by Brian Harmon
It was a short climb. By the time it became clear that the pain of standing on this thing in only his socks was not going to become any less excruciating, he was nearly at the top. He muscled his way up over the ledge and then just stopped there on his hands and knees, biting back the barrage of curses that wanted so badly to spew through his gritted teeth.
What the hell was that?
That was like something from a Saw movie. A sick, sadistic trap clearly designed by someone with an unhealthy hatred of old, chubby people and disguised as a giant, indoor playground.
What was the point of all this anyway? What the hell was wrong with a regular playground? What was wrong with swings and merry-go-rounds? Were those things not good enough for kids these days?
Was it a slow progression, he wondered. Or had he just gone to bed young one night and awakened old?
As the pain in his tender feet subsided, he lifted his head and looked up. A little girl in long, blonde pigtails was standing in front of him, staring at him.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
“I’m fine,” said Eric. He sat up on his knees, feeling older by the second. With a far too grandfatherly grunt, he rose to his feet, only to bang his head against the low ceiling. The word on his lips got as far as, “Godda—” before he managed to clamp his mouth shut around it. “Dang it…” he finished lamely.
“I don’t think this thing was made for grownups,” the girl told him.
“I don’t think so either,” he replied, still rubbing his head. “Did you see a little boy in a white shirt run past here a minute ago?”
She thought about it for just a moment and then shrugged. “I’ve seen lots of boys today. I kinda stopped paying attention.”
Eric nodded. It was worth a try, he supposed. But even if she had been paying attention, there was no guarantee she would’ve seen him. Not if he was anything like Todd. “Thanks anyway,” he told her.
She cheerfully told him he was welcome and then took off back into the playland.
He stood there a moment longer, stooped over, looking around, wondering what he should do next. The playland was turning out to be far bigger on the inside than he’d imagined. The only thing he knew for sure was that going back down the torture net wasn’t an option.
“You’re not giving up, are you?” called Eliot.
Eric looked up to see the boy peering back at him from the far side of a narrow, wooden rope bridge. He was hanging upside down, only his head visible, his dark hair hanging toward the floor.
Just as quickly as he’d appeared, he vanished again, withdrawing back up to the next level of the playland.
His feet and head still aching, Eric hurried across the bridge. It swayed and drooped beneath his weight, but it was perfectly stable. And being a part of a children’s playland, it was impossible to fall off the bridge. The mesh walls were right up against each side and he could see through the slats in the wood that there was more netting underneath it. The trick was merely to keep from falling on your face as the bridge flexed beneath your weight. In just a few short seconds he was on the other side and looking up into a little square tower with alternating plastic platforms.
Eliot had been here just a moment ago. And it was no ghostly trickery that allowed him to appear and disappear. He was only a hanging, upside-down head because he was lying on that first platform, dangling over the edge. Presumably, he was somewhere at the top of this tower now.
It was a tight fit, and he wasn’t always confident that the thin plastic was going to continue holding his weight, but he managed to climb from one platform to the next, spiraling slowly upward.
His back and knees were starting to ache, joining his feet and head on his list of things he needed that aspirin for. He was also getting winded. This was more exercise than he’d had in a while.
Why was it he never seemed to get around to getting into shape? He told himself every time these things happened that he would get into shape if he could just survive one more day. But by the next day it somehow never seemed all that important.
By the time he reached the top, he was almost out of breath. Panting, almost wheezing, he crawled up onto the last platform and sat up, stretching his aching back.
“You’re not very good at this,” said Eliot. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor on the other side of a short, green tube.
As he watched, another little boy ran past Eliot and crawled through the tube. Unlike the yellow and blue ones below, it wasn’t stationary. It rotated like a wheel, rolling the little boy over and over as he made his way across.
Eliot grinned at him.
Eric wasn’t intimidated. He had this one. This thing was made for children. His extra weight would probably bog it down. It might rock a little, but it wouldn’t slow him down. Confidently, he rose to his hands and knees and lunged into the tube.
Sadly, he miscalculated.
As it turned out, his extra weight meant that the tube only rolled that much faster. As soon as he was inside it, it spun, flopping him hard onto his back, then onto his belly, then onto his back again, forcing a series of painful grunts from him.
Eliot laughed.
Eric tried to roll back onto his belly, but the tube spun again, flopping him onto his belly for only an instant before he was thrown onto his back again, banging his head against it in the process.
Eliot continued to laugh.
Deep down, he really didn’t blame the kid. It was pretty funny. Who didn’t love good slapstick comedy? But right now he was having a hard time seeing the humor in it. Right now, he was kind of getting pissed off.
More carefully this time, and letting the tube work for him, he rolled himself onto his belly and tried to crawl forward again. For a moment, he seemed to have it, then it twirled again, flopping him onto his back and then back onto his belly with a painful grunt that sounded something like, “Auooph!”
But at least Eliot was having fun. The boy was laughing himself into hysterics.
He didn’t try to crawl again. Instead, he reached out and grasped the edge of the tube and simply dragged himself to the other side. Slowly, he slid onto the floor and crumpled into an indignant pile.
