-and-forth walls of the waiting area had been high fences topped with red pitchforks, creating a prison-like environment for park visitors waiting for their turn on the ride. These fence walls had collapsed together into a rat warren, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if actual rats or other animals nested inside it.

He took a deep breath, lowered his head, and forced himself to walk through it. The tunnel of collapsed fencing was dark and smelled dank, and he had to push aside heavy sections of pitchfork-topped fence blocking his way. Unseen things scurried and hissed near his feet, but he continued on.

He made it through the gauntlet, but he still couldn’t stand up straight, because the roof of Inferno Mountain’s loading and unloading station sagged low and steep. He moved in a crouch toward the weedy tracks ahead.

A trail of dark spots led toward the front corner of the waiting area, where the head of the train would have braked. It occurred to him that these could be bloodstains from Tricia herself, the remains of her neck dripping while they wheeled her away, the stains on the concrete protected all these years by the slowly collapsing roof above.

Or the blood drops could have belonged to her last-minute deathmate, the teenage tourist boy who’d taken Carter’s place next to Tricia, gotten his head sheared off, and left Carter to a life of morbid confusion and an inescapable feeling that he was supposed to be dead already. He didn’t feel much guilt over the unknown guy who’d died in his place, but felt deeply guilty about leaving Tricia to die alone. His cowardice had saved his life but cost him his heart and soul, leaving him a zombie.

He reached the edge of the platform and looked down at the overgrown black-steel tracks below. He could barely see them in the post-sunset gloom.

Across the tracks, the body of the ride operator lay on the unloading platform, next to the control console. The years had reduced him to little more than a filthy skeleton wrapped in a blue star-spotted Starland uniform. The side of the skull was caved in. Carter remembered the operator had been knocked out, but he didn’t know the guy had died, and apparently nobody had bothered to collect his remains. Carter shivered—a little at first, then harder and harder.

Don’t be a shiver-shit, a voice whispered somewhere in his brain...or maybe it had come from out there, in the darkness that filled the overgrown park. It was a boy’s voice, but he wasn’t sure whose.

Carter told himself he had to go back through the maze of collapsed fencing, find Victoria, and get the hell out of here.

Then he felt the platform tremble, and he wondered if the sinkhole was still active, still expanding after all these years, swallowing more and more of the park and making the remaining ruins less and less stable. Cold sweat broke out all over his skin.

Rusty squeals and heavy mechanical thudding sounded inside the black volcano of Inferno Mountain, as though enormous, decaying gears were being forced to turn deep within the ride.

The red pitchfork gate at the base of the mountain, the ride’s exit, swung open. The black train came rumbling and squeaking down the tracks, under the station roof, and clattered to a stop. The train radiated an immense heat that rippled the air, and it hissed and popped as it settled into the station.

All the seats were vacant except one—Tricia, sitting in the front car. The seat beside her was empty, waiting for him to sit down beside her.

It was just her body, her head still missing, her necklace of pumpkins and black cats still damp with gore around the brutalized stump of her neck, the blood fresh and red all over her white dress, soaking her hand-painted dragons and unicorns.

When Tricia spoke, he could hear her voice soft and clear, though her body did not move at all and she lacked the mouth to speak.

“You were supposed to be with me, Carter,” her headless body said. The voice didn’t sound angry or vengeful, just flatly stating the facts. “Why did you leave me, Carter?”

Carter’s mouth made some movements, but he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even think. He was filled with dread and horror, and he couldn’t move.

“I need you with me, Carter.” Tricia’s dead body shifted just a little, and the arm closest to him began to rise, her pale forearm and hand spattered with droplets of her own blood. Her fingers opened and closed, clutching blindly at the air. “Where are you, Carter? I can’t see you, Carter...”

Carter was frozen by fear, but he didn’t know whether to run away or try to help her.

“Why can’t I see you, Carter?” A note of panic crept into her voice. She waved her hand more frantically, and she shrieked, “Carter, why can’t I see you?”

His heart pounding, Carter turned away from the ghost in the train and ran to the rat-warren of fallen fences. He dug through them, trying to find a way out, but they were much heavier now, and sometimes swung or slid on their own. He found himself caged and trapped by the pitchfork fencing.

“Help me, Carter!” Tricia’s voice screamed.

The roller coaster train rolled forward, out of the station and up the steep hill. Carter banged on the impossibly heavy fence rails that caged him, but he couldn’t budge them at all. He was a prisoner in a strange red-pitchfork cell, and he could only watch through the bars as Tricia rode up and up, alone on the clanking train as it approached the devil’s open mouth.

He could still hear her screaming as she waved her hand in the empty space over her bloody neck, as though she was just now discovering her head was missing.

“Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” the devil laughed as the train climbed up into its fanged mouth and vanished. The tiny red lights in its pupils glowed.

* * *

When Carter awoke in the darkness of his own bedroom, shaking and sweaty, he thought the devil face was still staring at him outside his window with one glowing eye. The large face-shape slowly resolved into the outline of a familiar palm tree, a yellow parking lot streetlamp shining between its branches.

He glanced around his room, looking into the dark corners and the open closet for any sign of a headless girl ghost. The glowing clock on his table said it was three in the morning.

Another nightmare. He turned on the lamp, knowing he would never get back to sleep without it.

In his dream, he and Victoria had gone into the park. He tried to piece together his memories and sort reality from nightmare. In the real world, he carefully told himself, he hadn’t let Victoria talk him into trespassing inside Starland. She had taken more pictures of dilapidated amusements and motels, and eventually she’d brought him home.

And nothing else happened, he reminded himself. We didn’t go into the park. I would never do that.

With a shaky but growing sense that everything horrible had been part of the dream and not real, Carter tried to go back to sleep. He wasn’t quite comfortable enough to close his eyes, though.

Instead, he checked out Victoria’s blog, the “Eye of Tori,” which mostly featured pictures of deteriorating buildings and neighborhoods around Detroit. The most recent post included a few pictures of dilapidated attractions along the Starwalk, including one of Carter staring through the chain-link at the empty Eight-Track course. The look on his face was pure sadness, and he felt embarrassed to see it, especially since Victoria had some followers on Tumblr and deviantART who had apparently already seen it.

“That boy looks so miserable,” someone named Jking22 had commented on the blog. “Great pic!”

Chapter Six

The first day of school, for whatever reason, was a Tuesday. Carter rode the bus since he didn’t have a car. He’d saved up a few thousand dollars in the bank over the previous couple of years, but he knew he would need it for college. A car was good for running around with friends, having fun, and other things he didn’t really do.

Black and white fliers hung on the steel front doors of the school and in the front hallway, with the word MISSING and pictures of a pair of middle-school kids. One was a winking kid in a do-rag who already looked like a delinquent—Reeves Mayweather. The other was a very chubby kid with his mouth hanging open, as though the photographer had caught him by surprise—Kevin Gordy. Carter didn’t know either of them.

His first class was Advanced Placement Biology. While many of the seniors took light loads with lots of electives, or a “vocational” program that led them leave school early to work a part-time job, Carter’s schedule looked like a year of hard labor—AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP Calculus, and AP English and History, which would help him get into college and take care of some college credits, assuming he could handle the load and not have a nervous breakdown by Christmas.

Mr. Pluminowski—his long name leading to his more common nickname, Mr. Plum, or occasionally “Professor Plum”—handled the advanced science classes and also advised the school’s science club and coached the chess team. Carter had joined both of those, though he wasn’t particularly good at either chess or science.

Essentially the same group of kids were in all Carter’s classes, the ones he would find in the science club and chess team, the school’s hyperintelligent social rejects. Carter was an outsider among them, too, because he didn’t have a borderline genius IQ. He just worked hard, studied, and missed a lot of sleep. Each class also had a rotating share of preppy kids, who each took a couple of AP classes to get ready for college.

Victoria, it turned out, was only a junior, so they had no classes together. He didn’t see her until lunch, where she was sitting alone in a nook of the concrete courtyard. She waved, and he walked over to join her.

He walked past the concrete planters holding little palm trees at the center of the courtyard. Those were the domain of Jared and his group, who weren’t exactly popular enough to claim the picnic tables by the lawn, but they had an elevated spot to sit. The concrete lips of the planters were as wide as park benches.

Carter and his old friend Jared didn’t even look at each other. They barely noticed each other anymore. Jared had a group of his own, kids who dressed in concert t-shirts and ripped jeans and were known for their wild parties. Jared was now a senior, which made him a leader in that circle, mainly because most of its elders had already dropped out. The guys and girls around Jared were mostly sophomores and juniors, and they paid close attention and laughed when he talked. He still wore a ratty Joker cap.

Carter reached Victoria in the unclaimed nook she’d found for herself, where a locked steel door led into the band’s storage room. The nook offered a slice of shade from the hot sun overhead.

“Hi,” he said.

“Want to have lunch?” she asked, gesturing to the empty shady spot beside her. “I made reservations.”

“Nice lunchbox.” He sat down with her, enjoying the partial shade.

“It’s a benefit of the flea-market-and-thrift-store lifestyle.” Victoria opened a heavy metal lunch box that depicted the Fonz from Happy Days giving a thumbs-up while reclining against his motorcycle. “Fine vintage lunchboxes. We need to work on yours.” She pointed at his brown paper lunch bag. “I see you as a Flash Gordon, or possibly a Night Rider.”

“Yeah, I can’t let you be the only one in school who brings a lunch box,” he said.

“We could start a trend. Brown-bagging is bad for the environment.” She opened her lunch, stored in reusable plastic containers—carrot sticks and an apple.

“The brown-bag tree must be an endangered species by now,” Carter said.

“It is.” She unscrewed a thermos and poured a thin green liquid into the plastic cup.

“What are you drinking?”

“I can’t remember whether I packed Merlot or green tea this morning.” She sipped it. “It was green tea.”

“Is it gross?” Carter asked.

“It’s the second healthiest drink after water.” She held out the cup. “Try it.”

Carter sipped it. He thought it tasted bitter, and it clearly hadn’t been sweetened at all. He grimaced and returned the cup. “Yep, definitely gross. Good thing you have those...carrots to make your lunch exciting.”

“What gourmet dishes did you bring?” Victoria took his bag and brought out a sandwich in a plastic wrapper. “Watercress and brie?”

“Peanut butter and jelly. Grape jelly.” He took the sandwich from her.

“Three ingredients—bread, peanut butter, and jelly—and only one of them potentially healthy.”

“The jelly?” he guessed.

“And to cleanse the palate...Cool Ranch Doritos.” She brought out the blue aluminum-foil bag, which he snagged from her. She cocked an eyebrow as she peered into his bag. “And what complements peanut butter and Doritos? Is it a full-bodied red? A sweet white? No...a Mello freaking Yello.” She held up the can. “Is ‘Yello’ with no ‘w’ even a real color?”

“I think it refers to a specific greenish shade of yellow.”

“How do you even drink this stuff?”

“It’s the second healthiest drink after Mountain Dew.” Carter popped the can open. “Try it.”

She took a hesitant sip, then grimaced and passed it back to him, shaking her head.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

“You’re crazy.”

This led to a quiet truce while they ate.

“I was looking at your blog last night,” he said after a minute.

“Really? What did you think?” She smiled, looking a little nervous.

“Rusty playgrounds, burned-out houses, overgrown streets...”

“That’s what the Eye of Tori sees. Or what I saw back home.”

“The Eye of Tori sees a lot of desolate and depressing things.”

“It does.” She bit her lower lip for half a second, looking him in the eyes. “I was thinking about those missing kids.” The principal had mentioned Reeves and Kevin in the morning announcements, too.

“Yeah?”

“They’ve been missing for like a week, right? No sign of them?”

“That’s what people are saying.” Carter tore open his Doritos bag and offered her one, which she declined.

Victoria cleared her throat, then asked in a very careful tone: “Do you think maybe they went into the old amusement park, or somewhere around there?”

“Why would they do that?”

“It seems like it would be a huge temptation, wouldn’t it? I mean, I find the place tempting and fascinating, and I’m not as impulsive as a teenage boy. But I still want to go in there.”

“Maybe if they were from out of town,” Carter said. “Local kids wouldn’t go in there. It’s too...intense, if you have memories of it.”

“Would the police look there, though? Or would they say what you just said, that local kids would stay out?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll check. Look, I realize you want some cool pictures for your blog, but it’s not a good idea to go in there.” Carter shifted uncomfortably. His appetite was fading, though he’d only eaten half his lunch.

“It’s not just about me, Carter.” She scowled a little. “You can’t imagine that those kids would want to go exploring in there...but if they did it and they got hurt, nobody would ever find them. I know everybody’s used to trying to forget and to pretend that place isn’t there, but maybe that turns it into a kind of blind spot for the whole town...”

“They’ve probably checked there,” Carter said.

“How can we find out?”

“I don’t know. Those kids probably just ran away.”

“That’s what everyone else is saying.” Victoria shook her head. “‘They were delinquents, they just ran away.’ They’ve been gone a week. They brought nothing but their bikes and skateboards. So what did they do? Stay at a hotel? Join the merchant marines? They’re only thirteen and fifteen.”

The end-of-lunch bell rang, and Carter tossed the remains of his lunch into the trash. She shook her head and picked up her lunch box.

“How do you know so much about it, anyway?” he asked.

“I read the newspaper article. Look, why do you want to become a doctor?”

So if I’m ever surrounded by people screaming and dying again, I won’t just stand there clueless with no idea what to do about it. “I guess to help people.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” She smiled and gave him half a hug before going to class. “Think about those kids, okay?”

“Yep.” Carter watched her enter the cinderblock school, trying to figure out just how he felt about her. He definitely had no idea how she felt about him, if she felt anything at all.

Chapter Seven

The Science Club did not waste time. Their first meeting was on the first day of school, and they had to debate their group project for the year. David Huang wanted to study environmental effect on the beach as the old businesses along the Starwalk decayed. Sameer Upadhyay proposed a sociological study on the impact of the park disaster on the town. Emily Dorsnel suggested a parapsychological investigation of the park.

“I don’t understand,” Mr. Plum said, looking among them. He was a beanpole of a man with a thinning brown comb-over and cheap glasses. “Why so much interest in the old amusement park this year? Has something happened?”

“It’s the five-year anniversary,” said Wes McKinley, a pimply junior with bright red hair. “Simple-minded people find a kind of numerological significance at certain essentially random intervals.”

“Why do you say ‘simple-minded’?” Emily Dorsnel asked. She was a chunky senior with frizzy hair, a painfully prominent mole on her cheek, and a flawless academic record. “Five years since it happened. It’s on everyone’s minds.”

“Why is five more significant than four or six?” Wes McKinley asked her. “Because your astrologer says so?”

“I don’t believe in astrology,” Emily said.

“But you want to go ghost hunting in the park,” Wes snorted.

“That’s different. I want to do it scientifically,” she told him.

“I should point out that any access to the park would require special permission from the authorities,” Mr. Plum said. “Permission we can safely assume they will not provide.”

“Definitely not for ghost hunting,” Wes said. “If you want to do something that really matters, we should try to assess the risk of any additional sinkholes in the area. If we determine where it’s safe to build, it could revitalize at least some of the beach.”

“Wouldn’t the town have already done that study? Or the state? Or somebody?” David Huang asked.

“The town is run by a bunch of ignorant rednecks,” Wes said. “And so is the state.”

“Then we could try to determine why the biggest sinkhole in Florida opened here in the panhandle, instead of in central or south Florida like most of them,” Sameer added.

“What about you, Carter? Did you want to propose a project?” Mr. Plum asked.

“I’m okay with whatever,” Carter told him.

Later, as Carter started walking home, he happened to glance back over his shoulder and see the fresh graffiti on the back of a stop sign in front of the school. It was a crude shape in red paint, little more than a stick figure, but it had horns and gripped a pitchfork in one of its red stick arms.

Maybe there was some kind of renewed interest in the park stirring deep down in the small town’s subconscious. If so, Victoria had a point—maybe the missing kids had gone exploring in the park, even though it was taboo for locals. Maybe they were too young to understand.

With his phone’s browser, he located the small article in the Tallahassee newspaper that mentioned Reeves and Kevin. It was only a couple of paragraphs long, and he didn’t learn anything new from it, but a week was a long time for a couple of kids to be missing, even if they were known delinquents who might have run off intentionally.

He thought it over for a minute, then touched Victoria’s phone number in his contacts list.

“I’ll go,” he said when she answered. “We can at least walk around the outside fence and see if we find anything.”

“You know we can’t see much through the fence,” she told him.

“We aren’t going to break in—”

“Never mind,” she interrupted. “We can do whatever you want. Are you at home?”

“I’m still at school.”

“You got detention on your first day?”

“Worse. Science club meeting. Come pick me up before I change my mind.”

While he waited, pacing the sidewalk in front of the school, he felt himself beginning to shiver. He glanced at the devil graffiti again.

We’re not going inside, he reminded himself. If we see anything crazy, we’ll just call the police.

The sky was gray and overcast, which matched his mood as he watched Victoria’s little black Fiesta approach along the street. She smiled when he got in, but he couldn’t bring himself to return it. He sighed as he placed his heavy backpack between his feet.

“This is exciting!” she said as she drove away from the school. “Isn’t it?”

He shrugged. “We have to be quick. It looks like it’s going to rain. Plus we want to get out of there before dark.”

“Why? Is that when the ghosts come out?” A little smile played around her lips, and it annoyed him.

“Do you care at all about the missing kids, really?” he asked. “Or do you just want something exciting to post on your blog?”

“Of course I care.” She scowled at him. “You think I’m that shallow, don’t you?”

“I was just asking.”

“Sounded more like accusing.”

He sighed and looked out the window as they passed through the center of Conch City. There was no “downtown” area, just strip malls that had sprouted up along the Gulf Coast Highway, most of them half-vacant now.

They turned south off the highway and down Beachview Drive toward the ocean.

“We can’t park at Starland or the cops will see your car,” he said. He pointed at a crumbling pink motel on the beach. “Pull around and park behind the Fancy Flamingo Lodge.”

“You’re the tour guide,” she said.

They found a shaded spot in back of the old motel where her car wouldn’t be seen from the road. Victoria lifted her camera bag and a flashlight out of her back seat. She took a picture of a faded aluminum sign that read BEACH CLOSED.

“Nobody’s allowed on the beach, either?” she asked.

“There’s a public section at the east end,” Carter said. “Not many people go there, though. We don’t get many tourists anymore, and for those of us who live here...when you live by the beach, you don’t really think about going to the beach.”

“Because you can go anytime.”

“Pretty much.” He didn’t feel like explaining how sad the empty dunes were to people who remembered throngs of visitors in years past. Tropical storms had churned up and eaten away the big white beach, leaving only a brown strip of sand in its place.

As they hurried across Beachview Drive, Carter cast a worried look at the heavy gray clouds above.

“We need to finish up fast,” he told her.

“We’ll just look around and go. It’ll take less than an hour.”

“I was thinking less than ten minutes,” he said.

A knot of fear formed in his belly as he crossed the broad expanse of the Starland parking lot, where weeds jutted up through the cracked blacktop. Sand filled the concrete gutters around the perimeter of the lot, and would eventually bury the whole place, given enough time. The devil grinned at them over the fence as they crossed the open wasteland toward the overgrown front gate.

We are not going inside, he reminded himself, but he could feel Victoria’s determination to do exactly that.

When they reached the rotten castle towers of the front gate, she lifted a rust-speckled padlock in her hand.

“I’d say the police haven’t been here,” she said. “These locks and chains are old and rusty.”

“Not so rusty they wouldn’t work. I’m sure Chief Kilborne has a key.”

“Do you see any sign they’ve been inside?” Victoria crouched by the gate and ripped away a small patch of the thick vines. “I can see weeds growing on the other side. They don’t look like they’ve been trampled down.”

“The weeds around here are pretty tough. They spring right back.”

“Now you’re a botanist?” She stood up and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Kevin! Reeves! Are you guys in there? The whole town’s looking for you!”

Carter doubted that. Most of the students at his high school, anyway, seemed to have lost interest in the missing kids long before the day was over. He supposed his town might be more hardened to tragedy than most.

“We should check around the fence,” Victoria told him. “Maybe we can find where they went inside.”

“If they ever did.” Carter looked up at the thick clouds again. “Which I doubt.”

“We at least have to look.”

“And if we don’t find a hole in the fence, you’ll be satisfied, right?”

“They could have climbed over.”

“Even with barbed wire along the top?” Carter pointed.

“Maybe that’s how they got injured. Come on.” Victoria started walking along the fence, toward the high hill of the Log Drop jutting up over the vine-infested chain link.

They followed the fence into a stand of palm trees thick with undergrowth and insects, where the fence turned and continued on into a wooded area. Despite the buzzing cloud of mosquitoes and the swampy, muddy ground, Victoria plunged onward. Carter reluctantly followed, wondering how he had let the girl talk him into doing this.

Because you wanted to come here, a little voice said somewhere in his brain. You wanted to see it again for yourself.

Carter shook his head. He definitely did not want to go inside and see the destruction. He didn’t need to see that at all. The sinkhole’s ripple of destruction had already spread to engulf his life. He saw enough evidence of it every day.

“Somebody’s been here.” Victoria pointed. Carter couldn’t argue with her. A path of weeds stomped down into the mud led along the fence, deep into the wooded area beside the park.

The walk grew gloomy, between the palm trees overhead and the heavy shadows of the log ride and Crashdown Falls blotting out the low summer sun. Victoria clicked on her flashlight. If she hadn’t, she might not have noticed the glint of metal from the weeds ahead.

“What’s that?” she asked, veering to one side of the path they’d been following. Near a spot where large pipes jutted out of the ground, drooling dark water into a mostly dried creek bed, Victoria reached into the weeds and pulled up the handlebar of a bicycle. “You think it’s that kid’s bike?”

“Maybe...” With a sinking feeling, Carter helped stand the bicycle up on its wheels.

“There’s a skateboard, too.” Victoria picked it up from the patch of ground they’d exposed from under the bike.

“We should probably report them to the police,” Carter said.

“We can’t call them yet,” Victoria told him. “It’s inconclusive. We should keep looking. I bet the two kids went in through there.”

Carter felt disheartened as she stepped toward a low section of the chain-link that had been pulled free of its post, directly over a swampy puddle of water. He knew she wouldn’t stop now.

“This is it, Carter,” she said, squatting beside the fence and pulling it open.

“Let’s check.” He cupped his hands and shouted “Reeves! Kevin! Are you in there?”

He listened, but there was only silence inside the fence.

“I guess they’re not here,” he said.

“We should go inside and check,” Victoria said.

“Don’t say that.”

“Come on, they could be hurt or unconscious in there. Maybe they stumbled into the sinkhole.”

“If they did, they’re already dead. It’s a long way down.”

“Are you scared of this place?” she whispered.

“No. It’s just a bad place now. It used to be the happiest place in the world, and now it’s...exactly the opposite.”

“We’ll only go in for a minute.” Victoria took his arm and stared into his eyes. “Please?”

“I’m still going to stick with ‘no’ on that.”

“Is there no way I could change your mind?” She smiled, squeezing his arm a little tighter.

“It’s a really bad idea. We should get out of here, tell the police what we found, and that’s all.”

“Fine. Do what you want.” She unzipped a pouch on her bag and slipped out a small pair of wire-cutters, with which she began to snip along the top of the loose section of chain link.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m not crawling through that mud.”

“I told you, we’re not going in there.”

“You might not be going, but I am.” Victoria gritted her teeth as she cut through both a strand of the fence and a thick green vine tangled around it.

“You brought wire cutters? You were planning to break in, weren’t you?”

“I just thought they might be useful. And I was right.” She clipped through the next metal strand.

“You’re seriously doing this?” he asked.

“I seriously am.”

He watched her snarl as she sheared through another length of vine, another bit of fence.

“You should let me do that,” he said, squatting down beside her.

“Why?”

“You could hurt yourself.”

She snorted and kept cutting. When she’d cut all the way across the top of the loose piece, she packed away the wire cutters, wiped sweat from her forehead, and pushed aside the newly cut flap of fence. She hunched down, squatting on her heels, and ducked through the fence.

Inside, she stood, stretched, and adjusted the shoulder strap of the camera bag.

“You can’t go in there!” he said, still squatting outside the fence.

“I just did.” She looked up at the enormous leaky underbelly of Crashdown Falls, a simple waterfall ride in which a boat with fifteen people went up, around a curve, and right back down a steep water slide, getting soaked in the process. “It seems darker in here. Weird.”

“You can’t do it by yourself, either,” Carter said. “You don’t know your way around the park. You could get seriously lost. Or hurt.”

“Then you’d better come with me.” She gave him a long look, then turned around and walked deeper into the park.

“Wait!” Carter sighed as he ducked and crawled through the fence. She smiled as he joined her.

“I know you couldn’t resist a mystery,” she said.

“You’re a mystery.”

“Am I?” Her smile wavered before she looked away. “Let’s go.”

Victoria took snapshots of the old Crashdown Falls and Log Drop, both of them decrepit and filled with scummy dark water.

They followed a broken, uneven path from under the water rides and out toward a wider plaza. Carter remembered the ground shuddering beneath his feet, the pavement buckling and breaking into the jagged moonscape they were now crossing. They had to watch their step to avoid tripping on the uneven ground.

“This was Pirate Island,” he told her, pointing toward the overgrown pirate ship, still hanging from its axle high above. “That’s the Swingin’ Scalawag, over there are the bumper boats...”

She took pictures, then drifted over to check the ruins of a row of game booths.

“That’s Harpoon Lagoon. I was good at this.” Carter stepped to a booth with its front panel left open and one wall blackened by fire. The big fake harpoon gun was still mounted on the front counter. It creaked as he turned it toward the three cardboard cutouts hanging at the back of the booth—a whale, a shark, and a jaunty seahorse, each one with a hole through the center of its body. “You try to shoot a ball through one of the fish. Three shots for a dollar.”

“What did you win?”

“A plastic snake. Loved that thing.” Carter lined it up on the seahorse, the skinniest and most difficult target. He closed one eye, aimed the harpoon a few inches to the left of the hole—that was the critical part—and squeezed the trigger.

He jumped when the gun actually fired a softball with a hiss of compressed air. The ball sailed through the hole in the seahorse, through which it just barely fit, trailing string behind it like a harpoon.

When the ball reached the end of the string and the line went taut, a foghorn blew in an upper corner of the booth. Carter and Victoria both yelled in surprise.

“What the hell was that?” Victoria asked.

“The winner bell,” Carter said. “It must be automated.”

“You should have warned me!” She punched his arm. “That scared the crap out of me.”

“I didn’t even expect the gun to work.”

“I’m surprised anything still works here. Pose with the harpoon thing. Show me how proud you are of your kill.” She snapped a picture while he forced a grin. “What did you win, Carter?”

“One of those crocodiles, probably.” He pointed to three big plush crocodiles with happy grins, all of them filthy with mildew. “But technically, I didn’t pay a dollar first, so I don’t win the prize.”

“You’re so ethical.” She rolled her eyes.

They continued past the collapsed remains of Pinchy Pete’s Sandwich Stand, which had once looked like a big red crab, and on out to the midway. He thought he could smell faint traces of popcorn and cotton candy, as though the ruins had been permanently imbued with those aromas.

The midway looked just like Carter remembered from the day the sinkhole opened, the asphalt broken into chunks that had jutted up or sunken down, inviting you to break your leg if you walked too fast. A few wooden buildings along the center had collapsed into heaps.

“Look at that.” Victoria pointed past the row of rotting, vine-infested game booths—Bat Ball, Whack-A-Frog, Knock-’Em-Dead Bowling—toward a cheerful red popcorn cart on golden bicycle wheels, shaded by an umbrella striped red and white. While everything else in the park was rotten and falling down, the cart gleamed as if its glass windows and brass frame had been recently polished. Even the umbrella was spotless, its red and white stripes crisp and bright.

“What the hell?” Carter walked toward it.

The glass display window glowed with inviting yellow light, and it was filled with a mountain of golden popcorn. A big red scoop was shoved deep into the popcorn, its handle pointed out toward a small open window in the side. The smell of freshly-popped corn, dusted with salt and drizzled with butter, wafted out from the cart. Red and white striped paper bags were folded and stacked neatly on the little shelf by the open window.

“It smells so good,” Victoria whispered beside him, her chest brushing his arm, and he jumped a little. She gazed at the salty, buttery puffs inside. “I kind of have a weakness for popcorn. If it’s good popcorn, if it’s made just right...” She nudged past him and closed her eyes, leaning in toward the window and sniffing, and her lips broke into the first real smile he’d seen on her face. “That’s amazing.”

“It’s insane,” he said, though his mouth was watering and his stomach rumbled. It had been hours since he’d eaten. “We can’t eat this. It must be so old...”

“It’s fresh,” she whispered. She opened her eyes and looked at the stack of popcorn bags, neatly folded and ready to be used.

“We aren’t going to eat it.” He touched her arm. “Victoria?”

“Huh?” She blinked as she looked up at him.

“We aren’t eating this.”

“Oh, yeah, of course...” Her voice had a disappointed tone, and she looked back longingly at the popcorn.

“I wonder who did this. Those kids?” Carter looked around the ruined, overgrown midway.

“What kids?” Victoria’s brow furrowed as she stared at the popcorn. “Oh, yeah, the kids. They must be living in the park, surviving off preservative-filled candy and delicious...popcorn...”

“Reeves! Kevin!” Carter shouted. “Are you guys here?”

Victoria jumped when he yelled, and she blinked a few times, as though he’d startled her out of a trance. She raised her camera and took pictures of the popcorn cart. Then she shouted, “You guys, are you okay? Come out if you can hear us.”

They listened carefully, but no voices answered them.

“Do you hear that?” Victoria whispered, but he shook his head. She pointed up along the midway. “Listen.”

Carter concentrated. He thought he did hear something in the distance, very faint little beeps and blats.

“Something like a video game?” he whispered.

“Yeah. Little lasers and explosions.”

“It has to be coming from Space City. There’s a big arcade there, and Martian laser tag.” He started up the midway.

“But it wouldn’t have electricity, would it?” she asked.

“I didn’t expect Harpoon Lagoon to work, either. Maybe they brought a generator.” Carter stopped walking. “Or maybe it’s not those two kids.”

“Who would it be, then?”

“Any crazy person who might have drifted down to Florida—they do that, you know, crazy people drift down here from all over the country. One of them might decide to live in a condemned amusement park. Maybe we’re not hearing the kids, but the psycho who killed them when they snuck in here. Did you ever think of that?”

“Of course I did,” Victoria said. “That’s why I needed you to come with me.”

“So I can get psycho-killed first?”

“You would die protecting me? That’s so sweet. Come on.” She started up the midway, and he walked along beside her.

The midway ended at a square central plaza with a wishing well and a few benches shaded by palm trees, all of it overgrown by thick vines. Colorful arrow signs pointing in different directions: TYKE TOWN, MERRY-GO-ROUND, FOOL’S GOLD....Victoria looked along the black arrow painted HAUNTED ALLEY in faded green ghost-letters. Dark Mansion was straight ahead of them, its waiting area full of fake gravestones. Inferno Mountain loomed behind it, the devil face grinning down at them over the peaked dormers and collapsing turrets of Dark Mansion.

“Is it just me,” Victoria whispered, “Or does it always seem like the devil is looking right at you?”

“It always seems like that.”

She looked in the opposite direction, along the weed-choked MERRY-GO-ROUND path, which was shattered into pebbles and sloped downward toward a large open valley, empty except for chunks of the roller coaster tracks visible on the far side. A row of decaying sawhorses wrapped in faded yellow police tape sat across the sloping path.

“Is that it?” Victoria whispered.

“That’s the sinkhole. We really need to not go over there.”

“I just want a closer look.” She started down the sloping path with her camera in front of her. The pulverized asphalt crunched like loose black gravel beneath her old sneakers.

“Be careful.” Carter walked a few feet behind her. The shattered path felt unstable beneath his feet, and it grew steeper as it approached the sinkhole.

“Look at that,” Victoria whispered, leaning over a sawhorse toward the darkness beyond. Carter reluctantly stepped up to join her.

The sinkhole was a broad, black pit fifty feet across, and they couldn’t see far into its depths under the gloomy late-afternoon clouds. Pebble-sized bits of asphalt rolled from under their feet and tumbled away into the open hole, making no sound after they fell inside, no echoing impact from the bottom. The air around the sinkhole felt much colder.

“I didn’t realize it was so big,” she said.

“Big enough to swallow a merry-go-round.” Carter felt a growing fear inside him as he gazed into the sinkhole, which seemed to go down and down forever. He glanced around the edges of the pit, where more sawhorses with yellow tape were scattered in a very loose ring with several wide gaps. “It looks like some of these things have fallen in. The sinkhole could still be growing.”

“It’s so creepy. Do you hear that?” She leaned her head a little farther over the sawhorse, listening. This close to the ocean, the breeze was almost constant. As it passed over the mouth of the dark chasm, it made a sound like a soft, endless sigh.

She took pictures of the sinkhole, though Carter didn’t know what there was to see except darkness. Then a voice shouted, startling them both.

“That’s two hits, Kevin! You’re going down, Beefball!”

The voice didn’t come from the open pit but from somewhere behind them, mechanically amplified into a booming shout.

Carter and Victoria looked at each other. “Kevin” was the name of one of the missing kids, the fat one.

They turned and dashed up the path, with little spills of pulverized asphalt sliding away beneath their shoes. Video-game sound effects echoed ahead, with lots of digital explosions and high-pitched laser fire.

It was easy to follow the sounds to the Space City attraction called Mad Martian Arcade, a sprawling place covered in fake red rock. One black-tinted entrance door was shattered and its black glass lay all over the ground.

Through the door, they glimpsed the wreckage of the old video arcade, with plastic seats shaped like motorcycles and race cars facing large, cracked video screens. Carter had been carrying the flashlight so Victoria could focus on taking pictures, but he didn’t need it to see inside the arcade. A red strobe light pulsed at the cave-like entrance to the laser tag game—clearly identified by the glowing red neon sign above it: MARTIAN TAG.

More laser sound effects thundered around them, along with the heavy breathing of an out-of-shape kid trying to run. The sounds and voices weren’t coming from inside the arcade, but from outdoor speakers mounted around the outside of the arcade, as though to advertise the laser tag game to the whole park.

“I killed you! You’re dead!” shouted the boy’s voice they’d heard earlier.

“No...you’re dead!” answered the labored, panting voice of another boy.

Carter and Victoria looked at each other again, and then a wrenching, rusty squeal echoed across the park. It wasn’t coming from the speakers.

“Over there,” Victoria whispered. She led the way toward the American Rockets ride, its high central tower just a black shadow outlined against the deep gray clouds above. The day had grown very dark.

The four rocket cars had been stuck at the top, but now the black shape of one rocket was sliding down the tower, giving off an ear-puncturing rusty squeal as it descended. It picked up speed as it rushed toward the ground, and the squeal grew louder. The entire support tower rocked forward with it. Victoria snapped pictures.

“Watch out!” Carter took her shoulders and drew her back from the swaying tower, which seemed ready to topple over.

“It looks like there’s something hanging from it,” she whispered.

The rocket car squealed its way down. Rather than braking and slowing as it approached the ground, it picked up speed until it crashed right into the base of the tower. The tower swayed with a metallic echo, then grew still.

Carter and Victoria made their way around the tower to see the crashed car. Her hand clutched his forearm.

Carter aimed the flashlight directly at the front of the rocket, and they both screamed.

Two bodies were mounted on the front of the car, their arms splayed out and bolted to the upper rocket shell as if they’d been crucified. They were smeared with dark filth and mud from head to toe, but they were clearly young teenage boys. One was short and wide.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” Victoria whispered.

Carter took a careful step forward and reached out toward one of the bodies.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Just checking.” Carter wanted to know whether he needed to call an ambulance. He touched one of the dangling legs, then recoiled. It was stiff and cold. He looked up and pointed at the kid’s face. “What is that?”

Victoria stood beside him and followed his gaze. The fat kid, Kevin, was blindfolded with a long strip of dirty white satin tied into a bow over his eyes.

“Somebody wrapped him like a present,” Victoria whispered. She snapped a picture without even looking through her camera to line up the shot, as though it were an automatic reflex.

The voices boomed over the arcade’s outdoor speakers again:

“You’re so dead, Kevin! Just admit it!” a kid’s voice shrieked.

“We’re both dead,” the other voice panted back.

“How are they still talking in there?” Carter whispered.

“It must be a recording...” Victoria’s eyes widened, and he was pretty sure they were both thinking the same thing. Someone must have recorded the two kids, then killed them, then bolted them to the front of the rocket car. That person must now be inside the arcade, playing the recording over the outdoor sound system, as if he knew Carter and Victoria were here and wanted to attract their attention. “We have to get the hell out of here,” she whispered.

“No kidding.” Carter took her hand as they jogged as fast as they could over the broken, sharply uneven pavement of the midway. He kept glancing back, expecting the psycho killer to emerge from the arcade.

Maybe he’s not even in there, Carter thought. He could have just played the recording and left...he could be anywhere.

He glanced up at the Dark Mansion and the enormous grinning devil face of Inferno Mountain. He half-expected the devil’s eyes to light up and laughter to boom out of its open jaws, but none of that happened.

They hurried past collapsed and burned buildings, and it wasn’t hard to imagine a crazed killer lurking in the shadows with a sharp knife, or a gun, or a chainsaw.

They turned off the midway into Pirate Island, past the collapsed crab shack and Harpoon Lagoon. The shadows under the water rides were almost pitch black now, and the mud was slippery. Someone could easily be watching them, perhaps hidden behind one of the heavy support columns, or merely standing against it, invisible in the deep gloom.

Their feet slipped and slid in the mud as they ran, and they finally stumbled against the fence. They searched along the chain-link in the darkness, trying to find the hole where they’d come in.

It’s gone, Carter thought wildly. He sealed it up somehow, or maybe it just closed itself up and trapped us inside...

Then they found the loose flap of chain-link Victoria had cut open. While she crawled through the mud, Carter watched back over his shoulder, expecting someone to emerge from the dark, grab him, maybe cut his throat before he had time to react. Whoever had killed the kids and mounted up their bodies was clearly a sick, twisted individual.

When Victoria was on the other side, he passed her the flashlight, then crawled out on his hands and knees, expecting someone to seize his foot from behind. Instead, Victoria seized him under the arm—she was already standing, and she helped him to his feet.

They stomped through the overgrown, swampy woods, and Carter cursed when he remembered how far they still had to go before they reached her car.

They reached the open expanse of the parking lot and broke into a run. He glanced back to see if anyone was following them, but only saw the dark shape of the devil’s face, its horns outlined against the gloomy sky.

They ran across the road to the Fancy Flamingo Lodge. Victoria’s car keys slipped in her wet, muddy hands, but she managed to press the remote button on the key fob. At the moment, Carter could imagine no sound more lovely than the little thunks of the car doors unlocking.

They scrambled inside. Victoria’s trembling hand inserted the ignition key, and she had to turn it twice with her slippery fingers before the engine grumbled to life.

In her hurry to escape, she peeled out across the motel parking lot, leaving a smoking tire track. She punched the accelerator as they reached Beachview Drive, not even pausing to check for oncoming cars.

She sped away, pushing the little Fiesta as fast as it would go. Carter glanced back at the broken ruins of the retreating amusement park, but he didn’t see anyone chasing after them. It definitely felt like someone was watching, though.

In his mind, he could hear the devil’s laughter, but there was nothing unusual about that. He heard it every time he thought of Starland.

Chapter Eight

“What do we do?” Victoria asked. She turned down her stereo, since the loud proto-surf sound of The Ventures did not exactly fit their panicked mood.

“We have to go to the police.” Carter’s heart was still thumping fast as they turned onto Gulf Coast Highway, where most of the strip-mall town of Conch City was located. Night had fallen, and the street was lit by glowing signs offering fast food and liquor.

“Didn’t you say we’d get in a lot of trouble for going into the park?” she asked.

“This is too important. Some kind of psycho freak is hanging out in there, killing kids.”

Victoria nodded, taking a deep breath. “Of course. This is all just so bizarre.”

He directed her to the low brick strip mall housing the municipal complex with the police, fire, and water departments. They parked in front of the police station and waited a moment. Things would get crazy once they stepped inside and told their story.

“Thanks for coming with me.” Victoria spoke quietly. “If I’d gone in there without you, I might be dead right now.”

“Would you have gone without me?”

“Yes. But what would have happened if I did?” She rubbed her forehead, smearing mud into her hair. “Why was I so obsessed?”

“You were right,” he said. “The kids were in there.”

“I’m freaking out right now, Carter.”

He took her trembling hand with his own trembling hand.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

They climbed out of the car and trudged toward the brightly lit plate glass door of the police station. He held open the door for her.

“Oh, my goodness,” said the middle-aged policewoman eating an apple behind the front desk. “What happened to y’all?”

“We found them.” Carter pointed to the MISSING flier on the bulletin board with the pictures of the missing kids. “Kevin Gordy and Reeves Mayweather. They’re both dead.”

The middle-aged policewoman raised an eyebrow at them and bit into her apple. “Well, my goodness,” she said through a mouthful of juicy mush.

Minutes later, Carter and Victoria sat in the office of Police Chief Jud Kilborne, who spoke with a heavy South Alabama accent. His hair was graying, and he regarded them across his desk with frost-blue eyes. A frown seemed permanently carved into his face. Carter remembered that the chief had lost his own son in the disaster—the kid had been elementary age, around seven or eight years old.

The police chief looked between the muddy teenagers currently ruining the chairs in his office.

“I recognize you,” he said to Carter. “You’re Henry Roanoke’s boy, aren’t you? Used to run the Eight-Track.”

“Yes, sir,” Carter said. He couldn’t help shivering a little at the thought of confessing that he’d broken the town’s largest taboo, going into the old park.

“Don’t recognize you, ma’am,” the chief said to Victoria.

“I’m Victoria Samaris.”

“You from out of town?”

“My dad just moved us here. He’s the chief administrator at Cypress Lane Long-Term Care.”

Kilborne nodded. “Now, Bertie tells me you two have some information about them missing kids?”

“Yes, sir,” Carter said. “We...found their bodies.”

“Where?”

Carter gulped, readying himself for the chief’s angry response.

“In Starland.” Carter’s voice was just slightly louder than a whisper.

“I couldn’t hear you there,” Chief Kilborne said.

“We found them in Starland,” he repeated, a little bit louder.

Kilborne stared, his mouth a flat hard line. By his silence, Carter knew the man had heard him correctly.

“How did y’all come to be there?” the police chief asked.

“We were looking for the kids.”

“We thought they might have snuck in there,” Victoria added.

“And what gave you that idea?” Kilborne’s eyes narrowed. They hadn’t moved from Carter’s face, and he had a feeling the man wanted to pound his face until he bled.

“Everybody’s been talking about the park at school,” Carter said, which was only a little bit of an exaggeration. “It just seemed like a possibility.”

“And instead of coming to the authorities with this idea, you decided to break into the park yourselves. Trespassing into that park is something we take seriously around here.” His sharp blue eyes watched Victoria while he raised a Styrofoam cup from his desk, spat a little stream of brown chewing-tobacco juice into it, and set the cup down again. She glanced at the crumpled, spit-stained napkin inside it, and her nose wrinkled for a second.

“But the point is, we found those kids, and there’s some kind of psycho in the park—” Victoria began.

“I’ll decide what the point is here, ma’am,” Kilborne said. “If you’re witnesses to something, I want to know how you came to be there. Especially in a place where’s nobody’s allowed.” His cold gaze shifted back to Carter. “Local boy like you already understands that.”

“Yes, sir.” Carter nodded.

“Why does this even matter?” Victoria, clearly feeling impatient, brought out the camera from her bag and turned it on, calling up the last picture she’d taken. She held it out to Kilborne. “Look!”

The police chief’s eye shifted to the display screen on her camera.

“Why the hell you showing me that?” he asked.

“Because...” Victoria gaped at him, at a loss for words. She turned the display screen back toward herself. Her brow furrowed, and she shook her head. Carter leaned over to look.

Two figures were tacked to the front of the American Rockets car, their wrists bolted into place as if they’d been crucified: a blue horse wearing a feathered headdress, its face striped with war paint, and a pig wearing a ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots. A white satin bow was tied over the pig’s eyes like a blindfold.

“What are those?” Victoria whispered.

“Shoot-Em-Up Puppets.” Carter and the police chief said it at the same time, in the same quiet voice.

“I don’t understand.” Victoria flipped back through the last several pictures, but they only showed the crumbling red-rock sprawl of the arcade and the deep emptiness of the sinkhole itself. “We saw them. Right?”

“We did,” Carter said. “I don’t know how the picture changed. We didn’t see those puppets at all. We saw the kids.”

The police chief looked between them, analyzing them with his hard blue eyes, his jaw flexing under his cheek. He raised his Styrofoam cup and spat more brown juice.

“What drugs are you kids on?” he finally asked.

“Nothing , sir,” Carter said. His heart was racing, and the room suddenly seemed much too small and hot.

“You been drinking?”

“No. We really did see those kids—”

“Maybe you ought to step out for a second, Miss Samaris,” Kilborne said, his eyes on Carter.

“It’s not his fault,” Victoria said. “I was the one who insisted we go there—”

“You’d best leave,” Kilborne told her.

“It’s okay, Victoria.” Carter nodded at her, trying not to look as scared as he felt. “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“He’s sure,” the chief told her.

Victoria frowned and looked at Carter again, and he nodded.

“I’ll be right outside,” she said as she left.

The chief stared at him for a long time, saying nothing, which only made him more and more uneasy. He could hear the round institutional clock on the wall ticking off the seconds. He felt sweaty and hot.

“You lose anybody at the park?” Kilborne finally asked, and Carter knew he meant the disaster five years earlier.

“Friends from school.”

“Is that right? Any family?”

“No, sir.”

“I lost my boy, Michael. Seven years old. But you probably knew that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When I catch some out-of-towners nosing around without permission, I fine ‘em for every penny I can get. When I catch local kids doing the same thing, I flay and quarter them. You probably knew that, too.”

Carter nodded.

“Speak up,” Kilborne said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m ready to do the same to you. Her, I just about understand—she just moved down from the North, from the big city, she’s bored and wants to poke around. You should know better, even if the pretty new girl in town says she wants to go and see it.” He spat more brown juice. “Problem is that girl out there. The pictures are on her camera. I can’t exactly nail your ass to the wall without doing the same to her, can I? And lucky for her, her daddy is heading up that big new nursing home out on Cypress, which is the first new business to come to town in years. I don’t care to pay him a big ‘welcome to town, here’s your daughter in handcuffs’ kind of visit. You understand that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So here’s what’s going to happen. I’m letting her go, and what you’re going to do is volunteer for the real search party.”

“The real one?”

“If you really gave a damn about those kids, you’d know we started up civilian search parties yesterday. You’re volunteering, Carter.”

“I’ve got school—”

“If you got time to poke around out on Death Row, then you got time to help out your town,” Kilborne said. “We need a few more warm bodies. You’d think we’d have more, all these unemployed people just sitting around.”

“For how long?” Carter asked.

“You’re going to help until those two little delinquents finally turn up. Otherwise, I arrest you for breaking and entering, criminal trespassing, vandalism, and whatever the hell else I feel like piling on top of all that. You want to agree to what I’m telling you to do right now.”

“Yes, sir. Okay, I’ll do it.”

“I’d better not smell a whiff of trouble from you again, or I’ll bring the boot down on your ass, boy. Nobody goes inside Starland without my permission. Ever.” He regarded Carter for a moment longer, then waved him away. “Bertie has the volunteer sign-up sheet out front.”

“Yes, sir.” Carter eased up from his chair and walked out the door. Victoria sat on the front edge of a bench outside it, her knees bouncing nervously while she stared at the display screen on her camera. She looked up, and Carter gestured for her to follow him.

“What’s going on?” she whispered, walking close beside him.

“It’s not so bad. I have to volunteer for the search parties and help look for those kids.”

“But we know where they are.”

“Why would he believe us?” Carter stopped at the front desk and signed up to volunteer. “Let’s get out of here.”

Outside, they climbed into Victoria’s car, but she made no move to slide her key into the ignition. She kept staring at the display on the back of her camera, swiping her fingers to shuffle through the images, her knees bouncing crazily inside her muddy black jeans.

“We should probably go,” he said after a minute.

“The more I think about it, the less sense it makes. Look at this.” She showed him the pictures she’d snapped of the cheery red popcorn cart. All three images showed what appeared to be the same cart, except it was dark inside rather than glowing with an inviting buttery light. The brass wheels and frame were filthy and tarnished instead of gleaming, and the red paint on the body was water-stained and flaking. A spiderweb crack split the dirty display window. Instead of a mountain of golden popcorn, the interior contained only a thin black crust at the bottom.

“That changed, too?” Carter watched her flip through them again. “You were going to eat that.”

“I was not!” Victoria frowned, shaking her head. Her knees were bouncing so fast he was tempted to grab them and make them stop. “This isn’t possible, Carter. My camera was with me all the time. Nobody could have changed these pictures.”

“Unless it was you,” Carter said. “Maybe you’re screwing with me.”

“Why would I do that?” She scowled at him.

“Maybe you’re crazy. Maybe you’re just bored.”

“I didn’t, Carter.” She looked him in the eyes. She looked so lost and scared that it was hard not to believe her. “I mean it. I swear to God. I have no idea what’s happening here.”

“If you didn’t change the pictures, then what’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” She stared at the damaged, weathered popcorn cart. “You don’t think...”

“What?”

“What if it’s something, like...unnatural?” she whispered. “What if that place is haunted?”

Carter looked at her for a minute, then noticed the uniformed officer staring out at them through the plate-glass door.

“We’d better get moving,” he said.

Shivering, Victoria nodded and started up her car.

Chapter Nine

Victoria tried to sleep that night, but she still wasn’t comfortable in her new house, located only a couple of miles from the old amusement park where she’d just seen horrible and inexplicable things. She couldn’t even close her eyes without seeing the two dead kids bolted to the front of the rocket.

She uploaded the amusement park pictures to her desktop and stayed up late going through them again and again. Most of the pictures were just as they should have been—the ruins of the water rides, the dilapidated midway with the collapsed buildings.

She flipped among the popcorn cart pictures, bewildered at how she’d seen, smelled, and practically tasted the popcorn. How could it have been any kind of mirage or illusion? She studied the objects in the pictures carefully, but didn’t see any sign that the image had been altered. She’d been a serious photographer since she was eleven and tampered with enough pictures of her own to know the tricks.

It wasn’t possible that anyone had messed with her camera, anyway. It had never been out of her sight.

She went back to the truly scary picture, the one of a plush horse and pig crucified on the rocket car. No matter how long she stared at it, the picture refused to change to what it should have been, a pair of dead boys caked in mud. There hadn’t even been fresh blood where their wrists were bolted to the front of the rocket. They might have been dead for days.

She tried to imagine why anyone would have done all of this—killing the kids, mounting them up like that, playing their recorded voices over the outdoor speakers (which meant somehow bringing in electricity), and then, impossibly, altering the images on Victoria’s camera. She turned it around and around in her mind, but nothing added up. No rational explanation began to form.

Uploading the pictures online, with the story of what had happened, might bring some useful comments from her photography forums and groups, but it didn’t feel right to do that yet. People would just call her crazy, anyway.

She clicked back and forth on the popcorn-cart pictures, scrutinizing them on the twenty-four inch monitor she used for photo editing. It was hard to believe she’d seen the black moldy grit coating the bottom as something appealing and snackable.

A new thought seized her, and her first reaction was to grab the phone and text Carter: Call me if you’re awake. It was one-thirty in the morning, but she doubted he was sleeping well after what they’d seen.

He called a few seconds later.

“Maybe they’re not dead,” Victoria said when she answered.

“Who?” Carter didn’t sound sleepy at all.

“You know. Kevin and Reeves.”

“We saw them, Victoria. They looked dead to me.”

“The popcorn looked real, too. Do you think it was? Or do you think my camera was right, and the cart is old and rotten?”

“I would think...the cart is really old and broken down, like everything else.”

“So our eyes were being fooled, but not my camera,” Victoria said. “If that’s true, then we didn’t really see the kids’ bodies, either. That would have been an illusion, too, right?”

Carter was quiet for a minute while he thought it over. Victoria looked again at the two puppets on the rocket.

“I see what you mean,” he said.

“So if we were really looking at puppets and not dead kids, then—”

“Maybe they’re not dead, like you said. Then where are they?”

“They could be in the park somewhere. I don’t know,” Victoria said.

“And what created the illusions in the first place?”

“I definitely don’t know that. I’m just saying, what if they’re still alive? Maybe the psycho in the park has them captured or something.”

“If there is a psycho in the park,” Carter said. “Maybe we were just hallucinating all of it...”

“You don’t really believe we were both having the same hallucination at the same time for no reason, do you?”

“Then what should I believe?” he asked.

“Maybe it’s...” Victoria wasn’t sure how best to say what she was thinking. “Could it be something supernatural? Are there any ghost stories about the park?”

She waited through another long pause, wondering how Carter would react. He finally let out a kind of sigh.

“Not really,” he said. “But I know who to ask about it. We can find out tomorrow.”

“Good. Carter...I’m sorry this insanity is happening.”

“Me, too. How are you feeling?”

Victoria smiled. Her first impression of the boy was continuing to hold—that he was a nice, honest, trustworthy kind of small-town kid. Reasonably cute, too, if things happened to go that way, but she had too much on her mind already.

“I’m okay. What about you?” she asked.

“Can’t sleep, but I already have a lot of homework, so that works out. These AP classes don’t waste time.”

“I see those two kids nailed to that ride every time I close my eyes,” she whispered.

“So do I. It will fade over time, though. Trust me.”

“But we have to figure out what’s happening, right?” she asked.

“Do we really have to?”

“At least until we know about those kids...”

“Those kids.” He blew out a long puff of air. “Yeah, at least until then.”

“Thanks, Carter.”

After their conversation, Victoria resumed flipping through the pictures of the old amusement park, the padlocked and faded game booths, the burned and collapsed wooden buildings of the midway, the bumper boats in their stagnant pond thick with cattails.

The echoes of life were everywhere, in the faded colors and circus characters painted on the food stands, the immense rusting weight of the waterfall ride, the ruins of the roller coaster shaggy with thorny vines. It wasn’t hard to imagine the park when it was alive, crammed full of excited children and other tourists, eager to win a stuffed bear or ride a rocket into the sky.

That same feeling, the invisible echoes of lost memories in a place where life had once thrived, permeated her pictures of Detroit—lavish mansions and soaring downtown architecture done in extravagant Deco and Beaux Arts styles, built in the feverish early twentieth century when the city was dizzy with its own wealth, all of it abandoned now and left to crumble and rot. She’d photographed everything from empty movie palaces to luxurious train stations that had been intended to rival Grand Central in New York City, towering more than ten stories high and fronted with Corinthian columns and elaborate sculptures, now standing hollow and empty like the temples of forgotten gods.

The emptiness and decay had eaten into neighborhoods across the city. Victoria had won a Young Michigan Photographers Award for a black and white image of an everyday street in Corkdown, a long view of crumbling, empty shops sealed with plywood. Their faded signs indicated they had once included a pharmacy, a deli, and a newsstand. A stray cat had sat on an old bench in the foreground, watching her. Its left eye was missing, and that side of its face was scarred and twisted into a permanent sneer. The right side of its face had stared stoically at the camera.

The old amusement park—Starland Amusement Park, she reminded herself, not Inferno Park as the news had reported at the time—was like Detroit on a small scale, but with high emotional energy packed into every square inch. She could feel the anticipation, excitement, fear, and joy of moments long faded, but still echoing.

In Detroit, she’d developed her search for the lost magic, the fragments of the past that marked where great emotion had once been felt, where lives had once been lived. In the roadside amusement park in the nearly forgotten tourist-trap town, she might have stumbled into some kind of real magic, of a dark and dangerous kind.

She looked at the devil on her screen, a look of mirth on its face as its grinning jaw stretched open around the black steel rails. It watched her over the sharp peaks of rotten dormers and a cracked turret on the Dark Mansion house in front of it. Though it was only a digital picture and not the life-size sculpture, its eyes seemed to follow her.

“What’s your secret?” she whispered to the devil. “I want to know.”

The devil kept smiling.

Chapter Ten

Carter arrived at AP Biology the next morning completely exhausted from lack of sleep, though he’d made some ultra-strong coffee at home. Now that it was daylight, he felt certain he could finally sleep, but instead he was taking notes on genetic inheritance and natural selection.

When the bell rang, Mr. Pluminowski walked out to the hall for monitor duty, but most of the nine kids in AP Biology stayed where they were, waiting for AP Chemistry in the same room. Among them were Carter and Emily Dorsnel, who absently scratched her nose while glancing through the chemistry textbook, a bored look on her face.

Carter, feeling nervous, walked across two rows to hers.

“Hey, Emily?” he asked.

“Huh?” She looked up at him, startled.

“You were talking yesterday about parapsychology and looking for ghosts in the amusement park.”

“A more precise term would be ‘discarnate energy entities,’” she said, blinking her eyes rapidly. “But yes.”

“Oh, this again?” Wes McKinley spoke up from his desk in the front row, smirking at them.

“I think Mr. Plum shot that idea down fairly roundly,” David Huang added.

“I don’t remember inviting you guys into our conversation,” Carter said.

“You invited us the instant you hoisted the brown flag of stupidity,” Wes snorted, and Sameer laughed and shook his head.

“Forget them,” Carter said. “Do you really think it’s haunted?”

“I wouldn’t know, as I haven’t collected any raw data yet, nor has anyone else,” Emily said. “I think that the sudden tragedy in such an emotionally loaded environment would make paranormal activity very probable.”

“How would you collect data?”

“Audio and video recordings, ideally with both analog and digital equipment, thermal imaging, electromagnetic field meters—”

“Don’t forget crystal balls and Tarot cards,” Wes snickered.

“Do you actually have any of that stuff?” Carter asked.

“Just a video camera. And infrared binoculars. And an EMF meter. But that’s all.”

“You can’t go into the amusement park,” David Huang said. “You’ll get arrested.”

“Who said I was going there?” Carter asked. Mr. Pluminowski returned to the room, and Carter whispered to Emily, “Can we talk at lunch?”

“Sure!” She gave him a smile.

“The superstitious leading the clueless.” Wes rolled his eyes.

“What’s that?” Mr. Pluminowski asked as he stepped behind his desk.

“Nothing. Just Emily’s parapsychology nonsense,” Wes said.

“Perhaps the most intriguing of the pseudosciences,” Pluminowski said. “Now, however, we must discuss the far more fascinating world of stoichiometry, in which we study the proportions of reactants and products in particular reactions...You’ve all surely read chapter five by now, so that will be our jumping-off point...” He approached the whiteboard, marker in hand, and Carter struggled to keep his eyes open.

Carter survived all the way to lunch break. He stood in the cafeteria and waited for Emily Dorsnel to walk out of the lunch line, carrying a disposable tray with a rectangle of pizza, tater tots, and a small heap of creamed corn, or what the posters in the cafeteria called “A Healthy, Balanced Meal!”

“Hey, Emily,” he said, approaching her. “Do you want come sit with us?”

“Who’s ‘us’?”

“Just me and Victoria. We need to talk to you.”

“Who’s Victoria?”

“She just moved here.”

Emily frowned but followed him to the nook by the band storage door. Carter let her have the shady spot and instead sat on the outer edge of the doorway, in the relentless sunlight. Victoria smiled and introduced herself as Emily sat down.

“Where’d you move from?” Emily asked.

“Michigan. Did you grow up here?”

“Yep. Unfortunately. I like your Fonzie box.”

“Thanks! Carter said you might know some ghost stories about the old amusement park. We want to hear anything you might have heard.”

“I don’t think there are any such stories,” Emily said. “It usually takes a lot longer for ghost lore to build up. Usually people who actually knew the dead don’t want to think of them as restless and spooky spirits.”

“Emily’s like the expert parapsychologist in town, though,” Carter said to Victoria.

“I don’t know if I’m an expert. It’s more of an avocation. In this town, however, I think I’m the only one, so by default, maybe...” Emily shrugged. She wore a baggy t-shirt depicting the Nintendo character Yoshi.

“So you know more than anybody else,” Victoria said.

“There isn’t much to know. The park would be a promising site for paranormal investigation, but unfortunately it’s closed to the public,” Emily said. “With the sinkhole there, that’s not likely to change.”

“Listen, you can’t tell anyone what I’m about to say, you promise?” Carter asked. Emily nodded. “We went inside, Victoria and me. We took pictures, and we saw a few strange things.”

“You snuck in?” Emily gaped. “What did you see? What did you hear? You have to tell me!”

“I’ll skip to the weird part.” Victoria brought out her camera and showed her the popcorn cart.

“I don’t see anything. Is that the Whack-A-Frog back there? Everything’s so destroyed now, it’s sad...” Emily mumbled.

“When we took that picture, the cart looked brand new, and it was full of fresh popcorn,” Carter said.

“We could smell it,” Victoria added.

“Smell it?” Emily frowned and scratched wax from her ear. Rolling it between her fingers, she said, “It could be a time slip. Sights and sounds from a location’s past, experienced as though they were in the present. Commonly reported in haunted commercial areas such as hotels and, yes, amusement parks.”

“That could explain it, but there’s something else,” Carter said. Victoria flipped forward to the crucified puppets and showed them to her.

“That’s...bizarre. I still don’t see anything paranormal here,” Emily said.

“When we saw them, when she took that picture, they weren’t Shoot-Em-Up Puppets,” Carter said. “They were Reeves Mayweather and Kevin Gordy, those missing middle school kids.”

“They were dead,” Victoria said. “They were cold and stiff. They looked like they’d been dragged through mud. Then I tried to show the picture to the police, and...”

“And now the police think we’re insane,” Carter finished.

“I can see where they’re coming from,” Emily said, studying the picture. “It looks as if you simply broke into the park, mangled some stuffed animals, and took pictures.”

“We didn’t, though,” Victoria said.

“Are you telling me the truth?” Emily asked, looking between them. “Are you playing a joke on me or something?”

“I wish we were,” Carter said. “We didn’t know who else to ask for help.”

Emily sighed. “The most common type of haunting is like a recording that plays over and over again. The second most common type is a spirit obsessed with people and places they knew in life. In either case, the most evidence you can reasonably expect is a photograph of a strange orb or light, a recording of a voice or an odd sequence of sounds, or in rare cases an actual apparition. This doesn’t fit with either type of haunting.”

“Is there a third type?” Victoria asked.

“The third type is extremely rare, and frankly I hope you’re both screwing with me at this point,” Emily said. “What you’re describing isn’t typical evidence of paranormal activity. What you’re describing is deliberate and manipulative. It requires sentience and supernatural power. You’d be dealing with a serious energy entity, either discarnate or noncarnate.”

“What was that last part?” Carter asked.

“Either a very powerful evil ghost or a never-born energy entity, something we might call a ‘demon’ as a general term, for lack of any well-developed taxonomy of the nonphysical world.” Emily pushed up her glasses and bit into her rectangle of pizza.

“A ghost or a demon.” Victoria frowned and looked at Carter.

“I don’t like those choices,” he said. “What about a crazed hallucination?”

“You’d want to test the park for chemical and gas leaks, naturally,” Emily said. “I assume neither of you were on drugs, or you would have mentioned it, correct?”

“What was the third type of haunting?” Victoria said. “A demon haunting?”

“Again, we use ‘demonic’ for lack of a more precise term,” Emily told them through a mouthful of ketchup and mashed tater tots. “The third type of haunting is what is sometimes called a dark place. In this case, we aren’t looking at a psychic recording of intense emotion, or an obsessive ghost that refuses to accept its death and move on. In a dark place, spirits are trapped against their will, unable to move on. They grow frustrated, confused, angry, and malevolent. Most haunted places are not dark places, but all dark places are extremely haunted. They are like miniature hells, imprisoning spirits here on the earthly plane.”

“So you’re saying Starland is a dark place?” Carter asked. “A miniature hell?”

“Based on a picture of two puppets? No, I’m not saying that. Again, assuming you’re not jerking me around, which I think you are...If you were to find such a place, you would want to stay away.”

“You wouldn’t want to investigate it?” Victoria asked.

“If I did, I would start by learning the history of the park and try to determine how it became a dark place.”

“The sinkhole,” Carter said. “All those people who died...”

“A sinkhole would account for simple haunting,” Emily said. “If we’re talking about a true dark place, however, the sinkhole itself may only be a symptom of the underlying darkness. Sinkholes are very rare up here in the panhandle of Florida, so why would the largest sinkhole in the state be here? It may not be a natural geographic formation.”

The bell rang, and Emily stood. “I honestly hope you’re not telling the truth.”

“We are,” Carter said.

Emily shook her head. “Then you should stay away from the park. A dark place is not a training ground for amateur ghost hunters.”

“Thanks for your help, Emily,” Victoria said, and the girl nodded a little as she walked away. Victoria looked at Carter. “I think we need to go back.”

“After what she just said?” Carter headed for the heavy front doors of the school.

“We still don’t know if those kids are alive or not. They could still need our help.”

“I’m not going tonight,” he said. “I’m about to crash my way to sleep, I’m already behind on homework, and I have to volunteer for the stupid search party until nine-thirty tonight.”

“Okay. I’ll see what I can find out about the history of the park. This town has a library, right?”

“A small one.”

“Is there a local newspaper?”

“An out-of-print one. The Conch City Chronicle. I used to read the comic strips when I was a kid.”

“Perfect.” She smiled as they parted ways down different halls.

Carter managed to stay awake for the rest of the school day. Later in the afternoon, he joined his volunteer search party group, headed by a short-tempered young deputy who was clearly annoyed to be there. The other three men in the group were past retirement age.

They drove to Dead Lakes state park, which was more than twenty miles inland. There was no specific reason to search for the boys there, so Carter figured the search parties were running out of ideas already. They chugged slowly around the big lake in a motorboat owned by one member of the party, intermittently calling for the missing boys with a bullhorn, all of which seemed incredibly pointless.

Thousands of skeletal cypress trunks occupied the lake, corpses left over from an earlier time when the lake had been a forest. Their small boat nosed through dense swampy areas close to the shore, sweeping a light back and forth through the dense clusters of cypress husks while they repeatedly called the missing boys’ names.

Carter tried to watch the shadowy woods, but found himself nodding off, his head drooping so that he instead watched the dark ripples on the surface of the lake. His eyelids were heavy, and he could feel himself slipping into the half-dream state on the borderlands of sleep, hearing snatches of a chemistry lecture, then bits of real and imagined conversations with Victoria.

“I like you more than you know,” a dream-image of her told him while they sat at school lunch together. “But I don’t want to lose my head.”

A thin trail of dark blood welled up across her throat and around her neck, as though some invisible wire or blade had just sliced through her. She smiled at him like nothing unusual was happening and he watched, unable to move, waiting for her head to slide forward and topple from her shoulders.

He opened his eyes and it was night, hundreds of thousands of stars glowing above as the boat slipped across the black water, past an island of tall, thick dead cypress stumps resembling the broken towers of an old castle fallen to ruin.

