"Not one of my greatest accomplishments, but yeah," Stan said. "Dead serious, as the man himself might have said."
"Do you think it's true? That he set himself on fire?"
The detective chuckled. "I'll tell you what I think…" He cleared his throat and looked around like a man about to tell a dirty joke. "I don't think he's dead at all."
"You think he's still alive?" Lilian asked, skeptical.
"Sure. Easy enough to fake your death when you're swimming in money. I mean, look at this place. With all the cash his estate sunk into it, don't you think he'd have stuck around to see it completed?"
Ben frowned, obviously not buying it. "How could he stay hidden, though? Nobody's seen him for twenty years."
Stan shrugged. "False identity. Living out of the country. Nobody's looking for him, are they? I mean, if he was to pop up in Guatemala who would recognize him? Shave off that cookie duster, no one would know it was him. He's not exactly Elvis."
"But he is famous," Ben said.
"Oh yeah? How many writers do you actually know to look at? Could you point out Lee Child in a police lineup? How about Agatha Christie?"
Ben shrugged and muttered something Lilian didn't fully catch, something about not even knowing who they were.
"Exactly," Stan said. "I show a picture of Rex Garrote to the average person, they'll shrug like you just did. And I bet you dollars to donuts he's walking around this park of his right now pretending to be a goddamn hologram, just laughing his ass off. The guy's a maniac. I mean, just look at this place. What kind of ghoul would dream up a place like this?"
Ben looked around, shaking his head in awe. Like he was seeing the place in a whole new light. Or looking for Garrote to pop out and admit to them all the whole thing was an elaborate prank.
The group ahead of them rose into the air and the next car stopped alongside the platform. The woman working the tram opened the door and turned to them with a dead-toothed smile. She looked more like a carny than any of the previous employees with her green bug eyes and frizzy horsetail. "You're gonna wanna have your glasses on during the ride," she said. "You'll miss all the fun if you don't."
"What kind of fun?" Ben asked warily.
The tram operator winked. "Oh, all kinds," she said, and began cackling. She finished her spiel in a single breath: "Please-don't-try-to-open-the-door-once-you're-in-the-air-and-the-enjoy-your-ride-on-the-Ghost-Tram."
The three of them climbed into the empty car and dutifully put on their headsets.
"You coming?" Ben called out to Stan, who stood on the platform looking awkward.
"There's room for four," the tram operator said.
"If you insist." Stan took off his hat and ducked into the car as Lilian buckled her seatbelt. "Didn't want to impose," he said. He glanced at Allison, who shrugged as if she didn't care. But Lilian knew her therapist's mannerisms all too well. She was annoyed. And Lilian—who had tried so hard to annoy the woman in the past—couldn't help but feel a little pleased about it.
Rex Garrote's voice came over the tram's loudspeaker: "Welcome to the Ghost Tram. Buckle your safety belts, boys and ghouls—"
Stan said, "Hey, that's my line."
"—for the most terrifying ride of your life."
Garrote quieted and for a moment they sat in silence, looking out the windows as the car rose into the sky, watching the rooftops become visible and the people below grow small.
"You know, Garrote's not the only maniac running wild in this park," Stan said.
Before he could continue, Garrote interrupted: "If you look to your left, you will see Charles Manafort's pirate sloop Gentleman of the Sea[v]. And if you look closer, you may see the pirate and his crew, who'd perished upon the high seas in a fierce battle against the Royal Navy."
Ben stood and pointed out the window. "Check it out, you guys!"
Lilian looked over his shoulder as the tram car slowly passed the rotting sails of an ancient three-mast ship. Ethereal apparitions circled the masts like gulls, their ragged garments fluttering. One of them whisked past the window and Ben staggered back, almost bumping into Allison. Despite her fear, Lilian stood her ground. The ghost came back for another pass, so close she could make out his long straggly beard, gaunt face and haunted eyes.
"I bet those pirate ghosts are just Rex Garrote wearing a mask," she said, feeling pretty clever about the reference.
