The Haunted Forest Tour

by Jeff Strand

  Uncle Perry was punching numbers on his cell phone, mumbling to himself. Maybe Aunt Jean thought they were all adding scares to the tour—which he had to admit was already plenty scary—just for fun, but Uncle Perry was breathing like he'd been running for a long time and couldn't get enough air.

  In front of them, a fat man tugged at his tie, pulling it loose and staring out the window as something that looked like it was made of black smoke pressed against the glass and bared wickedly sharp teeth. His wide, flabby fingers grabbed at the edge of Barbara's khakis as she walked past. "Are you sure those things can't get inside here? Because I gotta tell ya, that thing looks hungry!"

  Barbara looked first at the fat man and then back at Tommy. She was chewing on her bottom lip too, but she suddenly smiled when she looked at the fat man and nodded her head. "Absolutely. It's not possible for anything to get inside one of the tram cars." Her smile still didn't look right. It looked like Mommy's smile whenever she said everything was fine between her and Daddy. It looked more like a wish than the truth. "Now, just to be on the safe side, I'm going to talk to the driver and we're going to try to get hold of the main office to see if they know what the delay is." Barbara flashed another smile at Tommy and pushed forward.

  The snakey-boney-bug thing had slithered off the window and moved on, but there were other things behind it. Something with very thick, powerfully built arms and what looked like three eyes moved past in the trees, but it didn't come any closer. Tommy was glad, because the thing was taller than the tram.

  "Son of a whore!" Uncle Perry closed his cell phone and muttered under his breath as several people looked his way.

  "What is it?" Aunt Jean gave him a look that said there's a little kid here, behave yourself—an expression that Tommy saw a lot whenever his parents were talking in whispers.

  "I can't get any reception on this thing."

  "Well, we're in a thick forest, honey. I'd be surprised if you could."

  "The lady at the store said I should get reception anywhere."

  "Perry, it's not a top-of-the-line phone. It doesn't even have a camera."

  Behind Tommy, a brown-haired girl around twelve years old let out a piercing shriek as something came lumbering toward the tram car. It had gray skin that fell in thick folds from its neck and shoulders, and if it had a face at all, Tommy couldn't see it. Where the face should have been there was just a warty lump of more gray skin with an upside down Y-shape. As he looked, the slit on the face opened up and revealed row after row of teeth and a purplish tongue that dripped thick, foamy spittle.

  The open mouth clamped down on the tram and the window near the girl with a loud rude noise. The girl screamed again and jumped from her seat with both of her hands over her mouth to stop any more screams from getting out. The man across the aisle from her reached over and pulled her into his lap. "Calm down, Carrie. It's fine. We're going to be just fine." He was a big man, beefy with short brown hair. His voice was deep and cheerful as he pulled his daughter closer. Tommy smiled at the sight of him, because he looked large enough to be Superman.

  * * *

  Neal Whistler looked out the window, and a snake woman looked back. She wasn’t really a woman, per se, but she had breasts and she had a nice upper body of a woman, if you looked past the scales. From the navel down her body got scalier and tapered off into a powerfully thick snake body that was coiled below her as she gazed at him.

  She had black eyes, just like the garter snake he’d kept as a pet for three weeks before his mom found it and had a fit. That had been messy.

  The snake girl leaned in closer and smiled at him with full, sensuous, and slightly green lips. He smiled back, a little nervously. At thirty-four years of age, Neal was still a virgin. He hadn’t even tried dating a girl since the one time he’d built up the courage to ask Shaileen Stillers to the prom and she’d laughed in his face in the middle of the cafeteria. He’d been telling himself for years that the problems were glandular, but that was a lie and he’d finally accepted the simple fact that he was fat. Not a little large, not pleasantly plump or big boned, but fat.

