Thirty

Odane turned off the main highway and took a dark access road that led back into the brush. A little ways down that road, we came upon a broken-down sign that used to welcome visitors to Adventureland, an abandoned theme park just outside the city.

“Your mom saw something here?” I asked, peering through the darkness of the night in front of us and trying to see the park out in front of us.

Most people at school had taken the drive down the lonely stretch of highway that winds around the banks of Lake Pontchartrain, out to the abandoned ruin of the park. It had become almost a rite of passage for the privileged and bored to go out to the sticks and play with some danger.

Back before Katrina, the whole city had been excited about the park opening. People talked about jobs and tourists and money flowing into the area. Then the hurricane came and washed everything out, and the company decided it wasn’t worth the money to fix it. They left the park exactly as Katrina left a lot of things, rotted and empty and covered in a layer of whatever the floodwaters left behind.

Even I went out there once with a handful of other girls. We weren’t brave enough—or stupid enough—to go at night like a lot of people did, but we spent the better part of one winter afternoon looking around, scaring each other silly, all while the empty ribs of a forgotten coaster lurked above. It had been bad enough in the daylight, and I wasn’t in any hurry to see what it was like at night.

Odane cut the headlights so only the running lights of the Nova lit up the way in front of us. A few yards in, we came to an unguarded police barricade.

“Give me a second,” he said, getting out of the car. In the dim yellow glow of the car’s light, he moved the wooden barricade out of the way and then got back behind the wheel.

The abandoned parking lot was filled with crater-sized potholes and broken glass that glinted in the dim beams of the running lights, but Odane navigated it all with the same easy confidence he always used until we were at the gates of the park. “We’ll have to walk from here,” he said. “Do you have a flashlight in here or anything?”

I opened the glove box and pulled out a flashlight and handed it to him.

“Ready?” he said, looking at me.

I nodded and eased open my door, careful not to make a sound.

Before us, the abandoned park loomed like a broken city. Here and there, a few floodlights—probably for security—spotlighted areas in a murky yellow. A few shot upward, illuminating the skeletal remains of rides that had never been opened and casting long shadows that fell across them like bars.

We made our way carefully through the broken-down turnstiles that should have welcomed visitors and found a moldering map of the grounds hanging listlessly from its busted-up frame. Odane shone the flashlight’s beam on it.

“What are we looking for?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he told me, studying the map. “My mom’s visions aren’t always specific.”

“The path to the right is shorter. Maybe we should start there?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Odane said, his voice still as hushed as mine, like someone might be listening nearby.

We left the map and followed the debris-strewn pathway to the right, passing a limp, horseless carousel as we went. When we came to the entrance of Mardi Gras World, we had to pass under a half-collapsed archway. Huge, clown-like masks watched with empty eyes as we made our way beneath them, and once we were on the other side, everywhere we looked, more gruesome masks, their surfaces darkened with age and mold, leered at us from every surface.

“This was a mistake,” I said, wishing I had picked the other direction. “It’s like they know we’re here.”

Odane took my hand. “Come on,” he said, leading me farther into the madhouse world that we’d entered. “We need to hurry.”

Onward we walked, steadily, carefully. Past the crumpled frame of a whirling ride, past countless trash bins topped with open-mouthed clowns that looked like they might come alive at any moment and jump up to devour us.

“What’s that?” Odane said, training the beam on something that glinted in the dark.

We inched closer to it. “Oh, no,” I said, my voice shaking as I stooped down near the camera. Gingerly, I picked up the broken body, but bits of the shattered lens fell to the ground as a feeling of triumph flowed through me.

Bodies pressed around me, but I didn’t pay them any mind. Through the eyes of the mask I watched, following her from a distance through the crowd of the Quarter.

I gasped. The vision wasn’t as vivid as the others, but I understood what it meant.

“What?” Odane crouched down near me, catching me as I wobbled free of the vision. “Did you see something?”

“It’s Lucy,” I said, sure. “Thisbe has her.”

Odane took the camera from my shaking hands and slung the strap over his shoulder. “Where?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “The vision didn’t go that far.”

“Maybe you could try again?” When I hesitated, he gave my hand a squeeze. “I’ve got you, Chloe.”

His eyes were so calm and sure as he urged me to take the camera again. Like he trusted me to do this. Like he knew I could.

“I’m not getting anything else,” I said when I took the camera. “It happened fast. Thisbe was hiding in the crowd somewhere in the Quarter, and she took Lucy before Lucy could even fight her.” I looked around, the buildings lurking over me, threatening to box me in. To keep me there. “Where would Thisbe have taken her?”

“Not anywhere out in the open,” Odane said finally. “She’d find a place to hide out. There—” He pointed to a large, square building with the silhouette of a jester lurking over it like a jack-in-the-box gone wrong. “Let’s try in there.”

I wasn’t sure, but I followed as he led me to the entrance with its broken-down door, and then into the bowels of the building.