Joyland

Here's how a trip through Horror House ended. On the far side of the Torture Chamber, just when you thought the ride was over and your guard was down, a screaming skeleton (nicknamed Hagar the Horrible by the greenies) came flying at you, seemingly on a collision course with your car. When it pulled away, you saw a stone wall dead ahead. Painted there in fluorescent green was a rotting zombie and a gravestone with END OF THE LINE printed on it. Of course the stone wall split open just in time, but that final double-punch was extremely effective. When the car emerged into the daylight, making a semicircle before going back in through another set of double doors and stopping, even grown men were often screaming their heads off. Those final shrieks (always accompanied by gales of oh-shit-you-got-me laughter) were Horror House's best advertisement.

There were no screams that day. Of course not, because when the double doors banged open, the car that emerged was empty. It rolled through the semicircle, bumped lightly against the next set of double doors, and stopped.

"O-kay," Mike said. It was a whisper so low that I barely heard it, and I'm sure Annie didn't-all her attention had been drawn to the car. The kid was smiling.

"What made it do that?" Annie asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Short-circuit, maybe. Or some kind of power surge." Both of those explanations sounded good, as long as you didn't know about the breakers being off.

I stood on my tiptoes and peered into the stalled car. The first thing I noticed was that the safety bar was up. If Eddie Parks or one of his greenie minions forgot to lower it, the bar was supposed to snap down automatically once the ride was in motion. It was a state-mandated safety feature. The bar being up on this one made a goofy kind of sense, though, since the only rides in the park that had power that morning were the ones Lane and Fred had turned on for Mike.

I spotted something beneath the semicircular seat, something as real as the roses Fred had given Annie, only not red.

It was a blue Alice band.

* * *

We headed back to the van. Milo, once more on best behavior, padded along beside Mike's wheelchair.

"I'll be back as soon as I get them home," I told Fred. "Put in some extra hours."

He shook his head. "You're eighty-six for today. Get to bed early, and be here tomorrow at six. Pack a couple of extra sandwiches, because we'll all be working late. Turns out that storm's moving a little faster than the weather forecasters expected."

Annie looked alarmed. "Should I pack some stuff and take Mike to town, do you think? I'd hate to when he's so tired, but-"

"Check the radio this evening," Fred advised. "If NOAA issues a coastal evacuation order, you'll hear it in plenty of time, but I don't think that'll happen. This is just going to be your basic cap of wind. I'm a little worried about the high rides, that's all-the Thunderball, the Shaker, and the Spin."

"They'll be okay," Lane said. "They stood up to Agnes last year, and that was a bona fide hurricane."

"Does this storm have a name?" Mike asked.

"They're calling it Gilda," Lane said. "But it's no hurricane, just a little old subtropical depression."

Fred said, "Winds are supposed to start picking up around midnight, and the heavy rain'll start an hour or two later. Lane's probably right about the big rides, but it's still going to be a busy day. Have you got a slicker, Dev?"

"Sure."

"You'll want to wear it."

* * *

The weather forecast we heard on WKLM as we left the park eased Annie's mind. The winds generated by Gilda weren't expected to top thirty miles an hour, with occasionally higher gusts. There might be some beach erosion and minor flooding inland, but that was about it. The dj called it "great kite-flying weather," which made us all laugh. We had a history now, and that was nice.

Mike was almost asleep by the time we arrived back at the big Victorian on Beach Row. I lifted him into his wheelchair.

It wasn't much of a chore; I'd put on muscle in the last four months, and with those horrible braces off, he couldn't have weighed seventy pounds. Milo once more paced the chair as I rolled it up the ramp and into the house.

Mike needed the toilet, but when his mother tried to take over the wheelchair handles, Mike asked if I'd do it, instead. I rolled him into the bathroom, helped him to stand, and eased down his elastic-waisted pants while he held onto the grab bars.

"I hate it when she has to help me. I feel like a baby."

Maybe, but he pissed with a healthy kid's vigor. Then, as he leaned forward to push the flush handle, he staggered and almost took a header into the toilet bowl. I had to catch him.

"Thanks, Dev. I already washed my hair once today." That made me laugh, and Mike grinned. "I wish we were going to have a hurricane. That'd be boss."