Scared Stiff (16 page)

“I don't know what's going on, but I think we'd better pack up and get out of here. Those confounded kids have managed to turn everything on, and it covers all the sounds they make. The people in the trailer park will hear the music and investigate—or get the cops to do it—before long. Where's the other boy?”

“In here. Went in in a little boat. And now that you're here to make sure he doesn't escape, I'm going in after him,” Zimmer said in a way that made my goose bumps bigger.

I eased up my grip on the wall and let the gondola float onward, keeping track of where I was by feel as I went around the corner. What if, I thought, when the wall receded and I knew I'd come to the first of the scenes set up to scare paying customers, I were to get out of my boat? Crawl up onto the ledge where the scene was laid out? If only I could think of a way to get the boat out of the way, so he wouldn't know I'd stopped, without having it come out the far end where Packard would see it and realize what I'd done.

There was no way to do that. The tunnel was only wide enough for one gondola at a time. When the one Zimmer was in got to me, it would bump into mine, whether I was in it or not.

Connie knew I'd gone for the cave, I thought. It was where he'd suggested I go, right from the start. Would he be able to think of anything to do to help me? Now that Packard was
no longer guarding the hole through the fence, either Connie or Julie could slip back through it for help.

I'd started to slide away from the left-hand wall, and I leaned over, grabbing whatever I touched, throwing me off balance. I got a better hold and gave a small sigh of relief that I hadn't been pitched into the inky water.

The water. What about the water? How deep was it now? It wasn't the sluggish puddle we'd first found, not even up to Connie's knees, but a flowing stream that might be deep enough to conceal this flat-bottomed gondola if I could sink it.

It would have to be fast. Packard was giving Zimmer last-minute instructions, and he'd be showing up any minute.

Hoping I was guessing right about the depth of the water, and hanging on to an invisible figure on the ledge in front of me, I began to walk up the side of the gondola, forcing it to tip sideways.

The water, surprisingly cold, came over my foot, and then up my leg as I kept pushing the edge of the gondola downward. It only took
seconds for it to fill with water; I scrambled up onto the ledge just before it sank.

I had been hanging on to a pirate's leg. I groped around, orienting myself in the darkness, and figured out where I was: with the pirate who held a lantern in the hook that replaced a missing hand, the one with a parrot on his shoulder.

I crawled around behind the pirate, crouched against the back of the ledge, and waited.

Zimmer didn't have any kind of light. Though I couldn't see him coming, I heard him. He wasn't making any effort to be quiet; in fact, he spoke to me as soon as he rounded the first turn in the tunnel and was in the dark, too.

“You better give up and come out, kid, if you know what's good for you.”

I'd gotten pretty wet at the bottom of the Splasher, and it was always cooler inside the cave than outside because the sun never reached this far. So besides having goose bumps because I was scared, I was actually cold.

My teeth were starting to chatter, and I bit them together so Zimmer wouldn't hear me.

When he spoke right alongside me the hair lifted off my scalp.

For a minute I thought he'd seen me when
he said, “Come on now, don't be an idiot. If you don't give up, we're going to have to be mean to your little brother. You hear him screaming, it'll be too late to save him.”

There was the sound of his gondola bumping the wall right in front of me, and I froze. What if the water wasn't deep enough? What if his boat hung up on the one I'd sunk?

And then he was past, and he was still talking to me, making threats. He hadn't seen me, and his gondola had gone right over the top of the first one.

I just waited, shivering.

I could faintly hear the carousel again, the calliope music. And maybe—was it my imagination?—voices shouting. I waited until I wanted to scream; surely Zimmer had had time to go all the way out the other end.

Finally I couldn't stand it any longer. I edged forward and slid off my ledge into the water, praying it wasn't so deep I'd have to swim. I had a nightmare once about swimming in black water, in the dark.

It was cold, and it came to a little above my waist. I stepped onto the sunken gondola,
nearly tripped getting out of it, and headed toward the entrance, hoping they wouldn't be expecting me to go back the way I'd come.

