I close the door, and once again I hear the Nightmare Elf’s giggle. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I sing, thinking how this whole scene reminds me a little of Sesame Street, but for horror lovers.
There’s a handful of thumbtacks scattered on the ground. I know they must’ve been tossed there by him, up to his corny elf trickery.
“Hey there, Darthy Garthy,” the Nightmare Elf says. “Have you come to play?” The voice sounds just like it did in the movies, just like a little kid’s. “Garthy, Garthy, Go Barthy, Banana-fana Foe Farthy, Me My Mo Marthy, Garthy.”
I continue down the alleyway. Brick buildings sandwich me in on both sides. “What are you hiding for?” I ask him. “Come out here and get me.”
Instead of showing himself, the elf continues to sing: “I know your nightmare. I took it from your sleep. And whether or not you like it, it’s mine, and mine to keep.”
I keep moving forward, spotting someone’s foot sticking out from behind a Dumpster. A kid’s shoe: bright red, shiny leather.
I inch closer, able to see that the shoe belongs to a girl. It’s a hologram of Little Sally Jacobs from Night Terrors. I recognize her dark red pigtails.
Wearing striped socks and a purple dress, she’s playing a game of jacks. She bounces a tiny ball and then snatches up a handful of the star-shaped pieces. There are droplets of blood on the pavement.
“Have you come to play?” she asks, keeping her face focused downward.
I open my mouth, shockingly at a loss for words.
Thankfully she fills in the blanks. “Did you bring me a piece of candy?”
I smirk, remembering how, in the movie, she was always looking for candy from strangers.
She starts singing to herself—that “Frère Jacques” song—and bouncing that stupid red ball of hers, collecting more jacks.
“No parlez-vous français,” I tell her.
The jacks fall from her grip. The ball bounces away. Finally, she looks up. As expected, there are skeleton keys jabbed into the center of her eyes. Tracks of blood trickle down her cheeks. She goes to pull one of the keys out. The pulling makes a thick slopping-sucking sound.
I take a step back, bumping into a trash can.
The key is out of her eye now. “Want to play?” she asks. There’s a happy smile across her face. Her lips and teeth are stained red. She stands and comes at me with the key, pushing it toward my face. “Pansy, pretty girl, crybaby, sweet pea.”
A motor starts up behind me. I turn to look.
It’s Pudgy the Clown wielding his chain saw. “Have you come to play?” he asks, giving the motor a rev. He comes right at me. His blade cuts across my neck.
I jump back, my heart pounding. I touch my neck. There is no blood.
It takes me a second to realize that the image is on a TV screen. It’s three-dimensional and looks so real.
I move away, down the alley. Eureka Dash from the Nightmare Elf movies appears on the wall to my left. She’s trembling; her hands shake. “He’s going to come after us,” she cries, tears dripping down her face.
On the other side of me, Sebastian Slayer from Forest of Fright is playing a piano in the middle of the forest. A severed hand and foot rest on top of the piano, right beside his pickax. He pauses from playing to look in my direction. “It’s your turn next.”
I want to think it’s funny, but instead it makes me cringe.
A hologram of Emma Corwin from Hotel 9: Enjoy Your Stay is a few steps away. Using the blood from her self-sliced wrists, she starts to write help on the wall.
I stop, spotting something moving in the shadows, behind a Dumpster. Someone dressed up as the Nightmare Elf is slumped over Lizzy Greer’s shopping cart. I approach him slowly, noticing the nightmare sack on the bottom rack of the cart.
Keeping his back to me, he asks, “Do you have any spare change?” à la Lizzy Greer.
The cart is filled up with soda cans. I know what’s probably hidden among them—what Lizzy keeps tucked away.
“Spare change?” he asks again, without looking in my direction.
I start to move past him, but he pulls Lizzy’s ax from the mound of cans and holds it up for show.
I take a moment to study him, wondering if he might be one of the drivers, but aside from his eyes, his face is completely covered with the elf mask.
