Welcome to the Dark House (19 page)

I
T TAKES ME TWO LOOPS
around the park before I finally find my ride. It’s called Nightmare Alley, which
makes perfect sense, seeing as part of my childhood nightmares involved walking down
a long dark alleyway in the middle of the night, with Justin Blake’s characters stalking
after me.

The ride itself appears to be inside a building of sorts. Four giant walls have been
erected, most likely to conceal what lurks behind them. I go inside and it’s like
I’ve died and gone to nightmare heaven. I’m in an entryway with walls that are at
least ten feet high. They’re decorated with illustrated murals of some of Blake’s
most well-known characters: the Nightmare Elf holding his sack of tricks; Lizzy Greer
pushing a shopping cart and swinging her bloodstained ax; Little Sally Jacobs with
the skeleton keys punctured through her eyes; and Sidney Scarcella from
Hotel 9
, serving a platter full of victims’ ears—to name just a few. Word bubbles blow out
each of their mouths: “If you dare.” “Come play with me.” “Ready to check in?” They
urge me farther inside.

There’s a bright red door in front of me. It’s shaped like the silhouette of the Dark
House. I open it, and the Nightmare Elf’s mischievous giggle greets me.

It’s dim inside. There are streetlights strategically placed down the long narrow
alleyway—just far enough away from one another to keep the creepy quotient high. Bordering
the alley are buildings and shops. I can tell they’re all movie-set fake, assembled
for the sole purpose of my nightmare, which makes this whole experience even more
incredible than it is. I mean, if it wasn’t cool enough that Justin Blake created
this “ride,” he created it just
for me
.

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.