Highway to Hell

by Val Crowe

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, then I guess we’ll just have to wait until I can find something out.”

  Mads turned to look behind her. “What is that?” She sounded annoyed. Then her mouth opened and she reached out for me. “Deacon!”

  “Mads?”

  But she was sucked backwards, as if the wind had caught her by the ankles and whisked her away. I couldn’t see her anymore.

  “Mads!”

  I walked in the direction that she’d been pulled, not that it made any sense to do that. She was on a completely different plane than me, the spiritual realm. I wasn’t going to find her just because I tried to follow her.

  “Mads!” I yelled again.

  There was a rapping on the door of the Airstream.

  Was it Mads? Had she been unable to communicate any other way and resorted to rapping on the door?

  I hurried over and threw open the door.

  It was Lily. “Hey,” she said. “Who’s Mads?”

  “Uh…” I took a deep breath. “Don’t worry about that. You okay? There something I can help you with?”

  “I was coming by to see your bathtub,” she said. “Or is it a bad time? I guess it’s getting late. Sorry. I’m such a night owl. I forget that other people go to sleep at normal times.”

  “No, no, it’s fine,” I said. “You can come in. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

  She grinned. “Excellent.” She climbed up inside, and then looked left and right. “Wow.”

  “There you go,” I said. “That’s the tour.”

  She laughed.

  I laughed too. “Um, so that’s the table over there.” I gestured. The table was at one end of the Airstream, with a built-in bench that wrapped around it. “This here is storage.” I pulled aside a shower curtain from the wall directly facing the door. I had a bunch of stuff on shelves back there. Extra fuel, batteries, water jugs.

  “Nice use of space,” she said.

  “Yeah, you really gotta cram it in here,” I said. “This is my primary residence, so everything has to fit.”

  “You live in this? Year round?”

  “Yup,” I said. I pointed to the sink. “This is the kitchen.” There was a stove beside it. Underneath was the refrigerator and some more storage for kitchen gadgets and pantry stuff. I pivoted. “This is the bed. Or couch, if I’m not sleeping on it.” The bed was across from the kitchen. I bent down and lifted up the bed. “More storage under here.” I had built the bed so that it would lift up on hinges and I could put things under there.

  “That’s pretty creative,” she said.

  “And this is the bathroom,” I said. The bathroom was at the opposite side of the camper as the table. “With the famous bathtub.” I opened up the door to show her.

  “Oh, that’s so cool.” She peered inside. “It’s all retro.”

  “It’s from the 1960s,” I said. “So, yeah. Retro.”

  “I love this thing.” She stepped out of the bathroom and looked around again, grinning. “And it’s so awesome you live in it. That must be incredibly freeing, just going wherever the wind takes you.”

  “Definitely is.” I jammed my hands into my pockets.

  “So, is this what you do? Go around from place to place looking for ghosts?”

  “Uh… no, I don’t look for ghosts,” I said.

  “Your mother said you were sensitive.”

  “Well…” I studied my shoes. “Ghosts find me, I guess, is the more accurate way to put it.”

  “And has Molly found you?”

  I raised my gaze. “Your sister, right?”

  She nodded.

  “No, I haven’t seen any spirits since we came into this place.”

  “No? But it’s definitely haunted,” she said. “Even I can feel it. There’s something here. It’s…” She hugged herself and her voice dropped. “I can understand why Molly stayed. I want to stay too. I think about leaving, and I can hardly imagine it.”

  I tried to think about leaving, about packing up the Airstream and hooking my truck up and getting back on the road. It sounded exhausting.

  Lily’s voice wavered a little. “We will leave, though, won’t we?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Let’s go walk up to the gate right now. Nothing’s stopping us.”

  She laughed. “Oh, that’s silly. You don’t have to do that on account of me.”