Wearing his bright green gloves, he takes a cantaloupe from the carriage, sets it on top of the Dumpster, and chops it in two. The blade drips with juice and pulp. Cantaloupe guts plop onto the ground. “Enjoying your time at the park, so far?”
My pulse racing, I continue down the alleyway, able to feel his eyes burning into my back.
“Not so fast,” he says.
I stop. And peer over my shoulder. Standing feet away, he straightens all the way up, and then comes at me with the ax. The blade slices through the air, missing my midsection by an inch, but still he manages to get my jacket.
I inspect the fabric, where it’s been cut by the blade. “What the hell?” I shout.
“Didn’t you come to play?” he asks.
I go to move past him again, but he grabs my arm, spins me around, and backs me up against the brick wall. He’s breathing hard and his breath reeks of coffee and oranges. He brings the ax high above his head, making like he’s about to strike down.
I duck out of the way, pushing against him as I go. He lets out a laugh, as if my efforts are all a joke.
Straight ahead, a young boy appears on another screen. It’s dark and he’s in the middle of the woods, using a flashlight to find his way. “Craig?” the boy calls. “Paul?”
Craig and Paul are my brothers’ names. The boy is supposed to be me.
A cabin comes into view. The Dark House. The sign is visible over the door. The boy knocks before going inside. There’s a rocking chair with the Nightmare Elf doll.
“My name is Carson,” the elf doll says, in his chipper voice. “Did you come to play?”
The boy begins to tremble.
I feel my stomach tie up in knots, remembering all those months I spent sleeping beneath the bed, praying that the Nightmare Elf would never visit my dreams.
The boy moves into a bedroom, tears sliding down his face. I want to tell him that it’ll all be okay—that one day nothing will ever scare him again.
I turn away—it’s too hard to watch—and follow the alleyway as it turns a corner. There’s an open door at the rear of one of the buildings. I go inside, able to hear the rattle of the shopping cart again.
I close and lock the door behind me, trying to catch my breath, reminding myself that this is all for the movie. A dim overhead lightbulb hangs down from a ceiling with peeling paint. A concrete staircase is to my left. Another door faces me. I’m assuming the door leads underground. I pick the stairs and climb them, two at a time, until I reach the staircase platform.
There’s a deep clink sound. The door lock? Before I can turn to look, the lightbulb goes out. The door I entered opens. I can hear footsteps coming up the stairs. I search the walls, desperate to find a door handle or light switch.
Footsteps continue. “Garth,” the elf whispers. “Are you ready to join the fun?”
I find a knob and turn it, relieved when the door opens and I can see again. The hallway’s lit up. I close the door behind me, noticing that it’s an emergency exit, and that it doesn’t have a lock.
There’s a long red carpet that runs down the middle of the hall. The walls are covered in thick, purple paper. There are gold-framed mirrors, slanted ceilings, and crooked numbers on all the room doors. It’s like being on the movie set of Hotel 9. I hurry down the hall until I reach the grand staircase—at least twenty steps high. It’s framed in dark mahogany with balusters that look like evil serpents. Standing at the top, I look down at the lobby. More
holograms. A group of kids in 1930s schoolboy garb—suit jackets, short pants, newsboy caps, and long kneesocks—play a game of Scrabble.
I look back over my shoulder, wondering where the elf is. The hallway remains empty.
Just then, a hologram of Sidney Scarcella enters the lobby. Wearing a butcher’s apron over his bellboy uniform, he’s carrying a pitcher of something dark. “More iced tea?” he asks the schoolboys.
They nod in creepy unison and he refills their glasses. I squint harder to see, accidentally brushing against the wall beside the banister. A picture falls—a family portrait of the Scarcellas. It tumbles down the flight of stairs. The glass inside the frame shatters.
“Garth, is that you?” One of the schoolboys stands. “Have you come to play?”
