If You Go Down to the Woods

by Seth C. Adams

  Dad passed out the tickets and we pocketed them, heading across the parking lot and to the arches that admitted us.

  Just as we walked in a young man approached, in nice pressed pants and a collared shirt and a denim jacket. He said hi to Sarah, and then turned and shook my parents’ hands and “sir”-ed and “ma’am”-ed them and I knew then without a doubt that Sarah had planned this.

  She indeed batted her lashes at Dad and did this pouty thing with her lips and pulled on his arm and said: “Please, Daddy, oh please.” Mom leaned over towards Dad and whispered in his ear. With an exasperated sigh he waved Sarah away. She leaned over and pecked him on the cheek and then she was prancing away like a doe with this nice looking guy not at all like the grease ball from California, and that surprised me. But not so much as the fact that Dad had let her go in the first place when he made such a fuss about it being a family night. I was angry at Sarah for getting away so easily, but angrier with myself that I hadn’t planned ahead like her.

  So I gave it a try and asked Dad if I could go looking for my friends. For a second I even considered trying the batting the lashes thing and pulling cutely on his arm. But at the last moment I decided to hang onto a bit of self-respect and just stick to the begging.

  “No,” he said.

  I thought about making a scene, but then Mom leaned towards him again. She had one hand on his chest and one finger was kind of stroking him gently, prodding him.

  “Come on, John,” she said, and she did this persuasive lilting, soothing thing with her voice a thousand times better than my sister’s blatant mooning. Sarah, take some lessons from the master, I thought, holding back a smile. “Let them have fun.”

  “This was supposed to be a family night, Linda,” Dad said.

  Mom snuggled even closer to him.

  “We can have fun too,” she said, and I thought, Oh, barf!

  But I thought of finding Tara out there somewhere, among the crowd and the booths and games, and her pressing close to me like Mom was to Dad. The Puke Factor immediately went down a few levels. Dad smiled at Mom. You could see he was trying not to but losing the battle. Finally, he handed me a twenty from his pocket, ruffled my hair, which I hated, and waved me off. I ran before he could change his mind.

  Under the lights and the shadows of the towering wheel and coaster, the people of Payne, shoulder to shoulder, moved almost as one mass, one creature. An ocean of people, and I ran and was drowned in the magic of it.

  2.

  I looked for my friends for a bit, trying mightily to avoid the game booths and rides until I found them. Until I saw this booth with water guns where you had to shoot into the mouths of these clowns that looked to me like portraits of John Wayne Gacy, not cheerful funny clowns at all. The water in the mouths filled up these balloons, and if the balloon on your target popped, you won a prize. It was the prize wall that caught my attention. Lined up rank and file on little shelves were these big plush superhero toys of Spiderman, Batman, Superman, and others, and I thought: Wow, that’s pretty dorky, but really what that meant was I thought they were cool and wanted one.

  Fishing the twenty from my pocket I walked over to the game booth. Only two of the six seats were taken, so I sat and gave the attendant my twenty, and it was a dollar a game so I got nineteen back. On my first try I found that the water stream from the gun arced high and I missed the maniacal clown’s mouth for a couple seconds and sprayed his eyes, forehead, and chin while trying to adjust my aim. I thought to myself if this was John Wayne Gacy he would have raped me and chopped me up for the mess I was making of his face.

  When the water gun was empty I passed another dollar across the counter to the attendant. He flipped a switch, and when the gun was full again, he said: “Ready!” I pulled the trigger and the water started to fly. This time I aimed low, adjusting for the arc, and though I was closer to the clown’s blood-red open mouth, I still splashed around a bit and the balloon only got half full.

  “Shit,” I muttered and passed over another dollar. As my water gun was filling up again I saw this body sitting down on the stool next to me. I turned and there was this face like the moon, and a smile that made my heart skip a beat.

  “Hey cowboy,” Tara said, as she passed a dollar over to the attendant and he began to fill the gun in front of her. She wore jeans and a jacket, and she straddled the stool like a cowgirl. “Bet I can beat you.”

