Читать книгу Last Seen - Rick Mofina - Страница 14

4

Cal couldn’t accept what Vaughn King was implying—that somehow Gage had vanished.

“That’s ridiculous. He didn’t just disappear,” Cal said. “He’s in there.”

Faith cupped her hands over her face. “Where else could he be?”

King stared at Cal, then Faith.

“Our people have already searched. Are you certain he didn’t exit ahead of you and wander down the midway?”

“He was with us in the spinner!” Faith said. “Let us search for him.”

King removed his hat, drew his forearm across his brow, a gesture suggesting that allowing the public access during a Code 99 was against company policy. A second later, as if he’d convinced himself that this situation was exceptional, or maybe to diminish potential liability—we did everything to help those parents—King found himself nodding and clicking the speaker on the small walkie-talkie again.

“This is Vaughn. I’m bringing the parents inside to search.” To Cal and Faith, he said, “All right, let’s go.”

His radio crackled. “But, Mr. King, the policy prohibits—”

“I know what the policy says.” King cut the speaker off. “I’m bringing them in!”

The key ring on King’s belt jingled as they all hurried toward the entrance. Moving around the other side of the attraction, Cal saw the Chambers of Dread for what they were: a series of interconnected truck trailers, forming an interlocking network that claimed to be America’s Biggest Traveling World of Horrors! He noticed the empty stool belonging to the fat ticket taker who’d eyed Faith and wondered if he was helping search for Gage.

King led them through the jaws of the Demon King. There was no fog when they entered; bright lights lit the inside. Their footsteps echoed as they rushed through the spinning portal, which was now stationary. Gage had to be in here. The ever-present thud of the midway outside hammered a deadened rhythm as Cal and Faith looked for their son.

“Gage!” Faith called. “It’s okay! Come out now. It’s Mom and Dad!”

All the interior walls were painted black; so were the floors and ceilings, where Cal noticed nozzles of the sprinkler system and the surveillance cameras. Suddenly the air exploded with ear-piercing staccato beeps. A side exit door opened and closed as a young woman in an Ultra-Fun shirt holding a walkie-talkie stepped inside.

“We checked the area around this exit, Mr. King. We didn’t find him.”

“Thank you, Hayley.”

Cal looked at the small exit light overhead and how the door was also painted black. It blended in with the walls, like camouflage, almost invisible.

“Hold on, I want to look out there,” he said.

The girl let Cal step through the door. The alarm bleated as he took stock of the backside of the structure, one not seen from the midway crowd. His heart was thumping faster now as he saw tentacles of huge power cables flowing on the ground and breathed in the smell of diesel and hydraulic fluid wafting from the generators and the pumps powering the rides nearby. The area was congested with an array of truck trailers, positioned to form narrow walkways leading to RVs and campers where Ultra-Fun staff lived while on the road—a netherworld of latter-day gypsies. Cal scoured the area, then the alarm bleated and King appeared on the stairs with Faith.

“Mr. Hudson!” King shouted. “The alarm would’ve been activated if your son used one of these exits!”

Cal took a second sweep under the trailers for anything that would lead him to Gage. Finding nothing, he conceded King’s point and returned.

Resuming their hunt in the Chambers, Faith and Cal came to the large cloaked figure they’d encountered earlier, the one toting a head. The figure had adjusted the costume. In the naked light, Cal and Faith saw that he was an acne-faced young man of linebacker proportions.

“Hi, Mr. King. We’ve searched everywhere in our section. He’s not here.”

“Thanks, Lonnie,” King said, moving on to the area smelling of rotten eggs—the Dungeons of Dread. Opening a door, he led the Hudsons down a few short steps to a cramped dugout set behind prison bars where actors with clawlike prop hands shook their heads.

“He’s not with us, sir,” a young woman—one of the “damned”—said.

Cal, Faith and King kept going, coming to another exit door, tripping the alarm. At this one, Faith exited and took the stairs, which landed tight to a chain-link fence. Trailers were backed against it. An empty lot stood on the other side of the fence, earthen, muddied and pot-holed with discarded tires, a stove and a filthy sofa—a menacing patch of misery.