My forehead starts to sweat. I close my eyes a moment, noticing how unstable I feel on my feet.
“Garth, is that you?” the voice repeats. “Have you come to play?”
I scurry back down the hallway and try the knobs on a bunch of the room doors. Most of them are locked, but the one at the very end opens. I go inside and lock the door. It’s dark, but I don’t turn on the light; I don’t want the elf to know where I am.
“You don’t really think you can hide, do you?” a voice asks. “I have eyes everywhere.”
I turn to look. It’s Pudgy the Clown again. He clicks on his chain saw and starts running toward me.
I slip beneath the bed, flashing back to when I was seven. Quickly the chain saw quiets and the room goes dark again.
There’s a knock at the door and a scratching sound on the wall. I hold my breath, wishing I were someplace else, feeling a dull ache in my belly. I have to piss. I’m going to throw up. Acid travels up my throat, choking me.
I roll out from under the bed, able to hear more scratching—fingernails on wood. A lighter striking over and over. And a key in the lock, turning. I move toward the window, able to see a shadow moving with me.
I try to open the window, wondering where I’d land if I jumped. But it’s locked. I fumble with the latch, the sound of knives carving—blades scraping against each other—behind me.
“Ready to check out?” a voice asks from the darkness.
Finally, I get the lock unlatched. I open the window, just as my pants fill with heat as I lose it on the floor, pissing all over myself.
I dive out the window, headfirst, telling myself there must be a safety net.
It takes my brain a beat to realize that I’ve landed, that I’m no longer falling, that the smack sound is my body as it hits the pavement. I’m still alive. A numbing calmness. Moments later I hear it: the rattle of a shopping cart.
On my stomach, I try to inch forward.
The rattle grows louder.
I can see someone coming at me. A pair of elf boots covered in dirt. But I can’t speak, can’t scream. There’s a flash of red.
He reaches down to feel for a pulse in my neck. Despite the gloves, he’s wearing a bracelet. It dangles in front of my eyes: gold, chain-link, with the symbol for infinity. Frankie’s bracelet. “You tried so hard to change,” he says, “but you’re still a scared seven-year-old boy.”
There’s the glare of an ax blade, and a deep moan as the ax is raised high.
AFTER THE OTHERS HAVE ALL dispersed, Parker and I decide to abandon Frankie’s ride—for now, anyway—to try Taylor’s phone at the front of the park. We stand beneath the TV monitor, where Justin Blake first spoke to us. I push the talk button and hold the receiver at varying angles, but it still isn’t getting reception. “We can keep trying in different parts of the park,” I say, hoping to sound optimistic. I look toward the top of the gate, wondering how many bones I’d break if I jumped from the very top, and what barbed wire feels like when it enters the skin.
“What are the odds of digging our way out of here?” I ask, assuming the idea is nuts. But Parker looks at the gate for five full seconds and says it’s worth a try.
We move over to it. I squat down and gaze upward, almost unable to see the wire at the very top—that’s how far away it is.
Parker fetches a couple of plastic cups from a snack shack and hands me one. “Use it to shovel,” he says, scooping up a mound of dirt.
I begin to dig, following the bars of the gate downward, into a hole. They seem to go on forever. I reposition, lying on my stomach, digging deeper into the ground.
“This isn’t working,” Parker says after about ten minutes. He tosses his broken cup and resumes digging, using his hands. The muscles in his forearms pulse. After about twenty more minutes, he steps inside his hole. He’s almost up to his thighs, and still he hasn’t reached the bottom of the gate. “It’s like they knew we’d try to get out this way.”
I sit at the edge of my ditch. “People are going to start to worry. Parents, I mean. Aside from Natalie and me, no one’s called home yet—at least not that I know of, and it’s been well over twenty-four hours now.”
“Maybe we should venture underground,” he says, nodding to the Train of Terror ride.
“No way.” I shake my head. “Frankie and Shayla have both gone underground, and so far they’ve yet to resurface.”
