by JL Bryan
The papers on the table rattled slightly, invisibly nudged by the air conditioning.
He walked closer and looked them over.
The papers were yellowed, with permanent creases where they’d been folded and filed away for years. Someone had dug them out of his father’s old office cabinet.
They showed harebrained plans for the park, cooked up by Teddy’s naive father and the madman Artie Schopfer. In the largest drawing, the land north of the park included new roller coasters, a botanical garden next to Tyke Town, and rides and shops themed around the seven wonders of the ancient world.
If Teddy’s father hadn’t suffered his heart attack in 1979, he would have run the family into bankruptcy trying to fund all of Artie Schopfer’s crazy ideas. Even with his health problems, his father had taken the opening of Epcot Center in 1982 as a personal challenge. He’d kept talking about expanding his park and making Starland into the panhandle’s answer to the Orlando resorts.
Teddy’s mother and older sister, as well as Teddy himself, opposed the idea, while Teddy’s two younger sisters supported their father’s craziness. The family remained in gridlock for many years, neither selling the undeveloped land north of the park as Teddy and his mother wanted, nor expanding the park as Teddy’s father had wanted. Condominium developers offered millions of dollars for their land along Beachview Drive, but Teddy’s father adamantly refused to sell.
“Who’s here? Show yourself?” Teddy turned slowly, looking around the spacious room, and jumped when he saw the man standing just outside the glass door, staring at him.
The man wore a white seersucker suit and a matching broad-brimmed hat, with a red tie and a matching red handkerchief in his jacket pocket. His eyes were a blank shade of gray, his features bland and forgettable, but Teddy recognized him instantly. He owed the man a large debt that he was unable to pay. He’d been dreading the man’s return for a long time.
The man tapped on the door with one finger, as if he’d been waiting for Teddy to look at him before he knocked.
Teddy lowered his gun, unlocked the door, and let him inside.
“I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again,” Teddy told him. “It’s been years.”
“You may not have seen me, but I’ve seen you often,” the man replied.
Teddy didn’t know how to respond to that. “Have a seat,” he offered, returning to the couch.
“An interesting cinema selection.” The man didn’t sit, but removed his hat and looked at the projection screen. The movie was paused on a wide shot of the girl as the football players tore away her cheerleader uniform. “It was nominated for an Academy Award, wasn’t it?”
“Ha ha.” Teddy turned off the projector. “You want a drink?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? I have some thirty-year-old Scotch—”
“I am not interested.” The man stood over him, looking down with cold, unreadable eyes. “You owe me payment.”
“Yeah.” Teddy scratched his bald head nervously, wishing he hadn’t removed his toupee for the night. He felt weak and exposed without it. “I was supposed to inherit millions of dollars in land, you know, but the sinkhole turned it into a million tons of worthless sand. Nobody wants to buy anything on that strip, on either side of the road. No insurance company in its right mind will underwrite any construction within screaming distance of that giant hole, not until somebody can prove there won’t be any more opening up.”
“This does not clear your debt to me. I fulfilled my end of the bargain.”
“Yeah.” Teddy looked down at his gray carpet.
“Poor little Teddy,” the man said, his voice a flat monotone as always. “Failed as a businessman, failed as a husband, failed as a father. Failed as a son, too, I’m sure we can both agree. You spent your life expecting to inherit Daddy’s fortune, just waiting for the fat old fool to drop dead.”
“Don’t call him that,” Teddy said quietly, still not looking up at the man.
“There is no point in acting protective of him,” the man said. “You and I both know just how absurd such a stance is, coming from you. Waiting and waiting...meanwhile, dear old Dad is following doctor’s orders, eating his vegetables, swimming daily. By the looks of it, he might live to be a hundred. And you didn’t want to wait that long, did you? Not at your age. You were already in your fifties, already bored with your second wife, unaware she was sleeping with that empty-headed personal trainer from the gym.”
“How do you know all this?” Teddy looked up at him, but quickly looked away from his steady, relentless gaze.
“They say the devil resides within each person, watching and whispering.”
“Do they?” Teddy was beyond uncomfortable with the hit man in his house. He wished the guy would stop dancing around spouting nonsense and just say what he wanted.
“I research my clients carefully. It pays to do so in my line of work. Now, regarding our bargain. You got what you wanted—your father dead in a manner that would be declared natural causes.”
“A lot of good it did me,” Teddy said. “The sinkhole opened a week later.”
“Draining all the value out of your inheritance, poor boy,” the man said. “Leaving you with nothing but guilt for your trouble. Your father put his heart into that silly amusement park, and you never even had the chance to destroy his life’s work after his death. That was done for you.”
Teddy didn’t say anything. He drank, thinking of his father.
“Killing your own father when he is already eighty-seven years old requires an extraordinary degree of greed, impatience, and callousness,” the man said. “I’ve always admired that about you, Teddy.”
“We barely know each other,” Teddy replied.
“I think I know you very well. I know, for instance, that you have not yet paid for my work. You agreed to sign over any one of the properties you inherited upon his death. My choice.”
