Chapter 5
Quinn stared at the world in front of him.
I’ve gone mad, he thought. I’ve actually gone mad.
When he was alive, Quinn had been to several amusement parks. Virginia alone had two good ones: King’s Dominion and Busch Gardens. He’d also taken vacations to Disney World as a kid and Universal Studios as an adult.
The park in front of him bore some passing resemblance to all of those but at the same time was fundamentally different. There was a line of ticket stations in front and behind them was a giant map of the park.
But everything looked decrepit and run down. The giant map was rotted through and the words and pictures faded. Several of the ticket stations had shattered windows. There were old soda cans lying strewn about the place, and the trash cans were still filled with garbage — complete with circling flies.
Even in its heyday — assuming this place ever had one — the park would have been creepy. Affixed to every lamp post were large, grinning pumpkin heads that were both malicious and scary. The teeth looked like knives and the eyes glowed a vibrant orange. Above the ticket booths was a huge banner that was dirty and faded. It read, “Welcome to Halloweenland.”
“So hell is an amusement park?” Quinn asked. “Seems fitting.”
“No,” Janus replied. “It’s a haunted amusement park, which is even worse. ‘Like wow, Scoob, we need to get Fred and Velma and fire up the Mystery Machine.’”
Quinn couldn’t help it — he burst out laughing. His laughter seemed to echo throughout the park and bounce back to him. For a moment, Quinn thought he heard someone else laughing as well, in a decidedly mocking tone.
“Did I ever tell you that your Shaggy imitation is dead-on?”
Janus looked at him and Quinn could see the genuine fear in his eyes.
“Never had much occasion to use it,” he replied. “But it seemed appropriate.”
“Are we really going in there?” Quinn asked.
Janus gestured to the door behind them.
“Do we have much choice?” he asked.
The door they had come through appeared welded shut and had no handle. Quinn pushed on it for a few seconds before realizing it was futile. It was clearly designed to let them in, but not back out.
“’You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave,’” Quinn said.
“Exactly,” Janus replied. For the first time, Quinn noticed how haggard and pale he was.
He’s been through a lot too, he thought. I have to try and remember that. It’s not just about me.
“I don’t suppose staying here is an option,” Quinn said.
Janus looked up at the sky, which was a perfect blue. Quinn followed his gaze and for a moment, he could believe he was back in Virginia.
“Just a guess, but I’d say the sun is going to set soon,” Janus said. “And we may not want to be here at night.”
Quinn nodded.
“Makes sense,” he said.
But neither one budged. The wind picked up and whistled through the abandoned structures. A lose shutter banged against a window, and a broken sign creaked as it swung from a rusty nail. From somewhere close by, Quinn thought he heard something crash.
“I’ll go first,” he said after a moment.
A series of flags lined the entrance path, each with the same grinning pumpkin face on it. “Halloweenland — you’ll positively scream with delight,” read one. “Can you die of fright? Find out in Halloweenland.” The last one before entering the park said, “It’s Always All Hallow’s Scream in Halloweenland.”
The actual entrance was a row of turnstiles, all of which appeared rusted and ancient. Quinn tried to push on one but it was stuck.
“I assume nobody’s going to kill us if we don’t have a ticket,” Quinn said, as he hopped over the turnstile.
“Pretty sure the plan is to kill us no matter what,” Janus replied, and followed suit.
The inside of the park was a twisted nightmare. They were forced to walk through the mouth of a giant pumpkin head to enter. Quinn almost wondered if it would turn out to be real and swallow Janus and him whole.
Instead, the paved pathway continued on the other side, lined with small dark buildings. The structures were vaguely Gothic in design and were both cartoonish and grotesque. Once upon a time, they were meant to look like a haunted village. But now age and disrepair had given them a very authentic ‘haunted’ look.
