by R. L. King
As they drove by on the way to the parking lot, Jason scanned the group as best he could. He didn’t see any leather jackets with red and black logos on them, which was a good thing. Glancing back at Lissy, he noticed she was still humming to herself and didn’t seem at all agitated. To the contrary, she appeared to be taking in the whole scene with wide-eyed wonder.
Nobody looked at them oddly as they waited in line to get tickets. Although most of the crowd was teenagers and young adults, there were a few families and older couples as well. The loud music made conversation difficult, so they just drifted along together until they got to the front of the line, Susanna keeping a tight hold on Lissy’s hand. She still wasn’t showing any signs of distress.
Once they handed their tickets to the attendant and went inside, they found themselves standing in a large, open area full of milling people and little booths selling T-shirts, glow sticks, buttons, and other paraphernalia with the haunted house’s logo on them, along with snacks. On a whim, Jason bought everyone caramel popcorn balls, and a green glow stick for Lissy. She waved it around happily, her eyes shining. Susanna gave him an approving nod, though she still looked like she’d rather have a cigarette than a popcorn ball.
When they’d entered, the attendant had given each of them a little map showing the locations of the various different areas of the show. The largest of these was the Fear Asylum, which, by the images that went with it, appeared to depict a horrific mental institution. Other secondary attractions included the Haunted Forest, the Church of the Damned, and the Circus of Terror.
“Where do you want to start?” Jason muttered to Stone. “It could take us all night to go through all of these.”
“Why don’t we wander around outside each of them a bit,” he said. “With any luck, if any of the Evil are here, Lissy can give us a general idea as to their location and save us having to take a trip through each of them.”
Jason nodded, and the four of them began a slow circuit of the area. All but the Haunted Forest were inside exhibit buildings, while the Forest was set up in a large vacant area behind temporary fencing. They moved past the Fear Asylum and the Church of the Damned without any reaction from Lissy other than to continue happily waving her glow stick, but when they approached the Circus of Terror she began to move more slowly. Her eyes, big with excitement, grew fearful.
“Wait,” whispered Susanna.
The others stopped. “Is this it?” Stone asked. “In there?”
“I think so,” she said. She had her arm around Lissy and was holding her close; the girl was clearly shaking now. “I’m not sure we’re gonna be able to get her in there.”
Stone contemplated that for a moment. She was obviously right: Lissy was growing more disturbed by the minute. Instead of humming she was moaning; her glow stick fell out of her hand and landed in the dirt. Verity picked it up and brushed it off, looking worried.
“Al,” Jason said. “How about this: Susanna, you can hide the two of you, right? You can make that work here?”
Susanna nodded. “All I got to do is worry about keepin’ Lissy safe and it just works automatically. It’s prob’ly already workin’.”
“Okay then—what if you stay here or maybe go sit somewhere away from here so she’s not so scared, while Al and V and I go in and look for the guy.”
“But Jason, how are we going to find him without Lissy to show us?” Verity asked.
Stone, however, had caught his line of reasoning and nodded. “Right,” he said. “We just go in there and look for someone who’s getting entirely too much—erm—personal pleasure from watching all these people being frightened.”
“Yeah, exactly. It might take us a little while to find ’em, though. Will you guys be okay?”
“We’ll be all right,” Susanna said. “It’ll give me a chance to have a smoke. Lemme have that back,” she said, pointing to the glow stick Verity held. “It’ll help keep her calmed down once we get away from here. We’ll go sit by the food stands.”
“We’ll be back as soon as we can,” Stone said as Verity handed it over.
As they once again approached the Circus of Terror, they noticed that the music had switched from heavy-metal classical to macabre minor-key calliope. The lurid painting on the outside of the building depicted a nightmarish clown with graying fangs and claws, blood dripping from his chalk-white face above a ripped clown suit in black, purple and gray polka dots. “Charming,” Stone commented.
“I’ve always hated clowns,” Verity said, shivering. “I probably saw something like this when I was a baby.”
