by JL Bryan
***
The next day, Jason and Erin left the hotel early, while Mitch and Dred were still asleep in their rooms. They rode the DART, Dublin's public train system, out toward Malarkayland on the west side of the city.
“Did you ever get a chance to talk to Heath?” Erin asked him as the city rolled by outside the window.
“Uh,” Jason said. “Um. Yeah, before our recording session yesterday.”
“Really?” Erin asked. Yesterday’s session had gone the same as the previous two days, Heath rejecting Erin’s songs and making them play the same stupid, repetitive songs again and again.
“It didn’t work,” Jason said. “The music just doesn’t affect him like normal people. I couldn’t change his mind. I just ended up looking crazy. He hates me even more now.”
“Thanks for trying, anyway.” Erin shook her head, frowning. “Why doesn’t our music work on that guy?”
“It’s strange.” Jason shrugged. “I can’t figure it out, either. Maybe he’s spent so much time making lame pop songs that he can’t really enjoy music anymore.”
Erin laughed, and the day seemed brighter.
The front of the amusement park looked just as they'd seen on television countless times—the row of big medieval-looking gates, the golden spiral towers rising up behind them. Their all-inclusive day passes got them inside quickly and free of charge.
Inside the gate, they walked up a wide boulevard lined with shops selling souvenirs, t-shirts, and Abominable Snowcones. They passed an Authentic Irish Pub filled with tourists eating tacos. The front of the park was designed to look like a magical city, with gold-painted bricks, bright flags, and high arching doorways. Music played from every window, mostly TV theme songs.
At the first big intersection, there stood a tall stone fountain carved to look like the legendary cartoon character Dummy Dog, who spat out an arching stream of water as his nemesis, Crummy Cat, slugged him in the stomach with a big mallet. Next to the Dummy Dog fountain was a monument sign with a huge cartoon map of Malarkayland. “What do you want to ride first?” Jason pointed to the rides. “The Inferno-Coaster? The Gut-Wrencher? The Noggin-Clonker?”
“I was promised miniature golf,” Erin said.
“That’s Pirates of the Mediterranean,” Jason said. “Looks like we’ll have to ride the caterpillar.”
They walked to a nearby platform with a large caterpillar sign and joined the other people already waiting there. After a minute, a train that looked like a big plastic caterpillar pulled up alongside the platform. It had a big smiling face and two bouncing antennae at the front end. Two seats were built into each of its segments.
Erin and Jason picked a segment near the front.
The caterpillar wound lazily through the park, taking them past an amphitheater hosting some kind of special-effects show featuring gorillas and dinosaurs. They passed the three-story Mystery Mansion Maze, based on the board game and movie of the same name.
It had been a grueling three days in the studio with Heath, but Erin was smiling now, as they passed over the gingerbread houses of Santa’s Village. They chugged toward the pirate ship, half-sunk into a lake, that marked the entrance to the miniature golf course. Jason was glad to see her looking happy for a change.
At the golf course, a man in full pirate costume, complete with an eyepatch and a fake talking parrot on his shoulder, gave them their golf balls through a porthole in the half-sunken ship. He held out a pair of putters, but he wouldn’t let go when Jason tried to take them.
“Arrrr, beware, ye maties, beware the Pirates of the High Seas!” he said.
“Okay,” Jason said. “Thanks for the warning.”
“Arrrgh, the pirrrrates are to be fearrrred!” the man said.
“I’m sure they arrre,” Jason said. He gave the two clubs a little tug. “Can we have the clubs, please?”
“Arrrrgh, many a yearrr the pirrrrates have rrrroamed the seas!”
“Gotcha.” Jason pulled a little harder, and the man finally released the clubs.
They walked the plank from the ship to the first hole, which was a small replica of the lost city of Atlantis—high cracked walls with faded Minoan art, broken columns and urns, water spilling everywhere from stone fish and a broken stone aqueduct, filling half the area with water hazards.
They would have to hit their balls down a complicated series of platforms to reach the actual hole at the bottom, which was on a peninsula that stuck out into the water of the flooded city.
“Wow,” Erin said. “This really is the most expensive mini-golf course in the world.”
“This is just the first hole,” Jason said. He gave her a putter. “Ladies first.”
“I’ll give it a try.” Erin set the ball on the putting square. Instead of hitting it, she walked out and looked down the long, twisting slope of the first green, which wound around statues of fish and people in togas, all of them painted to look like marble ruins.
Someone had spent way too much time designing this golf course, Jason thought.
Erin putted her ball. It bounced off the statues of an octopus and a man with a long marble-colored beard, and eventually stopped right next to the hole at the bottom, which was surrounded by little fish sculptures.
“What?” Jason said. “ You almost got it in one shot. How did you do that?”
Erin shrugged. “Luck.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“You just have to know how they set these things up,” Erin said. “My dad—my real dad, not Dave—he was the manager of Gold Rush City back in Ann Arbor. It’s one of those places with go-karts, an arcade. It’s all Old West themed. Like in the restaurant part, they have these robotic miners and cowboys that sing Happy Birthday while you eat pizza. They’re kind of creepy.”
“That sounds pretty fun,” Jason said. “My dad sells farm equipment, which is less fun than that.”
“The mini-golf course took you through boxcars, this underground part that was supposed to be a mine, and they’d spraypainted gold rocks all over the wall...it was pretty neat. In middle school, I hustled some tourist kids for money on that course.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, the key is to act like you’re from out of town, too,” Erin said. “So they don’t know you’ve played the course a thousand times before.”
“How much did you make?”
“Like fifty bucks, altogether.”
“That’s pretty good,” Jason said.
“Then this assistant manager busted me and told my dad,” Erin said.
“Did you get in trouble?”
