Highway to Hell

by Val Crowe

  Sure, she was. I wondered how much they were paying her. But I couldn’t begrudge her it too much. She had to eat, after all. I didn’t see her getting a regular job any time soon. She was stuck in her ways. And for that matter, I wasn’t exactly the regular job type myself.

  I supported myself through a combination of skimming at an inheritance left to me by my father and working odd jobs. But I didn’t stay put in one place for very long either. Guess I’d inherited that antsiness from my mother.

  “So, now we’re a foursome,” said Oscar. “Unless you stay. And then it’ll be five of us.”

  I looked back at the amusement park. “Yeah, I’ll stay. I’m in.”

  “Really?” My mother looked overjoyed. “Oh, that’s so exciting. We’ll get to really catch up.”

  I nodded slowly. I was here to find out about Negus. That was all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Wait, you’re doing what?” said the voice of my friend Wade on the phone.

  “I’m going to stay here with my mother and check out this haunted amusement park,” I said.

  “Oh, dude, that actually sounds wicked cool. How long has it been sitting empty?”

  “Not sure. Maybe thirty years or so?” I said. “I haven’t really looked into the history of the place. It looked pretty wrecked, though. Everything is overgrown and rusted out.”

  “Neat,” said Wade. “I want to come.”

  I just laughed. I was inside the Airstream now, and I was drinking a beer. At the prospect of spending an indefinite amount of time with my mother, I had started to get nervous. That was why I’d called Wade. He was my family, at least as far as it counted. We weren’t related by blood or anything, but we were closer than brothers.

  “How long are you going to be there?” said Wade. “Like a couple days?”

  “I really couldn’t say,” I said. “As long as it takes to dig something up on Negus, I guess. I don’t even know how I’m going to do that. But, um, the place sort of called out to me, and I think it wants to give up information.”

  “You think it’s going to be longer than a couple days?”

  “Could be.”

  “Man, I really can’t skip classes this semester. I’m trying to actually graduate, you know?”

  “Wade, you don’t have to come. That’s not why I called you.”

  “I want to come. I want to go exploring an abandoned amusement park. That sounds totally insane. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “I called because I’m just… I’m nervous about my mother.”

  “Why? What did she do?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “But she still insists that she doesn’t remember being possessed.”

  “Maybe it was too traumatic for her. Maybe she wiped that out of her memory bank.”

  “Or maybe she’s lying.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. But I do know that I didn’t trust her for years and years, and now here I am planning on spending a lot of time with her, and I’m nervous.”

  “I’m going to come.”

  “No, I know you need to stay and go to class. You don’t need to come here. I can handle this. I’m not ten years old anymore. My mother is not a physical threat to me.”

  “Still, it could be hard,” said Wade.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Well, keep in touch, though, because I can’t say that I’m exactly thinking it’s a good sign this place called out to you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, aren’t you like a ghost battery pack? They get around you, and they get strong. So, if they’re already strong enough to call out to you, how much worse are they going to be once you’re in there?”

  He had a point. The truth was, last time I’d been in a haunted place, it had gotten powerful enough to eat Wade and nearly force me to kill someone. And all because it wanted whatever it was that I had. I didn’t know what I had, but it was also what Negus wanted. They wanted my energy. My power.

  Not that I had any power. Except the power to make them strong, which I couldn’t control. I would have liked the power to zap them or something. That would have been helpful.

  “Hey, Deacon?” said Wade. “You there?”

  “I’m here,” I said. “Just thinking about what you said.”

  “Maybe you should back out.”

  “No, I have to know about Negus. Because if what that specter back in Boonridge told me is true, then Negus is still out there, looking for me. Until I find him, I could be in danger. I have to find out everything I can about him. It’s the only way that I can stop him.”

  “No, I know,” said Wade. “I guess nothing will stop you from going in there.”

  “Not likely,” I said.

  “So, then you just promise me that you’ll be careful.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  * * *

  After I finished my conversation with Wade, I finished my beer and then settled in on my bed with my laptop to surf the internet a bit. I waited for Mads to show up, but she never did.

  That wasn’t that rare. Sometimes I went weeks without seeing Mads. She came and went as she pleased.

  Mads was a ghost. Well, a spirit. I didn’t know if she was what was left of a dead person or if she was something else entirely. She was more powerful than most ghosts, and she was all there in a way that they weren’t. Mads was a fully formed personality, and she didn’t have any unfinished business or obsessive behavior that kept her from being able to interact like a regular person would.

  She seemed very normal. Except for the fact that she was incorporeal and she could walk through walls, of course.

  Mads was like my guardian angel. Guardian ghost? She had driven Negus out of my mother. She had gotten me free of ghosts in Ridinger Hall possessing me. She looked out for me. She made sure that I was okay. I didn’t know where I would be without her.

  And that was all that there was to our relationship. Because it’s not like a person can be, you know, involved with a ghost.

  And I wasn’t. Involved. That would be impossible. And weird. Really weird.

  So, none of that was going on.

