Wild Ride (8 page)

“Mab ain't gonna like this,” Gus said.

He went to the rear of the statue as Ethan grabbed at it to gauge its weight. It was heavy but not impossibly so—thin sheet iron laminated over a wood frame—but it was bulky, too bulky to move by himself.

Gus was doing something on the back. “Damn it.”

Ethan went around and looked over Gus's shoulder. He'd opened a door in the back of the statue and revealed a compartment with a large wooden cup, its heavily carved lid broken in several pieces.

“He wouldn't a gotten out if this lid hadn't been broke,” Gus said, gathering up the pieces.

“Who?”

“I
tole
you. Fufluns. Trickster demon.” Gus shook his head as he stowed the pieces of the lid in his jacket pockets. “Probably got cracked all the times the damn college kids stole the statue, knockin' around inside for forty years. Shoulda checked. Shoulda gotten the keys and checked them all. Shoulda—”

Ethan put his hand on Gus's shoulder, feeling sorry for the poor old guy, bedeviled by his illusions. “It's okay.”

Gus shook his head. “Come on, we gotta get this back to the gate. Mab is gonna have to fix it for Halloween.”

Ethan looked at the twisted statue. There was no way in hell anybody
was fixing that ever again. “Sure,” he said. “But we'll leave it here until we get a hand truck or something.”

Gus nodded. “Yeah. A hand truck. Or maybe a golf cart.”

“You go tell Glenda we found the statue,” Ethan said. “I'll get a cart.”

“Okay,” Gus said, and began to amble toward the back of the park.

And then I'm going to ask some questions
, Ethan thought. Somebody in the park had to know something. And if he stayed away from his mother and Gus, the chances were that whoever he asked wouldn't tell him about demons.

After his morning, that was a plus.

 

B
y midafternoon, Mab had finished getting the booth ready to prime. Along the way, she had tripped the lever accidentally on purpose several times and gleaned much good advice:

SOMEONE CLOSE TO YOU HAS A SECRET TO SHARE
.

IT'S GOING TO GET WORSE BEFORE IT GETS BETTER
.

THAT'S NOT A GOOD LOOK FOR YOU
.

But she hadn't found a way to open the box, and she was growing increasingly obsessed with getting in there to see Vanth's face.

She stood and scrubbed off her hands with a wipe, thinking,
I know you're in there, and I know you're beautiful
. Of course, just the box stripped to its basic iron was so gorgeous that she was tempted to leave it like that, but that wasn't her job. Her job was to put it back, and the way it had been was beautiful, too, those sea-greeny colors—

“You busy?” somebody said from behind her.

“Yes,” Mab said.

The different swirls weren't just each painted different blues and greens; they had different blues and greens within them, she'd have to paint the undercoat and then—

“We found your clown.”

Mab turned around. It was Ethan in camouflage and a lot of dust.
Bad colors
, she thought.

“He was behind the Mermaid Cruise,” Ethan said. “He's pretty beat-up. Did you see who was carrying him when they hit you?”

“No,” Mab said. “By the time I saw him, I was hallucinating. Will you be here long?”

Ethan looked around. “It's pretty empty here now.”

Mab frowned. “It's October. The place is only open for the Dream Cream in the daytime and the Beer Pavilion at night during the week, so we don't charge admission until after four. We're busy on the weekends because we open the park as Screamland Friday and Saturday, but otherwise—don't you know this stuff?”

“I've been gone for a while,” Ethan said, his blank face going blanker. “What I meant was, not a lot of people in the park to go running into you with some clown statue.”

“Not some statue. The FunFun by the gate. And I hallucinated him.”

“The evidence says it was him, not a hallucination.” He rubbed his eyes, and she saw how red they were. “I tracked the clown's footprints. One set. Started at the gate, went through the park to the back of the Mermaid Cruise.”

“He left
footprints
?”

“Have you ever seen anything here that struck you as . . . strange?”

Mab carefully did not look at the Fortune-Telling Machine. “Everything here is strange.” When he looked exasperated, she said, “Look, it's an amusement park. Parks always have an unreal feeling about them because they're not real. Young Fred stands on the stage in a clown outfit and tells terrible jokes that nobody would laugh at, and people laugh because it's an amusement park. Delpha tells fortunes, and people come out of her tent amazed at how good she is because it's an amusement park. They drink awful beer and eat horrible food, and they think it's all fabulous because—”

“It's an amusement park,” Ethan said.

“Although Cindy's ice cream really is fabulous.”

“You don't have to explain the park to me. I grew up here.”

“I know. I graduated with you.”

“Okay,” Ethan said, clearly not remembering her, which was not strange, considering what an outcast she'd been. “Uh, sure.”

“I mostly stayed in the art room and the library. You didn't know me.”

“Okay,” Ethan said. “So you do this for a living, fix amusement parks? Or is this something you're just doing for Ray?”

He sounded suspicious, the way he said “Ray” sounded like “Batty Brannigan” to Mab, and she steeled herself for whatever insult was coming next.

