by Rick Mofina
And it worked.
Little by little they’d regained control of their lives. Sarah resumed teaching, drawing strength from her work. While Cole was resilient, Jeff noticed steadfastness in his eyes, but he’d endured.
Hell, we all endured.
Jeff smiled to himself as he rolled through his town. There was a silver lining. It had obliterated all of his doubts about Sarah, about holding his family together.
That, and the private trips he made to the children’s section of the cemetery at the edge of Laurel.
Jeff realized his place in the world was to take care of his family, to help others every chance he could. Being a good husband, a good dad, fixing cars and volunteering for emergencies seemed just about right, for him.
He turned his truck’s radio to his favorite country station, glad to catch “I Walk the Line.” Listening, he thought the song suited his state of mind as he came upon his home on Coyote Ridge Road.
They had a ranch-style bungalow on half an acre, but they started dreaming again of getting a bigger place at Pheasant Brook. There were some nice properties out there.
He eased his Ford into the driveway, killed the engine and radio. He hesitated before he got out. Through the front window he caught the scene: Sarah, standing behind Cole, who was working at the computer. Sarah was pointing at something on the screen, likely Cole’s geography project.
Cole had chosen to do it on New York City.
They’d promised him they would go back one day for a real vacation.
Jeff smiled to himself.
As the truck’s engine ticked down he continued looking into the window. This was a portrait of a perfect life.
My life.
They were not the same family anymore.
They never would be.
They were stronger, and no matter what they faced, nothing could ever, or would ever, defeat them.
* * * * *
We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin ebook. Connect with us for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!
Subscribe to our newsletter: Harlequin.com/newsletters
Visit Harlequin.com
We like you—why not like us on Facebook: Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks
Follow us on Twitter: Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks
Read our blog for all the latest news on our authors and books:
HarlequinBlog.com
If you enjoyed THEY DISAPPEARED, don’t miss USA TODAY bestselling author Rick Mofina’s latest pulse-pounding thriller, LAST SEEN, available now.
Keep reading for a sneak peek!
THE FIRST DAY
CHAPTER 1
River Ridge, Illinois
“You’re doomed!” the fat man on the stool said.
He was missing two lower front teeth. Peppered stubble whorled on his cheeks; vines of long hair framed his face. His eyes locked on Gage as he extended his hand, raising his voice over the chaos of the midway.
“Give me your ticket, kid.”
Smiling, Gage placed his ticket in the man’s red-stained palm, then raised his voice. “Hey, is that real blood?”
“You tell me, kid. Look where fate has brought you.” The fat man cast his tattooed arm back to the huge arching sign bearing blood-dripping words that proclaimed the attraction.
The Chambers of Dread: America’s Biggest Traveling World of Horrors!
“This is so cool!” Gage said.
“Cool? How old is your young soul?”
“What?”
“How old are you?”
“Nine!”
The man’s eyes narrowed into reptilian slits as he assessed Gage, then his dad, then his mom. They stayed on Mom long enough to border on being unsavory before coming back to Gage. Then the man knocked on the wooden advisory bolted to the metal barricade next to him.
Warning! This attraction may be too intense for pregnant women and people with heart conditions. It is not recommended for children under the age of 12 unless they are accompanied by an adult.
A fat finger, tipped with a long, yellowed and chipped fingernail, pointed at Gage. “Mark my words, kid. These Chambers is cursed. No one who enters is ever the same when, and if, they leave. Now’s the time to run home with your mama. Otherwise, move ahead. Next! You, there! You’re doomed!”
“Whoa!” Gage’s laugh betrayed excited nervousness as he and his parents inched forward in the crowded line that snaked between barricades to the entrance. The aroma of deep-fried food, grilled meat and cotton candy wafted from the food stands. He felt his mother’s hands on his shoulders before she leaned into his ear.
“You’re sure you’re okay to do this, sweetie? You’re not too scared?”
“Mom, I’m not scared!”