  It was an ugly truth, but the fifty-four-inch waistline on his pants put an end to his arguments. He’d been forcing himself into pants with a forty-eight-inch waistline for a long time, because the weight around his waist was malleable, but after last week, when he’d blown out the backside of his slacks while trying to sit down at his office cubicle, he’d finally had to accept that some things are inevitable.

  Getting new clothes always depressed him but not as much as the idea of dieting. As he was doing both next week, this was his little motivational trip. Today he ate, watched monsters and enjoyed himself. Monday bright and early, it was time to become a better man, even if it killed him.

  The snake woman moved closer to the glass, a Mona Lisa smile on her face. She wasn’t human, no two ways about that, but she was exotic and he stared, fascinated by her.

  Right up until the time she opened her mouth and bared the four-inch fangs that slid out from her upper and lower jaws. The fact that her mouth opened wide enough to swallow his head was a little unsettling, too.

  Still, he thought, she’s cute.

  * * *

  “Stupid piece of shit.”

  Perry gave up and shut off his phone. Back in the car, he had a top of the line, state-of-the-art satellite phone, set up to receive a signal anywhere in the world. He’d paid more than most of the people he knew growing up made in a fucking year. But he'd left it behind, because—oh no!—they didn't dare have camera phones in their precious fucking forest. So instead he'd brought this crap phone, that the bitch clerk had promised him would work. The unemployed bitch clerk, after he returned home.

  He didn’t even want to be here. He had things to do, but no, Jean had to watch her little nephew, because her stuck-up sister couldn’t keep her husband happy anymore. And who had to pay for it? Perry, of course. He had the money, it wasn’t a cost thing, it was a matter of the inconvenience.

  Perry didn’t want kids, didn’t like kids, didn’t much care if there were kids anywhere around him. It was just the way he lived. Nothing personal against Tommy—who was a good kid as kids went—but he could have been back at the office or working on the publicity stills for the next movie. He couldn’t even enjoy himself on what was supposed to be the coolest tourist attraction ever because he needed to get a few more calls in before he could relax. Instead, they were stuck in the fucking woods.

  Tommy looked over his way with wide eyes, and Perry made himself smile. The kid was okay. A pain in the ass, but as long as they had him around now and then, at least Jeanie was shutting up about having kids of their own someday. Having kids would have ruined all the sweet stuff he had going on the side, because you never, ever wanted to risk a family with kids in it. Cheating on Jean was kind of shitty, but cheating on her after they had kids? That was like being a Nazi or something.

  Which reminded him, it was time for his monthly check-up. No need to take risks on getting herpes or something worse.

  Movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention just in time to let him see a lizard man flick its tongue in his direction. Okay, a nine-foot-tall lizard man, with a dark blue tongue.

  Perry opened his phone again and prayed for a signal.

  * * *

  Up at the front of the tram, Tommy watched Barbara as she spoke to the driver. The driver tried talking into a radio and waited for answers that didn't come. He and Barbara whispered to each other, and neither of them would look back into the car behind them.

  In the seat directly behind the driver's, an old man dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt looked out the window and smiled, showing discolored teeth as he watched the things that kept creeping closer in. A baseball cap covered the top of his head. His skin was pasty white and his hands trembled, but he looked like he was happy while almost everyone else was nervous. Tommy kept staring at him, glad to see somebody smiling in the darkness.

  Some
thing wet and black oozed across the window near Aunt Jean's head and caught his attention for a moment. Whatever it was, it left a dull red smear on the glass as it slipped past.

  * * *

  Eddie Turner looked at Barbara and sighed as he set down the radio. "Nothing. There's got to be some major power failure in the tram. I can't even get a signal on the radio. And the handheld is battery operated. I should be able to get through on that if nothing else."

  "Jesus, Eddie, what are we going to do if we can't get contact?" She tried not to sound nervous. There had never been an incident of something getting inside the tram on one of her or anybody else's watches, not even the ghosts. Though they'd suffered the occasional technical glitch, nothing like this had ever happened. The Haunted Forest Tour was one hundred percent safe.

