He reached for the gate, clutched the bars tightly in his hands, and pushed.
And pushed.
Nothing happened.
The metal would not budge even an inch. There was no lock mechanism that he could see. He checked both sides, made sure there was nothing blocking the way.
He tried again, putting all his weight into it, straining and wincing and feeling the blood rush to his head, feeling the vein in his forehead throb and threaten to burst from the exertion.
Nothing. He looked upward, calculated how far of a climb it would be, but the calculations died quickly when he saw the barbed wire lining the top of the fence. The coiled spikes stretched around the perimeter of the park.
“Fuck.” He didn’t care that he’d sworn in front of Tim. There were much worse things than profanity. Like being stuck in hell with no way out even though the way out was right in front of your fucking face.
He looked through the bars. What should have been another parking lot and the back road that stretched along the wooded hills was pure blackness. The mountains were dark etchings in the background, with unidentifiable things moving about.
What had he expected? Had he really been stupid enough to think Dream Woods would let them leave?
Of course he had. Sweet, naïve Vince, thinking everything would work out if he just stood back and let life take its course.
He heard movement from behind. It sounded distant but close enough to make him grab Tim and crawl behind a trash bucket twenty yards from the dinosaur park. Something inside the bucket smelled horrid, food left out for ages. He covered his nose and swallowed back bile. He swatted away flies that looked three times too large, with wings the size of half-dollars. Flies that did not exist in the real world. But the stench and the bugs were nothing compared to what he saw across the way.
It was Andrew. Andrew was alive and walking and talking, though he was alone. It looked like he was conversing with an imaginary friend. He headed straight for Dream Castle, nearly skipping, acting as if it was the most normal trek in the world.
Tim stood up, held his hands around his mouth, and readied to yell.
Vince pulled him backward and held a finger to his lips. There was someone standing at the castle’s entrance, waving Andrew on.
Not someone—something.
It was a large silhouette, vaguely and covered in thick and mangy hair. Its head was circular and wide and when it stepped down from the front steps of the castle Vince wanted to run over there and rip its googly eyes out.
Sebastian held a mittened paw out and took Andrew’s arm, led the boy into the darkness of the entrance.
Vince thought back to the billboard that day, on his way into work. He had been sweating through his shirt, miserable, thinking how awful it was to have to drive an hour and a half just to make a living.
And there had been Sebastian in the distance, the billboard like a beacon of hope.
But now he saw that hope had nothing to do with it. It had been his approaching doom. He should have turned around and sped away from the sign. He should have known there would be a catch. Dream Woods had closed for a reason and he thought that reason was pretty clear now.
“We have to go get him,” Tim said, sniffling. “That’s where all those things went. That’s where they live. Why didn’t they hurt him?”
Vince shook his head. “I don’t know but you’re right. If I hurry I can catch up with him.”
“If we hurry.”
Vince looked down at his son. It felt like the last few years had flown by in seconds. Hadn’t he just been rocking Tim to sleep while Audra did the same with Andrew? Hadn’t Tim just taken his first words, rode his first bike, fallen down and gotten his first scrape? Time was a precious thing and not a moment of it could be wasted. “I need you to stay here. I need you to hide as best you can and wait for me.”
Tim opened his mouth to protest but Vince cut him short.
“Listen to me. I’m going to find your brother and then your mother and then we’re going to get the hell out of here. I promise.”
Tim said nothing. He hugged Vince and for a moment it felt like the last time they would share such an embrace. “I love you, son. I may not say that too much and we may not be the perfect nuclear family but I’ve never stopped loving you or Andrew or your mother. I hope you at least know that much.”
Tim wiped away tears, smudged grime on his cheeks. “I know.”
Vince nodded. “Good. Now hide and wait for me to come back.”
He took one last look at Tim before jogging past a dilapidated gift shop and into the belly of Dream Woods.
The front doors of the castle were wide open.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Where are you going?” Andrew asked.
After a ten-minute walk from the wreckage back at the hotels, Raymond stopped just outside the front doors of Dream Castle. “This is where I get off.”
“What do you mean? What about all that stuff you said back there, about how you’d always been with me? And now you’re abandoning me just like my dad?”
“It was true. Every word. But you’ve got to get up there.” He pointed to the highest peak of the castle, the spot where Andrew had first sensed something watching. “You’ve got to make your family pay, Andrew. They don’t love you and these fine folks, well, they have a way of accepting those that have been abandoned.”
In the darkness of the main entrance, a shape appeared, its disheveled hair flowing in the breeze. Andrew should have been scared at the sight but in a strange way, the figure was comforting. He turned toward Sebastian and waited for confirmation but the bear didn’t move. He stood rigid and still like a furry statue. Andrew tried to imagine a man beneath the costume but it seemed impossible. When he turned back around Raymond was gone.
No, not gone. He was never there in the first place.