  “Not silly at all,” I said, crossing the Airstream to the door. The truth was, I wanted to make sure that I could do it. If I let her talk me out of going up to that gate, then I was going to be freaked out. I threw open the door and forced my way down the stairs and onto the cracked asphalt beneath. “You coming?” I called.

  Moments later, she appeared next to me.

  I shut the Airstream door.

  She took a deep breath.

  We both looked at the gate, which seemed an interminable distance away, all the way across the parking lot. Maybe she was right. Maybe walking all the way over there was stupid. After all, it was late. We needed to get some sleep.

  But no, nothing was stopping me from going to that gate, damn it. I squared my shoulders and started walking. I half expected to feel some kind of resistance in the air, that it would be like walking through dark water. But it felt normal. And now that I was going, it was just as easy to keep going as it was to stop.

  Not that I wanted to stop.

  “Deacon?” said Lily.

  I did stop. I looked back at her.

  She hesitated and then hurried to catch up with me. She took my hand. “Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s go to the gate.”

  Another long moment, neither of us moving.

  And then I started to walk. I dragged her along with me, and we didn’t speak. We just walked. Walked and walked until we had arrived at the gate and we were both faintly winded from walking so quickly.

  We let go of each other’s hands, and I brought my hand up to wrap it around the chain link. I peered out into the darkness. I could see the twisty country road that passed by this place. It had once been better traveled, but had now fallen into disrepair. But it would take us away from here. All we’d have to do was drive.

  “See?” I whispered. “No big deal. We can walk up and open the gate any time we want.”

  “Right,” she said, and she was whispering too. “No big deal.”

  I turned back and there was Point Oakes, the dark tangle of empty rides and overgrowth, towering over our little encampment. The lights were still on in the Airstream, and they looked so cheery and welcoming.

  “Let’s get back,” said Lily, who was already starting back over the parking lot.

  I followed her right away.

  * * *

  When I got back to the Airstream, I said goodnight to Lily, who was already yawning. I felt incredibly tired too. I climbed inside, turned out the lights, and got into bed. My memory foam mattress that I’d installed myself had never seemed more comfortable. I sank into it, swathed in blankets, and fell instantly to sleep.

  At first, my sleep was like falling into a warm, dark well. It was nothingness, pleasant nothingness. And then, after some time, in the wee hours of the morning, I began to dream.

  I knew I was dreaming, which was interesting, because I was never one who could manage lucid dreaming. Wade watched some movie that got him into it when we were teenagers. He was able to figure out how to do it really quickly, and he would tell me about how he had lucid dreams all the time, and that he had progressed from the level of being aware that he was dreaming to the level of being able to control things. He would tell me all about how he did things like fly around or turn scary stuff that was chasing him into fluffy bunnies.

  It sounded awesome. I wanted to be able to control my dreams too.

  But whenever I got the least bit close to realizing that I was having a dream, I tended to wake up. If I didn’t wake up, it was only because I convinced myself that it wasn’t actually a dream after all. It was maddening.

  Anyway, in th
is dream, I was immediately aware that I was dreaming.

  In the dream, I was standing outside of the Airstream, and I was looking at the amusement park. The place still looked overgrown and decrepit, but it was all lit up, and the rides were moving inside, like dancing skeletons.

  I decided to ignore the stupid park and focus on it being a lucid dream. I wanted to fly like Wade did.

  I tried to kick off the ground and get airborne, but that didn’t work. I tried flapping my arms as though they were wings. Doing the breast stroke through the air.

  Nothing.

  The park was buzzing. It was warm and inviting, and it wanted to me come inside.

  I wanted to fly.

  That was when I realized that I was actually weightless. The only thing keeping me on the ground was the fact that I thought I belonged there. But the truth was, I belonged in the sky. So, I simply allowed myself to float, and I did, raising up off the ground by about three feet.

  Very cool!

  I continued to rise, going far into the sky, all the way up so that I could see the encampment and the whole park spread out below me.