“We don’t know that for a fact. Maybe they started underground but then followed a tunnel and came out someplace else. Let’s face it, they could be anywhere—even beyond the gate.” He nods to the forest.
I look out at the park. The actress on a nearby movie screen is running for her life. Naturally, she’s in the woods, wearing heels instead of track shoes. She trips over a tree root and falls to the ground, letting out a sputtering noise that doesn’t even sound human. She grapples forward on her elbows and knees.
I reach for my aromatherapy necklace, able to feel the girl’s angst.
“What is that?” Parker asks, nodding to my necklace. He takes a seat beside me and our feet dangle inside my ditch.
“Cedarwood oil.” I pull the cork out. “It helps induce tranquility and relaxation.”
“Does it work?”
“You can be the judge.”
“For real?” He goes to touch the bottle, checking for my reaction first.
I give him a silent okay and he moves in closer. His fingers graze my chest as he takes the bottle into his hand, sending tingles all over my skin.
Looking straight at me, he gives the bottle a tiny sniff. A subtle grin sits on his lips, as if he knows his effect on me. “I feel better already,” he says.
“Me too.” I smile—my first one in what feels like days.
“Was it a present from someone that I should know about?”
“It was supposed to be my mom’s.”
“Supposed to be?”
I bite my lip, wishing that I could take the words back. “Maybe we should go look for more hotspots.”
He nods and gets up, steps out from my ditch, and dusts the dirt from his palms. I can tell that he’s frustrated with me. I’m frustrated with myself.
“There’s a gamesmanship quality here,” he says, before I can apologize. “Survive your worst nightmare, get to be in the movie, get to meet the mastermind. Knowing Blake’s work, I’m pretty sure we’re not getting out of here until we do that…face our nightmares, I mean. The main character always confronts the villain before the end. The showdown is not only expected, it’s mandatory.”
“And I signed up for this because…?”
Parker looks at me again, his eyes swollen and serious. “I don’t know; you won’t tell me.”
I swallow hard, hating myself for being so guarded. Yesterday, it probably wouldn’t have mattered to me if he were upset by my secrecy. But today I’m upset too.
I don’t want it to be like this.
“Let’s get going.” He extends his hand to help me up. I take it, feeling the warmth of his skin radiate over
my face.
Parker notices and takes a step closer.
I try to glance away, but he forces me to look into his eyes by touching the side of my face. And making my heart pound. For just a moment I think that maybe he’s going to kiss me. And, for the first time that I can remember, I actually want to be kissed. I want to believe that I can be just like every other girl, and not this person who’s always waiting for the end.
Parker leans in a little closer and I stare at his lips—pale pink, shallow vee, slightly turned up at the corners. But before I can even feel his kiss, someone screams—a high-pitched shriek that severs the moment in two.
I turn to look. The girl on the screen—in the woods—is now running along a set of train tracks, while a dark-clothed someone follows behind her, keeping a steady pace.
“Let’s go,” Parker says. “We need to get this over with.”
As we move toward the center of the park, a phone rings. I pull Taylor’s cell phone out of my bag, but the ringing is coming from someplace else.
We follow the sound behind a row of Skee-Ball machines, startled to find a telephone booth.
“The emergency phone,” I say, moving quickly to answer it. I push open the bifold door and grab the receiver. “Hello?”
“Who’s this?” a male voice asks. “Wait, I think I might have the wrong number.”
“No!” I insist. “Who is this? Who are you calling for?” I turn to look outward, spotting a first aid kit hanging on a nearby post.
“Is Max there?” the caller asks. “He left a message for me yesterday. Something about switching shifts. I’m just calling him back.”
Parker comes and shares the receiver with me, his cheek grazing mine as we stand huddled in the booth.
“You have to listen to me,” I say. “You have to help us. We’re trapped inside an amusement park in the middle of the woods…someplace outside Stratten, Minnesota.”