  Her voice was like a spring breeze through grass and tumbling leaves, and I thought I could smell her breath on the air. It was dew after the rain, flowers, and a clear blue sky.

  I smiled, took hold of my gun.

  “What are the stakes?” I asked, taking careful aim at Gacy’s mouth.

  “Whatever the winner wants,” she said.

  Smiling, she gave me this squinty look.

  “That’s kind of broad and vague. I don’t have much to give.”

  Somehow I found the courage to meet her gaze.

  She laughed, a brief sound like raindrops on a rooftop or feet tapping a dance.

  “Then you better hope you win,” she said. The attendant told her the gun was ready. She looked at me. I looked back at her, smiling so broadly it ached, telling myself I must look like an idiot, and not caring. “On the count of three.”

  I turned to stare down the killer clown.

  You’re going to choke on it, I told that painted face staring back at me.

  “One,” she said.

  You’re going down, clown boy, I taunted telepathically at Mr. Gacy.

  “Two.”

  I tried thinking of what I’d ask for if I won. I wondered if she really meant what she said: Whatever the winner wants. I thought of a lot of things I wanted at that moment, and they made this shivery feeling go up and down my body.

  From the corner of my eye I saw the arc of water shoot out of her gun, and I was still waiting for the Three! It took me a moment to figure out what was happening. I looked over at her and laughed, and then back at my target and pulled the trigger.

  My aim was true this time around, but she had a head start and her aim was nearly as good. I watched as our balloons filled with water, mine always a bit smaller than hers, and then her balloon was stretching, growing, expanding until parts of it seemed almost translucent. When it burst she dropped the gun and lifted her arms to the sky and shouted: “I won! I won!”

  I laughed and so did she, and she pointed across to the prize wall and chose the Spiderman plush toy.

  “Two out of three,” I said when she was seated again. Spiderman resting on her lap seemed to look up at me with a smug satisfaction. “You cheated.”

  Her crooked smile aimed my way and she laughed and reached over and gave me a little shove on the shoulder. My skin tingled there even after her hand was gone, like a phantom presence.

  “Can’t stand losing to a girl?”

  This seemed a taunt in more ways than one.

  “No,” I said. “Losing to a girl’s just fine by me. It’s losing to a cheater I can’t stand.”

  She gave another one of her tinkling laughs, and I wished I could record that sound and play it back whenever I wanted.

  “Okay,” she said, her head kind of rising a bit and doing this cute bob like one of those springy bobble heads on the dashboards of cars, “Mr. Macho has to beat a little girl. Two out of three.”

  She passed over another dollar to the attendant.

  “No cheating this time,” I said, passing over another dollar also.

  “No cheating,” she agreed.

  We waited for the guns to fill and the attendant to give us the ready. I looked over at Tara and she was looking at me, and those eyes were like crystal balls and in them I saw what I wanted my future to be.

  “On three,” I said, and she nodded. “This time I count.”

  She laughed, and my heart raced.

  “One,” I said, taking aim then looking back at her. She was all concentration, looking down the sight of her water gun at the clown in fron
t of her. The tip of her tongue poked out of a corner of her mouth, and it was the cutest thing I’d ever seen. I needed to make a list of the cutest things I’d ever seen when it came to her.

  “Two.”

  I turned back to my own devil clown. Put the painted bastard in the crosshairs.

  I waited for the count of three, letting the silence hang between us. I counted the seconds away in my head, one, two, three … still not saying the last aloud. I waited, ticking the moments by in my mind … four, five, six, seven … and finally, in my periphery, I saw Tara lower her gun and turn to me.

  “Something wrong?” she asked, and then I pulled the trigger, my grin impossibly stretching wider.

  “You booger!” she shouted, turned back to face front, took aim, and fired.

  This time my balloon filled faster, though she gave it a good run. My balloon burst, splashing the ground beneath it. We both laughed, and she gave me another of those shoves on the shoulder.

  “You cheater!” she said.