Many of the buildings still had signs in front. To the right was “Nightmarish Knacks,” which appeared to be a former gift shop, while ahead on the left was “Terrifying Treats,” with a picture of a lollipop on the sign. If Quinn wasn’t mistaken — and he hoped he was — the lollipop looked like it was coated in blood.
“Charming,” Quinn said. “Can’t imagine why this place went out of business.”
“You see that?” Janus asked, and pointed to the buildings in front of them.
All along the roof ridges and gutters, fake birds perched. Quinn thought they looked like crows or ravens. Only when one of them turned its head and cawed at him did he realize they were real. Several other birds took up the cry and suddenly the entire park, which earlier had been as silent as a graveyard, erupted with the sound of birds. Quinn put his hands to his ears. But as suddenly as they started, they stopped, and the park was silent again. Instead, the birds watched them quietly, each head turning in slow motion as Quinn and Janus walked by.
Quinn and Janus exchanged a worried look and kept walking.
The path led to a courtyard with a fountain in the middle. The birds perched on the buildings all around them, still silently watching Quinn and Janus. Their attention was drawn elsewhere, however.
Five scarecrows were propped near the fountain, each one wearing jeans, a flannel shirt stuffed with straw, and a pumpkin for a head. All of the pumpkins were carved differently. Each one looked like it was in pain.
Janus and Quinn approached the scarecrows cautiously, worried they might suddenly start moving. They certainly didn’t look human, but in this place, appearances were deceiving.
Quinn prodded the middle scarecrow, confirming that it was straw, not flesh, tucked inside the clothes. He felt a certain relief until his hands brushed against something sticky on the jeans. When he looked at his hand, it had blood on it.
Quinn jerked back and looked again at the scarecrows.
“Whatever these things are, I think they were people once,” he said.
Before Janus had time to respond, music suddenly blasted over a loudspeaker. Quinn and Janus jumped. The music was dissonant and jarring, with the sound of chains rattling and screams mixed in.
“Good afternoon,” a man’s voice said. “Welcome to Halloweenland, where all your nightmares come true. We apologize for our appearance, but we are now under new management. The old management has been… put out to pasture. You’ll find them… hanging around the fountain. Be sure to stop and say, ‘Hello.’”
The voice drifted off into a fit of childish giggling.
“We hope you enjoy your stay,” the voice said. “We’re dying to meet you.”
Quinn felt a tug of memory. He had the sudden feeling that the voice was familiar to him. Before he could think much about it, however, another voice interrupted him.
“Help me!” someone screamed. “Help me, please!”
The voice was coming from beyond the fountain, deeper into the park. Janus and Quinn looked at each other, then ran around the scarecrows and toward the shouting.
A few hundred feet beyond the courtyard, they found what appeared to be an old arcade, complete with a series of old carnival games, the kind where you had to pay an exorbitant fee for the chance to win an oversized stuffed bunny. The shouting was coming from a man sitting on the ledge of a large dunk tank. His arms and legs were tied to a chair, and he watched in a panic as a scarecrow stood outside the tank lobbing pumpkins at a large bull’s-eye.
The man’s eyes locked on Quinn’s.
�
�Help me!” he said.
The scarecrow turned to face Quinn and Janus. Its pumpkin face grinned when it saw them, and it cackled. Then it turned its attention back to its prey and lobbed a perfectly aimed shot at the target. It hit the bull’s-eye and the man’s chair plunged into the water. The man tried to scream again, but he was already under water. The scarecrow cackled and ran out of sight, ducking into one of the nearby buildings.
Quinn and Janus ran forward and began pounding on the water tank. The man stared back at them with a terrified expression as he tried helplessly to free his limbs. Janus backed up and hurled himself at the glass. Nothing happened.
“We need something stronger,” he shouted and looked around frantically.
Quinn picked up a large rock and began hitting the glass as hard as he could, but it did nothing. The man inside was wild-eyed, struggling to move to the surface even as he was tied down to the chair.