He tried to look normal, like he hadn’t just suffered a mini-nightmare in front of everyone. The old men didn’t seem to be watching him, anyway. They slumped in the little bucket-sized seats of the fishing boat, not moving much, possibly asleep. In the darkness, it was hard to tell. The deputy was awake, standing in the prow wearing a broad-brimmed highway patrol-style hat, watching the water ahead. From where Carter sat, the deputy was outlined in black silhouette by the searchlight on the nose of the boat.

Carter looked at the boat’s owner and captain, a retired gas station manager named Ned, sitting ahead of him in the driver’s chair. He wasn’t moving much, either, but the guy had to be awake because the boat wasn’t crashing and tangling in the dead tree trunks and underwater roots.

Down in the water below, the ghostly shapes of the cypress roots were visible just beneath the surface like the gnarled fingers of dead giants. The moon was directly above them, and Carter realized it had to be sometime around midnight.

“Why are we still out here?” he asked. Nobody answered, so he repeated it: “Why are we still here? Shouldn’t we be home by now?”

Nobody stirred. Carter heard something thunk against the underside of the boat, then another thunk, and another. He looked over the side and saw the boat was driving over one after another of the thick, pale roots, spaced under the boat at regular intervals, like the cross-ties of a railroad. The thumping continued, and he had the odd idea that the boat was actually rolling along an underwater track, like on an amusement park ride. He wondered who would have built such tracks in the lake.

A splash sounded in the water beside him, followed by another. Two large shapes had floated up from under the water and now drifted alongside the boat. When the moon emerged from behind a cloud, he saw them clearly: Kevin and Reeves, the two missing boys, their bodies bloated, pale, and smeared with mud. Their waterlogged eyes stared up at him.

Carter wanted to yell, but he couldn’t make his mouth work at all. He tried to stand, but he was locked into his seat by a steel safety bar across his lap, which he was fairly certain had not been there when he’d sat down in the boat hours earlier.

The dead boys floated along with the slow-moving boat as it thumped its way along the underwater track.

“Hey!” Carter finally managed to yell, unable to put what he was seeing into coherent words. “Hey! Hey! Hey!”

“Sh,” a voice whispered.

Tricia stood on a thick, black ruin of an ancient cypress trunk jutting out at a steep angle above the water, pale and glowing in the moonlight. He saw her feet first, slimy with mud, barefoot except for the plastic spider toe ring. Then her dirty, scarred shins, the hem of her white dress that became wet and bloody around her hips, turning to dark gore around her shoulders.

As in his dreams, he could hear her voice clearly when she spoke, though her head was still missing.

“We’re still here,” she whispered. “We’re all still here.”

The water churned and boiled around him. Dozens of bodies floated up from the depths, all pale and bloated, most of them children.

Carter screamed. He looked back at Tricia as the boat passed her by. Tricia raised one bloodless index finger to the area where her lips would have been, in the empty space above her neck.

“Sh,” she whispered again.

A bright light turned on Carter, momentarily blinding him. The deputy up front had turned the searchlight onto him. Carter held up a hand to blot it out.

As his squinting eyes adjusted to the glare, Carter finally saw Ned Willoughby, owner and captain of the small fishing boat, in clear light. The man’s eyes bulged open under the floppy brim of his fishing hat, staring at nothing. He tongue was swollen and purple between his lips. A fishing line was coiled around his neck like a garrote, cinching the fat and muscles of his throat inward. More fishing line lashed his hands to the wheel. The dead man didn’t have to steer, because the boat was thumping comfortably along on its sunken track.

The other two retired men had been killed in the same fashion, strangled and tied to their seats with what looked like entire bales of fishing line.

Only the deputy seemed to be left alive. The man approached him, barely visible against the intense searchlight shining behind him. It occurred to Carter that this meant the deputy had killed the others, and Carter was trapped in his own seat, at the deputy’s mercy.

Then Carter saw it wasn’t the deputy at all. The broad-brimmed hat wasn’t blue or black but candy-striped, red and white, and so was the man’s suit. The man wore a red tie and sported a red handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket. He looked like some kind of old-fashioned carnival barker.

“It’s you,” the man said, looking Carter over. Carter didn’t recognize his face. It looked bland, of no particular age, forgettable except for the searching, colorless eyes.

Carter gripped the locked safety rail, his heart beating as fast as a hummingbird’s. The man bent over him, studying his face.

“You must be so excited to know the old park is opening again,” the man finally said. “Imagine the good times you’ll have. The thrills. The chills. The ecstasy and the horror. All for less than twenty dollars.”

“Who are you?” Carter managed to ask.

“I am the new proprietor of Starland. And I intend to make it a place no one will ever forget.” His smile was thin and sharp, his eyes cold. “Tell your friends, Carter. The rides are dazzling, the games addictive, the refreshments top of the line. They can indulge themselves all they wish, day or night. Tell your friends, Carter—above all, tell your friends.”

The man seized Carter by the shoulder and gave him a hard shake.

“Hey, kid, tell your friends!” he said. “Hey, kid! Wake up!”

Carter blinked. It was daylight again, though the sun smoldered low and orange on the horizon. The man shaking his shoulder was no longer the carnival barker, but Ned Willoughby, their fearless captain.

“I gotta pull the boat on up the ramp now,” Ned said. “We’re done for the day.”

Carter looked around, feeling the same disorientation that came with stepping out of a dark movie theater into a bright afternoon. They’d returned to the boat ramp where they’d started. The deputy and the two other men were already out of the boat.

“You’re alive,” Carter said.

“Uh, yeah,” Ned said. “They ought to make a t-shirt. ‘I lived through Dead Lake!’ Damned place has more snarls than a hooker’s cooch. Come on, get moving, kid.”

“Did I sleep through the whole search?” Carter asked.

“You looked like you needed it,” Ned told him. “We weren’t gonna find nothing out here, anyway.”

“Stupid waste of my time,” the young deputy complained, kicking at the dock where he stood.

Soon after, one of the old men dropped Carter back home. Carter went to his room, unzipped his bag, sat down to confront a few hours’ worth of homework that was sure to be too hard for him.

He started with calculus, which already seemed like an alien language to him, though he’d always done fine in past math classes. His exhausted brain wasn’t much help in attacking this bizarre new species of math problem.

I’m too stupid, he told himself. I can’t do this. I’m going to fail everything.

After about twenty minutes of struggling, getting nowhere, and wondering why he’d set himself up for certain failure in life, he was startled by the notification chime from his phone. His nerves were badly frayed, and his hand shook as he checked his message.

It was a text from Victoria: Did you get my voicemail earlier?

He hadn’t. Carter checked and found he’d missed her call while he was out on the lake, out of cell phone range. He played her voice message.

“Carter, I’m at the town library, and I have good news,” she said. He felt his heart sink. Good news for her might be bad news for him—it meant she’d found some reason to keep up her investigation of the park, when he was starting to wish they’d left it alone.

“They have every issue of the old town paper on microfilm,” her voice mail continued. “I’ve been spinning through this stuff for hours, and I think I’ve found something we can use. Call me the second you get this!”

She’d left the message more than two hours earlier.

He texted her back: Can we talk later? I’m dead now.

What?? she replied.

Dead tired, he texted back, realizing he’d forgotten a word. His brain was definitely not functioning. Glad there’s good news, he added, which wasn’t exactly true.

Found articles about the park’s creation, she told him. Talk at lunch tomorrow?

Can’t wait, he replied. That wasn’t exactly true, either. He could wait and wait—he wasn’t sure he was ready to learn more about Starland, and probably wouldn’t mind if he never had to talk about it again. He shuddered as he thought of his dream, Tricia’s headless body facing him from the tilted cypress stump, raising a finger to her nonexistent mouth to shush him.

He lowered his head and focused on his homework—he hadn’t even scratched the surface of chemistry or biology yet, and he still needed to read the second half of Walden for English class. Homework and studying were the keys to escaping this town and his past, but the past wouldn’t stop haunting him.

Chapter Eleven

Carter trudged to the concrete courtyard for lunch break on Thursday, feeling a bit like a condemned man on his way to the gallows. He was drowning in school work, and he’d even quit soccer this year to focus on studying. He didn’t need the horrific distraction of the amusement park derailing him now.

Victoria waved and smiled from the door nook as he approached, practically bobbing with excitement. As reluctant as he felt, the smile on her face made him want to learn what she’d discovered. Though Starland was a major part of his own personal history—the shaping influence of his life, really, between the trauma of seeing his first love die in such a brutal manner and the eventual closing of the Eight-Track, which had dealt a fatal blow to his parents’ marriage—he didn’t know much about the park’s history. It had simply always been there, as far as he was concerned, like all the bright, gaudy, loud attractions that had crowded the Starwalk. Until, of course, the day all the magic died.

“You look happy,” he said as he sank down beside her.

“How was your search party?” she asked.

“Hot and full of mosquitoes, like any good party.” He decided not to mention the nightmare he’d had after nodding off in the boat. “I knew we wouldn’t find anything. Everybody else seemed to know it, too.”

“That sucks. But I did find something at the library. Want to see?” She unzipped a side pocket of her backpack without waiting for him to answer, and she brought out a single folded piece of printer paper. “It’s a start, anyway.”

Carter unfolded the page. It showed a portion of a Conch City Chronicle newspaper page dated July 8, 1978. Somewhere in the process of transferring from newsprint to microfilm to laser printer, the text had grown blurry and the accompanying picture had become grainy and fuzzy.

The headline was clear, however: INFERNO MOUNTAIN AWARDED TOP TEN RANKING.

“Can you read it?” Victoria asked.

“Barely.” Carter squinted his eyes, trying to focus on the blurry text.

Inferno Mountain, the newest attraction at Starland Amusement Park, is one of the top ten “dark rides” in the country, according to Amusements and Attractions magazine, an industry trade journal for amusements, carnivals, and circuses.

“Combining the excitement of a roller coaster with the allure and mystery of a spooky funhouse, Inferno Mountain creates a thrilling experience unmatched anywhere else in the Florida panhandle,” stated the journal’s July edition, which ranked the ride number four among the best “dark” (or enclosed) rides in the United States.

“We’re all very excited by this news, of course,” said Theodore Hanover, the park’s owner. “We always strive to provide a fun and unique family experience, and we invite everyone in the community to come visit us here at Starland. To celebrate this award, we’re giving everyone a dollar off admission all week.”

Also happy with the news was Arthur “Artie” Schopfer, the designer of Inferno Mountain and other eye-catching attractions around the park.

“It’s good to know people are enjoying what we built,” Schopfer said. “Each creation is unique, but I think we all felt something special when we put that big devil together. If you’ll pardon the expression, we think it’s one hell of a ride.”

Schopfer is currently building a miniature golf course near Starland, which he says will be populated by “life-size dinosaurs.”

Starland Amusement Park opened in 1968 and attracts more than eight hundred thousand visitors annually. It is located at 1066 Beachview Drive. Open 6 PM to 11 PM weekdays, noon to midnight on Saturdays, noon to ten on Sundays.

The grainy photograph accompanying the article showed the devil’s two-story face perched on the front of the smoldering volcano, its jaw stretched wide around the steep black roller coaster track as though laughing while it looked down at a very 1970’s crowd: the men with big mustaches, the women with feathered hair, the remarkably skinny teenagers in tiny shorts and high tube socks.

“Okay,” Carter said. “Now we know the name of the guy who built it. Sounds like he did Dinosaur Mini-Golf, too.”

“And the guy who owned the park,” Victoria said.

“I could’ve told you that. Everybody in town knows who the Hanovers are. They used to own a lot of stuff, when there was stuff worth owning.”

“Oh. Anyway, the library didn’t have Amusements and Attractions magazines, but I went online and found where somebody had uploaded a bunch of PDF’s of old issues. There’s like a whole Internet subculture devoted to old amusement parks and carnivals.”

“There’s probably a whole Internet subculture devoted to any weird thing,” he said.

“And I’m so glad there is. I found the article.” Victoria brought out two more sheets of paper folded together. One page showed grainy black and white pictures, while the other was mostly text. The headline read:

#4: Inferno Mountain, Florida. “One Hell of a Ride”

One picture was a shot of the ride’s front, the devil’s face framed by the clear sky, a trainload of riders on its way up to his open mouth. Another showed the ride under construction, when the mountain was just a skeletal framework of steel rods and wooden scaffolding. Two men stood in front of it. The caption identified the smiling rotund man in the white summer suit and matching fedora as Theodore Hanover, Park Owner. The other man, in horn-rimmed glasses, a dirty plaid work shirt, and scuffed jeans and boots, was identified as Artie Schopfer, Ride Designer.

A third photograph showed three young, beautiful female models standing in front of the pitchfork-prison waiting area for Inferno Mountain, wearing horns and a high-collared cape (presumably red) over skimpy ballet leotards. They smiled and offered commemorative toy pitchforks to the passing crowd. A banner above them read, in fiery letters flanked by cartoon devils:

INFERNO MOUNTAIN

GRAND OPENING

“RIDE IF YOU DARE!”

“The article says more about him than the newspaper did,” Victoria said. “This one guy, Schopfer, designed several big things around the park—the Dark Mansion, Professor Atomic’s Brain-Scrambler, the jungle ride...”

“All the cool stuff,” Carter said.

“Exactly. He actually built stuff at little amusement parks all over the country, from Maine to California. Haunted houses, mazes, things like that. It says he started out building and running a small funhouse for a traveling carnival when he was just sixteen.”

“Sounds like a great job. Better than moving furniture,” Carter said.

“So I tried to find these guys.” Victoria tapped the picture of Artie Shopfer and Theodore Hanover. “There’s no ‘Schopfer’ in the local phone listings, though.”

“If he worked all over the country, then he could be anywhere by now,” Carter said. “Why would he stick around here?”

“I did find a Hanover Realty in an office building on 98, right in the middle of town.”

“That’s the family you’re looking for, but old Mr. Hanover died a few years ago. Right around the time of the sinkhole, I think. His son, Hanover Junior, is the one in charge now.”

“We have to talk to him, then,” Victoria said. “We’ll say it’s for a school project. You have to come with me.”

“I doubt he’ll meet with us.”

“Maybe not if it was just me, but you’re local. Your family even had an amusement business like theirs.”

“It wasn’t anything like theirs! We were tiny.”

“But still...”

“But still,” he agreed. “You’re right. He would think of you as an out-of-towner.”

“Do you know him?” Victoria asked.

“Not at all. I think my dad might.”

“Can you check?”

Carter felt less than comfortable with the idea of approaching the richest and most powerful individual in town to ask about the sensitive subject of the amusement park, but he didn’t want to look scared in front of Victoria.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

Victoria stood up as the bell rang. “I’ll work on tracking down Artie Schopfer. I’ll try contacting that amusement-park magazine and the people who used to work at the local newspaper.”

“Good luck. Maybe the guy’s still alive.”

“I hope so. You know, I read that something like thirty million people visited Starland during the years it was open. It’s crazy how quickly the history of it can just disappear.”

“My dad says everything disappears faster at the beach,” Carter said. “It’s all built on sand and water.”

Chapter Twelve

Carter was strolling to the bus after school when someone grabbed his arm. He jumped, his nerves badly frayed by recent events and his chronic lack of sleep.

“Whoa, relax,” Victoria said. “You aren’t taking the bus, are you?”

“It’s faster than walking home.”

“Come on.” Holding his arm, she steered him away from bus loading area and toward the student parking lot. “So have you talked to your dad about getting in touch with Mr. Hanover?”

“Um, no, I’ve been at school,” Carter pointed out. “I can ask him tonight.”

“Can you ask him now?”

“He’s at work.”

“He has a cell phone, though?” Victoria asked.

“You’re getting obsessed.” Carter opened the driver-side door of her Fiesta.

“I’m not obsessed. Do you think you’re driving?”

“Just getting the door for you.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Get in.”

“Admit you’re obsessed,” Carter said from the passenger seat as they pulled out of the parking lot.

“Would you really be willing to forget all about it?” she asked him. “With those two kids still missing?”

“Is it really just about the kids?”

“Well...it wouldn’t be as urgent without them.”

“But you’re really just obsessed with the park.”

“Can you call your dad already?”

Carter groaned. He called his dad’s cell phone.

“What’s up? Everything okay?” his dad answered.

“Hey, Dad, I’m okay. I was wondering if you knew the Hanover family at all?”

“Sure. I play golf with the Hanovers at the country club on Thursdays,” his dad said sarcastically. “Why would you ask that, Carter?”

“Oh. Um, I was hoping to talk to Theodore Hanover. For this school project. About...local history.”

“Teddy Hanover Junior couldn’t care less about local history. His father did, but all Teddy sees is dollar signs.”

“Okay,” Carter said. “So, you don’t know him? I was hoping you could call him for me...”

“Call him yourself,” Carter’s dad said. “He’s more likely to talk to you. I’ve already cussed him out to his face, back when he refused to lower the rent on the Eight-Track, even when the tourist business was dying fast.”

“Oh...I didn’t know that.”

“Yep. I’d do it again, too. Anything else? We’ve got to pack here...”

“No, that’s okay. Thanks, Dad.” Carter hung up.

“Well?” Victoria asked.

“My dad isn’t friends with him. He said I might as well call him myself.”

“Go ahead.”

“Right now?”

“I don’t have the number...”

“Hanover Realty. Look it up on your phone,” Victoria said.

“You’re pushy when you’re obsessed.”

“I’m not obsessed. Just...focused,” she told him.

Carter found the number and called. A receptionist answered, and he told her he was a senior at the town high school and wanted to speak to Mr. Hanover for a local history project. She put him on hold. Easy-listening jazz played over the phone.

“What did she say?” Victoria asked.

“She told me to wait a minute. I guess she’s asking him.”

The “minute” turned into more than five. By the time the receptionist returned, mercifully killing a long, drawn-out saxophone solo, Victoria had driven to Carter’s apartment complex and they sat idling in the parking lot.

“Mr. Hanover can give you a fifteen-minute appointment,” she said. “I have tomorrow at nine-thirty available.”

“I’ll be in school then,” Carter told her. “Is there anything after two-thirty?”

“Not tomorrow. He has a very important golf game.” The receptionist said this in a deadly serious tone. “The only other time would be eleven forty-five tomorrow morning, for fifteen minutes. Or we could schedule something for next week.”

Carter passed that information to Victoria. They could sneak away during away lunch, but they would have to hurry back to avoid being caught leaving school. It didn’t sound as though the man expected to speak to them very long, anyway.

“We’ll do it, thank you,” Carter told the receptionist. After he’d hung up, he asked Victoria, “Are you happy and calm now?”

“I’m a little better. We also need to plan our next trip to the park.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good idea. Let’s just wait and see what we find out.”

“But those kids—”

“Okay, okay.” Carter thought about something the police chief had said. “I don’t think we should go in there alone. We need more warm bodies. Our own search party.”

“Who could we bring?”

“Some kids from school, I guess. We don’t want the police to find out.”

“You’re in charge of that,” Victoria said. “I don’t know anybody.”

“Great.” Carter couldn’t imagine talking anyone else into searching the park with them. Who would ever agree to go there? “I’ll try, but most of us locals avoid that park...”

“Just give them your most charming smile.” She looked around the parking lot where they’d been sitting. “Do you want to hang out for a while?”

“Wish I could, but I’ve got my police-ordered volunteer work and homework for five A.P. classes,” he said. “I’d rather be doing anything at all with you.”

She smiled and gave him a one-armed hug, her arm across his back, the top of her head against his cheek. He wasn’t sure where his own arms fit into this particular hug configuration, so he touched his fingers to her side for a second, feeling her ribs and warm skin through her thin summer shirt.

“I’m glad we met,” she said as she pulled back from him. “Most people would probably think I was insane by now.”

“Me, too.”

“You think I’m insane?”

“Who isn’t?” He stepped out of her car. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for the ride.”

Carter didn’t have much time to wait before one of the retired men from the search party picked him up in an old truck. They walked a hiking path at Dead Lake that afternoon, keeping to the flattest, easiest trails because of the age of the other men in the group. The young deputy muttered to himself much of the way, shaking his head, and little was accomplished. The deputy ended the day’s search an hour early, and nobody complained.

Ned Willoughby, who hadn’t been strangled and tied to his boat with fishing line after all, offered to give Carter a lift home. Carter accepted, but had the man drop him off at a house a few miles north of town, next to a deep creek that fed into the town’s small, shallow bay. The house was wide, with two full stories and a wraparound porch, but its paint had gone gray and a number of patches of shingles were missing from the roof. Groves of enormous citrus trees surrounded the house.

“Ain’t that George Islington’s place?” Ned asked. “He’s still living, ain’t he?”

“He’s on home care, with a nurse.”

“Why you coming here? Are you kin to him?”

“I’m friends with his grandson, Jared.”

“Hmph.” It was a small noise, but it told him Ned knew a bit about Jared’s reputation as a hard-partying troublemaker who’d had scrapes with the police.

“Thanks for the ride,” Carter said.

“Yep.” The man watched Carter climb down from the old truck, then asked, “You figure we’re ever going to find them two boys?”

“Out at Dead Lake? I’d be surprised.”

“Waste of time, ain’t it?”

“Probably.”

Ned nodded, and Carter closed the door.

While the pick-up drove away, Carter walked up the gravel drive to the house, flanked by weeds and wildflowers. He didn’t approach the front door, but cut diagonally across the yard, passing under orange and lemon blossoms, toward a long barn that couldn’t be seen from the road. It had once been an actual working barn, housing actual pigs. More recently, it had been refurbished as a full-service workshop lined with tools, work counters, and tables with built-in clamps and saws. Even more recently, the place had fallen into disuse and become overgrown with thorny vines.

The gravel drive curled past the house and behind the barn, where a couple of old cars and pick-ups were parked. The wide wooden door into the barn was slightly ajar, letting out a narrow vertical strip of dim electric light. Carter heard Incubus blasting over a stereo as he approached the door.

Carter looked in through the door. Jared occupied a chair near the middle of the room, wearing his battered old Joker cap and a thin white tank top, drinking beer from a forty-ounce bottle. His girlfriend, a cute junior named Becca Towbridge, sat in Jared’s lap smoking a cigarette, casually flicking ashes onto the dirty wooden floor. Carter could hear more voices, and he could see part of one girl in a chair, her back to him, and the hairy legs of a couple of guys sitting up on the wide work counter.

He nudged open the door while knocking on it. Most of the people in the room looked up and immediately scowled at him. Three guys sat on the counter near a rusty table saw.

Carter recognized two of them, both juniors—Finn McKinley, shirtless, his freckles particularly dense and heavy on his face, shoulders, chest, and arms. Finn was the younger but larger brother of Wes McKinley, who was in most of Carter’s classes. The second guy was Derek Butcher, a sandy-haired kid with a scrubby attempt at a goatee, also shirtless to show off his tanned muscles. The third guy was younger, maybe a sophomore, stocky and heavyset, the type who likely had chunks of muscle under his layer of fat. He wore a gold hoop in his left ear.

Two girls sat in chairs and half-turned to look at him, but Carter didn’t recognize them, either, which meant they were likely sophomores or freshman. One had dyed her hair an unnaturally bright shade of blond and streaked it with purple. The other, pudgier girl had tied her dark hair back with a kerchief and wore dark purple eyeshadow and lip gloss, which left stains on the white filter of the cigarette she was smoking. All the kids seemed to be smoking cigarettes and drinking beer.

“Whoa, look who that is,” Jared said. “Somebody’s slumming tonight. What the hell are you doing here, Carter?”

“Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” Carter asked him.

“Go ahead.” Jared leaned back in his chair, grinning, clenching a lit cigarette between his teeth. His girlfriend Becca settled against back against him, frowning at Carter. She had brunette hair streaked with gold, and dressed in a bikini top and tiny black shorts. Studs and rings stippled the edges of her ears.

“I mean privately, though,” Carter said.

“What, you don’t like us?” Finn asked.

“Probably scared of us,” Derek said, which got a few laughs, so he milked it for more. “Hey yo, you scared of us, nerd-boy?”

“Am I supposed to be?” Carter asked.

“What the fuck do you mean by that?” Derek scowled, his voice drunk and aggressive. “Hey, Jared, what the fuck does he mean by that?”

“Relax, dude,” Jared told him. “Slide off, Becca, I’m going to talk to him for a second.”

“Can’t I come?” Becca frowned.

“Nah, go get yourself another beer from the cooler. Good girl.” Jared slapped her butt as she stood up, and she shrieked and turned back, playfully slapping at him with both hands. Carter had to endure more than a minute of their laughing play-fight before Jared finally shook the girl off and walked to the door. He stepped outside with Carter and eased the door shut.

They looked at each other for a moment.

“Been a long time, man,” Jared said. “Long time since you lowered yourself to speak to me.”

“I’m not lowering myself. You know I cut everybody off after it happened.”

“Everybody?” Jared snorted. “There was no ‘everybody,’ Carter. Just me.”

“I know we haven’t talked in a long time, but—”

“Don’t even start like that,” Jared interrupted. “Don’t act like it’s equal, like we just stopped hanging out. You cut me off. You decided you were better than me.”

“I didn’t,” Carter said. “I just...after seeing her die...I couldn’t...deal with anything.”

“Me, either, man. That was a fucked-up day.” Jared swigged beer from his bottle.

“It was.”

“You guys lost the go-kart place, too. That sucks. We used to have so much fun there.”

“I know. My mom took off, too. Couple years ago.”

“I heard,” Jared said. “Sorry, man. So, what’s up? Are you trying to buy some weed or something?”

“No, thanks.” Carter took a breath. He’d spent his time with the slow, slow search party mentally practicing what he was going to say.

“No!” a girl screamed inside, but she was laughing.

“Look,” Carter said. “You know about those missing kids, right?”

“Yeah, yeah. Reeves used to come hang out sometimes. He was pretty cool. I guess the other kid was his weird neighbor or something.”

“We were thinking, what if they went into Starland?”

“Wait, wait,” Jared said. “There’s a ‘we’ now? Who else besides you?”

“Victoria Samaris.”

“That’s the new girl you eat lunch with?”

“That’s her.”

“Sweet ass on her,” Jared said. “You fucking her?”

“No...”

“Kinda sad in the ta-ta zone, though. Plus she’s got too much of that dark and witchy look, like she spends too much time reading books. But if you’re into that type.” Jared shrugged.

“Anyway, we were thinking the police probably didn’t search Starland. They do drive-bys to check for trespassers, but they like to keep that place sealed up. They wouldn’t expect local kids to go in there.”

“So why do you think they went there?” Jared asked.

“It seems like people are really talking about the park this year, doesn’t it? Like it shocked us for years, but now something’s different. I’ve even seen some devil graffiti.”

“I’ve seen a few of those, yeah. Little red spraypaint devils around town. It wasn’t me or anybody I know doing it, and that eliminates most of the usual suspects...”

“So maybe they got curious and went inside.”

Jared seemed to think it over, then took a long chug of beer and wiped his mouth. “You know, we’ve been talking about doing that all summer, but we haven’t yet. Go in there, check out the craziness, maybe party a little...”

“Was Reeves here when you talked about it?” Carter asked.

“Probably.” Jared shrugged. “We were talking about it again like fifteen minutes ago.”

“So I’m trying to get some people to help us. We have to sneak into the park and search it without the cops finding out.”

“Yeah, no shit. Not with psycho Chief Kilborne around. He’d stomp your ass for it.”

Maybe not, Carter thought. Kilborne hadn’t formally charged him with anything, and had informally sentenced him to some pointless community service. Then again, Carter and Victoria had walked into the police station and confessed. If Kilborne or other cops had caught them in the act, the situation would have been very different.

“But we need more people for a search party. Can you and your friends come?” Carter asked.

“You need a few people to help, and I’m the first person you ask?” Jared snickered. “Jesus, dude, you are desperate. You really don’t have any friends, do you?”

“I don’t know. Will you help us out? You said you were friends with Reeves.”

“Hell, if they’ve been in there this long, they’re probably dead anyway,” Jared said. “We’re going to find dead bodies if we find anything.”

“It’s worth looking, though. It would really help if you guys came.”

Jared stared at him for a long moment, clearly thinking about it, or thinking about something. Maybe he was just putting together a choice insult to fling into Carter’s face.

“You know what?” he finally said. “We’ll do it. We want to go there anyway.”

“Seriously?” Carter felt a moment of shock, then relief. He’d been almost certain Jared would turn him down, but he didn’t know who else to ask.

“Yeah, let me just go sell it to everybody. Hey, you should hook up with one of these sophomore chicks. They’re really friendly. I guarantee you could probably get Elissa’s top off, maybe.”

“That’s okay. Thanks, though.”

“You’re serious about that Victoria girl, huh?”

Carter shrugged.

“All right, come on.” Jared pushed open the door and led the way back inside. “Hey, listen. We’re going to search for Reeves and the fat kid.”

The kids groaned or shook their heads, except Jared’s girlfriend Becca, who laughed.

“And we’re going to search for them in Starland,” Jared said, which made the room fall silent.

“We can’t go in there!” one of the sophomore girls gasped.

“How are we supposed to get in?” Finn asked.

“There’s a big hole in the fence by Crashdown Falls,” Carter said.

“We’re going to have a search party,” Jared said. “I mean a search party, like we’ve been talking about. Sneak in some bottles, some smoke and just tear that fucking place up! Who’s going to stop us?”

Carter thought the obvious answer was “the police,” but nobody said anything until Becca spoke up.

“Hell, yeah!” Becca said. She threw her arms around Jared and kissed him. “That’ll be a fun night. I want to go there so bad, I’ve been having dreams about it.”

“Yeah, we could go in there, bust some shit up,” Derek said, lighting a cigarette destined to join the pile of crunched butts and ash on the counter beside him. He pointed at Carter. “Is this guy coming with us?”

“Carter, you know everybody here?” Jared asked. “That’s Finn, Derek, Heath...” The big quiet sophomore guy with the earring gave Carter an upward nod. “These ladies are Tamara and Elissa.” The sophomore girls waved. “And Becca. The hottest girl we know of.” Jared slung his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders.

“Oh, you’re so sweet to her! You’re like the perfect boyfriend!” chirped Tamara, the sophomore girl with the ultra-blond hair. Becca gave her a frosty little smile.

“So everybody wants to go, right?” Jared asked. Nobody disagreed. “Good. Becca, get Carter a beer.”

Becca walked to the large cooler perched on an old tool cabinet.

“That’s okay,” Carter said. “I have a lot of—”

“Have a fucking beer, man,” Jared insisted, while Becca popped open a bottle of Rolling Rock and held it out to Carter with a friendly smile. “When a hot girl hands you a cold beer, you just say yes.”

“I guess I could have one.” Carter took a sip, but he didn’t really like the taste of beer. “There’s something else I should say before we go. The park might be haunted.”

The room grew quiet for another moment. Finn snickered.

“I bet it is,” said Elissa, the sophomore girl with the purple lips and allegedly loose bra. “If anyplace is haunted, Starland would be.”

“It has to be,” Jared said. “Fuck, that place haunts everybody. It haunts the whole town.”

“So there could be ghosts at our party. Could be fun.” Becca gave Jared another smile.

“True,” Jared said.

“You guys are crazy!” Tamara said. “I can’t wait.”

“Carter and I were there, you know,” Jared told Becca. “When it happened.”

“Seriously?” Becca’s eyes went wide. “You never told me that!”

“It just sucked that carousel right down into the ground,” Jared said. “Then the swings. Thing is, man, some of the people on the swings got bashed into the pavement first, then dragged down into the hole. Then the roller coaster broke apart. Hell, Carter’s little girlfriend was riding Inferno Mountain, and when she came out...” Jared looked his way, and Carter felt all the blood drain from his face. He didn’t want to think about any of that. Jared hesitated, then shook his head. “That was a fucked-up day, man.”

“I want to know what happened to his girlfriend,” Tamara said, looking Carter over. “Was she pretty?”

“Yeah,” Carter said. “I really have to get going. It’s a long walk home, then I have a ton of homework—”

“Homework,” Finn snickered, and Derek snorted and shook his head.

“—so that’s a long night,” Carter said. He raised his beer bottle in a kind of parting toast, which nobody returned. “Thanks for helping, everybody. We’ve got some more research to do, but we’ll let you know when we’re ready to go.”

“I’m ready now,” Derek said, and the other guys grunted their agreement.

Carter started for the door.

“Later, man,” Jared said. “I’d give you a ride, but I’m way too smashed.” Jared didn’t seem all that drunk to Carter, but he was willing to take Jared’s word for it.

“We can give you a ride!” volunteered Elissa, one of the sophomore girls.

“Really? You’re old enough to drive?” Carter asked, looking at the nearly empty tall boy of beer in her hand.

“I’ve got my learner’s and my mom’s car,” her friend Tamara said. “So, basically, yeah.” This made Elissa burst into drunken laughter beside her. The two girls spilled over each other, laughing uncontrollably, and then Tamara threw up on herself a little bit.

“I think I’ll walk,” Carter said.

Chapter Thirteen

Carter and Victoria ducked behind a low-riding blue pick-up truck as the principal strolled along the side of the school. The man was looking toward the student parking lot where Carter and Victoria were hiding, and he was clearly checking for lunchtime cutters. Carter hoped he hadn’t seen them.

The principal was sometimes tolerant of seniors skipping out during lunch, especially during the spring as graduation approached. It was still August, though, and Carter was still seventeen, and Victoria was a junior, so they were courting serious detention if caught.

“Is he coming this way?” Victoria whispered.

“I couldn’t tell.” Carter eased his way up the door of the truck and peered through the cab windows, hoping they would make him less visible at a distance. The principal was still looking their way, and Carter tensed up. Then the principal continued on around the corner of the building, out of sight.

“He’s gone,” Carter whispered. Victoria had a sly smile, and he thought she was enjoying this, sneaking out of school and the risk of getting into trouble. He wasn’t particularly enjoying it, except for seeing her smile.

“Should we go?” Victoria whispered.

“Now or never.”

They dashed to her car and climbed inside. As she pulled out of the lot, they both sat low in their seats, as though the school administrators and teachers wouldn’t know who they were by the Michigan plates on her car.

They escaped, and soon they raced down Gulf Coast Highway toward the Hanover Realty office.

“What do you think he’s going to say?” Victoria asked.

“He’ll probably tell us there’s a big Satanic temple in the caves underneath the park.”

“Seriously? Are there caves?”

“There shouldn’t be any, but nobody can explain the giant sinkhole, either. So, sure, giant Satanic caves,” Carter said. “Why not?”

“Maybe he’ll remember something that can help us. Or maybe he can put us in touch with the guy who made the rides, Artie Schopfer. I called Amusements and Attractions magazine, and the lady there said the guy who wrote the article on Inferno Mountain died years ago, but she said she would try to find some information about Schopfer for us. Honestly, I think she just wanted to get me off the phone.”

“We’ll find out. I think that’s your turn.” He pointed to a four-story office building with dark windows.

Hanover Realty occupied the top floor of the building, but most of that floor had been let out to a temporary employment company called STAFF UP TODAY!, their logo plastered everywhere in cheery yellow letters.

Hanover occupied just one corner of the floor, a front corner with floor-to-ceiling glass in the reception lounge, looking out over the highway and palm trees and the half-empty strip malls of downtown Conch City.

Carter introduced himself to the receptionist, a stern-looking lady with a large heap of battleship-gray hair and a sour frown that seemed permanently carved into her face.

“Have a seat,” she invited, in a tone that implied she’d be happy to watch them drop dead on the carpet. Carter and Victoria sat on uncomfortable antique mahogany chairs next to a bookshelf stocked with volumes of classics, from The Odyssey and Arabian Nights to Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy in three volumes: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. All the books matched perfectly in height, with identical black covers and golden binding, the kind of books sold as a set for display by people who didn’t necessarily care to actually read them.

Another wall held a large bulletin board pinned with fliers and brochures for properties for sale or lease around town.

Carter and Victoria sat quietly, since the receptionist’s presence seemed to demand a library-like silence. The only sound was the lady’s fingernails clacking the keys at her computer.

They grew more nervous as one minute after another dragged by. The sooner they returned to school, the smaller their chance of getting caught, but it was already six minutes past their appointment. They had to be back at school when the beginning-of-period bell rang at twelve-fifteen or their absence would be noticed.

Finally, the intercom on the receptionist’s phone crackled, and a man’s voice muttered, “Okay.”

The woman stood and opened the door to Mr. Hanover’s office, motioning wordlessly for them to enter. Her stern eyes bored into both of them as they passed.

Theodore Hanover Junior looked about sixty years old, with a deeply wrinkled face and a permanent squint that Carter associated with cigarette smokers. His curly, dark brown toupee almost matched the hair on his mustache and the sides of his head, but not quite. He was heavyset, his stained white shirt stretched over his stomach paunch, his checkered necktie askew. He coughed as he stood and extended his hand for a shake. The pungent burning smell of old cigarette smoke rolled off him, filling the room.

“Carter Roanoke, right?” Hanover asked. He made Carter think of a hefty overgrown frat boy, with a deeply uncomfortable and unhappy look in his eyes, as though growing old and fat had caught the man entirely off-guard. Hanover’s eyes shifted to Victoria, looking her up and down in a way that was less than appropriate. “And you are...?”

“Victoria Samaris,” Carter said. “She’s a junior.”

“Samaris? Your family bought the old Woodman place? That means we’re just about neighbors.”

“Hi, neighbor,” Victoria said with an exaggerated wave and a big smile.

The girl’s smile seemed to melt Hanover a little, or at least loosen his bitter crust.

“Go on, sit down, kids.” He rubbed his stomach and scowled as he squatted into his office chair across from them. “Sorry, acid stomach. We’ve tried five different prescriptions, but that stuff just keeps shooting its way up my esophagus. What were you coming to talk about? The history of Conch City, you said?”

“Yes, sir,” Carter said.

“We appreciate you meeting with us, Mr. Hanover,” Victoria added.

“Call me Teddy, everyone does.” The man grimaced as he twisted open a bottle of antacids. “Too bad you can’t talk to my dad. He could stand on any spot in town and tell you everything that ever happened there since the town was founded. Dad was a great storyteller. It’s been a couple of years since he passed, but we still miss him. My sisters and I talk about him all the time.” Hanover nodded at family pictures on the wall of his office, depicting three different women, presumably the sisters. “He was a real character.”

“I’m sorry about your father,” Victoria said.

“It’s been hard on all of us.” Hanover looked down for a moment, as if in prayer or sad contemplation, then looked up with a hearty fake smile. “So what did you kids want to talk about? I only have a couple of minutes...”

“We were interested in a man who worked for your father,” Victoria said. “Arthur Schopfer. He built haunted houses and amusements all over the country, including some here in town.”

“This is about Starland?” Hanover frowned, his fake smile vanishing. “I don’t want to talk about Starland.”

“Not so much about Starland itself, but about roadside art in America,” Victoria said. “The history of commercial tourism art and how it was shaped by the American highway system.”

Carter couldn’t help smiling at how professional she sounded.

Hanover, however, did not look as though he’d be smiling any more today.

“Artie Schopfer. That’s a name I never expected to hear again.” Hanover shook his head.

“Did you know him?” Victoria asked.

“I knew him as the man who drove my dad out of his mind with wild ideas,” Hanover said. “Back in the seventies, he and my dad were inseparable. Schopfer kept pushing my dad to pour more and more money into that little amusement park. Every project was bigger and more expensive than the last...the Brain-Scrambler, with the dome, the dry ice fog, the twelve-foot scientist holding his lava-lamp flask by the entrance...”

“Professor Atomic,” Carter said, unable to suppress a grin, which earned him a sour look from Hanover.

“Do you have any idea how much it cost to keep that place stocked with dry ice all summer?” Hanover asked. “And that wasn’t enough for Schopfer—nothing ever was. We couldn’t just have a funhouse, we had to have a two-story haunted mansion maze full of hidden doors and secret rooms. We couldn’t just have a boat ride, it had to go through an elaborate animatronic jungle that Schopfer kept changing every season. Don’t even get me started on how much Inferno Mountain cost us—that thing was a monster. Couldn’t be a horror ride or a roller coaster, it had to be both, like we were Disney World instead of a dinky little park for the world’s cheapest tourists. Of course, the more my father spent, the more money Schopfer made. That park barely turned a profit until the eighties, when Schopfer finally stopped leeching off my dad and left town, probably to fill some other beach with giant tacky garbage.”

“But the park was successful after that, right?” Carter asked, feeling defensive about the place.

“Sure, there were a couple of good decades,” Hanover said. “We had to move a ton of devil t-shirts and keychains to help us pay for that ride. My father loved that park, though. He would have spent his last penny to keep it up and running. He kept the admissions prices lower than they needed to be, just because he wanted to the park available to everyone, not just rich kids.”

“He sounds like a nice guy,” Carter said.

“Everybody loved my dad. He was a born showman.” Hanover looked annoyed. “He really built this town into something. Probably best he didn’t live to see what became of it. It just would’ve killed him.” He looked closely at Carter, as though actually worried about Carter’s answer.

Carter nodded. “Nothing’s been the same since the sinkhole.”

“Do you know how to get in touch with Artie Schopfer now?” Victoria said.

“Just look for a fool and his money, and you’ll find Schopfer in between. Or you can follow the trail of giant concrete gorillas and cheesy haunted houses he’s left all over the country, if Shopfer’s still alive at all. He hasn’t been around this town in decades.” Hanover looked between them. “Schopfer may have put up a few roadside attractions, but it was my father who really built this town. Remember that. You’re really doing a paper on Schopfer’s work? I don’t think the man deserves it.”

“It’s just a high school project,” Victoria said. “It’s not a big deal.”

Hanover sighed. “I could have my receptionist dig around for his contact information. If there’s nothing else...” He stood up, and Carter and Victoria did the same. Hanover shook their hands again. “It was nice meeting you kids, but I have a lot of serious work to do today.”

Carter remembered the “important golf game” mentioned by his receptionist.

“Thanks for your time,” Victoria said. “Should we ask your receptionist about Schopfer?”

“We have a busy day today. She’ll probably call you next week.” Hanover smiled, but his eyes were cold, and he was clearly less than pleased with how the meeting had gone. “Enjoy your weekend.”

As Carter and Victoria left, the receptionist gave them an unfriendly look over her small iceberg salad.

“What do you think?” Victoria asked as they stepped into the elevator.

“We have three minutes to get back to school.”

“I meant about Mr. Hanover. Excuse me, I mean Teddy.”

Carter laughed. “I don’t think he wants to help us.”

“I hope his receptionist can get us in touch with Artie Schopfer.”

“I hope she bothers trying,” Carter said.

They raced back to school in Victoria’s car. Both of them were late to class, earning them each a detention for the following week.

When the school day was over, Victoria again gave him a ride home.

“Do you have to do the search party today?” she asked him as he got out of the car.

“Yeah, it sucks. I hope that’s winding down, since everybody seems to think it’s pointless.” He looked at her for a moment while he worked up the nerve to ask his next question: “Do you want to hang out after that? I should be done by eight or nine. And it is, technically, Friday night...”

“Okay.” She smiled. “I just have to be home by midnight, that’s my curfew.”

“I’ll call you.” Carter walked away, knowing it was a bad idea—he was getting too far behind on his schoolwork, but something about the idea of spending more time with her made his heart thump faster.

The search party drove in Ned Willoughby’s pick-up truck on a bumpy trail through the woods north of town, Carter sitting in the truck’s bed, the deputy riding shotgun and rolling his eyes. They wasted hours up there, finding no lost kids, but millions of mosquitoes, ticks, and flies.

Carter called Victoria as soon as he got home.

“What are we doing tonight?” she asked.

“This town’s full of possibilities,” he told her, walking up the stairs to his apartment. “We’ve lost most of the good stuff, but there’s still Captain Scoop’s and the FastGas parking lot.”

“No wonder this place was a major tourist destination.”

“There’s the old shopping mall. Creepy, locked up, covered in graffiti. You’d love it.”

“That sounds pretty great, actually, but I don’t think I’m in the mood for decay and loss tonight. You said some of the beach is still open to the public?”

“East Beach. Nobody ever goes there, though.”

“That sounds pretty ideal. Remember, I just got here from Michigan. I’m not jaded about living near the beach like everyone else. I want to go while there’s still a little summer left.”

“We could do that,” Carter said, though he didn’t feel particularly thrilled about it.

“I’ll get ready for the beach! See you in thirty minutes.”

Carter took a quick shower, washing off his sweat from sitting out in the hot pick-up bed all afternoon with the sun beating down on him.

He hadn’t been to the beach in years, not since his last trip there with his family when he was ten or eleven. It might be interesting to see at night, and it would almost surely be deserted.

He couldn’t help thinking that going to the beach meant Victoria would be wearing some kind of swimwear, and he couldn’t help wondering what that might be. On the other hand, it also meant he would be shirtless. While his face and hands were deeply tanned, the rest of him was bleach-white from being trapped inside the MOOVIN’ ON coveralls all summer. It gave him an absurd two-tone look when his shirt was off, a goofy farmer’s tan.

At least it would be dark on the beach.

He changed into swimming trunks and walked to the door.

“Where you going tonight?” his dad asked. Carter’s dad looked exhausted, sitting in his recliner and still wearing his green coveralls with his name patch, half-unzipped now to reveal a sweat-stained, faded Eight-Track shirt underneath. He was drinking a Jamaican Red Stripe and watching Spinal Tap on DVD.

“Nowhere,” Carter said. “Just to the beach with that girl Victoria.”

“To the beach with a girl doesn’t sound like ‘nowhere,’” his dad said. “Sounds like a dangerous amount of fun. Are you staying on top of school?”

“Yep,” Carter lied. He would be caught up by Monday, he told himself.

“What’s this girl like?”

“She’s cool. She’s smart.”

“She’s a good student?”

“Oh, yeah,” Carter said, and his dad nodded.

“Don’t swim out too far, stay where it’s shallow. Stay on the beach if you can. There won’t be anybody to help you if you get in trouble.”

“I know, Dad.”

“Go for the long walk on the beach scenario. Don’t have sex, and if you do, use a condom, even if she says she’s on the pill.”

“I have to leave the room now,” Carter said, feeling his face turn red with embarrassment.

“I mean it. You don’t want to get a girl pregnant at your age—”

“Good night!” Carter hurried outside and down the stairs.

When he climbed into Victoria’s car, she had a wide smile for him, her knees bouncing excitedly, just as they did when she was scared. She was still in her usual black jeans and dark blouse.

“You’re really excited about the beach,” he said.

“I even made a picnic.” She pointed to the wicker basket on her back seat while she drove out of his apartment complex. “And I brought beach towels. Where’s yours?”

“I forgot about that part.”

“The part where you get out of the water?” she laughed. “Good thing I brought three.”

“Why three?”

“Three’s a lucky number.”

They drove through the darkened strip malls of town, turning down Beachview Drive at its eastern intersection with Gulf Coast Highway, an intersection inhabitant by the remnants of Conch City’s once-thriving hospitality industry: a Holiday Inn franchise, a gas station, an International House of Pancakes.

The road became dark and moonlit. Victoria pulled into the public parking lot at the beach, deserted except for one old beater of a car with a flat tire and multiple police citations tucked under its windshield wiper.

“It’s so quiet here,” Victoria whispered. Ahead of them, rickety wooden stairs led up to a wooden boardwalk that crossed the high dunes toward the endless darkness of the ocean. There was no sound but the water crashing ashore. Countless stars glittered in the clear night sky above, visible all the way to the horizon.

Carter took the picnic basket and led the way up the old stairs, which creaked and wobbled beneath them. They crossed over the dunes and descended another set of steps, far more weathered and creaky, down to the beach.

The beach was wide open, with no other visitors, just a narrow strip of dull sand chewed away by storms over the years. The black ocean reflected the stars.

“This could be a good spot to take pictures,” Carter said.

“I really don’t feel like photography tonight,” she told him. “I just want to swim and forget about everything.”

“That sounds good.” Carter knew how she felt. If he could spend a little time not thinking about the missing kids, or the amusement park, or school, it would be an incredible relief.

They planted their picnic basket next to the collapsed remnants of a pair of wooden lounge chairs.

“Ready?” he asked. “You still want to swim?”

She nodded and lifted up her shirt, revealing the upper half of a black one-piece swimsuit. He tried not to show too much interest in how she looked in the skintight garment. When she unbuttoned her jeans and began to push them down, he made himself look away before the sight of her taking off her pants got him too excited.

He took off his shirt and tossed it aside, and a smile twitched on her face as she regarded the arctic whiteness of his chest and stomach.

“I didn’t expect you to be so white under there,” she said.

“What? I worked on this tan all summer.”

Victoria smiled and turned away, and he felt a little breathless as he watched her retreating back and her bare shoulders, legs, and feet. He was definitely starting to like her more than he’d intended.

You’re not looking for a relationship right now, said a voice in his mind. Focus on the future...

If you’re not looking for that, another voice countered, what the hell are we doing here tonight?

Shut up, both of you, he told the voices in his head. We’re just swimming.

Carter joined her on the hard-packed sand at the edge of the shore. A wave of warm ocean water drifted in, drenching their feet.

“This is so pretty,” she said. “I can’t believe you never come out here.”

“Too many memories.”

She nodded and waded out deeper into the water, the little waves breaking against her stomach.

They floated on their backs, looking up at the moon and stars. There was no contact between them, and very little talking. The mood was contemplative rather than romantic, but he liked just being with her, letting her presence quietly enrich his world.

“I wish I could just dissolve into the ocean,” she whispered at one point. “Just for a while.”

“I know,” he said.

He wasn’t sure how much time they spent out there, maybe half an hour, maybe an hour. By some unspoken agreement, they swam back to the beach at the same time.

“What’s in our picnic basket?” Carter asked while he toweled off.

“Mineral water and sandwiches.” She handed him one wrapped in parchment paper. “Sprouted-grain bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, with chevre and olive tapenade.”

“And you’re legally allowed to call that a sandwich?”

“What would you prefer? Meatballs and corn chips?”

“Yeah, give me that one!”

“You can’t live on junk food.” She handed him a bottle of Evian. “Your diet does more to shape your health than anything else.”

“I’ve survived so far.”

“By some miracle.” She opened her own bottled water and sipped it. “How’s your sandwich?”

“Not as bad as it sounds.” The bread was chewy but good, the vegetables crisp, the goat cheese tangy.

“You know, I’m really glad I met you,” Victoria said. “I felt kind of lost the first few weeks I was down here. I don’t think I belong in this town.”

“Nobody really belongs here anymore. That’s why everybody’s moving away.”

“I felt lost until all this craziness started,” Victoria told him. “Now I just feel confused. I still feel weird at school, like people think I’m strange.”

“You could try getting involved with more stuff. You could volunteer to take pictures for the school newsletter or the yearbook...”

“But that seems kind of cheesy. I try to be a serious photographer.”

“It’s good padding for your college application, though,” Carter said.

“You’re always thinking about the future.”

“Better than thinking about the past.”

“Maybe.” She crumpled her paper sandwich wrapper and returned it to the basket. “We need music.”

“I’ve got it.” Carter brought out his phone, which he’d stashed into the basket with his wallet while they swam.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“About ten.”

“Good. I don’t feel like going home yet.”

“Wait, I’ve got a voice mail.” Carter clicked the little envelope icon.

“Hey, it’s Jared,” the recording said. “We found that side entrance you told us about, and we’re going in. Where are you? Answer your phone!”

“What’s going on?” Victoria asked, in response to the shocked look on Carter’s face.

“Jared and his friends went into the park tonight. They’re already inside.” Carter checked the time on the missed call. “It’s from an hour ago.”

“We weren’t supposed to go yet,” Victoria said. “We still have to meet with the artist guy, do more research—”

“I told them that! I think they were just eager to go once they had the idea. They probably decided to go tonight and forgot to tell me until they were there.”

“Did you tell them it might be haunted?”

“I tried, but they didn’t seem to care. I hope they’re okay.” Carter clicked the phone number from Jared’s missed call. Jared must have changed his cell number since middle school, since Carter didn’t recognize it. It was an 850 number, though, the area code for their town as well as the entire Florida panhandle.

The phone rang three times, and then it made a clicking sound, followed by a mechanical whirr like an old-fashioned tape player. A man’s voice answered in a dead flat monotone.

“Thank you for calling Starland Amusement Park,” the voice said. “We are closed for the season, but you may leave us a message.” A loud beep sounded.

“That’s really weird,” Carter said as he hung up. “His number goes to a voice mail for the amusement park.”

“Why would they have an active phone number? They’ve been closed for five years, right?”

“That’s what makes it weird. Plus I thought he was calling from a cell phone, because he said they were just going inside when he called.” Carter tried again and reached the same recording. He sighed and stood up. “I’d better go in there and check on them. Can you drive me?”

“I’m going in with you.” She got up and pulled on her jeans over her wet swim suit.

“There’s too much weird stuff happening with the park. I’d feel better if you waited in the car with the engine running and ready to go, in case it’s too freaky in there.”

“You’re not going in by yourself.”

Carter didn’t keep up the argument very long, because he knew Victoria was determined to pay a return visit to the amusement park anyway. He’d hoped to put it off a lot longer, though, if he had to go back at all. Now he felt responsible for sending in Jared and whoever Jared had dragged along.

They shook the sand from their towels as they climbed the rickety steps over the high, moonlit dunes.

Chapter Fourteen

Jared led the group along the concrete path under Crashdown Falls and past the Log Drop, swinging his flashlight. He stopped when he reached the round central plaza of Pirate Island, and everybody stopped with him.

“Holy shit,” he whispered. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

He’d expected nothing but overgrown, collapsed ruins. The last time he’d been here, five years earlier, the pavement itself had shattered into irregular little pieces that made walking almost impossible. Now everything looked completely intact, at least in this corner of the park, as though the park were still in operation and had simply shut down for the night.

“What’s wrong?” Becca whispered. His girlfriend was walking very close to him, her arm through his.

“It’s exactly like I remember it, before the sinkhole.”

“Of course it is,” Finn said. “They locked it all up and left it here.”

“I remember that place.” Derek nodded at the giant red wooden crab, scratching his patchy goatee. “They had fish sandwiches. No crab, though.”

“This is all so creepy,” Tamara said. Her friend Elissa, the freakish girl with the purple lipstick that just had to be reapplied every fifteen minutes, clung close to her side. “Do you guys think it’s really haunted?”

“Shh! Don’t say that!” Elissa whispered.

Heath, the large, quiet, lumbering sophomore with the golden earring, lagged behind the girls, walking alone and saying nothing.

Jared shook his head. He was probably the only person in their group who’d actually been there when the sinkhole had opened. Clearly nobody but him understood the kind of destruction that had hit the park.

Now everything in the park looked intact, not even dirty or neglected. Harpoon Lagoon and the Gone Fishing game were still there, closed down and padlocked as though waiting for business the next day. He couldn’t see the bumper boats in their elevated concrete pond, but the green dome of Jungle Land was illuminated by spotlights, which made no sense at all.

“Why are the lights on?” Becca asked as they passed Jungle Land. Statues of tigers and elephants cavorted out front, in the zigzagging rope bridge area where people lined up to ride.

“Yeah, there shouldn’t be any lights,” Elissa said.

“Probably solar or something,” Finn said. “My grandma has those in her front yard. Little fucking gnomes holding solar-powered spotlights.”

“Remember, we are kind of looking for Reeves and that other kid while we’re here,” Jared said.

“Who cares about them?” Derek snorted. “I just want to get hammered.”

“Even if they came here, would they really stay here for a week? Or is it two weeks now?” Becca asked.

“Closer to two weeks,” Heath said from the back of the group, a rare vocal moment for him. His voice sounded hoarse, probably from never being used. “And if they’re still here, it’s because they’re dead.”

“Thank you, Heath,” Becca said.

“Seriously? Dead?” Tamara asked.

“Why would you say that, Heath?” asked Tamara’s friend Elissa.

“Maybe there’s some psycho serial killer guy living in here,” Derek said. “That’s who put up the lights. That’s who killed Reeves and Kevin. Probably watching us now.”

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” Tamara announced.

“I’ll protect you, girl,” Finn said, dropping back to walk alongside her. Tamara smiled up at him, while Elissa frowned.

“Dude, where are you getting this psycho killer stuff, Derek?” Jared asked.

“Look around,” Derek said. “I’ve worked with my uncle before, clearing out foreclosed houses. A place gets neglected for a couple of years around here, there should be weeds growing up through the pavement, vines climbing the buildings...some of those wooden booths should have plants growing on top of them by now. The jungle comes back fast. Somebody’s been taking care of this place, weeding it, touching up the paint...” Derek shook his head. “Somebody’s been here. A lot.”

“You might have a point,” Jared said as they stepped onto the midway. The wide central avenue was badly cracked, but not full of holes and jagged asphalt edges jutting up like he remembered. It would have taken a huge amount of work to smooth all those broken chunks into a level surface.

He walked into the center of the midway, gaping, feeling himself go weak.

“What’s wrong, baby?” Becca whispered, staying close to his side.

“It shouldn’t be like this,” Jared said. His heart was pounding. “Some of these buildings should be collapsed or burned. That cotton candy stand, I know I saw that on fire...”

“I still can’t believe you actually saw all those kids die,” Becca said. She sounded more impressed than horrified. “That must have been amazing.”

“The carousel was gone before I looked. I saw the swings go down. Then it spread toward the roller coaster...” Jared was staring off into deep space, seeing all of it again. “We waited until she came out of Inferno Mountain, and then we ran.”

“Who?”

“Me and Carter.”

“Who came out of Inferno Mountain?” Becca asked.

Jared shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is this place is all messed up—”

“Oh, yeah! Are you people seeing this?” Finn started up the midway toward the front gate.

A soft light glowed from somewhere down the midway, and Finn was running toward it. The rest of the group followed slowly, Jared and Becca slowest of all.

“Come on, man,” Heath said as he passed them. “Maybe it’s what we’re looking for.”

“Are you having bad memories?” Becca asked him.

“No, I’m good.” Jared was determined not to look weak or scared in front of everyone. “Let’s go.”

The soft light seemed inviting, a warm, happy color that made him feel hungry. As he and Becca walked closer, catching up to the rest of the group, the source suddenly became clear: a booth shaped like an old-timey wooden beer keg, about twelve feet tall. The middle third of it had swung open like a door to reveal the single large serving window.

The neon letters above the window read THE KEG STAND, and smaller neon signs advertised BEER and CIDER. The wide counter at the front of the window was occupied by rows of clear plastic cups filled to the top with beer: pale ales, reddish ciders, dark lagers and stouts, dozens of beers just sitting out waiting to be taken. They were cold, too, judging by the hundreds of tiny droplets of moisture clinging to the outside of each cup.

“Holy cow, is it free beer night?” Finn asked.

“I wouldn’t drink it,” Jared said.

“Why not?” Derek asked him.

“Because, man, it’s just sitting out here. Where did it come from? Who poured it? Is it five years old or what?” Jared asked.

“Don’t look five years old to me,” said Heath. The big sophomore picked a lager and took a big slurp.

“Eww! Did you see that?” Tamara asked Elissa. “He actually drank it!”

“What’s it taste like?” Becca asked, her upper lip curling a little in disgust. Even then, she was damned pretty, Jared thought, with her big, dark eyes and soft lips.

Heath drew the cup away from his lip with a funny scowl on his face. He held the cup up as though inspecting it.

“What, man?” Derek asked.

“That’s the best beer I ever tasted,” Heath said. “Wonder what brand it is.”

He downed the rest in two long slurps, foam streaming down the sides of his face. He tossed it aside and guzzled another one, pausing only to belch.

“We’ll see if it kills Heath,” Finn said. “Then we’ll know if it’s safe.”

“Hell, I ain’t waiting.” Derek grabbed a black stout, peered into it, and took a tiny sample sip. His eyebrows shot up, and he took another big taste, then a full swallow. He held the cup out to Finn. “This is good. Try it.”

“I’ll get my own. God knows what kind of diseases you get from those skanky girls you hang out with.”

“Like your standards are so high,” Derek said. “I’m surprised you don’t have wiener rot.”

Finn grabbed a cup of dark beer, dipped his finger into it, and tasted it. He had the same reaction as Derek, taking several more drinks right away and nodding. “Yeah. That’s good stuff. I’ve never tasted anything like it. What do you want to drink, Tamara?”

“Guess.” The white-blond girl smiled, and Finn leaned in close to her face and pretended to study her. Beside her, Elissa scowled, as though she didn’t like Finn getting too close to her friend.

“I’m going to say...cider,” Finn finally guessed.

“Good guess.” Tamara held out her hand and Finn gave her a cup of the reddish drink.

“It’s really good,” Tamara said. “Oh, wow. Really good. You should get one, Elissa.”

The girl’s purple lips frowned. She glanced at Finn, then walked up to the counter and picked a pale ale. Becca stepped up to the counter beside her.

“Wait,” Jared told her. “We brought all this stuff.” He set his cooler onto a picnic table in front of the concessions area and opened the lid. “We’ve got Mickey’s, Miller, PBR...”

“Pour that trash out,” Finn said, raising his cup. “This beer is, like, straight from heaven.”

“Aw, you’re poetic,” Tamara said.

“It’s the Irish in me, lassie,” he said, and Tamara giggled.

“Lassie’s a dog,” Elissa grumbled. She chased her grumbling with another long swig of beer.

“Come on, I’m not carrying all this crap back to my car.” Jared opened a green bottle of Mickey’s malt liquor.

“Everyone else is doing it,” Becca said, with a little pout. “I want to try the cider.”

“It’s the best thing ever.” Tamara closed her eyes in apparent rapture as she guzzled the sparkling drink.

“Don’t do it,” Jared told Becca.

“You think you can stop me?” Becca asked. She picked up a cup of cider, sipped it, and smiled at him, her lips stained a deep red by the drink.

“I told you not to drink that,” he said.

“And now you have to punish me.” She walked toward him with a sway in her hips, her eyes bright in the night. Jared sat on top of the picnic table, drinking his bottle of Mickey’s, and she slunk forward between his knees. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Please don’t make us watch this,” Finn said.

“Have a drink,” Becca urged, holding the cider toward Jared’s lips.

“I don’t want it,” Jared said.

“Are you scared?” Becca asked. “It’s just apples.”

“I don’t care if he’s scared,” Derek said, grabbing himself a second beer. “More for the rest of us.”

“I’m not scared,” Jared told them. He took the cider, drank a cold, sweet sip, and handed it back. “Okay? It’s just...apples...” He gaped along the midway. “Look at that.”

The one sip of cider seemed to have opened his eyes to a thousand things he’d missed before. The entire midway glowed with neon and colored lights, every food stand and game booth open and fully lit, playing their clashing calliope and rock music. The lights of the high rides rose above the park, blotting out the stars above—the American Rockets, the towering oblong shape of Moon Robot, the glowing round spiderweb of the Ferris wheel, and beyond that, the high hills of the Starland Express, Florida’s fifth-oldest roller coaster and one of its longest, trimmed in glowing white lights.

“Oh, this is awesome!” Heath shouted. The nearby concession booths were now fully lit, with pulsing, flashing neon on the outside and warm, buttery light on the inside. Pizza slices glistening with grease on paper plates, crisp corn dogs piled in checkered baskets, and sweet golden-brown funnel cakes dusted with powdered sugar crowded the serving counters. The mingled aroma of the fair food made Jared’s mouth water.

The other guys wasted no time tearing into the deep-fried treats. Heath seemed to make it his mission to eat double helpings of everything. He wrapped a slice of pizza around a corn dog and held it up, proclaiming this dish “nature’s perfect food” before devouring it like an animal.

“Look, the Double Dutch House. I remember that.” Elissa pointed to a booth shaped like a cutesy European cottage. Two of its outer walls had folded away, revealing shelves and shelves of cookies and fudge, all of it illuminated from within by the same sweet yellow light.

Elissa dashed toward it, followed closely by Tamara, and the two sophomore girls squealed in delight as they helped themselves to chocolatey sweets.

Jared took Becca’s hand and led her down the midway, past the Lucky Darts game, where rows of bright balloons waited to popped, past the Whack-A-Frog, which was going through one of its intermittent demos where the frog heads popped up and down from holes in the slanted game table painted to look like a pond with lily pads. The bats hung upside inside the Bat-Ball game, their leathery wings wrapped around them, their velvety purple fur looking bright and new. Jared knew that, if hit with a baseball, the bats would spread their wings as they swung backwards, revealing a comical expression of surprise on their little rodent faces.

The games were fully lit, the neon display above the Knock ‘Em Dead bowling game flashing while the recorded sounds of clattering balls and pins played over the speakers. The Whack-A-Frog played a jazzy tune with intermittent croaks and cricket chirps.

“I wanted some of that chocolate,” Becca whispered.

“None of this should be here,” Jared said, half terrified, half in awe. “It’s just like when I was a kid.” Deep down, in some completely irrational part of himself, this was exactly what he’d hoped to find—the park somehow still alive, his happier childhood memories waiting intact for his return. He wished Carter were here to see it, but that guy hadn’t even bothered answering his phone when Jared called.

“I had some good times here when I was little,” Becca said. “My whole family would come once a summer, back when my brother still lived at home. On my eighth birthday, my mom let me bring a couple of friends here. We had such a good time...” Becca’s eyes were glazed over as they reached the central plaza, with the benches and palm trees clustered around the wishing well, the colored arrow signs pointing in all directions.

To their left, the Ferris wheel stood above them, a giant lighted structure against the dark sky, slowly turning even though all its seats were empty—it should have been leaning steeply over the giant black pit of the sinkhole, or have already fallen in during the passing years, but it looked polished and new.

Past the Ferris wheel, the carousel itself rotated around and around, its horses and dragons rising and falling, while pumping out cheerful calliope music that made Jared think of old cartoons. The carousel’s roof flared out like a gold and royal red tent to the elaborate golden filigree designs on its perimeter. The entire structure was lit as lavishly as a palace, every inch of it bright and glittering.

“That really shouldn’t be here,” Jared whispered, pointing. “The entire thing was swallowed in one quick gulp when the sinkhole opened. And where is the sinkhole? It’s gone.”

“Do you think your friend Carter was right?” Becca asked, squeezing his hand. “Is this place haunted?”

“Haunted would just be seeing a ghost.” Jared shook his head, his whole body trembling, but he didn’t want to show fear in front of anyone, especially Becca. “This goes way beyond haunted. This is a...fucking miracle. Or a dream.” Jared realized he’d stumbled across the only explanation that made sense, and he nodded to himself. “That has to be it. I’m dreaming all this.”

“Then we’re dreaming it together,” Becca said, smiling. “Let’s enjoy it while it lasts. Do you want to ride the carousel?”

“Definitely not that,” Jared told her. He turned to look the opposite way, along the black arrow with HAUNTED ALLEY in ghostly green letter, and he led her in that direction instead.

Dark Mansion was as he remembered it before the sinkhole, the waiting area winding through a graveyard with dry-ice fog crawling across it, the fake tombstones painted with names like DeCade Boddee and epitaphs like Here lies poor Jill / Went uphill with Jack / Jack had an ax / Jill never came back.

