by Shaun Hamill
“Kyle,” I said.
“Shh,” he said. He handed me the stack of flyers with his eyes still closed. “You go ponder whatever you’re so busy with and hand out flyers. I’m thinking about Donna for the both of us.”
3
When Kyle and I got back to the house, there was an unfamiliar Honda CR-X parked in the driveway behind Eunice’s station wagon. The hatchback was covered in stickers for bands like AFI, Bikini Kill, MxPx, and the Misfits, and a giant bumper sticker reading PORNOGRAPHY RAPES THE MIND. As I walked through the front door, I heard a sound so rare I didn’t recognize it at first: Eunice laughing.
We found her at the dining room table next to a wide, squat girl with spiky blue hair. The girl wore a hoodie with patches safety-pinned to the sleeves. She and Eunice were bent over a textbook, and both looked up as I entered the room. The punk girl had half a smile on her face, but Eunice was flush with laughter, eyes watering.
“Noah,” she croaked. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” I said. “I handed out most of the flyers.” I set the remaining stack down on the table.
Eunice gestured to the stranger beside her. “This is Brin. She’s in my English class.”
We traded hellos, and I offered Brin a flyer.
“A haunted house?” she said.
“It’s the family business,” I said. Eunice looked uncomfortable, as though she wished I hadn’t said anything.
“Well,” Brin said, digging in her purse, “as long as we’re trading flyers.” She handed me a crumpled-up quarter-sheet of paper. At first glance, I thought it was an ad for a punk rock show—it had that washed-out xerox quality, and the background was a giant nautical star with a banner across it, but this banner read REDEMPTION BIBLE CHURCH. And beneath it, in almost illegible white text, instead of a list of bands, there was a schedule of worship services and events.
“You go here?” I said.
“You can, too, if you like,” she said, looking at me and then Eunice. “Maybe change your mind about your livelihood.”
The discomfort on Eunice’s face increased, but she smiled. “Yeah, maybe.”
Before I could give a (probably rude) answer to this invitation, Mom came into the room, her mouth set, complexion paler than usual.
“Mom, this is Brin—” Eunice started.
“We handed out most of the flyers,” I said, but Mom waved both of us off.
“Noah, it’s time to say good night. Kyle, you should probably head straight home. Your mother will want to see you. Brin, it might not be a bad idea for you to go, too.”
“What’s going on?” Eunice said.
Mom’s mouth worked for a moment, and when she spoke, her voice broke. “A little girl went missing today.”
By the next morning, the story would be unavoidable on both local and national news, but Mom related the vital facts to all of us in the room: earlier that morning, Maria Davis, age nine, and her five-year-old brother, Bobby, had ridden their bikes to an old, closed Winn-Dixie store a few blocks from their house. Twenty minutes later, Bobby turned around and went home, but by dinnertime, Maria still hadn’t returned. When Maria’s parents drove to the store, they found her bicycle on its side in the parking lot, but no sign of Maria herself. They called the police, who called the FBI.
Mom stood behind a chair at the head of the dining room table as she told us all of this, gripping the back with white knuckles. After she finished, we all sat in a sort of stunned silence—Brin and Kyle included.
I spoke first. “They don’t think it has anything to do with Sydney, do they?”
“They don’t know yet,” Mom said. “But the police wouldn’t have called me if they didn’t think it was a possibility.”
Kyle and Brin both said their good nights to us. Brin and Eunice exchanged a lingering smile I didn’t know how to read, but I had more pressing things to worry about.
Mom, Eunice, and I sat together in the living room for almost two hours after that, staring at the TV and not talking. I don’t think any of us knew what to say, or even think. We’d never really let go of the hope that Sydney had just run away, that her parting scream had been some sort of elaborate prank, exactly the sort of thing that an angry teenager with a penchant for haunted houses might do. I’d secretly hoped she was out in L.A., that I might go to the movies someday and either see her on-screen or maybe read her name in the end credits. But now, with another girl missing, it was a lot more difficult to entertain that fantasy.
When Mom sent me up to bed, Eunice followed me upstairs and even came into my room, which she almost never did anymore. She took a seat on my bed and watched as I pulled off my shoes.
“You okay?” she said.
“I guess so.”
She sat for a moment, running her hand back and forth on the blanket.
“What about you? Are you okay?” I said.
She considered. “What do you think of Brin?” she said.
It wasn’t what I’d expected. “That girl from earlier? I don’t know. She’s fine, I guess. Seems kind of religious.”
“She says she mostly just goes to church for fun these days,” Eunice said. “A lot of her friends from high school still go there. They have a punk rock praise band or something.”
“You like punk now?” I said.
Eunice smiled at the floor, then stood. “I should let you get your rest. Good night, Noah.” She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and left.
I waited until I heard her bedroom door shut down the hall before I called to the monster.
“Are you in here?” Usually, at this summons, My Friend would emerge from the closet or from beneath the bed, but tonight I received no reply.
This happened sometimes. Some nights the creature arrived late, right before I went to sleep, and other nights it didn’t come at all. But I could have used the company that night, some comfort from someone who wasn’t suffering like my family was. I fell asleep sitting next to my bedroom window, waiting for My Friend to come home.
