by Brian Harmon
Eric stared back at her. “Aren’t you supposed to be like a human lie detector?”
She blushed a little, embarrassed. “I’m not a lie detector…”
“You’re always telling me you can tell when people are being dishonest. That’s lie detecting.”
“There’s a difference between a dishonest person and a kid who wants a treat,” she said. “All kids lie sometimes. It doesn’t mean they’re dishonest people.”
“You didn’t even suspect?”
She pinched her lip between her thumb and forefinger and gave him a little shrug. “They said you sent them…” she whined. “And I trust you…”
“Well don’t fall for it again.”
She poked her lower lip out at him.
“Sorry, but I need to go find Paul.”
“Wait… What if you really do send someone to me? Like the first girl. How do I know?”
“I don’t know… I’ll give them a password or something. I’ll give them one of your sisters’ names.”
Her pretty eyes lit up. “That’s good! But not the same name twice.”
“Right.”
She gave him a perky thumbs-up. “Got it!” she said. Then she turned and hurried off.
Eric turned away, too, shaking his head.
He wasn’t sure what was crazier, the parts of the building with the monsters or the parts of the building with the children.
At a nearby table, that little girl stood up again and yelled, “Mom! Caleb says he’s going to eat my hair!”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Paul was leaning against the far wall near the corner of the playland, watching two women struggle with a three-year-old boy who was throwing a massive temper tantrum. When he saw Eric coming, he smiled and nodded toward the commotion. “You missed it. This kid just totally lost his shit because his mom threw away a napkin.”
“Are you okay?” asked Eric.
“I’m fine. Strangely enough… How about you?”
“You know… Been there, done that.”
“Oh, totally,” agreed Paul. “Eaten alive by flaming hell vermin… Typical Saturday night for us Fortrell boys.”
“It’s the ones that actually leave scars that make for a bad day.” Eric sat down on a nearby bench and began untying his laces.
“What’re you doing?”
“Taking off my shoes.”
“Okay. Why are you taking off your shoes?”
Eric looked up at him as if he were dumb. “I’m gonna go play. Why else would I be taking off my shoes?”
Paul stared down at him. “Right. Silly me.”
“Get yours off, too. You’re coming with me.”
He looked down at his work boots, then back up at Eric. “I don’t want to take off my shoes.”
“You can’t go in the playland with shoes on. That’s the rule.”
He looked over at the playland entrance and then back again. “I don’t want to go in the playland.”
“We can’t just keep wandering around looking for this thing,” explained Eric. “It’ll just keep sending us into that other world, torturing us, making us waste time. We need to know what it is and how to beat it.” He stood up and slid his shoes into an empty cubby in the circus train. “At the very least, we need to know how to find it. Todd said the only one who could tell us that was Judith. But the only one who can take us to Judith is Eliot. And Eliot won’t take us to Judith unless I play with him.”
Paul nodded. “Okay. That almost made sense. But why do you need me?”
“William said I needed to change the rules. So this time, we’re both going in. Maybe the two of us can corner him.”
“Who the hell is William?”
“Just do it.”
Paul sat down and untied his work boots. “This is stupid. Are grownups even allowed in there?”
“Parents are allowed.”
“We’re not parents,” countered Paul. “Well, I am…” He nodded at the children in the playland. “But not theirs.”
Eric ignored him and peered up into the playland. “First we have to find him.” It was a very large playground in there. And for all he knew, Eliot could pass through the mesh and plastic and hide in the nooks and crannies of the structure, itself. Or maybe he had his own other world that he could pass into whenever he wasn’t in the mood for mortal foolishness. He had no idea what ghosts did in their spare time.
But he didn’t like thinking of Eliot as a ghost. Todd or William, either. He didn’t like to think that any of them had died.
They were just…special. Like Isabelle.
That was all.
Paul slid his boots into an empty cubby and then turned to face Eric. “So how do we do this thing?”
“We start at the bottom and work our way up,” he replied as he walked between the clowns and into the chaos of the playland. “Hopefully we don’t waste too much time looking for him.”
As they walked in, Eric passed the boy in the Mario tee shirt again. Like each of the previous times, he greeted them with a goofy, “Good mornin’!” and continued on his way.
Paul turned and watched him go. “It’s after one,” he said.
Eric shook his head and continued forward. “Just focus on Eliot.”
“Right. What’s the kid look like?”
“Dark hair. Blue jeans. White tee shirt.” He peered in at the eight or nine kids who were thrashing around in the ball pit, confirming that none of them were Eliot, then turned his attention to the upper levels, where he first appeared. “About four years old.”
“Only four?” said Paul. “Jesus…”
“I know.” Eric walked all the way around the ball pit to the mirror maze entrance. “Keep an eye out for that clown, too,” he said.
“He actually comes out here? Where the kids play?”
“He looks different when he’s with the kids. It looks different,” he corrected. The thing might sometimes look like a man in clown makeup, but it wasn’t even remotely human. “More kid friendly.”