  Laughing, she wiped at her eyes, tears of laughter rolling down.

  “I learn from the best.”

  I ran a forearm over my own eyes.

  I pointed at the Batman plush toy on the prize wall, and the attendant brought it to me. I propped the Dark Knight in my lap, like Spiderman was in Tara’s.

  We took a few moments to regain our composure. We each slid another dollar across the counter to the attendant, dancing back and forth between us and his other customers. We waited for the guns to fill.

  “Now the tiebreaker,” she said. “Winner takes all.”

  “And this time,” I said, “really, no cheating.”

  “No cheating.” She crossed her chest with a finger. I watched where her finger trailed, making the X between the swell of her breasts, and my mouth went dry. I turned my gaze back to her face. “Cross my heart.”

  She faced front again.

  I did the same, taking aim, looking down the scope of the gun at the evil clown in front of me.

  “We’ll both count this time,” she said. “To make it fair.”

  “Okay,” I said, not looking away from my target.

  The attendant gave us the ready.

  “One,” Tara said, and I heard her shuffle in her seat, probably to take better aim.

  “Two,” I said, finger tightening on the trigger.

  I waited for the three count, tensing in my seat. I heard her shuffling again and thought to myself: Good, she’s nervous. My mind drifted and I thought again of what I could ask of her if I won. The possibilities were almost too much for my brain.

  “Three,” came the final count, and it was right next to my ear, a puff of breath like an ocean breeze. Startled, I dropped the gun and turned. Tara was moving back into her seat, lifting her gun, aiming, and pulling the trigger, smiling and laughing like the night was hers. The evening air carried that laughter like it belonged to it.

  Her balloon was filling fast.

  My gun sat on the counter in front of me.

  The tingle of her breath against my ear lingered, that feeling of a phantom touch like when she’d shoved me on the shoulder, now intensified a thousandfold. I picked up the water gun and pulled the trigger, trying to aim and splashing nothing but the wall, missing the psycho clown completely.

  Tara’s balloon burst and she jumped from her seat and did a little dance. She came up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders and shook me, leaning over and laughing in my ear.

  “I won! I won! I won!” she said. She pointed at the Superman toy, and when the attendant got it down for her, she put it under one arm and Spiderman under the other.

  I smiled, but inside I felt cheated. I’d lost, and now all those things I had thought about wouldn’t ever happen. Still, she was here beside me, and that wasn’t bad at all.

  “Come on,” she said and took me by the arm and pulled me along beside her. “I saw Jim and Bobby near the Haunted House earlier. I told them to wait for us.”

  “Wait,” I said, as she tugged me along. “What about what the winner gets?” I asked, surprised that I’d had the guts to say it, even as I wondered how she knew Jim, how all these people—Fat Bobby, Jim, Tara—knew each other, and feeling a bit like an outsider.

  “I’ll collect later,” she said mysteriously. She gave another cute bob of her head, and then she was pulling me again, away from the water gun booth and into the lights and the people. I saw none of it, only her hand on my arm, and I hoped the night would never end.

  3.

  Jim and Fat Bobby were in front of the Haunted House just as Tara had said they’d be. Eager and anxious, they jogged towards us and herded us back towards the line. Jim saw the Batman doll under my arm and gave me this wry grin like he wanted to call me a sissy, wanted me to know he wanted to call me a sissy, but was doing me a favor, and wanted me to know he was doing me a favor. It was all pretty complicated, and I threw him a look that I hoped let him know I got the message and appreciated it. About twenty or so people were ahead of us, and I took the time to look at the Haunted House.

  The place seemed constructed of clapboard and leftover wood too termite infested and splintered to be used for proper construction. The walls were adorned by murals of wailing ghosts and bloody-mouthed vampires and zombies with ropes of brains dangling from their maws. I thought to myself that a retard with crayons and markers could paint better than those murals, even if said retard also had Parkinson’s and periodically went into spastic fits and banged his head against hard surfaces. The line of patrons waiting to get in went down the center of a rubber foam stone graveyard, each tombstone with a stupid name like ‘Boo Gravely’ and ‘B.L. Zebub’ etched on it.