  Barbara loved her job. The benefits rocked her world and the pay was good enough to cover her college bills, but she had to admit that some of the things she'd seen along the way were disturbing enough to guarantee her nightmares from time to time. The first time she'd seen a giant spider—not an original name, but accurate enough, even if the thing did have ten legs and an unsettlingly human face—she'd almost peed her pants.

  The idea of the tram being stuck without power was not at all comforting. "Wait, Eddie, please tell me there's some power left on this thing."

  "I would, but I try not to lie to people I'm not dating."

  "No power at all?" Her heart sped up a bit inside of her chest.

  "None."

  "So the electromagnet is fried, too?"

  "As far as I know. I flipped the switch, so I guess in theory it could be working." Eddie looked a little worried, but he was holding it in pretty well. "The only good thing is I haven't seen anything big enough to be a real threat so far."

  "Listen, Eddie, we can't sit out here until night, and if we do, we need to be armed."

  "I think it's way too early to worry about that, sweetie." Eddie chuckled and Barbara gritted her teeth. She hated being called "sweetie" by him. They were friends but sometimes she couldn't decide if the older man was trying to flirt with her or adopt her. Either way, it was a little creepy and a lot annoying. Still, she held back from making any comments. "It's gotta be just a freak power failure. We'll be running again any second now."

  "Well, to be safe, we should look into opening the weapon chest."

  "Are you kidding me? Jeez, you'd think this was your virgin voyage. Relax, sweetie. If it comes down to that, we'll open it, but I don't think that's anywhere close to necessary yet." He looked at the people in the seats behind them. "The last thing we want to do is start these folks panicking, and if they do start panicking, the last thing we want is for them to be packing heat."

  "Yeah? The last thing I want is to end up as dinner for something with eight mouths." She had to keep herself from yelling. Eddie was a nice enough guy, but sometimes he was condescending as all hell and right now she wasn't much in the mood to be talked down to.

  "Don't worry your pretty head, Barbara. If it starts getting ugly, I'll protect you. There's lots of weird stuff out there, but they're harmless. How many workers died clearing out trees and laying out those tracks? Zero. How many got injured? Three. How many of those were injured because of monsters? Zero. I know you're paranoid about getting eaten, but people in this forest don't get et. Just doesn't happen. Go take a bong hit or something to calm yourself down, and let me do my job."

  "You don't have a job right now. You can't drive."

  "Go away, sweetie."

  Before she could tell him off, the tram rocked harshly and a few of the passengers let out gasps of surprise. Something big had just bumped into them, and big in this case meant hefty enough to rock the four-ton vehicle.

  "Okay," said Eddie. "Electromagnet definitely not working."

  Eddie let out a gasp as something covered the entire windshield. Whatever it was, it seemed intent on getting inside. Thick claws scraped across the windshield and the tram shook a second time.

  The passengers were definitely starting to panic. Barbara looked back to where the people who trusted her to maintain order were all staring out of the windows and either recoiling or pointing.

  A lot of creatures were moving in for a closer look.

  * * *

  Everyone around them talked in whispers, the same sort you expected in a church. Brad Landry barely noticed. He was too fascinated by the things outside of the tram. Monsters, demons, and God alone knew what else. Brad had his face inches from the glass and stared out at the things in the woods. Some of the things stared back.

  A creature with four arms and warty skin looked right at Tina and licked its chops. Definitely an image she could do without. Still, it was almost worth the nightmares to see Brad so happy.

  He worked so hard. Both of them did, but with Brad it was almost an obsession. He wanted them to have the American Dream, and he’d get it for them if it killed him. So it was especially nice to see him having a good time, even if that meant she had to deal with things like the ghost that was shifting and glowing as it moved past the window.

