I was expecting Wizard’s Folly to be a dilapidated ruin. Tall grass and encroaching woods peppered with vine-covered skeletons that had once been buildings and stands. I half expected that we wouldn’t be able to get in at all, or if we did, we would poke around for half an hour before leaving dejected because the reality of the park fell so far into the shadow of what Pete’s story had built up in our minds.
But nothing could have been further from the truth. As incredible as his story had been, the appearance and condition of the amusement park was even more awe inspiring. We entered easily through the front gate at precisely ten in the morning, all three of us looking around for signs of security in case the plan had somehow gone awry on the guards’ end. Within moments any thought of being caught had fled however, as we were all gasping at what we were seeing.
Everything was in nearly perfect condition. The grass was cut, the buildings looked recently painted, and there was none of the expected signs of disuse or ill-repair. We had taken a rural road up to the edge of Firenze, but our route turned us left towards Wizard’s Folly instead of right towards the ghost town. Because of that, I had only a slight idea of how the town compared to this place, but the glimpse I’d had of an old gas station at the edge of town had made sense. It looked long-abandoned, with rusty, old-fashioned pumps out front and morning sunlight glowing dimly through the caved-in roof of what looked like a small attached garage.
By contrast, if I had been told this park was open just an hour earlier, I would have believed it. We walked further up the main road, passing by a hot dog stand and a small building that appeared to contain public bathrooms. Up ahead, there were more buildings and the looming shadow of a massive wooden rollercoaster off to the right.
“What the fuck…” Pete’s expression matched my own feelings. “What is this? Are they reopening this place?”
Marjorie looked over at her brother. “Are you sure it’s okay for us to be here? This place does not look abandoned. And there’s a lot more here than what you described.”
She was right. We had already passed a gift shop, a small sit-down restaurant, and five different stands housing what looked like carnival games. All of them pristine and with lights blazing. Pete stopped and turned back to us.
“I mean…we’re trespassing either way, right? But so long as we don’t hurt anything, it shouldn’t be too much hassle even if we were caught, which we shouldn’t be. But…none of this makes sense. Why would the lights be on in these places? Why would everything be so…well, not new exactly, but intact?”
I knew what he meant. None of it had the feel of things that had been recently built, but rather just maintained very well. I pointed to one of the carnival game stands where you tried to pop balloons with darts. “Look at that shit! The balloons!” My description wasn’t overly articulate, but it didn’t have to be. Once you looked at the stand, it was obvious what was wrong. There were probably fifty balloons on a large corkboard at the back of the stand, and all of them were fully inflated.
Pete shook his head. “What…those balloons had to have been put there yesterday at the latest.” He looked around, his expression growing paranoid. “I don’t know what this is, but I think they’re either reopening it or something is way different than what I was told. Either way, if ya’ll want to go, I’m fine with it.” He was looking at Marjorie, but I was the one that spoke up.
“No, let’s keep going.”
We rounded a curve and saw that the park opened up before us, with multiple paths leading off toward rides and shrouded thoroughfares that wound deeper into the property. This was also our first good look at the mansion, albeit from a distance. It was strange and imposing even far away, with dark stone and black shingles swooping this way and that like the contours of a giant gargoyle just waiting for us to get closer. A large hedge maze acted as a barrier between us and the house, and when I went to enter it, Marjorie tugged on my arm.
“No, Phillip. Let’s not and say we did. I do not want to get stuck in that thing, okay?” When I nodded, she went on, gesturing towards a path off to our right. “Let’s try this way. We can see more of the park and find a way around to the house if we’re lucky.”
Pete chimed in. “Yeah, Phil. I think she’s right. We’re on a clock here, so we’re better off taking in as much as we can rather than taking time for the maze.”