Quinn looked around for anything else they could use and noticed the “Feat of Strength” game machine nearby. Standing next to it was a huge sledgehammer which was clearly used to see how far a person could knock a small disk up the measuring board. Quinn grabbed it and tried to pick it up with one hand before realizing it was too heavy. He used two hands and could barely lift the hammer.
“Janus, help!” he said.
Janus tore himself away from the tank and ran to help Quinn. Together, the two of them picked up the hammer and ran toward the water tank.
“On three,” Janus said. “One… two… three!”
The two used the hammer like a battering ram, carrying it on either side and smashing it into the tank. This time, they were rewarded with a satisfying cracking sound as thin spider webs spread out from the impact. But the man inside had stopped struggling and appeared to have passed out.
“Again,” Quinn said.
The two backed up and once again hit the glass with the hammer. The fractures went further and water began to leak out. It took three more tries before the glass finally shattered, the water spilling out onto the ground.
But by the time they had broken through, the trapped man was motionless. When Janus and Quinn turned his chair over, his vacant eyes stared up at the empty sky.
Janus felt for a pulse and then slammed his hand on the ground.
“He’s dead,” he said.
“Want to try CPR?” Quinn asked, trying to remember how it worked.
“In this place? Don’t bother,” Janus said. “Dead is dead. He’s gone.”
The two sat down on the wet ground, just beyond the shattered glass. Janus looked around, watching for whether the scarecrow or others like him would come back. But Quinn couldn’t stop staring at the face of the dead man.
“I know him,” he said finally.
“Huh?” Janus asked. “Really?”
“I think so,” Quinn said. “He was one of Elyssa’s moidin. I remember him watching me at the castle.”
“Who’s Elyssa? And what’s a moidin? And, while we’re at it, what castle?”
Quinn stared at him blankly, momentarily forgetting that Janus had been long dead when he tangled with Sawyer and Elyssa.
“It’s a long story,” Quinn said. “I don’t know that we have time to get into it. But there was another Prince of Sanheim. The guy was Sawyer, the girl was Elyssa. They had followers that they called moidin. I’m pretty sure this guy was one of them.”
“Can’t be a coincidence,” Janus said.
“Ya think?” Quinn replied.
The creepy music started up again and both men stood up, watching their surroundings warily.
“I’m so sorry you didn’t win, gentlemen,” the voice said, and it sounded anything but sorry. “But don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of other chances to play. In fact, here comes your next one right now.”
The music cut off and was replaced by an ear-splitting scream from a woman nearby.
Quinn looked at the hammer.
“Think we should take it?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Janus responded. “And when we get there in a half hour, we can use it to dig a grave for whoever’s dying out there.”
“Good point.”
The two sprinted across the park toward the scream. They saw another booth with a scarecrow standing in front of it. The booth had a large sign in front that said, “Crossbow Junction.” Behind the scarecrow, a woman with wavy brown hair stood on a platform pinned to the wall behind her. She had arrows on either side of her where the scarecrow had shot — and missed, likely on purpose. There was even one just above her head.
The scarecrow seemed to wait for them to get closer before laughing and turning back to his victim. He raised his crossbow and took aim.
As Quinn ran toward the scarecrow, he knew they wouldn’t make it. He also realized something else.
The woman in the booth was Elyssa.
Chapter 6
Kieran lay on the makeshift cot in the jail cell and tried to ignore the obvious bloodstains still on the floor. If he had ever wondered how much blood was spilled by a decapitation, that question was now answered. There was evidence of the attack a few days ago everywhere, and Kieran wondered how much effort was spent cleaning it up. He shrugged. Maybe the police were focusing their attention elsewhere.
The cell door wouldn’t even shut all the way anymore. It had been hastily repaired, but it had the look of a temporary — and unstable — fix.
Kieran looked at the man in the room with him. Tim Anderson was pacing outside the locked cell, looking more anxious than Kieran.
“You don’t have to stay, you know,” Kieran said. “You’re just likely to get yourself killed.”
