Rushed: All Fun and Games

by Brian Harmon

  The dream had shown him how his journey would’ve taken place if he’d followed his instincts the first night he woke from the dream. It showed him the events as they would’ve happened if he’d arrived two days sooner.

  Essentially, it had revealed another timeline to him. One he’d only narrowly avoided. And in that other timeline…

  But that wasn’t real. It didn’t happen that way. It happened the way it happened.

  Right?

  And yet, now that she’d reminded him of it, he couldn’t get that awful memory out of his head. He did, indeed, die in the dream. He died horribly. Painfully.

  “Haven’t you ever wondered why strange things happen to you? It’s because you’re special. Your eyes are open to the truth. You’re a part of the greater whole.”

  He stared at her. “How do you know all this?”

  “I know a lot of things.”

  “Because you’re a ghost?”

  Behind him, Eliot burst out laughing.

  Judith smiled at him as if he were simple.

  “What’d I say?”

  “We’re not dead,” she informed him.

  Eric stared at her, confused. What did she mean they weren’t dead? They certainly weren’t among the living.

  “We can’t die,” explained Judith. “You have to be born to die. And we were never born. We just sort of…blossomed.”

  Eric felt that headache coming back. He rubbed wearily at his temples. They just “blossomed”? What did that even mean? “Then what are you?”

  “Lots of things, I suppose.” She smiled at him again. “Humans muddle things up so much it’s difficult to explain anything to them. You call us lots of things in lots of parts of the world, but never get it quite right. Personally, I prefer the word…fairies.”

  “Fairies?” Eric had to close his eyes for a moment. Ghosts were one thing. He’d accepted the idea of ghosts. They weren’t simple. They could be almost anything. They could walk among the living, utterly indistinguishable, or they could be monstrous and terrifying to look upon. Or anything in between. But they were ghosts. The restless spirits of the dead. In the end, they were just lost, departed souls. But fairies? Really? He shook his head. “But this place is filled with spiritual energy.”

  “Spiritual energy is not unique to ghosts alone,” said Judith. “There are many things that are spiritual in nature. We fae are one of those things.”

  Todd never said he was a ghost. Eric only assumed. And he never said Eliot or Judith were ghosts. Because he didn’t want to acknowledge the gruesome idea that these children had died so young, he’d only asked if they were “like him”. And they were like him.

  Fairies… Weren’t they those cutesy little girls with the butterfly wings and the magic wands?

  Realization dawned on him then. What was it Poppy said? Among all those other odd things the water showed her? A little girl with wings? He’d thought she was describing an angel, but angels weren’t the only mythical beings with wings.

  He stared at Judith. He could scarcely wrap his head around the idea.

  And yet looking upon her now, it seemed strangely fitting, as if somewhere deep down, he’d known it all along…

  All that business about them not caring made a little more sense now. Todd said they had no concept of life or death. It wasn’t because they’d died so young. It was because they’d never lived or died. They simply existed. And there was no telling how long they’d been around. To them, the lifespan of a human might feel like the blink of an eye. Why would they have any reason to care if a few of those lives were cut a little short?

  But fairies? It shouldn’t have seemed so strange. He’d met a freaking genie. But it was so much harder to accept than ghosts. Ghosts he could handle. Ghosts he was familiar with.

  On the other hand, though, that meant that these weren’t dead children who left behind grieving families. He could feel a weight lift from his heart simply knowing that no tragedies had happened here.

  Not yet, at least.

  He checked his watch. Was it really already after two?

  “You should go,” agreed Judith. “Time travels more slowly in our world than in yours, but it still travels. I’ve given you all I can give. It’s up to you now.”

  “Yeah,” said Eliot. “So get out of here.”

  And with that, Eric was shoved from behind. Not by small, four-year-old hands, but by something that felt like a powerful wind. He toppled forward, into the water and beneath the waves.

  “Eliot, that was rude,” was the last words he heard as a strangely powerful undertow sucked him down into a deep, dark abyss.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  At some point, Eric went from being dragged downward through a vast darkness to simply falling through a vast darkness. He wasn’t sure when one thing became the other. It was hard to notice such things when you were being dragged to your watery grave. Or plunging to your doom. Either one was equally terrifying, really. There was no change in pressure or temperature, but at some point, the water just didn’t exist anymore. He was completely dry, as if he were never sinking in the first place, as if he were only ever falling.

  He also wasn’t sure how he managed to land without breaking any bones. The next thing he was fully aware of was lying on his back on the dark, cold concrete, gasping for breath and wondering how in the hell he was still alive?

  He sat up. His eyes wide. Why was it dark? Where was he?

  And where was his phone?

  The last question was immediately answered for him when it struck him in the head and then landed in his lap. The screen lit up as soon as he looked down at it and a new text message shined up at him: THAT WAS WEIRD

  Eric nodded and rubbed at the fresh bump it left on his head. Karen was right, he needed to start wearing a helmet when he did this stuff.