Dim lanterns cast patchy low light onto the facade of the two-story building, designed to look like a rotten old mansion with loose shutters and mossy balconies. In one window, a skeleton swung on a noose and held a cardboard sign that read HANG IN THERE! That sign had changed frequently over the years. Jared remembered it saying JUST HANGIN’ OUT and NO NOOSE IS GOOD NOOSE!

From another second-floor window, a character nicknamed Old Sackhead looked down at the waiting area, his mask a gunnysack with two eyeholes and stitched-up mouth slit. He waved a bloody butcher knife back and forth to greet people waiting in line.

Beyond Dark Mansion, Haunted Alley looked restored to life, too. The fake gas lamps glowed outside the Haunted Souvenir Shop, which was the only exit from Dark Mansion, displaying Dark Mansion and Inferno Mountain t-shirts in its window. The Devil Dogs booth, its logo a Dachshund in a devil costume, offered foot-longs with chili and onions. The red neon pitchfork glowed above the Beat the Devil game, and eerie pipe-organ music played from the Ghostly Gallery, a game where players shot BB guns at “ghosts” made of brightly colored cloth draped over helium balloons. Glowing green footprints led up and down Haunted Alley, bright and clear as though freshly painted.

Inferno Mountain, though, was just a towering, lightless mass, all its lights off, no red glow from the volcanic caldera at the top. The lower half of the devil’s enormous face glowed in the festive colored lights from the park below, casting deep shadows upward across its eyes. Its horns were only visible where they curled up against the night sky, blacking out the stars.

The red front gate to the pitchfork-prison waiting area for Inferno Mountain was locked. A metal sign on the red gate read:

RIDE CLOSED TODAY

Sorry for the inconvenience!

In his mind, Jared could see the pitchfork gate at the base of the mountain opening, the black train rolling out. Tricia Calhoun in the front car, her head torn off, blood all over her white dress.

“What are you thinking about?” Becca asked.

“Nothing.”

“You can talk to me, you know.” She touched his arm. “You can trust me.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. What’s everyone else doing?” Jared looked up and down the midway.

Tamara and Elissa had reached the wishing well, where Elissa looked like she was digging for coins in the pocket of her denim shorts.

Heath, the quiet lumbering sophomore—God knew how that guy had attached himself to their group, but they seemed stuck with him—was bashing at the Whack-A-Frogs with a giant mallet.

Farther back, Derek steered Finn into the dim Old West ruins of Fool’s Gold, which didn’t look restored at all as far as Jared could see, except for the light-trimmed track of the big Starland Express roller coaster.

Tamara and Elissa laughed and dashed on from the wishing well, toward the lighted retro-futuristic landscape of Space City.

“Want to go into Dark Mansion?” Becca asked. “That was always my favorite. All the secret doors.”

Jared looked up at the haunted house. He didn’t want to go inside. He felt like he was the only one who realized just how crazy all of this was. Maybe it was because he was the only one who’d been here the night it happened, the only one with any firsthand experience of the park’s destruction.

Or maybe it was because he’d only had a small taste of the amusement park’s free beer, while everyone else had guzzled it.

“We don’t have to go if you’re scared,” Becca said, with a concerned look on her face, but he knew it was just an act. If he didn’t go, she would think he was weak or a coward, and she would pick on him for days or weeks about it. Having the beautiful Becca around made him feel bigger than he was, like more than just another loser around school. If she lost respect for him and they broke up, he knew it would wreck him.

“Sounds like you’re the one who’s scared,” Jared told her. “You’d probably rather go to Tyke Town and ride the teacups.”

“I would not!” Becca started up the walkway through the graveyard, past the headstone of I.C. Feet (Took a walk / Out in the snow / Wore no boots / Now lies below). “Race you to the front door!” she called, and she took off running.

Jared raced after her, pressing himself to his top speed, determined not to lose even this most minor of competitions.

They were dead even by the time they reached the wide, decrepit-looking front steps, and Jared leaped up three steps at a time, across the little porch where a park employee, often in a cape and fangs or werewolf mask, used to manage admission into the Dark Mansion. As with many of the rides and booths they’d seen tonight, it appeared unmanned yet fully operational and open for business.

Jared slapped the horned face of the oversized door knocker two seconds before Becca arrived.

“I win,” he said. “Where’s my prize?”

“It’s waiting inside,” Becca said, raising her eyebrows.

Jared grasped the door handle, his thumb lingering on the top latch. The door was wide, peaked, with snarling gargoyles and stone brickwork painted above it. He was starting to tremble, scared to look any deeper into the park’s mysteries.

It’s only a dream, he reminded himself.

But if it was a dream, then anything could happen.

“Are you scared of what I’m going to do to you in there?” Becca whispered in his ear.

Jared pushed the door open with a loud creak. He took Becca’s hand and led her into the darkness.

Chapter Fifteen

On the midway, Elissa stood with Tamara at the Double Dutch House, eating the most delicious, intoxicating square of chocolate fudge she’d ever tasted. Tamara ate her chocolate with her eyes nearly closed, trembling with pleasure at each nibble.

“Hey, girls,” Finn said as he approached, though he was only looking at Tamara, and he touched her briefly on the lower back when he arrived. Elissa felt an instant pang of jealousy.

“Oh, Finn.” Tamara opened her eyes, laughing a little. “Sorry, I’m totally lost in this chocolate. You should try some.”

“Hell, yeah. Hey, do you want to go explore the park? It looks fucking crazy out there,” Finn said. As an afterthought, he glanced at Elissa. “You can come, too. It’ll be fun.”

“Sounds great,” Tamara said, returning his smile and his long stare.

You can come, too. Elissa felt stung, and she looked away.

“Hang on, Finn.” Derek caught up with them, looking scummy as always, clapped Finn on the shoulder, and steered him west, toward Fools’ Gold. “We have work to do.”

“Work?” Finn looked back over his shoulder at Tamara. “I came here to not work, man.”

The two of them fell into a whispered argument as they walked off toward the Old West town, which looked completely dark.

“We don’t need those lame, stupid boys, anyway. Let’s go exploring by ourselves.” Elissa said. She grabbed Tamara by the wrist and pulled her down the midway.

“Wait! I can’t walk and eat,” Tamara giggled. She shoved the rest of her fudge into her mouth, then licked her fingers.

“Come on!” Elissa tugged on her wrist, and Tamera stumbled forward, still giggly with her sugar high. They walked on past the game booths, eventually emerging into the brightly painted, music-filled central plaza. Even the little stage near the concession area was lit, with its red curtain drawn back and tied, but nobody was there.

Elissa glanced around to make sure nobody was in earshot. Jared and Becca were exploring Haunted Alley, stupid Heath was pounding away at the Whack-A-Frog, and most importantly, Finn and Derek were far back along the midway.

“Why are you flirting with Finn?” Elissa whispered. “You know I like him.”

“I am not!” Tamara looked startled.

“You’re letting him flirt with you, then,” Elissa said. “You always take the guys I like.”

“No, I don’t.”

“We started hanging out with Scott Jensen because I liked him, and you ended up going out with him,” Elissa said. “And now it’s the same thing with Finn. You’re going to end up with him, not me. I can tell.”

“I can’t help it if some guys like me instead,” Tamara said.

“They always like you instead, because you’re pretty and I have a big butt and a weird face. That’s the problem.”

“You do not have a weird face! You have a cute face.”

“Whatever.”

“I never do anything to take these guys from you, Elissa. They just come after me. What else am I supposed to do?”

“Um, try saying no, you’re not interested? Steer one my way occasionally?”

“Oh, okay. I guess I could. I guess I always just let these things happen.”

“But you won’t go out with Finn? Or do anything with him?” Elissa asked.

“Nah, I won’t. Hey, look, the wishing well. Remember that?” Tamara pointed to the brick well with its cheerful little wooden roof and roped bucket.

“You promise you won’t do anything with Finn?” Elissa asked.

“I promise.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. You know I’m good at not doing stuff. Finn will just be one more thing I don’t do. Like laundry. And homework,” Tamara said, and Elissa laughed.

Elissa read aloud the poem painted on a sign over the well:

Some wishes come true,

Some others are lost.

You’ve nothing to lose,

Give your coin a toss!

“Okay, let’s do it.” Elissa dug into her pocket, picked out two pennies, and gave one to Tamara. “Have a wish on me.”

“Thanks!” Tamara smiled at her for a long moment, then turned and flicked her penny down the well.

“Hey, I wasn’t ready yet!” Elissa said.

“Oh, was I supposed to wait? I didn’t think about it. Maybe I have another one.” Tamara opened her purse.

“No, it’s okay.” Elissa balanced the penny on her thumb and index finger and aimed it into the darkness below. The wish came to her mind, unbidden but inevitable:

I wish I was prettier than Tamara, she thought.

She flicked the coin down the well, watching its tumbling copper glint until it was out of sight.

Elissa felt a stab of shame. Why had she wished to be prettier than Tamara? Why not simply wish to be pretty? Or to genuinely not care about her looks or what people thought of her? Or wish for something practical, like a million dollars?

“It’s just a stupid wish,” Elissa whispered, shaking her head to try and clear the bad feeling.

“What did you say?” Tamara asked, still smiling at her.

“I said, let’s go see this park! Right? And if any of the rides are open, we find the highest, fastest one and ride the hell out of it.”

“That’s what I was just thinking!” Tamara replied.

Hand in hand, friends again and drunk on beer and sugar, they staggered toward the high, pulsing lights of Space City, where most of the big rides could be found.

“American Rockets? That’s one of the highest in the park.” Elissa pointed to the glowing stripes of neon and rows of colored bulbs flashing up and down the ten-story central tower of the rocket ride. The four rocket cars flashed and pulsed with their own lights, sitting on their launch pads and ready for riders.

“Maybe,” Tamara said, but she didn’t sound sure.

“The UFO Spinner?” Elissa pointed to the flying saucer with hundreds of brightly colored, flashing lights on its silver shell. “It just goes around and around and pushes you back against the wall. It doesn’t go up high or anything. Maybe later.”

“Maybe later,” Tamara agreed.

“There’s the Brain-Scrambler!” Elissa pointed to the twelve-foot scientist with the oversized brain, his giant lava-lamp flask glowing red. He stood sentry by the entrance to the white dome enclosing the ride. The words PROFESSOR ATOMIC’S BRAIN-SCRAMBLER! glowed and flashed across the top of the dome, accented with neon test tubes. “I always loved that big alien professor guy.”

“Me, too.”

“Oh. Oh!” Elissa stopped walking and put her arm across Tamara’s stomach to stop her, too. Then she pointed up at the monster ride glowing and flashing ahead.

The Moon Robot was a Zipper-style ride. Its central structure was an oval-shaped steel axis, about fifty feet from end to end. The entire oval rotated like a windmill, and a large wheel spun at either end of it. Twelve little cages, each barely big enough for two riders, spun end over end while zipping around the outside of the oval like the teeth of a chainsaw. The entire structure glowed with purple and gold neon.

“Moon Robot,” Elissa breathed. “Probably the best ride in the park, and they’ve got it running again! This is the one for us, Tamara. It has to be.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s totally us!” Tamara beamed, the thousand lights of the Moon Robot reflecting in her wide eyes. She was always so agreeable that Elissa suspected she found making her own decisions to be too much hard work—Tamara could be profoundly lazy when not excited by something new and shiny.

Tamara was usually willing to go along with other people’s ideas, so Elissa did find it entirely possible that Tamara hadn’t set out to steal the guys Elissa liked, but had just passively gone along with their interest in her. It was just Tamara letting other people make her choices, as always.

Elissa took her arm, and they dashed together through the empty waiting area for Moon Robot, giggling as they ran back and forth between the railings. They blew drunken kisses at the giant toy robot that decorated the waiting area.

“How do we get on it?” Tamara asked as they approached the concrete slab of the loading area for the ride.

The Moon Robot ride stopped rotating. The outer cable brought one of the twelve caged cars down to the very bottom of the ride, directly in front of them. It stopped abruptly, and the door of the empty cage swung wide open, as though inviting them in.

“Wow,” Elissa said. “Okay, but how do we start it and stop it? We need a rope or a boy or some other tool.”

“All of our rides are now fully automated,” a flat voice said behind them. Both girls jumped and shrieked in surprise.

The man approaching them must have emerged from the ride operator’s booth, which was shaped like an Apollo space capsule with black-tinted windows. The booth’s round door stood open now, with the lights of a control panel glowing somewhere deep inside the dim booth.

He was in his thirties, or his forties, or his fifties, his face bland and expressionless, his eyes an almost colorless gray. He wore a candy-striped white hat with a matching suit, a bow tie, and a red handkerchief tucked into his coat pocket like a goofy rich guy in an old movie.

The girls gaped at him, afraid to speak. They glanced at each other—fight or flee? Tamara would probably wait for Elissa to decide.

He looked between them, then up at the glowing tower of the ride.

“The Moon Robot,” he said. “The best ride in the entire park, some would say. Rapid rotation, tremendous G-forces, all while riding six stories into the air. For those who need a good, solid jolt of fear. Is that what you’ve come to find?”

Tamara gave Elissa a shocked, helpless look.

“Um.” Elissa cleared her throat. “We’re sorry, we thought the park was closed...”

“It is. But you’ve come inside anyway.”

“Yeah.” Elissa trembled. “Are you the security guy? Because we can just leave. You don’t have to...get us in trouble.”

Tamara nodded vigorously, her eyes wide.

“I am not the security guy,” he said, with just a little smile at the very corners of his lips. “I am the new proprietor. As you can see, our renovations are making rapid progress.”

“Oh, yeah, uh-huh,” Elissa agreed quickly.

“It looks great!” Tamara said. “It’s all so pretty. And new.”

“I am pleased to hear that you approve,” he said, though his face didn’t show any particular pleasure, or anything at all. “You are squarely in my target market, after all. Your demographic provides my most valued customers.”

“Really?” Tamara asked. For some reason, she seemed to enjoy hearing that she was part of a valued target market.

“Young, bright, wandering souls desperately seeking a good time,” he said with a slight nod.

“That’s totally us! Right, Elissa?”

“Sure.” Elissa shrugged, just glad the guy hadn’t called the cops, so far.

“Please provide feedback on your experience as you exit the ride,” the man said. He made a flourishing gesture and the open cage and bowed his head. “Now, my ladies, your gondola awaits.”

Tamara and Elissa snickered.

Elissa led the way toward the open cage with a growing rush of excitement. Instead of getting mad at them for sneaking into the park, the guy was actually inviting them to try out the ride. She figured he must be some crazy rich guy—he would have to be, if he’d bought and restored the entire park. She wouldn’t mind making friends with a crazy rich guy like that.

“Moon Robot! Whoop!” Tamara cheered as she climbed into the little cage, suspended a few feet above the ground, and dropped into the narrow seat. The man in the striped hat held the cage to prevent it from swinging back and forth.

Elissa climbed up beside her.

“This is awesome,” Elissa whispered.

“I know!” Tamara squeaked, bobbing up and down in her seat.

“Place your hands in your laps for the safety bar,” the man said through the cage wall.

That didn’t sound right to Elissa—wouldn’t it make more sense to raise their arms out of the way while it closed over their laps? She did as instructed, though, and placed her hands on her thighs. Tamara copied her.

The steel bar swung down, and steel hoops snapped into place around all four of their wrists, handcuffing them into place. Elissa and Tamara shouted in protest.

“I apologize,” the man said, walking around to look in at them from the open cage door. “New safety regulations, you see. People could not obey a simple instruction to grasp the old handlebars at all times during the ride. So now we have these.”

With the two of them locked into place, the man leaned into the cage and reached his hands toward their faces, as if he intended to smother each of them with one hand. Elissa steeled herself, ready to bite his fingers if necessary, but he instead reached around behind their headrests, not touching them at all.

He swung a steel semi-circle out from behind each of their headrests and closed it across their necks, locking their heads against the thick, padded headrests.

“Whoa, hey!” Elissa protested.

“I’m afraid the insurance company now requires these to avoid head injuries.” He locked the neck guards into place, and then his flat gray eyes looked into Elissa’s. His gaze filled her with a creepy, squirmy feeling. “It is unfortunate, if you ask me,” he said. “A ride is much more interesting when it includes the risk of serious injury or death, don’t you agree?”

“Sure,” Elissa answered, feeling nervous now. She suddenly couldn’t believe she’d gotten on the ride, that she was trusting her life to this strange man.

He stepped back out of the cage and closed the door, then gazed at them for a moment through the wire mesh.

“Of course, I suppose injury and death are constant risks at every moment,” he said. “That is what makes life interesting.”

He latched the door from the outside, then turned and walked away toward the fake Apollo capsule.

“This is gonna be epic!” Tamara shrieked. She rocked back and forth, making the cage swing. If she did it hard enough, she could make their little cage flip upside down before the ride even started. Elissa remembered that from when they were kids.

“I don’t know,” Elissa whispered. “Don’t you think that guy’s kind of scary?”

“Should we be scared?” Tamara asked, her eyes widening. “This ride’s safe, right?”

“Nobody’s ridden it in five years,” Elissa whispered. “Maybe we should get off.”

A heavy chain clanked slowly somewhere behind them. Their little cage car rose, rocking back and forth as it climbed the side of the Moon Robot, up and away from the concrete below.

“Hey, wait!” Elissa screamed down at the Apollo capsule. “Wait, we changed our minds! Stop!”

“Yeah, stop!” Tamara screamed, echoing her.

The strange rich guy either didn’t hear them or didn’t care, because they continued to rise, gaining speed. The countless bright, colored lights of the park spread out below them. Music flowed from every ride and game booth, colliding into a vibrant ocean of sound—rock, country, jazz, and the obligatory calliope from the glowing red carousel across the way, which was flanked by the drowsily rotating Ferris wheel and the spinning swings. People died on those tame little rides, Elissa thought, and I’m riding the freaking Moon Robot.

Off to her left, she could see the eerie, swamp-like lights barely illuminating the peaked dormers and turrets of Dark Mansion, its name glowing in ghostly green letters above the front porch area. Inferno Mountain still lay dark and lifeless, as did the bumper boats and all of Fools’ Gold, but Tyke Town was lit up just as she remembered.

She took in the Storybook Maze full of candy houses and fairy castles, the spinning teacup ride, and the flashing yellow and orange lights of the Funtime Firehouse whose gaping, rotating entrance tunnel led into a wonderland of slides and bouncy houses (socks only).

Her heart lit up as the sight conjured a hundred lost memories of her own childhood. Then the cage whipped around one of the Moon Robot’s two colossal wheels, their cage flipped upside down, and she and Tamara screamed in terror at the ground far below. It was a long drop to the hard concrete.

The entire ride shuddered and rumbled, as if wobbling on its support system. The girls screamed again as they rocketed forward, still hanging upside down, toward the other giant spinning wheel.

“Is it supposed to do that?” Tamara screamed. “Elissa, tell me, is it supposed to—”

They whipped around the wheel, gaining more speed, and immediately went into a series of spins as they dropped toward the ground. The entire ride structure heaved and swayed, and Elissa watched Tamara’s padded headrest rupture in several places.

How well had the weird rich guy actually restored the ride? Had he even tested it once before putting the two girls on it? Elissa’s heart raced, and she felt her skin grow hot as she went into an adrenaline-fueled panic, her thoughts racing as the cage spun her upside down again and again. She didn’t remember the ride ever spinning her this much before—it was lucky to go upside down just four or five times before the cage settled.

The sense of enchantment—the one that had made it seem perfectly normal that the park was mostly restored, the rides were open, and food and beer were freely available to everyone, even teenage girls—was entirely wiped away.

The idea of someone buying and restoring the park should have ignited a wildfire of outrage and controversy all over town. She should have heard something about it already.

Maybe he wasn’t an eccentric rich guy at all. Maybe he was some murderer who lured kids into the park, drugged them with the free food and beer, and then sent them on the decrepit old rides just to watch them die. This seemed far more likely than the idea that he was an eccentric rich man who’d bought and restored the amusement park and now welcomed trespassing kids just for the heck of it.

All of this flashed across her adrenaline-fueled brain in just a few seconds. She looked at Tamara to see if she’d realized it, too.

Tamara had something else to scream about.

Thin stainless steel rods slid out from the ruptures in Tamara’s headrest, surrounding her head like fence posts. Each one was topped with a different object—a round, compact-sized mirror, a syringe full of clear fluid teeming with strange little wriggling creatures, a tiny circular saw, a scalpel, and a few spinning mechanical objects she couldn’t identify. They were all miniature in size, as though they belonged to the world’s tiniest surgeon.

Tamara shrieked as the rods moved in straight lines, back and forth in front of her face, as if the rods were driven by some primitive carnival mechanism. Their simplistic back-and-forth motion reminded Elissa of the up-and-down movement of horses on a carousel, controlled by unseen clockwork.

Elissa screamed and tried to reach over to help her friend, but her hands were still cuffed to the safety bar, and her head was locked into place, just like Tamara’s. All she could do was uselessly kick her feet against the cage door in front of them.

They rounded a wheel and leveled out, right side up again as they ascended the side of the Moon Robot.

“What’s happening?” Tamara cried. “Elissa, do something!”

“I can’t!” Elissa kicked her feet against the door in frustration. “I can’t do anything!”

“You have to help me!” Tamara watched the little scalpel as it moved in close enough to brush her cheek, then moved back out in front of her face as its steel rod extended again. Tamara’s eyes widened, and she screamed.

They rounded the other wheel on the big rotating axis of the Moon Robot, and their cage began flipping backwards, flinging them head over heels again and again.

The rod with the syringe tip pulled in close to Tamara’s pretty face, and the needle punched into Tamara’s cheek, injecting her with the clear fluid brimming with tiny wormlike creatures.

“No!” Elissa screamed.

“Make it stop! Make it stop!” Tamara cried. Her entire face seemed to tighten against her skull, like a canvas being stretched. Her lips pulled back far enough to reveal her gums, and her eyelids drew back tight, leaving her eyes bulging open, unblinking. Her tongue wiggled between her teeth as she screamed.

The scalpels descended next, cutting into both of the high cheekbones that helped make her attractive—more attractive than Elissa, anyway. They pulled away, and the circular saw and drill bit descended next. The saw carved into her cute button nose, while the whining drill bit punched through her cheek and sheared off a corner of her tooth, stabbing her tongue before it drew back.

While the other instruments cut and sliced at her, he little compact mirror remained fixed in one place, forcing Tamara to watch all that was happening to her. With the skin of her face drawn back, she was unable to close her eyelids.

The little rods accelerated, in and out, their tools stabbing and carving at Tamara’s face while both girls screamed helplessly. A mist of blood spattered through the little cage car, showering Elissa like hot, salty raindrops.

The car hung upside down, then went into a new series of forward flips.

The little spinning mechanical gadgets descended and gathered the butchered flaps of Tamara’s once-pretty face. They stitched and stapled her face back together in a new configuration, sewing her own skin over her eyes, nose, and mouth.

Tamara grunted, obviously unable to breathe, unable to do more than shift in her seat and kick her shoes at the cage door.

“Tamara!” Elissa cried, yanking her wrists against the steel cuffs that trapped them. “Tamara, no!”

Tamara grunted more desperately behind the mask of rearranged skin that blocked her nose and mouth.

The array of steel tools retracted into her headrest, leaving smears of blood as they slipped out of sight.

Tamara’s struggles grew louder, then quieter, then fell silent as the ride went on and on, flipping and spinning them and spattering Elissa with more and more of her friend’s blood.

Elissa was helpless to do anything but shriek Tamara’s name again and again.

The ride finally slowed, and their cage inched its way downward. The ride’s big central axis stopped spinning and settled into its upright resting position.

Tamara wasn’t moving or making a sound, and Elissa kept screaming her name, trying to get a response.

The cage finally reached the lowest point of the ride and stopped. All the safety gear remained locked into place.

“Help!” Elissa screamed. “Let us out! Let us out!”

The man in the striped hat emerged from the Apollo, strolling toward their cage, clearly in no particular hurry.

“You have to help us! She can’t breathe!” Elissa shouted.

The man walked up to their door with his hands tucked casually in his pockets. He looked over Tamara’s butchered, wildly re-stitched face, the blood-spattered interior of the cage, and then finally turned his cool gray eyes on Elissa.

“Anyone would agree,” he finally said, his voice as flat and empty as ever. “You are much prettier than she is now. Do you dispute this? Was it not your wish to be prettier than Tamara?”

Elissa gaped at him as the meaning of his words sunk in, and she remembered her passing jealous thought as she flung the coin into the well, annoyed with always losing boys to her more attractive best friend. She remembered her feeling of shame immediately afterward, too.

How did this man know her wish, though?

Given the situation, her face and body freshly soaked with her friend’s blood, Elissa made the only possible intelligent response.

She screamed, long and loud, right into the man’s impassive face. He watched her, making no response.

When she finally ran out of air, he sighed a little, as though he had to get on with a tedious but necessary chore.

“No need to weep for her,” he said. “She died as she chose to live. Passively, uselessly, taking no action on her own part. Letting others decide her fate. Letting you decide it.”

“I didn’t want...I didn’t mean...” Elissa blubbered, then she broke down into sobs. “Help her! Please!”

“I have helped her,” he said. “I’ve granted her wish. Do you want to know what she wished for, Elissa?”

Elissa was still crying, unable to stop. Tamara had fallen completely still, and was either dead or dying, and this man obviously had no intention of helping.

“Let me go,” Elissa whispered through her sobs. It was the best she could manage.

“Dear little Tamara wished that the two of you would remain best friends for the rest of your lives,” he said. “Isn’t that sweet? And so very typical of her, too, unable to imagine anything beyond life in this town, staying close with her best friend from high school. Is that what you wanted for your future, Elissa? Stay in your dead little town, get knocked up, drop out of school, only to grow old and die over in Sandy Road Trailer Park? Because that was her future, I can assure you. Until you changed it.”

“How do you know my name?” she whispered. “Who are you?”

“Both your wishes came true,” he said, and he finally unlatched and opened the cage door. “It must be a lucky night for us all.”

“Stay away from me,” Elissa said. “Get away.”

“As you wish.” He tipped his hat at her and bowed formally before walking back into the Apollo and closing the door.

She strained against the safety bars, but nothing would budge.

“Let me out!” she yelled.

The neck guard and the wrist cuffs unlatched, and then the safety bar rose off her lap. She grasped the bloody mesh of the cage wall and pulled herself to her feet, which made the entire cage rock back and forth.

Tamara, not moving and already turning cold, was still locked in the seat by her steel neck guard. Elissa couldn’t pull it loose.

“Tamara?” she said, touching the girl’s cooling face, now a bloody patchwork of skin.

“All riders must now exit,” the man’s flat monotone said over the Apollo unit’s exterior loudspeakers.

“Let her go!” Elissa yelled back.

“Unless you would like to ride again.” The heavy unseen chain clanked again, and Elissa’s cage jerked forward and upward.

“No!” Elissa screamed. She jumped out of the cage as it continued onward and upward, carrying Tamara’s body away with it.

“Come ride the Moon Robot. It’s out of this world,” the man said over the speakers, his voice still flat and emotionless even while making his sales pitch. “Chills and thrills, ride it if you dare, it’s a killer.”

Elissa looked at the Apollo pod, wondering if the guy was going to run out and kill her, and then decided that it might not be best to take a wait-and-see approach on that.

She climbed over the exit gate and ran back toward the midway, her mind filled with panic, expecting the man to come after her any second. She didn’t dare to look back, but kept her eyes focused on the colored lights and open space ahead.

Chapter Sixteen

Finn slurped down his second corn dog. He normally didn’t find the things appealing, but these were by far the best he’d ever tasted, the crust golden and crispy, the corn mush inside delicious, the wiener thick and beefy with some kind of unusual spice.

He chased it with cold beer, then popped out his compact mirror to check his teeth. Satisfied that his teeth looked clean, he approached the girls pigging out on chocolate at the Double Dutch House. His eyes were on Tamara’s denim-sheathed ass, her back pockets edged with red glitter. She was shivering with delight as she ate her chocolate, so it seemed like a good time to make his approach.

“Hey, girls,” Finn said, touching Tamara on the lower back to get her attention.

“Oh, Finn.” Tamara opened her eyes, laughing a little. “Sorry, I’m totally lost in this chocolate. You should try some.”

“Hell, yeah. Hey, do you want to go explore the park? It looks wild out there,” Finn said. He wanted to get her away from the others. The old amusement park was full of good places to sneak off and make out. As an afterthought, he told Elissa. “You can come, too. It’ll be fun.”

“Sounds great,” Tamara said, returning his smile and his long stare.

I’m in, Finn thought. She totally wants me. I hope that Elissa chick doesn’t get in the way.

“Hang on, Finn.” Derek caught up with them, looking scummy as always, and clapped Finn on the shoulder. He pulled Finn away from the girls, toward the dark wreckage of Fools’ Gold. “We have work to do.”

“Work?” Finn looked back over his shoulder at Tamara, who was still smiling at him. “I came here to not work, man.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I came here to hook up with one of those girls tonight.”

“One of them?” Derek snorted. “You don’t care which one?”

“Tamara’s hotter, obviously. But if Elissa wants to paint a purple lipstick ring around my dick, then I’m not going to stop her.”

“Those girls are just skanks,” Derek whispered. “Who cares?”

“I thought you liked skanks.” Finn frowned as they approached Fools’ Gold. The ghost town clearly hadn’t been restored yet. Several of the buildings were charred or falling down. Broken timber and glass littered the sawdust street. The dark buildings were lit only by the lights of the Starland Express roller coaster above.

“Hell, yeah, it’s just what I hoped,” Derek said.

“So you’re cock-blocking me to show me some burned-out buildings,” Finn said.

“Naw, this is business,” Derek said, walking into the dark, littered street. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since we started talking about coming here.”

“What do you know about business?” Finn snorted. “You’ve never even kept a job for more than a month.”

“Jobs are for suckers,” Derek said.

“Is that why you’re always broke?” Finn asked. Finn himself had worked at Captain Scoop’s Ice Cream for almost a year and a half, ever since he was fifteen.

“Least I don’t have to scoop Rocky Road for screaming kids,” Derek grumbled. He kicked at a rotten hitching post in front of the “Triple-Z Saloon,” which had once served beer and hot wings.

“Captain Scoop’s has a lot of perks,” Finn said. “First, the pay’s above minimum wage. Second, some top hotties from school work there. Third, their top-hottie friends come to see them. I’m swimming in golden vajayjay my whole shift.”

“And how many of those girls do you actually hook up with?” Derek asked.

“Plenty.”

“Sure.” Derek rolled his eyes and approached the old wooden facades of the game booths.

“Four, and I didn’t see this one coming when I started working there: the MILFs. Every day.”

“I’m not into moms,” Derek said.

“You’re a red-blooded mammal,” Finn said. “These hot moms come in there, and they always have to bend over to deal with their little kids. If they’re looking away from you, their panties pop right up over their jeans. And if they’re looking toward you and wearing a tank top, you get a great view. And when any of these girls get close to the display cooler, you know, to look at the ice cream, their nipples pop right out at you while they’re trying to decide between Rainbow Sherbert and Brownie Fudge Crunch.”

“You’re a total perv, man. You should go into porn.” Derek grabbed the chained front of a game booth with both hands and pulled, and the rotten wood ripped away from the rusty padlock. “You don’t talk about anything but sex, girls, tits, and sex.”

“Is there something else worth talking about?” Finn asked.

Derek shoved aside the wooden panel that had blocked off the game booth. Inside, a couple of dented trash cans lay on the floor. The painted backdrop showed a cartoon possum poking its head up out of a dumpster.

“You recognize this game?” Derek asked, climbing over the counter and dropping inside the booth.

“Yeah, Playing Possum,” Finn said. “You threw this little bean-bag possum and tried to get it inside one of the trash cans. The smaller the trash can, the bigger the prize.”

“This is what I’ve been thinking about, as long as we’ve been talking about breaking into the park,” Derek said. He hoisted the largest trash can.

“This game?”

“No.” Derek slammed the trash can into something under the counter that Finn couldn’t see. “Think about it. The sinkhole opens up, everybody runs. All these booths and shops and crap get abandoned. How much money do you think they left behind?” Derek slammed the trash can again.

“I’m guessing none,” Finn said. “Money would be the one thing worth grabbing.”

“Yeah, if it was your money.” Derek slammed the can a third time, and something cracked under the counter. “But what if you’re just some high school kid with a stupid summer job? Are you gonna grab the cash out of the drawer, or just run and save your own ass?”

“I don’t know. Probably my own ass. But somebody must have come for the money by now.”

“They locked it up tight five years ago, nobody in or out since then. Help me search all these old places, and we’ll split whatever cash we find.” Derek tossed the trash can aside, reached under the counter, and lifted out a cash drawer so he could see it in the roller coaster lights.

Finn leaned over to look, fairly interested in the prospect of free money.

At first glance, the drawer looked empty. Derek lifted one panel after another, ultimately discovering a total of seventeen cents wedged into a back corner.

“We’re rich!” Finn said.

“But you see what I’m talking about,” Derek said. “Let’s split up and search Fools’ Gold.”

“And you’re sure I’d rather be doing this instead of making out with those sophomore girls?” Finn asked. “Because I’m not so sure.”

“If we find even one store with cash hidden in it, it could be worth hundreds of dollars,” Derek said.

Finn sighed. “How long will it take?”

“You search that half of town, I’ll search this half, starting with the saloon,” Derek said. “Whatever we find, we split evenly.”

“Fine, but you owe me half of seventeen cents.” Finn held out his hand.

“That was before you started helping.”

“You’re a cheap bastard. Let’s get this over with.” Finn crossed the muddy street.

Finn started with El Dorado, a food booth fronted with a fanciful Aztec city. It had served, not surprisingly, nachos and burritos. The back half of the booth had burned away, but some of the front remained like the ruins of ancient city.

He checked the cash register drawer, and was surprised to find two entire dollars, their edges singed. He thought about shouting about his find to Derek, then wised up and pocketed the money instead.

He poked around a couple of unrecognizably burnt buildings, then stepped through the shattered display window of the Fools’ Gold Mercantile, which had once sold cowboy hats and plastic spurs alongside the standard jumble of amusement-park souvenirs like seashell lamps and flamingo keychains.

Its racks were overturned and empty now, and a jagged crack as wide as Finn’s thumb curved across the floor and out of sight.

He found the cash register already smashed open on the dusty floor. He kicked the empty cash drawer aside.

This is stupid, Finn thought.

He walked out, following the wide crack in the pavement past a ride with four big cars shaped like hefty pink pigs, each with a pair of ridiculously tiny angel wings on its sizable haunches. The pig cars were mounted around a giant wagon wheel laid on its side. When the ride was in motion, the pigs would go around and around, and maybe up and down a little—it was pretty much a kid’s ride, and Finn barely remembered it at all.

Now the pigs were coated in years of accumulated grime, giving them a mottled, diseased look. Their oversized smiles were like sickened fever grins.

Finn could hardly read the faded name of the ride, in puffy pink letters on the sky-blue wooden sign: WHEN PIGS FLY. Below the words, a fat cartoon pig with tiny white wings reclined on a cloud, its arms behind its head, napping contently.

Tucked into a back corner of Fool’s Gold, almost hidden behind the pig ride, was a long wooden shed of a building. The sign out front, also hand-painted and badly faded, read PORK BELLY’S BBQ, with a double-chinned cartoon pig gleefully digging into a plate of barbecue, a fork in each hand, dark sauce drooling down its chin.

Finn approached the old food stand, which was practically tucked under the support pylons of the Starland Express. It was so close that none of the light from the roller coaster tracks high above actually fell onto it, leaving it in a pool of shadow in the back corner of the ghost town.

It wasn’t just another food stand, though, but a restaurant with batwing saloon doors. Finn had to walk up five steps to its sloped, crooked front porch, which was overgrown with a curtain of thorny vines.

The porch boards groaned and shifted under his feet as he crossed to the doors. He reached out and nudged one open with a rusty creak, then stepped inside.

It was dark as a cave, and his first impression was the overwhelming smell. The odor of old smoke exuded from the rank wooden walls, and beneath that, as if radiating from the moldy floorboards, was the stench of rancid grease. The air itself seemed embedded with smell of charred pig carcasses.

He shined his cell phone around like a flashlight. The interior was paneled in cheap pine, with pig heads mounted near the ceiling, the way people usually mounted deer heads. He couldn’t tell if they were fake or real.

The tables were overturned, several of the chairs smashed. All the wooden shutters were drawn and bolted from the inside, sealing out any hope of light.

Finn advanced slowly into the place. His shoes stuck to the floor and had to be peeled free with each step. A serving counter ran along one wall and ended at a sales counter all the way across the restaurant. He walked along it, shining his light into what had once been a refrigerated display with sliding glass doors, now offering plate after plate of formless black filth.

He heard a clattering sound.

Finn raised his phone to look through the open window into the kitchen behind the counter, but his light didn’t penetrate far into the gloom. He glimpsed a few dirty pots and pans, but not much else.

He heard a squeal and a clatter in the kitchen, and he turned and ran for the door.

Probably just a rat, he told himself, but he didn’t want to find out. He crossed the sawdust street to look for Derek and tell him he was done searching for money and would now be leaving to find the girls.

Derek was inside the Vintage Portrait Shoppe, where people could have old-looking photographs taken in a variety of period costumes against matching backdrops. The scene was currently set to a kind of Arabian Nights theme, showing a cave full of treasure and a genie wafting up from a magic lamp.

“What the hell are you doing?” Finn asked.

Derek stood at a rack of clothes, tossing frock coats and fancy dresses onto the floor. It looked like he’d already dumped out a chest of costume jewelry and a trunk of hats.

“Searching, man,” Derek said.

“You’re not going to find money in there,” Finn said. “Check the cash register.”

“It’s gone. I have a feeling about this place, though...” Derek shoved the rolling clothes rack aside in frustration. He knocked over several faceless busts holding wigs of varied styles and colors, then he turned and stared at the Arabian Nights backdrop on the wall. “There,” he said.

“Dude, that’s a picture of treasure, not the real stuff,” Finn said. “I’m out of here.”

“Wait!” Derek ran to the big print and kicked it. After an experimental tug, he made it roll up, revealing an Old West street scene behind it. Behind that, a spooky castle. Behind that, an actual solid wood-paneled wall with a small square door no more than a foot high.

“How did you know that was there?” Finn asked, pointing to the little door.

“I could just feel it.” Derek knelt by the tiny door, took the knob, and pulled it open. Finn squatted down beside him, shining his phone light inside the cold, drafty opening.

Beyond the door was a little concave area scooped out of raw dirt. He leaned closer. Just below floor level sat a dirt-encrusted wooden box.

“There.” Finn pointed, and Derek scooped it out, blowing the dirt off the lid. It was the size of a jewelry box, carved around the edges with hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades.

“It’s heavy,” Derek whispered. “I bet it’s money. I bet it’s a lot of money.”

“Open it,” Finn whispered back.

Derek cleared his throat, rubbed his hands together, then raised the lid with his fingertips. More dirt spilled out of the little playing-card symbols carved on top. The box’s rusty hinges squeaked as he opened it.

Inside, the box was divided into change compartments, like the inside of the cash drawers they’d been searching, but each compartment was brimming with dusty gold coins, carved with eagles, Indian heads, or some lady’s face.

“Are those real?” Finn asked. “They can’t be real.”

Derek lifted one of the coins and rubbed the dust away with his thumb. Then he bit it.

“Are you serious?” Finn asked him.

“The real stuff’s got a certain feel to it, a certain weight, and a special taste,” Derek said. “It just whispers ‘money, money, money.’ This is real.” He looked over the box full of gold. “It’s got to be worth hundreds, maybe thousands. Maybe we’re rich. I’m the fucking troll king, bitches!”

“What is that, some Harry Potter shit?”

“Just something we used to say as kids.” Derek blushed and looked away, embarrassed.

Finn picked up a gold coin. It was smooth-textured and heavier than it looked. “How did you know it was there?”

“I didn’t. Maybe I can smell money.” Derek stuffed two handfuls of coins into his pockets.

“Hey, half of those are mine!” Finn said, grabbing out his own double handful.

When they’d filled their pockets, the box was still half full of gold. Derek hoisted it up, his pants sagging low.

“Why are you carrying the gold?” Finn whispered.

“You want me to carry the light instead? This shit’s heavy,” Derek said.

“Okay, you carry it.”

Finn double-checked for more boxes or coins, but the dirt cavity behind the wall was empty, already crumbling, as though they’d disturbed it into collapsing.

They walked out of the portrait studio into warm yellow light. The street lanterns glowed all through Fools’ Gold, illuminating a dusty Old West street banked by wooden buildings with long porches. It was as if the lights had come up on a stage set.

A piano, or a recording of one, played fast and loud somewhere inside the Triple-Z Saloon. The lights glowed on the Playing Possum game, where the trash cans had been set up and a bean-bag possum lay waiting on the front counter. The Shoot-Em-Up Puppets had come to life, too, resembling a little theater stage studded with light bulbs, the red curtains drawn back to show the endless loop of puppets parading across it: the Indian war horse, the cowboy pig, the bank robber coyote with his six-shooter drawn, his black hat low and his bandana pulled up to his nose.

Finn walked out into the street, amazed at how different it looked, the heaps of broken clutter gone, the mud replaced by a layer of dry, fresh sawdust.

“What the hell happened?” he asked Derek. “Why did all the lights come on?”

“Who cares? We have to talk about how to hide this gold from everyone else,” Derek said. “I say we just sneak out to your car right now.”

“You want to take off?” Finn asked. He looked up from the thick fresh sawdust on the ground, and his jaw dropped at the sight of a building next to the Triple-Z Saloon. It must have been completely dark when he’d passed it before, or he definitely would have noticed it.

It was a two-story wooden building following the same Old West theme, but sheer pink curtains hung in its windows, and little hearts were carved all along the front of the building. Its name was painted in glittering letters above the entrance: THE HEART OF GOLD HOTEL.

In the windows on the upper floor, silhouettes of shapely women passed back and forth behind the pink curtains. On the lower floor, more lighted pink curtains with lacy trim hung in the entrance, at the center of the hotel’s front porch. Batwing doors hung in front of the curtain, and a heart was carved at the spot where the doors met, one half carved into each door so that the heart would split apart when they opened.

“Look at that.” Finn walked slowly toward the building’s soft pink lights. “I know that wasn’t there before.”

“Who cares? We gotta get going,” Derek said, hefting the box of stolen treasure.

The pink curtains parted. A woman with her hair done up in an elaborate heap of curls stepped through the curvy batwing doors, smiling right at Finn with her dark red lips. She could have been one of the hot moms he liked to admire at the ice cream parlor. She wore a long calico dress with puffy sleeves and a neckline so deep that he could see the fringe of her scarlet bra. Gold jewelry glittered at her ears, neck, wrists, and fingers.

“Uh, hi,” Finn said, approaching her. She strolled up the railing of the wooden walkway in front of the wooden hotel, waving a folding paper fan at herself.

While she gazed down at him, two girls emerged from the batwing doors and sauntered up on either side of her. They were younger, closer to Finn’s own age, in red and black dresses cut high in the front to reveal fishnet stockings and tall, high-heeled boots. Their hair was also done in elaborate curls and braids and decorated with tall feathers. Their faces were heavily painted, and they regarded Finn with distant, appraising looks.

One of them, the red-haired girl on his left, resembled Kylie Winchester, an older girl who’d once lived in his neighborhood. Finn had fantasized about her before she’d vanished on the day of the sinkhole, though he’d done the same about every girl on his street, and a few of their moms, too. And one or two of their grandmas, when he was reaching for some new fantasy material.

“Let’s get out of here!” Derek grabbed his arm, but Finn shook him off and walked closer to the porch railing.

“Come on up, sweetie,” said the lady in the calico dress. “If you want a good time.”

“I do.” Finn climbed straight up over the railing, not even bothering to walk a few feet to use the steps. The three women moved in around him, and he smelled their rich, sweet perfumes, tangy and tempting in the air.

“We want to have a good time, too,” the one in calico said, touching his cheek with her silky gloved hand.

“But you must pay a price,” said the girl who looked like Kylie Winchester.

“You got it,” Finn whispered, intoxicated by the sight and smell of them as their fingertips stroked his face and arms. He brought out a handful of gold coins from his pocket. “Take what you want.”

“What the fuck are you doing up there, Finn?” Derek shouted from the ground. “Get away from them!”

“One minute,” Finn mumbled. He wished he could slap Derek away like an annoying fly.

“Is that all?” The girl who looked like Kylie frowned with her deep red lips. “I hoped it would last a little longer.”

“Don’t forget to save some for me,” said the other girl, taking Finn’s arm. She caressed his bicep. “Oh! He’s so strong.”

“And so big.” The lady in calico laid her hands on his hips and pressed herself against him, gazing up at him with a hungry look in her hazel eyes. She licked her lips as she took his entire handful of gold coins. She gave the two younger girls one coin each and pocketed the rest. “We’ll have a lot of fun with this boy,” she said in a husky voice, and the other two giggled.

“This is really messed up, Finn!” Derek called from below. “We should go! Right now!”

“We want you to come inside,” whispered the girl who looked like Kylie. She stood up on the toes of her leather boots and kissed his cheek. He could feel the lipstick stamp she left behind. The other younger girl kissed his other cheek, and then the lady in calico kissed him full on the mouth, her hands caressing their way down his chest and stomach.

Finn was so horny he could barely breathe.

“Follow me,” the calico lady whispered. She stepped through the batwing doors, then slipped away through the pink curtain.

Finn followed, a burlesque girl on each arm, all the blood in his brain slipping away and flowing southward. He knew what it would be like inside the Old West brothel—deep Oriental rugs, silk furniture, candles, soft music, strong whiskey, maybe opium pipes and hookas. Upstairs, the feather beds would be enormous and full of warm, welcoming girls. He could see it all in his mind.

His heart hammered in anticipation.

Distantly, he heard Derek calling after him, but Derek was an idiot. Derek was obsessed with money for the sake of money, not realizing that the whole point of having money was to get laid.

Finn passed through the curtain.

The facade of the hotel turned out to be a false front. Behind it lay three feet of dusty space ending at a bare plywood wall.

Finn looked up at the second story. Female mannequins rolled back and forth behind the pink-curtained windows on automated loops, riding little train contraptions on circular tracks. The tracks sat on scaffolding behind the hotel facade. Little spotlights mounted behind the mannequins created the alluring shadows he’d seen on the window curtains.

“I kind of expected it to be different back here...” Finn lowered his gaze back down to the three women.

The older woman no longer wore the calico dress. Dark mud smeared her hair thin and flat against her head. Her entire body looked pale, more than a little decayed, and dripping with more dark mud, like she had just crawled out of her own grave.

In place of the calico dress and high-heeled boots, she wore a mud-soaked summer blouse and high-waisted mom jeans, all of it ripped and pasted to her body. A mud-drenched orange fanny pack sagged on her hip, and her eyes were concealed in the shadow of an orange plastic sun visor smeared with grime—two red-flag signs of a tourist.

One of the younger girls was now just a mud-soaked teenager in an airbrushed Conch City shirt and denim shorts.

The other girl, he realized, really was his hot neighbor Kylie Winchester who had died in the sinkhole. Her skin was pale, her entire body muddy, and the left half of her face bashed in as if by some blunt object, but he recognized her. Her eyes glowed, pale and drained of color, inside the decayed wreckage of her face.

All three of them looked like the risen dead, and the two younger girls had grown icy cold in his arms. He tried to pull back from them, but they clutched him tighter, encircling him with their stiff, dead arms, their nails digging into his waist like bird claws. Finn tried to break away, but the two girls were as stiff as iron, trapping him in their embrace.

The tourist mom removed her visor as she approached him. Her eyes were also colorless, so pale they seemed to glow, even when the spotlights overhead snuffed out and left them in darkness.

“You said we could take what we wanted as payment,” she whispered, her voice hoarse, as though her throat were full of water and sand. “‘Take what you want,’ you said.”

The cold dead girls giggled, clutching him tighter from both sides. Finn shuddered, his heart beating triple-time, his entire body shivering with fear, but he couldn’t break free.

“What is this?” Finn whispered.

The dead tourist mom raised her face toward his, the smell of rotten flesh wafting from her rotten lips, and he remembered how she’d kissed him less than a minute ago. She lay an icy gray hand on his chest, and it was so cold Finn thought it might stop his heart.

“Feeding time,” she whispered.

Then she bit into his chest, her teeth cracking his breastbone, as if she planned to chew right through to his heart.

The other girls sank their teeth into his belly and into the back of his neck.

Finn couldn’t break away from their deadly hug, so he screamed for Derek to come help him until his hot dead neighbor Kylie bit open his windpipe and sucked all the air from his lungs.

Then they really tore into him.

Chapter Seventeen

Heath stuffed himself on the midway, but he felt he had no choice. The food was delicious, packed with grease, salt, and sugar. He ate multiple slices of pizza, three or four corn dogs slathered in ketchup and mustard, a deep-fried funnel cake with powdered sugar and blackberry jam. He’d chugged at least six beers. He’d done all of this in less than five minutes.

His belly full, he’d strolled down the midway, taking in the endless array of bright neon signs, blinking light bulbs, and painted animals and clowns.

He walked right to the Whack-A-Frog, half-smiling to himself. He remembered wanting to play it years ago, when he was six or seven, and his dad insisting it was a waste of money. His dad had found most things Heath wanted, and some of the things he actually needed, to be a waste of money.

Heath looked over the booth, lit by its array of alternately pulsing lights. Big stuffed animals dangled from ceiling wires above. The frogs crouched in the holes in the painted pond, waiting to spring out. He hefted the cartoony oversized mallet, connected by a thick cable to the game console.

He dug into his pocket, came out with a pair of quarters, and fed them into the machine.

All the lights flared to full brightness at once, and the game played a few croaking-frog and cricket sound effects.

Then the first frog jutted out of its hole, and the booth’s speakers began to blare the oldies song “At the Hop.” Heath swung the mallet, but not before the frog ducked back into the hole. He had never been fast on his feet, but he was strong as an ox, and in both these things took after his father.

When the second frog jutted out, he slammed the mallet into its grinning green face and felt a pleasant crack at the impact. The lights of the machine flashed red for a moment, and a bell rang.

Heath kept swinging, pounding the third frog, missing the fourth, and bashing the fifth with a vengeance.

When his mallet bashed into the fifth frog, he felt a satisfying crunch like cracking bone. Dark red fluid spurted from the frog’s head, spattering the blue and green booth around it. He guessed it was some kind of mechanical oil or other lubricant, but it almost looked like blood, and Heath smiled at the sight of it.

He bashed the sixth frog, feeling its face crack, and a gusher of the dark red fluid splashed his arm. The frog retracted into its hole with obvious damage to its green head, the eye and nose area cracked and sunken.

Heath smashed one frog after another, feeling them break under his mallet, while “At the Hop” played at deafening volume. Soon Heath and the booth were dripping red, and the frogs popped out already damaged and cracked, but he kept swinging, filled with destructive glee.

When he was eight years old, his father had taken him deer hunting, which involves waking up before dawn and sitting in a tree stand hung with camouflage. His father had drunk Wild Turkey—not a waste of money, apparently—and when thoroughly plastered, had given Heath the rifle to hold.

Heath had held it while his father continued drinking himself into a stupor. A deer had stepped out into the little clearing in the woods below, a buck with an impressive rack of antlers, and Heath had gone ahead and shot it. He’d never killed anything larger than an insect before that.

It hadn’t been a perfectly clean shot—he’d hit the big deer in the lung, and it thrashed around for a minute, hacking up blood, and dashed into the woods.

Heath had scrambled down from the stand and chased after it. He found the deer several yards away, toppled over on its side, struggling and gasping to breathe while it drowned in its own blood. It took several minutes to die.

He’d roused his dad, and they’d tied to the deer to the truck and gone to his dad’s friend’s place to hang it upside down on a wooden rack. Heath remembered his dad slicing the deer from crotch to throat and the steaming, ropy entrails spilling out into a big metal tub below.

“Killing a thing is power,” his dad had muttered in his slurred voice. “But eating a thing you killed, that’s real power.”

Heath had thought that over while his family ate roasts and ground venison from his kill over the following weeks.

His dad had taken off a month or two after that, rarely to be seen again. Apparently he’d decided that supporting Heath’s mom and brother and sisters was a waste of money, too. Times got hard after that, and Heath often thought about his dad’s last lesson, and what it really meant, if anything.

When the game ended, most of the frogs still jutted out of their holes, too demolished to sink back inside. Springs and ruptured plastic tubes hung out of their fractured bodies like broken bones and leaking intestines. A sheet of blood-red fluid coated the entire face of the game, with little trickles running off and dripping softly into the sawdust at his feet. The oily red fluid soaked Heath’s face and shirt.

Heath looked around with a grin, eager to show Derek and Finn how he’d completely destroyed the game, but he didn’t see anyone at all, just the hypnotic colored lights pulsing along the midway, and more lights from the high rides beyond, especially in the direction of Space City.

He vaguely remembered the two girls walking by—not giving Heath a second look, he was sure—and then he seemed to remember glimpsing Derek and Finn from the corner of his eye, heading into the dark ruins of Fools’ Gold. Jared and Becca weren’t anywhere in sight, either, but those two didn’t seem to like him very much anyway. They had only tolerated Heath because Derek brought him around.

A creaking, humming sound came from above, near the ceiling of the booth. Heath looked up. One rack of stuffed animals was moving, each plush creature advancing one spot like the candy bars in a vending machine.

The animal at the front dropped off the rack and landed in his arms. It was a green reindeer with brown felt antlers, wearing a red collar with a jingle bell on the front.

Nine-point buck, Heath thought. How’s that for a waste of money, Dad?

He hugged it against him, which smeared red fluid all over it.

Carrying his prize deer, Heath walked up the midway and into Fools’ Gold. The place really was a ghost town now—several of the buildings had burned to the ground, others had collapsed, and the only light came from the tracks of the Starland Express high above, though the actual depot where riders boarded the roller coaster remained dark.

“Derek?” Heath called into the shadowy wreckage. “Finn? You guys here?”

The only answer was a rusty squeak, and then another, and another, as if some big metal wheel were turning around and around.

Heath followed the sound, calling Derek’s name again.

As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw the source of the squeaking. The When Pigs Fly ride turned very slowly, even for a kiddie ride. The four grimy pigs crept along through the air, their teeth bared in ugly, muddy grins.

Beyond this, a spot of dim red light, like raw fire, glowed somewhere in the distance.

“Derek?” Heath called again. He started toward the red light.

It burned somewhere deep inside a wooden shed of a restaurant called Pork Belly’s BBQ. He could barely read the wooden sign over the door, which had faded and was partially overgrown with the thick, thorny green vines that half-buried the building.

Heath stepped up onto the creaking porch and peered inside. It was dark, except for that one red spot at the back. He could smell charred meat and smoke, and he thought he could hear the hiss of sizzling fat.

“Derek?” he asked, but he couldn’t manage more than a whisper. The dark interior of the restaurant seemed to require silence.

Heath tiptoed inside, shining his phone around. The floor was sticky and strewn with broken chairs and table legs, so he had to move cautiously.

A serving counter ran along his left side. The entire counter had shifted askew, probably when the sinkhole opened, and now lay as a kind of shattered barrier under the big open window to the kitchen. Heath couldn’t see much through that window.

That’s not where the real action happened, anyway, he thought. That’s just where they made the cornbread and cole slaw.

The sales counter with the battered cash register sat near the back. Behind it was an open door, from which emanated the fiery red light and the sound of sizzling fat.

Heath made his way around the wreckage of the counter and nudged open the door.

It led into a partially outdoor area under a slanted corrugated-metal roof. The ground was covered with gravel.

Directly ahead of him, in the weedy area behind the restaurant, sat an enormous black barbecue smoker, the kind so large it had its own tires and trailer hitch. One of its two coffin-sized front doors was open, and pyre of red coals burned inside. It was so hot that he already felt scorched from several feet away. A blistering-hot breeze poured out of the open door, strong enough to nudge Heath’s hair back.

The odor of cooking meat and the buzzing of flies filled the air around him.

Unidentifiable lumps and remnants sizzled on the grill he could see, the one behind the open door. Louder sizzling and popping sounded behind the closed door.

He stepped closer to the second door. It was a horizontal hatch that rolled upward, big enough to justify having two handles for lifting and lowering it. Heath set his green prize deer on the seat of a rocking chair with a broken leg.

He gripped a sticky wooden handle in each hand. The hot black surface of the smoker was less than an inch away, close enough to scorch his fingers red.

He pulled, but the door barely budged. It felt like hundreds of pounds of solid iron.

He grimaced and lunged with all his strength. The door let out an ear-splitting squeal as he heaved it up, and a cloud of smoke billowed out around him, rich with the flavor of roasted meat. Though Heath had just pigged out on the midway not long ago, the savory odor made his mouth water. There was nothing like fresh meat.

As the initial blast of smoke cleared, he looked over the butchered animal on the grill, its skin crispy, grease dripping from its pores.

He tried to tell himself it was a large pig, its limbs severed and arrayed around it, and did his best to try and see it that way, but he knew that wasn’t the case. The limbs were much too big, more like a cow, but the body was too small for that.

He finally let himself look up from the grill, at the rack above. He’d glimpsed it before, but looked down and tried not to see it.

Finn’s head sat on the smoker, his red hair blackened, his glazed eyes open and appearing to look right at Heath. The limbs and torso on the grill below were his.

Heath felt sick for a moment, as if he were going to throw up, but it passed. He stared in a kind of wonder at what had been done, that a person had actually done this to another person. Had Derek killed him? Derek seemed a more likely candidate than Jared or the girls. Or maybe there was some crazy serial killer living in the park, luring people in just to murder them and eat them.

It was a powerful thing, Heath thought. Killing a big buck wasn’t just a matter of putting the head and antlers on your wall, after all. It was a matter of eating that big, powerful creature, taking its life into your body.

Heath had figured that out over time, in the months after his father left while he lay in bed at night, kept awake by his younger brother beside him in the bed, who wouldn’t stop coughing. The kid had always been sick, and one day, when Heath was eleven, he’d awoken to find his brother stiff and cold in the bed beside him, his eyes open as if he’d he died while watching Heath sleep.

Finn was not sickly—he was more athletic than Heath, more confident, and he got girls to sleep with him. Given the circumstances, Finn was probably the best choice, if the killer wanted to eat someone with strength and power. Heath could appreciate that. If he had to eat somebody out of their group, he would have chosen Finn or Jared, the ones who seemed to exude the most power. The girls were probably tastier but had less strength to offer.

He licked his lips.

With one shaking hand, Heath reached out and tore a strip of roasted meat from Finn’s bicep. The drumstick, he thought.

Heath looked Finn in the eyes while he placed the juicy morsel onto his tongue and chewed.

It wasn’t bad, taste-wise—somewhere between chicken and pork, expertly seasoned and smoked. Heath wasn’t interested in the flavor, though.

“I’m taking your power,” Heath whispered to Finn. “I want it, and you don’t need it anymore.”

He peeled away another juicy strip and ate it.

The buzzing of flies grew louder, and he heard the sound of metal scraping on metal. Heath could feel someone watching him before he even turned his head to look.

The sounds of the flies had been constant, so the man must have been somewhere in the gravel lot behind the restaurant the entire time, possibly hiding behind the big, heavily stained dumpster.

He wore grease-stained boots and jeans, with an apron from his waist to his knees that had once been white but was now stiff with thick, crusty black stains. He wore a yellowed tank top stretched over his enormous gut, the shirt so filthy Heath could barely see the faint PORK BELLY’S BBQ logo underneath the spattered black stains.

The man’s arms were meaty and hairy. He held a long, rusty roasting fork in one hand and a black-encrusted butcher knife in the other, and he scraped them back and forth while he stared at Heath.

Dried blood and entrails encrusted the man’s pudgy face, obscuring his features. Heath could make out pale, colorless eyes glaring out from sunken sockets. The man’s long mullet haircut was clumped together with more filth. Flies swarmed in the air around him, crawling in his ears, nostrils, and open mouth.

Heath found the big man so horrific that he froze where he was, unable to move or think. He just gaped.

The man raised the rusty fork and pointed it at Heath’s right hand, where a shred of Finn-meat still clung to his greasy fingers.

“Thief,” the man grunted. “Thief. Stealing from Pork Belly!”

Heath looked at his hand, still damp with hot grease, then back up to the man.

“I...” Heath began, then he realized he had nothing to say and turned and ran back into the restaurant.

He ran as fast he could through the dark space, hearing his own breath puff in his ears. He kept his eyes on the cloudy, grimy light coming from the cracks in the front door. He wasn’t looking when he banged his shin against a broken table. He toppled and crashed face-first into the dark, sticky floor.

Heath struggled to regain his feet while his leg throbbed. The man approached him over the rubble, the broken wooden furniture cracking and crunching under his heavy boots. He was only a few steps away.

Heath limped as fast as he could toward the front door, but when he got there, it was closed and locked tight, with grimy light seeping in through the window in its upper half. He slapped the thick glass, then grabbed a broken table leg from the floor.

He’d meant to use it to smash the window, but Pork Belly caught up to him, still wielding the big roasting fork in one hand.

Heath swung the table leg like a baseball bat. It slammed into the man’s face with a loud crack. He pulled it back and swung again and again, as if still playing the Whack-A-Frog game. Pork Belly grunted and fell to his knees. Heath hit him again, and he toppled over.

“There,” Heath said, catching his breath. He turned and struck the window. It didn’t shatter, but a jagged diagonal crack appeared. He hit it again, spawning a few more cracks.

He drew back the table leg a third time, ready to put all his strength into breaking the window, but it was snatched from his hands.

Before he could turn around to look, a pair of sharp blades stabbed him in the upper right corner of his back, just below the shoulder. The impact drove his whole body forward, smacking his face against the cracked window.

He could smell the man behind him, reeking of smoke and rotten meat. Flies crawled on Heath’s ear and scalp.

Pork Belly drove his roasting fork deep into the meat below Heath’s shoulder, and Heath screamed in agony.

Using the fork, Pork Belly turned Heath around to face the glowing red light again.

“Walk,” Pork Belly commanded. Heath hesitated, and the man twisted the fork, creating an intense new explosion of pain.

Heath screamed, and he started walking. The man drove him forward, heedless of how Heath kept tripping and stumbling on the barely-visible broken furniture littering the floor.

He prodded Heath all the way back to open door of the smoker, while Heath wept in pain and confusion.

“I’m sorry,” Heath blubbered through his tears. “I’m sorry, just please just let me go, I won’t do it again—”

The man released the fork, leaving it buried deep in Heath’s back, and instead grabbed Heath’s right wrist with his thick, hairy hand.

He stretched Heath’s right arm toward the open smoker door, toward the grill over the red-hot fire.

“No!” Heath screamed, doing his best to pull back, but the man was much stronger than he was, and Heath’s right arm felt unusually weak.

“Meat for meat,” the man grunted.

He jerked Heath forward, then pressed Heath’s right arm down onto the grill.

Heath howled in pain, but couldn’t break away. The man held Heath’s wrist in his place with a bare hand, heedless of how the heat scorched the hair from his own knuckles and blackened his own fingers.

Pork Belly drew the carving knife from his belt and lay the blade in the crook of Heath’s elbow.

“No!” Heath begged. “No, please, don’t—”

Moving with a butcher’s expertise, the man sliced through Health’s elbow joint and cut off the lower half of his right arm, leaving it sizzling on the grill.

Heath cried out again as he fell, the pain almost knocking him unconscious, but not quite. He toppled over the old rocking chair. The stuffed reindeer tumbled into his remaining arm, and Heath hugged it close, weeping, too weak to stand up.

Pork Belly used tongs to flip Heath’s arm on the grill, and Heath shivered with horror when he saw the grill lines burned into his fingers and wrist.

“Stop,” Heath whispered. It was all he could manage to say. “Stop, please, stop...”

Pork Belly ignored his pleas. Heath made one last effort to stand, though he could feel himself blacking out from pain and blood loss.

This got the man’s attention. He put his tools aside and lifted Heath in his bare hands, hoisting him up as if he were as light as a bag of flour. He looked up at Heath, and his eyes were as colorless as a dead man’s.

“You don’t steal from Pork Belly,” the man grunted.

Then he pitched Heath into the smoker, right onto the grill, and slammed and latched the heavy door behind him.

The pain was excruciating, and death came as a relief.

Chapter Eighteen

Derek yelled for Finn to come back down, but Finn ignored him. Derek watched the three Old West hooker girls draw Finn back through the pink curtain into their brothel. The sign said “Heart of Gold Hotel,” but the place obviously offered a little more hospitality than the Holiday Inn.

“Finn!” he yelled again, but it was useless. Finn was an unrepentant horndog, and he wasn’t going to turn down sex to listen to Derek. The red-haired idiot had already forked over a handful of gold coins to the women.

As they led Finn through the curtain, one of the hooker girls looked back over her shoulder and winked at Derek, as if to say You’re next.

No, thank you, baby, Derek thought.

When they were out of sight, Derek waited impatiently, wondering how much gold the girls would steal from Finn’s pockets while his pants were off. His buzz from several cups of free beer was wearing off, leaving him with a headache. He felt cranky and impatient. He wanted more beer, and he wanted to get the hell out of the park before the rest of their group learned about the gold and demanded a share of it. Greedy bastards, Derek thought.

He heard Finn screaming and rolled his eyes. Then Finn’s voice screamed Derek’s name, startling him.

Before Derek could act, Finn came barreling out through the pink curtain and the curvy batwing doors carved with the heart shape.

Finn flew over the boards of the wooden walkway in front of the brothel, crashed right through the railing, and landed in the sawdust at Derek’s feet. Gold coins spewed from the pockets of Finn’s bloodstained jeans. Every inch of him had been flayed open, turning him into a shapeless bloody heap. Derek wouldn’t have recognized him if he didn’t already know it was Finn.

“Holy fuck!” Derek said. He looked up at the glowing pink curtain. There was no sign of the three women. Apparently they were staying inside the brothel for the moment.

Derek knelt next to his friend. A wheezing, gurgling sound burbled in Finn’s throat. He was still alive, but just barely, and not for long.

Derek opened the wooden box and scooped up the coins that had spilled from Finn’s pockets. No reason to let that gold go to waste. Derek didn’t think he could do much to help Finn, but he could save his own ass and keep all the coins for himself.

He stood and hefted the box, now heavier than ever, and jogged as fast as he could out of Fool’s Gold.

When he emerged onto the midway, he saw Heath farther down, absorbed in the Whack-A-Frog game. Derek glanced at the park’s front gates, saw they were still chained, locked, and overgrown with thorny vines, then hurried across into the water-ride area called Pirate Island.

Derek jogged under the big, wide slide of Crashdown Falls, toward the spot where they’d entered, but he must have remembered wrong because the opening in the fence wasn’t there.

He walked in the mud under the ride, searching the overgrown fence, but he couldn’t find the way out—it was all solid chain-link, thick with the thorny vines and topped with coils of barbed wire. The box of treasure seemed to grow heavier and heavier as he searched, and his arms ached.