  I didn’t want to fly over the park, though. I didn’t like that place. There was something wrong with it. No, I was going to fly all the way to see Wade in Thornford. I would watch him sleeping through his window. Then, from there, maybe I’d go fly over the ocean or join a group of geese and be part of their flying V.

  I turned my back on the park.

  And I did exactly what I wanted to do.

  I flew for a long, long time. I found a flock of birds, and I flew with them. I soared down over a lake and skimmed my fingers over the water. It splashed up, reflecting the light of the moon, and it was beautiful. Eventually, I found myself outside Wade’s window. I looked in on him, and he was asleep and drooling a little bit. Laughing, I left him, and I flew to the coast. I watched the waves crash against the beach in the darkness.

  It felt as though I flew for hours and days, but it never seemed to grow any later. It was always night, the sky peppered with bright stars.

  Eventually, I got bored. I thought that I would like to wake up, but I couldn’t seem to figure out how to do that. Nothing worked. I even pinched myself really hard, and it didn’t even hurt, for one thing—which was weird—but it also didn’t wake me up.

  So, I decided I’d just have to fly back to the Airstream.

  I did.

  I landed on the ground and opened the door. I walked in and went to my bed. There I was, asleep. I climbed back into my body, and I tried to wake up.

  Not happening.

  Man, maybe this lucid dreaming was not as cool as I had thought it was. Or maybe this wasn’t like Wade’s lucid dream. Maybe this was something else, something supernatural. I began to worry a bit. What if there was a reason that I couldn’t wake up?

  I didn’t like this much at all.

  In my dream, I got up and left the Airstream. I considered flying again, but decided I was done with that.

  The lit-up park pulsed at me, and I could feel tendrils reaching out and clinging to me, pulling me inside.

  Fine.

  It wanted me to go in there. I’d go.

  I went under the archway, following the brick walkway. Follow the yellow brick road, chirped a voice in my head. Except it wasn’t yellow, and I wasn’t going off to see a wizard. I was going to see…

  I didn’t know what, but I wasn’t sure it was going to be a good thing. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to see anything. But my feet seemed to know where to take me. I walked all the way into the park, directly to the center, where the mirror maze was standing, all lit up and bright. Unlike the rest of the park, Slappy Happy’s Maze had been restored to pristine perfection. It was perfectly painted and clean. None of the mirrors inside were broken.

  I walked up to the mouth of Slappy, stepped onto the tongue.

  I cringed, half expecting it to come alive at any moment and swallow me whole, like I thought it might do to my mother. It was a dream, after all. Anything could happen.

  A sweet smell came from within… a rotten smell.

  “Deacon!” called a singsong female voice.

  I recoiled. That sounded like my…

  “Mommy’s hungry,” snarled the voice.

  The words went through me with a jolt, and then I woke up face down in the pillow on my bed, the sheets and blankets tangled around my neck and my limbs. I gasped for breath.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  It was morning. Sunlight was streaming in through the windows of the Airstream, and I was feeling rested and heavy, as if I’d just had the best sleep of my life.

  How had I gotten back to sleep after that dream last night?

  Had I even woken at all?

  Best not to go down that rabbit hole. If I did, before long I’d be questioning whether I was even awake now. That way lay madness.

  I could smell coffee brewing. I peered out the window to see that my mother had several big French presses full of coffee sitting out on the table next to her motorhome. She had a griddle on her grill and she was cooking bacon and eggs.

  My stomach growled.

  I threw on a shirt and jeans and went over there with one of my coffee mugs. I seized one of the French presses and realized that the press hadn’t been pushed down. I started to do that.

  “Wait, it’s not ready, Deacon,” said my mother from the grill.

  I grunted, disappointed.

  She beamed at me. “Good morning. Did you sleep well?”

  I eyed the coffee. My mouth was practically watering for it. I could taste it. God, it smelled good. The mingling smell of coffee and bacon smelled like morning. Smelled like home, even though I’d never even really had a home—unless you counted this motorhome my mother lived in. And she never woke me up with breakfast cooking as a kid. I ate cereal for breakfast every day. Usually sugary cereal with a cartoon character on the front. What was going on with my mom?