“Hell, they’re all worthless now. Take your pick.”
“I intend to do exactly that.” The man suddenly held a long manilla legal envelope. Teddy had no idea where it had come from, but it must have been hidden under the man’s coat.
The man opened the envelope and set a packet of papers on the coffee table in front of Teddy, along with a pen.
Teddy flipped through them, curious which useless beach parcel the man wanted. As he read, he turned numb.
“This can’t be right,” Teddy says. “It says you want this house. This is my personal residence.”
“And it is one of the properties you inherited upon your father’s death. As we agreed.”
“But...” Teddy rubbed his head, feeling panicky. “This is where I live. I grew up in the house. It’s our family home. I thought you wanted some of the beachfront...”
“As you’ve said, the beach properties are now useless.”
“We still have a couple of other small properties you might consider.” Teddy’s brain was spinning as he tried to figure out an alternative.
“I do not wish to consider other options. This home still has value. Therefore, I would like to take it from you.”
“You can’t take this house. It’s our family home. My parents lived and died here, my sisters and I grew up here. They would kill me if I lost the house.”
“Our agreement was for any one of your properties, my choice,” the man said. “Obviously, the contract cannot be enforced in court, so I must enforce it myself. If you do not sign the agreement, I will be forced to kill you. I wouldn’t mind, but I’d prefer not to collect you just yet. I’d much rather see you in live in the world, spreading your misery to others for years to come.”
Teddy reached for the pen, but hesitated. He imagined how his family would react.
“I could make it look like natural causes,” the man said. “You know this already. Nobody would find it difficult to believe that a sad little fat man died of a heart attack while watching pornography.” He snapped his fingers, and the movie began to play behind him, the girl kn
eeling in front of three football players at once.
“How did you do that?” Teddy asked. His remote control lay untouched on the coffee table.
“Sign the papers, Teddy.” The man tapped a blank line marked with a large red “X.”
Teddy picked up the pen.
“It was my father’s own fault,” Teddy said. “He made enemies of everybody in the local business and political community because he refused to move on. Simple redevelopment would have resolved it, but he kept leasing out those parcels to the same rundown motels and old tourist traps, just because he considered the owners his friends. His stubborn insistence on keeping the west beach stuck in the nineteen-seventies ruined us—ruined me, too, because nobody wanted to do business with our family. Property values all over town would have skyrocketed if he’d only changed with the times.”
“There is no need to justify yourself to me,” the man said. “Your father became an obstacle to your goals, so you had me remove him. Perfectly understandable.”
“I wish I hadn’t done it,” Teddy whispered. “I miss him.”
“Don’t unburden your soul to me. Leave it burdened. I like souls dark and heavy. They sink right down. Now sign the paperwork, Teddy, or I will rip the soul directly from your body and devour it.”
Teddy flinched. He slowly signed his name. The instant he was done, the man snatched up the papers, returned them to the envelope, and tucked the envelope under his arm. “I’ll expect you and your belongings out of this house by the end of the week. Is there anything else I can do for you, Teddy? Anyone else you’d like to see die? One of your sisters could contract a mysterious terminal illness, if you like.”
“I don’t want anything else from you,” Teddy said. “You’ve taken everything from me.”
“Yes, it’s been a profitable transaction for me. I’ve enjoyed it.” The man turned away and walked toward the glass door, the paperwork tucked under his arm.
Teddy’s fear turned to anger. Five years ago, the man had talked him into the arrangement, killing Teddy’s father in exchange for one parcel of land. Teddy’s inheritance had turned out to be all but worthless.
Teddy lifted the revolver from the couch beside him, aimed at the man’s back, and fired.
He must have missed, because no bullet hole appeared in the back of the man’s white jacket, although one of the windows in front of him shattered.
The man turned around, his face as blank as ever as he looked Teddy over.
Teddy, realizing the man would certainly kill him now if he had the chance, shot again and again, emptying the remaining five bullets from the gun.
Though the man stood only a few feet away, not one bullet seemed to hit him. Impossibly, the panes of glass directly behind him shattered, as if the bullets passed directly through him. He did not even blink when Teddy shot at him. His face remained blank and perfectly calm while slivers of glass tumbled to the floor behind him.
When Teddy was out of bullets, he just stared at the man, the empty revolver shaking in his hand.
“What the hell?” Teddy whispered.
“Feel free to shoot up the house all you like,” the man told him. “I won’t be selling it or using it in any fashion. I intend to let it rot in neglect, so that you and your family can visit your old home and watch it deteriorate year by year. It will provide everyone a moment to reflect on you and the multitude of ways you have failed yourself and your family, Teddy. Have a pleasant evening.”
The man stepped through the shattered pane of the door. He walked away into the night, never looking back.
“God damn it,” Teddy said. He looked at the revolver trembling in his hand, half-wishing there was one bullet left inside so he could put it through his own head.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Carter dreamed again that he was at the park at night. It was all ruins again, and a heavy rain pounded down on him. He could hear Tricia inside Inferno Mountain, screaming for him, but he couldn’t find a way inside. A red-hot iron fence, twenty feet high and topped with pitchforks, encircled the entire ride.