  Eventually, I got ready for bed and laid down. I slept fitfully, plagued with odd dreams about my mother, who was stalking after me with her hair in her eyes, waving a shard of broken glass above her head. I knew that if she caught me, she would use the glass on me, but I wasn’t sure if she’d stab me or cut me or use the glass to carve patterns into my skin.

  When I woke up, I was sweaty and out of breath, and I felt as though I’d been up all night running, as if I hadn’t gotten any rest at all.

  My mother was knocking on my door.

  I got up and answered it.

  “Hey,” she said, “could I take your truck into town to get groceries? You can come if you want. I’ll buy you breakfast.”

  “Uh…” I scratched my stomach, yawning.

  “It’s easier than trying to take the entire motorhome.” She gestured at her vehicle, which was huge. “And we need provisions. I’d rather not be running in and out of that place, especially when we’re sort of technically trespassing.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Well, the guy who owns Point Oakes lives across the country and seems to have washed his hands of the entire property. I went to some online forums for people who visit haunted locations, and people claimed that whenever they’ve tried to contact him about the place, he ignores their emails and won’t return their phone calls. We could have tried to do this through the proper channels, but he wasn’t going to give us permission. People break in all the time to go exploring or to camp out. It’s not a big deal for us to do the same.”

  “Not a big deal, huh?” I shook my head at her. My mother was not big on rules. I mean, I’m not exactly a letter-of-the-law guy myself, but this was her job. If she got in trouble with the authorities,
it could really affect her ability to continue to make a living. She wasn’t being very responsible.

  I guessed she never was.

  Maybe my mother had never abused me, but she was right when she said that she hadn’t been a perfect mother. There were certain things she’d never really taught me, like how to hold down a normal job or how to follow the rules.

  “Mother-son breakfast,” she said. “My treat. Come on.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay,” I said. Breakfast did sound good, but the prospect of pushing a cart around the aisles of the grocery story while my mother chattered incessantly at me did not.

  Still, I got ready and grabbed my keys. My mother and I drove to the closest town, Springton, which wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis. It probably stretched over six square blocks, and most of that was housing, not businesses or anything like that. We didn’t see much in the way of restaurants, especially not ones serving breakfast.

  Eventually, we settled on a diner called The Springton Diner. Wow, were they creative.

  I ordered an omelet with hashbrowns and bacon on the side. My mother got corn beef hash.

  I expected her to talk my ear off during breakfast, but she didn’t. We talked a little, about boring things like whether the food was good. But mostly, she just glanced up at me from time to time, as if she kept expecting me to disappear in a whiff of smoke, and every time she discovered that I was still there, she seemed to grin in relief and gladness.

  I tried to bring up the abuse and Negus again, but she shushed me, saying I shouldn’t talk about that kind of stuff in public.

  So, I gave up on it.

  We went to the grocery store next, which was outside of town in a strip mall on the outskirts. The strip mall also contained a Burger King and a Goodwill. My mother then proceeded to purchase the entire grocery store. I didn’t know what she was thinking, filling up the cart like that. She kept babbling about how we’d need to use the refrigerator in my Airstream.

  “Wait,” I said. “There’s no electricity in the park, right?”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Don’t tell me you don’t have enough batteries to keep it running with a quick daily recharge from your generator. I raised you better than that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But it’s a waste of fuel—”

  “I’ll buy you fuel,” she said, patting my arm.

  So, that was how I ended up with a refrigerator jam packed with sliced cheese and ground beef and bacon and chicken breasts. There was barely any room for my beer, but there was some room. And I guessed I was glad to have the fridge on after all, because warm beer isn’t as good as cold beer.

  By the time that all the groceries were in, the brother and sister who had hired my mother showed up.

  They had a rented RV that looked like it had never been driven off the lot, let alone been camped in. I knew it was rented because the rental company’s sign was plastered on the side of it.

  The brother had his hair pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He wore glasses and he looked like a college professor. Well, a young college professor. He shook hands with me when I offered my hand.

  “I’m Deacon,” I said. “Cora’s son.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t know that Cora had invited her son along.”

  “I won’t be in the way,” I said. “I’m doing my own thing. I swear.”

  “Don’t listen to him. He’s going to be a big help,” said my mother, flying out of her motorhome to greet the newcomers. “My son is sensitive.”

  I rolled my eyes. I was possibly going to have to take back the thing I’d said about my mother never trying to use my abilities to make money.

  “Deacon, this is Patrick Fletcher,” said my mother.

  I nodded at him. And then I turned to her. “Seriously, Mom, I’m not here to get involved in whatever you’re doing. I feel like I can find my own answers in this place.”

  “Okay.” My mother shrugged. “Just stay close. You’ve got half the food in your fridge.” She laughed.

  The sister came out of the RV now. She was younger than her brother. She wore glasses too—cat-eye style. She wore her hair in two knots on either side of her head. She wore a shirt that had a picture of Spock on the front. It said, Illogical in big yellow letters.

  She grinned at me. “Hi, I’m Lily.”

  “Deacon,” I said. “Big Star Trek fan?”

  “Oh, the biggest,” she said. “In my spare time, I write Star Trek fanfic. Mostly Next Gen stuff, but sometimes I dip out into other casts of characters. I’m such a sucker for the Riker/Troi stuff.”