“You’re funny,” said Eliot.
“That’s what people tell me,” he groaned.
Eric rose to his feet, rubbing at the fresh sore spot on the back of his head. “Can we just go see Judith now?” he asked.
But when he looked up, the boy was gone.
“The hell?”
There was another of those little passages with the hanging balls, except that instead of balls, they were little, purple cylinders. They were still swinging back and forth. Eric hurried through them and found himself standing in front of a wall of mesh. On the other side of it was Eliot. He was staring back at him from the top of a bright, yellow slide.
“Don’t move!” he pleaded. He turned and followed the mesh to the right, trying to find his way into that next space, but all he found was another one of those torturous climbing nets.
“I think I won this round,” said Eliot.
“Just stay right there! Don’t go anywhere! Please!”
He went left this time. There had to be a way in. Didn’t there?
Unless the kid cheated…
“Tell you what,” said Eliot. “Since you’re so much fun, I’ll tell you a secret.”
“I don’t want a secret,” said Eric, finally finding an opening. “I need to talk to Judith.”
“Find what’s hidden in the basement.”
“I tried going to the basement. There’s something down there. It wouldn’t let me in. That’s why I need to talk to Judith.”
“Things aren’t entirely what they seem.”
Eric stepped toward the boy, his hands raised, urging him to stay put. “Not what they seem. Believe me, I know. I’m used to things being not what they seem. Just…don’t go down that slide. Please.”
Eliot smiled. Then, in a flash, he turned and plunged out of sight.
Eric lunged, diving headlong into the slide after him.
Like the torture net and the spinning tube, it was a really bad idea. But in the moment, his only thought was that it was just a slide. How bad could it be?
Very bad, it seemed.
It was one of those spiral slides, made up of several segments, presumably so that it could be built as tall or as short as you wanted it to be. For a lightweight child, it was no doubt a fast and incredibly fun experience. For Eric, who was once again reminded that he was far larger and far heavier than a child, it was a slow, claustrophobic, spine-twisting descent all the way to the bottom of the playland, during which he felt the seam between each segment of slide rake past his body, forcing from him a painful, “Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow!” all the way to the bottom, where he was unceremoniously deposited headfirst into the ball pit.
For a moment he just lay there, his feet still inside the slide, his body stinging from the pounding of those seams, his back aching, his head pounding and a mild sort of horror rising inside him.
He was inside the ball pit.
He could almost feel the billions of germs that must now be crawling all over his face.
Then he heard a distinct knocking on the plexiglass wall beside him.
When he turned his head and looked up, he saw his brother, Paul, standing on the other side, staring down at him.
“What’re you doing screwing around?”
Eric groaned and sank a little deeper into the balls.
Chapter Sixteen
Fortunately, it wasn’t that hard to find his way back out of the ball pit. The steps led straight to the second floor entrance. From there, he simply made his way down the real stairs and walked back to the front of the playland where Paul was waiting for him.
“You didn’t have to quit playing on my account,” said Paul. “I mean, if you were having fun…”
“Believe me, I’ve had about all the fun I can stand.” He didn’t ask why he was here. Clearly, Karen had called him. She didn’t like to let people know when she was scared or worried. She had a bad habit of shielding those kinds of feelings from everyone, even him. It was something she picked up about the same time she began obsessing over her weight. But she had other ways of expressing her fears. Like always making him carry a cell phone in case of emergency, in spite of the fact that he’d always hated the stupid things and never wanted one. And how she always kept her purse well stocked with first aid supplies. In the case of weirdness, she almost always called his big brother and made him tag along to look after him.
He didn’t usually mind. He appreciated any help he could get. But Paul seemed unusually prone to bad luck when it came to the weird. On past occasions, he’d been tased, drugged, humiliated, run off the road and even held captive for several hours in a stifling resort cabin by something that resembled a mutant baby rhinoceros.
Why he continued to answer the phone when he saw Karen’s number come up, Eric had no idea. And today, especially, he wished Paul had stayed away. Just being here put him in mortal danger. What if he failed this time? What if he couldn’t stop the clowns? Paul would end up being just one more victim, one more body amid the carnage…
Eric reclaimed his shoes from the circus train cubby and began putting them back on.
Paul strolled toward him and started to say something, but a line of screaming boys ran between them, forcing him to stop and wait.
As he sped past, the last kid in the line shrieked, “Viva la France!”
Paul stared after him, scratching his shaggy beard in bewilderment. “So what’ve we got? Witches? Agents?” He looked at Eric again, an eyebrow raised. “Sexy agents?”
“Ghost children,” replied Eric. “And clowns.”
“Clowns?”
“Ghost clowns, I think.”
“Well, of course. I mean, why would it be normal clowns?”
“Nothing’s ever normal anymore,” lamented Eric.
“But it’s definitely not sexy agents?”
“Definitely not.”
“You’re sure? Like, you’ve checked the whole building?”
Eric gave him his usual “I’m not amused” look and Paul put his hands up in surrender.
