Chapter Sixteen
I patted at the wall until I found the light switch. Much to my surprise, it actually worked, illuminating the rust bucket of a mobile home that I had somehow found myself alone in. The walls were coated in newspapers and the windows covered in foil. The floor was sticky and smelled of urine. A crack pipe lay atop a tube television while pizza boxes and beer cans created floor-to-ceiling sculptures. There was nothing here to glamorize the life of the trailer’s owner, but one thing stuck out like a fly on a wedding cake.
On the far side of the room, past the stained blowup mattress, there stood a six-foot-tall steel gun safe. Brand new, from the look of it. And probably more expensive than the trailer itself. I didn’t see the kid anywhere, so unless he’d found a way to crawl inside the safe, I must have imagined him.
That settles it. There’s nothing here. It’s time to leave. Now.
Except now may have been too late. The dial on the safe started spinning. It froze, reversed course, and spun again. It stopped, turned the other way, and spun once more. Then, with a loud clunk, the door swung open.
I waited.
Nothing happened.
Eventually, I realized I was holding my breath. I exhaled, sucked in air, then said to the empty room, “Okay. What am I supposed to do now?”
No answer. The smart move was obvious. Go. Turn around. Leave. While you still can!
I took a step towards the safe.
Um, hello? my brain seemed to say. What are we doing here? You saw that safe open all by itself, right? When has haunted furniture ever been a good thing?
Yeah, you’re right, I said to my brain. Of course I’m right! my brain said back. Now get to getting! Before it’s too late!
I took another tiny step towards the safe. The room was so small that I was almost there. Why am I not getting out of here?!
I took another step. Why am I so stupid?!
One more step, and I was at the safe. Please don’t get the wrong idea. I wasn’t planning on taking anything. I just wanted to look. I just wanted answers. I just wanted to know what was going on for once in my life. But there weren’t any answers in here. The safe was completely empty, save for a single clay pot sitting on a shelf at arm level. It seemed ordinary enough, red and roughly the size of a baseball, topped with a tiny clay lid.
Well, that answers nothing. Ah well. At least I tried.
Wait. Don’t go.
That voice was stronger now. And it sounded like it was coming from… can’t be… well, stranger things have happened around here. The voice sounded like it was coming from inside that small, round pot. I reached out to touch it. As soon as my fingers connected, I felt a sharp jolt of electricity and jerked my hand back. The clay pot came with me, as if our connection had caused it to temporarily stick to my fingertips. It hit me right in the chest. I tried to catch it, but instead it rolled down my leg and landed on the grimy floor.
By some miracle, it didn’t break. The lid didn’t even come off. I still had a chance to put the thing back where I found it and get the heck out of there without anyone noticing. I bent over, wrapped my fingers around the pot, and heard the voice again as clear as day. This time, it was coming from inside my mind.
You’re not safe. Someone is hunting you. He’s right outside. He followed you here. If you are to escape, you must hurry. Peel the foil from the back window. Crawl out. You have precious little time.
“Oh no. I’m not playing this game.”
What?
“I don’t buy it. This is just another series of randomly misfiring neurons creating an artificial sense of emergency. You’re just a component of some delirious episode my mind has put together.”
No. No, you’re in grave danger.
I laughed into the empty room, held the clay bowl thing in front of my face and said, “I’m always in grave danger.” I paused, thought about it for a second, then went on. “Or am I? Is any of this even real? How did I get here? I’m supposed to be looking for help, not bumbling around some crack shack in the middle of a carnival. Nobody’s hunting me. I’m just being paranoid. Watch, I’ll prove it to you, disembodied voice.”
I stuffed the clay figure into my jacket pocket, walked back to the door, and pushed it open. There was nothing out there. A small ring of light from the bulb over the camper door showed nothing but dirt and sticks. I carefully stepped down from the camper, waved at the nothing, and said, “You see that, phantom voice in my head? Nobody’s out here. Ha! I told you I was crazy! Now shut up forever so I can go find help.”
“FREEZE!” Suddenly, there was a gun in my face.
“I’m sorry!” I yelled pathetically.
“DROP THE WEAPON!”
“What?”
The man screaming at me—“PUT YOUR HANDS UP! DO IT! NOW!”—was a cop. An out of towner. State trooper, judging by the uniform. He’d emerged from the shadows like a boogeyman with a nine-millimeter. I tried to explain.
“I can’t! I have a crutch!”