“Gage! It’s Mom, honey! Gage!”

The fear that had seeped into her voice was unmistakable, Cal thought, joining her and searching the confined area for several minutes before returning inside. Once more they’d activated the alarm, underscoring their desperation on their way to the next set.

The air smelled as if a gas stove had been switched off when they got to where the burning witch queen had cursed them. The room’s temperature had dropped a little from the oven-level it had been during the act. The actress had left her stake and was still searching the edges of the prop wood pile.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” The witch shook her head. “He’s not here but I’m sure you’ll find him, don’t worry.”

Moving quickly to the next set they were greeted by the insane butcher still clad in his bloodstained apron and surrounded by props of limbs. Faith was thankful they’d stopped twitching. Still, the scene sent a shiver coiling up her spine. She dropped to her hands and knees, looking under the table and around the suspended torsos. Cal crawled on the floor from the opposite side, the chains creaking as they brushed against the props, which marked them with streaks of stage blood.

“Gage! Gage, come out, son!” Cal called as the butcher and King exchanged a look.

They’d found nothing here.

The butcher shook his hideous face, telling the Hudsons, “We looked everywhere in this section, folks. He’s not with us.”

Cal and Faith hurried ahead with King, stopping to inspect the areas surrounding every exit that they came to. They didn’t find Gage with the fanged clown, who’d hefted the organ from a wall in order to look behind and under it. There was nothing to search at the river of snakes and the cavern of bats and spiders. Those areas had been filled with computer-generated images. Under the lights, these sets were void of anything searchable.

Gage was not among the tombstones in the graveyard. There, the wretched zombie woman offered a sympathetic smile, shaking her head—“He’s not here”—but with her makeup she came off looking like the possessed girl in The Exorcist.

In the spinner, the large round floor was motionless. At the six curtained exits leading to the slides, they saw the chain-saw executioner. He’d pushed his mask up to the top of his head, revealing the face of a handsome man in his thirties.

“I’m so sorry if I scared your little boy.” He offered the Hudsons a small, warm smile. “He’s not here but I’m sure you’ll find him.”

They didn’t.

Cal and Faith’s search of the Chambers had proven to be fruitless.

“This way.” King led them to one of the exits, and the outside stairs down, returning them to the chutes to where a small group of Ultra-Fun staff had gathered.

Amid the chattering walkie-talkies, some of the staff cast looks of awkward pity at the Hudsons standing helplessly at the slides—their faces bearing small smears of stage blood. It had now been nearly half an hour since Cal and Faith had last seen Gage, yet all around them the fair kept going, people kept squealing with joy, the thrill rides kept spinning and twirling, the music kept rocking, as if nothing had changed.

But everything had changed.

Faith’s breaths started coming in gasps; her hands started shaking. “Cal, this can’t be happening, not to us!”

“Take it easy.”

“Maybe, maybe Marshall’s and Colton’s families are here and this is a big joke to scare us? That’s got to be it, right?”

“Faith, I don’t think so.”

“No. No!” Faith’s knees buckled and Cal caught her. “Gage!”

Gage couldn’t be missing, Cal thought. It couldn’t be true. Maybe it was part of some pranking TV show? He struggled to grasp it all but their futile search of the Chambers with its grotesque faces and sets was a descent into Dante’s circles of hell.

Cal felt something monstrous had raked a claw across their lives while the screams of the midway grew louder and he reached for his phone. His fingers were trembling when he pressed the numbers for 911.

“River Ridge Emergency Dispatch, what’s your emergency?”

“My son is—” Cal started but his heart was hammering in his chest and his mind was swirling with disbelief. He glanced at Faith, her anguish piercing him. He couldn’t believe this was happening. What kind of parents lose their kid? He had to stop thinking that way and stay in control.

“Sir, what’s your emergency?”

Cal gripped his cell phone with such force he nearly cracked the casing. “My son is missing.” He resumed reporting Gage’s disappearance, but for one burning instant he felt trapped in a dream.

Wake up, go to Gage’s room—you’ll see he’s there. Wake up!

But Cal didn’t wake up because he wasn’t dreaming.