Under the Boardwalk (14 page)

The smile quickly vanished behind the glum mask again, and Tom turned away. But now Hallie saw that mask for what it was: it wasn't age that made Tom that way—she knew in her heart Kyle would still be the same warm and funny man when his hair was peppered with gray. And somehow she doubted that even the alcohol that apparently drugged the long days Tom spent at his desk was the cause of his gloom. That was part of his mask, too. But there was something else bothering him, some pressure that had weighed him down for so long that he could no longer make the effort to lift it.

"The cops have already checked all that stuff. But be my guest. Just don't leave a mess," he muttered to her. "We've got enough problems around here without your meddling." He went back to his office.

~*~

When she left the building, her hands were still shaking. She spotted a tall man walking ahead of her on the promenade. "Kyle!" she shouted over the carousel's roar. He turned around and made his way through the crowd to her.

"Did you find anything?" she asked.

"Nada." He shook his head. "How about you?"

"Nope—well...."

"What?"

"Well, Tom acted a little strange." She told Kyle about her run-in with his uncle.

Kyle dismissed her with a wave of his hand. "You shouldn't let Tom get to you. He's just a grouch."

"That's a nice word for it. But—" she paused. "Don't you think he acts kind of suspicious?"

"Oh, come on, Hallie. Tom couldn't have anything to do with all this."

"Hey, you asked me to use my imagination...."

"And that's all you could come up with?" Kyle turned away from her, frustrated.

"Well, you asked," she said defensively.

"Yeah, but Tom's family. He's a jerk, but he's a family jerk."

Hallie clenched her fists. She hadn't wanted to get involved in this in the first place. Kyle was the one who insisted she should use her so-called vivid imagination. She never intended to have anything to do with him, and then he'd forced her to give in with that lost puppy dog look of his. "Fine," she said. "I'm trying to come up with something. We don't have anything to go on, Kyle!" She walked away and left him standing alone on the promenade.

He ran after her. "I'm sorry. I don't really expect you to find the answers. I'm just—" he paused. "I'm just scared, Hallie."

"It's okay," she whispered. "I am, too. And so's Tom, I bet. We're all scared." She put her arms around him, giving him a big hug that he finally returned.

"I don't know what to do," he muttered. "I just don't know."

~*~

"I'll sit in the back," she said to Charlie when she got back to the haunted house.

"Oh, okay," Charlie said. She handed Hallie a flashlight. "You'll need this until your eyes get used to the dark."

Hallie walked through the arched doorway leading to the back and let the darkness swallow her up. Once inside, she took deep breaths of the cool, slightly musty air, forcing herself to calm down. All her nerves seemed stretched taut, ready to snap.

She felt like her emotions were on a roller coaster ride. Every time she vowed to stay away from Kyle, he somehow managed to get back under her skin. She never could understand men—Kyle drove her crazy and Tom scared her half to death.

Why had the conversation with Tom unnerved her so much? She knew why. A lifetime's training in avoiding violent men's anger had taught her to fear confrontations. She hated that streak of cowardice in herself. "You look brave to me," Kyle had said before, but he didn't know how she trembled when a man just looked at her the wrong way.

She shoved her hands in her pockets to stop their shaking. She longed to run for the shelter of Kyle's arms, and cursed herself for that weakness. That was a familiar trap, looking for a man to protect her from life. No. She was going to have to learn to stand up for herself.

Hallie heard a buzz from a speaker overhead, and heard the sound of a car heading down the track toward the ride's entrance.

She flicked on the flashlight long enough to step off the track and then turned off the light as the car full of giggling kids swept past just a couple of feet away from her.

She stood there for a few minutes until her eyes adjusted to the darkness, then, when the next car came through, she followed behind it along the track, watching as it went past each display.

Now that her eyes had gotten used to the dark, she could see the black-painted walls on each side, and the metallic reflection of the track on the floor. She noticed that there were electric eyes set at ground level beside the track, and as the car passed in front of each one, it triggered the next mechanical display to start its macabre show.

She followed more cars down the track, watching the passengers looking around, not seeing her standing only a few feet away from them.

Over and over again they went past each display: King Kong, the headless horseman holding his laughing head under his arm, the school bus that "almost" crashed into the track, the vampire sucking on the neck of his scantily clad victim, and on and on.

After a while she found herself giggling at the cartoonish displays, their fake violence ironically cheering her up and making her forget about her real fears.

The last car disappeared down the track, and the haunted house was silent around her. She stood in the cool blackness next to the little green alien, shuffling her feet on the floor, waiting for another car to come through.

A pungent, smoky odor rose up from the floor. She clicked on the flashlight and pointed it at her feet. A few cigarette butts were crushed on the floor. She bent down to take a look. There must be a half-dozen of them, all stubbed out on this spot.

So Charlie "goes nuts without a cigarette," eh? Well, that explained why she was so eager to stay back here and leave Hallie out front. She'd have to say something to her. She hated confrontations, but Kyle's description of the ferocious, quick-burning fire that gutted the park was vivid enough to make confronting Charlie important.

Behind her, the axe murderer went into action, chopping off the old lady's head with a blood-curdling scream.

That's odd, Hallie thought. She was alone in here. What had triggered that display?