“SHUT UP! I SAID FREEZE! PUT YOUR HANDS UP!” He was furious. His gun was inches from me. His finger was on the trigger.
“Okay, okay!”
“I WILL SHOOT YOU! I WILL FUCKING SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE! YOU UNDERSTAND?!”
“In the face. Got it. I’m trying to comply.”
“DROP YOUR WEAPON AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR! THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING!”
I finally figured out that my “weapon” was the crutch. I released my grip and let it fall to the ground, balancing all of my weight onto my one foot. I lifted my hands over my head, palms out, trying to make him understand, “Officer, I don’t have—”
“TURN AROUND AND GET ON YOUR KNEES!”
“I’d love to, but—”
The next thing I knew, I was smashing face-first into the dirt. The cop’s bony knee stabbed me in the small of the back while he forcefully yanked my arms behind me. He screamed “STOP RESISTING” more than once before the zip tie went into place, painfully locking my wrists together. I couldn’t understand what was happening.
The radio on his belt cracked to life. “Wayne, what’s your twenty?”
He took his weight off of me and answered. “This is Officer Wayne. I’m over by the groundskeeper’s camper.” When he spoke into the radio, his voice was much more relaxed. Jovial, even. “I found some yahoo sneaking around the off-limits area, acting suspicious. Looks like I found our guy.”
He said some other things, but I stopped listening to him the moment I noticed the purple boy sitting in the grass a few feet away from me, hugging his knees and smiling.
You want me to kill him for you?
“What?”
The boy’s lips weren’t moving. But he was still talking to me.
You’re in a lot of trouble. You want me to kill him? I can do it. I just need your permission.
“No!”
Are you sure? What about the one who kicked out your crutches? I can kill him too. I can kill anyone you want.
“Shut up!”
The cop rolled me onto my back and stayed crouched down next to me. “Did you just tell me to shut up? Is that what I heard, you little shit?” I finally got a good look at him. He was about my age. Big, bushy moustache and strong tobacco breath. I also got a good look at his uniform and realized with waxing trepidation that he was not a state trooper, as I’d originally assumed. While the uniform was clearly designed to resemble it at a glance, he didn’t have a badge. Or a nametag. Just an iron-on patch reading: “Leviathan Event Security Specialist.” I was being held under the gun by an armed and angry rent-a-cop.
“No, no, no,” I said, trying not to escalate the situation any further. “I’m actually really glad I ran into you, Officer. I was looking for someone to help. I have a crime I’d like to report.”
“I know. You’re already looking at B and E. Resisting arrest. Assaulting an officer of the law. Might as well confess now and save us the trouble. You killed that man, didn’t you?”
The child was standing over his shoulder now. I can take his head right off. Nobody needs to know. Would you like that?
“No!” I yelled.
“Then what were you doing sneaking around, huh?”
“I was…” I thought fast. “Looking for a bathroom. Is this not a bathroom? My bad.”
“You’re on drugs, aren’t you?”
“There’s an abandoned child in the tent next to the Hell House. It looks like someone locked him in there. He needs help.”
“Pull my other leg and it plays Jingle Bells.”
“Why would I lie? Go and see for yourself.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you know about the murder.”
“Listen, Officer Wayne, this is all a huge misunderstanding. I’m friends with Deputy O’Brien. Just radio her. She can clear this whole thing up.”
“Yeah right, I’d bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, I would. Very much.”
“First, tell me about the body in the haunted house. How’d you do it, huh? Why’d you kill him?”
He was dead set. I’d run out of options. Only one thing left to do. “I’d like to speak to a lawyer now. Please and thank you.”
There is another option.
“Oh, I’ll get you a lawyer alright...” (why did he make that sound so threatening?) “...but first, you’re going to have to confess.”
I rolled my eyes and repeated, very clearly, “Please and thank you.”
He yanked me up and pushed me down the path. Naturally, I hit the ground right away. Wayne yelled at me, cursed, and demanded I stop faking my injury and walk normally. The purple kid stood next to him, unseen by the security guard’s eyes, begging me to let him help.
All of this can be over. You can be free. You can have whatever you want. I can cure you. I can bring back your leg. I can make you rich and powerful. All I need... is for you to say, “I wish.”
“It’s not going to happen!” I yelled.
Finally, Wayne surrendered, removed my zip ties with a pocket knife, and returned my crutch. As I sat up, but before I could climb my crutch, I heard him say, “Hold up a second. What do we have here?”