Ben grinned, catching on. "And he would've gotten away with it too—"
"—if not for us meddling kids!" they finished together and broke up laughing.
Allison looked at them quizzically and the retired detective grinned. He took his hat off again and started fanning himself with it. "Hot in here, ain't it?"
Lilian watched Ben stare open-mouthed out the window. Funny how quickly the two of them had fallen back into step after so many years apart. She had to admit it felt good. Familiar. It also scared the living hell out of her. She couldn't bear the thought of losing him again. It would hurt too much. It would leave a hole in her heart too big to fill.
"A retired cop is never really retired," Stan said to Allison when it seemed he wouldn't be interrupted again. "Too many cold cases to keep you awake at night. For me, at least. In particular—"
"To your right is the infamous Apache Theater[vi]," Garrote said, causing the detective to pout at the interruption. "This sprawling one-story theater was owned and operated by somewhat of a showman, who'd employed rather ingenious tactics to terrify his audiences. On this particular evening, each of the theater's seats was fitted with a 'shock chair' and wrist shackles for a special one-night-only screening of the cult film House of the Zapper. But their host was a madman bent on murder—"
A crackle sounded over the speaker, cutting off Garrote's speech.
"I don't like the sound of that," Stan said.
Garrote's intro didn't resume. A moment later a frantic female voice shouted: "—he's loose, dammit, one of those goddamn freaks got loose—!"
Static swallowed her words. Lilian and the others looked around, growing troubled.
Allison said, "What was that all about?"
The car came to a sudden halt, slamming her against the window. Lilian fell against Ben. He caught her in his arms and chuckled nervously. "Sorry," he said. She broke the embrace. Ben was blushing.
"You think something's wrong with the ride?" Stan asked, looking nervously through the back window.
"I'm sure it'll start right up again soo—" Allison began, then shot a nervous glance out the window. "What was that?"
Ben followed her gaze. "What was what?"
Something thudded against the tram's metal exterior, reverberating like the inside of a drum, and the car rocked on its suspensions. The passengers grabbed onto something, looking around wildly in mounting fear.
Lilian held the handrail so tight her knuckles went white. They were too far up in the air. If the wire snapped, if the tram car fell, the impact against the concrete below would definitely crush them to death. She willed the intrusive morbid thoughts away, repeating a terror-filled mantra in her head: Please don't let us die, please don't let us die.
"Do you see anything?" she asked. Panic had made her whisper it.
Ben peered down through the window. "I don't see anything." He leaned closer to the glass. "Oh wow, it looks like we're right above the insane asylum."
"I had to go to Bright Falls one time to question one of the patients," Stan said. "I'm not ashamed to say that place scared the bejesus outta me, what with all the—"
Another violent drumming shook the car. Everyone held on to a rail or the bench except Stan, who fanned himself frantically with his hat. This time, it had sounded like footsteps. Lilian was certain of it. Like someone was standing on the roof.
The car behind them swung wildly, causing their own to wobble on the wire. Lilian could see the fearful expressions of its passengers, a family who looked like they belonged in an Old Navy commercial. The father, wife and children looked up as a man
dressed in a pale green hospital gown and fuzzy slippers clambered up onto the roof, holding a cleaver.
Lilian jerked back in fright. How did he get up there? She blinked, stunned silent as the maniac ghost reached through the roof and grabbed the little blond boy by his hair. The child screamed soundlessly, his stubby little fingers scrabbling at the ghostly hand. The boy's parents grabbed him around the waist. The psycho kept pulling. If they didn't let go, they were going to tear him in half.
"Ben…?"
Lilian's voice sounded small even to her own ears. Somehow Ben heard her and turned from looking out the front. As his eyes widened in horror, everyone followed his gaze out the back.
"What the hell?" Stan said, pressing up against the window.