She stood up and looked down the track toward the axe murderer. She walked down the track, listening to the last echo as the scream died away. She turned her flashlight on and pointed it toward the display. When she got close she could see that it had already wound to a stop and reset itself. The little old lady mannequin sat frozen in her rocking chair, knitting needles poised over an afghan, with the maniacal axe-wielding murderer standing just behind her. She swept her flashlight over both figures, images of mannequins come to life springing to her mind from some late-night horror movie. She saw that the figures were dusty, and rather crudely painted—convincing enough in the dark, but not very lifelike with a bright light trained on them. She could see that Kyle had been right—the axe murderer had a surfer's dark tan and his original Hawaiian shirt had been painted black, but the flowers were still faintly visible through the paint. Not so scary after all.

After examining the electric eye next to the track, and sweeping her flashlight all around her, she shrugged her shoulders. Maybe there were mice in here, she thought. She was sure she'd watched all the cars closely all the way through the ride. No one could be wandering around back here.

She was still shaking her head when she walked back along the track toward the bus crash.

All of a sudden, the giant school bus filled with dummy school children began to shake. She jumped straight up, and her foot landed crookedly on the track. "Ouch!"

She had tripped the electric eye when she walked past. With a roar of screeching tires and children's screams the bus lunged toward the track.

Even though she knew better, she backed out of the way of the bus.

She heard a man's scream of terror and whirled around in time to see the headless horseman raise his skull up high.

Hallie found herself giggling. This was ridiculous. She ignored the screaming skull and began to walk along the track again, watching her feet to avoid tripping any more displays.

She passed the nightgown-clad woman, waiting patiently to fall victim yet again to the leering vampire.

Why do vampires and axe murderers always have women victims? she thought. She was tired of women being victims of men.

The vampire leaned over the woman, biting her neck with a lurid chuckle while she screamed in terror.

"Hey!" Hallie jumped back. What had set that off? She backed away, staring at the vampire, and felt herself come up hard against something. Something alive.

Hallie's scream echoed the nightgown-clad woman's as she felt a pair of powerful arms pull her back and off her feet.

She felt an instinctive terror coupled with disbelief. Attacked by a monster in a haunted house? This couldn't be happening.

But this was no haunted house monster, she realized. This was the human kind, the kind she knew too well. She felt his breath on her neck, could hear him grunt with exertion as he struggled to get control of her flailing arms and legs.

She reached her hands up and scratched at where his face would be. He pushed at her arms with one hand while his other arm gripped her around the waist, knocking the wind out of her.

She fell to the track, gasping for breath. The flashlight dropped to the floor with a clatter.

Her attacker lifted her up to her feet and she took a deep breath, ready to struggle again, but then he looped something around her neck and she felt it tighten, and then there was no thought in her mind but the panicked instinct that she must have air.

She kicked and clawed and scratched and bit at his arm, but he pulled her back hard against his body and gripped tighter to the noose around her neck.

She heard a roar in her ears, and bells ringing, and then the darkness turned to blackness and she could no longer see anything. She heard the roar of King Kong, and the screams of the school children on the bus, but they seemed to be coming from somewhere far away.

With a desperate surge of strength she stomped down on her attacker's foot, and felt the noose loosen around her neck as he muttered a guttural curse; she took a huge gasp of air before the noose tightened once again, and then she could no longer fight, no longer struggle, and she hardly noticed when the vampire bit once more into the maiden's neck and a car came by just in front of her and the kids inside screamed with delight as she collapsed gasping to the floor.

She looked up in time to see a shaft of light as a service door was opened in the wall in front of her. The figure of a man, a black silhouette against the bright sunshine, paused there a moment looking back at her, and then the door closed behind him.

Somehow she found her feet and ran toward the end of the track and out into the light.

"Man, that was great!" one of the kids in the car said to her. "You looked like you were getting choked."

"Look at your neck," another one said.

Hallie felt for her neck. Something was wrapped around her throat. She pulled it away—the tattered rag came loose and dropped to her feet.

"What happened?" Charlie asked, staring at her, eyes wild with fright.

"Someone choked me in the dark," she said, but no sound came out.

Charlie's face was white as she stared at Hallie's throat.

"Better call the police," one of the kids said.

Hallie felt her legs sinking out from under her. A circle of faces stared at her as she sat down abruptly on the track.

All the old memories came back: helplessness, betrayal, fear, overwhelming her. She sank down to the floor and covered her face with her hands, cowering.

"Hallie! Hallie!" Charlie put her arms around her. "It's all right. The police will be here soon. Just lie still." Charlie turned to one of the kids. "See that pay phone over there? Call 911." The kid took off running.

Hallie struggled to sit up.

"Lie still, Hallie. A doctor will be here soon."

"No, no," she said. She brushed Charlie's hands away.

"What do you want?" Charlie asked.

"I want Kyle."

~*~

CHAPTER SIX

Hallie opened her eyes.

The attic bedroom looked the same, the bookshelf with her gray pony on it looked the same, the sun shining through the open window looked the same. If the skin on her neck didn't feel like it was on fire, she might imagine she'd overslept and had been having strange dreams. But she hadn't been dreaming. She touched her neck with a gentle finger. It felt bruised and raw. She lowered her hand to the coverlet.

One other thing in the room was different. In the corner under the low eaves of the attic a man sat slumped in a chair, a phone clutched in his hand like a lifeline. This wasn't the charming prince she'd dreamed about. It wasn't just the gaunt face, gray with fatigue, the dark shadows under the eyes, the exhausted slump of the shoulders that made him different. Even relaxed in sleep his jaw was still tensed, his expression showing none of the warmth she'd grown so used to. The easy assurance that seemed to be the very core of his personality was missing. This man who had joked about the ghosts lurking all around him looked haunted, driven by his ghosts to the very limits of his endurance.