Derek swore several times, then gave up. The side entrance was gone, but that was hardly the only insane, inexplicable thing that had happened tonight.

The back, he thought. There has to be some kind of gate at the back.

He didn’t want Heath or anyone else to see his gold, so Derek cut behind Jungle Land to emerge into Haunted Alley, in the shadow of the tall, black mass of Inferno Mountain, which was still closed and dark.

He crept out across Wishing Well Plaza, the dead center of the park lined with bright, flashing concession stands and games blasting music and neon light. He continued north along the midway. The space-themed rides of Space City glowed on his right. He smiled when he looked left and saw Tyke Town—the Funtime Firehouse, the Tick-Tock train on its flat track that curved through a fake little mountain range before circling back to the clock-tower boarding station. The round face of the locomotive was fronted with another clock, its hand spinning wildly as the train chugged along.

The archway into the Storybook Maze looked like it was made of gumdrops. Through it, he glimpsed the fake brick walls of the maze’s first corridor, lined with false windows and plastic flower boxes like an alleyway in a cheerful fairy-tale village.

The Storybook Maze was particularly special to him. When he was ten years old, he’d had the idea to hide behind the gingerbread house deep inside the maze, just ahead of the arched fairy bridge. When kids walked by, he would jump out screaming “I am the troll king!” and demand all their money. If they refused to pay, he would wail on them with his fists until they changed their mind.

Most of them just forked over the money without a fight, though. He’d been amazed by how few resisted. That day, Derek had begun to figure out that jobs were for suckers. His own dad had worked a crappy construction job he hated, getting up early every day to go and break his back for the foreman, and what did he have to show for it? A measly, pathetic paycheck.

The security clowns had eventually caught Derek, thrown him out, and banned him for life from the park, but not before Derek had made almost ninety dollars from the cash-heavy tourist kids.

He was tempted to go inside and check it out, just for the memories, but his arms were straining to hold the wooden box full of gold. Derek hustled down the midway toward the final row of game booths and concessions at the back. Behind these, if he remembered correctly, was a high wooden privacy fence concealing the park’s backlot area—administration, first aid, maintenance, and storage. A big EMPLOYEES ONLY sign was posted on the gate, and a security clown used to sit near it, watch for trespassers.

Someone giggled behind him. It sounded like a little kid. As Derek turned to look, he heard a clattering, rattling noise, and then his feet shot out from beneath him and he landed hard on his ass on the concrete walkway. Someone had pitched a big handful of marbles at his feet, and he’d stumbled right over them.

He released the wooden box and reached out his hands to catch himself. The box fell open in midair, raining down gold all around him before cracking into his scalp. The corner of the wooden box gouged into his forehead, stunning him and drawing blood.

“Goddamn it,” Derek whispered.

“He’s down!” a little girl squealed behind him. “The troll king is down!”

Giggling, laughing kids, five to ten years old, swarmed around him.

“Go away!” Derek shouted, swinging his fists at them.

They kept laughing, even when he hit them. Each kid grabbed a handful of gold coins and ran away into the Storybook Maze.

“Hey!” Derek shoved himself to his feet, yelling after them. There were more than a dozen kids, and they’d left him with nothing but an empty box. “Bring it back!”

The last of the kids, a little blond girl with pink ladybug barrettes, laughed at him over her shoulder as she dashed away under the arch.

Derek ran after them.

He passed through a pastoral scene where Little Bo Peep, with her bonnet and shepherd’s crook, scratched her head. Bo Peep was apparently unaware that her fiberglass sheep were just across the path, playing cards at a table with a heap of poker chips in the middle.

The light grew dim as he advanced into the maze. The only light source was a smoldering red glow in the windows of the gingerbread house, which stood about half his height.

He heard kids giggle behind the closed door.

“Are you little brats in there?” Derek leaned down and knocked on the plastic graham-cracker door. It was locked, and he knew it had been for years, ever since the park’s owners discovered that middle-school kids used the gingerbread house as a make-out spot.

“Open up!” Derek shouted. He kicked the door, which only brought more snickering from inside.

“He’s here,” a little girl’s voice whispered in the darkness behind him. “The troll king is here.”

“Give me back my money.” Derek turned around, but he didn’t see anyone on the shadowy path behind him. “Where the hell are you?”

“Where in Hell am I?” the little girl’s voice giggled.

Derek heard a small splash. He turned to see small, shadowy kids climbing up over the railing of the fairy bridge ahead, at least four of them, blocking his path. They advanced slowly down the gently arched bridge, their footsteps barely audible.

Closer to him, the door to the gingerbread house opened with a creak, and three more kids stepped out, their dark profiles outlined against the dim red light that glowed within the toy house.

“Give me back my gold,” Derek growled.

“He wants his gold,” the little girl’s voice whispered. “Let’s give it to him.”

Derek turned again, and this time he did see the little girl, flanked by four more little kids. They looked smeared in dark mud from hair to shoes, as though they’d been wallowing in it like demented little pigs.

The kids shrieked and charged him from all sides, surrounding him. They knocked him to the ground and pinned his arms and legs with their damp, ice-cold hands. Under the mud, they were pale and stiff, like walking corpses.

An icy hand pried his jaw open, and another one reached into his mouth. Derek tasted mud, then cold metal as the kid dumped a handful of gold coins down his throat.

Derek gagged and lunged against his captors, but they held his limbs to the ground. He turned his head and tried to cough out the coins, but one cold little hand grabbed his hair and turned his face back up toward the sky, trapping the gold inside his throat.

Another hand shoved gold into his mouth, and then another. His windpipe was thoroughly blocked, and his throat began to spasm. His head seemed to grow tight, building up an uncomfortable pressure while his brain starved for air.

Stop it! Derek thought, since he had no air with which to scream.

They kept shoving coins and mud down his throat, one handful after another, stuffing him with gold.

His whole body jerked and twitched, his hands and feet struggling with their last bit of strength to get free.

It’s so easy to die, he thought. It’s so easy to get killed.

The girl with pink barrettes knelt on his chest, her sharp, scabby knees digging in as if to crush any remaining air from his lungs. She giggled, and he saw her eyes were colorless and dead, her little face white as ash and hard as porcelain.

“Look at the troll king,” she whispered. “He’s not so scary now.”

She stuffed one last handful of gold into his mouth, then shoved his jaw shut.

The world turned red, then dark, and Derek’s body gave one final lurch, an attempt to vomit out the choking coins, before he laid still and died.

Chapter Nineteen

Elissa stood at the back gate of Starland, pulling her hair.

She was wet with Tamara’s dying blood. She was also soaked with sweat from running up and down the midway looking for help, and she was hoarse from screaming for Finn and Jared and everybody else. Nobody had come to help her.

Her lower half was slick with fresh mud from scurrying around in the muck under Crashdown Falls, looking for the opening in the fence through which they’d entered. She’d never found it, as though it had been sealed up and overgrown with vines in the short time they’d been inside.

Now she’d found her way to the very back of the park, an area with trailers and little metal sheds, walled off from the rest of the park by a privacy fence.

The back gate was much larger than the little customer entrances at the front. If it were open, it would be wide enough to drive an eighteen-wheel truck inside.

It wasn’t open, though. Chains coiled between the two wide sections of chain-link gate, their padlocks somewhere on the other side of the gate. She couldn’t even try to reach them. The gate, like the rest of the fence around the park, was so overgrown with tough, thorny vines that she couldn’t even see the world outside.

She was trapped in the park, her best friend was dead, and everyone else had deserted her.

“Fuck!” Elissa pulled her wet hair and stomped her feet. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

She explored the area around the buildings quickly, but she found no other way out. She noticed a faucet on the side of the maintenance shed and cranked it on, then splashed her face and hair with cold water. She rinsed blood and mud from her hands.

“I have to get out,” she whispered to herself, hoping the words would straighten out the crazed chaos in her mind.

She walked back up the midway, past the warm, inviting glow of Tyke Town. She slowed as she approached the central plaza of the park. She looked into the wishing well, feeling crushed by guilt, knowing her stupid, self-centered wish had killed Tamara.

Then she saw him. He stood not far from the wooden walls of Fool’s Gold, his arms crossed and his candy-striped hat tilted forward, looking into the Old West town as though something interesting were happening in there.

He turned and started walking directly toward her, in no particular hurry. His pale eyes found hers.

Elissa turned and dashed off the path, right back into Space City, where the Moon Robot was still rotating. She tried not to think about Tamara’s body up there in one of the cages, getting slung around and around.

She ran among the attractions. Every corner of Space City was lit by countless colored flashing lights, leaving few shadows and nowhere to hide.

She noticed one of the metal double doors to Professor Atomic’s Brain-Scrambler was ajar, and she hurried past the tall big-brained statue out front, who looked as fascinated as ever by the lava-lamp fluid flowing inside his giant flask.

The door gave a rusty squeak as she nudged it open and slipped inside the concrete dome that housed the scrambler ride. It squeaked again as she pushed it back into place.

The interior was silent and dark, so she used the light on her phone. The little corridor was strewn with rubble, and deep cracks ran across the floor and up the walls, through the faded mural of test tubes and a scientist’s lab filled with caged alien creatures. The place had a mildew smell. The exterior of the Brain-Scrambler might have been restored, but the inside still looked wrecked.

She stepped carefully over the broken floor, past an EMPLOYEES ONLY door and into the big domed space that held the ride itself.

The Scrambler ride had three big metal arms radiating from the center, all of them sagging and off-balance. From each arm hung a clump of the suspended cars, which had deteriorated over the years until they looked like giant, rusty dead spiders. Two had broken loose and lay on their backs on the floor, their passengers seats jutting up into the air.

An array of funhouse mirrors had lined the interior of the dome, but several of those had shattered, raining long slivers of glass all over the green concrete floor. Elissa stepped carefully, hearing glass crunching beneath her sneakers.

She shivered and wondered how long she should wait, and who the man was, and why he’d killed Tamara, and why everyone else had disappeared.

They’re dead, she thought. He’s killed everyone else, and now I’m the last.

And then she thought: I deserve it. It was her fault Tamara was dead, her own selfish, hateful wish.

She looked at herself, her face stretched tall and thin in a funhouse mirror.

The rusty squeal of the door sounded, and the colored lights and fast-paced electronic music of Space City spilled into the dome, illuminating one rack of dangling Scrambler cars.

Elissa ducked behind one of the two fallen Scrambler cars on the floor, her heart racing like a rabbit’s.

She saw him outlined against the lights, recognizing him mostly by his striped hat. He stepped out of the corridor and into the dome.

“You can’t hide from me, Elissa.” His dead-flat voice echoed off the slanted funhouse mirrors. He paused in front of the old broken-down ride with his hands clasped, not actively searching for her. “I know all about you. I know about the twelve dollars you stole from your mother’s purse last week. I know what you did with Zach Napier behind the gym during the eight-grade dance. I know about Squeakums, the poor hamster who died of thirst when you failed to realize his water bottle was boiling hot from sitting in the sun all day.”

Elissa shivered, more scared now than she’d ever been.

“You may as well come out from behind that fallen seat,” he said. “Come out, and we’ll both have a look at you.”

Elissa didn’t see much point in resisting. He would probably just get angry if she tried to stay hidden, and he obviously knew where she was.

She stood up, keeping the broken seat between them.

“Good. Cooperative. Not as cooperative as Tamara, of course, but she was unmatched in that department, wasn’t she?” He walked along the perimeter of the domed room, approaching her but taking his time about it. “When you suggested the two of you swipe her mother’s car for the evening, she hardly put up a fight.”

“What do you want?” Elissa asked. She looked around for a weapon and found a long sliver of broken funhouse mirror about the size of a butter knife. She held it lightly in her fingers, trying not to cut herself.

He now stood less than three feet away, watching her over the fallen seat, his carnival barker outfit as crisp and spotless as ever.

“The root of envy is self-loathing. You envied Tamara—stupid, flighty, marginally pretty Tamara—because of what you feel about yourself. What you know about yourself. Isn’t that true?”

Elissa shuddered, thoroughly creeped out by his questions and his impossibly detailed and intimate knowledge about her. Even more than that, it was simply his cold, heavy presence and the relentlessly blank look in his no-color gray eyes that frightened her.

“Have a look.” He gestured to a large mirror on the wall. “And be honest about how you see yourself.”

She saw herself there, her body distorted so she looked even wider and squattier than usual, as though she needed that. Her face already looked like the full moon, and her ass and stomach were both too puffy, especially compared to Tamara.

But you’re prettier than her now, a vicious voice whispered inside her mind. Just like you wished.

“That’s hardly scratching the surface,” the man said in his unwavering monotone. “Let’s see how you really feel, Elissa.”

The flesh of her reflection turned sickly gray. Its eyes became narrow and beady, spaced too close together on her head, and her nose became a bulbous mush, one nostril much larger than the other. Her lips grew rubbery and stretched from ear to ear like a frog’s maw. Her slight double chin turned into a definite triple one, piling up on her chest. Her torso swelled to disgusting proportions, and her legs grew wide and stumpy.

What she faced was a barely human thing, an ugly, squat, misshapen alien no one would ever love or ever even want to touch. It was a hideous beast, and it was how she truly saw herself, all the way down inside, during her most miserable moments.

“Do you hate it?” he whispered.

“I hate it,” she told him. “I hate it so much. How do you know? How do you know everything?”

“If you hate what you see, act on it,” he whispered. “Kill what you hate.”

Elissa stared at the disgusting image in the mirror. It was everything she knew about herself, all that she pathetically tried to conceal with extreme makeup and clothes, with attitude and alcohol. Her disgusting true self stood before her, and she couldn’t deny the truth.

She gripped the long sliver of glass tighter in her hand, heedless of how the sharp edges cut her fingers. All her self-hate surged inside her. She was sick of being who she was. She was sick of being the thing in the mirror, so inferior to everyone else.

Elissa stepped forward and swung the sliver of glass. It passed right through where the glass should have been and stabbed the disgusting gray thing in the chest. She stabbed it again and again, shrieking her hatred.

Then she gasped and staggered back. The long piece of broken glass was embedded in her own chest. She hadn’t been stabbing an image. She’d been stabbing herself in the heart.

She stumbled, then fell to her knees, surrounded by the broken glass all over the floor. Blood soaked the front of her purple tank top, darkening the zombie Hello Kitty on the front. She gasped for air, and each breath hurt.

“Good,” the man said, leaning over her. He twirled his candy-striped hat on one finger, as though bored. “Very good, Elissa. For once, you’ve done something honest and pure, something completely true to yourself. How does it feel?”

She collapsed to the floor, seeing herself from more than a dozen angles in the mirrors above.

“You need not fear death,” he said, replacing the hat on his head. “We will find a place for you here, along with the others. You won’t be alone.”

Blood welled up over her lips. Her dying thought was that, while more than a dozen funhouse mirrors reflected her from every side, the man standing over her didn’t show up in a single one of them. He cast no reflection, as though he were not really there at all.

Chapter Twenty

Jared and Becca entered the first room of Dark Mansion. The front door creaked shut behind them and closed with an exaggerated recorded boom, as it always had in the days when the park was open. Maniacal laughter followed, and the leather screeching of bats from somewhere above the ceiling.

The first room was dim and looked decayed, the eaves thick with spider webs. If the amusement park’s haunted house had suffered from years of neglect, it would be nearly impossible to tell, since it had been designed to look derelict in the first place.

“Are you scared yet?” Jared whispered.

“Shut up.” Becca rolled her eyes. “Let’s see if Statler and Waldorf are still here.”

They leaned through the open half of a Dutch door on their right, through which visitors could see (but not touch) two bearded skeletons in 19th-century hats and coats. They faced each other across a chess board. One skeleton’s mechanized hand repeatedly stroked at its beard while its other hand hovered over the chess board, as if he were indecisive about his next move. The other skeleton slumped with his chin in one hand, his fingers constantly drumming the table. Spiderwebs had grown among the chess pieces and over the skeletons themselves, the obvious joke being that both men had grown old and died while waiting for the first one to make up his mind.

“They look as healthy as ever,” Jared said.

“I’m so happy this old park is being restored.”

“I’m happy to finally be alone with you.” Jared pulled her close and kissed her. Her hands curled behind his head, keeping him close to her face. This lasted a long, delicious minute before she pulled away.

“Let’s go further,” she said.

“Right here?” Jared started to take off his shirt, and she laughed.

“I meant exploring the house.” Becca slapped his chest. “I want to see the torture room. I always loved it.”

The only obvious way out of the room was a staircase that curved up and out of sight behind a partial wall, but they both knew that was a gag. It went right up to the ceiling, where there was no opening or even a trap door, just a message in ghostly green letters: DEAD END! GO BACK!

The real way out was to push aside the grandfather clock ticking away on the back wall, which looked like a massive antique but weighed no more than five or ten pounds. It moved on little rolling racks mounted on the wall beside it, painted to blend with the wall but obvious on closer inspection.

“Open the secret door for me,” Becca said, standing beside the grandfather clock.

Jared rolled the tall clock aside, revealing a narrow, cobwebbed hallway painted to look like stone, dimly lit by red bulbs set into the eyes of animal skulls along the ceiling.

Doors ran along both sides of the long hall, each door a different design—one a rotten green rectangle, another a low medieval arched door made of planks, another door tall and skinny and painted black.

Two figures approached from the darkness ahead. They were Jared and Becca’s reflections in the black mirrored wall at the end. The mirror made the corridor seem even longer than it was.

“Remember this?” Jared opened the first door on the right, which opened inward into a very narrow passage. “It just connects through a little side hallway to another door up there. You would go in one door and then jump out the other to scare the tourists.”

“We called it the Scooby-Doo hallway,” Becca said.

“This was so much fun.” Jared closed the door and reached for the one across from it.

“Not that one.” Becca curled her lip and shuddered a little.

“Are you scared?”

“It just creeps me out.”

Jared opened the door anyway. In a room the size of a tiny closet, a baby doll sat at a high chair, its face and bib smeared with dark blood and entrails. One of its little hands pawed at a heap of rotten guts on its tray. Little baby-sized bloody handprints stained the wall beside it. The baby’s bib read MOMMY’S LITTLE ANGEL.

A pane of clear plastic prevented visitors from actually reaching in and touching the sick little diorama.

“Next,” Becca said, walking on while he closed the door.

She opened the next one, which opened into what looked like a coat closet hung with dusty garments. Closer inspection revealed a grinning skeleton hiding behind the coats.

“Oh, yeah, the skeleton in the closet.” Jared rolled his eyes and closed the door.

Another door opened onto a lattice of mismatched board and wood scraps that looked hastily nailed together to block off the doorway, painted with the words KEEP OUT and LEAVE US ALONE. A woman’s voice sobbed somewhere in the darkness beyond the barrier, and whispered the words “Help me, help me...” Then she screamed.

A second voice, rough and monstrous, shouted, “Close that door!”

“Which way do you want to go?” Jared pointed to the last door on the left, then the last door on the right. “Over to the funeral parlor and the taxidermy room, or upstairs to the torture chamber and voodoo temple?”

“The torture chamber.” Becca gave him a wide smile. “Definitely.”

Jared opened a door onto a steep staircase so narrow they had to walk single file. The wooden stairs didn’t quite line up, always jutting an inch or so to the left or right of each other, giving it a ramshackle, dangerous appearance, but the handrail was sound. The walls were painted to look like stone, with ornate little bat lanterns for light.

“I’m doing it!” Becca said.

“No, I want to do it!” They wrestled for the privilege of going first. Jared won, squeezed past her, and dashed up the stairs.

“I’m going to kill you!” she shouted, running close behind him and tickling his ribs.

About two-thirds of the way up, Jared stomped on the magic stair.

The sound of snapping wood filled his ears, followed by the sound of heavy debris crashing to the floor and a high-pitched scream. The middle third of the stairway slid to the right, then the left. It moved back and forth on hidden wheels, only a few inches in each direction, but the sound effects helped create the impression that the stairs were actually breaking away beneath their feet.

“I wanted to do that, Jared!” Becca shoved him up the stairs.

They reached a landing with warped floorboards, where another steep flight of stairs continued up under a hand-painted wooden sign that read TO THE ATTIC with an arrow pointing up.

The landing was like a tiny room with doors that were always locked, possibly not even real, and a curtained window painted solid black. A portrait of Captain James Dark, the fictional pirate who’d allegedly built the mansion, hung on the wall. He wore an eyepatch and a black tricorner hat, and an enormous black beard concealed most of his face. One hand was a hook, naturally. A bloodstained saber hung in a display case beside him, along with a tattered Jolly Roger flag.

“I get this one!” Becca elbowed past him to the next set of old wooden stairs and stomped on the first one.

“Stay out of my attic!” Ghostly green lights illuminated the portrait of Captain Dark, and his eyes glowed a solid green as he shouted at them. Becca’s step had activated the recorded warning. “Get out of my house!”

Becca laughed as they took off up the stairs, crammed side by side on the narrow steps. As they reached the top, she rammed her elbow into his stomach, causing some genuine pain as she bolted ahead to stomp the top stair.

“I told you to stay out of my attic!” the portrait shouted below.

Jared rubbed his stomach as they entered a narrow, crooked corridor paneled in rough planks of wood. Small windows were cut into walls.

The first window looked into the voodoo room, which some people called the “voodoo lounge,” crammed full of weird little gruesome statues, bones, candles, cloth dolls stuck with clumps of long pins, and a birdcage whose resident had been to cut to pieces, its dark feathers dripping out the bottom of the cage. A drum soundtrack echoed in the room.

They followed the back-and-forth crooks of the hallway toward the sound of screaming. The next group of windows looked into the torture room, with flails and whips on the back wall, a bed of nails and an iron maiden—fresh blood dripped from all of these, trickling into a metal grate on the floor. A couple of corpse-like shapes hung from chains in the shadowy back corner of the room, near a jail-cell door where a bloody arm waved. The loud screams echoed from the dark space behind the barred door.

“Isn’t it great?” Becca asked, her eyes shining like a kid on Christmas morning as she looked over the torture devices.

“Having Dark Mansion all to ourselves?” Jared asked, slipping an arm around her waist and pulling her close.

“You know what we should do? Kidnap Mitzi Traynor and bring her here. We wear scary masks and torture her.” Becca crossed her arms. “She deserves it, after she spread that rumor about me last year.”

“Yeah, that’s a great idea,” Jared said. “I see no flaws in your plan at all.”

“But, seriously, would you help me do that, if I asked you?” Becca placed her hands behind his neck, looking up at him.

“Kidnap and torture Mitzi Traynor?”

“Yeah. Bring her here, tie her to the bed of nails. Smack her big, ugly ass with that whip. You would do that, wouldn’t you?” Becca pressed herself against him.

“You’ve got anger issues,” Jared said. “Kind of sexy anger issues, but still...”

“I know we won’t really do it,” she whispered. “Just say you would if I asked you.”

“Okay. I would help you kidnap and torture Mitzi if you wanted me to. Which you don’t.”

Becca kissed him, and her entire body felt feverish in his arms. She wore a thin mesh shirt over a black bra and amazingly skimpy shorts, and he could feel her skin beneath his hands. She kissed him aggressively, her tongue prying into his mouth.

This is it, Jared thought. Here’s where it happens. He’d brought condoms in his pocket just in case.

“Wait.” Becca pulled back from him and turned to look into the torture room again. “I want to go in there.”

“You don’t go in there. You just look into it through these little windows.”

“These little windows don’t have any glass. I can fit through this one.” Becca traced the edges of the wall cutout with her fingertips.

“You can’t.”

“Are you saying I’m fat?” She gave him a mock scowl.

“No, but—”

“Then give me a boost.” She leaned forward against the window, wiggling her hips, and he couldn’t resist her. He took her by the hips and hoisted her up.

Becca wriggled through the window and dropped to the floor with a crash and a scream. Then it sounded like she was sobbing.

“What happened?” Jared leaned through the window. Becca lay on the floor, not crying but laughing.

“I fell,” she said, rubbing her head, still laughing. “I fell so hard.” She used the bed of nails to pull herself to her feet, then carefully touched the point of one nail. It bent like rubber, and she frowned. “It’s not real.”

“Of course it’s not real. This isn’t a museum.”

“I just thought, for a second...” She frowned more deeply and opened the iron maiden casket propped against the wall. The interior had a few rubber spikes and a leaking plastic blood pack, but nothing else. “I guess there’s no point bringing Mitzi here.”

“Nope. Are you coming back out?”

“I don’t know.” Becca walked toward him across the room, unbuttoning her shirt. “Want to have sex on a bed of nails?”

Then the floor opened beneath her and she dropped out of sight, screaming. She’d stepped onto the grate in the floor where all the blood drained, and it had swung open like a trap door. Jared instantly flashed back to the sinkhole opening up and swallowing the carousel full of kids.

“Becca!” he yelled, banging the wall beside the window. “Are you okay?”

“Help me!” she screamed. “It’s crazy down here!”

“Okay, wait.” Jared hoisted himself up into the window, but he had to hunch in his shoulders to try and wiggle through the small opening.

“Jared, hurry! Open the trap door!”

“I’m coming!” He finally shoved himself through, then fell to the musty wooden floor painted to look like stone tiles. He scrambled on his hands and knees to the floor grate and pressed down on it.

It wouldn’t move.

“Help me!” she screamed below, but he couldn’t see her. The grate wasn’t real, just painted onto the floor. He couldn’t find a handle or hinges, or even the edges of a trap door. He banged on it with his fists, but it didn’t move.

“Jared, I’m scared!”

“I’m right here.” He stood up and stomped on the grate with one foot, but he didn’t feel it give at all. “Look out!” he shouted to her.

“How can I look out when I can’t see anything?”

“I’m coming down.” He braced himself, then jumped onto the painted grate with both feet, ready to grab onto the edge of the trap door as he fell.

The floor boomed beneath his feet, but it didn’t moved. There was no trap door at all.

“That’s impossible,” Jared whispered.

“Help me! I’m trapped!” Becca screamed.

“I can’t get it open!” he shouted to her through the floor. “I’ll try to find another way down!”

Jared ran to the window and struggled to crawl back through, listening to her scream. It seemed to take forever before he wiggled through into the narrow attic corridor.

He regained his feet, raced back to the stairs, and ran down to the landing with the Captain Dark portrait and the two doors that were both locked and possibly fake, located midway between the first and second floors of the haunted house.

“I told you to stay out of my attic!” the scowling picture shouted at him, its eyes glowing solid green.

Jared began kicking the locked door beside the portrait. If it was real, it would lead directly toward Becca.

He felt it creaking and cracking, so he kicked it harder. The door splintered around the handle and toppled back into the darkness behind it.

Jared rushed into a narrow passage lined with plywood, narrow wooden studs, and exposed clusters of electrical wire. He’d broken through into some hidden passage of the mansion used only by the amusement park employees.

He ran toward a dim light ahead, which led him into a small raw-wood room that must have been located somewhere near the center of the mansion.

A rumpled sleeping bag and a few beer bottles thick with cigarette ashes lay in one corner. Across from it was a sort of altar on cinder blocks, with burning candle stubs arranged around some kind of animal skull, maybe a dog. Pentagrams, inverted crosses, and the word SATAN were painted in black all over the walls.

“Becca!” Jared shouted. “Becca, where are you?”

She didn’t answer. Jared shined his phone up at the wooden planks of the ceiling above him. Someone had drawn a square on the ceiling with a pencil and written the words TRAP DOOR in a hasty scrawl.

“What the hell?” Jared whispered. “Becca! Becca!”

There were three ways out of the room, all of them narrow hallways framed in raw plywood and particle board like the one through which he’d entered. The passageways were just gaps between the mansion’s walls, barely wide enough to pass. Each one would take him toward a different part of the mansion, but he didn’t know which way to go.

“Becca!” he shouted. “Can you hear me?”

He thought he heard a faint scream down one of the dark passageways, though he couldn’t tell if it was her or one of the many recorded screams playing on loops all over the house. He started running in that direction, barely fitting through the hidden passage between the walls.

He shouted her name again, his heart pounding. He heard the scream again, a little louder this time.

Jared chased the sound to a gap in one wall, where he faced a door made of fake bamboo. A scrap of paper was Scotch-taped to it with the words EVIL TIKI GODS scrawled in pencil. Chanting sounded beyond the door.

He pushed it open and stepped into a room he’d seen before, though only through the viewing windows cut into the front wall. Large, angry Tiki-style carvings were set all around him, on different platforms connected by steps and hung with fake jungle vines. Dull red bulbs glowed in their eye sockets. A row of shrunken heads hung from the ceiling.

Another loud scream interrupted the chanting. The scream was just another part of the recording, not Becca at all. Jared cursed to himself as the chanting resumed.

He went back through the hidden door from which he’d emerged, back into the inner passageways of the mansion, and he resumed running and calling her name. He thought he heard her voice down another passage and started running that way, in the direction of the funeral parlor and the haunted library.

Chapter Twenty-One

Carter and Victoria again parked in the shadows of the peeling pink Fancy Flamingo Lodge to hide her car from the road. They hurried across to the dark ruins of the amusement park, past the shrine at the front gates, and around the corner of the fence near Crashdown Falls.

They slowed as they approached the spot where they’d entered last time.

“What the hell is that?” Carter asked.

Victoria shined her flashlight over it. Instead of a loose, partially cut away piece of rusty fence, they looked at a full-size door made of chain link, held in place with a simple unlocked latch. It looked brand new and had none of the thick, thorny growth of the fence around it. An aluminum sign on the front read STAFF ONLY.

“It definitely wasn’t here before,” Victoria said. “I wish I hadn’t left my camera at home.”

“You feel like you’re in more of a photography mood now?”

“I’m getting there.”

“Let’s go in and rescue them, if they need it.” Carter lifted the latch and pushed the gate open.

Instead of dark, slippery mud, a concrete path now lay on the ground beneath their feet, leading from the new gate to the blue and green lights of Pirate Island ahead. They shared a troubled look—things already looked very different from last time, and they hadn’t even stepped inside the park.

They took each other’s hand as they walked up the path under Crashdown Falls, which no longer dripped sour water on them at every step. Carter couldn’t have said whose idea it was to hold hands, but they gripped each other tight as they emerged into the glowing central plaza of the Pirate Island section of the park.

Most of the rides and attractions were fully lit and looked open for business. The big Swingin’ Scalawag ship sat in its cradle, freshly polished and dripping with lights. The winking pirate sign out front looked freshly painted, as did the big pelicans lining the Log Drop. The Harpoon Lagoon and Gone Fishin’ game booths were lit and open, and the big red crab of Pinchy Pete’s Sandwich Stand looked freshly rebuilt with a new coat of paint, and Carter knew it had been a wreck last time they were here, just a few days earlier.

“This is messed up,” Carter whispered as they walked the path toward the midway.

“It’s a lot of work for just one crazed psycho,” Victoria whispered back.

The midway looked new—the pavement no longer cracked at all, most of the little booths open with their neon signs glowing. People had clearly been there recently—greasy paper plates with pizza crusts, corn dog sticks, and half-eaten funnel cakes crowded the serving counters of the booths, now crawling with ants, flies, and worms.

A big barrel-shaped booth called the Keg Stand had dozens of plastic cups on its counter, most of them overturned with just a little foam left at the bottom. Carter didn’t remember the Keg Stand from childhood, but he’d been twelve last time the park was open and probably would have ignored a place that sold boring adult stuff like beer.

“Looks like they helped themselves to everything,” Carter said, remembering how tempted Victoria had been by the shiny red popcorn cart and its golden-yellow offerings.

“It’s so quiet,” Victoria said. Though all the lights were on, none of the attractions played their customary music, and there were no voices, either from game and ride operators advertising their offerings or from Jared and his friends. The park was lit up like Las Vegas but silent as a graveyard. All the rides were in their stations, waiting for passengers.

Carter called Jared’s cell phone, but only reached the voice mail. He left a quick message and hung up.

“Jared!” Carter shouted. “Other people who came with Jared! Are you guys here?”

No answer came. They walked slowly down the midway, still hand in hand, calling for Jared and friends, but the park lay silent around them.

They continued on toward the central plaza, with the wishing well surrounded by benches and colorful arrow signs.

To the left, where there should have been a gaping sinkhole, the thousand bright lights of the carousel circled around and around, the horses and dragons bobbing on their poles. The Ferris wheel was no longer a rusting heap slouching on the lip of the sinkhole—it was brightly lit and turning, just like the swing ride beyond it. The high wooden track of the Starland Express glowed behind it, fully restored.

“This isn’t possible, is it?” Carter whispered. “Even the biggest construction company in the world couldn’t do it in a few days. Right?”

“It was dark before we came inside,” she said. “We didn’t see any of these lights from outside the park.”

“Jared!” Carter shouted, turning slowly. He faced Haunted Alley, where the Dark Mansion’s eerie green light glowed through a thin haze of dry-ice fog. The little attractions looked open—the Haunted Souvenir Shop on the back side of Dark Mansion, the Beat the Devil and Ghostly Gallery games, the Devil Dogs concession stand—but Inferno Mountain rose above it all, its lights still off, a dead volcano towering into the dark sky above. Only a hint of the devil’s face near the top was visible in the colorful lights from the park below. “Jared, where in God’s name—”

The door to the Haunted Souvenir Shop creaked open, giving a recorded ghostly “Wooooooooo-ooo!” instead of a chime or a bell. A very bland-looking man in a candy-striped hat and a matching striped suit, like some old-time carnival barker, emerged onto the rickety-looking wraparound porch in front of the store. Carter thought he recognized him, but he couldn’t remember where he’d seen him before.

“I’m sorry you missed the party,” the man said. His voice was a dead, flat monotone. “An extraordinary time was had by all, and you may take some comfort in that.”

The moment he heard the man’s voice, Carter remembered—he’d seen him in his dream on Dead Lake, just after the headless ghost of Tricia had shushed him from the bough of a skeletal cypress.

Carter shivered at the recognition. The man had walked right out of his nightmare and into the middle of Starland Amusement Park.

“Where did everybody go?” Victoria asked. She looked calm, but Carter could feel her hand trembling in his.

“Your friends have all purchased their tickets and boarded their rides,” the man replied. He stepped down from the shop porch and walked to the center of Haunted Alley, facing them. “We will find permanent positions for them here at the park.”

“What does that mean?” Carter asked him, trying not to look as scared as he felt.

“We have closed for the evening,” the man said. As if to illustrate his point, the galaxy of lights in Space City vanished, followed by the bright lights of the roller coaster, the carousel, and the Ferris wheel. Darkness rushed in around them as the midway lights disappeared like ten thousand candles blown out at once.

Only the Haunted Alley lights remained, and they were growing dim around the man in the striped hat.

“I want to see Jared,” Carter said.

“You can see him eventually.” The man’s voice fell to a quiet whisper, but Carter could hear him clearly, as if the man stood just behind Carter’s shoulder, whispering into his ear. “When the park is open, perhaps you can visit.”

The remaining lights turned red and went very dim, leaving a thin glow like a fire that had burned to its final coals.

A sound like a hundred whispering voices rose in the dark alley, and then a black fog rose from the pavement. It resolved into the shadowy shapes of dozens of people, most of them the size of children.

“As you can see, we are all staffed up for the season,” the man said. “Soon all the rides and attractions will be open to the public—nearly all, in any case. Be sure to tell your friends.” He gave a faint hint of a smile.

The crowd of dark shapes swelled toward Carter and Victoria, whispering louder, creating a shadowy wall in front of the man. They grew more distinct, their skin pale, many of them smeared in dark mud, their eyes colorless and dead.

Carter thought he recognized Tamara and Elissa, two girls who’d hung out in Jared’s barn, among the shadows. He pointed and began to open his mouth to tell Victoria about them, but they melted away into darkness.

“I recommend you depart through the nearest exit,” the man said, “Or I will be forced to contact security.”

A security clown grew more distinct among the whispering shadows, his orange wig filthy under his blue hat, his rotten face streaked with remnants of white and red paint.

The crowd of shadows swelled closer, their whispers growing into shrieks and howls, pale and muddy hands reaching out like hungry claws.

Carter and Victoria looked at each other for a second, and then they ran.

Pirate Island lay dark, and Victoria had to shine her flashlight so they could find their way to Crashdown Falls. As they ran, voices whispered in the darkness around them. He clutched Victoria’s hand tightly, afraid the hissing, whispering ghosts would seize her and drag her away. He expected to be grabbed and ripped to pieces at any moment.

They made it to the fence, and the door opened easily for them. It slammed shut behind them, and Carter noticed the sign had changed from STAFF ONLY to KEEP OUT.

They didn’t even check for traffic before bolting across the road. They hurried into Victoria’s car.

“I think that place is really haunted,” Carter panted as he dropped into the passenger seat.

“No shit.” Victoria started the car and punched the gas.

Chapter Twenty-Two

They sat in the parking lot of Sand Dollar apartments, Victoria’s engine idling.

“I have to go home,” she said. “Curfew.”

“Yeah.”

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” He told her about glimpsing the ghosts of the two girls. “Maybe Emily was right. It’s a dark place, a trap for souls.”

“So if you die inside the park, you become one of the ghosts haunting it. And the park just killed seven people.”

They didn’t speak for a minute, and then he climbed out of the car.

She called him almost immediately as she drove home, and they stayed on the phone together for more than an hour, sometimes talking about what they’d seen, sometimes just staying silently connected so neither had to face their thoughts alone.

When they were done, Carter took down the yearbook from a shelf in his closet. It was from seventh grade, and it fell open to the customary place, the only reason he ever looked at the old book at all.

She smiled, showing a little gap in her teeth, her pale blond hair drawn back in braids for picture day. The faces around her had aged into teenagers, and many of them had moved out of town with their families, but her face would never change, and she would never grow up and escape this town.

This was how he needed to remember her, young and full of life. He was determined to keep this vision in his memory instead of the headless ghoul who haunted him in his nightmares.

He touched the name printed under her picture: BEATRICE CALHOUN.

“I’m sorry, Tricia,” he whispered. It was not the first time he’d said it.

On Saturday, he began his weekend volunteer duties at the hospital, spending half the day delivering flowers and pushing wheelchairs. The work relieved the insanity in his brain. When he returned home, he immediately dug into his pile of homework. It helped him avoid thinking about anything else.

He tried Jared’s cell number a few times, but only reached his voice mail.

He spent the rest of the weekend absorbed in schoolwork, getting frustrated with how often Victoria called and broke his concentration. He wanted to deal with this situation by keeping his mind on other things, but she clearly wanted to deal with it by talking it over again and again. He turned down her invitations to hang out, and by eleven p.m. on Sunday, he was almost entirely caught up with homework. It helped that he couldn’t sleep at night, and could only manage short naps during the day. Closing his eyes meant seeing the ghosts again, either Tricia or the horde of dark shadows in Haunted Alley.

Seven new MISSING posters hung in the front hall at school on Monday, featuring Jared and his friends.

Carter expected a grim scene when he walked into biology class. Wes McKinley’s younger brother Finn was among the missing, and he was startled to see Wes rolling his eyes and rambling in his usual condescending tone.

“Finn’s a stupid pecker,” Wes was telling Sameer, while David Huang and Emily Dorsnel listened closely. “All he does is lift weights, drink beer, and try to hook up with girls.”

“Sorry about your brother,” Carter said as he sat down.

“Don’t be sorry. He’s not dead. They’re probably all off on a road trip in a stolen car, that’s what I think,” Wes said. “Finn and his stupid pecker-brain friends.”

Carter nodded, not sure what else he could say. Wes was the last person who would believe him if he started talking about ghosts and supernatural carnival barkers.

It was far from a normal day at school. The police were on campus, interviewing students about all the missing kids.

Carter himself was pulled out of class during third period, AP American History, where they were studying The Federalist Papers, and sent to the principal’s office. Chief Kilborne himself waited there, having taken over the office for the day.

“Mr. Roanoke,” Kilborne said, looking him over as he sat down. Kilborne turned to a female deputy sitting at the side of the desk with a laptop. “Why don’t you take a break, Deputy Patterson?”

She frowned, but left the room without protest, closing the door behind her.

The police chief took his time reading over some notes before he looked up at Carter. “I assume you know why we’re here,” he said.

“The missing kids?”

“Jared’s mother listed you as one of his best friends. Is that right?”

“We were friends in elementary and middle school. Not in the past few years, really.”

“Why not?”

Carter shrugged. “I guess I focused on school, and he was more focused on...having fun or whatever.”

“I’ve seen his academic records and I’ve seen yours. You’ve got plans for the future, don’t you? College?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And your buddy Jared has his own file folder down at the police station. His discipline file here is a whole lot bigger than his academic one.” Kilborne spat tobacco juice into a foam cup. “You have any idea just where this gang of delinquents might have gone and disappeared to?”

“You might check Starland.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Lots of people are talking about it this year.”

“You mentioned that last time we spoke. When you showed up with a picture of Shoot-Em-Up Puppets and said they were the bodies of those first two boys.”

Carter didn’t know how to reply.

“Tell me something, Carter. Is ‘everybody’ talking about it because of you and that new girl? You been going around bragging about how you broke into the old place?”

“No, sir.”

“And your girlfriend? Has she been going around showing folks pictures she took inside the park?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you want to finally explain to me just what the hell you two were doing in there? Why you really came to the police station last week?”

“It’s just what we said,” Carter replied. “We saw the bodies of two kids. I still don’t understand what happened with the pictures—”

“I don’t have time for crazy bullshit,” Kilborne interrupted. “Do you know Paul McCorter? Gavin Lassiter?”

“No, sir. I don’t recognize those names at all.”

“They’re sophomores here at your school.” Kilborne brought out four pages from a folder and spread them out on the desk, facing Carter. They showed black and white images of four younger boys, labeled with names he didn’t know. “What we have here is four kids who went missing Saturday night. Two sophomores, two freshman. You know any of them?”

“No, sir.”

“I gather that Reeves Mayweather was known to associate with Jared and his crowd,” the police chief said. “So that’s a connection. What about these four? Were they friends with anyone you know?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Carter said. “I don’t know those kids at all.”

“Apparently the four of them...you ever heard of this thing called LARPin’?”

“Live action role playing?” Carter asked, after thinking it over for a second.

“Apparently these four boys like to go out in the woods and dress up like wizards or some crap like that. They were heard to say they were planning a ‘campaign’ in Starland. Guess that’s what they call their games. Anyway, these four weird, nerdy kids bragged to all the other weird, nerdy kids about it. Then they disappeared.”

“Four more?”

“A total of thirteen missing,” the police chief said. “I knew this was going to be a bad year when you showed up at the station like that—local boy babbling about craziness in the old park. I hoped it was the last I’d hear of Starland, but it just keeps coming up. So tell me again: why do you think these seven kids went into the park? Did you give them the idea their two missing friends might be in there?”

“Maybe,” Carter said.

“Either you did or you didn’t.”

“All I said was they could have gone into the park.”

“When did you say this?”

“Last week, I think.” Carter felt very uncomfortable and sweaty in his chair. He wanted to help find the missing people if he could, but there was no way the police would believe the truth.

“All last week? Day after day? Or was there a specific day?”

“I’m not sure exactly, sir. I think it’s worth searching the old amusement park, but you’ll want to bring a lot of people if you do. It’s crazy in there.”

“How do you mean?”

“I think...it could be haunted.” Carter felt stupid for saying it. He knew it was true, and that whatever was happening at the park was a hell of a lot more than a simple ghost or two, but it still sounded absurd in the light of day, in the principal’s office at school.

The chief glared at him for a long moment.

“Get the hell out,” Kilborne finally said. “Expect to hear from me again.”

“Yes, sir.” Carter didn’t waste any time leaving. He was shaking. School no longer felt like an island of normality and order. It felt as though whatever had happened in the park was reaching out to engulf the whole town. He imagined the sinkhole quietly spreading underneath the roads and buildings of Conch City, like a mouth widening until it was ready to swallow everything at once.

He’d often thought of the sinkhole as a living thing, a kind of gigantic primordial worm with a ring of rocky teeth, eyeless and blind, drawn up from its deep subterranean lair by the music and laughter, the screams of delight and the smell of fresh meat.

At lunch, Victoria was shivering when he sat down beside her. She stared past him into the courtyard.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Look. You can tell they’re gone,” she whispered. “It’s like a hole in the crowd.”

He followed her eyes to the wide concrete planters where Jared and his friends usually sat. The space was occupied by a couple of freshman in black concert shirts, who looked around blinking like cows that had lost their herd. Everybody in the courtyard was quiet, an extremely rare thing at lunch time.

“How are you feeling?” Carter asked.

“Like you’re avoiding me.”

“I seriously had a ton of homework. I told you about my AP classes. I barely slept.”

“I barely slept, too.” Her knees were bouncing nervously. “I don’t want to sound freaky right now, but you’re kind of the only person who makes me feel sane, after what we saw. The rest of the time, I feel crazy. So I sort of need to know you’re not pulling away from me. At least not this week, or this month. Okay?”

“I’m not.”

“Seriously?”

He put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close, and she rested her head on his shoulder, the top of her hair grazing against his cheek.

“Are we going crazy?” she asked after a minute.

“Yes.”

“Who do you think he is? The man in the striped hat?”

“I don’t know. I told the cops to search the park.”

“Do you think they will?”

“I hope so,” Carter said. “Somebody needs to go in there and figure out what’s happening.”

He turned his head slightly, trying to look at her, and found his lips grazing the top of her head. She looked up at him for a long moment, then pulled away and drew up her knees in front of her.

“Sorry if I’m being weird,” she said. “I’m going to call that Hanover guy’s office right after school and see if they can put us in touch with Artie Schopfer. Maybe he can tell us why the amusement park he designed is full of angry ghosts.”

“That would be convenient,” Carter said.

After school, Carter went home to study. Happily, the volunteer search parties had been temporarily suspended while the police tried to deal with eleven new missing kids, so he had time for both homework and a full night’s sleep.

At a few minutes past ten, he tossed his clothes on the floor and climbed into bed. He left his desk lamp on, but found he was still too scared to close his eyes. He considered looking around for some NyQuil to knock himself out, and then his phone rang.

He assumed it would be Victoria, since they’d been texting each other all night, but instead it was a call from UNKNOWN NUMBER. He answered it.

A recorded voice informed him that someone was trying to make a collect call, and told him to press one if he would accept the charges.

Then another brief recording played, and it was a voice he recognized: “Carter, it’s Jared. You have to answer the—”

Then it cut off with a beep. Carter’s finger shook as he pressed one on his phone. He had no idea what to expect—good news that Jared was alive, or maybe the menacing man with the flat monotone, taunting him.

“Jared?” Carter asked.

“Dude, you have to pick me up,” Jared said. “I lost my wallet, I lost all my shit, somebody towed my car—”

“Where are you?”

“The Q-Mart. Come get me, okay? I lost my fucking phone, and the only phone numbers I know by memory, are yours, my parents, and my grandfather’s, and I’m sure as hell not calling them.”

“Okay, I’ll borrow my dad’s truck. Where have you been?”

“In Starland. Didn’t you get my message?”

“I haven’t heard from you since Friday,” Carter said. He hurried to get dressed again while he talked.

“What day is it now?”

“Monday. Monday night. You’ve been missing for three days.”

“What about Becca? Is she okay?”

“Nobody knows. Everybody’s still missing, thirteen kids missing. Um...twelve, now, if you’re back. I’ll be right there,” Carter told him. “The Q-Mart at West Beachview and 98?”

“That’s the one. And bring some money. I’m fucking starving. And pants.”

“You said pants?”

“Just hurry.”

Carter went to the kitchen, where his dad was assembling a small remote-control go-kart at the table and asked to borrow the truck keys. His dad had recently begun wearing glasses, and Carter still wasn’t used to the sight of them.

“Are you going to see that girl?” His dad looked at him over his glasses. “Kind of late, isn’t it?”

“I just have to give somebody a ride home. Because of, uh, a flat tire. I’ll be right back.”

“Keep it quick.” His dad handed over the keys.

Carter drove to the Q-Mart and parked under the big white sign with a yellow duck driving a convertible. In its day, the Q-Mart had been like a twenty-four-hour general store, selling everything from beer to bathing suits, but it had since shrunk, renting out half its space to a dry cleaner, and now closed at eleven every night—just a boring, rundown gas station with really disgusting bathrooms.

Jared emerged from behind the convenience store. He wore one shredded sock, badly tattered boxer shorts, and a crisp new t-shirt that read I SURVIVED DARK MANSION AT STARLAND AMUSEMENT PARK. Except for the shirt, he was smeared from head to toe in filth, as if he’d been crawling through chimneys and sewers.

“Jared, what the hell happened?” Carter asked.

“I’ve been inside Dark Mansion,” Jared said. “Three nights, three days. That place is different inside now, Carter. It’s huge. It goes on forever. I know that sounds crazy, but...Becca’s still in there. You have to help me get her out.”

“I’ll believe anything you tell me about Starland,” Carter told him. “I’ve seen the most insane things there, too.”

“What’s wrong with that place?”

“It’s full of ghosts. Here, have some pants.” Carter tossed him a pair of khaki shorts. “I could have brought shoes.”

“Ghosts?” Jared asked as he dressed. “They were all over the mansion. Can we eat?” He pointed at the blue International House of Pancakes sign across the street. “I’ve been staring at posters of pancakes for at least twenty minutes. I haven’t eaten since Friday. You got any smokes?”

“Nope.”

“Damn it!” Jared climbed up into the truck.

Carter drove across the highway to park at the pancake house. It was open all night, but the hostess refused to seat them, pointing to Jared’s one sock and citing their policy regarding shirts, shoes, and service.

They ordered take-out and waited in the parking lot, sitting in the bed of the old pick-up.

“So what happened in there?” Carter asked him. “By the time Victoria and I got there, everybody was gone.”

Jared told him about the copious amounts of free beer and food. “I don’t know what happened to everybody else after that. Me and Becca snuck off to Dark Mansion to get away from everybody, right? And then this trap door opens and the haunted house basically swallows her up. So I keep searching for her, for hours, and I realize that the mansion’s a lot bigger now, somehow. I don’t know how many rooms I walked through full of bookshelves, rugs, paintings, fireplaces, and there’s always a secret door in the fireplace or a staircase hidden behind a painting or a trap door under the rug. Always more doors and stairs and rooms, and the rooms got really weird, decorated with skulls and coffins and....” Jared took a breath and shook his head. “I spent hours in crawlspaces and attics full of old chests that opened onto ladders leading into hidden rooms...the goddamn place just went on and on, and I couldn’t find the entrance or the exit. And it’s darker and I’m seeing faces in the shadows and the mirrors and weird whispering voices and this one girl giggling like she’s going to eat my brain.”

“That’s where you’ve been?” Carter asked. “Three days inside Dark Mansion.”

“Yeah, and I’d get tired and almost fall asleep somewhere, and these cold little hands would come out of the darkness and claw at me, rip at my face, my clothes, my shoes...” Jared said. “I never saw them, it was always dark. They always got me as soon as I closed my eyes.”

“You haven’t slept in three days?”

“Slept or eaten. How long does it take to make a fucking omelet and pancakes, anyway?”

“I’ll go check.” Carter went inside and collected their to-go boxes and Styrofoam cups filled with cola. When he brought it back to the truck, Jared tore open the baggie of plastic silverware and dug into his meal—a big omelet stuffed with ham and cheese, plus six pancakes, hash browns, and a little container of bacon. Carter slowly ate the hamburger he’d ordered while Jared gorged himself, not speaking again until every bite was gone.

“I gotta get some people together,” Jared said. “We have to go back in there and search for Becca. Would you help me do that?”

“Things are a little different now,” Carter told him. “The police are all over it. Lots of people are missing.”

“I don’t want to go to the cops. Chief Kilborne already hates me.”

“If you don’t, they’ll come to you when they realize one of the missing people is back. They’ll have a ton of questions.”

“They won’t believe me.”

“So tell them something they can believe,” Carter said. “Tell them there’s some crazy guy living in the park, and he locked you into a room in Dark Mansion until you escaped, and you don’t know what happened to anybody else.”

“I don’t know what happened to anybody else. That’s why we need to go look for them.”

“That’s why you need to convince the cops to do a big search of the park.”

“They won’t do that just for me,” Jared said. “The park is like the most forbidden place in town.”

“They’re desperate for something to do, and they won’t be able to ignore what you say. The sooner you talk to them, the sooner they’ll open up the park and search it.”

Jared rubbed the sides of his head with his fingers, like he was developing a bad headache.

“But what’s really happening?” Jared asked. “That’s what I don’t understand.”

“Victoria and I have been trying to figure that out. You know Emily Dorsnel?”

“Is that Emily Dork Smell?”

“She’s into parapsychology. She told us that some places are just a little haunted, like you might see or hear a ghost for a second. Other places are much worse. They trap souls inside, and they’re called dark places.”

“Starland is definitely some kind of dark place now,” Jared said.

“That’s what Victoria and I think. We already spoke to Mr. Hanover, and Victoria’s trying to get in touch with Artie Schopfer, the guy who designed all the big rides, including Dark Mansion. Victoria and I—”

“‘Victoria and I, Victoria and I,’” Jared repeated, mimicking him. “Is she your girlfriend now or what?”

“We’re just friends.”

“Like actual platonic friends, or that thing where she thinks it’s platonic, but you think it’s going to lead somewhere?”

“Shut up,” Carter said. “We’re just investigating the park together. Do you want a ride to the police station or not?”

Jared sighed and slumped.

“I feel dead,” he said. “But yeah, take me to the fucking cops, I guess. They might as well do something useful around town for a change.”

They drove up the highway toward the strip mall housing the police station.

“Let me off here,” Jared said. “I’ll walk in by myself.”

“You sure?”

“No reason to drag you into it. Thanks for coming to get me.”

Carter felt he should insist on going in with Jared, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d had enough problems with the police lately.

“If you think that’s best...” Carter said.

“Yeah, I’ll just walk in off the streets, more dramatic or something that way.” At the next red light, Jared opened the door and hopped out. Carter watched him dash across the street, then turn back and wave before stepping into the police station.

Good luck, Carter thought, and then he drove back home.

He texted Victoria to tell her Jared was back from the park, and she immediately called him for all the details.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Jared wasn’t at school on Tuesday. By lunchtime, a rumor had swarmed through the school that the police were going to open up Starland for a full-scale search. Carter knew it was true, because Jared had texted him about it early that morning.

Like many of the students, Victoria and Carter decided to drive over to Starland after school and check it out. Hundreds of other people had done the same, creating a weird sort of carnival atmosphere around the place, the crowd pushing up as close to the front gate as the police barriers and yellow tape would allow, newspaper reporters, a FOX affiliate van shooting footage, and cars parked at all the old attractions, where vandals and scavengers had long since removed the orange cones and sawhorses blocking off the parking lots.

Everybody seemed to be whispering and taking pictures.

Carter and Victoria arrived just in time to see the event unfold. Theodore Hanover Junior stood at the front gates, sweating copiously under his curly toupee, looking like a nervous, hunted animal. Town and county police had assembled for the search, along with a number of firefighters, EMS workers, and three police bloodhounds. Jared stood next to Chief Kilborne, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. He was too far away for Carter to speak to him.

“I wonder what they’ll find,” Victoria whispered. She took a few pictures of her own as the professional search party quietly moved aside the accumulation of presents, cards, and pictures at the front gate.

The crowd fell silent as Theodore Hanover Junior fumbled out a thick spool of keys and opened the padlocks on the front gate, pausing between each lock to search for the next key. By the time he opened the final lock, the only sound was the surf rolling against the beach across the street, beyond the old motels.

Hanover removed the chains and set them aside. He stared at the thick vines shrouding the gate for a moment, took a breath, and pushed it open. A long, rusty squeal pierced the silence. It was a sunny afternoon under a blue sky, not a cloud on the horizon, but a chill seemed to spread through the crowd.

Dozens of cameras snapped pictures, and people began to whisper. For a moment, Carter was reminded of the whispering crowd of shadows rising from the ground in Haunted Alley, and he shuddered.

The amusement park’s midway was a wreck, the pavement shattered into uneven pieces, some of them jutting up like sharp boulders. Waist-high clumps of weeds sprouted through the broken asphalt. The concessions and games were unidentifiable, many of them collapsed, most of them buried under thorny vines and spindly plants, their once-bright paint faded and peeled away. It looked just as it had when Carter and Victoria had gone inside the first time, a dilapidated and forgotten ruin.

“It’s hiding itself,” Victoria whispered as the police advanced inside. “I bet they don’t find anything at all.”

“You’re right,” he whispered back.

She raised her camera and took a picture of the wreckage along the midway.

“I wonder why he let us go,” Victoria whispered. “The carnival barker guy.”

“Let us go? He threatened to kill us.”

“And then he let us go. Why? If the park swallowed up everyone else, why did it spit us back out?”

“I don’t know.” Carter thought it over. “He said something like ‘we’re all staffed up for the season.’ Right?”

“He said that to us on Friday night. On Saturday night, he took four more kids, those freshmen, and they’re still missing. So he specifically rejected us.”

“I don’t mind being rejected if it means we’re still alive.”

“But why us?”

“We did resist the Popcorn Cart of Temptation,” Carter said.

“Maybe.” Victoria frowned. “But he eventually let Jared go, too. And you said Jared drank some of the park’s beer.”

“Jared barely made it out alive.”

“There must be some reason, though. Some kind of connection.” Victoria was bouncing nervously on the balls of her feet.

“Jared and I were both there on the day of the sinkhole,” Carter whispered. “So there’s that.”

“You saw it happen?” Victoria’s mouth dropped as she looked up at him. “You were there?”

“I was there.”

“You never said that before.”

“I don’t like talking about it. It was terrible. The worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I’m sorry.” Victoria touched his hand, and he took hers. Both of them felt clammy and shook a little bit. “You and Jared were both there and lived through it. Maybe that means something.”

“Maybe. I’m not sure what. It’s hard to know, isn’t it?”

“I found out where Artie Schopfer is,” Victoria said.

“Seriously? Mr. Hanover actually got back to you?”

“No. His receptionist shoved me off the phone yesterday, said she’d call back but didn’t. It was actually an editor at Amusements and Attractions magazine. She emailed me his contact information, sort of.”

“Sort of?”

Victoria pulled up the email on her phone. “It’s the address and phone number of a nursing home near Silver Springs. She said he apparently doesn’t like to speak on the phone, but we can visit.”

“That’s five hours away.”

“We can do it on Saturday if we get up early enough.”

“It would have to be Sunday. I work at the hospital on Saturdays.”

“This Sunday, then?” Victoria raised her eyebrows. “Will you go on a road trip with me?”

“You’re sure you want to do this?”

“How else will we get any answers?”

Carter shook his head. “Okay. If the cops don’t find anything today.”

“I don’t think they will.”

After a couple of hours, the crowd had thinned as people grew bored waiting for the searchers to emerge from the old park. Carter and Victoria waited until sunset, when the police and their dogs returned to the front gate.

Jared was still with the police chief. Neither of them looked happy. Jared saw Carter near the front of the crowd, shook his head, and shrugged.

“We should go,” Carter told Victoria, while Theodore Hanover Junior locked up the gate and the police returned to their row of vehicles. “I’ll learn more from Jared than we’ll find out hanging around here, anyway.”

“If they didn’t find anything, that means it’s up to us to figure it out,” Victoria said.

Carter didn’t like the sound of that.

When he returned home, his dad was watching the local news on the DVR. Carter sat beside him to see what they would report about the park.

“Starland Amusement Park in Conch City,” the anchorman finally said. The news image that had once gone all over the country appeared over his right shoulder, the devil leering down at a burning cotton candy stand. “Five years ago, it made headlines when the largest, deadliest sinkhole in Florida history opened beneath it. More than a hundred park visitors and employees died, and much of the park burned, earning it the nickname ‘Inferno Park’ in the national news.”

“It wasn’t a nickname,” Carter’s dad muttered. “They just got the name wrong.”

“Today, the park was re-opened, but not for fun and games,” the anchor continued. “Correspondent Brandi Orchid has the story.”

The TV cut to the crowded scene where Carter had been, with a tanned blond woman smiling brightly with the ruins of the amusement park behind her.

“Thirteen teenagers have gone missing without a trace here in Conch City,” Brandi said. “The gates of Starland Amusement Park opened for the first time in five years as local authorities widen their search for the missing. What did they find?”

The view cut to footage of police poking around the wrecked midway.

“The answer: not much,” Brandi’s voice continued. “Police and trained rescue dogs spent hours in the ruins, but found none of the lost kids. Still, the world got its first glimpse inside these gates in years. It was a scene of destruction and desolation, a sad reminder of this park’s tragic history, and for local authorities, just another dead end in the mystery of the missing children.”

Then the news moved to the story of an apartment fire in Pensacola.

“That didn’t really tell us anything,” Carter said.

“It’s the damn TV. It never tells you anything,” his dad said, then flipped to a reality show about garage bands. “Hey, have you been watching this? The Marshmallow Deadbeats replaced that Tyrell guy with a new bassist. Probably for the best.”

“I haven’t been watching, sorry.”

Carter went back to his room and tried to focus on his homework, hoping Jared remembered to call or text him. He was drowning in calculus problems when the phone rang.

“We didn’t find her,” Jared said when Carter answered. “We didn’t find anybody, alive or dead. The whole place changed, man. When I was in there, it looked all new. Now it’s just a wreck.”

“Nobody saw anything strange? Did you check Dark Mansion?”

“That was one of the first places. We pulled it apart. I mean they pulled it apart, because I was just supposed to stand there like a dog on a leash in case the pigs wanted to ask me questions.”

“What do you mean by ‘pulled it apart’?”

“Oh, it turns out some of the walls in Dark Mansion were built to come down fast in case of a fire or if some fat old tourist had a heart attack or whatever,” Jared said. “So they pulled down all these walls, and the place just looked gutted. It was falling down anyway. I mean there was a tree growing out one window. When they opened up the walls like that, you could just tell there was nothing in there. They searched it and they didn’t find any sign of Becca, but the place looked completely different, man. It wasn’t the same place where I got trapped for three days, not at all. It shrank.”

“Victoria said it looked like the park was hiding itself,” Carter said.

“Did Victoria have any ideas why? Or how?”

“Who knows? Maybe because it was daytime, or it was adults, or it just didn’t want to be seen that publicly.”

“What’s behind all of it, though?” Jared asked. “Why is any of it happening?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m so worried about Becca,” he said. “Everybody else, too...but especially her, you know? Because I should have been able to protect her in there, or rescue her, or...maybe I should go back tonight.”

“Don’t do that!” Carter told him. “You barely survived the first time, and you already searched all day. Wait until we figure some stuff out. Victoria and I will talk to that Schopfer guy, and we’ll see what else Emily Dorsnel can tell us. Are you going to be at school tomorrow?”

“Why not?” Jared said. “Nothing else to do.”

After their phone call, Carter studied until his eyes were bleary and heavy. He went to sleep and dreamed again of standing on the platform of Inferno Mountain, looking down at a trainload of corpses, with Tricia’s headless body in the lead car, reaching out her cold, pale hand toward him.

“You almost missed the train,” Tricia’s voice whispered in his ear, “But we came back for you.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Carter asked Emily Dorsnel to have lunch with them again on Wednesday. He invited Jared, too, but Jared instead took up his usual seat at the concrete planters, surrounded by a few dozen others who wanted to hear about his time in the old amusement park.

Carter and Victoria began to tell Emily about their second visit to the park.

“First, it looked like everything had been restored,” Carter said. “The way it was when I was a kid.”

“Time slips. We discussed that previously,” Emily said, nodding.

“A lot of the concession stands were open,” Victoria told her. “Jared and his friends drank beer and ate all kinds of food offered by the park.”

“Truly?” Emily’s eyes widened. “That’s unwise, of course. One should never accept food or drink in the underworld, the fae world, or any supernatural locale. Myth and lore are clear on that point.”

Carter then told them about the man in the striped hat and his horde of dark ghosts, and seeing Tamara and Elissa among them. Emily grew more and more pale as he described it.

“Some dark places are self-feeding,” Emily said, her voice very low so they had to lean in to hear her. “Like Tuen Mun Road in Hong Kong. Ghosts appear in the middle of the road to make people swerve and crash. Then those people become ghosts haunting the road, so it becomes more and more haunted over time. A spiral of death.”

“Great,” Carter said.

“If that’s what we’re dealing with, then there are two layers of problems,” Emily said. “The first is all the ghosts of people who’ve died in the park. The second, deeper layer is the evil behind them, the one who’s turned the place dark and basically enslaved all of these lost souls.”

“What would the deeper layer be?” Victoria asked.

“Something evil and powerful.”

“We’re going to meet with the artist who designed the park,” Carter said. “Inferno Mountain, Dark Mansion, all the good stuff. Maybe he’ll know.”

“You are?” Emily frowned. “I would use great caution in that case. You could be dealing with a very dangerous individual.”

Carter and Victoria shared an unhappy look.

“One more question,” Victoria said. “The park has taken all these kids, but they let us go. The man just told Carter and I to leave, and then Jared eventually escaped, too. Why wouldn’t he take everyone? Why didn’t he kill us?”

“Not that we’re complaining,” Carter added.

Emily considered this.

“A couple of possibilities,” she said. “One is that he specifically didn’t want your souls for the park. I don’t know why that would be. The other is what Jared is so ably demonstrating for us here.” Emily pointed to Jared, talking on and on to an enraptured crowd, mostly freshmen and sophomores with their mouths hanging open as they listened to his story.

“He’s telling everyone about it,” Victoria said.

“Exactly,” Emily said. “Think of what’s happened since Jared returned. The police searched the park, the news covered it, and now people want to hear more about it from him. A soul trap wouldn’t be very effective unless it could lure people inside.”

“So we’re supposed to be walking advertisements for the park,” Carter said.

“A mythology is now forming around Starland,” Emily told them. “A lure to draw in the rubes, the people who just have to see it for themselves. Starland might have been in the back of our collective mind this summer, but now it’s at the front, under spotlights. People from all over the country might be hearing about it. People will come from out of town just to have a look, or to try and sneak inside.”

“He said all the rides and attractions would be open soon,” Carter told her. “He even said ‘Tell your friends.’”

“There you go,” Emily said. “You’re part of his promotional strategy.”

Carter felt ill as he remembered pushing Jared to hurry up and go to the police, hoping they’d do a full-scale search of the park. He’d gotten his wish, too.

Emily stood as the lunch bell rang.

“Be careful about meeting with that artist guy,” she advised them. “He could be connected to the underlying evil somehow. Maybe even a part of it.”

After Emily walked away, Victoria whispered, “Do you want to hang out tonight?”

“Can it include doing homework together? I have a ton of it.”

“That’s fine. I just don’t want to sit by myself in that strange house, thinking about all the evil things in this little town.”

“On the bright side, we still have one good pizza place,” he said. “We should go there.”

They went to Sharkfin Pizza that evening, now a small dive tucked into a narrow slot in a rundown strip mall facing the highway. Nets, mounted sharks, and shark memorabilia crowded the walls. They sat down in one of four small booths.

“This used to be the best pizza on the beach,” he told her. “It was so popular, they opened this second location just for deliveries. Now this is the only one left, but it’s still something.”

When the pizza arrived, Victoria squinted at the taste of the extremely salty crust.