“That’s good. I don’t think he’d get much work looking the way I saw him.”
Eric looked up at the gaps in the structure above him. He could see children running around up there. “Eliot?” he called, raising his voice to be heard over the screams of the living.
He waited a moment, but Eliot didn’t answer. Nor did he appear in any of those gaps to look down at him.
All he heard was the screaming and laughing of children and the one little girl who was again shouting for Hunter. Or was she still shouting for Hunter?
He called out to Eliot again. And again, like Hunter, Eliot didn’t answer.
“Maybe he’s done playing with muggles for the day,” suggested Paul.
But Eric didn’t think so. Eliot liked to play games. He especially liked to play with grownups. That was what Todd told him. And it certainly seemed to be true. If anything, he was playing with them right now, watching them, stalking them, wondering how he could make fools out of them.
“We should go higher up,” decided Eric.
Paul looked up at the towering structure looming over them. “Why don’t you go higher up and I’ll stay here in case he runs down?”
“Just move it.”
“Fine.”
But before he could pick how he wished to ascend into this tower of torture, his cell phone rang again. It was Illinois. “Hold on, I have to take this.”
“Take your time.”
Eric stepped out the back of the playland and walked around by the doors of the midway, where it was quieter. “Hello?”
“Hey, Eric. It’s Poppy again.”
“Hey, Poppy. What’s up?”
“Um… We’ve hit kind of a snag over here.”
Eric closed his eyes and rubbed at a dull ache in his temples. “What kind of snag?”
“So, you know how we were monitoring the water for you, looking for anything else that might help…?”
“Did you find something?”
“Something found us
.”
He opened his eyes again, surprised. “What?”
“We were focusing on that shadow we told you about, trying to make sense of it. But I think we pushed too hard. Whatever it was, it turned the spell against us somehow. The water turned black. It was like that cloud I was talking about, the one hovering over everything, leaked right through the vision and filled the water.”
“That’s bizarre, right?”
“None of us have ever heard of anything like that happening before. We’re trying to get in touch with Del to see if she can explain it. But that wasn’t even the weirdest part.”
“No?”
“Not by a long shot. This is going to sound totally insane, even by our standards, but while we were trying to figure out what was happening with the water, a rat jumped out of the bowl! It totally freaked everybody out.”
A rat…
Why rats?
“It jumped off the table and ran into the kitchen. It was so gross!”
“I’ll bet it was,” said Eric. His voice seemed calm enough, to his own ears, anyway, but inside, he felt like he’d been socked in the stomach. A rat? All the way in Illinois? That was eight hours away by interstate.
“We have no idea what it means.”
“I have an idea…” said Eric.
“You do?”
“This thing I’m dealing with seems to have a thing for rats. There’s no way that’s a coincidence.”
“Yuck… I’d say not.”
“Yeah.”
“Well…” said Poppy. “I threw out the water and tried to start again, but the new water turned black before I was even done pouring it. I think you might be on your own.”
“I think you’re probably right,” agreed Eric. Somehow, he wasn’t surprised.
“Sorry…”
“No. It’s totally not your fault. And you’ve already been helpful.”
“I hope so. Maybe if Del were here, she’d know what to do. But I think we’re way out of our league on this one.”
“You girls have been awesome. Thanks so much. I’ll take it from here.”
“You’re welcome. We’ll keep trying to get in touch with Del. If she can tell us anything, we’ll pass it on to you.”
“Awesome. Thanks.”
“Good luck. And call us if there’s anything else we can do.”
“Sure thing.”
He hung up the phone and then stood there for a moment, letting it sink in. So much for his magical backup. What kind of monster could turn a coven’s divination spell back on them?
Just what on earth was he dealing with?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
He called Paul’s cell phone and began climbing the stairs.
“Yeah?” answered Paul.
“I’m heading up to the second floor. You start working your way up from down there. We can spread out more quickly that way.”
Paul sighed. “Whatever you say.”
“And stay on the line. We’ll work together on this one.”
“You’re the boss.”
Eric reached the top of the steps and circled around to the second floor entrance.
Somewhere inside this labyrinth of plastic and mesh was a ghostly four-year-old who was the only one with the knowledge he needed to stop the impending massacre that Todd described. As much as he didn’t want to go back in there, it was the only way. All he’d managed to do on his own so far was get himself and his brother hurled repeatedly into those nightmare worlds.
He needed to speak with Judith.
Which meant he needed to speak with Eliot.
He walked through the playland, his phone still pressed to his ear. There was no ball pit on this floor. Instead, there was a ten-foot-long rope bridge. There were three children on it. Two of them, both of them boys, were running back and forth as hard as they could while the third, a girl, was simply clinging to the top rope and jumping up and down, making it bounce and wobble beneath them.
None of these children were Eliot.
To his right was the padded steps that led down into the ball pit. To his left was the mouth of a green, spiral slide that started somewhere higher up. Next to the slide was a small tunnel opening and next to the stairs was another of those torturous climbing nets.