  Grunting, he rose to his feet and looked around. He had questions he wanted to ask Isabelle, but the important thing right now was to figure out where he was. (And she probably didn’t have any answers for him anyway.)

  He could hear the children playing nearby, so he was still in this world. But that didn’t mean he was safe. After all, he was pretty sure he wasn’t in another world when the midway came to life. Or the holiday decorations.

  But if he wasn’t in another world, where was he? He couldn’t see anything.

  He turned his phone around and turned on the flashlight. He couldn’t keep using that. The battery was getting low. But he needed the light. He needed to find his way back to the playland before something bad happened again.

  The light revealed him to be standing at the center of a small go kart track.

  Eric gazed around, surprised. It wasn’t large, but it was impressive enough, considering that it had been all but abandoned. It was a tightly twisting and winding track, walled entirely in old tires. Eight karts were parked at the starting line, collecting dust, each one a different color and labeled with a different number.

  He understood how the midway might not make money. You needed to hire someone to run each and every game. And even the mini golf and laser tag might not be popular enough on their own to pay for an attendant. But go karts? Maybe it was just him, but that seemed like it should be profitable. People loved those things.

  But what did he know about it?

  FOCUS, said Isabelle.

  Right.

  Judith told him that he couldn’t be dragged into one of those dark worlds if he didn’t let it happen. He just had to focus on what was real and not let himself be distracted. So if he didn’t want to see what hell’s version of the go kart track looked like, he needed to find something real to focus on. And in this unfamiliar darkness, the only thing that he knew to be real was the children.

  As long as he could still hear them screaming and playing, he was going to be okay.

  Now all he had to do was find the door and figure out how to get back to the playland.

  He turned his attention to the karts. It made sense that the door
would be in that corner, by where the ride began and ended. He started in that direction, but before he could take two steps, the overhead lights came on.

  He froze. This was different. Usually the lights went off in a scary situation.

  He expected Melodi or Kacie to walk into the room, probably wondering what the hell he was doing wandering around the old go kart track in the dark. But no one entered.

  He turned around, scanning the room. Something wasn’t right here. The hair on the back of his neck was standing up.

  He wasn’t alone…

  The children. Focus on the children.

  Did they sound softer than before?

  This was harder than he expected. Concentrate on the sound of the children playing and ignore this gut feeling that something dangerous was in this room with him.

  He turned off his cell phone light, but didn’t put it away. At any second, the lights would probably go back out again.

  He listened to the children. He tried to make out individual voices, individual words, but it was impossible. From here—wherever here was—it was little more than a jumble of screams and shouts. He couldn’t even hear laughter.

  He felt a prickle creep up his spine as he wondered if he’d be able to tell the difference if the rat demon set itself loose.

  No. He couldn’t think that way.

  It wouldn’t come to that.

  He looked at his screen.

  THERE’S DARK ENERGY PRESENT, BUT IT’S WEAK AGAIN

  “That didn’t turn out to be a good thing last time.”

  I KNOW

  Eric turned and scanned the room again. He needed to get to the door. Fast, before his nerves got the better of him and he started paying more attention to the track and that dark energy than to the children.

  IT’S GROWING, warned Isabelle.

  Eric had no idea if that was good or bad. He didn’t care. He stepped over the tires, heading straight for the karts. He could see the doors now, right beside the ticket counter.

  The children. Screaming. Shouting. Yelling. He’d always hated how much noise kids made. He loved his niece and nephew, but it used to drive him crazy when they acted wild and loud. Especially Kevin. That kid used to have an obnoxious screech that felt like it could break glass. Putting more than fifty of them in the same building, feeding them cake and letting them all go wild had sounded like utter hell since the day Karen started talking about this party. But if Judith was telling the truth, then right now that noise was the only thing standing between him and another trip through Bellylaugh Playland Hell, which suddenly made it sweet music to his ears.

  And he couldn’t let himself lose it.

  But as he approached the aging karts, one of them suddenly shuddered and rolled forward a few inches.

  Eric stopped and stared at it.

  It was just idling there. The red one. Number four.

  Given the amount of dust that had settled over it, its batteries should’ve long been dead. And even if someone was taking the time to come down here and maintain them, it wasn’t as if these things were remote controlled. What would be the fun in that? The whole point was to get behind the wheel and drive them.

  The tires turned left and right, as if it were still confused from its long nap.

  The other seven shuddered to life behind it.

  Was this the rat demon or the clown? He was leaning toward the clown. Go karts just seemed more clown-like to him.

  THE CHILDREN, Isabelle reminded him.

  Yes. The children. He could still hear them. He concentrated on the sound. That was what was important. The driverless karts were merely a distraction.

  Number four revved up and lurched toward him. Behind it, numbers three and eight, green and black, followed.

  Eric turned and ran.

  The karts sped after him.

  But when he jumped up onto the tires, number four rammed harmlessly into the rubber treads and was jolted to a stop. Three and eight simply slammed into four.

  They were go karts. They were built for children. Especially these karts. What were they going to do? Ram him in the shins with their rubber bumpers?

  No… This was merely another distraction.