This place is getting to you. It’s making you see things that aren’t real.
Like the creatures that killed everyone? Like the machines they used to feed the rides? Those sure seemed real.
Andrew shut his eyes, tried to focus his thoughts. Everything was spinning.
Yes, those things had been real. He was sure of it. But Raymond—he was just a nightmare, a childhood bogeyman. Nightmares did not exist in the real world.
Look around. This isn’t exactly the real world anymore.
The park, he realized without fully understanding, knew what you feared most. It knew he was afraid of being alone, of being the outcast, so it had conjured up something that would make him hate his family. He ought to turn around and run for cover. He could find his father and brother and—
And what? Thank them for leaving him behind? Go back to being second best, the one without the diabetes, the one who was never be in the spotlight even for just a second?
They don’t love you. They never did. Do as Raymond said, real or not. These people or whatever they are, they want to help you, make you feel welcome. What’s so wrong about that?
Andrew looked again at Sebastian. Though the smile on the mask’s face was stitched on, it seemed the expression had changed. The grin had widened somehow.
That was all the confirmation he needed.
He followed the mascot through the front doors and past an office that looked demolished. Every cubicle had been torn from the floor, leaving behind cracks and gouges in the dirty floor. In the corner was a heap of computers and broken desks, staplers and tape dispensers and just about every kind of office supplies. They looked old and rotten like mulch. Something like mold covered the ceiling, black and fungal and moving in his peripherals.
“Where exactly are we going?” His voice echoed, too loud for the silence.
Sebastian did not answer. He moved forward, toward a set of elevators. He pressed the up button and Andrew thought one last time that if he was going to turn around, now would be the time.
But the doors opened and he followed Sebastian inside.
The ride up was eterna
l. The castle could not have been much taller than their hotel yet it felt like they were travelling to the top of a skyscraper. It reminded him of the time he rode to the top of the Empire State Building with his parents and Tim, the sensation of lifting so far upward it was impossible to conceive ever getting back down. He thought again of the previous night, sitting on the hotel balcony and being certain something stared at him from the castle.
Now they were heading straight into that something’s lair.
His heart pumped with fear and something else, something hard to describe.
Something like excitement.
The elevator finally slowed and the doors opened up to a hallway, lit only by flickering torches. It was too dark to make out many details but he could see cobwebs—or perhaps genuine spider webs, though he did not want to meet the architects that had created them—and what looked like human bones scattered about.
He followed Sebastian down the hall, ending at a room with an opening in the wall, a view of the entire park and whatever now lay beyond. The breeze this high up chilled his skin. He shivered, wished again that he’d packed a sweatshirt despite the humidity from before everything had changed.
He stepped into the room and walked toward the balcony, watching the rides that were working better than ever, though they looked nothing like they had before the quake. Their shapes were all wrong as if the metal had melted and dried in odd patterns. They played different tunes now, distorted like an ice cream truck’s speakers on the highway. He wondered if the altitude messed up the sound waves but something told him the music sounded the same as it would on the ground.
He felt a presence behind him, eyes peering.
“You must be Andrew.”
He tensed, held onto the balcony for support. He imagined how his body would look should it topple over the edge. The voice was gravelly and hoarse, like someone who’d recently had throat surgery. They spoke with a faint accent; one he could not identify. It sounded sophisticated. It sounded terrifying.
“Yes,” Andrew said. “That’s me.”
“Sebastian here has told me so much about you. I’ve been watching, you know. Last night, while you were on your balcony, I was on mine. I could tell even from this distance that there was something about you, something that resonated with me.”
Andrew nodded. “Yes, I thought I saw you.” He still looked at the ground, not daring to turn around and look at the speaker. He focused on a bloodstain near the Burger Shack. It must have been large to be visible this high up.
“Do not be afraid,” the voice said. “I may not look like you or anyone you know but I assure you I am no bogeyman. Normalcy is a pathetic term and it has no place here at Dream Woods. Please, Andrew, turn around so that I can get a good look at our newest employee.”
He froze. His body felt paralyzed.
“Andrew, I cannot help you if you won’t even spare me one look. Please, turn around and say hello.”
He closed his eyes, took the longest breath of his life, and turned toward the voice.
“That’s it. Now open those eyes. There is nothing to be afraid of. You are in quite capable hands.”
He did as the voice commanded. The first thing he noticed was that Sebastian had left the room. The hallway was dark save for the faraway flickering of the nearest torch. Inside the room were more torches, the flames swaying in the wind, though they somehow remained lit.
And in the middle of the room was a man wearing a tailored suit and tie.
No, not a man. Not exactly.
At first glance he looked like a man but the longer Andrew stared the more his features seemed to melt away. In his peripherals the man’s skin looked less tan and more grey, not unlike the things that had nearly killed him by the pool. Andrew swore he saw scales along the man’s arms and neck and jagged talons where there should have been fingernails but each time he blinked the man became human again. His mind could not properly process the man.