  “Uh huh,” I nodded. She had lost me.

  She laughed, cocking her head. “You’re, um, not a big Star Trek fan.”

  “I’m not not a fan,” I said. When I was a kid, in fact, I used to watch Star Trek reruns, but I had to admit that I got the various different shows confused. I was pretty sure I’d mostly watched Voyager, but maybe I had seen some of The Next Generation too? Or what was the one on the space station? I was probably most familiar with the original series, though. I remembered seeing reruns of it in the afternoons on some channel or other. But I hadn’t watched Star Trek of any kind since I was about ten.

  “Right,” she laughed, offering me her hand. “Don’t worry. Patrick doesn’t get my obsession either. He likes Battlestar.”

  Patrick shrugged at me. “Utterly superior show.”

  “It’s completely not fair to compare them,” said Lily. “Besides, there would be no Battlestar without Star Trek. It’s like trying to compare A Song of Ice and Fire to LOTR.”

  Patrick spread his hands. “I’m not denying that. But just because something comes first doesn’t mean it’s automatically better.”

  “Um… actually, it kind of does,” said Lily. She eyed me. “I think my brother and I are going to be arguing the whole trip. He already claimed the queen bed in there because he said he was taller than I was.”

  “I am taller,” said Patrick. “And bigger. You’re tiny. You’ll be fine on one of the twin bunks.”

  Damn it, I liked them. Or maybe I just liked her. I didn’t like the idea of them getting suckered by my mother.

  “Listen,” I said to Lily, “are you sure you want to go into this park with my mother? I feel like I should tell you that the things she’s promised you are—”

  “Deacon,” said my mother, eyes wide.

  “What?” said Lily. “The things she’s promised us are what?”

  “Deacon, do you believe in ghosts?” asked my mother.

  “You know I do,” I said.

  “Then I don’t see what there is to talk about,” said my mom. “If Patrick’s and Lily’s sister is in there, we’ll find her.”

  “And find out where she stashed that jewelry of our mother’s,” said Patrick.

  “And that,” said my mother.

  I raised my eyebrows at her. What the hell? Why would she claim she could find that out?

  * * *

  Oscar and I opened up the gate that was closed over the road into the park. It wasn’t locked or anything. It was a tall chainlink fence, and the gate was closed but not locked. I wasn’t sure why the guy who owned this place wouldn’t bother with a lock. Maybe he’d had one and someone had taken it off with bolt cutters or something and the guy had never bothered to replace it. Or maybe he simply didn’t care about the park at all, like my mother had suggested.

  Once the gate was open, we all drove our campers into the place.

  Well, Oscar didn’t have a camper. He was going to pitch a tent, he said. Wasn’t the least bit afraid of roughing it for a few days. Besides, he felt he’d be closer to the phenomena in the park if he only had a bit of nylon between him and the outside.

  I might have liked Lily and felt a little bad for Patrick, but I found that I really disliked Oscar, and I wasn’t exactly sure why. It was partly because I knew he was a phony, like my mom. He was taking advantage of Lily and Patrick, who had lost someone. Oscar was exploiting the
ir grief to make a podcast. I had to admit that I didn’t listen to podcasts myself, so I wasn’t sure if he was making money doing this, but whether it was for profit or not, it was still exploitation. That made him kind of a dick in my book. Also, I don’t know. He rubbed me the wrong way.

  Once we got through, we shut the gate after ourselves, and an overgrown parking lot spread out in front of us. The asphalt was cracked and weeds were growing up through the breaks in the blacktop. Tall black lamp posts jutted up in one long line down the center of the lot. But the lights at the tops were busted out and shattered.

  Beyond the parking lot, the amusement park sprawled.

  It had once been surrounded by a smaller, inner fence, but that had come down in several places, and more growth choked it out in others.

  A big sign over the entrance still read in faded letters, Welcome to Point Oakes Park. Beneath it was a brick walkway that was similarly overgrown. It turned around a bend and disappeared behind the overgrown inner fence.

  I found myself peering eagerly around that bend, wanting to go running for it, to go skipping into the place. I couldn’t understand it, but the closer we got, the more a sense of enthusiasm seemed to attach to me. I was intrigued by this old place. It was, as Wade had said, neat.

  As I looked at the place, I could almost imagine what it might have looked like back in its heyday. Then, the parking lot would have been teeming with glittering cars, and families would have been rushing underneath that arch into the park, which would have been lit up and moving, all of the rides full of people screaming and whooping. It would have been a place of joy and excitement.

  Even now, though that excitement had been muted and hidden, I could still sense it underneath everything.

  We were here, finally. We could go in.

  I couldn’t wait.

  We parked the campers near the archway. I got out right away and hurried forward to that archway. I felt a lightness in my step. I was excited.

  “Deacon, wait!” my mother called after me.

  But I didn’t.

  I rushed through the arch, over that brick walkway and around the bend so that I could see everything.

  Inside, there was a big open square, flanked by benches and fenced off areas that had obviously once been landscaped, but were now nothing more than snarled undergrowth. In the distance were the rides, choked out by vines and rust.