The crowd here wasn’t as large as for the Fear Asylum, but they joined a little group of about fifteen people and moved past the attendant (dressed as a sinister ringmaster) into the darkness. The calliope music got louder as they moved in. The whole place smelled like sweat and sawdust and a hint of popcorn.
Inside, the cavernous area had been broken up into a maze of twisty corridors by portable barriers that occasionally opened up on one side or the other to reveal a tableau. The barriers were painted black, while the tableaus themselves were garishly colored and lit by ubiquitous black lights.
“Just like the one back home,” Jason said, bored. “This wouldn’t scare a Chihuahua.”
It appeared he was wrong, though. As they approached the first tableau, which depicted some sort of horrific clown-related torture session, they noticed that more than one member of the crowd looked agitated. When one of the clowns, who’d been hiding in the back of the group behind one of the black barriers opposite the tableau, lunged out with a roar and brandished a realistic-looking chainsaw, several people screamed and leaped backward, then giggled nervously as the clown subsided back into his hiding place to await the next group. One young boy started to cry. Jason, under cover of the milling crowd trying to reassure the boy as they shuffled off toward the next tableau, peeked around the barrier at the clown. He was standing back there with a buddy, chainsaw leaned against a wall and both of them taking quick swigs from the beer cans they’d stashed. Jason quickly backed up and caught up with the rest of the group.
The next tableau was a sinister magic act, where the tuxedo-clad magician was sawing a curvaceous woman in a slinky red dress in half as two more evil clowns cavorted around off to the sides. The magician kept up his patter, looking relaxed, but suddenly something went horribly wrong and the “blade” sliced through the woman’s torso. She screamed so loudly that there had to be a microphone hidden around her somewhere, while blood shot out in all directions and her “guts” came spilling out of her body. The magician, meanwhile, went into hysterics, screaming and running around while the clowns tried to catch him.
“Wonder how long it takes her to stuff all that back in between groups,” Jason muttered to Stone and Verity. His sister grinned.
Stone wasn’t listening, though. He was looking behind them—just in time to see another clown, this one wielding two large, bloody machetes, leap out and scream incoherently. He buried one of the machetes in the midsection of one of the straggling group members, who shrieked and fell to the sawdust-covered ground, writhing in agony and fountaining blood.
The crowd was going crazy, and even Jason had a look of wide-eyed horror now. “What the hell—?”
Stone, however, looked unimpressed. “I wonder how long it will take the rest of our group to realize he wasn’t with us when we started?”
As if to punctuate his words, the “victim” got up, laughing, pulled out the “machete,” and darted off behind the barrier. The clown was slower to follow. He waved his remaining machete a few more times, then moved off after his victim.
“Hang back,” Stone muttered to the other two.
They did so, pretending to watch the magician for a moment, then used the crowd as a diversion while they slipped behind the clown’s secret exit.
By the time they got back there, neither the clo
wn nor the victim were anywhere to be seen. “Damn,” Jason said under his breath, but then Stone touched his arm and pointed.
Barely visible in dark clothes and a dark stocking cap, a skinny boy around seventeen sat in a corner with his arms wrapped around his knees. A broom and dustpan were propped next to him. His eyes were closed, his face lit up in a rapture of pleasure.
“I think we’ve got our man,” Stone whispered, waving Jason forward.
It went just like they’d planned: Stone cast a spell that made the boy slump over, his head dropping onto his knees. Jason picked him up, supporting him as if helping a drunken friend. Verity pulled off his dark stocking cap and replaced it with a red and gold San Francisco 49ers one from her pocket. Together the three of them quickly headed for the emergency exit, dragging the boy with them. His eyes were open, but his head lolled alarmingly to one side.
Stationed outside the emergency exit was a burly man in a Fear Asylum T-shirt. He looked at them suspiciously when they came out, but Stone made a surreptitious hand movement that caused the boy to jerk in Jason’s grip and vomit violently on the ground.