“Sure, yeah. Makes sense.” I started walking with them down a brick path that led closer to the massive rollercoaster, a familiar sense of strangeness coming back to me. Why were they deferring to me so much now? Acting as though they need to persuade me or as though I was in charge? I had just been going along with whatever, which was fine, but why now did they ask my opinion? Was this some of the weirdness I was worried about? I was snapped out of my reverie by the fear and wonder in Marjorie’s voice.
“My God. I smell popcorn. I smell popcorn and cotton candy.”
I realized I smelled it too. Fear crawled up my back as I looked around, but I saw nowhere it could be coming from. My eyes met Pete’s and he shrugged. “I don’t know, Phil. I smell it too, but no clue how or why.”
My roving gaze fell on the rollercoaster again. We were probably fifty yards from the entry for the ride, which a large and brightly lit sign proclaimed as “The Hunter’s Blind”. It seemed a strange name for any ride, much less a rollercoaster, but the thought left me as I realized something.
“Pete, didn’t you say they only partially built the rollercoaster?”
He nodded. “Yeah. And you saw it in the picture too, remember? The park shut down when they were only about halfway done.”
I pointed ahead of us. “Do you see any part that’s unfinished on that thing? I’ve been looking at it, looking for a break in the track or some sign that something isn’t in place yet, but I can’t find it. It looks like the rest of the place—ready for business.”
Pete swallowed. “You’re right.” He rubbed his cheek and glanced at his watch. “Okay, we’ve got a little over an hour left. Shit, I didn’t realize that much time had passed. Anyway, what do you guys want to do? This place is weird and creepy as fuck, but obviously they have to be renovating it, right? There’s no other reasonable explanation, and this is from the guy that believes in all kinds of fucked up shit.”
Marjorie laughed nervously. “Yeah, I bet that’s it. Has to be.” She turned to me. “Phil baby, are you good with us going now? They may have more security if they’re getting ready to do something with this place, and I really don’t want to go to jail on our honeymoon.”
I grinned at her, but it was forced. I really wanted to keep going, felt driven to explore further into the park and reach the house. But I also didn’t want to disappoint her or Pete, and I could tell they were both anxious to leave.
Her brother chimed in, “It’s your call, Phil. We’ll do what you decide. But if you’re ready to head out, we are too.” Again that strange deference, that odd tension and expectation that I had never noticed before. Something about it made me want to stay in the park even more, but when I glanced back at Marjorie I pushed it down.
“Nah, it’s cool. We’ve seen plenty, and we probably shouldn’t risk it.”
The relief from both of them was palpable, but I tried to ignore it. I was teetering on just telling them to go wait in the car for me, but then Marjorie took my hand and I let myself be led back to the front gate and beyond it. Within a few minutes we were back on the road in the rental car Pete had procured earlier in the morning. I found myself looking back at the park with an odd wistfulness until its dark silhouette had slipped from view.
That night I had terrible dreams that I didn’t remember upon waking except for an acid taste on my tongue and the uncomfortable sensation of something gripping my thudding heart. Marjorie stirred restlessly beside me, but when I lay back down in the cool dampness of the sweaty sheets, she slipped back into a deeper sleep. I stayed awake, my mind adrift in a shadow sea of unfamiliar thoughts and feelings as I stared up at the ceiling I couldn’t really see. As gray dawn began crawling through our balcony window, I gave up on getting back to sleep. The rooms really were very nice, and the hotel itself was massive and far more expensive than anywhere I had ever stayed before, but I felt trapped in there. Trying to be quiet, I got dressed and slipped out of the room.
I headed downstairs with the idea that I would just walk around a bit. The area we were in was lushly forested, and between the hotel’s golf course and the series of walking paths through the woods on the resort grounds, I had plenty of options for an early morning constitutional. I’ve never been much for exercise, but I needed to clear my head, to be away from the two of them for awhile. So for the next couple of hours, I walked.