4
In the days that followed Maria Davis’s disappearance, as the national news became more obsessed with the case, there was a definite change in the emotional weather in Vandergriff. It had never been an idyllic town where everyone smiled at one another, but now there was a tightness in everyone’s jaw, a crease in the brow. There were fewer kids out playing in the parks or front yards in the afternoons, and the street outside our house was quieter at night. I heard less laughter around town, although I heard a lot more in the halls at school. We were all tense and drowning in hormones, and still too young to take anything seriously. There was an assembly in the school auditorium, where a local police officer explained that we’d be seeing cops in the building and stationed in the school parking lot to keep an eye on things. This same officer reminded us not to take food or rides from strangers, as if we were still in grade school. She showed us a poster with a phone number on it and implored us to call that number if we ever saw anything suspicious.
“Even if you’re not sure if it’s worth reporting, let us know. The life you save may be your own.”
The whole presentation had the tone of a bad joke being told by someone who knows they’re telling a bad joke but can’t stop. Like any of this would help bring Maria home, or prevent another disappearance. There’d been school assemblies and national news coverage after Sydney vanished as well.
Mom, Eunice, and I had several discussions about whether to open The Wandering Dark that year. Although I wanted us to stay open for purely selfish reasons, I had to admit that there were good reasons to consider not doing it. After all, most of our employees were high schoolers, and we might have trouble filling all those roles if parents didn’t feel safe sending their kids out into the night for six weeks straight. Every time the subject came up, we talked in circles and then t
abled it again, but I could feel the chances of our 1999 season slipping away.
Aside from work talk, my family and I didn’t speak much. We kept to our own corners of the big house—Mom downstairs in front of the TV, Eunice in her room, I in mine. I missed the monster like crazy. I’d almost given up hope of ever seeing it again when, a week after its last appearance, I snapped awake to a scratching at my bedroom window. The creature was crouched on the roof outside, running one talon up and down the glass.
I unlatched the window and pushed it open. I stepped back and tried to put on a stern face as the creature climbed into my room. I meant to yell at it, scold it, demand an exact accounting of its whereabouts for the last week. What I actually did was fall into its arms and hug it tight around the middle. It hugged me back, and that old sense of comfort and bliss washed over me, mingled with the scent of its musty cloak and fur. My anger dissipated, and I felt relief.
“I missed you so much,” I said, into its chest. “I was so worried.” I meant to say more, but My Friend tightened its grip on me, and my feet left the carpet. We were in the air, the creature’s head inches from the ceiling.
My Friend carefully maneuvered us out the window and into the balmy summer night. My first thought was that it meant to play another round of jump and catch, but instead, it shifted me so that I was pressed against its side and rocketed into the sky. The wind whistled in my ears and tore at my hair. The town shrank below us, an increasingly small constellation of lights, as the air grew colder and thinner. I had to take deeper and deeper breaths to fill my lungs.
The monster stopped our ascent high in the night sky and hung in place, turning a slow circle. Off toward Dallas I saw Reunion Tower, and toward Fort Worth, the sturdy rectangle of Burnett Plaza. Vandergriff’s own Fun Mountain amusement park sat directly below, the parachute drop lit up even though the park was closed at night.
Without warning, the creature released its grip. The park flew up at me like a bit of zoom photography as I tumbled through the sky, the parachute tower rising like a sword thrust up from the earth. A scream burst from my throat, and I flailed my arms as if there were something to grab on to.
Oh, Christ. Oh, Christ, oh, Jesus, this was it, I was going to die, and worst of all it was going to hurt—
But before I shattered every bone in my body against an amusement park ride, the creature caught up to me, clasped me around my middle, and flew me in circles around the tower, neon lights a strobing blur in my periphery. My wail of terror became a cry of delight. Energy surged through me. I howled. I laughed. The creature tightened its grip, and waves of warmth pulsed from our point of contact. The world took on a golden hue and my heart galloped in my chest. Then the creature released me again.
I didn’t plummet this time. This time, I rose. I wasn’t going particularly fast, but, I realized, I was making a loose spiral of ascent on my own. My Friend remained just behind and below, keeping pace but not touching me. I was flying under my own power. I turned around to face the creature.
“How did you do this?” I said. “This is amazing!”
As usual, it didn’t answer. I flew away from the tower and out over the highway. I moved more slowly and clumsily than the creature—as it turned out, learning to fly wasn’t so different from learning to swim—but managed to stay aloft and propel myself in the correct direction. Suddenly, all the worry and anxiety of the last week didn’t matter. All that mattered was this ascent, this sensation of complete power and freedom.
The exhilaration eventually faded, subsumed by a delightful exhaustion. By the time we arrived back at the house, my temporary ability to fly was wearing off. I bobbed and weaved through the air like a drunken insect, and stumbled onto the roof, landing on my hands and knees. The creature landed next to me, more felt than heard, a gentle shift of wind. “It’s hot out here,” I said. “Are you hot?”