I followed his eyes and saw exactly what we had there. The clay pot I’d forgotten to return to the safe. It had rolled out of my pocket at some point, and now it was sitting in the grass a few feet away. Wayne went for it, and my mind started screaming.
For no explainable reason, I knew what was at stake. I knew what would happen if he touched that clay pot. The moment he made contact, I wouldn’t be able to see the child anymore. I wouldn’t be the one he needed to ask permission from. If Wayne got his hands on that clay pot—
I smashed it into a thousand splintery pieces with my crutch. Wayne jumped back, jerked his gun from its holster, and hollered, “What the hell?!”
“There was an ant! It looked like it was going to bite you. So, ya know, you’re welcome.”
The purple child was gone now. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him again tonight.
***
By my estimate, I’d been trapped in “Officer” Wayne’s car for about an hour, cold and alone, wondering how long he was going to make me wait, and whether or not the rent-a-cop realized that he’d technically kidnapped me. He forced me here at gunpoint, to the muddy lot comprising the employee parking area. Then he took my phone, wallet, crutch, and jacket. He bound my hands behind me and shoved me into the back seat of his rundown Ford Taurus. If his behavior didn’t already give away his obsession with emulating a real cop, the fact that he’d installed a prisoner partition in his personal vehicle would have been a huge clue.
I tried getting comfortable, but that wasn’t possible. The zip ties around my wrists were digging too far into my skin to let me forget they were there. At least I’d finally stopped shivering, although that might not be a good thing. Why did he have to take my jacket, anyway?
“It seems you’ve found yourself in another tight spot.” I looked around. A face turned back from the passenger seat and stared at me with sad eyes.
“Oh,” I said. “Hi there, Tom. I didn’t realize you were back.”
“I’m not,” he assured me. “But I still wanted to check on you.”
“Well, I do appreciate the company.”
“You got any plans for how you’re going to get out of this mess?”
“You know, I figured I’d just wait until someone rescues me. That’s what I usually do, and it’s been working out okay so far.”
Tom sighed and turned back in his seat.
“That isn’t going to work much longer, Jack. You’ve been coasting by this far on luck, but things are about to change for the worse. Howard is right about one thing. There’s a storm brewing.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve actually noticed quite an uptick in dead people contacting me recently.”
Tom didn’t respond. I scooted forward in the seat, pushed my face against the partition bars, but couldn’t see anyone there. I was alone again. Or more likely, I was alone still.
The door at my side opened, hitting me with a blast of cold night air. A welcome voice from the other side asked, “You alright, Tripod?”
I looked out to see O’Brien standing next to the red-faced security officer.
“I’m fine.”
“Uncuff him,” she commanded. When Wayne’s speed didn’t fit her liking, she yelled, “Now!”
He removed the zip ties and handed me my phone and crutch. He helped me out, helped me up, put my jacket over my shoulders, and did pretty much everything short of dusting me off.
“Now. Apologize,” O’Brien ordered.
I turned to face Wayne, who was now looking at the ground sheepishly. Then, I said, “I’m sorry, Officer Wayne.”
He looked up at me and asked, “What?”
“Not you, dummy. Him.”
“Oh.”
The security guard cleared his throat and forced his way through a half-hearted apology, then he got into his car and drove off. And that was the end of that.
The empty carnival looked like a ghost town as we walked back together. The booths were closed up, all the people long gone. I must have been sitting in the back of that car for a lot longer than I thought. My lost episodes of time finally came in handy.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you! I thought I told you to stay put!” She was angry, but there was a note of genuine concern in her voice.
“I know, but there was a… well, I’m not sure what you’d call it. A kid or something. In a cage. Did you guys ever find out what happened to him?”
“You shouldn’t have gone off on your own like that! What if Spencer had been following us? What if he’d gotten to you before I did?”
“I guess I’d be dead by now.”
“You need to start taking this seriously! You know better than anyone what’s really out there.” She was really letting me have it. “I never should have let you come tonight.”
I stopped in my tracks. “Whoa. ‘Let’ me come tonight? Amy, you’re not my mom or my boss. I appreciate all the times you’ve saved my skin, but I don’t need anyone’s permission to leave—”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I’m not your responsibility.”
“Someone’s gotta keep you safe.”
“What am I? Your pet? I can keep myself safe!”