“No, he thought it was funny,” Erin said. “My mom got mad when she heard about it, though. It was a pretty good racket while it lasted. Your turn.”
“Oh, yeah.” Jason lined up the ball. He doubted he could do better than her impossibly good shot, and he was right. The ball ricocheted off the polka-dotted octopus sculpture and came shooting back towards his head. Jason and Erin ducked. The ball cracked into a broken column behind Jason, then landed right back where it had started.
“Looks like it’s your shot again,” Erin said. “Try to avoid hitting our skulls this time.”
Jason swung as hard he could. His ball bounced back and forth among the fake broken sculptures, and eventually stopped between two octopus tentacles. There was no direct path toward the hole.
“Here, you’ll have to do a bank shot.” Erin showed him exactly where to hit the ball so it would bounce off the wall and roll down toward the hole. He putted just as she instructed, and his ball ended up right next to hers.
“Hey, I’m caught up!” Jason said.
“Actually, you’re a couple strokes behind,” Erin said. She walked down and putted her ball three inches into the hole.
“Show off,” Jason said.
Hole Two was called Jungle Island, after a setting in the pirate movies. It was full of thick green grasses, tropical trees, and bamboo, all of
it plastic. Huge plastic frogs sat on lily pads that floated in the pond beside the course, which was surrounded by life-size plastic animals like elephants and lions.
This time, the golf balls had to be hit through a long obstacle course full of plastic tropical wildlife, like parrots and monkeys.
“What do you think about this video idea Heath sprang on us yesterday?” Erin asked. “Going to Romania? Filming in Dracula’s castle?”
“Sounds fun,” Jason said. “I looked it up on the internet. It’s called Bran Castle, and it looks amazing. Lots of high towers, and it’s like a little city inside.”
“But what does Dracula have to do with ‘The Sugar Dance’?” Erin asked. “I mean, it’s bad enough we have to make a video for that stupid song, but why a vampire thing?”
“I don’t know. I feel like he’s making us do an extra-stupid video just to punish me,” Jason said.
Erin sighed and putted. The monkeys and birds sprang to life, swinging their long arms and wide wings, slapping the ball back and forth among themselves like flippers in a pinball machine. Finally, the ball raced up the elephant’s trunk, off his ear, and rolled to a stop among more of the flipper-animals.
Jason saw something move by one of the green frogs. It wasn’t there when he turned his head, but he stepped to the edge of the pond for a closer look.
“Hey, Erin, have you seen the Pirates of the Mediterranean movies?” he asked.
“I’ve seen the first two. Why?”
“Were there any leprechauns on Jungle Island? Like with little black hats and curly-toed shoes?”
“Leprechauns? I don’t think so.”
“I could swear I just saw one on that lily pad.” He pointed to the space behind the fat, bored-looking plastic frog. “Right there.”
Erin shrugged. “Well, we are in Ireland, so who knows? Just putt.”
Jason putted and watched his ball bounce back and forth among the randomly slapping animals.
They played through Hole Three, the Cursed Cave, and then onto Hole Four, the Sphinx. As Jason was preparing to tee off among the pyramids, the huge, lumbering twins Sean and Shane ran out from behind the Sphinx’s tail.
“What’s this? What have you two gotten up to?” Sean asked.
“Just playing some golf,” Jason said.
“You call this golf?” Shane asked.
“Properly speaking, it’s goofy golf,” Erin said.
“It certainly is!” Shane looked indignant. “An insult to real golf.”
“Getting back to the point,” Sean said. “What makes you think you can simply creep off one fine morning and play a game of madman’s golf, all by yourselves?”
“Why not?” Jason asked.
“‘Why not?’” Sean repeated to his twin. “Doesn’t he know we’re his security?”
“I think we’re pretty safe,” Erin said. “Heath said we had today off.”
“It’s his spa day,” Jason added.
“You don’t get a day off from your security!” Shane said. “What if you’d been trampled by fans?”
“Or kidnapped for ransom?” Sean asked.
“Guys, I don’t think anyone’s going to kidnap us,” Jason said.
“And we don’t have any fans in Ireland,” Erin said. “We barely have any in America. Nobody knows us or cares about us.”
The twins sighed.
“That won’t be the case for long, with Mr. Malarkay's machine running you,” Sean said.
“In any case, Mr. Malarkay's made his investment, and he protects his investments,” Shane said. “You don’t go anywhere without security. Which is us.”
“Or people approved by us.”
“Yeah, or them.”
“Mr. Malarkay doesn’t like his investments wandering around with no security.”
“He doesn’t own us,” Erin said.
“For the next seven years, he does,” Sean said, and Erin frowned.
“You have to get used to being careful,” Shane said. “Did you see anything out of the ordinary today?”
“Um, well I did see something...” Jason began. He was going to tell them about the leprechaun, but then he noticed Erin rolling her eyes a little.
“What was it?” asked Sean.
“Yeah, what was it?” asked Shane.
“Nothing,” Jason said.
“It sounds like something.”
“If there’s something, we need to know of it.”
“I just thought it was strange that Erin almost sank a hole in one on her first shot,” Jason said. “I mean, have you looked at this course.”
“She must have a bit of luck,” Sean said.
“Luck’s something it’s always good to have a bit of,” Shane said. “Though you can’t always count on it.”
“Right,” Jason said. “Can we at least finish the game?”
“We haven’t got time,” Sean said. “We have to get you back where you’re safe.”
“Those are our orders,” Shane added.
“Come on, just another hour?” Jason asked.
The twins folded their arms and shook their heads.
Jason looked at Erin. What could they do? If they ran, they could probably lose the security guys somewhere in the park, for a while. But that would just make the Malarkay people mad at them.
They trudged back out of the park, flanked by their huge babysitters, the whole day pretty much ruined. They hadn’t even ridden a single roller coaster.