They sat there for more than an hour, quietly doing their homework, the only customers in the place besides a few who came by for pick-up orders.

It became their ritual for the rest of the week, sitting at the library, the park, or the beach studying together. Sometimes they talked about Starland, and their growing fear at the idea of meeting the man who’d designed it, but they would quickly move away from the subject.

Victoria talked about Detroit, how it used to be one of the most opulent cities in the country, and how living in a prosperous suburb of a dying metropolis was like sitting in a comfortable little life boat and watching a massive ship sink beneath the ocean. Carter learned about her family, too, and how her mother had once played violin in an orchestra, and then taught music, and now sat at their new house reading books, drinking wine, and going stir crazy. Victoria’s mother hadn’t wanted to move down to the Florida panhandle, far from any major cultural center, but the job heading up the new nursing-care facility had offered more money than her father could resist.

Carter felt embarrassed to talk about his family and how things had crumbled after they lost their business. He spoke only vaguely and briefly about his mom’s alcoholism flaring out of control and prompting her to leave town with some random younger man. It all sounded a little trashy compared to her background.

They also spent a lot of time silently working, and he would glance up at her while she was focused on her textbook, watching her eyes and her lips for a moment before going back to his own work.

Jared’s adventures had brought him a small horde of new followers, mostly freshmen and sophomores. He asked Carter every day when they could go back to the park and look for Becca again. Carter kept telling him to wait, but he knew Jared wouldn’t listen to him forever.

The news story about the search for missing kids in Starland was picked up as a filler item by a couple of national news channels, and out-of-towners were beginning to drift in to gawk at the old amusement park. A police car sat near the locked front gate all day to ward off trespassers.

Carter grew increasingly nervous as Sunday drew closer, wondering what would happen when they met with Schopfer, and whether the man would be as dangerous as Emily seemed to think.

Victoria called him on Saturday afternoon, as he was leaving the hospital in his dad’s truck, having completed his volunteer hours for the day.

“This is so stupid,” she said.

“What’s wrong?”

“My parents. I happened to mention our road trip tomorrow, which should be no big deal, right? Now they want you to come over and meet them. They think we’re dating or something. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Right,” Carter said.

“Even though I told them we’re just friends. So, anyway, would it be at all possible for you to come over for dinner with us tonight? I’m sorry, it’s so embarrassing.”

“That’s okay.” He felt instantly nervous at the idea. It would be all the fun of getting examined by a girl’s parents as if he were her new boyfriend, without all the hassle of later having a nice date and possibly making out with her. “What time?”

“Seven? I can pick you up. I’m really sorry.”

“Why? Is it going to involve torture?”

“With my family, you never know,” she said.

Carter spent much too long thinking about what to wear, and he didn’t text Victoria for advice because he didn’t want her to know he was worried at all. He finally erred on the side of dressing up, with full-length khakis and a blue shirt that was meant to be worn with a coat and tie, plus the brown loafers he never wore. The clothes were too hot for the weather. He usually wore shorts until December or January.

When he climbed into Victoria’s car, she raised her eyebrows at him, then laughed.

“I’ve never seen you dress like that,” she said. “Are we going to prom?”

“Are you asking me to prom?”

“I don’t know. I might have a boyfriend or something by then.” She smiled to herself as she drove out of his parking lot. “You don’t have to be nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.” He noticed he was drumming his fingers on the armrest and made himself stop.

“You wearing that outfit screams nervous,” she said.

“I can go back and change into a wife-beater.”

“Do you actually own one?”

“I own nine or ten, all different colors. The mesh really showcases my nipples,” he said.

Victoria laughed so much that her eyes closed and she swerved into the next lane, nearly colliding with a motorcycle before she straightened the car out.

“Don’t talk about your nipples when I’m driving,” she said, rubbing at her eyes.

Carter felt nervous again as they entered her house. The interior was full of polished hardwood and sunlight from the tall windows. Bright splatters of abstract art hung on the walls, and a string quartet played over a stereo somewhere. The rooms were about twelve feet high, with some fancy-looking crown molding. He was glad he’d never brought Victoria into his narrow rat-trap of an apartment.

He met Victoria’s father first. Mr. Samaris sat on the long gray couch in the living room, near the glass door to the sunroom, holding a glass of wine and reading a Smithsonian magazine. He had close-cropped, graying hair and large reading glasses, and dressed slightly more casually than Carter, in a short-sleeve collared shirt.

“This is my dad,” Victoria said. “Dad, this is Carter.”

“You’re the boy who’s taken up all her time lately?” He looked up, studying Carter with a little bit of suspicion in his eyes.

“Thanks for inviting me over,” Carter said.

“So what’s this the two of you are doing tomorrow? Tori explained it, but I still don’t understand the point.”

“What’s hard to understand?” Victoria interrupted. “We’re going to meet the artist who created all the big attractions around town, all the stuff behind the fences.”

“And?” her father asked.

“He’s also created haunted houses and rides for carnivals and amusement parks all over the country,” Victoria added.

“So what? Why do you want to meet him?”

“It’s about chronicling the decline of a certain species of organic pop culture,” Victoria said. “These old roadside attractions are a kind of folk art. They represent the ‘highway’ era of American history before the ‘interstate’ era. I’ve explained all this already.” Victoria rolled her eyes.

“So it’s a photography thing,” her dad said with a shrug. “It’s your Sunday, waste it how you like. Just be home by ten.”

“But Monday is Labor Day,” Victoria said. “So my curfew should be midnight.”

“Why does every kid suddenly turn into a lawyer when you bring up curfews and allowances?” he asked. “Carter, any thoughts on that?”

“Um.” Carter cleared his throat, feeling anxious and unsure what to say. “Not really, sir.”

“Tell this kid to stop chewing my ear off, Tori,” her dad said. “I can’t keep up with everything he’s saying.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Carter said.

“Listen to that. ‘Sir,’” her dad repeated.

“Carter’s a Southern gentleman.” Victoria smiled and touched Carter’s arm briefly. “So he says things like that.”

“At least he’s still in high school. You are, aren’t you? I told Victoria no more college boys, she’s still too young.”

“Dad, stop it.” Victoria blushed.

“Yes, sir, I’m a senior,” Carter told him. He was trying not to look too surprised at the idea that she’d dated a college guy, or dismayed at the thought of trying to compete with such men for her attention.

“Is Tori home with her boyfriend yet?” Victoria’s mom walked into the room holding a dangerously full glass of red wine in one hand. She looked a bit tipsy, but still seemed elegant to Carter—a polished silver necklace with little black opals, which Carter imagined was some kind of antique, plus lots of black clothing, with chunky high heels. Her eyes were large and dark, just like Victoria’s.

“Carter, this is—” Victoria began.

“There you are! Come help me set the outdoor table, Tori. We may as well try it out before the weather turns cold.”

“Carter, this is my mom,” Victoria tried again, and her mom seemed to notice Carter standing there for the first time.

“Oh, yes! I’m Lucette. We’re so glad Tori brought you over.”

“I’m so glad Tori invited me,” Carter said. He looked at Victoria, enjoying the use of her nickname for the first time, and she gave him a tiny scowl.

“Come on, Tori, give me a hand.” She took Victoria’s arm and led her toward the kitchen. Victoria cast him an apologetic look over her shoulder.

Carter was left stranded with her dad, awkwardly standing there since he hadn’t invited Carter to sit. Mr. Samaris sipped wine and looked at him. A rich, spicy aroma flowed out from the kitchen area.

“So, that’s some great music,” Carter said. “What is it?”

“Stravinsky. Tell me something, Carter. Do you actually share my daughter’s apparent passion for photographing roadside folk-pop-art, or whatever she calls these tourist traps, or are you just humoring her?”

“Well, I grew up around all of that, so it’s interesting to learn about it. My parents had one of the little places on the strip, a go-kart place. Before the sinkhole ended most of the tourism.”

“That must have been quite a blow to this town. I remember reading about it in the paper. ‘Inferno Park’ does sound like an unlucky name for an amusement park.”

“It was actually called Starland,” Carter said. “The national news reported it wrong at first.”

“What do they do now?” Mr. Samaris asked.

“Who?”

“Your parents.”

“Oh. My dad’s a...he works with that national moving company. Moovin’ On.”

“I imagine the logistics are complex.”

“Yeah, logistics and stuff. My mom lives in Tampa. She’s a....bartender, I think.”

“A colorful background,” he said, with a small nod. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

“No, thank you, sir.”

“Suit yourself.”

Victoria saved him by returning and announcing dinner was ready. He followed her through the kitchen and out through an open pair of glass doors.

He sat across from her at a rectangular glass table, her parents at either end, on a brick patio overlooking a densely landscaped yard with a small swimming pool.

“It’s really nice out here,” Carter said. “I’ve never been to this house before.”

“Did you know that’s a hummingbird garden?” Mrs. Samaris asked. “Every flower is there to attract hummingbirds. It works, too. Just keep your eye out.”

“San Pellegrino?” Victoria asked, tilting a green bottle toward the empty wine glass in front of Carter’s plate.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s the strong stuff. Water and bubbles.” She poured for him, then filled up her own glass.

They had a Greek salad with fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, some strong feta cheese and beets. The main course was baked lamb with a thick, heavy sauce. Not exactly his favorite.

“Tori’s father comes from a Greek family,” Victoria’s mother said. “But I learned to cook from my grandmother, who was Québécois.”

“That means French Canadian,” Victoria said.

“I knew that,” Carter told her. “Je parle un pute le français.”

Victoria and her mother both gaped at him for a second, then looked at each other and laughed.

“What?” Carter asked. “I haven’t actually studied French since middle school.”

“Um...” Victoria leaned closed to him and whispered. “I think you meant peu. Pute means...whore or bitch.”

Carter felt his face turn bright red.

“So what you’ll find here are Greek dishes with French-style sauces, or French food with far too many olives,” her mom continued, trying to salvage the moment.

“It’s really good.” Carter’s words came out in a rapid rush, eager to move on to something besides his failed attempt at French. He didn’t actually like the food at all. He never ate lamb, which always tasted the way goats smelled, as far as he was concerned.

“Thank you. Tori says you want to be a doctor, is that right?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“‘Ma’am.’ He’s so cute, Tori,” Victoria’s mom said, and Victoria blushed crimson. She looked like she was dying of embarrassment.

“Good luck with that,” Victoria’s father said. “That’s ten years of school, you know that? And then you’re just getting started.”

“I’m taking a full load of advanced placement this year,” Carter said. “That’ll save some time and money in college.”

“Somebody who believes in saving money! I knew there had to be a few of us left out there,” Victoria’s father said. “You won’t find enough of them in this family. Medicine, though. That’s a good, solid choice. Too many kids these days are getting degrees in Native Alaskan folk dancing, Romantic poetry, underwater basket-weaving...”

“Dad, you already have a son in business school,” Victoria said.

“It’s a good thing, too,” her dad told her. “If your actual grown-up plan is trying to make a living as a photographer, you’ll need a brother who can loan you money.”

“Or maybe I’ll just marry a doctor,” Victoria shot back. She and Carter looked at each other, and she blushed dark red again. He’d never seen her blush before, and now she’d done it twice in less than an hour. “I mean, you know...some doctor. That I might meet.”

For the rest of the meal, Carter was still nervous, but he thought he did a decent job of hiding it. On the inside, he felt a goofy, weird, warm glow.

When it was finally over, Victoria led him to the back door.

“Thanks for coming,” she whispered. “I think we convinced them you’re not some crazy kid who’s going to kidnap me tomorrow.”

“So they fell for it?” He slowed and looked at a collection of pictures on the living room wall. “Are those the pyramids? Like the real ones?”

“Yeah, like the real ones. That’s my brother.” She pointed to a teenage boy in the picture, standing next to her mom and a smaller version of Victoria with long black pigtails. The Great Pyramid and its two smaller companion pyramids loomed in the background

“How old were you?” Carter asked.

“Seven, I think.”

“You’re a world traveler.” He looked among pictures of little Victoria smiling and waving at the gardens of Versailles and looking bored at Greek ruins on a grassy hillside.

“We used to travel more before my brother went off to college,” she said. “Come on.”

She led him down to her basement, where there was a den area with a couch, an old stereo with a turntable, and several cardboard boxes overflowing with old records. Victoria played one hissing, popping album after another, while telling him all about the history of punk and psychedelic music.

As she drove him home a couple of hours later, Carter wondered whether he might be entirely underqualified to be her boyfriend.

It doesn’t matter, he thought. Nothing will matter after I leave town for college. The whole past will just disappear behind me.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Carter awoke on Sunday morning with a feeling of dread, remembering Emily Dorsnel’s warning about Schopfer. He and Victoria were going to visit the man today. He’d avoided thinking about it as long as possible, but there was no more time for denial.

He flipped off his alarm, showered, and went out to the dark parking lot to wait for Victoria. The sun was just beginning to rise when she arrived.

Victoria sat behind the wheel, wearing her vintage sunglasses, with “Rockaway Beach” blasting over her sound system. Carter couldn’t help smiling a little at the sight of her. At least he was getting out of town for a change, and he’d be spending the day with a girl he liked, who was maybe the only real friend he had left.

“Ready?” she asked as he climbed inside.

“You brought coffee?” He lifted one of two portable cups from her cup holders and sipped it. It tasted dark and strong. “That’s a good idea.”

“Yes, one’s for you,” Victoria said.

“Thanks! When you’re on your way to ask a man why his amusement park is a trap for lost souls, it’s good to be wide awake first.”

“That’s what I thought, too.”

They drove east along the Gulf Coast Highway, passing the half-empty strip malls and the Moroccan facade of the Beach Ball and Sand Castle Museum, now closed. Carter felt a weight lift off him as they sped past the town limits and onto an open stretch of two-lane highway lined with high pine trees. Traces of white sand blew across the road, gathering in little piles around the roots of the tall pines.

They reached Mexico Beach, with RV parks, campgrounds, and rental cottages on their left and a wide view of the blue Gulf water on their right, the sky clear and full of sunlight. Their windows were open, and the warm salty wind combined with the loud music made conversation difficult, consisting mostly of Victoria identifying some of the songs in her road-trip playlist, while he nodded along as though already familiar with her music.

As she picked up speed, her hair streamed across her face in thin black ribbons, and she tucked some of them behind her ear. She noticed him looking at her and smiled, her eyes unreadable behind black glasses.

He returned her smile before leaning back in his seat, looking at the long road ahead. A song called “Sunset City” by The Magnetic Fields played over the stereo, and though they were driving into sunrise rather than sunset, it was a perfect song about leaving and moving on, which had been all he’d ever thought about until Starland had crawled up out of his past like a monster from a dark pit.

His hometown receded rapidly behind them. The highway would carry them along the panhandle beach for the next two hours, with little towns on the left and dark blue water of the bay on their right, stretching all the way to the far horizon.

The land ended at Apalachicola, but the highway continued on across the bay. Victoria shook her head as they drove for miles across a bridge with nothing but water visible in any direction.

“This is creepy,” she said. “This bridge could be a ride at the amusement park. You just need a couple of giant sharks and squids rising up from the water.”

“I’m kind of avoiding amusement park rides right now.”

“Probably a good policy.”

They both let out a small breath when the bridge finally connected to a causeway, and relaxed more when they reached solid ground again. Then they looked at each other and laughed at how scared they’d been.

“What happens when we actually meet this guy?” Carter asked.

“I’m not sure. I’ve been studying that one picture of him we found, from the seventies. It’s pretty grainy, and he’s wearing these thick glasses, but I blew it up on my screen. I don’t think he’s the carnival barker guy.”

“I hope not! I didn’t even think of that.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a different person.”

“So, do we start by telling him about the ghosts?” Carter asked.

“Definitely not. We say we’re collecting images of all his work, like the amusement park, and we want to find more.”

“Do you really think he’ll talk to us?”

“I hope so. I just hope this doesn’t somehow get us killed,” she said.

“He’s in a nursing home. How dangerous can he be?” Carter asked. Victoria just frowned, looking worried.

“We don’t know what we’re involved with here,” she said. “Not at all.”

The highway peeled away from the coast, unfortunately, and turned into an endless straight line slicing through leafy state forests that blocked any view of the water. The scenery eventually turned to farms and cow pastures, then suburbs, before crawling through the busy streets of Ocala, where the man’s nursing home was located.

Victoria pulled into the shady parking lot of a nursing home on the east end of town, not far from Silver Springs State Park. They sat quietly, the engine running, and stared at the low, single-story brick building shadowed by rows of palm trees. A small brown sign by the road identified it as Silverview Assisted Living Home. The building looked like a shabby, outdated motel.

“Should we get lunch first?” Carter asked.

“I don’t think I can eat.”

“That’s true.” Carter’s own stomach felt clenched and nervous. He’d been hungry before they reached the nursing center, but now he just felt cold and afraid. The idea of lunch was just a delaying tactic.

“We should just go see what he has to say,” Victoria said. “Then we’ll be done.”

“Okay.”

She turned off her engine. Carter got out first, looking toward the sliding glass doors at the front of the building. They reflected the palm trees around them like black mirrors.

As they crossed the parking lot, she took his hand and held it tight, just as she’d done while they explored Starland. Carter was glad. He felt like he was in a dream that was right on the verge of becoming a nightmare.

The glass doors slid open with a hiss, and they stepped inside.

The lobby was tiled in dark green, the walls a similar avocado hue. The sunlight barely penetrated the heavy yellowed curtains, and half the overhead fluorescents were switched off, leaving the interior dim. A few worn plastic chairs sat along one wall.

A heavyset, middle-aged Hispanic nurse sat alone behind the front desk. She looked up at them from the thick stack of paperwork in the open file folder before her.

“Yes?”

“We’re here to visit Mr. Schopfer,” Victoria said.

“Room 139. Turn right, all the way at the end.” She gestured with a ballpoint pen, then looked down and resumed her work.

The dim green corridor smelled like urine and Pine-Sol. Doors opened onto dim rooms on either side. Carter happened to glance in at a thin old man in a wheelchair, wearing an oxygen mask. The man’s rheumy eyes looked back at him, and Carter quickly gave him a polite smile and looked away.

The hall widened as they passed a kind of activity room with more of the plastic-upholstered seats. A couple of old men stared at a TV, watching a Gunsmoke rerun. Three frail, elderly women sat in a circle, softly whispering and cooing to the lifelike plastic baby dolls in their arms.

The hallway narrowed again, and seemed even quieter than the rest of the facility.

“Isn’t it strange she didn’t even ask who we were?” Carter whispered. “Or call ahead to tell the guy we’re coming?”

“Not really.” Victoria whispered even lower, her lips close to his ear. “My dad says most nursing-care residents never get visitors. They’re usually eager to see anyone at all.”

They finally reached 139, near the end of the hall. The index cards mounted in plastic by the door had two names, written in pencil. One of them was SCHOPFER, A.

Carter and Victoria looked at each other, and he squeezed her hand.

They leaned into the room.

A curtain was drawn down the middle of the dark room, and they could only see the half closer to the door. One very thin old man with a few white remnants of hair lay in the bed, his eyes closed.

“Is he sleeping?” Carter asked.

“He’s wearing headphones.” Victoria knocked on the open door, but he didn’t move. “What do we do?”

“Try to get his attention.” Carter stepped into the room, waving an arm. “Hello?”

The guy didn’t open his eyes.

“Should I tap his shoulder or what?” Carter asked.

“Um...” Victoria looked along the wall, found the light switch, and turned on all the overhead lights. She quickly turned them off again.

Carter looked at the bed. The man’s eyes had opened, sunken and pale inside his sockets. He stared at Carter, then lifted one shaking, badly gnarled hand and lifted away one headphone.

“Hello? Who’s that?” he asked.

“Uh, hi,” Carter said. “We’re looking for Artie Schopfer.”

“He’s dead,” the old man said.

“Seriously?” Victoria asked.

“Died this morning. Wheeled him out before lunch. Strange thing, though. I keep hearing his voice just on the other side of that curtain. Whispering. Saying he’s cold, he’s lost...”

“Oh my God,” Victoria said.

“If you lean real close, you might hear it,” the old man said. “Come on. Have the girl try it.”

Carter and Victoria shared a look, then both stepped close to the curtain and leaned their ears against it.

“Help me,” a voice whispered on the other side. “I’m lost. I think I’m dead.”

“Oh, no, there he goes,” the old man said. “He’s haunting us, just like he said he would, ever since that night he got cheated at Bingo.”

Carter pulled back the edge of the curtain and looked around it.

An elderly black man sat in a wheelchair, reading a large-print illustrated copy of the Tao te Ching. He smiled at the sight of Carter.

“Young man,” he said, “Don’t you know better than to disturb the dead?”

The old man in the first bed cackled laughter.

“I believe you scared this one, Artie,” the black man said. “He expected to see a real ghost. I could see it all over his face.”

“Sorry to bother you, sir,” Carter said. He let the curtain drop and turned back to the old man with the sunken pale eyes.

“So you are Mr. Schopfer?” Victoria asked the first man.

“I apologize,” the old man said. “Couldn’t resist the old nameless-horror-behind-the-curtain trick...Could you do me a favor, young lady? Come press the stop button on this player. I’m listening to a book, and my hands aren’t what they used to be.” Schopfer held up both his hands, which shook rapidly, the fingers gnarled like old tree roots.

“Okay.” Victoria eyed him cautiously as she stopped his MP3 player for him. He looked her over with a growing smile.

“That’s an audiobook. Raymond Chandler. Ever read him?” Schopfer asked.

“No, sorry,” Victoria said.

“You should. Classic.” He turned to Carter. “So why are you looking for Artie Schopfer? Tell me you’re planning a new haunted house or roller coaster and you need expert advice.”

“I wish we were!” Victoria said. She introduced herself and Carter, and told her story about collecting images of his work around Conch City.

“You want to see more of my work? Is that what I’m hearing?” he asked.

“That would be great,” Carter said.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Victoria added.

“I have a little time to pass before my 3 p.m. medication,” he told her. “After that, two more hours until dinner. Young lady, would you mind grabbing that scrapbook on my bookshelf? The big one there, yes.” While Victoria lifted his scrapbook, which was bound in cracked brown pleather and looked about six inches thick, overflowing with papers, he said, “You know why they call this place Silverview? Right up the road you’ll find what used to be the front gate to Silver Springs Park. You kids ever been to Silver Springs?”

“No, sir,” Carter said. Victoria lugged the enormous, unwieldy scrapbook to the man’s bedside. Schopfer made no move to accept it.

“Florida’s first big tourist attraction,” Schopfer said. “The granddaddy of them all. Used to be the most famous amusement park in the country. Had some of the world’s first glass-bottom boats. By the 1930s, you had Ross Allen’s Reptile Institute, you had Colonel Tooey’s Jungle Cruise boats on the river. They made the Tarzan movies out there, and Creature from the Black Lagoon, too.”

“Really?” Victoria asked. “That’s a seriously classic horror movie.”

“Not to mention the Deer Ranch, the Six-Gun Territory...” Schopfer coughed into one of his twisted fingers. “Used to be quite a place. Most of it’s gone now, and hardly anybody remembers it.”

“Did you make any of the attractions?” Victoria asked.

“The Haunted Steamboat.” He smiled, revealing scattered teeth. “Only ran during October, of course. Rest of the year, it was just a regular jungle boat ride. One year we even had the Creature from the Black Lagoon climb aboard out of the water, try to scare the tourists. Lots of fun. You’ll have to hold that photo album for me, miss. You two have a seat.”

The room only offered one chair, so Carter motioned for Victoria to take it.

“Anything specific you want to learn about?” he asked. “Or should we start from the top? The whole she-bang?”

“The whole she-bang,” Victoria said.

“Let’s see that first page.”

Victoria opened the big photo album. Black and white photographs grown yellow with age showed a very young Schopfer in front of a false front painted to look like a gray brick wall, with the words Haunted House painted in big, lurid letters on the front. Simple curtained archways served as the entrance and exit.

“Did you say this is for a magazine article?” Schopfer asked, pulling on a pair of bottle-thick glasses.

“It’s more like a school project,” Victoria told him.

“Hm. Dervish Brothers Carnival,” he said. “Kids used to talk about running away with the circus, but I went and did it back in 1949. Sixteen years old. I didn’t want to farm the rest of my life. Had ten brothers and sisters, so I don’t think my parents missed me.

“I built that first walk-through house from pure scrap, no money. Should have called it the ‘Haunted Shack’ because ‘house’ was a little generous—it had about three little closet-sized rooms. I learned how to scare people on a budget. The key is to put them in a small, dark place and give them just enough to start up their imagination. That’s where the fear lives, down inside you, not inside whatever it is that’s scaring you. Anyway, I built that little haunted house up over the years. Could you turn the page?”

Victoria turned it. The next page showed a more decorated version of the attraction, with a legitimately scary figure in a stitched mask peering out a window, which reminded Carter of “Old Sackhead” staring out from the second floor of Dark Mansion, waving his butcher knife. A few people in dusty overalls and farm dresses were lined up for the haunted house.

“Dervish Brothers was small, but it stayed alive for years,” Schopfer said. “The usual things. A few rides, a few games. Some odd attractions.” He pointed to other pictures—a small, simple Ferris wheel, a “Freak Museum,” and another tall attraction front painted with a larger-than-life girl in a short skirt with a giant cobra curled around her, its fangs bared and its forked tongue lashing her cheek. A real girl stood in front of it, also in a very short dress with a big snake wrapped around her waist and shoulders, though it was a boa constrictor instead of a giant cobra. “Tatiana the Snake Girl. I dated her a little. I was seventeen, she was twenty-three and Romanian. Exciting times.” He smiled wistfully and shook his head.

“How long were you with the carnival?” Victoria asked.

“A few years. I learned a lot. In the winter, we’d go down to Florida, and I’d look for side work. This fellow came to find me, said he’d heard my haunted house was popular. It was, too. I made decent scratch most nights. The key was to give them one really good scare inside so everyone passing by could hear them scream. Later in life, I’d play records and tapes of the girls screaming so I didn’t have to wait for a real one, but back then it was real or it was nothing.” He grew silent, staring at the pictures.

“Who came to find you?” Carter asked.

“Huh?” Schopfer looked up and blinked, as though he’d been lost in thought. “Oh, yes. It must have been back in ‘52 or ‘53. This man had bought up beachfront land along both sides of the Gulf Coast Highway, and he’d built some tourists cabins and a motel—just a little wooden thing with about a dozen rooms. He said he leased a few amusement rides during the summer, and was looking for some kind of attraction to make people slow down, maybe stop at his little resort.”

“Should I turn the page?” Victoria asked.

“Yes, next page. What’s that?” He leaned forward and pointed to a one-story motel with the words CONCH CITY RESORT painted on the side. A two-tone Plymouth with a rounded, curvy 1940s frame sat in the sand-dusted parking lot in front of it.

“Conch City?” Carter asked.

“It was just the name of the motel. There wasn’t a Conch City, as far as a real town goes, until 1961. He made up the name, then made the city later.” Schopfer laughed a little, then held a gnarled hand over his mouth while he coughed. “In those days, old Highway 98, the original Gulf Coast Highway, ran right along the beach. When Conch City sprang up into the panhandle’s biggest tourist trap, traffic got so thick they rerouted 98 north, leaving Beachview Drive to run wild down there along the Gulf. You can see it better here.”

He gestured to another, wider view of the motel and a couple of simple, single-story tourist cabins. The blacktop of the highway ran through the foreground while the ocean lapped against the sand in the background.

“I didn’t know all that,” Carter said. “I’ve lived in Conch City all my life. Who built the resort? Was it one of the Hanovers?”

“Teddy Hanover.” Schopfer tapped a picture of a balding, chubby man in his thirties wearing a tie and starched shirt, his pants rolled up to his calves. He stood in the surf, talking and making giant hand movements, while a twenty-year-old Artie Schopfer, already wearing thick glasses, stood beside him listening, his unkempt hair and tie blowing in the wind. Carter guessed that was from an age when everybody wore ties all the time, like in old movies where guys wore fedoras and suits everywhere, even if they were on Mars or the moon.

“That’s the father of the guy we met?” Victoria whispered. Carter nodded.

“He was an idea man, ahead of his time,” Schopfer said. “He bought all that empty land dirt-cheap. He knew he could catch tourists off the highway if he could just make them turn their heads—a born pitchman, really.”

Schopfer gestured, and Victoria turned the page. A smile spread wide across Schopfer’s face.

The faded black-and-white picture showed a black house with large white question marks painted on the front door and all the exterior walls. The roof was high and steep to serve as a billboard, with the words MYSTERY HOUSE painted in ghostly white letters.

“That looks pretty cool,” Carter said.

“Exactly the idea, young man,” Schopfer said. “Hanover imagined carloads of families pulling over to investigate the ‘mystery.’ He also had more practical projects underway—a restaurant and a gas station. He wanted to give people every reason in the world to stop. Once you’ve got the cows inside the barn, then you can start to milk ‘em. Hanover saw that highway as a river of money just waiting to be fished.”

“Did it work?” Victoria asked.

“I believe so. By the next year...where’s the placemat? Next page?”

Victoria turned to a page filled with a folded yellow slice of paper, brown and curled at the edges, decorated with little drawings.

“You can take that out, but be gentle,” he said.

She lifted the plastic sheet that held the paper in place, then gingerly unfolded the paper place mat. Several panels tracked the adventures of a cartoon family, with two smiley kids and a happy mom and dad. The family built a sand castle, the parents ate dinner together, the kids rode in a biplane, the parents slept in a bed. Each panel was captioned with an attractive feature of the resort: BEAUTIFUL BEACHES! RESTAURANT! RIDES AND GAMES! SOFT CLEAN BEDS!

The final panel showed a cartoon of the black house with white question marks, with the simple caption MYSTERY HOUSE.

Underneath the cartoons, in huge letters, it read: CONCH CITY BEACH RESORT – CHEAP RATES! followed by a phone number and address.

“Hanover paid restaurants up and down the highway to use these mats,” Schopfer told her. “So many people flooded the place, he had to double the size of the motel. Next page, I think, there’s some good pictures of it.”

Victoria carefully replaced the old piece of paper. The next page held a brochure for Conch City Resort from 1954. The photographs showed a large motel, kids on small amusement rides, girls swimming at the beach, and the Mystery House again.

“I think he would imagine the advertising he wanted, then built a place to match the advertising,” Schopfer said.

“What was in the Mystery House?” Carter asked.

“A scattering of things. Optical illusions, like a room built on a special slant so everything seemed tilted, water flowed uphill...the room where you looked like a giant if you stood on one side, and tiny if you stood on the other...we had a wax-museum room, not much there...a ‘ghost room’ with some old furniture, with little bottles and reeds in the eaves above it that would sometimes make sounds in the wind. A voodoo-juju kind of room. Not a lot of logic to it, but I think the tourists got their nickel’s worth.”

“So that’s when you moved to Conch City,” Victoria said.

“Oh, no. I was back on the road in the spring, but I had a new trick under my hat. I made these...” He gestured at the photo album.

Victoria turned the page to a flier topped with the words “IS YOUR TOURIST ATTRACTION HAUNTED ENOUGH?” followed by pictures of Schopfer’s carnival haunted house and the Mystery House. It had Schopfer’s name and a Tennessee post-office box address in one corner.

“Wherever we traveled, I’d watch for these little amusement parks and roadside tourist traps,” Schopfer said. “I’d find the owner and try to convince him he needed a scary walk-through, or that the one he had could be cheaply improved. I built little things at forgotten places—Chippewa Lake in Ohio, Wonder City in Indiana.” The scrapbook showed tourists lining up at similar small haunted-house attractions with names like SKELETON HOUSE and DEATH’S DOOR, which had a wide front door with a detailed painting of the Grim Reaper.

“Now, the owner of Dervish Brothers—there never were any real Dervish brothers, you understand—was a man named E.B. Jennings, a real penny-snagger who had a sour look for everyone. He told me to stop building these attractions for other people, said it was a conflict of interest. At the time I had an offer to build and run a haunted railway ride in Kansas City, so I left the carnival and did that for a year...” The next page of pictures showed a miniature train full of frightened teenage riders chugging through a graveyard toward a mine tunnel. “Am I boring you kids yet?”

“Not at all,” Victoria said. Her eyes had been drinking in the old pictures with obvious fascination.

“I didn’t care to stay in one place very long,” Schopfer said. “I wanted to keep tinkering and expanding, and the owners always wanted to keep costs down. I moved wherever there was work. No, go on to the next page...”

Victoria turned to a poster advertising a four-story cartoonish-medieval castle splashed with the words CASTLE TERROR across the front.

“There,” he said. “That was the first really big one, though not as big on the inside as it looks from the boardwalk. Castle Terror, Atlantic City. 1961, 1962. Keep turning...you’ll see a few things there, Christmas Town outside of Brainerd, Minnesota...I built an indoor ride with a little sleigh on tracks that took you through Santa’s toy workshop, the reindeer stables, some snowmen and ice-skating penguins. We made the world’s largest snowglobe there, too. Well, we never checked whether that was true, but we sure told everyone it was the largest.” One photograph showed him standing inside a giant snowglobe, adjusting the cozy cottage scene surrounded by glowing Christmas trees. “Christmas Town lasted until the early eighties before they tore it down to make a shopping mall. I was proud of that little ride, though, considering the budget.”

“I had no idea you’d made so many things,” Victoria said.

“Oh, yes. I was the Johnny Appleseed of loud, gaudy tourist traps.” He showed them more pages of rides and walk-through amusements—a wrecked pirate ship full of rope ladders, nets, and slides; an Aztec temple boat ride; more haunted houses with names like LOST MANSION and MURDER MOTEL. “Now here comes the big one,” he said.

Victoria turned the page. The first picture showed a structure of wooden pillars and cross-beams under construction, already several stories high. A sign in front read FUTURE SITE OF CONCH CITY COASTER!

“Between jobs, I used to get in the car and just drive back along my own trail,” Schopfer said. “I liked seeing people lined up at the attractions I’d built. It must have been about ‘66 or ‘67 when I went back to Conch City. Now the place had blown up.” He gestured to a picture of Beachview Drive cluttered with neon-lit motels.

“That’s starting to look like the town I know,” Carter said.

“By the late sixties, Teddy Hanover had leased out several parcels of his land along the highway. They built motels on the beach side. On the other side, you had a candy store, an ice cream parlor, a few restaurants, a little nightclub called the Palm Grove. He’d torn down the Mystery House. He had an idea to put up a roller coaster in its place, to go with the other amusement rides he leased each summer. That was the first time I went back to a town and found my creation demolished without a trace, but it wouldn’t be the last.

“Anyway, Hanover and I had some drinks at the Palm Grove and he told me all about it—we were both a good bit older by then, and I had years of experience under my belt. I pitched him on the idea of building a little attraction around the roller coaster entrance, just a few snack stands and games to grab more dollars from anyone who stopped to ride the coaster. He wanted a stage, too, for music, magicians, ventriloquists, or anyone else who didn’t charge much to perform.

“The cowboy shows were popular then—Gunsmoke and Petticoat Junction and the rest—so we decided to build an Old West town at the base of the roller coaster. By the time the summer of 1968 rolled around, we had the roller coaster, the Triple-Z Saloon, the Cowpoke Theater, and games like Shoot-Em-Up Puppets. We had the cluster of rented attractions set up, too. Hanover put up billboards all along Gulf Coast Highway.

“When you’re in this business, you dream of a patron like Teddy Hanover. Stars in his eyes, more interested in creating something new and ground-breaking than in making quick cash. That’s all most of ‘em ever cared about, the quick cash, but not him. Teddy and I just sparked off each other. We’d feed each other’s ideas and draw out elaborate plans on bar napkins. Those were good times.” Schopfer smiled a little, staring off into space. “Good days.”

He didn’t speak for a while, as if lost in reverie. Carter and Victoria shared a tense look—now they were getting to the heart of things.

“So that’s how Starland began,” Carter said, hoping to get him talking again.

“Oh, yes. We didn’t call it ‘Starland’ yet. That first summer raked in so much money, he couldn’t wait to expand. By the fall, we’d drawn up all kinds of crazy plans. He wanted bigger, permanent rides, a full-scale amusement park. He sold off land farther down the highway to raise capital, and he leased out his rickety old ‘Conch City Resort’ building to a company that demolished it right away and built a new two-story motel, which they painted the brightest shade of pink you ever saw.”

“The Fancy Flamingo Lodge?” Victoria asked.

“That’s the one. You know your history. By the next summer—the summer of ‘69, wasn’t it?—we opened with games, food, music, and beer in Fool’s Gold, plus a permanent Ferris wheel and the prettiest merry-go-round we could find. That wasn’t enough for Teddy Hanover. He leased out some kiddie attractions, like a big slide and pony rides.” The pictures showed the park crammed full of families, with long lines waiting everywhere.

“The traffic started to get bad that year, with people driving in from all over to see the new amusement park. There was no front-gate admission then, you paid for rides and games as you went, so it was just packed with people day and night. Hanover leased off more properties at higher prices. More motels went up along the beach side of the highway, and on the land side you had an ‘authentic’ Indian village, a snake exhibit, things like that cropping up.

“He raked in all kinds of cash and put it right back into the amusement park. By 1970, we had a real circus-style midway with penny arcades and carnival games. On the west side, you had Fools’ Gold, the roller coaster, the merry-go-round, the kiddie rides. East of the midway, you had a swinging ship where Pirate Island was going to be. I built the first, one-story version of Dark Mansion. You had the Spinning Rotor ride, the Tilt-A-Whirl, the Scrambler. Permanent kiddie rides, too, like When Pigs Fly.”

Victoria kept turning pages whenever he gave her a small nod, showing photographs of the evolving and expanding amusement park.

One of them showed Theodore Hanover, more rotund than ever, on a bandstand located where the wishing well would later be, at the dead center of the park, surrounded by a dense crowd of tourists, backed by a three-piece band. He spoke into a microphone while dabbing at his bulbous chin with a handkerchief and making a sweeping gesture with his other hand.

It was one of the first color photographs in the album, which made it clear that the businessman’s round-brimmed hat was white with red candy stripes. He also wore a white suit with matching red pinstripes, a red bow tie, and a red handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket.

Carter and Victoria looked at each other, startled, and Carter felt a chill along the back of his neck.

“That’s Theodore Hanover, right?” Victoria pointed at the picture and looked at Schopfer for confirmation.

“That’s him. The first day he wore that silly get-up. That would have been the Fourth of July, 1970. He had fireworks at the park, a country singer from Nashville playing the Fool’s Gold stage—Townes Van Zandt, I think.”

“And Mr. Hanover kept dressing like that?” Victoria asked, looking at Carter.

“He wore the broad-brimmed hats long after they went out of fashion, probably because he was bald as an egg up there.”

“His son wears a toupee,” Carter said.

“Is that what the little snot’s calling that dead possum on his scalp?” Schopfer asked.

“I’m really interested in this outfit he’s wearing.” Victoria tapped the picture.

“He brought it out on special occasions—opening day in the spring, Memorial Day, the Fourth...He had a black and orange version for ‘Scareland’ in October, when we made all of Starland haunted for a a few weeks, just before closing down for the year. By that time, he’d lost interest in the real estate business and the motel business and considered himself a showman. He focused all his time and money on the park.”

“Did anyone else ever wear that outfit?” Carter asked.

“I don’t think anyone else ever dared to dress that way, no,” Schopfer said. “Possibly some of the game operators down on the midway.”

They flipped through pages of color pictures showing rides and attractions under construction—the Funtime Firehouse, the Storybook Maze, the big alien-brained scientist, the log ride.

“His philosophy was to add one or two big attractions every year,” Schopfer told them. “After Disney World opened in 1971, Hanover figured he could build something just as big. We went down and rode Space Mountain in 1975, and that’s when he started talking about building ‘the big one,’ a great big monster of a ride folks could never forget, one they’d just have to write home about.”

“Inferno Mountain?” Carter asked.

“That’s the one,” Schopfer said. “He wanted his own enclosed dark-ride coaster, which was about the most expensive thing he could have decided to build. He’d just sunk a bundle into Jungle Land and the bumper boats, but he was determined to catch up with Disney World. ‘If Disney’s taking them way up, then I’ll take ‘em way down,’ he said. He wanted to do an underground, journey-to-the-center-of-the-earth roller coaster, with mines and caves and lava. I don’t want to tell you what that would have cost, but it was out of his price range. He first settled for a roller-coaster-inside-a-volcano idea, but then he wanted more. He wanted the volcano to be the doorway to Hell itself.”

Victoria turned the page to see a picture of Hanover and Schopfer—both with heavy sideburns now—studying a scale model of the ride on a table. Half the volcano was sliced away to reveal a tangle of curving, twisting tracks inside. Both the men frowned as they looked it over.

“We had nothing but trouble with Inferno Mountain,” Schopfer said. “Design problems, engineering problems, and later some construction injuries. Unluckiest ride I’ve ever built. We broke ground the day after Halloween in 1975, the instant the park closed for the year, but it wasn’t ready when we opened in 1976. We kept hammering away at it all summer. One little thing after another went wrong, like we had a gremlin infestation. The ride still wasn’t ready for opening day in ‘77. The thing was a black hole of time and money, and about this time I felt I was no longer welcome in the Hanover household.”

“Why not?” Victoria asked.

“His wife thought I was bankrupting them,” Schopfer said. “His children—adults by then—they agreed with her. Lots of people got rich off tourism in Conch City in those days, but the Hanover family felt he was blowing all their money on the amusement park. They blamed me for encouraging him.

“About then they decided to re-route the Gulf Coast Highway away from the beach, because it was bumper-to-bumper traffic through Conch City from spring break to Labor Day. Hanover loved it—that was his fishing stream, stocked so heavily the fish could barely swim. They poured into the attractions and motels along the strip, and most of that was located on land he owned.

“So he panicked and bought up all the land between Starland and Northcross Road, which he figured would be expanded and turned into the new U.S. highway. The road along the beach would just become Beachview Drive, a horseshoe spur off the new highway route, and after that a million tourists would blow right pass Conch City beach every summer. If the tourists happened to turn their heads, they might notice the high rides of Starland, but that was about all. Now most of the fish were going to cruise right past his net without even tapping their brakes.

“It turns out, though, that the land values had shot way up since he first bought his land in the late forties, early fifties, and interest rates were high. He had to borrow against his existing beachfront parcels to buy hundreds of acres of scrub brush. I didn’t know all this at the time, but he took on a crushing load of debt, and his family blamed me for it.

“Anyway, we managed to open Inferno Mountain in October 1977, just in time for the ‘Scareland’ fun. We’d renovated and expanded the Dark Mansion, with a souvenir shop and ‘Haunted Alley’ games and food to help recoup some of the cost. It was a fantastic opening, and everybody seemed to love the ride. It won some awards, you know.”

“We read about that,” Victoria said. “Congratulations.”

“Long time ago now. We had big plans for that land. First idea was to expand Space City northward, with a shiny new high-speed steel coaster. We talked about all kinds of things, but then Teddy had his first heart attack early in 1979.

“After that, his family took over, and they opposed any new expansion, any new attractions. They were ready to sit back and let the money come in for once, and their focus was on getting rid of that new land and the debt that came with it.”

“That left me without a job, because we already had full-time maintenance people. My job was always design and development, and suddenly there was nothing to design and develop except the advertising. I suppose I stayed on until sometime in 1981, but the family pretty well pressured me out of town. And that was that. I never worked there again, and the park remained forever frozen in 1979 until the day it died.”

“I was there,” Carter said.

“Were you? It must have been awful.”

“It was. It ruined everything, too. The whole town.”

“I know.” Schopfer limped through the last few pages of his scrapbook, showing them a “Gorilla Golf” course in Biloxi, Mississippi and a glow-in-the-dark “Creature Feature” bowling alley in Guerneville, California, with each lane themed after Dracula, the Mummy, or another classic horror monster.

“Work slowed down by the nineties,” Schopfer said, frowning now, the wrinkles on his eighty-year-old face standing out in sharp relief. “People left the highways for the interstates, and they took the interstates straight to Orlando, walled in the whole way so they can’t even see what else lies along the road.”

The room grew quiet for a minute. Carter felt like he’d just gone on a ride through a very obscure nook of history.

“Does that answer your questions?” Schopfer asked. “I believe I may have rambled a bit.”

“When you were building Starland, did anything unusual happen?” Victoria asked. “You said Inferno Park was a cursed ride.”

“Cursed construction,” he said. “Never had one problem with it after opening day. The construction crew thought it was cursed, but later on, the maintenance crew thought it was eerie how little work it needed.”

“Did anything else strange ever happen at Inferno Mountain?” Victoria asked, which instantly stirred bad memories for Carter.

“What are you trying to ask me here, young lady?”

“Anything supernatural,” Carter said. “Did anything supernatural ever happen?”

Schopfer’s sunken, pale eyes looked at him for a long moment, then closed behind his wrinkled lids. He took a deep breath, his mouth trembling.

“You know,” he said, “When I would build these things, I could start to imagine all the people that would pass through them, all the visitors over the years—millions and millions of them, with the amusement park. Each one of them would be stepping out of their regular lives, out to have a little fun, and maybe each one brings a little bit of extra happiness back home with them. Multiply that by millions, and you’ve got waves of light flowing out from Starland into the world all season long. Like a big lighthouse, or a radio tower, broadcasting these waves of happy feelings.

“People visited these amusements with family and friends, so it’s a place for creating happy memories between people, a little connection between them. Up Route 319, north of Tallahassee, I built a giant catfish in front of a place called Uncle Fred’s Seafood Shack. It was twenty feet from whiskers to tail, and its eye rolled back and forth, and in the early days it waved a fin at oncoming traffic. You couldn’t miss it if you were heading into Tallahassee from the northeast.

“I sat out there one day and watched families pull off the highway for a quick picture with that big ridiculous fish. It must have been ten or fifteen families I saw do it in a single day. Just a goofy memory, a happy shared moment among them. That’s what I was creating, ultimately, whether it was a haunted house or a roller coaster. That moment.” His eyes opened, looking at Carter. “Is that supernatural enough for you?”

“I wish it was,” Carter said. He looked at Victoria with a question in his eyes, and she nodded.

Carter told the man about their experiences at the park—the dead boys the first time, the ghosts the second, the man in the striped hat, and the twelve kids still missing. Victoria hopped in several times to add details.

Schopfer listened without asking questions, but he rubbed his eyes and sighed frequently while they spoke.

“We’re trying to find out who he is and what he’s doing in the park,” Victoria said. “And how to stop him from taking more people.”

Schopfer gazed at the ceiling for a minute. The room, and the facility around it, seemed dim and silent.

“There’s something else out there,” he finally said, his voice thin and weak now. “I could feel it all those years, following me like a wolf in the night. It kept me restless. It followed behind me, destroying all I created. Everything I showed you in my scrapbook is gone. There’s nothing left of what I built, as far as I know. It’s all gone now.

“The man in the striped hat isn’t me, and it isn’t Teddy Hanover, even if he did copy the silly pinstriped outfit,” Schopfer said. “I know who he is. First time I saw him, he was a peddler selling medicines and potions out the back of his truck. That was nineteen...” Schopfer’s brow knitted as he concentrated. “Nineteen-fifty. Had to be. Just before I got involved with Tatiana the Snake Girl. Next time I saw him was that day of the sinkhole—was that three years ago?”

“Five years,” Carter said.

“Five years ago. And I tell you, he looked just the same, like he never aged. Same old dead gray eyes, sand-colored hair, exact same face. Like he was frozen in time. He came into my room, and he took my hands away from me.” Schopfer held up his twisted, shaking fingers. “He said I would never create again, and I would live to see the destruction of all I’d created. Then I heard about Starland, and the sinkhole, and all those deaths, and I knew it was him.”

“Who is he?” Victoria whispered.

“He doesn’t like what I just told you about. The lighthouse, the radio tower, the broadcasting of light, the forging of connections and bonds between people. He wants each one of us to feel isolated, hopeless, cold, and dead inside. Because that’s what he feels, all the time.”

“Who?” Carter asked. He also felt the need to whisper, as Victoria had.

“The devil,” Schopfer whispered. “He is the devil.”

The room was silent again while Carter and Victoria looked at each other.

“In what way?” Victoria asked.

Schopfer laughed until he coughed again. “In every way, young lady. The one true devil.”

“And...he has nothing better to do than hang around an old amusement park?” Carter asked, half-certain Schopfer was joking with them, just as when he’d pretended there was ghost behind the curtain and his roommate had played along.

“He takes an interest in each of us, but particularly the young—so much innocence to be corrupted, so much potential waiting to be wasted and lost. Those are the most precious souls to him, I think,” Schopfer said.

“Did he...say he was the devil?” Victoria asked.

“He didn’t have to say it. The moment I watched my hands shrivel up like dead flowers, I knew. When I heard about the sinkhole at Starland, and saw those pictures on the news, it only made me more sure of it.”

“Then what’s he doing with Starland now?” Carter asked.

“I can’t tell you what he’s doing or why,” Schopfer said. “I can only tell you who he is. He’s the devil, and he’s taken my best work and turned it into something monstrous.” The old man gave a very thin smile. “He can create nothing of his own, you know. That’s why he wears Teddy Hanover’s old suit. He can only infest and inhabit what others have made. I’ve had time to study and think.” His warped fingers touched the side of his head.

Carter and Victoria shared another quiet, uncertain look.

“Then what do we do?” Carter asked.

“The only safe thing is for you to stay out of the park,” Schopfer said. “Whatever he’s plotting, you don’t want to be in the middle of it.”

“It’s too late for that. We’re already involved,” Victoria said. “People keep disappearing into the park, and we’re the only ones who understand what’s happening.”

“Not that we really understand it yet,” Carter added. “We have to figure out how to stop him.”

“How to stop him?” Schopfer shook his head. “He is ancient evil, young man. He’s as old as sin. I don’t believe he can be defeated.”

“We can’t just let him lure people to their deaths,” Carter said. “I’ve seen enough people die in that park already. You’re telling us to give up.”

“I’m only telling you it’s hopeless,” Schopfer said. “Whether you give up or not is up to you.”

“So you don’t have any idea what we could do,” Victoria said.

Schopfer looked between them, then sighed.

“You can’t defeat him, and you certainly can’t kill him,” Schopfer said. “But you can beat him for a round or two.”

“How?” Carter asked.

“I can’t say. I don’t know what game he’s playing, so I don’t know what the rules are, but you can be certain that there are rules binding him. If there weren’t, he would be all-powerful and wouldn’t need to resort to trickery.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us about him?” Victoria asked.

“Probably not much you don’t already know, or would guess,” Schopfer said. “He trades in souls. The souls of the damned are already his, so he must focus his time on the souls of the innocent. Or the semi-innocent, at the very least, since few of us are truly innocent. Beware of bargains, deals, and wishes. He’s known to use these to trap your soul.”

“He had the chance to take us,” Carter said. “Or kill us, at least. Why would he let us go like he did?”

“Perhaps you’re already damned and not worth the trouble.” Schopfer grinned, a little maliciously. “Or, for some reason, he does not want you for his ghostly menagerie.”

“Why wouldn’t he want us?” Victoria asked.

“I can’t say, young lady, but if you can figure that one out, it might just be the key to discovering the rules of the game.” He coughed and gestured at the scrapbook. “Look in the back pocket.”

Victoria turned the last page. The inside of the hard leather cover had a pocket stuffed with old envelopes. Schopfer rapped his gnarled hand on one of them.

“That’s the one,” he whispered.

Victoria slid it out with a wondering look at Carter. It was a little manila envelope, smaller than an index card, sealed with a string looped around a cardboard button. She opened it slowly and turned it upside down.

A long, thin copper key tumbled out and landed in her hand. It had a single sculpted tooth at the one end, and the other end was circular, cut and drilled to resemble a skull.

“That’s a skeleton key,” Schopfer said. “I made it myself. It should open almost any door in the park, and certainly any attraction I built. If you insist on returning to the park, that may help you in some way.”

“Thank you so much,” Victoria said, staring at it. “We can mail it back when we’re done.”

“Or don’t bother,” Schopfer told her. “I haven’t needed it in many years, and I don’t intend to return to Starland again in my life. I may never leave this building again. I’m not sure the key will help you at all, but it can’t hurt. If he wants you to stay out of the park, then there may be something you can do in there to change the course of things. The only other advice I can offer is this: claim your winnings early and get out as soon as you can, because you’re playing in the devil’s house, and the house always wins in the long run.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Carter blinked as they emerged into the afternoon sunlight outside the nursing home. His ears felt worn down from listening so much, but he now understood the history of his town and the amusement park far better than he ever had. The knowledge made him feel slightly better armed, but against an enemy that seemed impossible to beat.

“What do you think?” Victoria asked. She opened her hand to look at the key. “Is he out of his mind?”

“He didn’t seem that way to me.”

“Then we’re up against the devil? I didn’t even believe in the devil this morning, and now he’s living in our town, refurbishing the old amusement park? That seems more than crazy to me.”

“Everything’s been crazy since we first stepped into Starland,” Carter said. “This is kind of the first thing that makes any sense. At least it’s an explanation.”

“I don’t know.”

“I do know that I’m ready for lunch now. I’m so hungry. Let’s find the largest cheeseburgers in town.”

Victoria watched for restaurants along the side of the road and picked one based entirely on the name—the Mermaid Cafe, a low shack of a building with badly peeling teal paint. On the way inside, she made him stand in front of the chipped seashell water fountain by the door, which was about half his height. The fountain was water-stained and dusty, as if it had fallen into disrepair years earlier.

“I wouldn’t eat any actual fish or seafood here,” Carter whispered as they approached the front door.

“Come on, let’s live dangerously.” She led the way into the dingy old restaurant. It was more than half empty, and most of its customers were small clusters of elderly people talking in hushed voices among themselves. A very faded under-the-sea mural ran the length of one wall, and Carter could imagine the place when it was vibrant and new, packed with tourists on their way to and from the once-famous attractions at Silver Springs Park.

The place did offer enormous cheeseburgers, as Carter had hoped. Victoria picked the grilled chicken sandwich on toasted wheat.

“Grilled chicken? Is that how you live dangerously?” Carter asked.

“You realize your cheeseburger’s going to be floating in a giant puddle of grease, right?” she asked.

“I hope so. Then I can dip my fries in it.”

When the food arrived, they ate hungrily for a minute, both of them too busy to talk. The elderly restaurant crowd was quiet, muttering among themselves. Forks and spoons clanged on plates. Dust motes floated in the deep yellow afternoon light.

“So, the devil?” Victoria finally said. “Like the one who rules Hell and takes all the souls of evil people? That guy.”

“I don’t know if I believe it, but I think Schopfer does. I don’t think he was making it up or trying to trick us.”

“You bought into his ‘there’s a ghost behind that curtain’ trick for a second, too,” Victoria said.

“Yeah...do you have any other explanation for what we saw, though?”

“I don’t know. Are you religious?” she asked. “Do you believe in that stuff?”

“Not really,” Carter said. Aside from a couple of early-childhood visits to his grandfather’s dark, sweaty, Hell-obsessed rural church, he didn’t have much experience or contact with religion. “Do you believe in it?”

“I’ve never seen a reason to,” Victoria said. “Most of what I know comes from movies, but...let’s say it’s true, just theoretically. Why would the devil want to kill a bunch of kids? He can’t keep their souls, right?”

“Unless they’re evil little kids,” Carter said.

“But most of them aren’t. He can’t keep their souls, but Emily said a ‘dark place’ is somewhere souls are trapped. So maybe he keeps them there and turns them evil after death. Then they become his.”

“It’s a thought, but I still don’t see why the devil doesn’t seem to want my soul.”

The restaurant was very quiet, and Carter noticed the other patrons—an elderly couple and a family with two kids—staring at them. Even the waitress gave them a funny look. He considered what they’d been talking about.

“Maybe we should get out of here,” Carter whispered.

They hurried to pay and escaped back onto the highway.

When they reached his apartment complex, they sat in the car for a moment, not talking.

“I thought about going to the beach when we got home, but I’m not sure I want to be out there in the dark, with the park only a mile away,” she said.

“That might be why nobody in town goes to the beach. I have a lot of homework to do, anyway...” He looked up at the yellow lighted square of his living room. “I’ve always kept my mind on the future, you know, just waiting to go off to school so my real life could finally begin. Now it feels like I’ll never escape the past. I just want to leave town and never look back.”

“Am I part of the past you want to escape?” she asked.

“No. You’re from outside this place. You’re the first sign that the future might get better.”

She smiled at him, looking him in the eyes. On an impulse, he leaned over and kissed her gently on the lips. She kissed him back, just a little.

He drew back and they looked at each other. She didn’t grab him for more, but neither did she freak out or get mad at him. She looked as though he’d given her a complex piece of information, and she needed time to think about it.

“Okay,” she finally said. “Call me if you want to talk more.”

“Okay.”

He climbed out of the car and started up the steps to his apartment. When he glanced back, she was smiling at him, and then she pulled away.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Teddy Hanover Junior stood at the wet bar in the corner of his living room and poured himself a tall glass of Scotch. He deserved it, after the week he’d had with the cops and the newspapers, all of it involving that big white elephant hung around his neck, the old amusement park. It was the largest of his family’s many worthless properties along the beachfront.

“The sinkhole,” he muttered aloud, for perhaps the millionth time in his life. “The goddamned sinkhole.”

He splashed a negligible amount of soda on top of his Scotch before walking to the couch. The couch was a long, sleek, black modernist piece, which could seat eight people in front of the enormous projection screen television. He sat down, adjusted his bathrobe, and took a long, bracing sip of whiskey.

His father hadn’t been much of a drinker, but had stocked the cellar with wines and liquors for his frequent large parties. Teddy had killed the parties and claimed the booze for himself.

He lived alone. He was sixty-three years old, and he’d left his first wife fifteen years earlier, for his incredibly gorgeous, though incompetent, former receptionist. He now owed alimony to both of them, while his real estate business had only shrunk, and the family construction company had essentially become a dormant storage yard.

He’d learned to enjoy being alone, just as he’d learned to hire an unattractive but experienced receptionist who didn’t botch up deals and meetings through relentless stupidity.

Teddy lifted his remote and played the new DVD. It had arrived by UPS, in a package of similar DVDs whose arrival had marked the high point of his week.

Onscreen, a young woman in a cheerleader outfit stood outside a gray charter bus, looking antsy. Soon the door would open, she would board the steps—looking hesitant and more than a little scared, he hoped—and then she would bang the entire college football team. Hanover liked that particular theme, one girl passed around by a group of guys. It reminded him of a certain wild night or two from his fraternity days, decades earlier.

While the opening credits were still rolling, a shadow passed across the glass wall of the living room. He stood up, considered whether to grab his revolver, and settled for approaching the glass to get a closer look.

The south wall of the living room was inset with floor-to-ceiling windows and two pairs of glass double doors that could be opened to catch the ocean breeze. Outside, a cobblestone terrace overlooked the back lawn, which stretched away toward the palm trees bordering the beach. Little spotlights and sconces glowed here and there.

When his father had died, the back yard had been full of playground equipment and little pedal-cars for visiting grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Teddy had removed all of it, taken the spiral slide off the swimming pool, and had the back yard re-landscaped to look more upscale and elegant.

The interior of the house had been even worse, painted bright circus colors and cluttered with cuckoo clocks, giant stuffed animals, pinball and gumball machines, and other absurd bric-a-brac. Teddy had sold off what he could, stored the remainder of the tacky junk in the basement, and had the house painted and decorated in sane, neutral tones.

Teddy couldn’t see anybody outside. He unlocked the doors and opened one of them.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

He heard nothing in response, not even the thousands of insects that should have been buzzing on such a warm night. The only sound was the slow, distant lapping of water against sand.

Teddy locked the door and hiked up the back stairs to grab the revolver from his bedroom. The gun was fully loaded. He liked to keep it that way, ready to fire at the drop of a hat. Sometimes Teddy fantasized about catching some street thug breaking into his house and blowing his brains out.

He returned downstairs. The movie played on the six-foot screen, and things were really happening now, the girl stripping on the bus while the football players cheered her on.

The movie didn’t interest him at the moment, though. He stood in place, gun in hand, and stared at what had appeared on his coffee table.

“Is someone in here? I have a gun. I called the police already,” he added, in a moment of last-second inspiration.

The papers on the table rattled slightly, invisibly nudged by the air conditioning.

He walked closer and looked them over.

The papers were yellowed, with permanent creases where they’d been folded and filed away for years. Someone had dug them out of his father’s old office cabinet.

They showed harebrained plans for the park, cooked up by Teddy’s naive father and the madman Artie Schopfer. In the largest drawing, the land north of the park included new roller coasters, a botanical garden next to Tyke Town, and rides and shops themed around the seven wonders of the ancient world.

If Teddy’s father hadn’t suffered his heart attack in 1979, he would have run the family into bankruptcy trying to fund all of Artie Schopfer’s crazy ideas. Even with his health problems, his father had taken the opening of Epcot Center in 1982 as a personal challenge. He’d kept talking about expanding his park and making Starland into the panhandle’s answer to the Orlando resorts.

Teddy’s mother and older sister, as well as Teddy himself, opposed the idea, while Teddy’s two younger sisters supported their father’s craziness. The family remained in gridlock for many years, neither selling the undeveloped land north of the park as Teddy and his mother wanted, nor expanding the park as Teddy’s father had wanted. Condominium developers offered millions of dollars for their land along Beachview Drive, but Teddy’s father adamantly refused to sell.

“Who’s here? Show yourself?” Teddy turned slowly, looking around the spacious room, and jumped when he saw the man standing just outside the glass door, staring at him.

The man wore a white seersucker suit and a matching broad-brimmed hat, with a red tie and a matching red handkerchief in his jacket pocket. His eyes were a blank shade of gray, his features bland and forgettable, but Teddy recognized him instantly. He owed the man a large debt that he was unable to pay. He’d been dreading the man’s return for a long time.

The man tapped on the door with one finger, as if he’d been waiting for Teddy to look at him before he knocked.

Teddy lowered his gun, unlocked the door, and let him inside.

“I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again,” Teddy told him. “It’s been years.”

“You may not have seen me, but I’ve seen you often,” the man replied.

Teddy didn’t know how to respond to that. “Have a seat,” he offered, returning to the couch.

“An interesting cinema selection.” The man didn’t sit, but removed his hat and looked at the projection screen. The movie was paused on a wide shot of the girl as the football players tore away her cheerleader uniform. “It was nominated for an Academy Award, wasn’t it?”

“Ha ha.” Teddy turned off the projector. “You want a drink?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? I have some thirty-year-old Scotch—”

“I am not interested.” The man stood over him, looking down with cold, unreadable eyes. “You owe me payment.”

“Yeah.” Teddy scratched his bald head nervously, wishing he hadn’t removed his toupee for the night. He felt weak and exposed without it. “I was supposed to inherit millions of dollars in land, you know, but the sinkhole turned it into a million tons of worthless sand. Nobody wants to buy anything on that strip, on either side of the road. No insurance company in its right mind will underwrite any construction within screaming distance of that giant hole, not until somebody can prove there won’t be any more opening up.”

“This does not clear your debt to me. I fulfilled my end of the bargain.”

“Yeah.” Teddy looked down at his gray carpet.

“Poor little Teddy,” the man said, his voice a flat monotone as always. “Failed as a businessman, failed as a husband, failed as a father. Failed as a son, too, I’m sure we can both agree. You spent your life expecting to inherit Daddy’s fortune, just waiting for the fat old fool to drop dead.”

“Don’t call him that,” Teddy said quietly, still not looking up at the man.

“There is no point in acting protective of him,” the man said. “You and I both know just how absurd such a stance is, coming from you. Waiting and waiting...meanwhile, dear old Dad is following doctor’s orders, eating his vegetables, swimming daily. By the looks of it, he might live to be a hundred. And you didn’t want to wait that long, did you? Not at your age. You were already in your fifties, already bored with your second wife, unaware she was sleeping with that empty-headed personal trainer from the gym.”

“How do you know all this?” Teddy looked up at him, but quickly looked away from his steady, relentless gaze.

“They say the devil resides within each person, watching and whispering.”

“Do they?” Teddy was beyond uncomfortable with the hit man in his house. He wished the guy would stop dancing around spouting nonsense and just say what he wanted.

“I research my clients carefully. It pays to do so in my line of work. Now, regarding our bargain. You got what you wanted—your father dead in a manner that would be declared natural causes.”

“A lot of good it did me,” Teddy said. “The sinkhole opened a week later.”

“Draining all the value out of your inheritance, poor boy,” the man said. “Leaving you with nothing but guilt for your trouble. Your father put his heart into that silly amusement park, and you never even had the chance to destroy his life’s work after his death. That was done for you.”

Teddy didn’t say anything. He drank, thinking of his father.

“Killing your own father when he is already eighty-seven years old requires an extraordinary degree of greed, impatience, and callousness,” the man said. “I’ve always admired that about you, Teddy.”

“We barely know each other,” Teddy replied.

“I think I know you very well. I know, for instance, that you have not yet paid for my work. You agreed to sign over any one of the properties you inherited upon his death. My choice.”

“Hell, they’re all worthless now. Take your pick.”

“I intend to do exactly that.” The man suddenly held a long manilla legal envelope. Teddy had no idea where it had come from, but it must have been hidden under the man’s coat.

The man opened the envelope and set a packet of papers on the coffee table in front of Teddy, along with a pen.

Teddy flipped through them, curious which useless beach parcel the man wanted. As he read, he turned numb.

“This can’t be right,” Teddy says. “It says you want this house. This is my personal residence.”

“And it is one of the properties you inherited upon your father’s death. As we agreed.”

“But...” Teddy rubbed his head, feeling panicky. “This is where I live. I grew up in the house. It’s our family home. I thought you wanted some of the beachfront...”

“As you’ve said, the beach properties are now useless.”

“We still have a couple of other small properties you might consider.” Teddy’s brain was spinning as he tried to figure out an alternative.

“I do not wish to consider other options. This home still has value. Therefore, I would like to take it from you.”

“You can’t take this house. It’s our family home. My parents lived and died here, my sisters and I grew up here. They would kill me if I lost the house.”

“Our agreement was for any one of your properties, my choice,” the man said. “Obviously, the contract cannot be enforced in court, so I must enforce it myself. If you do not sign the agreement, I will be forced to kill you. I wouldn’t mind, but I’d prefer not to collect you just yet. I’d much rather see you in live in the world, spreading your misery to others for years to come.”

Teddy reached for the pen, but hesitated. He imagined how his family would react.

“I could make it look like natural causes,” the man said. “You know this already. Nobody would find it difficult to believe that a sad little fat man died of a heart attack while watching pornography.” He snapped his fingers, and the movie began to play behind him, the girl kneeling in front of three football players at once.

“How did you do that?” Teddy asked. His remote control lay untouched on the coffee table.

“Sign the papers, Teddy.” The man tapped a blank line marked with a large red “X.”

Teddy picked up the pen.

“It was my father’s own fault,” Teddy said. “He made enemies of everybody in the local business and political community because he refused to move on. Simple redevelopment would have resolved it, but he kept leasing out those parcels to the same rundown motels and old tourist traps, just because he considered the owners his friends. His stubborn insistence on keeping the west beach stuck in the nineteen-seventies ruined us—ruined me, too, because nobody wanted to do business with our family. Property values all over town would have skyrocketed if he’d only changed with the times.”