“We could skip this and get something to eat over there.”
“He’s fine, Faith. You’re always babying him,” Gage’s dad said while checking messages on his phone and texting responses.
Always working, Faith Hudson thought, irritated. It was as if his phone was part of his anatomy. Now he was dialing.
“Seriously, you’re calling someone?”
Phone pressed to his ear, Cal flashed his free palm to Faith, signaling her to quiet down. She bit her bottom lip, hesitating, then said what she was thinking. “And I was going to thank you for making time for us today.”
Cal never heard her, focused on his call. “Yeah, it’s Hudson,” he said into the receiver. “You gotta tell Stu the number’s wrong in the story—it’s fifty thousand, not five…Right. Good. Bye.”
He turned to his wife. “I’m sorry, what’d you say?”
“Nothing.”
Cal looked at her for a long moment while across from them the Polar Rocket erupted with a diesel roar, frenzied squeals and Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song. After absorbing everything that Faith’s silence screamed at him, Cal leaned into her ear.
“I had to make that call—it was important.”
“They’re always important calls.”
“I had to correct an editing error. What were you trying to tell me?”
She stared at him. “I was going to thank you for making time to be with us, but you’re not with us. You’re working.”
“Cripes. I’m here, Faith.”
“Are you?”
“Please don’t start.”
“No, no, I’m not.” Faith glimpsed the family behind them, the mother and father awkwardly pretending not to be watching them. Immediately Faith rubbed Cal’s shoulder lovingly and smiled for all to see. “Everything’s fine. Really.”
Sure, everything’s perfect, Calvin Hudson told himself, turning from Faith and scanning the top of the Mega-Roller Ferris wheel. She’d never truly understood his work, he thought. He was a journalist; it was in his DNA. The demands were 24/7. She never really grasped how deeply involved he was with his stories. He couldn’t just switch it off, like she insisted; or like she could at the PR firm. Now there were rumors of layoffs at his paper, the Chicago Star-News, making him uneasy. He had to work that much harder to prove he was still valuable to his editors. Jobs in the business were scarce. But the way Faith had said, “Don’t worry, we’ll get by on my salary and you’ll find something else,” had wounded him. How could she be so dismissive, as if his position in life didn’t matter, as if she wanted him to lose his job. She had no clue how much he’d given to it—his blood, sweat and tears along with much of his soul. She had no idea the things he’d done.
And if Cal’s uncertainty about his job at the paper wasn’t bad enough, the situation at home was worse. He and Faith were no longer as intimate as they used to be. She had grown colder over the past few years. Their lovemaking was infrequent. Her displays of affection—spontaneous handholding, touching or even kissing, which used to be common—were now rare.
She’d become more impatient, more demanding. And the way she babied Gage… “Is your pizza too hot for you? Wa
nt me to cut it for you? Maybe that movie’s too scary for you?” The boy was nine. And he clearly hated when his mother treated him this way. It was no wonder Gage lived for any free time with his dad—with Faith it was as if he was drowning and desperate to come up for air.
But no one knew that Cal and Faith were grappling with these problems—not their relatives, not their friends. “We don’t need everyone to know our business,” Faith had decreed.
In keeping with a job as a public relations manager, appearances were important to Faith.
Given her personality and her professional skills, she was good at hiding the truth when it counted. Maybe that’s why buried in a corner of Cal’s heart was the fear that Faith would take Gage and leave. Cal would never see it coming.
He forced himself to shift away from all these thoughts and stay positive. He found comfort in the line he had on a potential reporting job overseas. The chances that he’d get it were slim but if he did it would mean a big change in their lives.
Still, no matter what he and Faith felt, Gage came first.
Cal looked at his son, thinking that he must sense his parents were having problems.
Like powerful telescopes scouring space for signs of life, kids like Gage could pick up infinitesimal traces of parental discord. They’d internalize it without voicing a word, while alone at night in their beds they’d hope and pray that everything between Mom and Dad would be okay.