The child slipped free of his parents' grasp. His head slammed against the ceiling once, twice, before the ghost let go of his hair and he fell in a crumpled heap in the arms of his parents. As they busied themselves with the fate of their boy, the maniac dropped through the roof and began gleefully slashing away with his cleaver. Blood splattered the inside of the glass before Lilian could force herself to turn away.
"Jeepers creepers!" Stan said.
The father's anguished face mashed against the inside of the glass, streaking away a swath of blood like a human windshield wiper. He disappeared into the darkened car—blood had blotted out the windows, dimming the morning light—then slammed against the window again, mashing his nose and cracking the glass. Lilian could almost hear its high-pitched shatter.
Footsteps trampled on the roof above her head. She twisted to look up at the small emergency hatch. It locked from the inside, but she was acutely aware a lock wouldn't stop a ghost if it wanted in. It certainly hadn't stopped the mental patient from killing everyone in the car behind them, and if this goddamn tram didn't start moving soon, everyone in here would be the next to die, she was sure of it.
How did ghosts even get up here? Why aren't they in their exhibits?
The window of the car behind them shattered outward and the father's lifeless body came hurtling out of the car. In the jagged glass-framed hole, the killer stood drenched in blood, his knife dripping gore. In the same instant his face flashed—a glitch reminding her where they were and what these things must be—and for a split second, she was sure the man with the cleaver, smiling wide, his face painted with the dead family's blood, was the same man who'd welcomed them to the park.
Rex Garrote was watching her, smiling, his brown eyes gleaming with malevolent glee from the body of the psycho killer.
Lilian tore off her glasses. The earbuds came out with them. The ghost with the cleaver no longer stood in the window. The window wasn't even broken. The car behind them was entirely undamaged and free of blood. Even the screams had stopped. Another small group of spectators was staring out the back of the car, pointing fingers, screaming silently, gripping each other. Not the family they'd just watch get slaughtered.
They must have been seeing the same show in the car behind them, and likely the car ahead had seen a similar massacre in the car Lilian and the others sat in.
She laughed at her own foolishness and raised the glasses again just as a bloody hand reached down through the ceiling above her, blood-drenched fingers clutching feebly. As she lowered them again the hand disappeared.
"There's nothing there," she said. "It's a trick. It's all just part of the show!"
Ben took off his headset and blinked. He let out a relieved laugh at what he saw—or didn't see. Everyone did. It was obvious they all felt as foolish as she did. The tension vanished like a ghost without their glasses.
The tram shook again. Without the accompanying bang, it was no more frightening than a sudden gust of wind. Which was bad enough with her fear of heights, Lilian considered, but not worth freaking out. Some mechanism had obviously caused it to move in time with the sound effects.
"He just Shyamalaned the hell out of us," Ben said.
"He? He who?" Allison asked.
"Rex Garrote," Ben said. "Who else?"
"What did I tell ya?" Stan grunted, fanning himself as he shook his head. "That maniac's laughing his goddamn ass off."
As the car started rolling again, Lilian finally allowed herself to calm. The rest of the trip was uneventful. She did her best not to look out the windows, and tried not to pay attention to Garrote's sporadic narration of the exhibits below. Meanwhile, Stan told them the reason he'd come to Ghostland on opening day.
"Speaking of maniacs," he said, "I've been chipping away at some of the cases I was never able to solve. I figured this miracle technology—the ability to see ghosts," he said with sarcastic jazz hands, "—I figured they might try to use it to solve crimes, not to be the feature of a damn theme park. What did I know? I'm no scientist. Anyways, that's why I left the wife behind to drive all the way out from Emerald City for opening day. There was the Garrote case, of course, but I've made my peace with that one—as much as I'm able. No, the one I came to put to bed was the Doll's Head Murders[vii]."
"What are the Doll's Head Murders?" Ben asked.
Eagerly, Stan told them about the case. Six women in the Seattle metropolitan area of a similar body type had each been bound and strangled to death, left with the head of a vintage fashion doll in their mouths, its little unblinking eyes staring outward, held between their perfect teeth.