“Just making sure.”
A little girl stalked past them with several party hats on her head, each of them pointing in a different direction, like colorful spikes. One was covering her face. She wore two more on her hands, which she waved blindly in front of her. In a robotic voice, she was chanting, “All I know is pain… All I know is pain… All I know is pain…”
Paul watched her march away, perplexed, and then asked, “So what do we have to do?”
Eric finished tying his shoes and stood up again. Glancing quickly around to make sure no one was listening, he replied, “There’s something evil in this building. We have to find it and figure out how to stop it before it can hurt these kids. But without disturbing this party.”
“Why can’t we disturb the party?” Paul didn’t waste time questioning the part about trying to stop something evil. He’d seen his fair share of weirdness. He knew that there were real things that went bump in the night.
Eric led him around the playland, toward the stairs. As they walked, he explained the situation as well as he was able. Something evil lurking somewhere in the building. Two demented clowns. A gaggle of ghost children. Plaster statues that sometimes came to life. A carnival midway that would make Stephen King giddy. And a haunted arcade, too.
Paul listened to the whole thing, nodding. A few years ago, he wouldn’t have believed a word of it, but today it didn’t even cross his mind to question anything his little brother told him. All he said was, “So why does this thing have to wait until the party’s over? Why doesn’t it just kill everybody now?”
“For the same reason you wouldn’t leave an open bar before closing time.”
“Ah. Makes perfect sense.”
“Right?”
“So you think this freaky clown is the thing that wants to eat the kids?”
“It seems that way. It’s definitely not human. And Isabelle says it has a dark energy hanging over it.”
Paul shook his head. “Dark energy… Shit… That doesn’t sound good.”
“It doesn’t,” agreed Eric.
“So how the hell do you stop something like that?”
“No freaking idea.”
“Okay…” Predictably, he didn’t look overly confident. “Any clue what we should do first, at least?”
Eric stopped in front of the staircase. “Eliot said I should find what’s hidden in the basement.”
“Eliot?”
“One of the ghost kids.”
“Oh. Right. Them.” He looked down the stairs, uncertain. “You, uh…trust these ghost kids?”
Eric wasn’t sure what to say at first. Did he trust the ghosts? Did he trust anybody, really? Did he have a choice? Finally, he replied, “I guess I have to. It’s pretty much all I have.”
“Awesome,” said Paul. “Very reassuring.”
They descended the stairs and Eric unlocked the basement door. Everything looked normal enough. It wasn’t cold, like last time. And he could still hear the noise of the playland above them. There was no sign of that eerie murmuring/whimpering sound he heard the first time he came down here. The lights were even still on.
“What’d you say we were looking for down here?” asked Paul.
“No clue. Eliot just said to find what’s hidden.”
“Find what’s hidden. How the hell are we supposed to know what’s hidden? We don’t even know what’s supposed to be down here.”
“I assume we’ll know it when we see it,” reasoned Eric.
Paul opened the nearest door and looked inside. “Oh yeah, this’ll be a piece of cake.”
It was a large storage room. Plastic bins of every color were stacked against the walls and buried behind scores of cardboard boxes and large, plastic bags. It was where the holiday decorations were stored,
Eric saw as he peered inside. He could see several Christmas trees, ranging from those little office-sized, decorative trees with the fiber optic lights to the huge, artificial firs that likely took places of honor in the busiest areas of the building each holiday season. And several large, holiday wreaths were stacked beside the door. A four-foot-tall Santa Claus and several reindeer stood huddled together in the back corner.
Most of the décor was packed neatly away in the bins and boxes, but little details could be seen here and there, transcending the entire calendar. There was a huge, pink heart leaning against one wall. An oversized leprechaun hat was sitting on top of one of the bins. And several small Thanksgiving cornucopias that probably decorated the dining tables each fall were sticking out of an open box. But the largest assortment of visible decorations in the room was for Halloween.
There were five plastic skeletons, three life-sized witches, a pair of vampires and a lone werewolf. There was a stack of foam tombstones, dozens of light-up jack-o-lanterns and several huge, plastic cauldrons. It was all perfectly kid-friendly, of course. Cartoony and cheerful-looking, they weren’t likely to scare anyone. Even more so because someone with a sense of humor appeared to have arranged the grinning skeletons so that they looked as if they were lounging on the stacked boxes, enjoying their time off between Halloweens.
And yet, there was something creepy about the scene as a whole. Something about the mingling holidays and the accumulated dust and the cobwebs in the corners of the room. It had a forgotten feel to it, as if it had been far too long since anyone had even been down here.
“Oh yeah,” declared Paul. “This is way better than sitting around a fire all day and drinking beer.”
Eric looked over at him, surprised. “That’s right… You had plans today.”
He shrugged. “Nothing important.”
“You and Monica were supposed to go out to Sam’s this afternoon.”
Paul looked embarrassed. He stared past him at the happy, chilling skeletons. “We can do that any time.”
“Monica’s going to be pissed off at me now, isn’t she?”
“It was an emergency. She understands.”