“Too much excitement,” Jason said to the man as the teen continued heaving. “My cousin couldn’t take it. What a wuss,” he added with contempt.
The man stared in disgust at the splashes of vomit on his boots and waved them off. Jason doubted he even looked at their faces, let alone registered them. Once they were safely away, Stone and Verity remained with the kid while Jason ran off to retrieve Susanna and Lissy. It was nearly ten minutes before they came back; Verity was pacing around, growing more and more nervous, and even Stone was starting to look apprehensive by the time the three arrived.
“Sorry,” Jason said. “Susanna had to finish her cigarette.”
“Hey, you don’t waste a good smoke,” Susanna protested. “They make you put it out in here if they catch you.”
Lissy, meanwhile, was agitated again. It was obvious their efforts to grab an Evil-possessed individual were successful, because the closer Lissy got to the boy, the less responsive she became. She sat down on the ground as far away from him as she could get and began to rock back and forth.
“Bugger,” Stone muttered. Now they had two unresponsive people to deal with. He thought fast, then dug in his pocket and tossed the van keys to Jason. “Go get the van and bring it around to that side exit over there,” he said, pointing. “I think that will be much more unobtrusive than trying to drag them through the front gate.” Jason nodded and jogged off.
It seemed an eternity before Jason returned, but in actuality it was only about ten more minutes. They had a brief fright when a couple of leather-jacketed DMW gangers swaggered by, but Susanna’s concealment power appeared still to be working since the gangers passed less than ten feet away and didn’t react to them.
“Hurry up,” Jason said when he arrived, glancing back over his shoulder. “I’m parked illegally.” He grabbed the boy again, while Susanna and Verity helped Lissy up and hustled her out the exit. Stone hurried ahead of all of them, jumping into the driver’s seat while the others arranged their passengers, seating Lissy as far as they could manage away from the boy.
Stone drove off quickly, careful not to draw attention. He pulled out a paper from his pocket and consulted it, then took a right out of the little side street where Jason had parked.
“How far is it?” Verity asked. She kept casting nervous glances at the kid, as if she expected him to wake up any minute.
“Five minutes. Just sit tight—we’ll be there soon.”
Two more rights took them down a largely deserted commercial street lined with gas stations, small auto body and machine shops, and other similar light-industrial buildings. The gas station Lamar had told them about was right where it was supposed to be, and did in fact appear abandoned.
“Go check the left side roll-up door,” Stone told Jason as he drove through the weed-choked parking lot up close to the building. “Lamar said it would be unlocked.”
Jason leaped out of the van and ran over to tug on the door. It was indeed unlocked. He pushed it up the rest of the way, then pulled it back down again once Stone had driven the van inside. “Everybody out,” Stone announced. “End of the line.”
Jason hustled the kid out. When they looked back at Susanna, she shook her head. “We’re gonna stay right here,” she said. “I think Lissy’ll be okay once she’s away from that boy.” She started to fumble in her bag for a cigarette again, glanced at Stone, grumbled something under her breath, and settled back in the seat with a resigned sigh.
“I don’t know how long this will take,” the mage told her. “It might be a bit of a wait.”
“That’s fine. We’ll just get us a little sleep. It’ll be nice for a change to sleep without worryin’ something’s comin’ after us.”
He nodded, grabbing his leather bag out of the front seat. “All right, then. With any luck, we’ll make this quick.”
Taking the lead, he motioned for Jason and Verity to follow him out of the garage area and into the gas station’s office. It was in the back of the building and didn’t have any windows. Stone fished in the bag and came up with a flashlight, which he switched on and put down on an old desk. “Set him down in the chair there,” he directed. “I’m hoping we can do this without ever having him wake up.”
“How?” Verity asked.
“We don’t need him. We need the thing inside him. And if he doesn’t wake up, then there won’t be any chance he’ll see us. Safer that way.” He opened the bag and started laying out items on the desk.