Dusk had deepened, though it wasn't really dark yet, and there were lights on all over inside the park. I sucked in a breath when I realized Packard was standing on the platform above the loading dock, and he was holding Kenny by the back of the shirt.

Though I couldn't see Kenny's face, he seemed to be all right. For now, but for how long?

I guess Packard thought too much time had passed, too. He was looking toward the opposite opening, and he yelled. “Zimmer! What are you doing? Haven't you found him yet?”

“He ain't in here,” Zimmer called back, and a moment later his gondola drifted out into the open. “I went all the way through, and the kid's not there.”

“That's crazy, he's got to be in there! He took one of those boats and he went in the other end, didn't he? You must have missed him.”

“How could I miss him?” Zimmer was in a
worse humor than before, and he didn't like Packard yelling at him. As soon as I saw him, I'd jerked back inside the opening, but stayed close enough so I could hear. “It's just a tunnel that winds around and comes back out; there's no place else to go.”

“Well, go through again. You must have missed him somehow,” Packard insisted. “Check the walls on both sides, make sure there isn't a side tunnel or something.”

“You go through,” Zimmer said sullenly. “This isn't turning out the way you said. A quarter of the value of that load ain't enough to make it worth my while to go chasing around in a dark hole looking for a bratty kid. Let's take the other one back to Sophie and go to work on 'em.”

I was frozen, inside and out. What should I do now? I wondered desperately.

Packard called his partner a name, and then he said, “All right, you watch this one. I'll go find the other one myself. He
has
to be in there somewhere.”

I heard them moving around on the dock, and I started backing away, then turned and
made my way deep inside again, afraid and not knowing what else to do.

I hadn't thought about the fact that I'd climbed onto the first of the rocky shelves from the edge of the sunken gondola, not from the floor of the artificial stream. It was too high up, and I panicked for a minute until I located the sunken boat again. Even then, it was hard work dragging myself out of the water, and I was afraid Packard would get there before I did.

Packard talked to me, too, in a deadly voice that convinced me he wouldn't hesitate to hurt me—and Kenny and Ma too—if he didn't get what he wanted.

He was coming alongside me, now, and I shivered against the back wall of the ledge, wondering if he'd go on past, too, or if he'd notice that the ledge was there. Once he realized there were a series of ledges, he'd investigate and find me for sure.

What did I do then?

He was talking, and he stopped in the middle of a sentence. He'd realized the upper wall had changed. I forgot to breathe.

And then, expecting to feel his hand on my ankle any minute, I was suddenly blinded when the light came on.

It wasn't a bright light, but the one intended to make this scene look spooky, and it was more of a surprise to Packard than it was to me.

I don't know where I got the nerve to throw all my weight behind the pirate and shove him forward, with the hooked hand and its lantern plunging right into Packard's face.

A second later the lights went out and it was dark again. I knew where I was, and I stayed there, but Packard was cursing and thrashing around. From the sounds he made, I guessed he'd fallen into the bottom of the boat, maybe cracking his head.

By the time he'd recovered, the gondola had drifted past me. Zimmer started yelling from outside.

“What's going on? Packard? What happened?”

The tunnel curved, so when the lights came on at the next scene I could barely tell it except that Packard started swearing again. I don't
suppose he was scared, once he realized what was happening, but he'd been startled enough the first time to allow himself to be swept on past me.

Although the tunnel was fairly long, it curved back on itself in a tight pattern; it was easy to hear what was happening beyond the spot where I was because the walls weren't real rock and nothing was very far away.

When the crazy laughter began, it echoed through the cavern. After it finally died away, Zimmer demanded, “What's going on? What was that?” He sounded quite unnerved.

“It's a fool tourist-trap fun house,” Packard yelled, startlingly near. “I'll be out in a minute. This can't last much longer.”

“You find the kid?”

“Not yet. But I will.”