I didn’t wait for the creature’s response. I climbed into my bedroom and stripped to my boxers. Even bared, my skin prickled with unnatural heat. My face was hot to the touch, and, I noticed, my shorts were tented with my own tumescence. I braced myself against the desk, and took a couple of deep but useless breaths. I couldn’t cool off. I turned around and found that the creature had followed me inside.
“I think maybe you gave me too much pixie dust,” I said. “I feel…hoo…” My head swam.
The creature’s look turned to one of concern. It touched my face and my chest, letting its paw linger there. My heart continued to race, and my face throbbed with heat. The creature picked up a pen and sheet of paper from my desk and wrote:
FRIEND HELP?
“Can you?” I said. My voice sounded remote, and distorted, as though processed through a synthesizer.
The creature set down the pen and paper. It put one paw on my shoulder, and used the other to guide my hand to my groin. The room thrummed around us, and my gut clenched again. The world grew dimmer, less there somehow.
“Are you sure you want to be here for…for this?” I said, both embarrassed and excited at the prospect.
The creature nuzzled the side of my face with its wet snout, its fur brushing my burning cheek. I dropped my boxer shorts around my ankles, gripped myself, and began to tug, feeling both inside and outside my body. It didn’t take long. As I tensed in preparation for climax, My Friend clamped down on my shoulder. My inner eye refracted into dozens of fragments, a kaleidoscope suffused with golden light, every distorted version of myself writhing in ecstasy out into infinity.
I slumped forward when it was over, and would have toppled to the floor, but My Friend caught me and held me against the musty smell of its cloak. It laid me down on the bed and climbed in behind me, one arm over my middle. The warmth no longer felt trapped inside me, but circulated between us now, an individual burden transformed by touch into a shared comfort.
“Thank you,” I said. I drifted away on the fading pulse of my orgasm, washed out to the sea of sleep with the fleeting impression of being kissed on the cheek by soft, human lips.
5
I woke the next morning with an idea for how to keep The Wandering Dark open and make sure our employees were safe. We would institute a system that would require minor-age employees to call in when they were either coming to us or heading home. Mom liked the idea, and so we were back in business. We started the work of getting the place ready for the 1999 season that week.
The Wandering Dark had grown considerably since 1989, from six rooms to fifteen. Four of the new rooms were on a second “floor” we built in 1995, so even counting the employee break room, the costume shop, the dressing rooms, bathrooms, security surveillance room, and the monster’s labyrinth, we were still only using about two thirds of the available floor space. I’d already started sketching ideas for how to use the remaining third. My working title was Chain Saw Chase Party, and I was excited that Mom hadn’t said no yet.
Kyle and I spent our afternoons and evenings sweeping and dusting the attraction, then running the lights and mechanical pieces (like the vertigo tunnel) through their paces, repairing or replacing as needed. Eunice, in one of her more energetic phases, agreed to come help, provided that Brin could come, too.
“She’s agreed to check the place out if I’ll go to her church with her sometime,” Eunice said.
“Why would you want to go to a church?” I said. “Especially a punk rock church? You hate both of those things.”
“I’m trying something new,” she said. “How about you try and be nice?”
As soon as Brin walked into the building for the first time, she made a face of mild revulsion.
“You’re okay taking people’s money for this?” she said.
“No one’s forcing you to be here. You grasp that, right?” I said.
“Come on, let me show you around,” Eunice said. Brin allowed herself to be led into the labyrin
th and out of sight. As Mom and Kyle and I worked, we were continually interrupted by echoed laughter, Brin sending my sister into shrieking hysteria with joke after joke.
“What the fuck?” I said, after the first hour of this nonsense.
“Language,” Mom said, tone mild as she marked something on her clipboard. We stood in the Professor’s study as Kyle dimmed and brightened the orange bulbs in the fireplace. “Eunice has never had many friends. Let her enjoy this one, even if she is sort of rude.”
“Is anyone paying attention to my remarkable bulb work?” Kyle said, crouched in front of the fireplace.
“Yes, you’re doing excellent work,” Mom said, without looking. “Now shut up, both of you, so I can think.”
Auditions took place the weekend after we finished repairs. Mom and I sat at a table in the dance hall set while Kyle ushered in the usual bevy of hopeful theater kids. Donna Hart was the first through the door. She performed Abigail’s “I cannot bear lewd looks no more, John” monologue from The Crucible, and sang a verse of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” from Jesus Christ Superstar. She played it big, her performance pitched toward the exit signs at the back of the high school auditorium across town.
Mom kept her eyes on the clipboard, scribbling notes for a good ten or fifteen seconds after Donna finished singing. When Mom looked up, she rubbed her nose with the back of one hand and said, “How’s your scream?”
“Fine, I guess,” Donna said, worrying the pleats in her skirt.
Mom made a little gesture. “Go on, then.”
Donna cleared her throat and unleashed a pure, crystalline scream.
Mom returned to her clipboard. “Thank you, Donna. We’ll be in touch.”
Donna smiled at me on her way out of the room. I smiled back, because it felt like the polite thing to do, and after checking to see Mom wasn’t watching, I gave her a thumbs-up.
After the rest of the auditions, Kyle, Mom, and I sat in a circle in the dance hall and compared notes.