  What was going on with me?

  “Oh, it’s probably all right now,” said my mom, gesturing to the coffee. “Go ahead.”

  I sprang forward and pressed down the press.

  “I think you have the cream in your fridge,” she said. “I couldn’t find it in mine.”

  Oh, that was right. My mother had insisted on buying a carton of heavy cream. At the time, I’d been annoyed with all of her groceries. Now, I was grateful. Coffee was going to be so much better with that cream.

  I dashed back into the Airstream to find it and came back. I poured myself some coffee. There was sugar sitting out. I fixed myself up—little bit of sugar, a lot of cream. And then I settled into my camping chair to sip at the coffee. Bliss.

  My mother transferred the bacon to a platter. She piled eggs next to it. “Hungry?”

  “Starving,” I said.

  She was still beaming. She set the platter down in the middle of the table.

  I started to dip food onto a plate. “Hey, Mom, about that mirror maze.”

  “What about the mirror maze?” she said. “It looks dangerous in there, all that broken glass. I said that already.”

  “Uh… I’m thinking we should go there. Me and you.” I wasn’t even sure if I’d been thinking this before, at least not in so many words. But as I was saying it out loud, I knew that it felt right. It was what needed to happen. My mother and I had to go to the maze. That was how I was going to get my answers. Maybe it would even help her remember.

  She straightened, knitting her brows together.

  I waited for her to speak.

  “Something smells amazing,” came the voice of Oscar, as he came out of the door of my mother’s motorhome. His hair was wet and he was already dressed and shaved.

  I fingered my own shaggy chin and glared at him. To be fair, I wasn’t big on shaving. I mean, I also wasn’t big on growing a beard, so I shaved. When it became abundantly necessary, that is. “Well, good morning, Oscar,” I said in my most sickly sweet voice.

  My mother caught my t
one and glanced at me. “I let him use the shower is all.”

  “Right,” I said. “That makes sense. We’re not hooked up to water, so let’s waste all our resources on showers. Excellent idea.”

  “Took a navy shower. Soaped up with the water off,” said Oscar. “Won’t be doing that every morning, of course, but your mother offered—”

  “We’re not so far from civilization,” said my mother. “If we run out of water or fuel for the generators, we can get in your truck and go buy more.”

  “Of course,” said Oscar.

  But then we all gazed at the gate, which seemed very, very far away.

  “I’m sure it won’t come to that,” my mother murmured. She turned to Oscar. “Please, sit down. Eat.”

  “I’ll be back in a moment,” said Oscar. “Let me take this back to my tent.” He held up a bundle of clothes. He disappeared around the edge of my mother’s motorhome.

  My mother turned on me. “What is your problem?”

  I pointedly shoveled some eggs into my mouth and chewed.

  “I never dated while you were growing up. Maybe I should have. Maybe you wouldn’t be behaving like a child.”

  I swallowed the eggs, giving her a sour look. “I don’t like him.”

  “Why not? Because he likes me?’

  “Because he’s a phony,” I said. “Because he’s exploiting Lily and Patrick. Because—”

  “None of those things are true,” she said. “He performs a service, just like I do. And if people want to believe it and want to pay for it, that’s their business.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Right, right. I forgot. You’ve got a rationalization for everything.”

  She clucked her tongue at me.

  I ate some more eggs. And even though we were arguing right now, I had to admit that it wasn’t such a bad thing. It made me feel… normal. We were just a regular mother and son who had some differences. The food was good, and the weather was nice—a bit of crispness to the morning air, but otherwise pleasant. I could imagine that if every day was just like this, I might be incredibly happy. I smiled to myself.

  And my mother smiled back. She ruffled the hair on my head. “I’ve missed you, kiddo.”