I was stunned. Hadn't he seen me when the light exposed the pirate I'd shoved at him? Maybe not. He'd been taken off guard, and the light had only been on for a matter of seconds. Had he gotten such a poor look at me that he'd taken me for part of the pirate scene?

The laughter, though, wasn't part of the
stuff programmed to scare the customers. Connie was here somewhere. I'd know that fake laugh anywhere. It had sure scared
me
the first time I heard it.

I didn't know whether to stay on my ledge or get back in the water and return to the mouth of the cave. Once Packard was outside, if they didn't yell, I might not know what they were saying, and I decided I needed to hear them. So I slid into the water again. I was already wet, and this time it didn't feel quite so cold.

I got to the entrance about the same time Packard came out the exit ten yards away.

“There has to be another way out of here,” he declared angrily as his gondola bumped the dock. “The kid got away somehow.”

I held my breath. Would they leave if they thought that?

Without warning, every light in the park went out and all the music stopped.

I knew it had to be Connie or Julie who'd thrown the switch, but what for? Grown men wouldn't be scared of the dark, would they? They might be confused, but it wasn't really dark enough to frighten an adult.

The voice that came over a loudspeaker was familiar, but it had a ring of authority that was new.

“This is the police. You are surrounded. Surrender your hostages and come out with your hands up. Walk to the center of the park, near the carousel. I repeat, with your hands up. You have three minutes. I repeat, you are surrounded by armed police officers.”

For a moment there was no reaction from the two men. Then Zimmer shoved Kenny to one side and started up the steps from the dock. “I'm getting out of here. I don't know what's going on, but I don't care anymore. I'm leaving.”

“That's not the cops,” Packard snarled. “It's those kids, they've got hold of a microphone somewhere!”

“I don't care who it is. I've had it,” Zimmer said, and then he was gone.

Packard hadn't given up yet. I heard Kenny give a protesting cry when Packard grabbed his arm and dragged him away from the entrance to the Pirate's Cave. By then no one was paying any attention to where I was.
Packard didn't even look back when I followed him up and out onto the grounds.

The man was walking fast, dragging Kenny, but he wasn't running. I couldn't let him take Kenny, I thought, and I
did
run, though I was afraid he'd hear me, even on the grass.

Packard was sticking to the path, heading toward the place he'd come into the park after us. I didn't watch where I was going, and I tripped over one of the good-sized rocks that outlined the pathway.

I don't even remember thinking about it. I bent, picked up one of the stones, about the size of the one I'd thrown through the window of the castle-office, and hurled it.

Pa and I used to play catch in the park, and he said I had a pretty good arm for a skinny kid. I put everything I had behind it.

The rock hit Packard in the back.

I heard the air go out of him, and he let go of Kenny and started to turn around.

“Run, Kenny!” I yelled, but it was already too late. Packard had already grabbed him again.

I found another rock, but my aim wasn't
quite as good this time—it was different with the man facing me, and so close—but it clipped his cheek and he jerked.

And then the lights came on again, though there was no music, and this time the voice that spoke didn't sound like Connie's version of the The Insane Dr. Murder.

“This is the police. Put your hands up and stand where you are.”

For a minute I thought he was going to obey. Kenny pulled against him, and then Packard made up his mind. He jerked Kenny right off his feet, so Kenny yelped before he got scooped up and half carried, half dragged along with Packard.

I just stood there, watching them disappear beyond the Wild West Village Saloon, feeling helpless.

The police were really there, though. That wasn't Connie repeating orders over a bullhorn, it was real cops. I ran toward the hole in the fence, hoping that Packard wouldn't find the way out through the drainpipe. The cops would catch him and make him give up Kenny, wouldn't they?

Connie said later he was real disappointed that the cops didn't use sirens, but of course they were coming because of what Uncle Henry had told them, not because they knew what was happening to us.

The movable boards had been torn out of the fence by the time I got there, making more room for bigger people to go through, and there was a crowd on the other side.