Tim grunted, but didn’t respond.
“Why are you here anyway?” he asked. “You can’t do anything to stop her.”
“Neither can you, and yet you let us find you,” Tim replied.
“Ah, but I have a plan,” Kieran said, without much conviction.
“Does it involve dying horribly?”
“Not really, no,” Kieran replied.
“Then I don’t think it’s going to work.”
Tim kept pacing. Kieran took a harder look at him. He’d never considered him much last year, seeing him as a nuisance and little more. But his presence here, his sheer dedication to Kate despite what she’d done, suggested there was more to the man. He focused on Tim’s eyes and recognized the look in them.
“You feel guilty, don’t you?” Kieran asked. “Why?”
Tim stopped walking and turned to face him. His mouth turned up at the edges, as if it were about to smile, but the look was distant, bitter and distinctly unamused.
“It’s all my fault,” Tim said.
Kieran guffawed.
“Oh, really?” he asked. “How do you figure that one? Did you secretly kill Quinn and I didn’t notice? Did you make Quinn and Kate into the Prince of Sanheim?”
Kieran’s tone was jovial, but he could see his words had an impact. Tim almost seemed to flinch.
“In a way, that’s exactly what I did,” Tim said. “Years ago, I hunted a killer. He was right in front of me the whole time, but I couldn’t see past my own fear. I could have stopped him. I should have stopped him. And if I had… well, everything would have been different. There would have been no reason for Quinn and Kate to become what they became. But I ran away. And so I failed them.”
Kieran whistled.
“I’m not sure what to tell you,” he said. “You seem to be just a tad hard on yourself. You might have kept trying to find that killer and died, and then you wouldn’t have been there last year or now.”
“Like it would have made a difference,” Tim said.
“In the end, it might make all the difference,” Kieran said. “Someone once told me that a person of integrity can do amazing things — like be a beacon of hope for those lost in the dark”
Tim stared at him for a long time.
“Who told you that?”
“Her name was Grace,” Kieran
said.
“What happened to you?” Tim said. “The man I met last year was very different.”
Kieran shrugged.
“The man you met last year was a fool,” he replied.
“Well,” Tim said. “We agree on something at any rate.”
Kieran was going to say something more, but outside in the distance he heard a booming laugh and he shuddered in spite of himself.
“She’s here,” Kieran said. “Showtime.”
*****
The Headless Horseman tore through the streets of Leesburg unchallenged. He had expected some kind of resistance and was almost disappointed not to find any. The streets were unusually quiet for a weekday evening. But this was October, and if Leesburg had learned only one thing, it was to stay inside when the sun went down.
The Horseman let loose a flaming pumpkin as it rode past the Loudoun Chronicle, a sign to its meddlesome editor. He was aware of the breaking glass, but didn’t wait to see if it caused a fire.
He galloped through town, periodically laughing as he saw terrified faces in the windows. It felt good to be feared; it reminded him of the power he wielded.
He was night, he was October. He was flesh torn and rent. He was the rider promised long ago, the harbinger of fall. He was death, riding on a black horse.
The Headless Horseman arrived at the police station. He waited for the usual shouts and protestations, the officers with guns to appear. Last time he had worked hard to restrain himself. He didn’t want to kill them, though more and more, he had trouble remembering exactly why. They stood in his way, and even if they were no threat to him, wasn’t that enough?
But there was no one here. He dismounted and approached the building, dimly aware that it was mostly dark. He yanked the front door off its hinges and strode in, expecting to hear gunshots, feel them penetrate his dead and decaying flesh. Instead, there was nothing.
It’s a trap, a voice whispered in his head, the one called Kyle Thompson. Turn back now and get out.
The Horseman laughed out loud at that, felt it echo through the empty building. Clearly, it was a trap. There were no officers here, pathetically attempting to stop him. He was more intrigued than alarmed. He walked through the dark offices, and waited for the trap to spring.
Give the Devil His Due Page 5