The bridge it was.
Holding onto the rope with his free hand, he gingerly stepped onto the plastic planks. Immediately, his weight dragged the bridge down, making it sag beneath him and taking the slack out from under the children.
The two boys barely seemed to notice. They continued running back and forth, taking advantage of this new element of play. The little girl, on the other hand, shot him a very dirty look.
Feeling as awkward as ever, Eric made his way across the bridge and then stepped off the other side. Behind him, the little girl went back to jumping as if nothing had ever happened.
“How you doing down there?” he asked into the phone.
“I already hate this place,” said Paul.
“As long as you’re staying positive.” He looked around. From here, he could go down a slide, probably into that germ-infested ball pit again, or crawl through one of two small tunnels.
There was still no sign of Eliot.
“Why did we never have anything like this when we were growing up?” asked Paul.
“Oh this was all here when we were growing up. Dad was just too cheap to take us to places like this.”
Paul laughed. “He always was a tight ass.”
“Still is,” laughed Eric. “Last time I saw him, he was going on about how McDonald’s doesn’t have a dollar menu anymore.”
Marv Fortrell was a fine man, but nothing infuriated him like exorbitant prices. Spending money wasn’t the issue. The man loved to spend his money. But he had a very particular sense for how much everything should cost, and whenever anything was priced above that amount, he practically took it as a personal insult. He went out of his way to make sure they had everything they needed growing up. He even did his best to get them all the things they really wanted for Christmas and their birthdays. But when it came to family entertainment, he almost always cheaped out. Theme parks, movie theaters, nice restaurants and almost any vacation, those were always way too overpriced. Disneyworld was completely out of the question.
Once in a while they’d gone on a real vacation when Eric was growing up, but only because his mother put her foot down. Even then, it was never anywhere more than five or six hours away. And never without a nauseating amount of bitching and moaning about every penny spent along the way.
Eric got down on his hand and knees to crawl into one of the tunnels and laughed again. “Hey, remember when we used to call him Uncle Scrooge and I told him we were going to turn out all messed up because of him.”
“I do remember,” chuckled Paul.
“And look where we are now. Hallucinating hell rats, fighting evil clowns and chasing ghost kids through a children’s playland.”
“Can’t say you didn’t warn him.”
“I did.” Eric wormed his way forward, struggling to keep his phone to his ear.
A little boy appeared in the tunnel ahead of him—still not the one he was looking for—then turned and went back the way he came when he saw that the path was blocked. But Eric heard him clearly as he told whoever he was with that they couldn’t get through this way because some fat guy was stuck in it.
Nice.
“We would’ve loved it here, though, don’t you think?” said Paul.
“Sure. Probably. When we were a lot smaller,” he grumbled.
“All we had was the shitty old city park, back before they redesigned it, with the steel slides that’d burn the hell out of your ass on a sunny day. And those rusty, old, blister-making monkey bars.”
“Don’t forget the wasp nest under the tire swing,” Eric reminded him.
“And there was always a big mud hole under the only good swing.”
“My favorite was the merry-go-round. That one was always pre
tty safe.”
“It was,” recalled Paul. “No matter how hard we tried to turn it into a death trap.”
Eric reached the end of the tunnel and found himself inside a little, plastic cube with round windows on two sides. Peering out, he saw that he was in the very corner of the playland. One window overlooked the arcade, the other overlooked the party room.
He was surprisingly high up.
“Little shits,” grumbled Paul. “Get out of here!”
“What?”
“Nothing. Couple of kids throwing balls at my head.”
“Don’t get distracted,” said Eric as he crawled through a section of tunnel made entirely of nylon strap netting. He couldn’t help but wonder if this stuff was strong enough to hold his weight.
“I’m not distracted. You worry about yourself.”
Beyond the netting was an open room with a playground zip-line mounted across a shallow depression in the floor. Several kids were playing here, zipping back and forth, but again, none of them were Eliot.
“Hey, Eric.”
Eric turned to find the little boy who thought he was too mature to play in the ball pit anymore sitting in the corner, watching the other kids play. “Hey, Preston.”
“Checking out the playland?”
“Sort of,” he replied. “I’m looking for someone. Eliot. He’s about four years old. Dark hair. White tee shirt. Jeans. Any chance you’ve seen him?”
Preston thought about it for a minute. “I don’t think so. But I’ll keep an eye open for ya.”
Eric smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“No problem.”
Another set of steps led higher up into the playland. Made almost entirely out of rolls of padding, they were designed not to be walked up, but rather crawled up.
He made his way to the top and then rose to his feet again. He was in a little open space. From here, he could go up by crawling through another of those tight, spiraling platform things or he could go right, across a narrow little balance beam that stretched across another one of those foot-destroying rope nets.
Staring at that balance beam, he could imagine several possible scenarios that would end in excruciating pain.
He lowered the phone and raised his voice: “Eliot?”