Jason set the skinny boy down in the chair, where he immediately tried to slump forward and fall. Stone tossed Jason some light rope, which he used to tie the boy’s hands behind him, more to keep him in the chair than to restrain him.
“So,” Verity said, “How are we gonna do this? Do you just want me to stare at him and concentrate really hard on trying to get the thing out of him?”
“Not yet,” Stone said, still fiddling with the various objects on the table. “First, I want to see if I can determine anything about the nature of the Evil so I can try to get my cage right. We won’t be able to contain this one since it’s so weak, I suspect, but any readings I can get will be invaluable.” Selecting something that looked like a short, black, wooden rod with a red crystal attached to one end, he moved closer to the boy.
“Is that a magic wand?” Jason asked, half-joking.
“Not exactly,” Stone sounded completely serious. “It’s more a focusing object, to help me ignore outside astral influences while homing in on the one I’m trying to study.”
“Of course it is,” Jason said to Verity. She nodded and grinned.
“Oh, be quiet, both of you.” It was hard to tell if he was irritated or amused. He dragged another chair over, sat down, and held the crystal up near the boy’s face. For a long time he neither moved nor spoke; he just did that weird unblinking-stare thing that Jason was learning to identify as ‘doing something magic’. The boy twitched a bit and seemed uncomfortable, shifting back and forth in the chair, but he didn’t wake. “You’re in there, you bastard, aren’t you?” Stone murmured. “I can feel you in there…”
“You can?” Jason whispered.
“Shh…” He moved the crystal again, this time touching it to the boy’s forehead. Again he remained there, his arm shaking a little but otherwise unmoving, for nearly five minutes. Then he pulled back and let his breath out.
“Did you get anything?” Verity leaned in as if trying to see whatever it was for herself.
Stone seemed to be gathering his thoughts. “I—did. But I’m not sure what I got, exactly. I’ve got the maddening feeling that it’s—familiar somehow, but I can’t figure out why or how. It’s fighting, though—it can’t move the boy’s body because he’s unconscious, but it’s trying. It’s afraid—I think it suspects what we have planned
for it. Best that we make this quick—I doubt this is good for its host’s blood pressure.”
“Did you get enough to make the cage?” Jason asked.
“I think so.” Stone had already moved off and had pulled a notebook and pen out of the leather bag. He opened the notebook, moved over by the flashlight, and started writing rapid-fire notes. “Just—see if you can evict it now,” he said to Verity without looking up. “I want to get this all down while it’s still fresh.”
Verity, looking thoroughly confused, cast a what do I do now? glance at Jason. When he shrugged, she moved closer to the boy and stared at him. She closed her eyes and screwed up her face—to Jason, it looked like she was either concentrating really hard, or trying to lay a particularly troublesome egg. After about thirty seconds she opened her eyes and let her breath out. “I have no idea what I’m doing,” she said.
“Um…maybe you have to tell it to get out,” Jason suggested. “When you did it before, I heard you yell ‘Get out!’” He glanced over at Stone for help, but the mage was still writing in his notebook, oblivious to their conversation.
“Guess it’s worth a try,” she said. Facing the boy again, she glared at him and yelled, “You! In there! Get out!” The boy shifted in the chair, but nothing else happened. “I feel stupid,” she complained.
“Al?” Jason called. “Little help here?”
Stone glanced up from his notebook. “What? Oh.” He thought a moment, then said, “Erm—you told me before that you ‘pushed’ with your mind. Try that.”
Verity rolled her eyes at him. “And I’m gonna maybe study magic with you? I can’t wait for my first lesson: ‘Okay—do magic!’”
Stone put the notebook away with a sigh and came over. “I can’t really explain it, since I don’t know exactly what you’re doing. Remember, this sort of thing isn’t the kind of magic I understand. It—” He stopped; his expression shifting from confusion to revelation to disgust. He put his hand to his face, shaking his head. “Honestly, I don’t know why you two bother to listen to me at all.”