Looking at Gage in his beloved Cubs cap and T-shirt, the one with the faded mustard stain, his khaki shorts and sneakers, Cal felt a surge of love for his son. He would do anything for him.
No matter what problems Cal and Faith had, they needed to show Gage that they were still a family intact; that’s why they were here at the River Ridge Summer Carnival. Every year the big traveling midway of games and thrill rides visited their suburb on Chicago’s West Side for ten days. Gage had ached to come, specifically to respond to the double dares from his friends about going through the Chambers of Dread.
“Marshall and Colton said they were going to get their parents to come to the fair today, too. I hope so because if I see them I’m gonna tell them, ‘In your face, dudes! I conquered the Chambers of Dread!’”
Cal mussed Gage’s hair, smiling and thinking that maybe this fear, the kind that was manufactured and sold, would take their minds off the real things they feared in their lives. Maybe for a short time they could pretend to be a happy family.
Cal glanced back at the fat man on the stool, saw him raise a walkie-talkie and say something into it.
The Hudsons were next in line.
As they entered the Chambers of Dread through the yawning jaws of the Demon King, the carnival barker’s warning of doom echoed.
Cal and Faith exchanged measured looks before they and Gage stepped into the darkness.
CHAPTER 2
Thick waist-high fog enveloped the Hudsons in the dim light; wisps of it curled around Gage’s chest as they began their journey through the Chambers of Dread.
Screams from the unseen visitors mingled with moaning in the darkness ahead of them. They moved toward ominous rumbling, coming to a passageway formed by a large, tunnellike drum, continually spinning, inviting visitors to step through the Portal to the Grim World Beyond, according to the twisted neon sign above it.
Keeping their balance while walking through the portal with a few other people, the Hudsons found a deeper darkness on the other side and began moving slowly through a maze when a large, cloaked figure emerged in front of them.
“Oh my God!” Faith gasped as the figure raised a severed human head before them, then vanished.
“It’s not real, Mom!” Gage laughed.
“I know, sweetie. It just startled me. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, this is so dope!”
But the underlying nervousness in Gage’s voice worried Faith, making her wonder if he’d be okay. Especially with what seemed to be up ahead.
Agonizing pleas beckoned them to the Dungeons of Dread and a darkened narrow walkway that reeked of rotten eggs and had water trickling down its jagged stone walls.
“Oh, no, let go! No!” a teenager ahead of them shrieked.
Something scratched at Faith’s ankles. Then it gripped them before she kicked free. Looking to her feet she saw clawlike hands reaching out from barred windows where the condemned, confined in a subterranean prison, grabbed desperately at them, calling, “Save us! Don’t leave us!”
Hurrying through the dungeons, the Hudsons came to another dark twisting connection echoing with wails, growing louder as they got closer to the next chamber.
There, the entire scene glowed in flickering orange, yellow and red as flames licked from a massive mound of wood and bramble. A large post protruded from the center. Bound to it, a woman wrapped in a white nightshirt, her head shorn, face glistening, her eyes inflamed, she screeched, “So you think burning me, the witch queen, will be my end! Fools! I curse you all! I’ll torment you from hell!”
The temperature soared, giving the scene a heightened degree of authenticity. Faith saw one man point out for his wife how the flames were controlled from a gas line, that the wood pile was a prop, like the gas fireplace in an expensive home.
“Did you hear me?” The witch queen screamed. “You’re all cursed! Forever!”
Faith found kinship with the witch queen.
Her writhing against her bindings echoed how Faith felt, bound to her heartache. Cal had grown distant over the last couple years and she didn’t know why. After one of his big stories he’d grow pensive. Faith didn’t know what was happening with him. Whenever she tried to talk about it, he’d shut her down. He’d become absorbed in his work and was never home. She was always alone, making her feel that he preferred the long hours of working with cops, criminals and street-smart, pretty female reporters to being with her.