  Oh yes, this was going on her long list of places to avoid in the future. Brad was the one that liked horror movies and comic books. He was still a big kid in a lot of ways, but only after he’d finished his duties as The Man Of The House. It wasn’t unusual for him to spend ten hours at work, come home and do the monthly bills, and then settle back on the sofa with her to watch one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. She was okay with those, because even with all the blood, the plots were thin enough to see through.

  Brad looked back over his shoulder and pointed at something moving in the distance. She didn’t know what it was, but it pushed a tree hard enough to make it sway. Giving it a little thought, Tina decided she was perfectly fine never actually seeing whatever was large enough to knock around a seventy-foot oak tree.

  “Did you see that, honey?” Brad’s voice quivered with excitement.

  “Are we supposed to be waiting this long to move forward? What’s taking so long, Brad?”

  Brad must have heard the worry in her voice. He smiled and leaned closer, his thickly muscled arm moving around both of her shoulders as he grinned. “Don’t worry. I’m betting you they set this up for the extra scares. Remember, this is the Halloween special, right?”

  And just like that, some of the tension left her body. Her shoulders relaxed and her chest stopped feeling like it was going to collapse on itself.

  “I never even thought about that.”

  “Trust me.” He smiled and nodded knowingly. “If I was the one running this show, that’s exactly what I would be doing. Five minutes from now, we’re on the way and moving again.”

  Tina snuggled in closer to her husband of five years and closed her eyes for the moment. Let him have his fun with the weird things lurking outside. She’d had enough. It was better just to think about being back home, where she would be safe and sound.

  * * *

  He heard the tour guide and the driver talking, of course. He was directly behind them and despite their best efforts to be quiet, Lee Burgundy had made it a point to be in the right place to hear the important conversations that people weren't supposed to hear. He'd had a lot of practice at eavesdropping in his sixty-three years on this planet. It came with the territory and he doubted he could stop if he was suddenly struck deaf.

  For the last thirty-five years he'd worked as a debunker, writing under the name Alexis Gander, and his list of fraudulent showmen was almost as large as his bank account. He'd proved hundreds of psychics as grandiose fakes over the years, and if he had a dollar for every "miracle" he'd shown to be nothing more than a clever hoax, he'd have eight hundred and seventy-nine dollars. Fortunately, he had a lot more than a dollar for each one.

  For the first time in his life, Lee doubted he'd be able to disprove a claim. Either the Haunted Forest Tour was real, or the special effects being used far exceeded the best he'd seen come out of Hollywood. He'd been on
the tour before, of course. First in line when it opened a year ago. It didn't make him a believer. Obviously, the sudden existence of a five-mile forest in the middle of the desert was extremely bizarre, and the creatures didn't immediately strike him as fake. But Lee followed a mindset of "total fabricated crap until proven otherwise," and he hadn't been entirely convinced that the Haunted Forest was not a mega-budget Disney-funded undertaking.

  He didn't write about it, though. Honestly, the Haunted Forest was a little too big of an endeavor for him at this stage of his life. Too much effort to debunk. He'd gone on the tour, been impressed but not convinced beyond any reasonable doubt of its authenticity, and moved on to more manageable targets.

  Hearing the only two employees talking only proved that they believed this was all real. The thing with the cat eyes staring through his window was certainly convincing, but again, total fabricated crap until proven otherwise. The beast had a thick mane of fur around its feline face, and when it opened its mouth to yawn he got a chance to count the rows of teeth with decidedly sharp points. It moved closer, and he watched, quietly horrified and fascinated, as the monster's six legs moved forward with unsettling symmetry.

  There were more things behind it and the tour guide's words echoed in the back of his head as he tried to comprehend everything he was seeing. I guarantee that you'll see things you never imagined.

  He had a good imagination, but damn, this was well beyond his wildest hopes.

  Despite a long career of revealing the frauds for what they were, he'd longed to see something real. His grandmother had told him fairy tales when he was growing up, and he'd been searching for his entire adult life to find something that could come close to the thrills she'd given him as a child.