“Who are you?” Andrew’s throat had become a dry sponge.
“Why, I’m the proprietor of Dream Woods, the boss, the manager, the executive chief but most everyone here just calls me The Director.”
“The Director.” The words seemed heavy on his tongue, like he’d said a forbidden curse word.
“That’s right and I understand you had yourself a little situation down below, when we began our transition.”
“Transition?”
The Director nodded. “Yes. It is painfully complex and perhaps a bit boring but we are no longer in your world. We have gone elsewhere.”
Elsewhere. It was perhaps the worst term Andrew had ever heard. His mind conjured up a million possible meanings and they all led to bad things.
“Your family, it seems, has left you behind.”
Andrew nodded. “How did you know?”
“Sebastian told me. He’s been keeping a close eye on you.”
“But I thought he doesn’t talk. I asked him plenty of questions on the way up here and he barely moved.”
“He speaks, though not with his mouth. I can hear him just fine. He tells me your father left you to die.”
“He couldn’t help me. The hotel had started to come down.”
“Even now you cling to the idea that it was an accident? That he actually wanted to save you?” The Director smiled. For a moment Andrew swore he saw a forked tongue within the man’s mouth. “I admire your diligence but you must know that your father never intended to save you. That is why you have come here, after all. Is it not? Do you not wish to make your family pay?”
Andrew tightened his fists. His theory had proven to be true. The Director had somehow gained access to his memories, had scoured until he found something to use to his advantage. Until he found Raymond to lure him here. Andrew’s mind played through each and every time he’d ever felt abandoned or alone in his own home. He thought of all the attention that had been given to Tim while he waited quietly in the corner. He thought of all the fights his parents had shared, all the awkward silences during dinner.
He nodded. “Yes. I want them to pay.” He thought of his brother’s eyes bursting open as Andrew stabbed them countless times with hypodermic needles.
You want your precious insulin, brother, then why don’t you fucking take it?
He imagined shoving dessert after sugary dessert into his stupid brother’s mouth and watching him slowly die in agony.
The Director laughed. “Yes. That’s the spirit. That is what we strive for here at Dream Woods. I think your employment has begun earlier than expected. We will have to skip the paperwork and the orientation process I’m afraid. Your very first assignment starts now.”
“Assignment.”
He nodded. “Your father. He is in our precious castle as we speak. He has come to save you, though we both know he only wants to bring you back home so that you can continue to be second best. After all, had he not left you behind in the first place you would not need saving.”
“You’re right.” Andrew shook with anger and excitement and hunger, no longer questioning how The Director knew about any of his personal life. That information had been made public knowledge at Dream Woods. There were no secrets here.
“You know what you must do once he reaches this floor?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Excellent,” The Director said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some business to take care of. I’m afraid I will miss the spectacle but I trust you’ll be able to handle the task on your own?”
Andrew nodded as the Director left the room. Then he waited and thought of all the ways he could kill his father.
***
The breeze had picked up and the temperature had nearly halved. Tim shivered but not just because of the chill in the air. He was alone for the moment, still hiding behind the trash bucket. He knew he ought to find someplace better to hide but each time he moved he felt like he was making his presence known to things unseen.
Perhaps if he stayed perfectly still, the b
ad things could not spot him. It seemed like a simple rule, one he could almost believe.
He heard faint screams and pleas for help in the distance, probably a few remaining survivors like himself who had managed to evade the creatures. He wanted to tell them to quiet down. The grey things seemed efficient and should they realize they’d left anyone behind, they would come pouring out of Dream Castle and finish what they’d started.
He kept his eyes glued to the castle’s entrance. He kept telling himself that his father was just inside the door, waving, letting Tim know everything was going to be okay.
But deep inside Tim knew nothing was okay, nor would it ever be again.
Truth be told, things hadn’t been okay even before the Carters had arrived at the park. His parents had been fighting more and more, his brother had been picking on him left and right, and to top it all off, he was pretty sure he was going to die young. He thought about it often while trying to sleep. It usually took him an hour or so to push such bad thoughts away before he finally drifted off and even then his dreams often turned to nightmares, visions of his dead body in a hospital bed while his parents swore at each other and his brother rejoiced.
But at least those had been real world problems. He could rationalize his sickness and his family troubles. They were nothing compared to what he was facing now.
Arguments did not have teeth. Insulin did not try to tear you apart.
His feet and legs began to fill with pins and needles. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been kneeling in the same position. He wasn’t wearing a watch and his parents wouldn’t let him get a cell phone until high school.
Imagine that. You’re going to die without ever getting your own cell phone.
He shook his head and slowly repositioned himself. He winced, imagining all the things hiding in the shadows, waiting for the slightest sign of movement.
He sat down, crossed his legs, and rubbed his ankles. They were nearly numb. He wondered if he could run in this state if need be.
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