As I went, the thing I kept coming back to was that I felt we’d made a mistake not going on to the house. Or at least I had made a mistake. It seemed like one of those ephemeral moments in life where picking right or left will have major ramifications somehow. You can’t say why it’s so important, but you can feel the weight of…what, fate?...bearing down on the decision you’re making. If you make the right one, you feel a sense of harmony and well-being. If you make the wrong one, you feel utterly discordant and lost.
I felt lost. I couldn’t explain it, but I somehow knew I had chosen wrong, and the further I walked, the more I mulled it over, the more certain I became that I had to go back there. Then suddenly Marjorie was running up to me, telling me that we had to get back to the room and pack. That there had been some kind of major accident back at Pete’s trucking company and he needed to start heading back now.
She was tugging on my arm, but I resisted with a frown. “Why do we have to go back now? Can’t he just leave us and go back?”
Marjorie scowled at me. “No, idiot. We have no way of getting back then, and no money to spend on a flight or even a bus.” She put her fingertips to the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. Pete’s just freaked out and so am I. Apparently there was some kind of chemical spill and three of his people are at the hospital. ICU bad. He’s worried about them, worried about getting sued and losing his insurance…he’s worried.” She reached out and touched my arm. “But that was still shitty of me to say it like that. But can we just go? He’s in no shape to drive the next several days back by himself, and he doesn’t want to risk leaving the semi here.”
I nodded, ignoring the voice inside screaming for me to stop. “Sure, honey. I get it. Let’s go get our stuff.”
When we met Pete in the lobby twenty minutes later, he looked haggard and red-eyed. He apologized for cutting the trip so short and helped us quickly load our things before we were on the road and headed back the way we had came. I felt a growing sense of restless unease as we traveled east, but I kept quiet. Whatever weirdness I was going through, Pete had enough on his plate as it was. I felt bad for him—I knew he had worked hard building that business up, and it was easy to see how stressed out he was from fear he might lose it all.
The thing was…as we traveled throughout the morning and early afternoon, his worries seemed to slip away. Not that I expected him to stay in a state of high agitation and fear for hours on end, but I’d have expected some noticeable level of distress to hang around for at least the rest of the day, if not until he was at his company and had a better handle on what was happening. Instead, him and Marjorie were back to joking around, singing along with the radio, and generally acting like they were still on vacation. For the hundredth time, I found myself questioning my perceptions of things, wondering if I was just being an asshole.
When we had settled in at the same motor lodge we’d stayed at just two nights earlier, I suggested we all get dinner together, my treat. I could tell they were both resistant, but I pushed on with cheery determination until they gave in. I wanted to watch them out of the truck and see how they acted. See if Pete acted carefree or concerned. See if any quick, secret glances passed between them.
The meal was uneventful until the end. They were both acting abnormally normal, but that is such a subjective thing that I quickly began doubting myself again. It was only as I was leaving the waitress a tip that I glanced up at Pete’s face. Marjorie must have seen it a moment before I did, because she was already up and moving, pulling Pete from the booth the same moment my eyes met his and my tongue went numb.
His face was sliding off. Or at least drooping. It looked as though he was wearing a latex mask that had gotten too hot and started to melt, the eyes and nostrils and mouth drooping low and revealing something red and wet underneath. I let out a startled grunt and put my palms against the edge of the table. I shoved the table towards him, but he was already out of the seat with Marjorie’s help, so the far edge just bumped against the back of the booth he was sitting in. I went to stop Marjorie, to make her understand that something was terribly wrong, that he was a monster or dying or something, but she was already leading him away. She turned back briefly to give me distressed look.
“He’s sick, Phil. I’ve seen this before. Go back to our room and I’ll be there soon.”
Before I could protest, she had turned the corner with him, heading towards the back of the restaurant and presumably the bathroom. I considered following them, but when I saw the few other customers in the place staring at me over the commotion, I reconsidered. I wasn’t going back to the room, but I would wait right here instead.
I know what I saw. His fucking face was falling off. And now I want some goddamn answers.
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Credits
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