“There is no need to justify yourself to me,” the man said. “Your father became an obstacle to your goals, so you had me remove him. Perfectly understandable.”

“I wish I hadn’t done it,” Teddy whispered. “I miss him.”

“Don’t unburden your soul to me. Leave it burdened. I like souls dark and heavy. They sink right down. Now sign the paperwork, Teddy, or I will rip the soul directly from your body and devour it.”

Teddy flinched. He slowly signed his name. The instant he was done, the man snatched up the papers, returned them to the envelope, and tucked the envelope under his arm. “I’ll expect you and your belongings out of this house by the end of the week. Is there anything else I can do for you, Teddy? Anyone else you’d like to see die? One of your sisters could contract a mysterious terminal illness, if you like.”

“I don’t want anything else from you,” Teddy said. “You’ve taken everything from me.”

“Yes, it’s been a profitable transaction for me. I’ve enjoyed it.” The man turned away and walked toward the glass door, the paperwork tucked under his arm.

Teddy’s fear turned to anger. Five years ago, the man had talked him into the arrangement, killing Teddy’s father in exchange for one parcel of land. Teddy’s inheritance had turned out to be all but worthless.

Teddy lifted the revolver from the couch beside him, aimed at the man’s back, and fired.

He must have missed, because no bullet hole appeared in the back of the man’s white jacket, although one of the windows in front of him shattered.

The man turned around, his face as blank as ever as he looked Teddy over.

Teddy, realizing the man would certainly kill him now if he had the chance, shot again and again, emptying the remaining five bullets from the gun.

Though the man stood only a few feet away, not one bullet seemed to hit him. Impossibly, the panes of glass directly behind him shattered, as if the bullets passed directly through him. He did not even blink when Teddy shot at him. His face remained blank and perfectly calm while slivers of glass tumbled to the floor behind him.

When Teddy was out of bullets, he just stared at the man, the empty revolver shaking in his hand.

“What the hell?” Teddy whispered.

“Feel free to shoot up the house all you like,” the man told him. “I won’t be selling it or using it in any fashion. I intend to let it rot in neglect, so that you and your family can visit your old home and watch it deteriorate year by year. It will provide everyone a moment to reflect on you and the multitude of ways you have failed yourself and your family, Teddy. Have a pleasant evening.”

The man stepped through the shattered pane of the door. He walked away into the night, never looking back.

“God damn it,” Teddy said. He looked at the revolver trembling in his hand, half-wishing there was one bullet left inside so he could put it through his own head.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Carter dreamed again that he was at the park at night. It was all ruins again, and a heavy rain pounded down on him. He could hear Tricia inside Inferno Mountain, screaming for him, but he couldn’t find a way inside. A red-hot iron fence, twenty feet high and topped with pitchforks, encircled the entire ride.

When he awoke in his dark room, he thought he saw a dark shadow leaning over his bed, studying him, its broad-brimmed hat outlined against the pale parking lot lights outside his window. Carter had enough time to gasp before it disappeared.

He looked around his room and couldn’t see anyone there, but the shadows were heavy. He reached out one shaking hand and clicked on his lamp. It was three-thirty in the morning. The phone lay beside the lamp, and there was a new text message for him.

This is getting too scary, Victoria had texted him. Maybe we should just stay out of it. What can we do, anyway?

Carter nodded as he read it, still shaking with fear from the bad dream and the dark apparition in his room. Schopfer claimed they were facing the devil, which had sounded a little absurd in daylight but now, deep in the night, seemed entirely believable. Whether it was the devil or not wasn’t so important—they were clearly up against something powerful and supernatural.

Maybe you’re right, he texted back. In the back of his mind, he hoped the carnival-barker-devil would somehow notice this and not return to his room.

She didn’t text back, and the last thing he wanted to do was lie down and his close his eyes again, so he walked out to the living room and turned on the television. He kept the volume low, leaving it just loud enough so he could hear some normal human voices. An infomercial attempted to sell him a product called the Super-Soak Sponge, which could allegedly clean anything.

He stayed awake for the rest of the night. Victoria texted him about mid-morning: Are you awake yet?

Still awake, he replied. How are you feeling?

Freaked out. What are you doing today?

Nothing. People at my apartments grill, drink beer, shoot fireworks. Happy Labor Day!

Can I come? Being around a lot of people sounds good right now.

Okay, but it’s pretty lame. Carter didn’t like the idea of giving her a good look at where he lived, but he didn’t want to turn her away.

Lame sounds good, too. Give me boring and lame PLEASE.

By noon, they sat in folding lawn chairs in the second-floor breezeway. This area was essentially a private balcony for Carter and his dad’s apartment, because the apartment across the breezeway was unoccupied and there was no third floor above them.

Below, people were already at the big black grills spaced through the parking lot. They sat on the picnic tables, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, setting off premature fireworks, and filling the air with the aroma of hot dogs, hamburgers, pork, and brisket. Willie Nelson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and fast Mexican pop poured from competing sound systems around the apartment complex.

“This is good,” Victoria said, watching the growing Labor Day festivities through the aluminum railing. “This feels sane.”

“Do you really think we can just walk away from the park, though?” he asked. “After everything we saw? It’s going to keep drawing people in, and nobody can stop it. Nobody but us understands what’s happening in there.”

“We still barely understand it ourselves.”

“I once had a crush on this girl,” Carter said, and Victoria turned to look at him. “I was twelve. We were both twelve. I mainly just talked to her at school, but one day during the summer, I...happened to run into her at Starland. And we hung out that day, and I felt like we could really be good friends. I was in love with her, you know, as much as a little kid can really feel that way.

“Then she wanted to ride Inferno Mountain, but I was scared of that ride. I already had nightmares about it. I tried to get on it to impress her, but I chickened out at the last minute, and she rode it by herself.”

“What was her name?”

“Tricia. She was great, she was different. I don’t know. I watched the devil swallow her up. The sinkhole opened while she was inside the mountain. It hit the park like an earthquake and shook the foundations of everything. So much of the ground just sank away beneath the pavement. Inferno Mountain moved, too. By the time the train came out of the exit gate, she was dead.”

“Oh, my God.” Victoria touched his hand.

“Something must have broken loose in there, because her head was completely gone, and the rest of her was covered in blood.”

“I can’t imagine seeing that. How old were you?”

“Twelve. So I’ve had nightmares about it ever since.”

“I’m sure you would.”

“I was thinking about it while I watched the Super-Soak Sponge Shirt demonstration this morning—”

“The what?”

“An infomercial. It’s for people who spill their drinks a lot, you know, this shirt just soaks it right up. Or if you’re a messy eater, it soaks up ketchup, and some of the thinner mustards and salad dressings, too.”

“What are you talking about?” Victoria asked.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I watched the whole infomercial, it was kind of gross...anyway, I was thinking, since the souls of all those kids are trapped in the park, then she must still be there, too. And what if these dreams aren’t just bad memories? What if she’s trying to reach out to me?”

They sat quietly for a minute. Below, somebody lit a string of Black Cats, and a group of voices gave a drunken cheer as the firecrackers burst like series of gunshots.

“It’s not the craziest idea, when you put it with all the other crazy things,” Victoria finally said.

“What if she needs me to free her? There must be something I can do, right? Or why would she keep contacting me?”

“If she is contacting you at all. And remember, all the ghosts we saw acted like they were obeying him. So even if it is the ghost of your girlfriend, and not just your own brain giving you nightmares, she could be trying to lure you back to the park for him.”

“But he threw us out when he could have had us,” Carter said. “If there’s something I can do to help her, and all the others trapped in the park, that explains why she’s contacting me, and why he doesn’t want me there at all.”

“It sounds like you’re planning to go back.”

“I have to. You should stay out of it, though. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“You’re not going in there without me,” Victoria said. “Remember why you came with me the first time? You were worried I’d get hurt if I went in alone.”

“I don’t plan to go alone. I’m going to get a group of people.”

“That didn’t turn out well last time.”

“This time, I’ll get smart people. Like Emily Dorsnel. And the other science club kids if I can. Wes might help if I can convince him his brother’s in there. If he agrees, then Sameer will go along with it. Maybe even David Huang.”

“Do I count as a smart person?” Victoria asked.

“Sure, but I don’t want to put you in more danger—”

“I’ve been reading up on the devil. That’s what I did most of the night, because I couldn’t sleep. Some sources say that the devil’s power over the physical world is absolute, that he completely controls the world of the living.”

“So we can’t win. Good to know.”

“Others, though, say he his only real powers are deception and trickery. He can tempt people, he can inspire them to do evil, but he can’t control anything. People must make the choices he wants them to make, or he doesn’t get his way.”

“That sounds a little better.”

“More modern sources say that the devil isn’t real at all, that he’s just an idea, and he stands for the evil inside each of us. He’s a symbol.”

“Whatever we’re dealing with is more than a symbol,” Carter said. “Did you find anything about how to stop him?”

“Religions usually teach that only another powerful being like an angel can defeat him. In folklore, though, there are stories of people beating the devil through games and skill. Chess masters like Jose Capablanca were said to have beaten the devil—Capablanca supposedly challenged the devil to turn his king into gold to prove he was the devil, but when the devil touched the chess piece, he was obligated by the rules of chess to move it, and lost.”

“Don’t forget the guy who won the fiddling competition against the devil. And a fiddle made of gold, too,” Carter said.

“Are you any good at fiddling?” she asked with half a smile.

“No. I suck at chess, too.”

“I thought you were in the Chess Club.”

“That’s why I know how much I suck. We need Wes and Sameer, they’re the best players.”

“Do you think we can get them to help?” Victoria asked.

“We can try. Maybe we should bring Jared, too. He’s survived the park before.”

“Is he reliable? Remember what happened last time.”

“I don’t know. Let’s call him.” Carter brought out his phone and dialed.

“Carter,” Jared answered. “You gotta help me. I’ve been trying to go back into the park every day—”

“You shouldn’t go in there alone,” Carter said. “There’s something powerful and evil in there.”

“No shit, man,” Jared replied. His words were slurred, and he sounded more than a little drunk. “There’s a cop there all the time, parked right out front. Sometimes out-of-towners show up so they can, I don’t know, look at the park or take pictures and crap, and the cop runs them off. I can’t get inside.”

“Victoria and I are working on an idea. Don’t try to go in by yourself, okay?”

“Oh, yeah, the great and wonderful Victoria. Becca’s still in there, Carter. Who’s going to help her if I don’t?”

“Let’s talk this out when you’re not drunk—”

“Who’s drunk?” Jared asked. “I don’t need your help, man. I’m going to get everybody I can together to go search the place, and do it right. We’ll go at night, when the park’s actually alive. I think that’s what the cops did wrong. They searched it during the day.”

“Jared, don’t do that. If you bring a bunch of people into the park, they could get taken or killed like last time. We have to be prepared. The guy who built the park told us we’re dealing with the devil.”

Jared laughed.

“I’m serious,” Carter said.

“I really wouldn’t be surprised,” Jared said.

“Just promise me you won’t go in there until we’re ready. You can come with us.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Jared snapped. “It’s your fault we went there in the first place. It’s your fault Becca’s missing...I don’t need your help. I can handle it myself. I have a lot of people who want to come with me already. Just leave me alone.” Jared hung up on him.

“Sounds like that went well,” Victoria said.

“Yeah, right. All those kids who sit around him at lunch and want to hear about the park...he’s going to lead them all in there.”

“They could all die.” Victoria’s eyes went wide. “He can’t do that!”

“I tried to tell him. I’ll try again when he hasn’t been drinking, but it sounds like he’s already been talking about it to other people. Whatever we’re going to do, we have to do it fast, before Jared can lead his expedition. The only thing stopping him is the police—he says they’re watching the park all the time now.”

“At least something is stopping him. That’s good...until we want to go inside ourselves, and then it’ll be a problem,” Victoria said.

Carter nodded. “We’ll have to get around them.”

“Do you have Emily Dorsnel’s number?”

“No, but I can message her on Facebook.”

“Let’s do that,” she said. “Like right away. When is Jared planning to go back?”

“He didn’t say, and I don’t think he’s really decided—but it’s obviously soon. I would think this week, maybe by the weekend.”

“Then we have to hurry,” Victoria said.

Carter got in touch with Emily, and the three of them talked on the phone. Carter and Victoria took turns catching her up on what they’d discovered, putting Emily on speaker.

“I’ll help you if I can,” Emily said. “I’m not sure about going into the park myself, though. I’ll have to think about it.”

“If we don’t stop it, he’s going to keep luring people inside and keeping them,” Carter said. “We might even free the souls he’d already captured. And the cops are never going to accept that something supernatural is really inside the park.”

“I know,” Emily said. “That’s why I’m thinking about it instead of just saying ‘no’ and telling you you’re crazy to go back in there.”

“Okay, thanks,” Carter said.

“I’ll also consider appropriate preparations,” Emily added, “Just in case I decide to join you on this expedition. I will see that my EMF gear is charged and stocked with fresh batteries, just in case.”

“I appreciate it,” Carter said. “Do you think the others will help us?”

“I would think not, except that Wes’s brother Finn is among the missing, so they might help because of that. We can only ask.”

“Thanks, Emily.”

“If we are to move, we should move quickly,” Emily said. “The more souls captured, the more powerful the trap becomes, just as a young planet’s gravitational pull grows as its mass increases.”

“We should talk to them tomorrow,” Carter said. “I’ll get Jared there, too, as another witness for what’s happening in the park. They don’t even believe in the supernatural—I mean neither did I, a few weeks ago—so we should do this in person.”

“Agreed,” Emily said, and Victoria nodded.

Later, as the sun sank down and the fireworks shot up, painting the sky above the apartment complex with explosions and crackling flames, Carter felt more and more afraid. It was good to be taking some action, but he was drowning in things far beyond his understanding, and he was dragging everyone else down into it with him. First Jared and his friends, now the science club kids, and worst of all Victoria, who’d just arrived in town only to be pulled deep into its darkness.

He reached across to her chair and took her hand. She let him hold it. Her fingers were cold and trembling, and the contact didn’t seem to bring much warmth and reassurance to either of them.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

With help from Emily, Carter convinced Wes McKinley, Sameer Upadhyay, and David Huang to meet with them after school on Tuesday, without giving them too much information about why. Carter wanted to talk in a deserted place where nobody would overhear them, so they met at the beach.

Wes, Sameer, and David listened to Carter, Victoria, and Jared tell their story, with Emily adding background lore about hauntings and dark places. The seven of them sat on the rickety stairs from the boardwalk down to the empty beach, where the wind blew restlessly, casting waves of sand left and right.

The three boys listened with few interruptions, probably because they were outnumbered and weren’t allowed much chance to interrupt, but they cast looks of obvious disbelief among themselves, particularly when Carter described seeing the host of dark spirits in Haunted Alley, and when he recounted Schopfer’s claims about the devil.

“This is all crazy,” Wes said, when he finally had a chance to speak. He looked at Jared. “I know my brother was probably with you the night he disappeared, but I can’t believe the rest of it.”

“Then go inside the park and prove me wrong,” Jared said.

“Are you sure you didn’t see my brother again? At all?” Wes asked.

“I didn’t see any of them again,” Jared said. “The park was deserted when I finally escaped Dark Mansion. I thought everyone had gone home, but I found out nobody else ever came back.”

“So what are you proposing we do?” Wes asked.

“We go back into the park as a group, at night,” Carter said. “We try to chase him out of there, free anyone who’s still alive...maybe free the souls of the dead,” Carter added.

Sameer snorted and shook his head.

“Why do you expect us to help with that nonsense?” David Huang asked.

“For one, Wes’s brother was last seen in the park,” Carter said. “Second, we need chess players.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Sameer said, elbowing Wes, who didn’t return his eye-rolling grin.

“Why chess players?” Wes asked.

“In the stories I’ve found, chess is the game people play against him,” Victoria said. “Smart people can beat him, or trick him.”

“There’s a game in Haunted Alley called Beat the Devil,” Carter said. “It’s chess-themed. I’ve never played it, but—”

“I have,” Wes said. “I dominated that game when I was six years old. I still have the giant stuffed devil goat to prove it.”

“So we go into the park and challenge him to a game,” Carter said. “And if he loses, he has to free the people he’s taken and leave the park forever.”

“And what if he wins?” Wes asked.

Everyone was quiet for a moment.

“If he wins, he gets your soul,” Sameer said. “Everyone knows that.”

“This entire conversation is ridiculous and pointless,” David said. “The police will never allow us to go inside the park, so there’s no point talking about it.”

“Who said we’re getting their permission?” Jared asked.

“I’m not going to jail just to investigate your weird ghost stories.” David stood up and kicked sand from his shoes. “You people are crazy. Right?” He looked to Wes and Sameer.

“Yeah, you’re not going for this, are you, Wes?” Sameer asked.

“Sameer, I am not an ignorant thirteenth-century peasant, therefore I don’t believe in devils and ghosts,” Wes said. “But this is my brother. He’s been missing for more than a week, and the police don’t have any ideas. If going into the park offers any chance of finding some clue about my brother...He may be a useless jack rag with only a handful of functioning neurons, but I have to find him if I can.”

Sameer nodded. “Yeah. I’d probably say that if it was my brother or sister. If you want to go, I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t expect to find anything but ruins, but what the hell?” Wes shrugged.

“You’ve all lost your minds.” David stalked away across the rickety bridge, back toward the parking lot.

“Don’t go narc us out to anybody!” Jared called after him. “Or I’ll kick your ass.”

David gave him the finger before walking out of sight.

“Thank you, Wes,” Victoria said.

“Yeah, that’s great.” Carter felt a very small portion of the heavy weight lift from his shoulders. “We really need you guys. Emily’s putting together her ghost-hunting gear—”

“Actually, I’ve decided against that,” Emily said. “From what you’ve described, we’ll hardly be looking for trace signs of abnormal energy, or even a simple apparition. We should instead focus on defending ourselves against this entity. I have my doubts as to the existence of the actual ‘Satan’ of Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, but clearly we have a dark and powerful personality energy. One that weaves webs to collect and eat souls.”

“So what do you recommend?” Victoria asked.

“We should each bring religious or spiritual symbols with strong personal significance.”

“So you’ll just hope that at least one of several random ancient books of myth and folklore just happen to be true?” Wes asked.

“I personally believe their subjective importance to us would be the important factor,” Emily said. “But that is merely my viewpoint.”

“Whatever,” Wes said. “Do what you want on the hocus-pocus end. I’m just looking for signs of my brother.”

“All you two really need to do is prepare to play chess,” Carter told Wes and Sameer.

“It’s not real chess, it’s a simplified carnival-game version,” Wes said. “But consider us prepared.”

“Jared, you need to call off these other people who are planning to go into the park with you,” Carter said. “Tell them the party’s canceled.”

“I’ll try, but there are tons of people planning to go,” Jared said. “I might not be able to stop it at this point.”

“Define ‘tons’ of people,” Wes said.

“I don’t know, lots of freshman and sophomores. It could be forty people or a hundred. We were talking about going on Friday night.”

“The police will stop them, anyway,” Sameer said. “They have a cop out there all the time now.”

“I don’t know,” Victoria said. “I think he wants all those younger kids to come to the park. That might be why he let any of us out in the first place, to tell other people about it. And if he wants them to come, he’ll probably find a way to get them inside.”

“Because he’s ‘the devil,’” Wes snorted, rolling his eyes.

“So we should go Thursday night, before all those people go on Friday,” Carter said.

“What about the police?” Wes asked. “We still have to get around the cop, too.”

“Then we need to distract the police,” Victoria said.

“How? Start a fire?” Sameer asked.

“That’s not a bad idea,” Carter told him.

“You’re insane.” Sameer shook his head.

“This town is full of empty buildings that will probably collapse before anyone ever uses them again,” Carter said. “A fire would keep the police busy...”

“So who gets stuck committing the arson?” Wes asked.

“I’ll do it,” Jared said. “I’m good at setting shit on fire.”

“It would be smarter if none of us were there,” Wes said. “We could set up a timer or a remote detonator.”

“This is getting too wild for me,” Sameer said.

“You don’t have to be involved with that part,” Carter told him. “But we all agree we’ll go to the park together Thursday?”

“Why wait for Thursday?” Jared asked. “If Becca or Finn or anybody is still alive in there, they need our help now.”

“Exactly,” Wes said. “We should go right away.”

“We’re not prepared,” Emily said. “I insist that we take our time and take careful precautions.”

“And we’d have to set up a distraction for the police,” Carter said.

“I’ll do it,” Jared said. “I’ll set anyplace in town on fire, just name it.”

“I could make the detonator,” Wes said. “We should wait until after sunset to break into our abandoned building and set things up.”

“Then let’s meet back here an hour after sunset,” Carter said. “Nine o’clock. Will that give everybody enough time?”

They looked at each other, and nobody disagreed.

Chapter Thirty

The man came to visit Artie Schopfer at five in the morning, when the world lay dark and silent.

Artie heard the footsteps first, not in the hallway but behind the curtain dividing his room in half. It certainly wasn’t Ezekiel Reynolds, his wheelchair-bound roommate. Artie hadn’t seen a nurse enter the room, and he’d been lying awake for at least five minutes.

As the footfalls approached the curtain, Artie began to feel afraid. It was him, coming back to haunt and terrorize him again. Artie had told the kids everything he knew. The man must have found out somehow.

The man wasn’t really a man, of course, but Artie didn’t want to think too much about that, or he would drive himself into a fear-drenched panic.

The curtain waved slightly, as though someone had taken hold of it from the other side, preparing to pull it open.

“Who’s there?” Artie whispered. “Ezekiel? Is that you?”

Pale white fingers—definitely not Ezekiel’s—reached around the edge of the stiff green curtain. They eased the curtain aside, making no noise at all.

Artie couldn’t bring himself to speak again. He watched the man step out, dressed in a candy-striped fedora and a crisp matching suit with a red tie, as if he’d raided Theodore Hanover’s personal wardrobe.

He didn’t have Hanover’s ruddy, jolly features, though. His eyes showed little color or emotion, and his face seemed plain and forgettable.

Artie had last seen him years earlier, on the day of the sinkhole.

“How are you feeling, Artie?” the man asked, standing at the foot of his bed and folding his arms. “Bitter and powerless?”

“Leave me alone,” Artie whispered.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. Perhaps I should come closer.” The man walked up the side of the bed until he reached the small bedside table. His blank eyes looked down into Artie’s. His presence chilled the air.

“Go away,” Artie managed to say, a little louder. “Please.”

“Is that how you greet your visitors? You receive so few, I thought you’d be happy to see me.” He sat down in the orange plastic chair by Artie’s bed, his posture perfectly straight. “Perhaps my appearance discomforts you. Would you prefer if I sprouted red horns and a goatee? Or perhaps a vaudeville mustache curled and waxed at the tips? Would you be more comfortable if my eyes looked like this?” The man’s pupils narrowed and elongated until they were vertical reptilian slits like those Artie had painted on Inferno Mountain’s devil face.

Artie didn’t say anything. The man’s inhuman eyes stared at him.

“Your soul is special to me,” the man said. “I take a particular delight in your torment. Look at your life now, no mate, no children, all your work crumbling to dust behind you.”

“What do you want from me?” Artie whispered.

“I want to watch you suffer. Your work disgusts me, you must know that by now. I loathe all manner of frivolity, laughter, lightness of heart and spirit. I like to watch souls grow dark and heavy, ripening with fear, hate, guilt, and greed until they fall toward me like rotten fruit. You seek to interfere, but your efforts are useless. Only a fool casts seeds on stony soil, and you have cast yours on the stoniest soil of all, the human heart.”

The man leaned closer, his voice falling to an intimate whisper. “So sour and barren is the heart, Artie, that we must at times resort to trickery to make things grow there. Isn’t that sad, Artie?”

Artie thought of the small brown medicine bottle made of thick glass. He had paid three dollars for it, a princely sum for a traveling carnival worker in 1950.

She will love you as much as she can, the man had whispered when he’d sold it to Artie. Artie had been nervous and horny as hell, his adolescent dreams and fantasies fueled by Tatiana’s short, skimpy costume that clung to her swaying hips while the boa constrictor curled around and between her breasts, as thick as Artie’s arm...

Artie had been young and out of his mind with desire. This man, dressed in a crisp brown suit and fedora, had stood next to the homemade wooden box-top on the back of his red Chevrolet Thriftmaster truck, from which he sold patent medicines and packets of ground roots and herbs.

Artie was now old and infirm, but this man looked as though he hadn’t aged one second since 1950.

“But you gave me an additional, special reason to hate you, haven’t you, Artie?” he asked. “You must know what I mean.”

Artie thought it over. “Inferno Mountain?”

“Inferno Mountain!” He snarled slightly, and the power of his voice rattled Artie’s frail bones in their sockets. “Plastering a cartoonish attempt at my face on a carnival ride for the amusement of a teeming, filthy mass of human beings. Making me into a figure of fun for public consumption. Stamping me on their little shirts and keychains so they could take home little mementos of how they laughed in my face. Mocking me on a grand scale. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“I didn’t think you were real.”

“I am more than real. I am eternal,” he said. “I dwell in the dark places inside each of you. I wait, and I whisper in your ear, helping your soul on its inevitable journey downward toward me. You create fragile painted clouds, Artie, empty illusions of happiness to lure and fool your fellow man, but I dwell far below, on the final bedrock of the universe where all things must eventually fall.

“I have saved your grandest creation for the final destruction, the final insult to your existence,” the man continued. “I have transformed your great lighthouse of shallow happiness into a blackened pit of despair and suffering. As you once lured souls in search of delights, so I lure them now, and they give themselves to me. Your Starland will be known as a den of unspeakable horrors, a place where many were tormented and many died. That shall be your only legacy.”

“How many have you killed in the park?” Artie whispered, feeling horror and dread creeping all through his body.

“What matters is how many souls I will take. That will number in the hundreds, perhaps thousands, before I lose interest in this little project. For now, I find it refreshing and pleasant. There is so much one can do with an amusement park infused with the powers of Hell, so many experiments I’d like to try. I can assure you it will be quite profitable to me.”

Artie was quiet for a minute, and the man stood.

“Have you nothing else to say, Artie? You don’t need to speak. I feel the pain inside you. I relish your sense of loss and emptiness.” He walked toward the curtain, then turned back. “There is one additional matter. You recently spoke with two young visitors. You must know that I would have preferred you to turn them away, but instead you loosened your tongue and told them all you knew, didn’t you, Artie? Not that you know much, but surely you didn’t think it would go unpunished.”

The man stalked up the side of his bed again. Artie pressed the emergency call button for a nurse.

“I have already taken your hands as penalty for your grotesque creations,” the man said. “Now I must remove your power of speech as well, for that has offended me.”

The man reached his long, thin fingers toward Artie’s face. Artie turned his head, but didn’t have the strength to do much more.

The ice-cold fingertips pressed against Artie’s left temple. Artie grimaced as they pressed harder and harder, and finally seemed to break through his skin and slide through his skull as though it were a soft, permeable membrane.

He felt a crunching pain, like a sudden intense headache, and then the right half of his body went limp and numb.

Artie had slipped the potion in the mug of warm wine Tatiana drank after each performance. She had fallen for him and shared his bed for a few months, before a large cottonmouth had killed her. The venomous snake wasn’t part of her act. It had bitten her while she bathed one evening in a creek in rural Georgia. Artie had lost his first love, and had resisted the urge to fall in love since then.

Now Artie trembled while the man, the devil, removed his fingers from Artie’s head. There was no blood, nor any feeling of pain or injury where the man’s finger had penetrated his temple, but Artie could feel that he’d done serious damage in some other way.

“Say your name, Artie,” the devil instructed.

Artie felt his lips and jaw move uselessly, as if the signals from his brain weren’t reaching his mouth correctly.

“Say my name, Artie,” the devil said, with a gentle smile on his lips.

Artie tried to speak, but his mouth made nothing but useless wet sounds.

“Now you’re all fixed, Artie. Your hands cannot create, your mouth cannot speak. You can only lie here, useless, and think. Think of all the bright young souls drawn down into your park to meet their damnation. Think of how perfectly I’ve reversed your intentions and ruined all that you made.”

Artie again struggled to speak, but could not form a single word. A feeling of panic rose in his chest.

“Enjoy what remains of your miserable existence, Artie. I will be waiting for you on the other side.”

The devil vanished just before the nurse entered the room.

Chapter Thirty-One

Carter asked Victoria to drop him at home for a while so he could square away some schoolwork and prepare for their third visit to the park. He could tell she wasn’t thrilled to separate from him when they had such a dangerous night ahead, but there was something he felt he needed to do alone.

He borrowed his dad’s truck and drove out to the Memorial Gardens cemetery on the western edge of town, across the Gulf Coast Highway from an empty strip mall and a Burger King.

Carter walked up the grid of gravel paths among the dead. It was a nondenominational, no-frills graveyard, with little brick-sized markers next to small flower holders. A few statues of angels and a woman in robes stood here and there as decorations, scattered across acres of glossy green grass. A small marble mausoleum/chapel at the center of the green expanse held the town’s wealthier corpses, but he wasn’t going there.

She lay in a back corner of the cemetery under the crooked, sprawling arms of a live oak tree. Her grave marker seemed isolated and lonely, since no other family members were buried nearby. Her ancestors had not lived in Conch City, and her parents and siblings had moved away. He was the only one left in town to keep her memory alive.

He knelt in front of the little marker, wishing he’d brought a few flowers to stick into the empty holder beside it. The inscription was so small he could have covered it with his hand:

BEATRICE GLORIA CALHOUN

“Love knows no death.”

“Hi, Tricia,” he whispered. “Sorry I haven’t visited you more. I miss you. I think about you a lot.”

The cemetery lay quiet except for a few whistling warblers and an occasional car on the highway far behind him. Evening approached, and the shadows of the trees around him had grown long and deep.

“We’re going back tonight,” he said. “I know you’re trapped in there. I want to help you. But I need your help, too. If there’s anything you can do from...from your side of things, please do it tonight. None of us really understand what we’re up against, or what we’re supposed to do, but we need to do something before he takes anyone else. If you can help at all...” He traced his fingertips over the inscribed letters of her name.

He heard a small, soft noise in the grass. At first he took it for a small animal, possibly a scrounging squirrel or bird under one of the trees, but as it approached him, it began to sound more and more like human footsteps.

Carter was scared to turn his head and look. He knew he would see her small, pale feet, one toe adorned with the plastic spider ring, and then he would look up to see her bloodstained white dress fluttering in the wind, the dark and gory stump where her head was supposed to be.

A shadow fell across him. The footsteps ceased. When he finally worked up the courage to turn his head slightly to the left, he didn’t see small girl feet standing beside him. They were large, clad in black leather shoes. The pants were white with thin red pinstripes.

Carter took a sharp breath as he looked up at the man from the park, who gazed down at him with no expression, his eyes almost transparently pale under his candy-striped carnival barker hat.

“Praying to a dead child,” the man finally said. “Aren’t you pathetic? What did you expect, a voice from the heavens? Did you think she would reach down and bless you, or intercede on your behalf with some deity?”

Carter shivered, afraid to stand up, run away, or make any sudden moves at all, so he remained where he was, kneeling before the devil.

“She is mine, Carter. No different from any of the others.” The man looked away across the rows of graves, and Carter drew back from a kneeling position into a squatting one, from which it would be easier to fight or run.

“Why are you doing this?” Carter whispered.

“Visiting you? Speaking to you?” The man looked almost amused.

“Killing people in the park.”

“Claiming souls is my trade, Carter. The souls of the innocent are difficult to corrupt after death, but that’s the challenge, isn’t it? That is what makes it fun. There’s a little devil in the soul of every child. It simply needs cultivation and encouragement. Don’t weep for them, Carter. When they aren’t busy working for me, they play and play—it’s an endless night at the amusement park for them, all the rides they want, all the cotton candy they can eat. It may not be paradise, but it’s certainly a lighter shade of purgatory.”

“And when they’ve killed enough people, you get to keep their souls.” Carter swallowed. “You take them down to Hell.”

“That’s the final profit for me, but it’s less about the destination than the journey. Don’t you agree?”

“Let her go,” Carter said.

“Who?”

“You know who I mean. Beatrice.” He touched her grave marker.

“Are you offering your soul in exchange for hers?” The man squatted down to look Carter in the eyes. The air around Carter turned cold, as though black clouds had rolled across the sun. “But her soul is a greater prize. So much lighter, so much sweeter...or it was when I first put my hands on her. I find you dull in comparison, neither very bright nor very dark.”

“Then how can I set her free?”

“You’re asking me how to steal my property, Carter? You cannot have her. In fact...” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She’s quite happy where she is. All the young ones enjoy the park so much. Why do you imagine she wants to leave?”

Carter didn’t know how to answer. He gaped at the man, trying to process that this was the devil of mythology and old-time religion.

When he was very young, maybe four or five, his mother had taken him to visit his grandfather, a tall, angry preacher in Mississippi. Carter had sat on the hard pew in the small pine-log church, stewing like a pig in the stagnant July heat, while his grandfather ranted about eternal fire and the devil, the devil, the devil. The same death-and-brimstone ramblings had driven Carter’s mom to run away from home at the age of sixteen, first to New Orleans, then to the sugary Florida beaches. His mother had a talent for running away.

Carter now wondered if watching his grandfather’s sermon, listening to the stories of souls burning in eternal anguish while he roasted like a pig inside the dim, hot country church had led to his childhood fear of Inferno Mountain. Maybe that was why he found the giant, grinning red devil face terrifying, while everyone else seemed to find it funny or campy.

The man in front of him was nothing like the evil monster of his grandfather’s sermons. This man looked so forgettable and ordinary that he could have vanished into any crowd, if not for his loud clothes. He could have been anyone.

“You are not welcome to return to the park,” the man said. “You’ve been an irritant. If you return, I will not hesitate to kill you. Victoria will die, too, as will any friends you bring along. I’ll be watching for you.”

“Why me?”

“I simply don’t like you, Carter.”

Carter didn’t believe him, but he didn’t want to press the issue too hard.

“I will make you a final offer,” the man continued. “I can give you anything you want, Carter, if you simply keep out. For example, this business of becoming a doctor—you and I both know you’re not capable of it. You’ll end up among the countless washouts littering the side of that particular path. Honestly, you probably won’t even make it through your high school classes this semester. I can change all of that. I can make you a rich, famous, brilliant doctor if you let me help. Perhaps you’ll cure, let’s say, Parkinson’s? That sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Or perhaps a major venereal disease? That will make you popular at parties.”

“I don’t care about being rich and famous.”

“Then I’ll make you a poor, obscure, mediocre doctor, if that’s your pleasure. College and medical school will be a breeze for you. Simply accept my offer.” He held out a bloodless, cold, carefully manicured hand.

“No,” Carter said.

The man scowled a little.

“I can grant any one wish,” he said. “What about Victoria? We both know she’s too good for you—in fact, all three of us know it, don’t we? She knew it the moment she met you. But I can make her all yours, Carter. For life, if you like, or just for a single ecstatic night, if you prefer. Consider what you truly desire. You could have any dream come true, no matter how impossible it seems.”

“And all I have to do is stay out of the park?” Carter asked. “No signing anything in blood? No giving you my soul?”

“You understand perfectly. One wish, no strings.”

“Why do you want me to stay out, when you want everyone else to come in?”

“Why must you press my patience? Make your wish and be free. Leave the ugly past behind, as you’ve always wished to do, Carter. Move on from this miserable, dying little town into your real life, into your future. It’s time. This chance will not come again.” He stood up, slightly adjusting the lapels of his jacket, never taking his eyes off Carter. “I could even move you forward in time, Carter. You want nothing more than to escape this town, isn’t that true? You could awaken tomorrow on your first day of college, leave all of this behind you. That’s all you really want, isn’t it, Carter?”

Carter stood with him, his knees shaking as if they would collapse under him at any moment. He knew there was only one way to answer, but the idea of speaking that single syllable terrified him, because there was no telling what might follow. If the man was who Schopfer said he was—and Carter was finding less and less reason to doubt Schopfer’s words—then he might strike Carter dead at any moment and stroll away whistling.

“Answer,” the man said. “Simply tell me which wish you wish to wish. Speak your heart’s desire.”

“No.”

“No?” The man’s eyebrows lifted slightly, and his lips parted. His slight smile disappeared. For his usually blank and expressionless face, it was an enormous outburst of emotion. “You have another wish to tell me?”

“I’m not making a wish.”

“Then you must want...” The man’s brow furrowed just a little, giving rise to a single shallow wrinkle in his forehead. “You are rejecting my offer?”

“Yes.” Carter felt sick with fear, as if he would vomit all over his shoes, if the man didn’t kill him first.

The man snarled, and there was nothing subtle about it. His canine teeth grew longer and sharper, and his pupils narrowed until they were vertical and reptilian. Now he did remind Carter of the devil on Inferno Mountain, just a little bit.

“Do you not understand?” the man growled. “If you defy me, I will capture your spirit and torture you until the end of time. It will not be an eternal night at the amusement park for you. It will be suffering and misery until you beg for death, but you will already be dead. You will die in ten thousand slow and horrific ways, and then ten thousand more. Your punishment will never end.”

Carter wasn’t sure what to say, but he realized he didn’t have to say anything at all. He’d already given his answer.

The man observed Carter’s silence for a full minute, his face growing angrier and turning a dark shade of crimson. Finally he stomped one foot on the ground. A wide circle of grass around his black loafer instantly turned brown and dead. The ripple of death spread outward, shriveling and killing the lawn in every direction, sweeping out across acres of grass. The lush green oaks and magnolias turned the dark colors of late fall and shed a wave of dead leaves onto the ground. Even the bouquets of cut flowers on the individual grave markers shriveled and crumpled.

“My offer is withdrawn,” the devil hissed. His voice sounded like the rustling of the dead leaves raining down around them. “Come to the park and die. I will relish your eternity of torment.”

He turned his back on Carter and stalked away. A heavy wind rose across the cemetery, blowing another thick rain of leaves from the trees. By the time it passed, the man had vanished.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“Are you ready for this?” Victoria asked when she picked Carter up from his apartment’s parking lot. She looked shaken and afraid, and he felt the same way. He hugged her.

“Thanks for helping,” he told her as she drove. “It’s really not your problem.”

“Someone has to do something about it. We’re the only ones available.”

“Do you think we should have tried to get some kind of, I don’t know, legitimate religious leader to help us? A priest or something?” Carter asked.

“A legitimate religious leader willing to break the law and sneak into a condemned old amusement park because some teenagers say the devil is there?”

“When you put it that way...”

“I did bring this.” Victoria opened the second button of her black, high-collared shirt and brought out a small golden cross with trefoil ends, reminiscent of the clubs from a deck of playing cards. “It was my grandmother’s baptismal cross.”

“Do you think it’ll protect us?”

“I have no idea. What did you bring?”

“I couldn’t think of anything.” Carter shrugged.

They reached the parking lot of the public beach, where Sameer and Emily were already waiting, and parked in the shade of the palm trees to make Victoria’s car less noticeable from the road. The sun had set and the beach was dark and deserted.

Wes and Jared arrived a minute later, reeking of gasoline. The six of them stood in the parking lot for a moment, looking at each other.

“We’re all set on the fire,” Wes said. “It’s on a timer. We have about five minutes before ignition.”

“What did you decide to burn down?” Carter asked them.

“Just the Beach Ball and Sand Castle Museum,” Jared said. “Wish we could watch it, it’s going to be sweet when it goes up.”

“A museum?” Victoria asked.

“It’s that building on the highway that looks like a crumbling old sand castle.” Carter said. “It closed down a year before the sinkhole even opened. It was a stupid museum, anyway. Just an excuse to sell overpriced beach gear.”

“The parking lot surrounds the building, so that should contain the fire. Nothing important will burn,” Wes said. “All we need to do is wait. I have to say, we did a pretty brilliant job all around.” He and Jared nodded at each other with such a serious look that it was almost comical.

“There’s something I should tell you guys before we go,” Carter said. He recounted his conversation with the devil in the cemetery.

Victoria, Emily, and Jared listened intently, looking increasingly pale as he described what had happened. Wes and Sameer made of point of rolling their eyes and making derisive snorts, refusing to believe him.

“Speaking of the devil, we should review some ground rules before we go inside,” Emily said. “First, do not eat or drink anything. That gives the park power over you.”

“No kidding,” Jared said. “That’s the first thing the park offers you, drinks and food. Then games and rides.”

“Second, we need to stay together as a group, no splitting up,” Emily continued. “Third, be extremely cautious regarding wishes, or any offers of bargains or deals.”

“Especially from the man in the striped hat,” Carter said. “He said straight out that he’s interested in collecting souls. I’m starting to believe he really is the devil or something like it.”

“Bullshit.” Wes shook his head. “I don’t believe in souls or devils. I just want to find my brother. If this doesn’t help, I’m going to be pissed at all three of you.” He swept his finger at Carter, Victoria, and Jared, then hitched up his green corduroy pants.

“I’m guessing you did not bring items of spiritual significance to you, then,” Emily said.

“Oh, I did.” Wes brought out a small aluminum Darwin fish and attached it to his shirt pocket with a pin. “Because I believe in the scientific method.”

“And you love sarcasm,” Emily said. “So it suits you. I brought a family heirloom St. Christopher medallion, which I further adorned with a yin-yang and a peace symbol for personal reasons.” She showed them her necklace.

“This is Ganesh,” Sameer said, drawing out a silver pendant etched with the image of a man with four arms and an elephant’s head. “It belongs to my father.”

“Seriously? You brought a religious thing?” Wes asked.

“Yes, seriously,” Sameer said. “Don’t give me a bunch of crap, Wes. I’m only here to help you. I could go home if you want.”

“No, no, don’t leave!” Wes told him.

Scattered sirens erupted in the distance.

“Right on time,” Jared said, checking his phone.

A flashing blue light streaked past them along the highway and barreled away at high speed.

“I bet that was the cop watching Starland tonight,” Carter said. “Let’s get inside before he comes back.”

They rode down Beachview Drive in a small caravan. Emily rode with Carter and Victoria, followed by Jared in his truck, then Sameer and Wes in Sameer’s golden Hyundai.

Victoria cautiously rounded the last curve before the park came into view, her shoulders and legs tensed, ready to pick up speed if a cop was still there.

The Starland parking lot lay empty, though. They parked once again in the shadow of the crumbling pink motel across the street. Carter remembered what Schopfer had said, that the Fancy Flamingo Lodge had once been the Conch City Resort motel, and Starland had once been a nameless handful of small, temporary amusement rides leased for the summer and parked across the highway from the motel, creating a tourist-catching net. This crossroads was where the town had really been founded, though no commemorative plaque marked the spot. It was also, of course, very close to where the sinkhole had dealt its fatal blow to the heart of the town.

“You’ve brought an array of documentary equipment,” Emily commented as Victoria slung her photography bag over one arm and checked her handheld video camera.

“Not quite an array, just one digital video and one old film camera,” Victoria said. “Maybe between them, they’ll pick up some of what we see.”

Wes and Sameer clicked on flashlights as they crossed Beachview to the dark parking lot of the amusement park.

“Did nobody else bring a flashlight?” Sameer asked.

“We won’t need them,” Carter replied. “The park’s full of lights.”

“Looks dark to me.” Wes pointed up to the rusting high rides and the big devil face of Inferno Mountain, all of it visible only by moonlight.

“Wait until you get inside,” Jared said.

They reached the front gates, where the August crop of memorial flowers had wilted and dried. The wind had scattered gifts, cards, and pictures of the dead all over the parking lot.

Carter and Victoria led the way around the side of the park, where their previous path through the woods was now paved with asphalt. They approached the place where they’d entered before.

Tonight, their side entrance was neither a hole in the fence nor a chain-link gate with a simple latch, but a heavy barred door held in place by a strange, round armored plate with a small keyhole. Several aluminum signs were zip-tied to the gate, reading NO TRESPASSING, KEEP OUT, and VIOLATORS WILL BE PERSECUTED.

“Shouldn’t that be ‘prosecuted’?” Sameer asked, pointing to one sign.

“We’ll see,” Carter said. He tested the barred door, but it was locked solid. Through the bars, the park looked like dark, overgrown ruins.

“So much for all those lights you talked about.” Wes shined his flashlight among the weeds.

“We’re not in yet,” Victoria said. She brought out the skeleton key from her pocket and handed it to Carter, then stepped back to take video of him. “Want to try it?”

“Hope it works.” Carter slid the long key into the lock. The key wouldn’t turn, so he applied more pressure, gritting his teeth.

“Careful,” Victoria whispered. “Don’t break it.”

“I’m being careful.” Carter twisted it as hard as he could, and a loud, rusty screech sounded from inside the lock. The key turned slowly and reluctantly, but it turned.

Carter felt a pop and a shudder in his arm as the lock gave way. The hinges of the barred door squealed as he pulled it open. He turned the key back the other way and struggled to pull it free from the lock, which seemed to determine to grasp the key with its rusty innards.

The six of them stared into the shadowy ruins.

“Who wants to go first?” Emily asked.

“Why are you people acting so scared? Come on, Sameer.” Wes led the way through the gate, followed by Sameer, and both of them waved their flashlights in the dimness under Crashdown Falls.

The moment they stepped through the gate, lights went up all over the park and waves of overlapping music erupted from the attractions inside. From where they stood, “Green River” by Creedence Clearwater Revival was the loudest, booming from the speakers around Crashdown Falls.

Wes and Sameer screamed and ran back toward the gate, but Carter and Jared advanced, blocking their exit. Emily and Victoria walked close behind them, Victoria at the very back with her video camera.

“What the hell?” Wes shouted.

“Told you,” Jared said.

“Keep walking,” Carter told them. “We should hurry.”

“But this is insane.” Wes pointed to the flashing green and blue lights of the Pirate Island plaza ahead. Sameer nodded beside him, gaping. “Who did all this?”

“As far as anyone can tell us, it’s the devil,” Carter said.

“Which I take to be a powerful energy-essence personality with malevolent intent,” Emily said. “As to whether it’s actually the mythological character—”

“Satan?” Wes asked. “Lucifer? Beelzebub?”

“It may not be wise to repeatedly call out demonic names at this time,” Emily said. “In fact...”

Emily brought out her phone and played voices chanting musically in Latin.

“What the hell is that?” Jared asked.

“Gregorian chants performed by Benedictine monks.” Emily clipped the phone to her belt. “In thirty seconds, it will shift to the Glory Road Baptist Church singing ‘Wade in the Water.’ Then Tibetan monks, and so on.”

“You really think that’s going to protect us?” Wes asked.

“We need to hurry,” Carter said. He, Jared, Emily, and Victoria walked on along the now-paved path under the waterfall ride.

Wes and Sameer glanced at each other, then back at the open gate.

“Somebody hung lights and played music,” Sameer said. “It doesn’t take a horned demon to do that.”

“Do you want to look for your brother or not?” Carter asked. After a moment, Wes shrugged and followed after them.

Every attraction in Pirate Island looked open. The Swingin’ Scalawag pirate ship swept back and forth, while the duck-shaped bumper boats waited at the loading canal under a string of glowing lights. The Harpoon Lagoon and Gone Fishing games were fully lit, the plastic fish swirling in their kiddie pool waiting for a player with a hook to grab them up.

Wes approached the giant red crab of Pinchy Pete’s Sandwich Shack, where a row of long, crispy sandwiches overflowing with fried shrimp and oysters, lettuce, and Pinchy Pete’s special orange sauce waited on paper plates on the serving counter.

“These look like somebody just cooked them,” Wes said, leaning closer and sniffing. “And they smell so good...you can almost taste them in the air...”

“Don’t eat that!” Emily snapped. “Don’t eat anything.”

“Like I was really going to eat it,” Wes said, but he looked unhappy, and his gaze lingered on the nearest sandwich. “I just didn’t realize how hungry I was...”

“Come on.” Sameer grabbed his arm, and then screams pierced the air.

“Over there!” Victoria turned and snapped a picture.

The big plastic log ride shot down its highest hill, spraying water out both sides. Two boys of nine or ten years old rode inside the log, screaming and thrusting their hands high into the air. The log dropped out of sight behind a sign advertising PIRATE PRALINES! and SALTWATER TAFFY!

“Where did those kids come from?” Sameer asked.

“They might be captive souls trapped in the park,” Emily said. “We would do best to avoid them.”

The midway pulsed with lights and music. Bubble machines atop the food stands and game booths filled the air with clouds of bubbles, their thin iridescent skin reflecting bright neon and flashing bulbs. Voices barked over the loudspeakers:

“Skee-ball, skee-ball! Five balls for a dollar, you won’t find a better deal in town—”

“Cotton candy! Ice cream! Deep-fried pretzel cakes!”

“Whack a frog, win a prize! Come on, kids, try your luck!”

Carter took the voices for recordings at first, but then he saw park employees at a few of the booths, men and women dressed in candy-striped broad-brimmed hats and red and white pinstriped vests. They stood at their counters trying to grab the attention of Carter and the others in his group. Under their hats, their eyes were pallid, lifeless gray, as if drained of color.

“This is insane,” Wes said. “I saw the pictures from the paper. This should all be overgrown and falling down. None of it should be operational, but I can see the Ferris wheel turning, the roller coaster, the Moon Robot...”

“Emily, who are these people working here?” Sameer whispered. “More ghosts?”

“The adults who died on the day of the sinkhole, most likely,” she replied.

“I’m not sure I can believe that,” Sameer whispered.

“Ignorance won’t not protect you,” she said.

A shrill, giggling girl’s voice sounded ahead. A pack of little kids chased each other back and forth across the midway, laughing as they ducked behind game booths and clambered over park benches. A blond girl with pink ladybug barrettes, seven or eight years old, seemed to be their leader.

As they drew close, Carter decided to risk speaking to them.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Hey, little girl, have you seen the man who runs the park? He has a striped hat?”

The girl looked up at him with dead gray eyes. Then her eyes sunk back into her sockets, leaving them hollow and black, and her jaw dropped open, revealing nothing but darkness inside. She let out a warning hiss like a rattlesnake.

Carter shouted and jumped back, stumbling into his friends.

The girl’s face returned to normal, and she giggled uncontrollably.

“You’re so stupid,” she finally said, her voice like a loud whisper. “First he kills you, then you can play with us.”

She broke down into more giggles and ran off down the midway, her gang of friends tailing her. They faded out of sight, but their laughter rolled on for several seconds after they vanished.

“Okay, mark me down as officially freaked out,” Wes said. “Can we leave now?”

“Any chance you got the disappearing kids on camera?” Carter asked Victoria.

“Let’s see.” She stood beside him, her arm brushing against his as she stopped recording and played back the video she’d taken. On the camera’s screen, Carter watched their group walking through the dim, overgrown ruins of the park, thinly lit by moonlight from above. Carter saw himself speaking into the shadows, but the kids didn’t show up on the recording at all. The audio contained no hint of their voices or laughter.

“It’s all illusion, isn’t it?” Carter looked up to take in the lights of the midway, the calliope and country and classic rock music, the barkers shouting for attention, the smells of funnel cakes and salty frying potatoes in the air. The asphalt was smooth and unblemished beneath his feet, and every ride and game looked freshly washed and polished.

“I don’t get it,” Jared said, looking at the video over Victoria’s shoulder.

“I’ve read the devil’s powers are nothing but tricks and deception,” Victoria said. “But I’ve read other viewpoints, too.”

“Whatever. That’s where we need to go.” Jared hurried ahead toward Wishing Well Plaza at the center of the park.

Carter stared upward as he followed Jared toward Dark Mansion, which had grown from two stories high to four or five. It now towered above them like a black fortress, girded with stone curtain walls and angular turrets. Instead of one plaster gargoyle at the entrance, it now had actual, three-dimensional stone gargoyles perched at every corner, sneering down with horned, devilish faces. A few of the narrow, barred windows glowed ghostly green.

“This isn’t how I remember Dark Mansion at all,” Wes said. “When did it get so big?”

“Jared, did it look this way last time you saw it?” Carter asked.

“No. It’s still growing. Come on, we have to find Becca.” Jared jogged up through the queuing area that wound through the graveyard. The headstones had a different look, too—real marble instead of foam, all the joke names replaced by ones that sounded real.

“We shouldn’t split up,” Emily said. “We should proceed to the Beat the Devil game now, Jared. You’ve already told us Dark Mansion is difficult to escape.”

“Fuck all that, I have to find her.” Jared continued on toward the front steps, now made of black stone instead of worn, peeling wood.

“Wes, you should look at this...” Sameer pointed to one of the gravestones. Wes stood beside him and read it.

“What the hell?” Wes asked.

“What is it?” Carter joined them. They stared at a headstone that read FINNEGAN MCKINLEY.

“Why is my brother’s name in front of this house?” Wes asked.

“I don’t know...” Carter looked at the other headstones and pointed. “Look, there’s those first two kids who went missing, Reeves and Kevin. Some of your other friends are here, too, Jared—Elissa, Tamara, Derek...”

“Becca?” Jared asked. He already reached the top stair, under the arched entrance to the haunted house, and now he turned back to look at the gravestones.

“I don’t see her...” Carter looked among the headstones, which faded in and out of visibility as the cold fog crawled across them. He was also looking for Tricia, but didn’t see her name anywhere.

“I want to know why my brother’s name is there. Let’s look inside.” Wes started up the stairs, followed by Sameer.

“I think it’s unwise to grow distracted from our primary goal,” Emily said. “That would be the Beat the Devil game.”

“I don’t care about that stupid game,” Wes told them. “First, we look for my brother.”

“And Becca,” Jared added. He, Wes, and Sameer approached the heavy black door inscribed with bats and skeletons.

“It would also be unwise to split up the group,” Emily told Carter and Victoria.

“But that means whoever is loudest and pushiest will get their way,” Carter said.

“Welcome to democracy,” Victoria said.

“Wait!” Carter called up to the three boys on the stairs. He approached them, holding out his skeleton key. “If we’re going in there, maybe we shouldn’t use the front door. This key is the only thing we have that might protect us.”

“Sounds good to me.” Jared started down the stairs. “I don’t want to get stuck in there again.”

They circled around the house, looking for a side entrance. They went around the left side, following a narrow maintenance path between Dark Mansion and the red-rock exterior of the Mad Martian Arcade. Going around the other way would have meant walking into Haunted Alley, and Carter wasn’t in a hurry to go there after the crowd of ghosts they’d seen last time.

As they passed along the narrow, tall windows barred by wrought iron, Carter thought he glimpsed small white faces peering out at them, but they vanished when he turned to look.

At the back of the mansion, under the dark shadow of Inferno Mountain—the only ride that still appeared to be closed—they found a small, plain rectangle of a door with a DO NOT ENTER sign marked with a skull and crossbones.

Carter inserted the key. The lock turned reluctantly, with an angry squeal.

The door opened onto a workshop area with table saws and racks of sharp tools, lit by bare bulbs in the ceiling. Scarecrows, spiders, and dismembered mannequin limbs lay heaped on the shelves, and the air smelled of the old sawdust strewn across the floor.

“Looks like we found the backstage area,” Victoria said, poking at a stuffed rat on a dusty plank table.

“Let’s keep moving.” Wes hurried up a half-flight of wooden stairs to a short, plain wooden door in the far wall.

“Wait,” Emily told them. “Considering the story Jared related, perhaps we should take measures to avoid getting lost in the maze.” She looked among the tools, found a large ball of twine, and tied one end to the leg of a tool bench. “We’ll trail the string behind us so we can find our way.”

“Good idea. I’ll hold it.” Jared reached out his hand.

“I can handle it myself, thank you,” Emily replied.

“Come on!” Wes shoved open the door. Jared hurried to follow him. Victoria quietly took Carter’s hand as they went up the steps together. Sameer and Emily came up behind them, Emily unraveling the ball of twine as she walked.

They ducked through the low lintel of the doorway and emerged into a narrow room with a floor and walls that looked like rough stone tiles. Tall, bizarre statues crowded the walls, distorted human shapes with the bodies of bulls or the heads of lizards and birds. They had just stepped out of a raised dais occupied by the statue of a squatting, pot-bellied man with hollow eyes and curving ram horns on the sides of its head. Carter touched the dais, and it felt like real stone. Frescoes on the walls showed rows of humans with empty eye sockets, their bodies mangled and twisted. A small stone brazier full of real fire illuminated the room and cast dancing horned shadows on the walls.

“I don’t remember this room from when I was a kid,” Carter said. “Jared, did you see it when you were here?”

“No, nothing like this,” Jared said.

“The art looks Sumerian to me,” said Sameer, and Emily nodded.

“Looks like a good place to get sacrificed to strange gods,” Wes said. He pointed to one end of the room. “I think I see a way out.”

They had to walk single-file around the large statues in the narrow gallery. Carter and Victoria found themselves leading the group through a small archway and up a dim wooden stairway that twisted left and right. The house had few straight paths, Carter remembered. The corridors slanted and turned frequently, so you were always turning a dark corner into the unknown.

Distant screams, intermingled with soft piano music, sounded from deep within the house every few seconds as the group ascended the dark stairway. A cold, wet drop splashed onto Carter’s head from somewhere above, followed by another that splattered across the back of his hand.

“Something’s dripping on me,” Victoria whispered.

“Me, too.” Sameer pointed his flashlight upward.

The stairway, though narrow, had a high ceiling. Hanging from it, swaying slightly, were several human shapes draped in bedsheets, suspended by rope nooses around their cloth-covered heads. The sheets were damp and dripping red.

“Are those real?” Emily asked from the back of the line. “Or mannequins?”

“You want to pull one down and look?” Wes asked.

“Let’s just get out of here,” Carter said.

The stairs took them up to a spacious ballroom lit by a chandelier with just a few burning candles, which reflected in black windows framed by heavy red curtains along one wall. The ornate floor tiles, engraved with floral and geometrical shapes, were dirty and grimy beneath their feet. An antique player piano sat on the raised stage at one end, banging out-of-tune notes as a yellowed scroll of paper rolled over a drum above the piano keys. The dirty ivory keys rose and fell as though played by a ghost.

Jared checked a pair of double doors, one of several around the room.

“These are locked,” Jared told them. “Keep trying all the doors. Probably only one or two of them actually lead anywhere.”

A scream echoed through the room, carried by a stiff, cold wind that blew out candles one by one. A wave of darkness swept toward them from the piano.

“Let’s go!” Wes shouted, sounding frightened.

The group scattered to the different doors, trying each of them as the large room turned dark and cold. Carter and Victoria pressed against one locked set of doors, and Carter kicked it in frustration.

“Over here! Hurry!” Sameer announced as he pushed open a pair of black glass doors near one of the remaining candles. He stepped through the doorway and screamed.

Emily was closest to him. She reached out to grab his sleeve, but he fell forward and dragged her through the doorway with him. The floor tiles immediately in front of the open doorway had sunk to create a slippery ramp. When Emily and Sameer tumbled out of sight, both of them shouting, the sunken tiles rose again to blend in with the others.

“Sameer!” Wes shouted, running toward them.

“Watch your step!” Carter yelled. He stood to one side and pressed the hidden ramp down with one foot.

“Emily? Sameer?” Victoria called into the darkness as she cautiously approached the doorway.

The double doors had opened onto a lightless space the size of a large chimney. Wes’s flashlight illuminated irregular, dusty bricks thick with spiderwebs. There was no floor, just an empty brick shaft with Emily’s length of twine dangling down one side.

“Are you guys okay?” Carter shouted into the dark shaft. Nobody answered. Emily’s playlist of assorted religious music had fallen silent.

“I can’t see the bottom,” Victoria whispered, leaning over Carter’s shoulder. She reached her video camera into the empty chimney space and twisted her display screen, trying get a better view straight down the chimney.

“This is crazy,” Wes said, pushing the ramp area down with the toe of his shoe. “You open the door, and the floor slants and makes you fall inside.”

“I told y’all this house was evil,” Jared said.

“Sameer! Emily! Say something!” Wes called into the dark chimney shaft. “There’s no way to climb down to them.”

“We’ll have to find another way down,” Victoria said. “Let’s look for stairs.”

“That’s how the house traps you,” Jared told her.

“What choice do we have?” she asked.

They approached the other doors more carefully, but all of them seemed sealed, some of them simply false fronts that would never open. Jared finally found the other way out, not through a door but one of the black-painted windows. He raised the heavy iron-trimmed pane, looked through it, and announced there was another room beyond.

They had to duck their heads low and step high over the windowsill.

The next room was again dimly lit by dripping candles, most of them spaced along the massive dining table at the center of the room. Dried, shriveled corpses, like mummies excavated from the desert, sat in high-backed wooden chairs around the table, their open jaws and empty eye sockets facing platters offering decayed goat heads, rotten fish, and blackened fruit crawling with flies.

The foul stench of the place made Carter gag.

“This is awful,” Victoria whispered, holding her arm across her nose. “Just fucking awful.”

Wes shined his light around the walls, revealing graphic paintings of people carving and eating each other, a bizarre banquet of mutual cannibalism. He jogged toward the oversized double doors at one end of the room. They were closed tight, flanked by full suits of armor thick with cobwebs.

“The obvious door won’t work. My money’s on the fireplace.” Jared moved in the opposite direction, toward the immense stone hearth, which held a heap of crumbling, moldy wood. A marble wolf crouched beside the fireplace, its teeth bared in a snarl.

“We shouldn’t have come inside this house,” Victoria whispered.

A loud, rusty squeal sounded as Wes turned one of the door handles. The walls shuddered around them, and a rumble echoed from the ceiling.

Carter looked up in time to see a heavy wooden-lattice wall descend from the ceiling like a curtain. It slammed to the ground just beyond the end of the dining table, walling off Wes’s end of the long room.

“What the hell?” Wes shouted. He ran toward the wall and looked through the gaps between the thick slats. “Help me out here. These doors won’t open, by the way.”

A loud rattling sounded from the ceiling, and then a more solid, wood-paneled wall descended in front of the lattice, sealing him off.

“Hey! Hey! What the hell?” Wes shouted, while Carter and Victoria ran toward him. Carter reached out to slap the new wall as it dropped into place, but it was much thicker and heavier than he expected. He couldn’t stop its descent.

“Wes, can you try the same handle again?” Victoria shouted through the wall. “Or the handle on the other door?”

No answer came through the very solid new wall.

“Can you hear us, Wes?” Carter asked, but he didn’t get a response.

“What the hell happened?” Jared ran over and kicked the new wall, but it didn’t help.

The three of them spent a few minutes trying to talk to Wes through the wall while searching for some way of making it rise up again. They couldn’t find anything, though, and the rotten-meat smell of the dining room was overwhelming.

“Jared...” a voice whispered weakly. “Jared, where are you?”

“That’s Becca!” Jared ran to a heating grate with an intricate brass grill resembling flowering vines. “Becca, can you hear me?”

“Jared...it’s so dark down here...”

“Where are you?” Jared asked.

“Jared, help me...”

“We have to go down!” Jared ran back toward the fireplace. “I think I found the way out.”

“Wait!” Carter ran after him, but Jared didn’t slow down. Victoria followed close behind him. “The house is trying to split us up. We need to stay close together.”

“So stay close.” Jared laid his hands on the snarling marble wolf on the raised hearth. It rolled backwards on a pair of sunken tracks, and a portion of the rock wall at the back of the fireplace swung open.

“What about Wes?” Carter asked.

“That guy’s fine. Becca’s been trapped here for a week, Carter. We’re lucky she’s alive.” Jared stepped into the fireplace and peered through the new opening. Carter couldn’t help imagining the dead, blackened wood flaring to life, consuming Jared in a sudden bonfire.

“What’s in there?” Victoria asked, edging closer.

“A ladder,” Jared said. “We can climb down and look for Becca.”

“Maybe we should try to help Wes first—” Carter began, but Jared stepped over the decayed wood and slithered through the hidden door, down a wooden ladder and out of sight. “Jared, wait!”

“Should we go with him?” Victoria asked.

Carter sighed, then shouted Wes’s name again, but received no reply.

“We can’t get separated,” Carter said. “You go first, and I’ll be right on top of you. Wes! We found a way down! We’ll come back!” he shouted at the wall.

Victoria grimaced as she squatted in the ashes and reached one leg into the open hole. Carter helped her slide forward and onto the ladder, which was barely visible in the candlelight from the grotesque dining table.

He crawled down after her, through a space so small he could barely fit his shoulders inside. There was no light. It was like climbing down inside a dark, sour-smelling well.

“Jared.” The girl’s voice whispered softly up to them on a draft of air as cold as winter air blown across hard ice. “Jared, help me.”

“I’m coming!” Jared shouted back to her.

The ladder brought them into a dim, cavelike space, illuminated by a small fire near the far wall. They stood in a cellar below the haunted house, though if the original building actually had a cellar beneath it, Carter had never heard of it.

The dark room resembled the mock torture chamber that had once occupied the attic, but it was larger, with strange contraptions, like a blood-stained wooden wheel large enough to tie a human to its face. Sharp, rusty points jutted out at every inch around its circumference. There was a rack for stretching people and a dark cage suspended by a chain from the ceiling. Atop the wood-burning fireplace was a long metal stovetop with iron cuffs at the corners, the inner curves of the cuffs lined with little spikes. Flails, whips, tongs, blades, and hooks hung on the walls.

“Jared...help...” Becca’s voice echoed softly.

“Where are you?” Jared ran to look into one of three cage doors built along one wall. “Becca?”

“Here...”

Carter and Victoria advanced cautiously into the room. They reached the bed of nails, which had been outfitted, somewhat perversely, with a sculpted oak headboard like a piece of luxury furniture.

As they stepped around the headboard, they saw the girl lashed to the bed of nails, lying on her back and covered from head to toe in dark, dried blood. She did not move at all.

“That’s her,” Carter whispered.

“What?” Jared turned from peering into the second cage door.

“She’s over here, Jared,” Carter said quietly.

“Becca?” Jared dashed over, then stopped and stared at her body. “Becca?” He reached out to touch one cuffed arm, then immediately drew his hand back. “She’s cold. And stiff.”

“Yeah,” Carter said. “It looks like...she’s been dead a while. I’m sorry.” Carter touched Jared’s arm, but Jared shook him off, looking angry.

“It can’t be her. I just heard her voice.” Jared touched her stiff, bloody face, then recoiled. “How could we hear her if she’s dead?”

“She took a long time to die.” A flat, monotone voice spoke behind them. They turned to see the man in the striped hat, now standing behind one of the cage doors in the wall, as though he were a prisoner. “We milked every drop of her anger to rebuild this attraction. She was filled with hidden pockets of wrath. You see the results. Dark Mansion is now larger than it ever was during its natural lifetime.”

“You asshole!” Jared ran to the cage door and tried to wrench it open, but it was locked. He smacked the bars in front of the man’s face. “You killed her!”

“I merely stripped her of her form,” the man said. “She’s thriving in her new existence. We let her torture all she likes.”

“What are you talking about?” Jared asked.

“Jared...” Becca’s voice echoed from another cage door. He ran to it.