When he awoke in his dark room, he thought he saw a dark shadow leaning over his bed, studying him, its broad-brimmed hat outlined against the pale parking lot lights outside his window. Carter had enough time to gasp before it disappeared.
He looked around his room and couldn’t see anyone there, but the shadows were heavy. He reached out one shaking hand and clicked on his lamp. It was three-thirty in the morning. The phone lay beside the lamp, and there was a new text message for him.
This is getting too scary, Victoria had texted him. Maybe we should just stay out of it. What can we do, anyway?
Carter nodded as he read it, still shaking with fear from the bad dream and the dark apparition in his room. Schopfer claimed they were facing the devil, which had sounded a little absurd in daylight but now, deep in the night, seemed entirely believable. Whether it was the devil or not wasn’t so important—they were clearly up against something powerful and supernatural.
Maybe you’re right, he texted back. In the back of his mind, he hoped the carnival-barker-devil would somehow notice this and not return to his room.
She didn’t text back, and the last thing he wanted to do was lie down and his close his eyes again, so he walked out to the living room and turned on the television. He kept the volume low, leaving it just loud enough so he could hear some normal human voices. An infomercial attempted to sell him a product called the Super-Soak Sponge, which could allegedly clean anything.
He stayed awake for the rest of the night. Victoria texted him about mid-morning: Are you awake yet?
Still awake, he replied. How are you feeling?
Freaked out. What are you doing today?
Nothing. People at my apartments grill, drink beer, shoot fireworks. Happy Labor Day!
Can I come? Being around a lot of people sounds good right now.
Okay, but it’s pretty lame. Carter didn’t like the idea of giving her a good look at where he lived, but he didn’t want to turn her away.
Lame sounds good, too. Give me boring and lame PLEASE.
By noon, they sat in folding lawn chairs in the second-floor breezeway. This area was essentially a private balcony for Carter and his dad’s apartment, because the apartment across the breezeway was unoccupied and there was no third floor above them.
Below, people were already at the big black grills spaced through the parking lot. They sat on the picnic tables, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, setting off premature fireworks, and filling the air with the aroma of hot dogs, hamburgers, pork, and brisket. Willie Nelson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and fast Mexican pop poured from competing sound systems around the apartment complex.
“This is good,” Victoria said, watching the growing Labor Day festivities through the aluminum railing. “This feels sane.”
“Do you really think we can just walk away from the park, though?” he asked. “After everything we saw? It’s going to keep drawing people in, and nobody can stop it. Nobody but us understands what’s happening in there.”
“We still barely understand it ourselves.”
“I once had a crush on this girl,” Carter said, and Victoria turned to look at him. “I was twelve. We were both twelve. I mainly just talked to her at school, but one day during the summer, I...happened to run into her at Starland. And we hung out that day, and I felt like we could really be good friends. I was in love with her, you know, as much as a little kid can really feel that way.
“Then she wanted to ride Inferno Mountain, but I was scared of that ride. I already had nightmares about it. I tried to get on it to impress her, but I chickened out at the last minute, and she rode it by herself.”
“What was her name?”
“Tricia. She was great, she was different. I don’t know. I watched the devil swallow her up. The sinkhole opened while she was inside the mountain. It hit the park like an earthquake and shook the foundations of everything. So much of the ground just sank away bene
ath the pavement. Inferno Mountain moved, too. By the time the train came out of the exit gate, she was dead.”
“Oh, my God.” Victoria touched his hand.
“Something must have broken loose in there, because her head was completely gone, and the rest of her was covered in blood.”
“I can’t imagine seeing that. How old were you?”
“Twelve. So I’ve had nightmares about it ever since.”
“I’m sure you would.”
“I was thinking about it while I watched the Super-Soak Sponge Shirt demonstration this morning—”
“The what?”
“An infomercial. It’s for people who spill their drinks a lot, you know, this shirt just soaks it right up. Or if you’re a messy eater, it soaks up ketchup, and some of the thinner mustards and salad dressings, too.”
“What are you talking about?” Victoria asked.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I watched the whole infomercial, it was kind of gross...anyway, I was thinking, since the souls of all those kids are trapped in the park, then she must still be there, too. And what if these dreams aren’t just bad memories? What if she’s trying to reach out to me?”
They sat quietly for a minute. Below, somebody lit a string of Black Cats, and a group of voices gave a drunken cheer as the firecrackers burst like series of gunshots.
“It’s not the craziest idea, when you put it with all the other crazy things,” Victoria finally said.
“What if she needs me to free her? There must be something I can do, right? Or why would she keep contacting me?”
“If she is contacting you at all. And remember, all the ghosts we saw acted like they were obeying him. So even if it is the ghost of your girlfriend, and not just your own brain giving you nightmares, she could be trying to lure you back to the park for him.”
“But he threw us out when he could have had us,” Carter said. “If there’s something I can do to help her, and all the others trapped in the park, that explains why she’s contacting me, and why he doesn’t want me there at all.”
“It sounds like you’re planning to go back.”