  I would have complained and asked that we go do something else, but everyone else seemed eager to get in, and so I kept my mouth shut. Besides, Tara was beside me and so I figured the night was still a winner.

  Finally at the front of the line, each of us handed over a dollar, accepted our ticket, and went up the steps and through the door. The door shut behind us and my opinion of the place soon changed.

  The first room was dark and in the sudden dark it was sort of frightening. A woman’s voice ahead of us gave a shrill little gasp, and someone with her laughed nervously, like he was saying: I’m not scared at all little lady, but my, it sure is cute that you are. In the dimness, red and blue lights started to flash, and a fog machine somewhere pumped in whirls of the stuff from vents in the floor and walls, so that soon you looked down and your feet and ankles were gone in the mist. As we stood about, sections of the walls began to flip open and behind them were women done up like Anne Rice vampires, in long and flowing immaculate gowns of reds and purples and black. They writhed their bodies in a slow and deliberate way, and offered passersby lascivious looks. They hissed at us and bared fake fangs. Trickles of fake blood ran down the corners of their dark red lips, running down the slopes of their chins and necks. A sign above them in glowing neon green lettering read “THE DEVIL’S BRIDES.”

  “Oh, brother,” Tara muttered from behind me and prodded me forward with a hand to my back.

  “Why does Satan get all the bitches?” someone called out behind us. Even distorted, bouncing off the walls with a tinny echo, the voice for some reason sounded familiar.

  Hoarse laughter answered it from somewhere ahead of us, past Jim and Bobby.

  The next room was lit by yellow lights and candles set into the walls and covered by protective glass. Tables, counters and shelves crowded the room, and it was obvious it was supposed to be some sort of library or laboratory or a combination of the two. Glass cases covered the surfaces of the furniture, and inside many of the cases were glass jars filled with what was supposed to be formaldehyde but looked suspiciously like Mountain Dew. Floating in the viscous fluid were fetuses vaguely human, grotesque and disturbing because of that similarity. All of them were deformed in some manner, staring out at us with glazed, plastic eyes.

  Here was one with an oversized head. T
here one with two heads sprouting out from each other like potato spuds. Another here with no head at all. One counter had floating and bobbing fetuses with too many hands; over this way one with three legs; right over here just a torso, bobbing like a buoy in a yellow ocean. Others had limbs fused together; too many fingers on each hand; noses and ears and eyes misplaced. Some had flesh like lizards, scaly and thick; others with spiny tails growing at the ends of their backs. In other cases were skeletal remains, and here were skulls misshapen with bony protrusions like jagged boulders; skulls with too many eyeholes; skulls with jagged shark-like teeth. A sign hung in this room as well, glowing bright in the dimness, and it read “THE DEVIL’S CHILDREN.”

  “At least Lucifer doesn’t shoot blanks!”

  The familiar voice from behind us.

  The laughter ahead of us answering it.

  Moving forward again and we came into a hall of mirrors. Lit only so that you saw the mirrors just before you ran headfirst into them, the mirror room was a maze of shadow and reflected shadow. Here too a fog machine poured in a mist from vents in the floor, so that it seemed like you were floating in the darkness, the darkness reflected and the mist below. The mirrors distorted things in disturbing proportions. First there was a big fat Joey in front of me, and then after a turn a skinny Joey almost ten feet tall, his head nearly touching the ceiling. I saw a squat and dwarfish Joey, and a Joey with a squished in face like he was sucking on the world’s sourest lemon. Lost in my many reflections, it was a moment before I noticed Jim and Bobby had disappeared out of sight ahead of us. I turned to make sure Tara was still with me, and seeing her vague form there I continued forward.

  A squeal issued from behind me a moment later. Tara ran into me from behind and I was pushed forward, bringing my hands up against the mirror looming before me. It didn’t shatter as I feared it would, imagining the tiny shards raining down on me and carving me up.