  He listened to the children. He tried to imagine them up there, making all that noise, screaming at each other as they ran and crawled and climbed through the playland.

  Number four revved its engine at him and stood its ground. The rest began to speed off around the track, half of them going one way, the other half going the other. Soon, they were circling around him like a pack of man-eating sharks.

  No… Not just a distraction, either. Something else was going on here…

  But what?

  THE DARK ENERGY IS STILL GROWING

  BE CAREFUL

  A shadow fell upon the track. He saw it from the corner of his eye. But by the time he looked up, it was gone. Everything was normal again.

  Or as normal as a go kart track could look while the karts were all driving themselves around.

  He turned and looked behind him.

  Something still wasn’t right. He could feel it.

  Another shadow passed over the nearby track. It was as if the light overhead had winked out for just a moment.

  That thought was still processing when the light dimmed precisely where he was standing.

  He looked up.

  The clown was there. It was clinging to the ceiling directly over him, like a huge, grinning spider, blocking out the light.

  Its evil giggle filled the room.

  He stood there, staring up at it, horrified. He couldn’t even wrap his head around how it was holding itself up. Its feet were planted against a support beam, its hands were gripping a heavy span of ductwork.

  The creepy giggling became an evil cackle as the clown ripped the duct off the ceiling and sent it crashing down on top of him.

  Eric’s reflexes took over. He leapt off the tires, stepped across the top of the number four kart and jumped down onto the track, where he barely managed to dart out of the way of number six as it swerved to run him down.

  Right behind him, the ductwork slammed to the ground with a thunderous crash.

  Eric kept moving. He darted across the next stretch of track, side-stepping number one and clambering onto the next wall of tires before pausing to look around.

  Number four was buried under a pile of twisted metal. If he’d been any slower, he’d have been buried there, too. But he doubted his survival had anything to do with either luck or skill. If the clown wanted him dead, why would it have waited for him to look up?

  It was playing with him.

  The children…

  He listened. The karts weren’t very loud, but they were making enough noise that it was harder to hear them now. But he could hear them. They were still there. He was still in the real world, in spite of the haunted go karts.

  He scanned the room around him, the floor and ceiling. Where the hell was the clown?

  That eerie giggling had gone silent, but the creature was still here somewhere. He was sure of it.

  The karts were still circling.

  He lifted his phone. “Anything?”

  NO CHANGE

  He nodded.

  I HAVE A THEORY, THOUGH

  He glanced around, nervous. “What’s that?”

  I DON’T THINK THAT CLOWN CAN SEND YOU TO THE OTHER WORLD AND DO THESE THINGS AT THE SAME TIME

  Eric raised an eyebrow.

  I THINK IT MIGHT TAKE TOO MUCH OF THAT DARK ENERGY

  He scanned the room again as he considered this.

  I THINK HE CAN ATTACK YOU IN OUR WORLD AND HE CAN ATTACK YOU IN THAT OTHER WORLD, BUT NOT WHILE YOU’RE TRAVELING BETWEEN THE TWO

  It made sense, he realized. That was why nothing attacked him in the mirror maze while he was chasing the clown. It wasn’t until he was fully immersed in that other world that he found himself trapped in the mirrors. The same with his first trip to the basement. Everything was still until the silence w
as absolute. Then that thing attacked him and knocked him back out. Even when he and Paul went back to the basement, he wasn’t immediately set upon by the holiday decorations. He wandered in the dark for a little while first. And it had taken a long time to find his way into the other laser tag arena.

  And if that was true, then he didn’t have to worry about ending up in the other world while he was fighting with the clown’s stupid tricks.

  But which one was he dealing with? The clown? Or the rat demon?

  BOTH AT THE SAME TIME, I’D IMAGINE

  “Huh?”

  JUDITH SAID THE CLOWN DRAWS POWER FROM THE DEMON. MY GUESS IS THAT THE DEMON JUST LURKS UNDER THE PLAYLAND, FEEDING ON THE ENERGY, WHILE THE CLOWN HARNESSES ITS POWER TO KEEP YOU BUSY

  “Oh.” Eric turned around, still searching, determined not to be caught off guard again.

  He should probably have this conversation after he found his way out of this mess. It was getting really hard to concentrate on the children.

  He heard a noise from behind him and spun around. One of the tires was flying through the air, heading straight toward him. He dropped to his hands and knees, barely avoiding it as it sailed over his head, bounced off the concrete and over the next wall of tires, where it slammed into the side of number seven with enough force to knock it off course and into the wall.

  That was close. Those things weren’t light. If it’d struck him, being knocked over would’ve been the least of his troubles.

  He rose to a crouch and looked back to make sure no more tires were heading his way. Instead, he found the clown standing on the next row, grinning stupidly at him.

  The sight sent such a wave of fright through him that he might’ve fallen over if he’d been standing up. A crippling terror swept through him, washing away every other thought in his head.

  But it wasn’t the clown or its horrid grin that he found so terrifying.

  It was the axe it was holding in its hands.

  Chapter Thirty-Four