“I just pulled you out of the back of a crazy man’s car. You’ve been kidnapped enough times this month to fill a punch card. Somebody’s out there hunting monsters and opening gates to hell, and now the bodies are piling up again. What are you supposed to do? You won’t even carry a gun.”
“Wow. I’m glad we could have that neat little recap there.”
“Whether you believe it or not. I care about your scrawny ass. You need to be more careful.”
A voice from near the Hell House called out, “O’Brien!” We looked up to see Deputy Love walking our way, a giant pretzel in one hand.
She looked back at me. “Can we finish this conversation later?”
“What is there to finish?”
Love was close enough to smell now. “Clyde wants to talk to you.”
O’Brien tried to hide her scowl but failed. “Alright. I’m on my way. Do me a favor and walk Skippy back to my car. Don’t let him out of your sight.” She put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I told Pockets and Stoner to wait in the cruiser while I went to find you. Stay with them where it’s safe until I get back. Understand?”
So weird that she would still think that any place in this town was safe.
***
Deputy Love walked alongside me for all of about ten seconds before giving up and saying, “You got this, right?”
“What?”
“I mean, you’re a big boy. You know where the parking lot is. No reason you need a chaperone, is there?”
Well, besides all those reasons O’Brien spelled out earlier…
“No, I’ll be fine. Go enjoy your pretzel.”
He’d already stuffed the entire thing into his mouth hole before I finished the sentence. As he toddled off to God-knows-where, I made my way back to guest parking, completely and utterly alone.
There were more cars here than I was expecting from an empty carnival. A few police cruisers and an ambulance were to be expected. A couple dozen others here and there. Either they belonged to responsible drunks who over-imbibed and found ride shares home, or people who went into the carnival and never came back out. Either way, it wasn’t my problem.
I found O’Brien’s cruiser where we left it, with the engine running and doors unlocked. But Jerry and Rosa weren’t inside. I looked around briefly. It didn’t take long to notice the aroma of woodsmoke heavy in the air and the sound of voices close by. I held onto my panic for now, circled the vehicle, and found them both. They were lying on a blanket next to a small campfire, staring at the sky and talking.
Rosa sounded annoyed, and somewhat drunk. “I don’t get it, you know? I don’t know what I did to make him not like me so much.”
They could be talking about anyone, I thought.
Jerry answered, “Yeah, I know what you mean. There’s a wall there. Most of the people he lets get close to him either die or try to kill him. Sometimes both.” Okay, that settles it. They are definitely talking about me. Jerry took a long, deep breath and continued, “If it helps any, I don’t think he likes me very much either.”
Wow.
Suddenly, I felt pretty damn small.
In the days and weeks and months since that night, I’ve wished countless times for one chance to go back to that moment so I could kick my own ass for not saying something. For not telling them, “Hey, I really do like you guys.”
Instead, I ignored it. I assumed I’d get a chance to bring it up again later, when I was ready. I took Jerry’s sentence and buried it deep in my mind, where I thought it would be safe and do no harm. Eventually, it would start to leak, poisoning my other thoughts, long after Jerry was gone.
I loudly cleared my throat. Jerry and Rosa popped up and instantly smiled.
“Jack!” Rosa hiccupped. “You came back!”
“Dude, we were so worried about you!”
By the time I took a step, Rosa had already sprung to her feet, run over, and thrown her arms around me.
“Oh, cool, we’re on a hugging basis now?”
Jerry threw his arms around both of us and sang, “Hug-ception!”
I was uncomfortable but warm, so I let the layer-hug continue as Rosa laughed delightedly into my ear, “The carnies make this stuff called hard wassail, and it tastes like angry apple juice!”
“And we totally stole it!” Jerry said proudly.
“And now we’re kinda drunk!”
She hiccupped again, laughed, and released me, letting the multihug fall apart.
“I see you built a fire.”
“Yeah.” Rosa stared at it inquisitively. “I’m not really sure why we did that. I just had this strong urge to build a fire for some reason. Oh my God, you don’t think we’re going to get in trouble for it, do you?”
Jerry jumped over her question with one of his own. “Where did you go? We thought you got bored of us and went home or something.”
“I got arrested.”
They both said at the same time, “Arrested?!”
“I got better.”
Jerry passed me a plain gallon jug halfway full of thick red liquid. “I’ve heard worse reasons to drink!”
I took it and asked my own question, although I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know the answer. “What happened to the purple kid? Is he okay?”
Rosa and Jerry looked at one another, then back at me. Rosa was the one to ask, “What purple kid?”