“Careful, Jared,” Victoria said, approaching him. “It’s probably a trick.”

“It is no trick,” Becca’s voice whispered. The girl appeared behind the cage door, only inches from Jared. Her skin was pale as a shroud, her eyes colorless, her long black hair tangled. Her lips parted in a sharp little smile. “I’m right here, Jared.”

“Becca?” Jared reached a hand through the bars toward her, then hesitated, his fingers reaching just beyond the bars.

“This life is sooo much better,” she whispered. “You should join me.”

“Join you?” Jared looked confused.

“Don’t listen to her,” Victoria told him.

“I want you with me, Jared. I need you with me. I’m reaching out to you from beyond the grave—that’s how special you are.” Becca touched her pale hand to Jared’s, and he shivered, but he didn’t draw back from her. “You’re everything to me, Jared.”

“I don’t understand,” Jared whispered. He looked cowed, and somehow entranced by the Becca ghost.

“I want you, Jared.” The cage door gave a rusty squeal, then opened just slightly. “I want you forever. There’s nobody else like you in the world. You’re the one. You’re everything.”

“Becca...” Jared pulled open the cage door. A cold rush of air spilled out of the cell.

“Don’t do it!” Carter grabbed Jared’s arm, but Jared snarled and punched him in the face with stunning force. Carter stumbled back a step, feeling blood leak from his left nostril and over his lips.

Becca retreated back into the darkness of the cell, out of sight. Jared hurried after her, though Carter and Victoria yelled for him to stop.

Jared was out of sight for only a couple of seconds before he screamed like a terrified child. Carter ran into the cage after him.

“Carter, wait!” Victoria shouted, but he didn’t stop.

He shined his cell phone upward like a flashlight. Jared hung there, in the center of a web of wires and chains strung through his body. The chains and wires were anchored in the walls around him. It looked as though someone had cut him at least a hundred times with a small blade. His blood drizzled out into a widening puddle on the floor beneath, his lifeless eyes bulging and staring at nothing, his legs still twitching.

“Too eager, Becca,” the man’s monotone voice spoke from the next cell.

“I know. I’m sorry,” Becca’s voice whispered. She became visible to Carter again, her pale face and arms splattered with fresh red blood. “I’ll kill the next one more slowly. Promise!”

She smiled at Carter and licked her bloody lips.

Behind him, the cage door gave a rusty squeal as it swung itself closed.

“No!” Victoria seized the bars of the door with her hands, pulling it back and stopping it less than an inch away from the latch that would have trapped Carter inside.

Carter ran to the door and pushed against it. Something sharp jabbed deep into his back, cutting him open, and Becca giggled, her frosty breath on his ear. She kept slashing at him while he pushed against the cage door.

Together, Carter and Victoria managed to pull the door open enough for Carter to slither out, his back greased by his own blood. The moment they released it, the door slammed shut and locked itself.

“Come back!” Becca shrieked. She became transparent, passed through the cage door, then grew solid again on the other side, holding a short, curved blade in one hand and a coil of razor wire in the other.

Victoria ran back to the ladder—it might not have been the quickest way out of the room, but they didn’t have time to search for another. While they climbed, Becca appeared at the foot of his ladder, hissing and slashing at Carter’s legs, trying to drag him back down.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Sameer sat by Emily’s unconscious form, gently prodding her with his fingertips. The fall had knocked them both out, and he was the first to recover.

“Emily?” he whispered. “Emily, wake up.”

She groaned but didn’t open her eyes.

They’d landed, after a long fall, on a dusty concrete slab in a room full of cardboard boxes and wooden crates.

“Emily,” he said louder, poking her arm harder. “You have to get up.”

“Huh?” Emily’s eyes opened, and she let off a few sneezes as loud as gunshots. “My throat hurts.”

“It’s the dust. Here.” Sameer helped her sit up and handed her a bottle of Dasani water. She sipped it gratefully.

“What happened?” she asked.

“We took a bad fall. Does anything feel broken? Like your legs?”

“Just my skull. Where are we?”

“It looks like a storage room under Dark Mansion. Your phone’s broken, I think.” Sameer handed her the cell phone that had fallen loose from her belt. The screen was cracked and had gone dark.

“So we’re still...” Emily looked at the bottled water in her hand. “Where did this come from?”

“The vending machine.” Sameer pointed to an open doorway, from which a thin light glowed. “There’s some kind of break room in there. There’s a little booth table with an ashtray, there’s a drink machine, a snack machine...”

“Sameer!” Emily snapped, her eyes growing wide. She stared at the water bottle as if it had turned into a dead rat in her hand. “I said we shouldn’t eat or drink anything from the park. I thought you’d brought this in yourself or something.”

“It’s not really from the park, it’s from a vending machine,” he said. “It’s not like we drank something served by a food booth out there. This doesn’t count, does it?”

“I don’t know! It’s not worth risking, is it?” She quickly screwed the cap back on. “Don’t drink any more of that.”

“Okay, okay, chill...”

“How do we get out of here?” Emily pushed herself to her feet.

“I looked, but I can’t find anything.”

Emily took Sameer’s flashlight and swept it around the room. She stopped when the beam landed on an EXIT sign, currently switched off so it radiated no light.

“That wasn’t there before,” Sameer said. “I looked.”

“Maybe you missed it.” Emily rubbed her head and began pushing heavy cardboard boxes aside to clear the way to the exit. “Help me. We need to get back to the others.”

Sameer began pushing more of the boxes aside, grunting at their weight.

After a few minutes, they’d cleared a path to a steel fire door located just below the sign.

“Who goes first?” Sameer asked.

“I’m not standing around arguing over it,” Emily replied. She pressed the wide metal bar, and they both sighed in relief when the door swung open to the night outside, filled with neon, music, and fresh, salty air. They faced a steep flight of concrete steps leading up to ground level in Haunted Alley.

Down the alley, the lights were on at the Haunted Souvenir Shop at the back corner of Dark Mansion. In the Ghostly Gallery, a row of ghosts made from helium balloons draped in pastel sheets flowed endlessly past, suspended from a moving clothesline. A row of chili dogs piled with onions and jalapenos waited on the Devil Dogs serving counter. Red and gold lights flashed all around the Beat the Devil game, reflecting off the arrangement of oversized white and black chess pieces facing each other across the mechanical board. The overhead racks of Beat the Devil were crammed with prizes, mostly plush goats and lambs.

Before coming to the park, Sameer had dismissed the idea that it was really haunted. He’d only come to help Wes search for his missing brother. He had sort of believed something strange was happening in the park—maybe even a psycho killer or some kind of gang or cult hiding out there, dangerous but not truly supernatural.

Now he knew differently, and he just wanted to escape. The idea of challenging some demonic entity to a game of Beat the Devil had seemed absurd before, but now it seemed like an obvious way to get killed. He watched a group of ghostly kids flicker in and out of visibility as they chased each other up the midway, squealing and screaming with every step. His heart beat faster inside his chest. Those kids freaked him out.

“We should go around front and wait for the others,” Emily whispered.

Sameer nodded and followed her out to the park’s central plaza. All the games and rides were still going strong. A security clown rode past on an oversized, motorized red tricycle, his dirty orange curls spilling out beneath his blue peaked cap, swinging a bright pink and yellow truncheon in one hand. He slowed as he glanced toward Sameer, who shivered as the clown’s cold, colorless eyes examined him. Then the clown picked up speed and zipped on down the midway.

The buildings of the central plaza seemed much taller than he remembered, four or five stories instead of just one or two, adorned with masses of flashing lights and cartoony paintings of circus animals and ice cream cones. Even the wishing well had grown into a multi-tiered brick fountain.

One tall structure in particular caught his eye. He didn’t think it had been here when they’d walked into the plaza, because he wouldn’t have missed it.

The attraction, or at least its facade, was four stories high, painted to look like reddish stone. The front appeared to be crowded with sculptures of people in medieval Indian dress, and the spaces between them were embellished with geometrical shapes, keeping his eyes busy wherever he looked. Two smaller stone towers of similar design flanked the main building.

Sameer told himself that it had to be fake, because there was no way anybody could move that much stone in the short time he’d been inside the haunted house. He approached the front steps, which also looked like red stone and led up between a pair of columns into a dark, narrow cave of an entrance.

The giant sign above the entrance, written in English but in an ornate font reminiscent of Sanskrit, read THE GREAT LIBRARY OF NALANDA.

Sameer approached it slowly, with a feeling of awe. He’d long been fascinated by the lost university of Nalanda, a great center of learning in India for centuries before Turkish invaders destroyed it in the twelfth century. The small rectangular doorway seemed to call to him, tempting him with the mysteries of lost knowledge.

He approached the front steps. Emily said something behind him, but Sameer barely heard her. He was stunned to see any version of the Nalanda library here, even if it was just some kind of amusement park attraction.

Sameer ascended the steps, his heart beating rapidly in anticipation, all his fear momentarily forgotten. Some part of his mind, way at the back, was screaming for him to stop, to turn back and run away, but it was a weak little voice, easy to ignore. Sameer was completely entranced by the sight of the ancient library. He had to look inside.

He passed through the doorway into an open, cool, shadowy space, with different floor levels and platforms connected by stairs and ladders. Circular oil lamps with five wicks each filled the space with the smell of burning butter and cast their dancing light on shelves heaped with thousands of palm-leaf manuscripts.

He heard footsteps approach, but he was too in awe to feel afraid, even when the man in the candy-striped hat emerged around a shelf of manuscripts and looked down at him from one of the narrow flights of stairs.

“Impressive, is it not?” the man asked. “An archive of the ages. In its day, scholars could study all of human knowledge here. There were nine stories of leaves and scrolls in Sanskrit, Mandarin, Greek, Latin...”

“How is this possible?” Sameer whispered. “How is it here?”

“It is here because it is among your fondest wishes,” the man said. “Are you pleased, Sameer?”

“Can I read them?”

“Read anything you like.”

Sameer gently lifted a stacked bundle of rectangular palm-leaf pages held together by string. The manuscript felt dry and fragile in his fingers, ready to crumble into fragments if he was careless with it.

The leaves were written in a flowery Nagari script, an archaic form of the modern Devanagari his mother had taught him. He struggled to read the faded ink on the first page, which was illustrated by a compact drawing of the goddess Kali, portrayed as a four-armed woman wearing nothing but a necklace of human heads.

“I wish I could spend the rest of my life studying these manuscripts,” Sameer whispered.

“You may have your wish,” the man replied.

Sameer focused on the figures at the upper left of the leaf. The manuscript grew warm in his fingers, and then tiny flames rose from the text. Before he could react, the flames spread quickly, devouring the dry old leaf and scorching his fingers.

“Ouch!” Sameer threw the old manuscript aside and stuck his burned fingers in his mouth. The burning book landed on a shelf of similar old, dry manuscripts. Tongues of fire crawled up and down, igniting the shelves above and below it.

“Careful,” the man in the hat said. “You’re going to lose thousands of years’ worth of knowledge.”

“No!” Sameer beat at the spreading fire with his hands, wincing at the pain. The fire raced up and down, leaping to other shelves of old manuscripts. Cursing, Sameer took off his shirt and tried to smother the fire, but it was spreading and growing much too fast. A long row burst into flames, sending a runner of fire to the shelves on the next wall.

“There are few fragrances more satisfying than a burning library,” the man said, completely stoic as the fire whooshed from shelf to shelf. “You should have seen what Julius Caesar did to the Library of Alexandria. I wish I had a thousand ambitious souls like his to work with. Men of the modern age are nothing but weak clay.”

“Help me!” Sameer said. He slapped at the flames faster, but his shirt caught on fire and he had to drop it onto the wooden floorboards.

“I have helped you,” the man said. “Your wish has come true.”

As though someone had pumped an enormous unseen bellows, the flames erupted into flowing torrents, sweeping from wall to wall and floor to floor, climbing the narrow stairs and wooden ladders. Rows of dry, brittle manuscripts burst into crackling little fires.

The smoke rose thick and dark from all sides, stinging Sameer’s eyes and searing his lungs. He coughed and gasped for air, but the man in the striped hat did not seem to have trouble breathing. A shadow of a smile appeared at one corner of the man’s mouth.

Sameer gave up on saving the library and ran down the narrow red steps through which he’d entered. Blinded by smoke, he smacked directly into a solid rock wall at a full run, bloodying his nose. He leaned against the wall and coughed again.

He felt around with his hands, but the doorway was gone, replaced by a carving of Kali so large the human heads on her necklace were life-sized.

“Where’s the door?” Sameer hacked and coughed as he turned around. The smoke thinned enough for him to see the man in the hat standing on the stairs ahead of him, watching Sameer coolly.

“The only way out is through the flames,” the man said. “It will only sting for a moment.”

The thick fire billowed down the stairs, passing through the man as if he were a ghost, and crashed down onto Sameer like a tidal wave. Sameer howled in pain, breathing in raw flames, until he collapsed into a charred heap on the burning floor.

* * *

As they reached Wishing Well Plaza at the center of the park, Emily found herself staring at a dark new attraction that had appeared next to the haunted house. She knew it hadn’t been there before, or she would have drooled at the sight of it.

The facade resembled a black two-story house with thick red curtains blocking the windows. Three steps led up to a door that looked like a coffin stood on its end, and the sign above it read PSYCHICAL RESEARCH LABORATORY. A smaller sign suggested: EXPERIENCE THE MYSTERIES OF DEATH!

Emily drifted toward it, forgetting about Sameer and the supernatural danger they faced. She just wanted a quick peek inside. The words “psychical research” made her think of nineteenth-century parapsychologists like William James, the kind who would visit Spiritualists and mediums in search of hard evidence of the afterlife.

She ascended the three steps, and the coffin door opened as she approached.

The interior looked just as she’d imagined. To her right, it resembled a nineteenth-century laboratory with racks of glass bottles interspersed with strange handmade devices of wood and iron. To her left lay a long table strewn with Tarot cards, a crystal ball, a planchette with a pencil for spirit writing, a brass “spirit trumpet” that was supposed to amplify the voices of the dead during seances. Leatherbound books lined the back wall of the room, with such titles as Notes on the Nature and Substance of Ghostly Ectoplasm.

Emily approached the wooden table with the occult artifacts, barely noticing as the front door closed softly behind her. The long scroll of spirit-writing paper had coiled up against the planchette, and she unrolled it and smoothed it out. Words were written at every angle, like the scribbling of a schizophrenic, and a few particularly large ones jumped out at her: ALONE, COLD, and HELP ME.

“I knew you would feel at home here,” a voice said, and she jumped. A man dressed like a carnival barker approached her from the rack of laboratory glassware. She hadn’t seen him there before. His gray eyes regarded her without any hint of emotion. “I know your kind, Emily. For millennia I have watched you searching for hints and glimmers in tea leaves and pig entrails, and later with cameras and magnets.” He stopped in the middle of the room, staring at her.

Emily felt nervous, but she knew she ought to be terrified—this was clearly the man Carter and his friends kept talking about, the one they claimed was Satan or some kind of demon. He was the one behind all the strangeness at the park.

At this moment, and in this setting, she was less frightened than curious. It seemed like a place where the human and the supernatural could meet and discuss, and she was eager to know what such a being had to say for himself.

It was only the weakest, quietest part of her mind telling her to run away, that she was in a lot of danger. Emily didn’t want to hear that.

“Many fools have spent their lives staring into the inexplicable chasm between science and the soul,” the man said. “Most find nothing...but you, Emily, shining the particular brilliance of your mind into that dark, might actually manage to find something there, some evidence or artifact to present to the world. Of course, few will believe you, as most people cling to their beliefs with an unshakeable stubborn stupidity. They need their primitive tribal myths of an angry god-king hurling thunderbolts from the sky, or their myth of an indifferent and empty material universe—you are among the few, very few, who dare to seek the bridge between these extremes.”

“Who are you?” Emily asked.

“You already know the answer. Ask a more interesting question.” His gaze shifted to the laboratory area, and Emily looked along with him.

She pointed to a device that looked like an archaic phonograph amplifier, coiled in exposed wires, connected by tubing to a wooden cube of a box painted with runes and sealed with brass locks on every side.

“What is that, then?” she asked.

“That device was designed and constructed by a Spiritualist splinter group in New York in 1887. They called it a spirit box.”

“And what does it do?” Emily moved closer, looking into the brass amplifier cone. She felt the warning signal again, somewhere at the back of her mind, but was much too curious to be cautious. For some reason, she felt completely safe.

“Its purpose is to capture spirits,” the man told her. “Malevolent and troublesome spirits, specifically, though I suppose it could capture any kind.”

“Does it work?”

“If you wish to see how it functions, you may activate it.”

The wires ran into a wooden box, ornately carved with strange, twisted trees and odd geometrical shapes. A single lever jutted out of the top of the box, next to a tiny, unlit light bulb. The cluster of filaments inside the bulb looked like something from the Edison era.

Emily hesitated, knowing that something was wrong but not sure what it was. It felt like someone had washed out her brain with cold water. All she could think of was how curious she was to throw the switch.

She took the lever in her hand and prepared to push it.

Then she hesitated.

Everything in the room—with the dusty old volumes on ghost lore and the Victorian-era gear for talking to spirits—seemed handpicked to fascinate Emily.

It’s a trap made just for you, whispered the tiny, weak voice at the back of her mind. Emily knew it was right.

She forced herself to take a step backward.

“Where are you going?” the man asked, crossing his arms.

Emily didn’t answer. She dodged around him, heading for the coffin-shaped door through which she’d entered. Her heart was pounding and her skin felt suddenly clammy, as though she’d been having a pleasant dream and only just now noticed that it was a nightmare. She couldn’t move her sneakers fast enough.

“Stop!” the man shouted.

A creaking, cracking sound boomed above.

A box made of old boards wrapped in barbed wire crashed down around Emily. Its roof was low and lined with rusty nails, and she barely managed to drop to her knees and avoid getting stabbed in the scalp.

The interior of the box was lined with sharp-toothed gears and rusty pulleys with chains threaded through them. These gears shrieked as they turned all around her. They drove a dozen heavy steel bolts into the floorboards, locking the box into place around her like a cage.

When the pulleys and gears stopped turning, Emily looked closely at a cluster of them, trying to decipher the elaborate mechanism of rusty wheels.

One of them spun as she studied it, and a thin metallic wire swept towards her eyes. She ducked under it, dropping to the floor again.

The wire tugged open a small, hinged panel built into one side of the box, no larger than her hand. It was near the top. The man leaned close, studying her with cold gray eyes.

“That was stupid,” he said. “And ungrateful. I’ve put all this together for you, Emily, and your only response is to run away?”

“Let me go.” Emily wanted to be demanding, but she could barely whisper. She was terrified of what the strange box full of gears and wheels might do to her.

“You should choose to work with me, Emily. Think of the knowledge I could impart, the mysteries and secrets I could reveal to you. Think of all you could learn.”

Emily’s lip trembled. She barely managed to say the word “no.”

The man’s face twisted into a hideous snarl. Apparently he only had two modes—bland and cold, or furious. He barely looked human as his lips peeled back from his teeth and his face reddened with anger.

Then he looked away quickly, as though he’d heard a loud noise elsewhere in the park.

“I have more important matters to consider than a fat little worm like you, Emily,” he said. “I’ll return in a moment...and then we shall discuss how long you’re willing to stay in that box before you finally give in to me. Do yourself a favor and avoid touching the mechanisms before you, or may you find yourself losing your hands, if not your head.”

He vanished in flash of raw fire, with a sound like a thunderclap. He left a cloud of acrid black smoke in his wake.

Emily peered at the wheels, gears, chains, and wires lining the inside of the box around her, trying to figure out how to escape before he came back.

* * *

After the wall came down and trapped him in the dining room, Wes turned on his flashlight. He pounded on the wall and yelled for Carter and Victoria, but if they answered him, he couldn’t hear it. The new wall was apparently thick enough to be soundproof.

He turned his attention to the door latches, since turning one of them had brought the wall down in the first place. Both doors were now locked tight, and the handles wouldn’t budge.

“Let me out!” Wes shouted, just in case anybody happened to hear him and felt like helping. The night was turning into a frightening disaster.

He’d intended to give the park a quick look just to see if anything strange was really happening. His brother had been missing for a week, and his brother’s friend Jared insisted they’d all disappeared in the park, and that was all the information Wes really had. Having a look for himself seemed the right thing to do, even if they had to break the law to get here—why care about the law when the police weren’t accomplishing anything, anyway? Twelve kids were still missing. Fourteen if he counted Sameer and Emily. Fifteen, if he counted himself.

Wes had already seen enough tonight to know there might be no true logical explanation at all. The rapid restoration of the park, and especially the ghostly kids fading in and out of view, their faces turning to horror masks if you looked at them too long...

He kicked at the walls, remembering how Jared had said that the new, inexplicably larger Dark Mansion was now riddled with hidden doors and passageways. He pushed at a small sidebar with a tarnished silver tea set, but it didn’t move or seem to hold any clues. He swept the tea kettle and its china cups onto the floor, shattering the cups but accomplishing nothing.

“Let me out!” he shouted again. “Is anybody there? What do you want from me?”

He studied one of the full suits of armor flanking the double doors, searching with his fingers for any hidden buttons or levers. When he explored the helmet, he felt it turn slightly to one side, much more easily than he would have expected. He pushed it further, until the helmet had turned sideways to look at the wall.

The floor rumbled, and then one narrow slice of the wall rolled backwards on a pair of tracks, leaving an opening through which Wes would just barely fit if he turned sideways and sucked in his stomach.

Wes stepped close and cautiously peered through the new gap in the wall. Behind it, a dark green corridor with dirty, warped floorboards ran in both directions, lit by widely spaced sconces casting small pools of light. He stepped inside and walked toward the direction in which he’d last seen Carter and Victoria.

“Hey, guys?” he asked. “Can y’all hear me?”

His voice echoed back to him, sounding lower and flatter, and he shuddered. Maybe he didn’t want to draw too much attention to himself.

He walked up the hall, searching for any door or panel through which he could rejoin the others. It turned sharply to the left, and then he emerged in a larger chamber with low lights and an acidic smell. It looked like the back room of a taxidermist’s shop, with skinned animals heaped on one table, crawling with flies—he thought he saw squirrels, some kind of hog, and a canine creature that might have been a coyote, but it was hard to tell because the creatures were just raw meat and veins. The room reeked of decay.

On the next table, a jumble of skins waited to be stuffed, reptiles and birds as well as mammals. Glass eyeballs stared up at him from a large jar.

Wes remembered there had been something like this room in the original Dark Mansion, a creepy taxidermy exhibit, but it hadn’t been nearly so large.

He continued on, seeing strange, deformed creatures mounted behind glass, and then floating in jars of formaldehyde. The jars grew larger as he walked, until they were as tall as him and held bizarre, human-sized creatures with fins, gills, or tails. He hurried past them, worried one of the odd monstrosities would spring out of its jar.

He searched the room until he found the exit, a hidden panel at the back of a cabinet full of animal skulls. He had to remove the damp, sticky skulls and the shelves before he could walk through it.

Wes entered a gallery with brighter light than the previous rooms, crystal chandeliers glowing along a gallery of paintings and sculptures. The first painting depicted Captain James Dark, the fictional original builder of the house, posing at the prow of his black ship while slicing at the wind with a gleaming cutlass.

He stopped and stared at the next painting. His brother Finn, along with Jared and some of his other scummy friends, were on the amusement park’s midway stuffing themselves with food and beer. They ate and drank like greedy animals, their faces and clothes splattered with foam, grease, and ketchup.

“What the hell?” Wes whispered.

The next painting was done in an Old West style, like the cover of a dime novel, depicting Finn and his stupid friend Derek walking up the dusty streets of Fool’s Gold. For some reason, they were dressed like 19th-century gold prospectors. Derek even carried a pickaxe over his shoulder.

In the next, Finn approached a two-story wooden building that was clearly a brothel, with women in low-cut calico dresses on the front porch leaning forward to greet him.

“Typical Finn,” Wes murmured.

In the next, Finn’s shirt was stripped off, and he screamed with a look of helpless terror in his eyes as the women sunk their sharp teeth and long nails into him, drawing blood.

The final painting in the galley showed Finn hanging from the ceiling of the Beat the Devil booth, alongside the stuffed goats and lambs offered as prizes. In the foreground, Wes himself played the booth’s stripped-down version of chess against an unseen opponent. Clearly, he was somehow playing to win his brother back.

“Okay,” Wes said. “Just show me the way.”

The painting creaked and toppled forward from the wall. Wes jumped aside as the top of the painting’s thick, heavy frame struck the floor where he’d been standing.

Three steep wooden stairs were built into the back of the frame, leading up into a dark cavity behind the wall where the painting had hung.

Wes climbed inside and found himself stooped in a crawlspace between the walls. He was on a landing of a hidden staircase, which coiled up out of sight in one direction and down into darkness on the other.

Wes hurried downstairs.

He emerged through an EMPLOYEES ONLY door into the Haunted Souvenir Shop. The lights were on, and the store seemed fully stocked, offering everything from candy to Inferno Mountain t-shirts to ghostly salt and pepper shakers. The old novelty song “Monster Mash” played over the store’s speakers

The glass door to Haunted Alley stood open, and Wes walked out into a warm breeze tinged with sulfur.

The Beat the Devil game was alive, its red and yellow lights flashing. Its hellish painted backdrop of people falling into a cavernous lake of fire glowed under a black light. The hooks along the ceiling were stocked with plush goats and lambs, but there was no sign of Finn.

As Wes approached the booth, he noticed the Devil Dogs stand next to it, offering foot-long wieners heaped with jalapenos and onions next to a row of icy, bubbling sodas in clear plastic cups. They were his favorite flavors, grape and orange. Wes had always been a Fanta fanatic.

He realized his throat felt hot and dry, and he was thirsty from all the walking and screaming he’d already done. One quick sip would cool him off and clear his mind.

As he reached for a cup of orange soda, he remembered Emily’s warning about eating and drinking. He forced himself to stop.

“Help yourself,” a voice said. A man in a striped hat, like the carnival barker the others had described, now stood in the Beat the Devil booth, watching him across the chessboard. “Refreshments are free tonight. Special promotion.”

“I try to avoid amusement-park food,” Wes said, making himself turn away from the tempting drinks and approach the booth. “Where’s my brother?”

“He’s here,” the man said. “Most likely at the Fool’s Gold bordello. He does love that place, and he should. It sprang from his own desires.”

Wes turned to walk away, up Haunted Alley and over to the Old West town.

“However, should you find him there, he won’t be in the form you desire,” the man added. “If you wish him fully restored, body and soul, you must best me in a game.”

Wes stopped and looked back. “Are you really the devil?” he asked.

“An interesting word, isn’t it? The devil. More of a title than a name. One can even capitalize it. The Devil.”

“Like...Satan?” Wes turned to face him. “Lucifer?”

“So many names, where does one begin?” the man asked.

“What are you really?”

“I am whatever you require me to be. Just now, Wesley, you need me to be someone who will restore your brother to you, should you win a game of strategy and skill. So that is who I am.”

Wes felt cold and afraid as he made himself walk toward the game booth.

“If I win, you return Finn, alive and well and healthy, right?” Wes asked. “No tricks?”

“I adhere perfectly to the letter of all my agreements,” the man told him. “I’ve even been known to grant wishes, on occasion. If you win, your brother will be returned alive and well and healthy, as you say.”

“And what if I lose?” Wes asked.

“If you know who I am, then you know my usual price.”

My soul, Wes thought. He nodded. “Okay. I’m ready to play.”

“The bargain is accepted.” The man leaned over the chess board, the brim of his candy-striped hat casting a dark shadow over his dead eyes.

Wes looked down at the game board.

Beat the Devil looked like an oversized chessboard with a reduced number of squares. Each player began with three pieces: a king, a knight, and a rook. Each piece was mounted on a mechanical stem. The pieces had to be moved like gear sticks through grooves carved into the board. The number of possible moves was extremely limited by the few available groove paths for each piece.

The game operator had never appeared to control the board directly—the “devil’s” black pieces had always seemed to move on their own, as if the player faced an invisible opponent. As a kid, Wes had thought the game was remotely operated, or perhaps there was someone hidden beneath the game table moving the controls. Now he considered that, with so few possible moves available anyway, the game table might have been entirely automatic, running on some kind of simple clockwork-and-weights programming.

The pieces began in opposing corners of the board rather than on opposing sides. Wes, as the customer, had the white pieces—a spindly, shriveled-looking horse as his knight, a crumbling white castle tower with significant chunks of its wall and upper curtain missing, as though it had endured heavy mortar fire, and a sagging hunchbacked king.

He looked across at the black pieces. The black castle looked sturdier and taller than his, and the black horse snarled around bared fangs, the interior of its nostrils and mouth red as though it breathed fire. The king was tall, dressed in black armor and a helmet with a closed visor and large ram horns mounted on its sides, sword and shield raised.

A fourth character stood among them, dressed in black robes and a cowl that obscured its face.

“Is that a bishop?” Wes asked. “I don’t have a bishop.”

“We play the game as it lies,” the man said.

“That’s not fair!” Wes studied the gearshift paths carved into the board, panicking. He had to reshuffle in his brain all the possible moves available, given the limited number of squares and the even more limited number of paths between them. How would he defend against the extra piece? He’d been thrown off balance.

“The game board has not changed since you arrived, Wes. Perhaps you should have inspected it and voiced your protests before entering our agreement.”

“This is cheating,” Wes said. “There was never a bishop here before.”

“Do you want your brother restored?” the man asked. “White moves first.”

Wes glared at the man, then looked down at the game board again, wondering how he was going to survive and take his opponent’s king.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Theodore Hanover Junior drove his black Mercedes sedan down the Gulf Coast Highway, his headlights piercing the gloom ahead. He drank from a bottle of Bowmore single-malt Scotch, clutching it between his thighs when he needed both hands for the wheel. ZZ Top blasted over the stereo system: “Got Me Under Pressure.”

Teddy had visited the site of Hanover Construction and unlocked a shed at the back of the paved lot. The family’s construction company had once done brisk business around town, particularly in the 1970’s and 1980’s, when everybody in town wanted an oversized pirate or a giant walrus to advertise their business. Artie Schopfer and Teddy’s own father had done much of the work involved in turning the beach strip into the gaudy eyesore it was today.

Hanover Construction had built more mundane creations, too, like strip malls and fast-food restaurants, but even those had gone into a clear decline by the 1990’s. The breaking of more recent real estate bubbles had finally put the struggling little company out of its misery.

The construction company was now an empty box of a corporation, a warehouse and sheds with equipment and tools and nobody to use them. It would have been evicted from the industrial lot by now if the Hanovers hadn’t also owned the land beneath it.

Teddy had gone into the shed and opened a padlocked crate. Six sticks of dynamite remained at the bottom, stored in a somewhat unsafe and illegal manner for the past two years. The nitroglycerine inside them had sweated badly, forming white crystals on the sticks’ paper skin. Old dynamite was extremely dangerous to handle in this condition, but Teddy wasn’t in a self-preservation sort of mood tonight, not at all.

The old crate rattled in his back seat now, the dynamite sticks rolling against each other as he rounded a curve. He’d also collected blasting caps and safety fuses, and he’d brought his lucky gold-plated Zippo lighter with the eight ball on the front. He normally used the Zippo for the occasional celebratory cigar when a deal went well, but recent years had brought him fewer and fewer causes for celebration.

Teddy’s idea had been simple. He would sit down in his home office, have one last cigar, and use it to light up the old dynamite. The explosion would not only end his suffering for all time, but would also burn down the family home, keeping it out of the hands of the cold-blooded hit man who’d killed Teddy’s father. A spectacular, fiery suicide to escape the lifetime of guilt, self-loathing, and poverty that lay ahead.

Then he’d had a better idea.

The devil had mocked him for five years, every time Teddy took Beachview Drive through the old strip. With its big red face, its immense horns, and most of all its huge, laughing mouth with the train tracks unfurled like a long steel tongue, the devil had seemed to mock Teddy every time he passed. You had your father murdered, and all you got was this lousy sinkhole, it seemed to say. And: I’ll see you when you’re dead. For all eternity. You’re mine.

The amusement park, Teddy now realized, was his real target. His father’s obsession with Starland had cost the family millions of potential dollars from the condominium developers. The moment his father had died, and Teddy was finally free to sell the beachfront properties, they had been rendered worthless by a sudden act of God. Or the Devil, Teddy thought. Nobody wanted to build anything near the largest and deadliest sinkhole in the history of Florida. Nobody wanted to vacation in a little town best known for disasters and dead children.

All of this spun in his mind as he turned off the Gulf Coast Highway and onto an overgrown, unlined road that ran behind a boarded-up gas station. He reached a rusty gate that blocked the road, and he left his car idling as he climbed out.

Teddy unlocked the gate, took another swig of whiskey, and drove on down the road. High palm trees and thick brambles walled in the road on either side, and the thorny undergrowth had swallowed up the edges of the pavement.

The service road ran across undeveloped property between Gulf Coast Highway and Beachview Road. If Teddy’s father had his way, he would have bankrupted the family trying to make all of this into the Panhandle’s Disney World.

In the long-lost past, delivery trucks had trundled up and down this road, filled with hot dogs, Coke, and cheap plush toys for tourists to win. Teddy was probably the first person to drive down it in the last five years.

He reached the back gate of Starland, which was made of chain-link and just as choked with weeds and vines as the rest of the fence. The cold rain poured more heavily now as he climbed out, opened the padlocks, and uncoiled the chains. The two big chain-link panels that made up the gate squealed as he pushed them open. He had to push hard to stretch and rip the tough vines woven through the gate’s hinges, but he finally separated them wide enough to let his car pass through.

He drove into the backlot of the park, where the administration trailers sagged into high weeds and the corrugated-metal storage and maintenance sheds had become rusty and overgrown. A tall privacy fence with solid wooden gates hid this area from the rest of the park.

Teddy sat and drank, his car idling while he stared at the rotten wooden gates ahead. They could open wide enough to allow a semi truck through, though that was usually only done when an attraction was being added or removed.

From here, he could see the dark fake-volcano mass of Inferno Mountain rising against the sky, the devil’s horns reaching above the cold crater at the top to blot out the stars.

Teddy intended to make that volcano erupt. He didn’t know if six sticks of dynamite would be enough to level it down to rubble, but he would do his best.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Carter followed Victoria up the ladder as fast as he could, inadvertently bumping his face against her rear end in his hurry to escape from Becca’s ghost slashing at his legs and feet.

Victoria banged the walls with her elbow as she ascended, searching for an escape from the narrow vertical crawlspace. A rectangular panel popped out of the wall beside her.

She toppled through the opening, and Carter scrambled after her, eager to get away from the malicious ghost. Before his feet touched the floor, he found himself tangled in what felt like spiderwebs. He flailed at the strings clinging to his face and arms, but they didn’t break.

They were in a workshop, the hammers and the jigsaw rusting under a layer of grime, the open paint cans filled with a long-dried crust. Little wooden heads and feet lay scattered along a workbench.

Carter had stumbled into marionettes hung from the ceiling, with sharp-looking wooden clapper mouths and creepy painted eyes. A knight marionette’s strings were tangled around his left arm, while the strings supporting a wooden monkey had wrapped across his face and around his head.

He pulled back from the puppets, glancing warily at the open hole halfway up the wall through which they’d entered the room. Becca hadn’t followed them out, but he could hear her voice muttering and giggling inside the shaft.

Carter took Victoria’s arm, and together they ducked under a dragon with a segmented body. They threaded their way among horses and jesters as they moved toward a red curtain at one end of the room, framed by a backstage wooden scaffolding with steep stairs and catwalks for the puppeteers.

Carter heard a wooden click just behind his left ear. He turned to see a wizard puppet hanging beside him, dressed in a pointy hat and robes with yellow moons and stars. Its gray beard framed a sharp wooden mouth with painted white teeth.

“I think that puppet just snapped at me,” Carter whispered.

Another wooden click sounded in the dark, somewhere past Victoria. She turned her light onto a princess wearing a tiara and a frilly pink dress, with long blond hair and dead blue eyes, its sharp notch of a mouth painted with pink lipstick. The puppet’s arms and legs hung limply, but its sightless eyes seemed to stare at them.

Creaks sounded ahead. A puppet that looked like a witch with a black hat and a long green nose swung back and forth on its strings as though someone had pushed it or bumped against it, but nobody else was in the room.

More marionettes began to sway on their strings, as if a strong breeze blew through the room.

“I hate this place,” Victoria whispered.

“Keep moving.” Carter took her hand as they hurried toward the red curtain. He pushed aside the stiff, musty cloth.

They both screamed at the sight of a man on the other side, his head concealed inside a burlap sack with two eye holes and a stitched slash of a mouth. His clothes were faded and tattered, and he clutched a butcher knife in one hand.

Carter and Victoria grabbed onto each other for a moment, before realizing that the man was just a life-sized marionette hanging limply on its strings, as boneless as a scarecrow.

“It’s Old Sackhead,” Carter whispered, stepping closer to it.

“Who?”

“He used to wave from the upper window at people waiting in line.”

“So what’s he doing down here?” Victoria whispered.

“I guess he’s kind of a puppet. Maybe he wanted to be with his own kind,” Carter whispered back.

“That’s possibly the creepiest thing you could have said.” Victoria jabbed him in ribs with her sharp elbow.

Carter gave Old Sackhead a push, and the serial killer puppet swung back and forth on its creaking strings. They stepped around it, onto a narrow stage overlooking what appeared to be a nursery or daycare room. Faded letters and numbers decorated the walls. Tiny overturned chairs, abandoned stuffed animals, and threadbare hobby horses were scattered across the floor, covered by thick dust. A cartoon rabbit nightlight glowed from one outlet, providing what little light the room had. Near it, four small blankets lay in a row, as if the kids had vanished during nap time.

Old Sackhead gave another loud creak as its swinging slowed down. Carter looked at it again. Through the eye holes, he could now see two closed eyes inside the sack. The skin was paper-white, but it looked real.

Carter reached over and touched the hem of the sack pooled around the marionette’s shoulders.

“What are you doing?” Victoria whispered.

“It looks like somebody’s in there,” Carter said, taking the rough burlap in his fingers. “We have to take off the mask and see if it’s one of the missing people.”

“Do we have to?”

“We can’t just leave someone trapped here like this.”

“I hate that you’re right,” she whispered.

Carter began to lift the mask, revealing a pale white throat underneath.

The eyes opened, revealing pale, colorless irises. A moan sounded behind the stitched-up mouth hole.

Sackhead swung his bloodstained butcher knife. It wasn’t a rubber or plastic prop, but a real blade, as Carter realized when the sharp point stabbed through his shirt and into the side of his arm.

Carter yelled and stumbled back, but Old Sackhead came after him, swinging forward on the strings that held his arms and legs. The butcher knife slashed at Carter’s throat, barely missing him. He toppled backwards off the stage. Victoria jumped down alongside him to avoid the swinging knife.

While he regained his feet, Old Sackhead twisted back and forth on the stage above, slashing his butcher knife at empty space, grunting through its stitched mouth as if frustrated.

“I think I see a door over there,” Victoria whispered, pointing to the far side of the room.

A rubbery squeaking noise sounded from above them. A grid of wires lined with rubber wheels was inset into the ceiling, as if the room had been designed so the marionettes could fly out above the audience.

One row of wheels squeaked as it turned, pulling a wire taut. It towed the wooden cross of Old Sackhead’s control handle toward Carter and Victoria.

Old Sackhead advanced over the lip of the stage, his feet dangling loose in the air. The overhead line sagged under his weight, bringing him lower and closer to them. He stabbed at Victoria’s head, and she screamed and ducked away from his butcher knife.

Carter and Victoria ran, and Sackhead picked up speed as he rolled forward on the overhead wire, jabbing his blood-stained knife.

They raced toward the door while the rubber wheels shrieked overhead and the Sackhead marionette picked up more speed.

Carter’s shin cracked into something hard. He toppled forward, sprawling across the musty old carpet. A small rocking horse had hooked around his lower leg. He hadn’t seen it in the dim room.

Old Sackhead stopped where he was, swinging back and forth, his mushy burlap head turning to watch them. The ugly marionette’s control bar dropped from one line to another in the spiderweb of overhead cables, bringing his rotten boots closer to the floor. A different set of rubber wheels screeched overhead, and the puppet rolled directly toward Carter.

“Carter!” Victoria reached down to help him up, and then screamed as the marionette’s knife slashed across her back, cutting open her shirt and leaving a deep red slash across her pale skin. Carter had a quick flash of Tricia rolling out of Inferno Mountain on the black train, the bright red blood on her lifeless white body.

Victoria ran to the door, pulling on the handle, and then banging on it while Carter pulled himself free of the rocking horse.

“It’s locked!” Victoria shouted. She spun aside as Old Sackhead caught up and stabbed at her again. The puppet thrashed and squirmed on its control lines as if trying to break free.

Carter tossed her the skeleton key, then picked up the little rocking horse. He swung it into Old Sackhead’s torso. One of the horse’s legs splintered on impact, and Old Sackhead let out a grunt and slashed at Carter. The tip of the blade stabbed through Carter’s shirt and gouged his chest, leaving a long, shallow cut.

Beside him, Victoria inserted the skeleton key and struggled to turn the doorknob.

Old Sackhead swung forward on his strings. The knife lashed Carter’s arm, cutting him open.

“The strings!” Victoria shouted.

Carter looked up and realized what she meant. He flung the rocking horse over his head with both arms, and it slammed into the five strings supporting Old Sackhead, sending the hideous puppet swinging backwards.

The door finally scraped open, and Victoria stumbled through it, pulling Carter behind her. Old Sackhead was already swinging back his way. The butcher knife lunged at Carter’s head, but Carter was already outside the room, standing in a dark hallway. He slammed the door at the approaching marionette. Old Sackhead crashed into the other side of the door, rattling the entire doorframe.

They ran down a twisting, narrow wooden hallway. Entire segments of the hallway shifted from side to side, trying to trip them as they ran. They passed another room where two mannequins of teenagers sat on a ratty couch. One had long, red strings connecting his empty eye sockets to the broken screen of the television several feet away like long optic nerves. The other held a cell phone near her ear, connected to her face by nerves and tendons.

In the next chamber, a corpse in a tricorner hat sat in an old wooden chair, surrounded by treasure chests overflowing with heaps of gold and jewels. The corpse had an eyepatch, a long black beard and a hook hand, and in general looked like the weeks-old corpse of a dead pirate. A wooden rail separated the scene from passing visitors.

“Oh, thank God,” Carter whispered. “We’re near the end of the maze.”

The pirate’s eyes glowed red.

“Stay away from my gold!” his recorded voice hissed.

Carter led the way to a door that appeared to be made of driftwood planks randomly nailed together. He pulled on the brass loop of the handle, but the door didn’t budge. Victoria stepped forward and unlocked it with the skeleton key.

The door led out onto a small landing overlooking a short staircase with a rotten red carpet. The stairs led down to a pair of black glass double doors. Spiderwebs and puppet bats hung above them, the little bat wings rustling as they flapped.

“That’s the Haunted Souvenir Shop ahead,” Carter whispered. “It’s the only way out.”

“Should we leave? Or go back and look for everyone?”

“We’re lucky if anyone else is still alive. Let’s check outside, maybe someone else escaped.”

They descended the creaking stairs. They had to use the skeleton key again to unlock the black glass doors. He wondered how long they would have been trapped inside the haunted house if not for the key. They would have died without it.

The souvenir shop was brighter than the rooms and corridors from which they’d emerged, and the merchandise looked shiny and new: skull-shaped candle holders, black cat sunglasses, a few bobble-head devils with suction cups on their hands and feet. It looked as though the shop were open for business, and Carter half-expected a clerk to step out behind the cash register.

They were alone for the moment, and it was their first chance to catch their breath.

“We’re lucky Becca didn’t follow us out and cut us to pieces,” Carter said, glancing at the black-glass door.

“Maybe she can’t,” Victoria said. “Maybe she’s stuck in there where she died.”

“Maybe she’s stuck...” Carter echoed. In his mind, he saw Jared suspended near the ceiling, run through with wires and countless sharp instruments. He couldn’t believe Jared was really dead—it was too shocking to accept. He tried to stop thinking about it.

“You’re bleeding all over.” Victoria’s warm fingers touched his arm, his chest, and then his face.

“How’s your back?” he asked.

“Everything feels terrible, and I’m bleeding from everywhere,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Look, remember these?” He pointed to a pair of salt and pepper shakers shaped like cartoon ghosts.

“Like the ones from the flea market.” She lifted one up and checked the price. “$4.99. I told you fifty cents was a good deal.”

The front door of the souvenir shop was unlocked, so they stepped out into the reddish glow of Haunted Alley, where the attractions still looked brand new and brightly lit, except for the immense dark mass of Inferno Mountain overshadowing the game and food booths. The alley smelled of chili dogs and a sulfurous tang like burnt onions.

“Wes!” Carter shouted, waving.

Wes stood at the Beat the Devil game, his whole body washed in the glowing red and yellow lights. He did not acknowledge Carter and Victoria as they approached him. He stared at the chess board in front of him, his eyes bulging, his lips pale and shaking as though he were about to vomit. His legs wobbled beneath him.

“Wes?” Victoria waved a hand in front of Wes’s face. He blinked a few times and seemed to finally notice her and Carter, but he didn’t say anything.

“Have you seen anyone else?” Carter asked. “Emily or Sameer? Anybody?”

Wes’s brow furrowed as though he couldn’t quite grasp the question. His gaze dropped back to the chess board.

“I’m losing,” Wes whispered.

On the oversized chess board, with its maze of mechanical grooves running through each of its squares, Wes had only his spindly-looking white knight and his white king remaining. Four black pieces had staked out positions around the game board, closing in on Wes’s king.

The gearworks concealed beneath the board hummed and churned. The chess board vibrated as the black bishop stalked across the board. It thumped as it jerked from square to square, as though moved by an invisible hand.

Wes’s white knight sunk down into its groove and out of sight among the machinery below. The bishop advanced into the defeated knight’s place, and the humming machinery below fell silent.

“I believe that leaves you in checkmate, or it inevitably will,” said a voice from the shadows at the back of the booth, which made Carter and Victoria jump in surprise. “If one considers all possible moves from this point.”

The man in the striped hat stepped forward. Carter didn’t know how he could have missed the man standing only a few feet away. Fresh, cold fear rose inside him, but Carter forced himself to step forward, shielding Victoria in case the man attacked.

The man did not attack. He stood behind the counter in his pinstriped suit, arms folded, cold eyes watching Wes.

Wes studied the arrangement on the board, tapping his fingers in midair, clearly trying to calculate a way out of the situation, but even Carter could see it was hopeless. Wes’s king was unguarded, outgunned, and surrounded.

“I lost,” Wes finally whispered. He looked up at Carter and Victoria, panic all over his face. “I lost. You have to help me!”

Wes bolted up Haunted Alley toward Wishing Well Plaza, but he didn’t get far.

The man in the striped hat held up one hand, then snapped it forward as though casting a fishing line into a river.

Wes’s head jerked around toward the man, his mouth distended to one side as if he’d been hooked. His ankles twisted inside his shoes, and he grunted in pain.

He stumbled back toward the Beat the Devil game, drawn face-first by an invisible force. He tried to stand against it, but he kept moving forward, his feet dragging along the ground behind him. He wailed in pain as his cheek distended further.

“Nobody reneges on a deal with me,” the man said. There was an angry tremor in his voice, though his face remained placid. “The bargain must be honored down to the letter. Those are the rules.”

Wes moaned and muttered, possibly trying to protest, his words incoherent because the side of his mouth was still stretched unnaturally wide.

Carter hurried over, trying to figure out how to remove Wes from the invisible hook in his mouth. The man raised his hand higher. Wes levitated from the ground, his sneakers kicking in the air, and he screamed while foamy red spit drooled from his stretched lips.

Then he began to glow.

A white fire seemed to ignite inside him. Pinpoints of light beamed from a hundred thousand pores in his skin. The light inside his head glowed so bright his face became translucent, the eyes and nostrils and open mouth burning a phosphorescent white.

Then the distended side of his mouth ruptured open, along with half his face, and the white light flowed out in a stream of glowing, transparent fog. As if borne on a current of wind, it flowed down the alley, over the chess board, and into the man’s upraised, cupped hand.

The man’s mouth moved very slightly, giving a thin ghost of a smile.

Wes’s body shriveled and dried as it hung in the air. By the time the last glowing tendrils trickled out of the ruptured cave of his face, he looked like a mummified body that had baked in hot desert sand for centuries.

Wes’s shrunken corpse crashed to the ground. The last curls of glowing fog vanished into the man’s hand, which closed into a fist.

The man’s colorless eyes looked at Carter and Victoria, as though noticing their presence for the first time.

On the chessboard, all the pieces snapped back into starting position.

“Who’s next?” the man in the striped hat asked. “Who wants to make a wager?”

Carter and Victoria looked at each other, and they instantly knew they were both thinking the same thing. They turned away from the Beat the Devil game and ran up the alley.

“Stop them,” the man’s voice said behind them.

In an eyeblink, a crowd of people appeared ahead of them, blocking their escape. Dozens of children stood among them, staring at Carter and Victoria with colorless eyes. The gang of kids they’d seen earlier, led by a girl of nine or ten with blond hair and pink ladybug barrettes, were front and center. The girl stepped forward, pale and muddy, and her eyes turned solid black.

“Let me kill them,” she whispered.

Carter and Victoria stumbled to a halt. The girl giggled and stalked toward them, trailed by more pale, muddy children with empty eyes.

“Calm yourself, Kylie,” the man in the striped hat said. Carter turned to see that the man now stood in front of the Beat the Devil booth instead of inside it, which brought him several feet closer. He leaned back against the chess board, studying them. “Before the sinkhole, Kylie was just a girl with a sneaky streak. She’s grown into one of my most enthusiastic pupils.”

Kylie, the little girl with the pink ladybug barrettes, smiled with sharp little teeth.

“I told you, Carter, that if you returned to the park, I would not simply allow you to leave again. You came to challenge me. So challenge me. White moves first.”

Carter and Victoria, unable to move either forward or back along the alley, instead moved sideways, putting their backs to the black rocks of Inferno Mountain.

“You cannot refuse to play,” the man said.

“Chess...isn’t really my game,” Carter managed to say.

“Pick any game in the park,” the man told him. “Perhaps Harpoon Lagoon? You were always skilled at that one, weren’t you, Carter?”

“Any game?” Carter asked.

“Don’t do it,” Victoria whispered.

Carter looked at the Beat the Devil game and the Ghostly Gallery, where the balloon ghosts bobbed under their pastel sheets, glowing under black lights as they drifted past on their moving clothesline.

He thought about what Victoria had said about Becca’s ghost being trapped where she’d died. He didn’t know if that was true, but it gave him an idea. If he was right, then a number of things suddenly made sense.

“What about Inferno Mountain?” Carter asked.

The faint smile on the man’s lips faded away.

“That is not a game,” the man said. “Victoria, perhaps you would like to choose first.”

“I know it’s not a game,” Carter said. He tried not to let his fear show, but he knew his voice was trembling. He pushed onward anyway. “Why is it still closed? You’ve re-opened every ride and game in the park, but not the most famous and popular one. Why not?”

The man stared at Carter for a long moment, then looked up at the dark mass of the mountain as if assessing its value.

“I don’t care for this ride,” the man said. “It’s absurd. I do not have a giant puffy red face or horns or fangs, do I? And that obnoxious, nonstop laughter. It’s an insulting portrayal. I never laugh.”

Carter looked back at the crowd of dead children. “Where is Tricia?” he asked.

“Who? Ah, I remember, your little friend. She must be running wild somewhere.” The man shrugged. “She’s not important right now.”

“Maybe she is.” Carter nodded at the unlit mass of Inferno Mountain. “She’s resisting you, isn’t she? Tricia’s refused to become part of your little horde of murderous ghosts. That’s why Inferno Mountain is closed. She’s inside there, and you don’t control her, so you don’t have complete control of Inferno Mountain. Because it’s her place, it’s where she died...”

“You aren’t making any sense, Carter,” the man said.

Carter looked at Victoria. “She’s been trying to reach into my dreams all these years. She’s telling me to come and save her.”

“She’s not telling you anything,” the man snorted. “She’s dead.”

“Then you won’t mind if I go inside and see her.” Carter gripped the skeleton key tightly and started toward the locked gate of Inferno Mountain, where the RIDE CLOSED sign still hung. This meant walking directly toward the man in the striped hat, and he shivered with fear at what the man might do.

Victoria followed close behind him.

“Are you sure about this?” she whispered.

“The ride is closed!” the man said. He was no longer reclining against the counter of the Beat the Devil game, but striding toward them. “I cannot allow you inside. You may choose anything else.” The man waved his hand, and a new game booth rose from the ground between Dark Mansion and Inferno Mountain. The asphalt pavement stretched to accommodate it, which made Haunted Alley longer and put Carter and Victoria back about twenty feet, lengthening the distance to the pitchfork gate of Inferno Mountain.

The newly arisen game booth took the shape of a two-story brick cube with a round steel bank vault door at the front. The wheel at the center of the door turned, and the enormous circular door heaved open.

Inside, the large vault was crammed full of bales of cash, stacked all the way to the ceiling. Neon letters sprouted at the top of the brick cube and flickered to life: BREAK THE BANK.

“You could win more money than you’ve ever imagined,” the man said. “More than you’ve ever dreamed. Just imagine what your father will think when you bring home all this cash. Let’s play Break the Bank, Carter.”

“No.” Carter kept walking, Victoria just behind him.

“Tori! I have a treat for you.” The man waved his hand, and another attraction rose beyond the Break the Bank game. Again, the alley grew longer to make room for it, putting Carter and Victoria back another twenty feet, but they kept walking.

The new attraction was a glass-walled building. Enormous photographs, each one several feet tall, hung inside it—a close-up of Victoria’s eye, another of her mouth, another of half her face. A shadowy crowd formed beneath the pictures, looking up at them, pointing, whispering, drinking wine. A banner reading THE EYE OF TORI hung above the exhibit.

“For you, Tori,” the man said. “Everything you could want—your work showing at the finest galleries in New York and London, your photography world-famous. I can give you all of this. And let’s be honest, it’s not as though you have the talent to succeed on your own. For that, you’ll need my help.”

“Keep walking,” Carter whispered.

“I know...” Victoria slowed to look at the exhibit, but she didn’t stop.

A third new attraction rose from the ground, featuring a wooden bar with racks of glasses overhead and a row of barstools, all lit by neon beer signs. A woman with bleached hair sat at the corner, drinking a double vodka and smoking a Pall Mall. She was turned away from Carter, her midriff shirt revealing the dragonfly tattoo on her lower back. Her tanned but pudgy belly jutted out a little over the sides of her jeans shorts.

He knew who it was even before she turned her head and smiled at him.

“Carter?” she said. “Come on over here and give your momma a hug.”

“Mom?” Carter asked.

“It’s not,” Victoria whispered

“Carter, I know I’ve been gone a long time, but I miss you so much.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “I miss my little boy.”

“It’s not her, keep moving,” Victoria whispered.

They hurried past the bar as another attraction sprang up beside it—a circle of Corinthian columns, three stories high, which grew a marble dome roof. A towering statue of Carter appeared inside it, surrounded by a shadowy crowd of admirers.

“I can give you power, Carter,” the man hissed. He was starting to look angry now. “Immense power. I can make you a lord of nations, a king of kings...I can do this easily, Carter.”

Carter and Victoria ran faster, finally reaching the pitchfork gate. Carter slid the skeleton key into the lock, but the lock was stiff and difficult to turn.

The man was instantly at Carter’s side, leaning in close. He looked different now, his face covered with deep red and purple patches so dark they seemed almost black, as if he’d suffered severe frostbite. His lips looked rotten and flaked away from his teeth as he spoke.

“Nothing awaits you in there but a wretched and painful death,” the man hissed. “There is no prize to be won.”

“I thought you wanted me to die.” Carter winced as he applied more pressure and the edges of the key cut into his fingers and palm. “I just want to see Tricia again.”

“She’ll kill you,” the man said. “I’ll order her to do it. The truth is, she hates you for abandoning her, for leaving her to die on her own. There is no escape, Carter.”

The key finally completed its turn, and the lock squealed. Carter opened the gate.

“Don’t go in there,” the man repeated, the corner of his rotten lips drawing back to reveal blackened gums and crooked, decaying teeth.

Carter stepped through the gate into the pitchfork-fenced prison of the ride’s waiting area. Victoria followed close behind, clearly eager to get away from the decaying man in the striped hat.

“You’re a fool!” the man shouted. “A dead, rotten fool.”

Carter and Victoria walked back and forth through the line, approaching the loading platform for Inferno Mountain. He noticed the man wasn’t following them, but remained outside the fence, shouting.

“What are we going to do in here?” Victoria whispered. They climbed onto the moldering, uneven wooden platform. The entire ride was still a ruin, with high weeds growing up through the rusty tracks.

“I’m not sure,” Carter whispered back. “If she’s been trying to reach me, maybe she knows what I need to do.”

The overhead lights stuttered to life. With a shower of sparks, the giant red devil head above illuminated for the first time in five years, the light bulbs in its eyes glowing.

“I’ll eat your soul!” the recorded voice shouted. “Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ahh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Outside the fence, the man in the striped hat shivered in clear disgust.

“Tricia!” Carter shouted. “Tricia, are you here?”

“Maybe we should just try to escape,” Victoria said.

The tall volcano rumbled, and heavy machinery groaned deep inside of it. The shrill, rusty squeals were so loud they seemed to claw into Carter’s eardrums. He winced and covered his ears.

The red pitchfork gate at the end of the ride screeched open, tearing through a thick overhang of vines. The rumbling grew closer.

Victoria clenched Carter’s hand more tightly.

The train lurched out of the darkness inside the mountain, trudging forward through the thick weeds that choked the tracks. Carter turned ice-cold inside as the last five years of nightmares became real. Here he was again, on the platform, watching the train approach, the devil laughing at him from high above. He wondered if it was real this time, or if it was just one more nightmare.

“Is that her?” Victoria whispered.

“Yes.”

Tricia sat in the front car, the lone passenger on the train as it pulled into the station. Fresh, bright red blood soaked her dress, as though she’d only just died.

The train braked to a rusty stop at the loading platform. Tricia was only a few feet away, in easy reach, but she didn’t stir. Her blood-soaked necklaces sat on her shoulders, surrounded the gory stump of her neck.

Carter was struck by how much she looked like a child now. He’d grown up over the last five years, but she never would.

“Tricia?” he whispered.

Tricia did not speak—it wasn’t like his dreams, when he heard her soft voice inside his head.

Instead, she held out one pale, lifeless hand, spattered with bright blood.

“She wants me to get on the ride,” Carter whispered. “That’s what she always wants in my dreams.”

“That can’t be a good idea,” Victoria said. “That ride is obviously falling apart. And she might...do what Becca did to Jared.”

“I was supposed to be with her,” Carter said. “I was supposed to die, but I was too afraid to join her. I’ve been living like a ghost ever since.”

He took a step toward Tricia.

“Wait,” Victoria said. “There’s no way this is the right thing to do. You could die, Carter.”

“By now you must know this is no simple amusement anymore. It’s real.” The man still stood outside the high pitchfork fence that encircled the mountain.

The crowd of ghosts had followed him, but they didn’t look so menacing at the moment. Their colorless eyes were upturned toward the enormous laughing devil head, their faces entranced as though it were a sacred bell calling the faithful to worship.

Carter considered what he knew about the ride. It was supposed to be a high-speed ride through Hell, filled with damned souls, demons, and other monstrosities. The idea of the ride had terrified him enough as a child. Now it had fallen into disrepair and rust, and if that didn’t make it dangerous enough, he would be riding it alongside the ghost of the girl he’d abandoned to die on her own.

And the man rumored to be the devil himself was telling him it wasn’t a ride, it was real.

“Let’s just leave,” Victoria whispered. “We can escape.”

“I have to do this.” Carter stepped to the edge of the platform, looking into the blood-splattered seat next to Tricia. He took her stiff, cold hand, her palm wet with gore.

“I’m coming with you, then.” Victoria took in a shaking breath and sighed, looking over the dilapidated black train.

“No. I need to do it alone.” Carter leaned toward her and whispered in a low voice. “It looks like he doesn’t want to come inside the fence. Maybe he can’t. Just wait here for me. The ride only takes a few minutes.”

He dropped into the car next to Tricia and buckled his seat belt. A shower of rust scraped free as the safety bar lowered across their laps.

Victoria looked down at him, shaking her head.

Another rusty squeal sounded, followed by the chattering, laughing voices of children. Ten of them, led by the giggling Kylie with pink ladybug barrettes in her blond braids, came screaming across the platform, flickering in and out of visibility. Victoria scrambled aside, looking horrified as the pale, muddy children with colorless eyes clambered into the train cars behind Carter.

“They’ve wanted to ride it for years,” the man in the striped hat said, glaring at him through the fence. “I don’t think it would be fair to deny them.”

“I just want to watch him die,” whispered Kylie, the ghost-girl in pink barrettes, as she slithered into the seat directly behind Carter. “I hope he gets his head cut off.”

Carter kept his head turned halfway around, watching the ten new arrivals from the side of his eye as they took their seats. They didn’t bother with seatbelts, and the safety bars didn’t drop for them, either. They would be free to crawl up and attack him at any moment during the ride.

Victoria cast him a worried look as the train lurched and began to trundle forward on the track, toward the steep hill into the devil’s waiting mouth.

As the train rolled past the fence, the man in the striped hat spoke a final time.

“I’ll give you one last chance, Carter,” he said. “If the ride grows too dangerous, simply press the red button in front of you. The train will stop, the lights will come up, and you’ll be free to walk away.”

Carter glanced at the dashboard area in front of him. He was almost certain that nothing had been there before, but there was now a large red button with the word STOP.

The train curved away from the fence and began to clack its way up the steep incline.

Tricia gripped his hand in hers. Her fingers were cold as ice and stiff as steel.

“Can you say anything, Tricia?” Carter whispered. He didn’t get a response, inside his mind or otherwise.

As the train climbed the hill, he could see the park spreading out below him, but there wasn’t much to see. It had reverted to old ruins, all the lights out except for the glowing red devil face above him.

The crumbling old tracks creaked under the weight of the train. A strong wind kicked up, and the tracks began to sway and crack, as though the entire support structure beneath the train would break apart at any moment.

The eight-story climb was painfully slow. His guts knotted up inside him. He clasped Tricia’s hand tighter, but her cold, dead skin was no comfort. His heart beat so fast he thought it would erupt from his chest.

I’m going to die, Carter thought, while the tracks swayed beneath him. I’m going to die in there.
Why did I do this?

The train reached the peak of the hill, then dipped forward as it entered the devil’s open, laughing jaws.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Victoria felt her knees shaking as she watched the black train carry Carter and the trainload of dead children up the steep, swaying hill into Inferno Mountain. Her knees tended to bob uncontrollably when she was nervous, and she hated it.

As Carter climbed up and away, the lights of the amusement park snuffed out like ten thousand candles. The game booths of Haunted Alley fell dark, as did the eerie blue lights of Dark Mansion. She risked stepping close to the pitchfork fence and looking out, but she saw no neon, not even from the high rides of Space City. The only light was the radiant red of the devil’s face against the sky.

She watched the train disappear into the flashing red lights of the devil’s mouth. High-pitched screams, angry growling, and rusty, thudding machinery sounded from inside the mountain. It was impossible to tell what was real and what was just an old recording.

A bright pair of lights appeared at the weed-choked base of Inferno Mountain, at the far side of the pitchfork fence. She watched as someone got out, unlocked a gate, and returned to the car.

A black Mercedes pulled in through the open gate, stopping at one side of the tracks. The driver left his headlights on as he climbed out of the car, swaying on his feet, and set a liquor bottle on his hood. He lit a cigar and looked up at the glowing devil face.

Victoria recognized him now—Theodore Hanover Junior, the owner of the park, the same man who had met with them and then failed to put them in touch with Artie Schopfer. She would recognize that curly toupee anywhere.

She had no idea why he would be here, and she was reluctant to make her presence known. She and Carter were both trespassing on his land, and she preferred to avoid the cops getting involved, so she decided to watch and wait.

Theodore heaved an old wooden crate from his back seat and dropped it to the ground next to his car. He leaned over and took something out of it. Victoria couldn’t see it very well, but it had a round cylindrical shape.

A gun, she thought. He brought a gun. Then another thought, based on nothing but the manic, lost look on Hanover’s face: He came here to kill himself.

“You’re going down tonight!” he shouted up at the devil’s face. “You’re going right back to Hell.”

He raised his bottle as though toasting, then drank.

When he put his bottle aside, he took the cigar from his mouth and touched the glowing red tip to the cylindrical object in his hand. When he held it up, Victoria saw the burning fuse at the end and felt panic welling up within her. It was either fireworks or some kind of serious explosive, and somehow she didn’t think he’d driven out here in the night just to set off a few bottle rockets.

“Wait!” she screamed. “Hey, wait! My friend’s in there!”

Either Theodore didn’t hear her, which she doubted, or he was too caught up in his own madness to care. He held up the explosive—it looked very much like a stick of dynamite, she thought, though she’d never seen dynamite outside of cartoons.

“Stop!” Victoria screamed, but he was aiming it at the devil’s face, lining it up and pulsing it forward a few times in preparation for actually throwing it.

Victoria banged on the fence, but didn’t get his attention. She ran away from the tracks, zigzagged back through the waiting area, and hesitated at the gate.

The pitchfork fence seemed to provide some protection against the man in the striped hat and his minions. Maybe Carter was right, and his dead friend Tricia was somehow resisting the devil—if the man really was the devil—and so the devil had less power around Inferno Mountain.

If so, then stepping through the gate could be unwise, and even get her killed. The skeleton key was in Carter’s pocket. The gate might lock behind her, trapping her out of the only area in the park that seemed a little bit safe.

On the other hand, Carter’s life might be in serious danger if she did nothing to stop Hanover.

Victoria cringed as she pushed open the gate, but no dead children showed up to attack her. She jogged as fast as she could over the broken, uneven asphalt, out of Haunted Alley, around the ruins of Dark Mansion, and up a narrow paved path between Dark Mansion and the Martian Arcade. Hanover’s car must have barely fit through.

“Stop!” Victoria shouted, her heart racing as she ran to the open gate in the pitchfork fence. “You have to stop!”

She was too late—Hanover had thrown the dynamite. She watched the tiny glowing fuse tumble through the air as the stick of dynamite spun toward the devil’s face, eight stories above.

The stick didn’t even make it halfway up before it stopped, then began falling downward again. It banged into the outer wall of Inferno Mountain and clattered its way down through the concrete boulders, right back toward the spot where Hanover stood.

“Oh, shit!” Hanover yelled, ducking behind his car.

The dynamite exploded near the base of the mountain. Its boom was deafening, like a shotgun blast. Smoke plumed out in every direction, followed by a wave of shattered concrete chips that flew out from the mountain.

Victoria dropped and covered her head before the concrete splinters rained down on her. They bit into her arms, scalp, and back, and she winced in pain.