Lilian said, "Do we have to talk about this?" She was already feeling ill, and talking about some sick twisted serial killer after what they'd just seen wasn't making it any better. She was eager to get back on safe ground. Her head was swimming from the height and the heat within the small, enclosed tram car.
"All right, I'll skip the gory details," Stan said. "I get a little carried away sometimes. Just ask my wife."
Stan explained his frustration with the investigation and how his young hothead partner had botched it by beating up their lead suspect—the son of a very rich and powerful woman—during questioning, forcing them to drop the case against Alexander Robin Fischer, the suspected Doll's Head Murderer. Ten years later, one of the murder sites—a double-wide trailer salvaged from the defunct University Trailer Park—had been purchased by Ghostland, and since any close relatives of the victims were also deceased there had been no uproar. Stan suspected the Doll's Head Murderer would be here today to relive the murder through its recreation.
"That's likely," Allison said. "Pathological murderers often return to the scenes of their crimes, to reexperience feelings of power and often, sexual gratification."
"Gross," Lilian said.
Allison ignored her. "If one of his victims is on display here, in spirit… he might have come to gloat."
"That was my thought, exactly," Stan said. "He could have come in disguise but likely not. It's been ten years since the last murder. And like our writer friend, I doubt most people would recognize him to see him."
The retired detective then slipped a photograph out of his flask pocket and shared it around. Lilian glanced at it but found she couldn't focus. The man in the black-and-white photograph was handsome, well dressed and clean shaven. His eyes were dark and somewhat mysterious. She passed it quickly to Allison, who gave it a more thorough examination before handing it back.
"If you see this man, keep your distance," Stan said. "He's damn sure dangerous, and he may even be armed."
"What about you?" Ben said. "Are you armed?"
Stan drew a pair of handcuffs out of the breast pocket of his jacket. "These are the only defense I need." The cuffs clinked against the hollow flask as he slipped them back into his pocket and sat back with a contented smile. "I'm gonna bring that son of a bitch to justice today if it kills me."
Lilian didn't think it was likely. Looking at Stan, she thought it was more likely it would kill him, and she wondered what might happen to someone who died at Ghostland. Would their spirits move on, or would they be stuck here with the rest of them, unintended exhibits for customers to gawk at forever and ever?
She didn't lik
e the idea of that at all.
Remind me not to die here, she thought.
The car swayed suddenly and the queasiness returned with a vengeance, driving a spike into her brain and making her gorge rise. While Ben and Stan began geeking out over the map Ben had kept folded into his back pocket, Lilian tried her best to keep from puking. And when they finally disembarked at the tram station, she stumbled out on shaky legs, rushed to the closest trashcan and threw up the coffee and half-digested toast she'd had for breakfast.
STALKER
BEN WAS STILL shaken by everything they'd experienced on the tram, but he'd been able to get through it without having to break down and take one of his heart pills. Despite his mixed feelings toward Garrote, he had to admit the whole thing had been a good bit of theater. Most people wouldn't have noticed the story Garrote had been telling right before the incident was a clue to what would happen, the one about the theater owner who'd murdered his audience with shock chairs. In retrospect Ben was upset he hadn't pieced it together before Lil had figured out the trick.
But it was Stan's murderer that was on his mind now as they left the tram station. The idea that real live murderer could be wandering the park set him slightly on edge, but it was also exciting. Stan had pointed out the exhibit he suspected the murderer would be heading for on the map, a building that housed haunted and cursed vehicles west of the curvy blue line marking the creek. It was where the detective headed now as Lilian raced toward the closest bathroom.
"I hope you catch your murderer," Ben said, waving.
"And I hope you find what you're looking for at that house," Stan said. "Sincerely, I do."
The detective tipped his hat and wandered off, leaving Ben alone with Allison. The two of them stood a moment in awkward silence. Finally, the therapist said, "It must have been difficult for you, to have gone through such a traumatic experience without a lifeline."
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