Had he fallen out of love with her? Once, she’d overheard him on a call joking to someone that journalists were truth seekers and PR people were professional liars. Did he feel that way about her? Most of her work was for big nonprofit groups and charities, and that was the only time she’d heard him talk that way, so she let it go.
Or tried to.
Faith needed to hold things together for Gage’s sake. But it wasn’t easy. She knew Gage idolized his father and lived for any free moment Cal spared for him. But it only happened when it was convenient for Cal. How many times had he canceled at the last minute on promised father-son days to see a movie, or the Cubs, or check out video games, because he had to work late?
Gage was crushed every time. He was resilient, but still, it broke Faith’s heart.
Cal had promised her that he would leave the crime beat and advance up the editorial ladder toward a more stable job and life. It never happened—and she knew it never would because he loved what he was doing. That’s why she saw the looming layoffs at the paper as a chance for him to start something new, for them to reconnect. Because little by little she felt something was slipping away from them. They were growing apart, forcing Faith to take a hard look at taking control of matters because she and Cal couldn’t go on like this.
They used to be so much in love. What was happening to them?
The cries of the witch queen soon faded as the Hudsons navigated another labyrinthian connection to the next chamber where they were met by the distinct sound of vigorous chopping. Then, emerging in the gloomy darkness, they saw a man in a blood-streaked apron swinging a cleaver, blood running down his arm while he chopped slabs of meat on a table.
“Whoa!” Gage said. “It’s the insane butcher!”
Legs and arms, some twitching, were displayed on the hooks and chains near the butcher as he worked. His hair as wild as Medusa’s, his face contorted and smeared with blood, as he stopped his work to offer the Hudsons delicacies from an array of bowls. One was filled with eyeballs, one brimmed with fingers and another held brains.
“Gross!” Gage laughed.
“No thanks,�
� Cal said.
As the Hudsons moved on with a small group, the light grew increasingly darker, making it nearly impossible to see each other, let alone Gage’s face. The actors and sets were of a higher caliber than Faith had anticipated and she worried that Gage was going to have nightmares after this.
She reached for his hand but he shook her attempt away.
“I’m not a baby, Mom!”
Suddenly the air filled with a loud hellish combination of perverted circus music and a thousand fingernails scraping on chalkboards. They came to a clown, malevolent makeup covering his face. Enormous fangs jutted from his head. He sat before an organ on a stool of bones while playing a demonic tune on a keyboard of little skulls, offering entertainment at the gateway to the next chamber.
It was the darkest passage yet.
Faith felt the floor beneath them undulating as thunder cracked. They were walking on something twisting, rolling and squirming.
Something slimy and alive!
Sudden lightning flashes revealed they were on a stream of snakes.
“Oh God!” Faith screamed, rushing ahead, thinking they couldn’t be real—they must be some sort of animatronics or CGI, though they sure felt real.
The connection, dimly lit with the lightning flashes, led them through a cavern-like passage overwhelmed with spiders and bats, forcing Faith to swat frantically at her face and hair.
They’re not real, Faith assured herself, swatting around her hair.
“Gage? Cal?”
“Right behind you,” Cal said.
Continuing in the next narrow connection they were nearly blind in the dark. They came upon rumbling so powerful everything vibrated. Feeling their way forward they brushed against earthen walls that were moving, closing in on them, forcing them to turn sideways to pass through. Sounds grew louder with the foreboding rumbling and heightened the sickening sense of being crushed and entombed.
“I don’t like this,” Faith said.
“Keep pushing forward,” Cal said. “It’ll be okay.”
The walls were actually constructed of foam and, after the initial horror, the passage ended by opening to the next scene: a figure standing in a cemetery. Her skin was alabaster, her white gown torn and filthy as if she’d just crawled from her grave. She hovered a few feet over the burial grounds threading around headstones, stopping before the Hudsons and snarling at them. Throwing her head back, she opened her mouth to vomit a stream of blood that gushed by them.