Chunks of concrete struck Hanover’s car, denting his hood, cracking up his windshield, and smashing one headlight.

“Goddamn it!” Hanover stood up among the billowing dust and walked to the front of his car. He picked up the broken neck of his whiskey bottle, which he’d left on the hood, and tossed it away. “God damn it, my Scotch!”

Then he reached into the crate for another stick of dynamite.

“Wait!” Victoria shouted.

He finally seemed to notice she was there.

“Did you see that?” He gave her a drunken grin as tried to line up the cigar in one hand and the dynamite in the other. The dynamite stick looked old and corroded, with strange little lumps all over the outside. “I just gotta hold it longer after I light it...let the fuse burn just a teensy-eensy little bit longer...”

“Don’t!” She grabbed his wrist to keep the cigar away from the fuse. “My friend’s inside the mountain. You could hurt him.”

“Shouldn’t be anybody in there,” Hanover grumbled. “Park’s closed.”

“But he is in there. Can’t you hear the roller coaster rumbling around?”

“Lemme go.” Hanover jerked his arm away from her, which sent him tumbling off-balance. He landed hard on his hip, dropping both the cigar and the dynamite. The objects rolled in opposite directions—the cigar under the running car, the dynamite toward Victoria’s foot.

Victoria snatched up the stick of dynamite. Its surface was rough with nitroglycerine crystals. She saw four more sticks in the old wooden crate, so she grabbed up the crate in her other hand and ran past the car. She now had all the dynamite, unless there was more in Hanover’s car.

“Hey! Hey, you stupid bitch, come back here!” Hanover shouted. “Drop that box!”

She didn’t look back, but ran as fast as she dared toward the open gate in the pitchfork fence. The old sticks of dynamite rolled and clicked against each other inside the crate. She was terrified the corroded sticks would detonate and blow her to pieces. Then she could worry about the drunken fat man.

An explosion sounded behind her, and she dropped to her knees and looked back. Hanover held up a revolver in his swaying hand. He had fired one warning shot into the air, and now he scowled at her.

Victoria made up her mind in about half a second. Staying close to the drunk and dangerous man would almost surely get her shot or blown apart by dynamite, so she regained her feet and ran out through the fence. He fired the gun again, but no bullet struck her, so she kept moving.

She ran up the narrow service drive between Dark Mansion and the Mad Martian Arcade, both of them small, dark, and overgrown with weeds—whatever magic or illusion had made the park look new and full of life was now vanished. She emerged into the dim ruins of the park’s central plaza. Hanover shouted somewhere behind her, his feet thudding on the broken asphalt as he pursued her.

Victoria immediately saw which way to go. If she crossed through the wreckage of Wishing Well Plaza, she could toss the dynamite over the old sawhorses and into the enormous sinkhole. She couldn’t think of any other way to get rid of the explosives before Hanover could take them back from her. He was clearly out of his mind and seemed determined to blow up Inferno Mountain, even after she’d told him Carter was inside the ride.

She crossed the plaza, trying to will her hands not to shake while the corroded dynamite bounced and rolled inside the crate. Another gunshot boomed behind her, and the hot sting of a bullet tore into her back.

* * *

Carter passed through the devil’s jaws and into darkness as the tracks curved away inside the peak of the mountain. Smoldering blasts of hot compressed air hit him from both sides, blowing his hair into a tangle and billowing his shirt. Despite the heat, Tricia’s dead hand still felt like solid ice. Her fingertips stabbed into his palm.

Terrified screams sounded in the darkness ahead—probably recorded, he reminded himself.

The roller coaster twisted sideways and plunged downward. Red lights strobed all around him, creating flicker-flash images of a tunnel of writhing bodies surrounding the tracks, all of them squirming and screaming together, arms and legs and torsos wriggling in a frenzy of howling torment.

These weren’t mannequins or animated displays. Carter could smell their flesh and their sweat in the thick, steamy air. The air reeked of fear. They shrieked and cried as the train raced past them.

Another flash of red strobe lights revealed a snarling three-headed dog that appeared to stand right in the middle of the tracks ahead, blocking the way. Its heads bobbed mechanically up and down, its jaws snarled and drooled as though rabid, its six eyes glowed blank and white.

Carter took a sharp breath at the sight of the oversized, slavering beast ahead. Then the train dipped steeply, ducking underneath the three-headed dog and racing down a long, steep hill into darkness punctuated by strobe-flashes of pale blue light. A cold, foul rain sprinkled over him.

As he swooped downhill through filthy, dripping water, he passed obese human beings who must have weighed several hundred pounds each, their bodies half-buried in the filthy muck walls alongside the steep track. Rivulets of dark water flowed over and between the folds of their pale, slug-shaped bodies. Their eyes were stitched closed, their mouths wide open and chomping at empty air like drowning fishes or starving baby birds. Their massive, meaty arms groped toward the plummeting roller coaster as though searching for a snack.

Behind Carter, the dead children screamed in delight. He looked at Tricia, but she wasn’t moving at all. It was hard to tell whether her hand was gripping his tightly or had simply reverted to the rigidity of death.

Hell, he thought. This really could be Hell.

The train began to climb uphill again, clanking slowly upward through a dark, cavernous space.

A steep rocky incline followed alongside the track, crowded with people trying to push their way past each other up the slimey slope. Each one dragged heavy weights and rocks chained to their arms, legs, and necks. They fought for every inch, trying desperately to climb over each other. They reminded him of the ghost of Jacob Marley in A Christmas Carol, weighed down with chains and locks for all eternity.

As the train chugged toward the crest of the next hill, Carter looked over at the lead group of struggling, climbing souls, the ones who’d ascended the highest by climbing over the whole mob below.

Abruptly, their chains, weights, and boulders tangled around each other, and the whole group went sliding, tumbling, and screaming back down the steep slope, dragging everyone else down with them, presumably forcing everyone to start all over again at the bottom of the steep hill.

Then Carter saw the goal toward which all the struggling souls had been climbing and clawing: a treasure chamber heaped with gold, sparkling at the very top of the slope. Open chests overflowed with glittering gold coins and polished gems—unlike the pirate treasure they’d passed on the way out of Dark Mansion, these jewels and coins looked real. Golden animal statues bowed toward an unoccupied, gem-encrusted golden throne, waiting for an aspiring soul to claim it.

He glanced back to see little Kylie and her undead friends staring at him with sharp little smiles, probably just waiting for a fun moment to kill him.

The coaster train turned sideways as it twisted through a pitch-dark passage, then emerged into a wider, fire-lit space occupied by a shaggy, goat-horned demon that must have been a hundred feet tall, though he could actually only see its head and one arm.

The train shot directly toward the beast. Its furry, clawed hand, as large as a wrecking ball, lunged at the approaching coaster train.

The tracks dropped away into a steep hill, and the train ducked underneath the demon’s lunging claw. At that moment, a sudden loud blast rocked the building. The wall beside him exploded in a cloud of dust, pelting him with sharp chunks of concrete.

Carter ducked low, pulling Tricia’s cold body with him.

The enormous demon head and arm toppled forward with a sound of wrenching metal. The claw bashed across the top of their car, scraping across his shoulders, then fell alongside the track, trailing sparks, patches of its fur on fire. If Carter hadn’t ducked, the falling machinery could have taken off his head.

The train plunged down the steep hill toward a sunken valley, which held a vast stone city far below, sprawling for miles and coiling inward on itself in a lopsided spiral. Fire poured from the iron-grate windows and doors of squat, asymmetrical rock towers.

The roller coaster was clearly no longer contained inside the Inferno Mountain facade. The burning city below him was larger than the entire amusement park, larger than the town of Conch City, even larger than the cities of Tallahassee or Mobile.

As the track neared the burning stone city, he felt the intense heat and smelled sulfur, burning hair, roasting meat. Screams echoed through the narrow spiral coil of the streets. He saw blackened, skeletal hands banging against the underside of the sewer grates as if desperate to escape. Smoke and flame rose from the sewer grates—there was no sign of water anywhere.

The train curved around the city rather than plummeting directly into it. Decayed bodies hung along the city’s outer wall like grisly ornaments, many of them missing limbs, most of them with gaping holes carved into their torsos. Colonies of flies and worms crawled inside their open cavities.

One man with his jaw missing and a thick mat of maggots covering him from face to his empty, gutted abdomen raised an arm and moaned as Carter rode past. The bodies hanging on the outer wall weren’t exactly dead, Carter realized. Suffering souls were still trapped inside them.

As the rotten-but-not-dead man reached toward them from the wall, both of Tricia’s hands clenched tight on Carter’s arm. She screamed.

Tricia was alive.

At least, she looked more alive than before. Her head was restored to her body, her pale blond hair blowing out behind her, her lips pink with strawberry smacker. All the blood had vanished from her dress.

“Tricia!” Carter said, but the wind swallowed his words as the train shot through the city, spiraling downward toward the dark city center.

They raced past small stone temples, houses, and short towers—all made of unpolished, ill-fitting rocks, through which long tongues of red and orange flame leaked out. Red-hot wrought-iron grates sealed every window and doorway. Screaming, charred faces and hands banged against the grates, desperate to escape the fire-filled stone buildings.

As the train tracks circled toward the city center, the heat became unbearable. Carter felt like he’d been plunged into a furnace. His skin dried as all the moisture baked out of it. His clothes grew scalding hot against his skin. The steel car in which he sat also became too hot to touch, and he had to keep his shoes off the floor so they wouldn’t melt.

The city grew denser as they approached the center. Burning heads screamed from iron pikes alongside the tracks. Pyres of bodies burned in the streets, chained together so they couldn’t escape—souls suffering their eternal torment.

Because this is Hell, Carter thought. And it’s going to get worse before it’s over.

The train raced toward the open dark cave at the city center, waiting like the open mouth of some immense underground beast. It reminded Carter of the sinkhole itself. Ahead of him, the tracks twisted into a straight drop into the lightless cave. The tracks glowed red tinged with blue, melting in the unbearable heat.

Carter looked at Tricia again, wishing the train would slow so they could talk—wishing it would stop altogether, in fact, rather than drop them straight into the bottomless, super-hot darkness ahead. She was looking back at him, her face a mixture of shock and fear.

She’s just a kid, he thought again.

A geyser of white-hot fire erupted from the dark hole as the train approached it. A wave of heat shoved Carter back in his seat. Fire rained down like snow as they approached, igniting his hair and clothes, and he screamed and tried to pat out the flames. They burned him all over, and he couldn’t keep up.

The immense column of fire poured upward from the hole, growing hotter and brighter. Carter could feel himself burning up as the train rocketed toward it. He could smell his own skin cooking against his bones.

He was going to die. If the heat from the twisting pillar of flames didn’t kill him in the next couple of seconds, then he would surely be consumed when the train dove straight into the fire.

The red STOP button was still in front of him. If he pressed it, the entire ride was supposed to end, and Carter would be free to walk away. He didn’t see much choice, because he was only a breath away from riding straight into whatever furnace was creating the hundred-foot geyser of white fire.

He reached for the button, then looked to Tricia again. Time seemed to stretch and slow—maybe impending death had a way of doing that.

Behind him, the ghostly kids rose up, all of them engulfed in flames but laughing, and scrambled forward over the cars toward Carter and Tricia.

I came here to save her, not to save myself, Carter thought. Maybe I can’t save either of us. Maybe I was just supposed to die with her.

He didn’t press the button.

The train went over the edge of the giant hole and shot straight down into blinding light. Fire swept in around Carter from all sides, and he heard himself scream.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Victoria stumbled between a rotting pink cotton candy stand and the Throw-A-Shoe game topped with the decayed remnants of an oversized horse head.

The bullet had caught her somewhere in her lower back. The right half of her shirt was soaked in blood. A streak of intense pain burned across her right side, but she was still able to walk, though she definitely did not feel like it. She wanted to collapse and pass out if she could, just to escape the pain, but the crazed Hanover was still stalking her, and Carter’s life was still in danger, so she forced herself to keep going.

She leaned against the peeling, crumbling candy-pink boards and eased the dynamite crate to the ground. Ahead, she could just barely see the sawhorses on the edge of the sinkhole, surrounded by thick debris and thorny brush.

From where she stood, the only feasible way to get the dynamite into the sinkhole before Hanover caught up with her was to throw it, one stick at a time, across several yards of debris, and hope each stick landed in the right place.

“Where’d you go, girl?” Hanover shouted in his slurred, angry voice. “Come on back here now, you sneaking little bitch!”

Victoria raised one stick of dynamite in her left hand, since her right side burned with pain and she didn’t want to move that arm. She took aim as best she could, then lobbed the first stick over the high pile of debris separating her from the sinkhole.

It flipped end over end until it dropped out of sight. She heard a soft thud...then the decayed old dynamite ignited with a bang and a flash of light.

The pile of debris exploded, bombarding her with chunks of old tree limbs and burning trash. The Throw-A-Shoe game booth took a lot of the blast, and it collapsed forward into the plaza, its boards on fire. The crumbling old horse head on top broke into chunks of rotten wood.

With the booth down in flames, she could see Hanover yelling and staggering toward her. That meant he could see her, too.

She flung the second stick of dynamite at the sinkhole. The first blast had opened up a more direct path to the gaping hole, so she had less trouble aiming this time.

“Hey! Hey, give that back!” Hanover stumbled toward her over the broken asphalt, waving his gun in no particular direction.

A bright flash of light flared from the sinkhole, and the ground rumbled, knocking her onto her back. The rusty Ferris wheel, perched on the edge of the sinkhole for years, gave a rusty groan as it tilted toward the empty space below. It teetered on the edge, its empty cars swinging with rusty squeals among the spokes. Then it broke free and tumbled, crashing and breaking apart, down into the sinkhole, which was more than wide enough to swallow it whole.

Victoria grabbed the next stick of leaking old dynamite and pitched it into the sinkhole. It vanished quietly, not exploding like the others. She followed it with the fourth, while Hanover scrambled to regain his feet. As she held up the final stick of dynamite, he fired the gun in the air.

“Give it back!” he shouted. “That’s mine!”

“You tried to kill my friend,” Victoria said. “I told you he was inside the ride.”

“This is the wrong night to fuck with me, kid.” Hanover leveled the revolver at her as best as he could while swaying heavily on his feet. “This is the night...I finally blow this place down.”

“You can wait just a minute,” she told him. “How long does a ride on Inferno Mountain last?”

“Give back my dynamite.” He blinked a few times, looking drunk and confused. “It’s mine.”

Victoria raised the final stick in her left hand.

“I’ll give it to you,” she said. “Be careful, it’s really unstable.”

She flung it in his direction, but used all her remaining strength to send it flying over his head, hopefully out of his reach.

Hanover tried to grab it, as though he either didn’t know or didn’t care that it would probably explode if it hit his hand.

It tumbled through the air, passing just over his fingers, and he cursed and turned to chase after it.

The old dynamite stick crashed into the side of the wishing well at the center of the plaza. A moment later, it fell into a heap of broken asphalt and exploded.

Hanover, running toward the well, was blown off his feet. He sprawled backwards as chunks of an old park bench rained down around him.

Victoria dashed over to the older man. As he lay there stunned, bleeding from his scalp and half a dozen other small wounds—though his toupee was, amazingly, still attached and in place—she searched for the revolver and found it lying a few feet away.

Hanover groaned, indicating he was still alive, so Victoria left him there, tossed his gun into the sinkhole, and hurried back toward Inferno Mountain. She winced in pain, fighting her brain’s attempt to shut down and black out.

Rumbling and crashing echoed inside the tall volcano, and clouds, of black dust rolled out of the dynamite hole in its side. The glowing red devil face looked down on her, laughing and laughing.

* * *

Carter rode straight down through the flames. The fire vanished, leaving him falling face forward into darkness.

The frayed restraints of the roller coaster had torn and loosened, just barely holding him in place now. The wheels rattled against the tracks as the train plummeted straight down in a vertical free fall, picking up more and more speed.

He should have been in excruciating pain from passing through the fire, but instead he simply felt numb. The air grew colder and colder. Instead of rushing into an enormous furnace, it now felt like he was dropping into some kind of deep freeze.

He reached over toward Tricia, but couldn’t find her. He called her name, but the cold, harsh wind swallowed his words. He felt he was moving at hundreds of miles per hour, down into the icy dark, but it was hard to judge his speed when there was no light at all.

Maybe I really am dead, and this is the fast train to Hell, he thought.

He rushed deeper and deeper into the darkness, and the cold ate at his flesh.

After an eternity of falling, he saw a spot of frosty blue light below. It seemed to swell as he approached.

The train rushed into the cold light and twisted upside down. He clung to the freezing cold safety bar. The train traveled through a rocky tunnel full of long, sharp stalagmites of ice jutting up at him from the floor as he rode upside down along the ceiling. Some of them passed dangerously close to his face, and he had to squirm and dodge them as best he could.

In the dim blue light, he could finally see that Tricia was gone. So were the other ghost kids who’d boarded the train. Maybe they’d snatched her away somewhere.

Carter now rode alone on the inverted train, and it was growing even colder around him. His breath ejected from his mouth in thick white plumes as he called Tricia’s name. An icy crust formed inside his nostrils and mouth, then at the corners of his eyes. His blood felt like a cold slush inside his veins.

The train corkscrewed and plunged down another steep hill, slipping from side to side as its wheels slid down the icy tracks.

The ice walls of the steep tunnel closed in around him, glowing with a dim, cold light, just enough to illuminate soft black shapes frozen beneath the surface of the walls.

Then the walls began to move, and he realized they were no longer rock formations but human beings covered in sheets of ice. Their skin was pale blue, their eyes and mouths stretched open and thick with encrusted frost. They reached long, stiff arms toward the passing train, moving slowly, their limbs heavy with rows of long icicles.

They moaned softly as Carter’s train slid past, their tongues thick with barnacles of frozen white slush.

The tunnel widened into an icy cavern, the train rattling and cracking as it twisted among heaps and spires of the frozen groaning people who reached toward him in slow motion. The bodies were stacked dozens high, and then hundreds high as the cavern expanded. They were formed into columns; frozen, intertwining bodies, stretching far into the distance and the vaulted darkness above.

The train shuddered, jerking him back and forth and side to side around the sharp, steep turns. Then it began to break apart. The safety bar cracked and fell open as he banked around a high curve, forcing him to grip the burning-cold sides of the car for balance.

Then cracks spread through the car itself, as if the entire train were made of nothing but breaking glass. As the car flew up and back down a short hill, the sides and floor of the car shattered. More cracks opened in his seat and in the front wall of the car. The rapid shaking of the car clacked his teeth together.

He didn’t know whether he would die from the intense cold or from the final wreck of the roller coaster breaking apart. Part of him thought he’d already died in the fire.

Carter looked at the big red STOP button. Maybe it could save him, maybe not, but he knew the devil hadn’t provided it out of benevolence. Pressing the button meant giving up. It meant surrendering whatever he had left.

He wrapped his arms tight around himself as the train plunged down a final steep hill. Ice formed all over his skin. The tracks seemed to end at a white cliff ahead. The cliff itself, and all the ground beneath the tracks, were now made of thousands of frozen bodies tangled together. Death-blue hands faces rose from the morass, some of them groaning softly.

Either the tracks were about to end, or the train would go over the cliff into one more vertical dive. Carter wondered if he was reaching the final stage of the ride. It felt like he’d been on the train for hours.

The train flew over the cliff. A deep, icy canyon made entirely of frozen human beings opened up around him.

There were no more train tracks.

Carter’s seatbelt shattered and he tumbled free of the train as it broke apart around him.

He fell along with the broken wreckage, past ledges of howling, frozen bodies. The canyon was of such immense size that there must have been millions of people here, heaped up and frozen together over the years, their collective groans of agony fusing together into an endless howling wind.

He fell and fell into open black space.

He finally slammed into hard, frozen ground. It felt as though every bone in his body snapped at once. Bolts, wheels, and other broken machinery from the roller coaster crashed down around him, chipping the glacier-like surface on which he’d landed.

Carter lay prone on the burning cold surface, the wind knocked out of him, every inch of him throbbing in pain.

A fierce, icy wind swept over his body from the shadows ahead. He thought he could hear a low growling mingled with the hissing wind.

When he could move again, Carter raised his head and looked into the gloom. Somehow the fall hadn’t killed him, but every bone in his body shrieked in pain.

He lay in some kind of a vast, dark cathedral of a room that stretched as far as he could see into the darkness ahead, full of slanted columns, sculptures, and staircases, all made of frozen bodies lashed and chained together. Their movements were almost imperceptible, their suffering groans barely audible through the relentless frigid wind.

The floor shifted beneath him. The layer of ice under him did not lie on top of stone or brick, but countless more bodies tangled and frozen together, their skin frosty, pale blues and purples. Their eyes remained open, their faces rigid with permanent expressions of fear and horror. There had to be thousands and thousands of them, and he thought it was probably more than that, maybe a million souls or more piled up over time, stretching out into the darkness beyond the broken columns.

He shuddered as the arms and legs of the frozen bodies shifted again. He forced himself to stand.

As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw a dark shape glittering in the shadows ahead, hundreds of feet high. The columns of frozen people seemed to be loosely centered around it.

The longer he stared, the clearer it became—a human form, sculpted on an immense scale and wrapped in ice, exhaling the freezing wind that numbed Carter’s body.

Carter forced himself to step closer, scared that the frozen bodies below would grab onto him if he stayed in one place too long. He stayed away from the columns of lashed-together people who tried to reach toward him, long icicles dangling from their fingers.

The dark, towering shape at the center of the shadowy cathedral was his final goal. He wrapped his arms around himself and lowered his head, squinting against the cold wind as he approached.

The enormous shape’s skin was the gray pallor of cold death. Its eyes opened. They were colorless ice, glowing with an ethereal light that did not look warm at all. Each eye was nearly as large as Carter himself.

The face was bland and dull, with no distinguishing features—a face designed to be forgotten.

“It’s you,” Carter said.

The giant frostbitten lips split open, revealing teeth like crooked marble slabs.

“You see me now.” The figure’s voice rumbled on the cold wind, and the ground shuddered, the columns of twisted-together frozen people groaning in fresh pain, as though the thing’s voice were hurting them.

Carter shivered with cold and terror as he looked up at the figure. Most of its body was surrounded by mountains of ice. Even its massive arms were trapped in a roughly cruciform pose. Icy cliffs surrounded its neck, leaving only its enormous eyes and mouth free to move.

“You’re a prisoner,” Carter said. “Aren’t you?”

“For eons.” A hundred thousand voices groaned in agony as its voice sent trembling shockwaves across the floor of cold, pale bodies below Carter’s feet. The bodies stretched away into the dark distance. They looked like trembling fish caught in a frozen sea.

“That’s why you couldn’t even reach out your hand to stop me,” Carter said. “You’re not really up there, you’re down here. Trapped. Up there, you’re just like a...video game character. A ghost. Right?”

“Do not think me powerless,” the immense thing said. “I can reach inside each of you that lives on the earth. You and your kind offer yourselves to me in a ceaseless tide, though never enough to quench my appetites. That is a portion of my torment, the endless hunger.”

“Am I dead?” Carter asked. “Or dreaming?”

“You stand in your living flesh before the Lord of Hell, in my sanctuary. You may make one request, and then you must depart or die.”

“A request? Like a wish that gets all twisted and monkey-pawed and ends up killing me?”

“If you wish to depart without making a request, you may go now.”

A metallic squeal sounded, and Carter turned to see a plain black door emerge from a column of frozen bodies. Stiff blue fingers clutched a glowing red EXIT sign about the door.

“It is unlocked,” the devil said. “You may leave.”

“Give me Tricia,” Carter told him. “I want her back. Alive. And everybody else you’ve killed, too.”

The enormous face bared its large, rotten teeth. The columns of the frozen dead shuddered and wailed.

“I cannot restore dead flesh to life,” the devil said. “Not after so many years. She is dead. They are all dead.”

“Then free their souls.” Carter was a little surprised at the anger and strength in his voice. He’d seen too many friends die or disappear. He’d ridden the train into Hell itself, and he wouldn’t be defeated now. Not when his adversary, though a monstrous and frightening entity the size of a mountain, turned out to be a prisoner himself with limited powers.

Carter felt he’d pushed his way into some backstage area of the world, that he was seeing more than anyone was really supposed to see. The real world, the one behind the bright lights and scenery that entranced the living, was an unspeakably bleak nightmare, one that had waited for eons, slowly filling up with the souls of the lost and the damned.

“You may have one soul,” the devil finally said. “Your poor, dead love who has called to you and irritated me these last five years. She may depart with you.”

“I want them all.”

“You may have only one. Take her with you or leave her here.”

The black steel door under the EXIT sign squeaked as it swung open. Though it was mounted in a massive column of entangled and frozen human bodies, the door itself opened, incongruously, onto steep concrete stairs leading up through a dimly lit cinderblock stairwell.

“Where is she?” Carter looked around at the enormous cathedral structure, the massive columns and archways of frozen bodies buttressing the cavernous vaulted ceiling a thousand feet above him. “I don’t see her.”

“You will not see her until you depart,” spoke the massive face of the frozen devil. “Once you begin to climb the stairs, you may not look back. If you look back, you lose. I keep her soul, and I keep yours.”

“That’s it?” Carter asked.

“That is the only rule. You may go now, unless you wish to stay forever. The frozen multitudes will gladly accept your warmth.”

The floor of frozen bodies bucked and screamed beneath him, and cold, grasping hands reached up through the creaking ice. They grabbed at his legs and feet, and he ran. Everything he saw was made of these not-quite-dead bodies, twisted and frozen together, their eyes open and bright with hunger as they reached for him.

As he reached the open door, the massive column of bodies that held it tried grabbing for him. Arms and hungry mouths grabbed and bit at him from all sides as he ducked through the tilting doorway.

Inside, he stood on a plain, packed-dirt floor. He hesitated before the first concrete stair, and he turned to look back.

Cold blue arms and faces surrounded the doorway, groaning and hissing as they reached toward him. Beyond it, the colossal form of the devil stared forward impassively, like a statue, not appearing to watch Carter at all.

“Where is she?” Carter shouted, but no response came.

The steel door slammed itself shut, cutting off his view and leaving him alone in the moldy cinderblock stairwell. The groaning, lamenting voices outside vanished when the door closed. The cold stairwell was silent except for the slow, distant dripping of water somewhere high above.

He stood in a space not much larger than a broom closet. There was nowhere to go but up.

Carter took a final look around—still no sign of Tricia. He tried the steel door, but it was locked and cold enough to sear his skin.

“Tricia?” he asked the shadows around him. “Are you here?”

There was no response.

He sighed and started up the concrete stairs. They took him to a landing illuminated by a flickering fluorescent bar dangling loosely on a chain. The next flight led to an identical landing, and so did the next. It was like ascending the stairwell in an underground parking garage, except there was never a door, only more stairs.

He caught himself starting to look back, stopping himself at the last moment.

“Tricia?” he asked.

There was no answer. He’d heard no footsteps behind him, not one clue that Tricia had joined him or was following him out of the underworld. This only made him more eager to look back, but he resisted the urge.

He walked up flight after flight of concrete stairs set at crooked angles to each other, so he couldn’t look up to see how much farther he had to go.

He said Tricia’s name a few times, but she did not answer. There was no sign at all that she was actually following him. He forced himself to keep to the devil’s one rule.

He climbed upward, while the steps grew steeper, narrower, and occasionally seemed to crumble under his feet.

The stairwell grew darker. The walls, ceiling, and the steps themselves gradually changed from concrete to rough, unpolished rock as he ascended. The ceiling grew lower and the walls closed in from either side. Soon he was climbing up eroded shelves in a steep diagonal cave.

The climb grew dimmer as he went on. The occasional hanging fluorescent bar became a very occasional rusty lantern dripping hot oil from overhead.

He climbed on his hand and knees, scraping them on the rough stone ledges that passed for stairs. Soon there was no more light, and he was climbing in absolute darkness.

Carter wondered how far underground he was. The train had plummeted downward for a very long time. He could easily be miles underground, buried deep in the earth.

He imagined miles of rock and earth above his head, and saw himself stuck far beneath it, already exhausted from scrambling up the uneven steps, his hands already worn raw from the rough stone. The tunnel had only grown narrower, pressing in on his sides and back. The only sounds were his own breathing and his own rapidly beating heart. He could see nothing at all.

A growing feeling of panic brought out cold sweat all over his skin. He could imagine himself trapped down here in the dark for days or weeks, trying desperately to escape.

So far, he’d encountered no live creatures while climbing through the lightless tunnel. He began to wonder why he hadn’t gotten tangled in a spiderweb, squished a bug, or startled a rat while he crawled blindly forward.

Maybe nothing can live down here, he thought. Maybe there’s not enough air, no water...

That was how he would die. The tunnel would grow even smaller, and he would eventually suffocate on the stale air. Or maybe he would keep moving blindly in the darkness until he collapsed and finally died from thirst.

He kept climbing. It was all he could do. If he stopped, the relentless darkness and silence would close in around him.

He climbed up and up, scraping and cutting his hands on the sharp rock steps, his back rubbing against the low ceiling. Every part of him ached, and still he climbed. There was no telling how much time went by.

He whispered Tricia’s name a few times, but there was no response. He’d begun to accept that he’d been tricked. He was just hoping to get out alive.

In time, he began to slow his ascent. It was hopeless. He’d failed everyone—first Tricia, when they were kids. He was the one who’d convinced the others to come searching this time. Everything that had gone wrong, everyone who’d died...it was all his own fault.

He let himself lie down and rest on the narrow, sharp stairs. His cheek lay on cold rock.

He felt beaten. Maybe he was meant to die down here, far away from everyone.

In the dark, as his breathing slowed, he could again hear the distant trickle of water somewhere above him.

It wasn’t much, but it was a sign that things could change ahead, if only he kept forcing himself to move.

As he climbed toward the sound, he began to see a hint of light ahead. It was only a slight suggestion, an area of dark gray barely discernible from the darkness around it, but it was there, and it gradually grew more pronounced as he climbed.

The walls and stairs became brick, and the stairwell’s roof grew high enough that he could almost stand up straight as he walked. The dripping water sounded louder and closer.

Swatches of dirty cloth hung at scattered spots along the walls like small, crude window curtains. Those he passed rustled and rattled, blown by a foul wind from somewhere beyond the wall. The rustling wind became hissing, barely audible whispers:

“...she did not come with you.”

“...you have been deceived...”

“...you are alone...”

“...look back...”

“...look back...”

Behind one of the fluttering cloths, he glimpsed a rotten face with hollow eyes, whispering to him to look back. He hurried onward up the stairs, and he did not look back.

The gloom lifted more as the walls changed from brick to concrete molded and painted to look like black volcanic rock. The stairs became railroad ties. The environment suddenly resembled the Inferno Mountain ride, and though he was exhausted, Carter picked up speed, believing he had to be somewhere close to the exit.

The air became warmer and fresher, too, though there was clearly some carbon monoxide mixed with it. It felt like living, moving air, not the stale old stuff he’d been breathing all the way up.

The lights grew brighter—electric red bulbs wrapped in foil to suggest burning torches. The railroad-tie staircase curved up and around, and he took a deep breath, relieved at what he saw.

Ahead, at the top of the wide wooden stairs, light poured in through the closed gate of red pitchforks. At first he thought it might be sunlight, which wouldn’t have surprised him. He’d lost all sense of time since stepping on the roller coaster. As he walked up the stairs, he saw it wasn’t the sun, but the headlights of an idling car.

He staggered up the last step toward the gate, wondering if he would be locked inside. He lay his hands on the crossbars—they felt like molded plastic—and leaned against the gate for a moment, trying to catch his breath. He felt like collapsing, but he only needed to take a few more steps.

There was no sound behind him except the distant dripping of water. He resisted the urge to take one last look back.

Carter pushed open the red gate and stumbled out along the roller coaster tracks, through the high weeds toward the bright headlights of the idling car ahead.

“We did it,” a voice whispered behind him.

He turned.

Tricia stood just outside the open gate behind him. She looked alive and healed, her dress and necklaces free of bloodstains, a thin smile on her lips.

“You were there the whole time?” Carter asked.

“I was. He wouldn’t let you hear me, but I was just behind you all the way.”

“Are you...?” He wanted to ask if she was alive, but couldn’t bring himself to say the word. It was too strange. He reached for her, and his hand passed through her shoulder. She felt like a patch of sunlight.

Her body began to break apart, splitting into threads of glowing light that slowly unraveled and flowed up toward the dark sky above.

“I’m free,” she whispered. “You set me free...and you broke his trap.”

“Wait,” Carter said, but she only unraveled faster, multiple threads of bright white light rising up and away. “Don’t go,” he whispered.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice spoke in his mind as her face unspooled into long, glowing filaments that crawled and twisted their way toward the sky.

“Carter?” Victoria’s voice asked.

He turned to see her slide off the loading platform and onto the tracks. She hobbled toward him as though injured, and he ran over to help her.

“What happened to you?” Carter asked. The right side of her shirt was bloody. He reached an arm around her shoulders to help support her.

“Teddy Hanover shot me.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s not as bad as it looks. It just grazed my side. Hurts like hell.” She looked pale and weak. He would have to get her to a hospital.

“Where did he go?” Carter asked.

“I knocked him out. What’s that?” She looked past him, staring at the ribbons of lights curling away toward the sky.

“It was Beatrice. I think I freed her.”

“Maybe you did more than that.” Victoria pointed toward the two-story, collapsing ruins of Dark Mansion. Brilliant white starbursts of lights floated silently past it toward the sky, trailing long bright threads. Carter felt he was watching scores of the strange, glowing creatures that lived in the darkest depths of the ocean, but these drifted into the sky like bright, transparent balloons released from some shining celestial fair.

“It’s kind of beautiful,” Victoria whispered.

They left the pitchfork enclosure of Inferno Mountain and walked over the lightless, shattered ruins of Wishing Well Plaza. Victoria pointed out Theodore Hanover, lying unconscious on the broken asphalt near the blasted ruins of the wishing well, his form illuminated by the swarm of bright, ghostly lights rising ahead.

The lights were emerging from the sinkhole itself. As Carter and Victoria approached the sawhorses and debris at the edge of the giant hole, he heard a kind of music from the rising, glowing cloud, as if each of the hundred or so clusters of bright threads emitted a gentle tone of its own, and all of the tones flowed into each other like ripples on a pond, creating a melodic constellation of sound ringing among the floating lights.

The rising lights mesmerized him, leaving him unable to think, watching and listening in pure awe. He’d had a horrifying glimpse of Hell tonight, and now he was seeing something that felt just the opposite, a glimmering garden of living lights escaping from the sinkhole.

“What are they?” Victoria whispered.

“She told me I broke his trap.”

“So these are souls.” Victoria tilted her head back to watch them rise higher and higher. They reflected in her eyes like bright stars. “All the captured souls. Aren’t they?”

“Such a waste,” another voice said. It was low and flat.

Carter jumped, his sense of wonder broken by fear.

The man in the striped hat approached slowly, watching the lights rise out of reach as he ambled around the ragged, crumbling edge of the sinkhole.

Victoria tensed and grabbed Carter’s hand, but he remained where he was. He’d already beaten the devil, and he didn’t feel the need to run away now.

“This took an investment on my part, you know,” the man in the hat said. He finally turned to regard the two of them with his dead gray eyes. “And where is my profit? Just a few scattered souls, not much more. I’d hoped to leave the park with better prizes.”

As the cloud of lights ascended into the sky, the ground rumbled beneath them. The edges of the sinkhole crumbled, spilling loose soil and black pebbles of broken asphalt into the distant darkness below.

Carter and Victoria held onto each other, backing away as the earth shook.

Muffled, agonized groans rose in a strained chorus from the sinkhole. The ground around it trembled, shaking loose rivulets of dust, as if the sinkhole was about to swallow up another huge piece of the park.

A tower of flesh emerged from the deep darkness like a swaying tongue. It was made of pale, naked human beings stitched together into a long tube formation that pawed at the edges of the sinkhole like an elephant’s trunk. Their eyes and mouths were sewn shut, which kept their pained moans to a low rumble.

The huge trunk of human flesh made Carter think of how he’d sometimes imagined the sinkhole as a kind of giant dinosaur of a worm, hungry to swallow up the world above.

One large man extended out of the heap of stitched bodies and lay prone over the abyss below, bridging the gap from the tower of bodies to the edge of the sinkhole. Chains rattled through eyehooks embedded in his arms and legs, stretching him until his was firmly in place. His screams barely escaped the metal rings that stapled his lips together.

“Give my regards to Artie Schopfer,” the devil said. “Tell him I will kill him for giving you that key.”

He strolled across the blinded, chained man, using him as a bridge to the tower of bodies. The top layer of bodies arranged themselves into a wide throne, and he sat upon it, his polished shoes resting on a row of living heads. He looked out at the rotten husks of the amusement park’s attractions and gave a slight sigh, like someone who’d had a disappointing evening at the gambling table.

The bridge-man was retracted by a chain running through eyehooks along his spine. He let out a muffled cry of pain as he coiled back against the other groaning bodies.

The tower of bodies lowered back into the sinkhole, the devil riding down on top of them all. His blank face watched Carter and Victoria as he sank out of sight. For a moment, he scowled, his eyes glowing red, his teeth long and sharp, and then he was lost in the shadows.

The groaning voices of the damned echoed a little longer before falling silent.

The earth shifted beneath them again, knocking Carter and Victoria off their feet.

The broken asphalt flowed toward the sinkhole, carrying them along like a river of shattered rock. He thought they would be swept down inside, but the sinkhole itself grew smaller and smaller as the tide of earth and broken pavement swept him toward it. The overgrown sawhorses around it clattered into each other and collapsed into rotten pieces as the perimeter shrank.

The giant hole was closing, and the ground around it was knitting itself together.

At last the earth finally stopped moving. They regained their feet, leaning on each other for balance, both of them wounded, bloody, and exhausted.

Only a small depression of loose, sandy dirt remained to mark where the center of the sinkhole had been.

“Is it over?” Victoria whispered.

Heavy, rusty squeals sounded from the sagging ruins of attractions thrown off-balance by the closing sinkhole and shifting earth. An overgrown column of the Starland Express roller coaster toppled and crashed into the remains of Fool’s Gold. The rusty tower of American Rockets twisted and fell against the last standing supports of the old Moon Robot ride.

Carter and Victoria ran into the open plaza and waited while the rides fell apart. Hanover lay without moving near the old wishing well. They avoided him—if the man was crazed enough to shoot at Victoria, Carter didn’t see any reason to wake him up. They could call an ambulance once they were safely out of the park.

They checked the ruins of Dark Mansion and Haunted Alley, but did not find Sameer or Emily, nor any sign of Jared and Becca’s bodies. The park seemed to have absorbed them like all the others.

They searched the park, calling out for Emily and Sameer.

Emily’s voice sounded faintly from inside one of the shapeless collapsing attractions on the midway. Carter and Victoria hurried inside and found her trapped inside a box made of scrap lumber and wrapped in old barbed wire.

“Emily?” Victoria found a small hinged panel on one side and raised it up.

“Thank God,” Emily whispered. She was huddled inside, looking frightened. “Where did he go? He said he was coming back for me.”

“I think you’re okay. He’s gone,” Carter said.

“You beat him?” Emily asked. “The chess game worked?”

“No....” Carter didn’t want to talk about what had happened to Wes. He didn’t know how to explain how he’d beat the devil himself, either, except that it involved courage, focus, and refusing to back down even when he was terrified.

They ripped the box apart and set Emily free.

As they walked out through the park, Victoria explained in quiet whispers what had happened to the others. Emily just shook her head, looking miserable and distraught at the news.

They found no sign of Sameer.

In Pirate Island, the Crashdown Falls ride had ruptured open, spewing out years of accumulated slimey water. They ducked underneath the drizzling waterfall.

They made their way to the place where they’d originally entered the first time. The side gate was gone, replaced by the original loose section of chain-link fence sliced open by Victoria’s wire cutters.

While the big waterfall ride above swayed and creaked and dumped nasty water over them, they crawled through the mud under the fence. They stood up among the dense, thorny vines in the scrubby woods outside the old park.

And then they were free.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

“Say ‘cheese.’”

Carter looked up, and Victoria snapped a picture in which he was certain to look stupid and surprised, his mouth wide open.

“What was that for?” he asked. He was at school, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while he sat in their usual lunchtime doorway, avoiding everyone else.

“The yearbook. Maybe. If it makes the cut.” Victoria sat down beside him.

“I thought that didn’t count as serious photography.”

“Maybe my perspective has evolved.” She looked out over the groups of kids scattered through the courtyard. “You were the one who said I should do the school yearbook and stuff.”

“So you decided to pad out your college application.”

“I realized every moment of life is something to appreciate,” she said. “After everything we saw, all the death. Any moment when you can relax and smile, any moment when a supernatural entity isn’t hacking you to pieces on a bizarre torture device...that’s probably a moment worth enjoying. I’ve seen enough decay and destruction.”

They sat quietly for a minute.

It had taken a couple of weeks, but their lives were finally beginning to calm down. They’d gone to the hospital after leaving Starland, Carter broken and bloody, Victoria with her owns cuts and abrasions, and a shallow bullet wound across her side. The bullet wound had drawn the police, who had recovered an unconscious Theodore Hanover from the park.

Carter and Victoria had decided to tell Chief Kilborne the truth rather than try to come up with any kind of story. The police chief didn’t believe them. He’d questioned each of them several times, and would probably do it again, but sticking to the truth was easy, even if it clearly angered the police chief. Carter had faced much scarier individuals.

They’d also both declined to talk to the media at all. The newspapers and television stations had been attracted by the reports of more missing kids, plus a second search of the amusement park, this time involving the state police. No bodies had been found, but the small army of searchers had been surprised to discover that Florida’s largest sinkhole had inexplicably closed up and vanished.

Despite the horrors he’d seen inside the park, Carter’s nightmares of the last five years had ended. He was restless and sometimes ill, feeling haunted by guilt about Emily, Wes, Sameer, Jared, and Jared’s friends, all the people who might never have gone into the park if not for him, but there were no more dreams of Tricia’s headless ghost insisting he return to the park.

Victoria insisted that it wasn’t his fault, that it was all part of a plan by the ultimate devious trickster, but he felt responsible anyway.

The only comfort was that final vision, the glorious constellation of escaped souls rising toward the sky, radiating light and gentle musical tones, whispering that there was something beyond death besides darkness.

He and Victoria had spent much of their time together, trying to get away from everyone else, trying to talk about anything except what had happened inside the park.

“Look at this,” Victoria said, taking her tablet out of her backpack. She opened up her photography blog, where she’d added a dozen new pictures of the Starland ruins. “Most of the pictures were too dark to see. I took pictures of the devil, and of the glowing souls, but nothing shows up except the wreckage. The videos I took were the same way.”

“That’s too bad.”

“The traffic on my blog has spiked since I added them, though.”

“A lot of people probably want to see inside the park,” Carter said.

“There won’t be much left to see before long. Have you heard they’re going to demolish it?”

“I’ve been hearing that every year since it closed. Maybe it’ll really happen this time.”

“If they do, I want to be there, or as close as I can get. I want to see it happen.”

Carter nodded. “I’ll go with you. Seeing them finally tear it all down would be...” Carter couldn’t find the words to express the mixture of hope, relief, and loss that he would feel at the park’s final destruction. “I would definitely want to see it happen.”

He looked at her pictures—the deteriorated devil-faced mountain, now with a big hole gaping open in its crumbling side from Hanover’s dynamite. An image of the sinkhole under the moonlight, which was supposed to show a hundred glowing souls rising into the heavens, instead showed only a dark abyss with a few broken, overgrown wooden columns of the Starland Express roller coaster visible in the background.

“He didn’t show up in any pictures,” Victoria said, pointing to one she’d taken from the loading platform of Inferno Mountain. Through the pitchfork fence, the camera had captured only trash, weeds, and broken asphalt. “This one should be full of ghosts, with him at the front.”

“He was kind of an illusion,” Carter said. “His powers are just tricks. I saw what he really is...and he’s a prisoner.”

“You really think he’s the devil?”

“I can believe that the place I saw was Hell. Or some part of it. He was at the center, at the very bottom.” Carter shook his head. “It was insane down there. I can’t believe I survived.”

“I’m glad you did.” She smiled a little and took his hand.

Nothing would bring back the dead, Carter thought, but at least their souls were free, whatever that meant—they were no longer trapped and enslaved inside the overgrown walls of the park. The evil had been driven away, but it had left deep and permanent scars in its wake.

He put an arm around Victoria and hugged her close, glad to be alive, and glad to have her near.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Artie Schopfer lay in his bed, waiting for the devil. He craved a cigarette, the ghost of an addiction he’d given up twenty years earlier but never fully escaped. He breathed as deeply as he could, taking in the bleach-and-piss smell of the nursing home.

It wasn’t just fire and smoke in his lungs he longed for tonight. He wanted to smoke as a young man behind the wheel of his long-lost 1964 Plymouth Fury, the top down while he crossed the United States on the old highways, maybe hugging the beach on US 98, or cutting through swampland and sunlit pastures as he took US 80 west from Georgia to Texas, or taking old Route 66, the more northerly passage across America.

He would thread through small towns and past giant billboards advertising reptile farms, petting zoos, roadside candy stands, oversized dinosaurs advertising minor amusements or natural formations (“Visit Alabama’s Largest Water Tower!!”) that would all be forgotten in a generation. He would pass hundreds of barns across hundreds of miles painted with the simple phrase SEE ROCK CITY, directing travelers toward the mountaintop attraction built by the same man who invented miniature golf.

Perhaps one of his occasional girlfriends would be with him—maybe Dottie Cotswold, the dark-haired girl who’d sold tickets at Tombstone Junction in Kentucky. They’d gone to New Orleans together one summer. He wondered what had ever become of her.

Married a better man than me, I hope, Schopfer thought.

The room-divider curtain was drawn open because he’d been moved to another floor for closer observation. For the moment, Artie had a private room. He could see a palm tree outside, outlined by a streetlight.

He knew the devil would return because the boy and the girl had already visited him again. He wished he could remember their names. They’d returned the Starland skeleton key to Artie, along with a fascinating story of how it had helped them stand against the devil and even beat him back. The devil had lost most or all of the park’s captured souls. Feeling his own death drawing near, Artie found himself warmed by the girl’s description of beautiful lights rising away into the sky.

The key lay once again in its envelope, tucked into the back of an old photo album.

“You cost me a great deal by interfering,” the dead voice spoke. Artie turned to look at him.

The man in the white suit and white hat sat in the thinly upholstered visitor chair, as though he’d slipped in from the hallway without making a sound. Artie understood that the man wasn’t really there at all. The real devil was chained and trapped somewhere far away, far below the world.

Artie had loosely based the descending circles of Inferno Mountain on an old illustrated copy of Dante’s Inferno, creating layers of darkness, fire, and cold and filling it with screams. The flickering lights gave only quick hints of the monsters, ghosts, and skeletons hung by the side of the track, letting the rider fill in the horrors with his or her imagination. The scare was more effective that way—and cheaper, too.

The ride had given the boy a glimpse of something far beyond what Artie had built, maybe even the true Hell that waited below, hungry for lost souls.

“You didn’t mention the skeleton key,” the devil said, glaring at him. “That would have been useful of you, Artie.”

Artie didn’t speak. On his last visit, the devil had plunged his fingers into Artie’s head, smirking as he took Artie’s power of speech.

It was possible, Artie had begun to speculate, that he hadn’t lost his ability to speak at all, that he’d only been trapped in one of the devil’s illusions. Buying the love potion and giving it to Tatiana had put him in the devil’s power sixty years ago. Now he thought he could break free.

Artie raised his shaking, gnarled hand from under his sheet. He clutched a small cassette player. A nurse had purchased it for him at his request. She’d bought him one with large, easy buttons.

“What is that?” the devil asked.

“Special dedication,” Artie croaked. “Me to you.” Artie thumbed down the big yellow button with the triangular “play” symbol. A roaring, cheering, whistling crowd played over the little speakers.

The devil’s lip curled, and he stepped back in disgust. He hated any sound of joy, so Artie used the happy recorded concert crowd as his weapon.

A guitar played into the cheers, then a fiddle joined in. Artie grinned like a loon, unable to contain his amusement when the Charlie Daniels Band launched into the old classic “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”

The actual devil’s lip curled in disgust, and he took another step back.

“I loathe this song,” he said. His normally dead-placid features were actually twisted by anger and irritation. “You must have known or surmised as much. Turn it off!”

Artie laughed out loud. While the recorded song, with its whistling and cheering audience, had clearly annoyed him, Artie’s barking laugh actually seemed to cause the devil some pain. He scowled, a red glow creeping into his eyes, his teeth looking just a little sharper than they’d been a moment earlier.

“Get out,” Artie said. It took an immense effort, and his words came out coarse and rusty, but laughing at the devil had begun the process of breaking the illusion and restoring his voice. Artie raised his hands, and his knotted fingers began to untie themselves and straighten.

Now the devil looked less annoyed and less angry. He frowned, his eyes widening, and Artie thought he caught a glimpse of fear.

“You have nothing,” Artie said, his voice raw and grinding but wonderfully strong.

. “You deceive, you lie, but you have no more...” Artie paused to cough and wheeze. “You have no more power than we give you.”

The devil narrowed his eyes.

“That’s not precisely true,” he said.

“True enough,” Artie replied. His throat felt like raw, bloody meat...but he was speaking again, and his fingers straightened themselves a little more. “Go away. Go back to your prison of ice. You don’t fool us anymore. You’re nothing.”

To prove how unafraid he was—though, in fact, he did feel quite a bit of fear—Artie closed his wrinkled eyelids and settled back on the pillow as though ready for a nap. He let the silly novelty song play on through his fingers.

The devil let out something like a low scream—it reminded Artie of nothing so much as the hiss of air escaping from a balloon.

Artie forced himself to count to ten before opening his eyes.

The devil was gone.

Artie held up his crooked fingers, stretching them out to their full length for the first time in five years. He felt a shadow had lifted away from him.

He craved a Bristol pad and pencil. With his hands working again, he was eager to create. Creation, the act of making something from nothing, was a direct attack on the devil, whose only wish was to drag the whole world down until everyone joined him in the cold, lightless abyss.

Artie found a pen and began to draw.

From the author

Thanks so much for taking the time to read Inferno Park! If you enjoyed it, I hope you’ll consider leaving a review at the retailer of your choice. Good reviews are possibly the most important factor in helping other readers discover a book.

My new book Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper begins a new series about a private investigator based out of Savannah, Georgia, who specializes in removing ghosts from haunted houses. Chapter one of that book begins on the next page, so I hope you’ll give that a try!

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Thanks for reading!

-J. L. Bryan

Ellie Jordan’s job is to catch and remove unwanted ghosts. Part detective, part paranormal exterminator, Ellie operates out of Savannah, Georgia, one of the oldest and most haunted cities in North America.

When a family contacts her to deal with a disturbing presence in the old mansion they’ve recently purchased, Ellie first believes it to be a typical, by-the-book specter, a residual haunting by a restless spirit. Instead, she finds herself confronting an evil older and more powerful than she’d ever expected, rooted in the house’s long and sordid history of luxury, sin, and murder. The dangerous entity seems particularly interested in her clients’ ten-year-old daughter.

Soon her own life is in danger, and Ellie must find a way to exorcise the darkness of the house before it can kill her, her clients, or their frightened young child.

Chapter One

“Why do ghosts wear clothes?” Stacey asked as we drove toward the possibly-haunted house.

Stacey was twenty-two, four years younger than me and much prettier, her blond hair cropped short and simple, carelessly styled, but her makeup was immaculate. She looked like what she was: a tomboy despite being raised by a former beauty-queen socialite in Montgomery, Alabama. She was a very recent graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design film school, but she'd been eager to join Eckhart Investigations and hunt ghosts rather than pursue a more sane and profitable career.

I had to wonder how Alabama-socialite mom felt about that.

“Well?” Stacey asked, raising an eyebrow. She rode shotgun as I drove our unmarked blue cargo van through the streets of Savannah. It was June, and rich sunlight fell through the thick, gnarled branches of ancient live oaks dripping with Spanish moss and crepe myrtles heavy with red blossoms. The stately old trees shaded columned mansions and gardens filled with summer blooms.

“I don't know, Stacey,” I said, trying not to sigh. “You tell me why ghosts wear clothes.”

“I'm asking you!”

“I thought you were setting up a joke,” I said.

“Nope, totally serious.”

“I don't get the question,” I told Stacey. “Why wouldn't they?”

“Well...think about it,” Stacey said. “The living wear them to keep warm or whatever. If you're a ghost, you don't have a body.”

“Does that keep you warm?” I smirked at her low-cut tank top, which wasn’t quite appropriate for work. I’ve been scratched and bruised by enough angry spirits that I wear turtlenecks, leather, and denim even in hot weather. I’ve tried to warn Stacey about this, but she hasn’t listened so far.

“Uh, no...” Stacey looked down at her shirt as if puzzled.

“So why do you wear it?”

“Because I don't want to be naked?”

“Question answered,” I said. “Next?”

“Why do ghosts wrap themselves in bedsheets?” Stacey asked.

“They don’t do that. Why would you even think--?”

“So they can rest in peace.” Stacey beamed, then her smile faltered a little. “That’s a joke.”

“No, jokes make you laugh.”

“That one killed at my second-grade Halloween party.”

“Only because your audience was high on sugar,” I said.

“Here’s another one: why do ghosts come out at night?”

“Because their electromagnetic fields are sensitive to dense concentrations of photons.”

“Joke-ruiner,” Stacey said.

We drove north and west, away from the city center. The Treadwell house was in an odd area of town, upriver, near empty brick warehouses and a few old factory shells dating back more than a hundred years. The nearest residential neighborhood was a row of decrepit bungalows on narrow, weedy lots, some of them clearly abandoned or foreclosed. They'd probably been inhabited by factory and dock workers at some point.

One old factory did show some signs of remodeling and gentrification, with a clothing boutique and one of those restaurants where you can buy a cruelty-free mushroom sandwich on sprouted-grain bread for just fifteen bucks. Maybe the area was on its way back.

I dropped the sun visor and opened the mirror to double-check myself before meeting the new clients. I always kept it pretty simple—minimal make-up, long brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. I can't do much more than that with my crazy coarse hair, anyway. Back in high school, I'd let it grow too shaggy and thick, and it combined with my old armor-thick glasses to create a real Mad Scientist Girl look.

Unlike Stacey, I hadn't been trained in a thousand subtle varieties of cosmetics and hair products. After my parents died when I was fifteen, I didn't really care about normal adolescent stuff like parties, dances, or dating, anyway. I'd stay up late at night studying everything from William James and Spiritualism to Tarot cards and Aleister Crowley.

Even then, I was training myself to be a ghost trapper.

“I don't see any houses down this way...” Stacey said. We passed a low brick warehouse choked with vines, its windows boarded over and spraypainted with graffiti.

“Maybe there.” I pointed to an overgrown lot with a screen of massive old trees and a wilderness of overgrown shrubs. A narrow, cracked brick drive led from the street into the darkness behind the trees.

We had to slow down and squint to read the old letters rusting off the ivy-choked brick mailbox. It was the right address.

I turned and eased the van up the cracked driveway, nosing aside low-lying limbs.

“Doesn't look like anybody's lived here in a long time,” Stacey whispered. “Do you think it'll be a real ghost this time? I'm tired of duds.”

“Careful what you wish for,” I told her. More than half our calls come from people who are just plain ghost-happy. They think their place is haunted, and they haven't bothered to eliminate other options. Sometimes that eerie, moaning cold spot is just a clunky air conditioner; sometimes those strange footsteps in the attic are just squirrels. Our first job is to check for any non-paranormal causes for the alleged haunting.

Stacey hadn't seen much in the way of real ghosts in the three weeks since she'd been hired full-time. If she had seen the kinds of things I've seen, she would have been less eager to find a true haunting.

The house lay beyond a jungle of green that had once been a lawn and gardens. Here in coastal Georgia, with the hot sun and constant rain, the wilderness is always ready to sprout back at the first sign of neglect.

I slowed to a halt as the front of the house came into view.

“Wow,” Stacey whispered.

A three-story brick mansion loomed above us, much of it hidden by the shadows of the old trees overhead, and even more of it concealed by moss and wild vines. It was a Gothic Revival style house, made of dark brick and heavy wood, with treacherously steep roofs and sharp, high gables rising toward the dim tree canopy above. It had a medieval castle look to it, maybe the kind of neglected castle where Beauty would find the Beast hanging out, just waiting for the remodeling power of love to turn it all into a gorgeous palace.

A team of three men worked on the roof, repairing years of broken shingles and rotten wood. A pair of paint-spattered pick-up trucks sat in the drive below them. I idled beside the trucks for a moment.

“This place looks creepy,” Stacey whispered. “Does it feel cold to you?”

“There's enough shade to lower the temperature a few degrees,” I said. “Don't get worked up and spook yourself. Keep your mind empty.”

“An empty mind is an open mind,” Stacey intoned solemnly, imitating our boss, Calvin Eckhart. We both broke down into snickering. Stacey is a pretty convincing mimic, and Calvin’s occasional bouts of Zen are always amusing, delivered in his earthy good-old-boy accent.

“It's true,” I said, straightening up in my seat. “They said to pull around to the side.”

“Ooh, we have to use the servants' entrance?” Stacey made a face as we followed the weedy brick drive back around to the two-story east wing of the house. The east wing had its own chimney and looked to be in much better repair than the main facade, with no mold or vines on the bricks, the trim freshly painted a dark brown. “They must not want the neighbors to know they called the ghost exterminators.”

“What neighbors?” I asked, thinking of the empty warehouse we'd just passed.

I parked near a likely-looking side door. The door was heavy and red, built of solid wood and shielded by a screen door. It was sunken at the back of a small brick porch under the shadows of a sharply peak roof. The door itself looked new, and the brick looked worn but recently pressure-washed.

Two more cars were parked there, a silver Jaguar and a small black Mercedes. Good. Eckhart Investigations charges on a rough sliding scale, so people and businesses who can afford it pay more, while poor people pay less. We also do some free work for people who obviously can’t afford anything.

I sort of hoped the Treadwells had a true haunting. The ghost business had been slow for a few weeks, and I could use a decent paycheck at the end of the month.

Stacey and I got out of the van. I grabbed my black toolbox, while she brought her camera bag.

“Are you the ghost catchers?” a small, whispery voice asked, and I jumped. Maybe I was a little more affected by the dark, creepy old mansion than I wanted to admit to Stacey.

A girl in a yellow dress emerged from the shadows under the roofed doorway, clutching a cloth doll in her hands. She twisted the doll nervously as she stared at us. She was nine or ten, and she had purple bags under her eyes as if she hadn’t slept in a long time. It was unsettling to see that on a kid so young. She could have been the cover girl for Sad Orphan Monthly, if not for the brightly-printed Cavalli dress that probably cost as much as a month’s rent on my apartment.

“We are the ghost catchers,” I replied. “I’m Ellie, and this is Stacey Ray.”

“Just call me Stacey!” Stacey said. She waved and gave the exaggerated smile people use when clumsily trying to ingratiate themselves to small children. “What’s your name?”

“Can you make her go away?” the girl asked me, and for a moment I thought she was talking about Stacey. The little girl’s face was pale and solemn.

“Make who go away?” I asked.

The girl glanced back at the door behind her, as if to check whether anyone was watching. Then she whispered, looking down at her doll: “The lady who comes at night.”

“Is she scary?” Stacey asked. The girl looked at Stacey like she was incredibly stupid.

“Is your mom Anna Treadwell?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Would you get her for us?”

“Mom!” The little girl turned and screamed at the door, but she did not move closer to it. “The ghost people are here!” She turned back and stared at us. “I don’t like to go inside.”

A minute later, a woman stepped out of the red door. She looked to be in her late thirties or early forties, her dark hair in a stylish professional bob. She was attractive and fit—I pegged her as the Pilates type. She wore old sneakers, worn jeans, and a t-shirt that read Southeastern Wireless: Team-Building Camp 2013! Every bit of her, from her hair to her toes, was spattered with light blue paint.

“I’m so sorry, I’m a mess,” the woman said, blushing hard and trying to adjust her hair. “Is it ten already? It’s so easy to lose track of time in this house.”

“That’s fine, please don’t worry about it. Doing some renovations?” I pointed to the guys working on the roof.

“You have no idea.” She shook her head as if overwhelmed. She wiped a paint-crusted hand on her jeans. “I’m Anna. I’d shake your hand, but you probably don’t want to stain your clothes Daydream Azure, so...”

“I’m Ellie Jordan, senior investigator for Eckhart,” I told her. “We spoke on the phone yesterday.”

“Oh, yes!” She smiled, but it looked forced, like she was trying to hide some serious apprehension. “Nice to meet you.”

“This is Stacey Ray Tolbert, our tech manager.” I delivered our job titles with a straight face, as if our company consisted of more than three people. It was just me, Stacey, and our boss Calvin Eckhart, a retired homicide detective who had fallen into paranormal investigations and ghost-trapping years ago. Calvin had hired Stacey because he wanted to withdraw from fieldwork, claiming that he was tired of trying to chase ghosts in rickety attics and basements while confined to a wheelchair.

“You can call me Stacey,” Stacey told her. I don’t know why I even bother introducing Stacey by her full name. It’s just kind of fun to say: Stacey Ray Tolbert.

“I guess you’ve already met Lexa,” Anna Treadwell said, giving her daughter a half-hug with one arm. Lexa ducked away, looking annoyed. “Come on inside, everyone. Please ignore the mess, we’re still unpacking and organizing...everything’s been crazy lately.” I took it she didn’t mean crazy in a fun way.

“Did you recently move here?” I asked as we followed Anna and Lexa inside. Anna had a gentle Midwestern sort of accent, so I knew she wasn’t from Georgia originally.

“Oh, yes. About six weeks ago.” The hallway was tall but fairly narrow, with a dark hardwood floor that made our footsteps echo. A hammer banged overhead. Light bulbs burned in a chandelier, but the heavy shadows of the corridor seemed to absorb the glow, leaving the upper corners dark. Heavy wooden doors lined both sides of the hall. One opened onto a dining room with a long, polished cherry table and matching chairs, plus cardboard boxes heaped in the corner. The opposing door opened onto a living room with a long leather couch, a big flatscreen on the wall, and more boxes waiting to be unpacked.

The hall seemed to end abruptly. On the right side, a flight of polished wooden stairs led up and out of sight. Just past the steps, at the very end of the hall, was another heavy door like the one through which we’d entered. Three industrial-sized deadbolts were built into it, and one was locked into place. The wall around the door seemed a slightly different color than those around it, as though the wall and door were not original to the house and had been added later.

“Dale!” Anna shouted up the stairs. The hammering paused for a moment, then resumed. “Dale, the ghost detectives are here!”

The hammering continued.

“My husband will be down in a second,” Anna said with an apologetic smile. Though she was putting up a calm front, her hands were trembling.

“No rush,” I said. I wanted to put her at ease but wasn’t sure how. “Where did you move from?”

“Oh, Marietta. Outside Atlanta?” She pointed back over her shoulder.

“I’m familiar.”

“Chicago before that. Dale grew up there.” Anna took a deep breath and screamed: “Dale, get down here right now!”

The hammering stopped, and there was another loud bang, as if someone had thrown a hammer on the floor. Footsteps clomped on the stairs. A thin man about Anna’s age, his dark hair speckled with gray, stomped down from the landing.

“Anna, I can’t leave a bookshelf half-hung!” he snapped at his wife. He definitely had a Chicago accent. There was a lot of nose in that voice. “I had to finish that second nail. Maybe if you helped out more, you would understand—”

“Dale, the detectives are here,” Anna interrupted, pointing at us.

“What’s that?” Dale saw us, then straightened up. A look of confusion crossed his face as he looked at me and Stacey.

I knew that look. I saw it most often among older males—they get thrown off-balance by the idea of a female detective.

We introduced ourselves quickly. Dale’s voice became less whiny now that he wasn’t alone with his family.

“You have a beautiful home, Mr. and Mrs. Treadwell,” I added, eager to defuse any tension.

“It’s a wreck,” Dale said, shaking his head. “Real money pit, just like I said before we bought it. And that was before all the...” He shrugged, as if deciding he didn’t want to finish his sentence.

“Is there somewhere we can sit and talk?” I asked, glancing at the dining room, where eight chairs were spaced around the table.

“Maybe the dining room.” Anna and her family stepped around the piles of boxes to sit on one side of the table. Stacey and I took the opposite side, our backs to the two narrow windows that barely let in enough sunlight to pierce the gloom.

“I’m sorry about the clutter,” Anna added, gesturing helplessly at the pile of unpacked boxes beside her.

“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you end up moving to Savannah?” I asked.

“Oh, well, in our past life, Dale was vice-president of product development at AlgoSystems Data Management. Have you heard of them?”

I shook my head.

“Well, they’re a...software company, basically,” Anna continued. “And I was a corporate accounts executive at Southeastern Wireless. With our commutes and our careers, we barely saw each other, and Lexa practically lived at the daycare center. Together, Dale and I decided it was too much. We wanted to escape the rat race.” She touched her husband’s hand. He looked at the floor and slouched, as though maybe he wasn’t so happy about escaping that particular race. “We’d visited Savannah a couple of times, and it was just such a beautiful city...We decided to buy one of these big old houses and turn it into a bed and breakfast. We bought this place for a steal, even when you consider how dilapidated it is.”

“Yeah, we’ve stayed at some bed-and-breakfast spots around the country, and they’re usually run by idiots,” Dale said, perking up a little. “Just complete idiots. So we figured we could do it smarter. Imagine this: wife comes to husband, says she wants to spend a weekend at some fruity-fruit bed and breakfast in Savannah, so she can shop for antiques, visit museums, junk like that. Husband says no way. But wait, wife says. This one’s got a sports lounge right on the ground floor—we’re talking big-screen TV, beer on tap. Now husband’s like, heck yeah, I can catch the Bears game, let’s go!”

“Something to appeal to the whole family,” Anna explained.

“Can we make this quick?” Dale asked. “We have a lot to do around here. The girls say they’ve seen ghosts, but I don’t think so. I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“We’ll move as fast as we can, Mr. Treadwell.” I said, mentally noting how he referred to both his wife and daughter as the girls.

I gently set my black steel toolbox on the floor, since I didn’t want to risk scratching their dining table. I popped the lid and brought out a long yellow legal pad, two pens, and a digital voice recorder.

I asked if it was okay to record the interview. Dale rolled his eyes, but nobody objected. I placed the device in the center of the table and tapped the record button.

“Okay, Mrs. Treadwell,” I said, since it was clear that Dale was the family skeptic. “Can you tell us why you believe your house is haunted?”

*end of chapter one*

Continue reading Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper on your Kindle! Ghostly adventures, cheap price.

The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series

Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

Cold Shadows

(more coming soon)

Other books by J.L. Bryan:

Urban Fantasy/Horror

Inferno Park

The Unseen

The Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)

Jenny Pox

Tommy Nightmare

Alexander Death

Jenny Plague-Bringer

Science Fiction Novels

Nomad

Helix