“Because I'd think after growing up around here,” he said, “the last thing you'd want to work on would be an amusement park. Didn't you get sick of this place as a kid?”

“I was never here as a kid,” Mab said. “I wasn't allowed to come anywhere near here. I could hear the music at night during the summer, we didn't live that far away. And I could see the lights from our attic window.” She swallowed, the yearning for lights coming back to her as if thirty years ago were yesterday, and then smiled tightly at him. “I never got to come here, but I did all my college art history work on carnivals and amusement parks and gypsy wagons, and I did my thesis on carnival art, so. . . . no, this is not something I'm doing for Ray.”

“Oh,” Ethan said. “So this means a lot to you, being in Dreamland.”

“No, it's just a job,” Mab lied.

“Right.” Ethan looked uncomfortable, and Mab would have changed the subject, but he beat her to it. “What's it mean to your uncle?”

“What?”

“He's here a lot. What's he want with Dreamland?”

“I have no idea,” Mab said. “Can I go back to work now?”

“Is there something here he wants?” Ethan said, not moving. “Or is he just coming here now because he couldn't when he was a kid?”

“He came all the time when he was a kid,” Mab said. “He had his get-out-of-town epiphany here when he was fifteen.”

“What?” Ethan scowled at her, as if she was being obscure.

“My mother said Ray came here one Halloween night and the next morning, he started doing everything he could to get out of Parkersburg.” Of course, Mab thought, being a Brannigan in Parkersburg was enough reason to do everything you could to get out of Parkersburg.

“Fifteen,” Ethan said. “What happened?”

“I don't know. He left the day after he graduated high school three years later and didn't come back, so I don't know him very well.” The pause after that stretched out, so she added, “I was two when he left. We hadn't bonded.”

“He's back now.”

“Yes, he is. I have to work now.”

“Have you ever seen guys dressed in black running around here at night? Black ops?”

“No. But I wouldn't, not unless they ran me down. I concentrate on my work. Which I should get back to.”

“Somebody with high-tech equipment was in the park last night. That's who—”

“High tech?” Mab said, interested now. “High enough to animate an iron statue?”

“—shot me.”

“Because that would be helpful. Frankly, the hallucination thing seems far-fetched, but I know what I saw, and I couldn't have seen that, so that left me with hallucinations, which is so unlike me, I'm a very calm person, and then you saw clown footprints, but if it's Men in Black animating statues . . .” Then the rest of what he'd said sank in. “You got shot?” She surveyed him doubtfully. “You look okay.”

“It was a strange bullet.” Ethan looked down at the base of the fortune-teller, frowning harder. “Can I borrow that magnet for a second?”

She picked up the magnet from the top of her bag and handed it over. “So you think it was a high-tech thing? Not the FunFun from the gate?”

“No, it was the statue from the gate. We found it behind the Mermaid Cruise.” Ethan dug in his pocket and brought out something that looked like a ring of barbed wire. It got sucked right to the magnet as soon as he brought it within a few inches.

“What's that?”

“The round that hit me. But bullets are made of lead or steel. Not iron.”

“That's a bullet?” Mab said, and then shook her head. “Never mind, I don't care. So you found the gate FunFun. Thank you. Put it back where it belongs and I'll fix it. I need to work on this now.”

“So who have you seen in the park at night?”

Mab sighed. Maybe if she cooperated, he'd leave faster. “Until eleven, anybody in the Beer Pavilion, but they make a beeline from the front gate to the Pavilion and back again, so they're easy to avoid. After eleven, it's
just the people who live here.” When he waited, she elaborated. “Glenda, Gus, and Delpha back in the trailers. Young Fred in the apartment over the paddleboat dock. Cindy and me in her apartment over the Dream Cream.”

“What about Young Fred?”

Mab frowned. She had work to do. “What about him? He lives over the paddleboat dock. He's a terrible comedian. He keeps an eye on the gate for Gus.” She thought about Young Fred. “He's not a happy person. I don't know why he doesn't leave. He doesn't like it here. Not the way the others like it.”

Ethan shook his head. “I saw him last night on the dock after you ran into the clown. He was watching you.”

“He watches everything. He's bored.”

“Who inside the park would betray it?”

“Nobody,” Mab said. “Glenda and Gus and Delpha live for this park. Cindy runs the food concessions, and she plans on staying here forever. She told me that when she dies, she wants her ashes scattered in the Keep lake while the carousel plays ‘What Love Can Do.' ” When Ethan frowned, she added, “It's her favorite song, but it's not going to happen because the carousel doesn't play ‘What Love Can Do.' ”

“Right,” Ethan said. “The others, then, the help, somebody with a grudge—”

“You're wasting my time. The permanent help, the people who would know the park the way you're thinking, they're all local, and the park is what keeps Parkersburg going. My uncle is going to get named mayor for life because he's restoring it. Nobody in town would do anything to jeopardize this park—it's their lifeblood. Your Man in Black is not local.”

“What about—?”

“I don't know anything else,” Mab said, her patience exhausted. “Look, I only have two weeks left to finish this park before the big Halloween weekend, and if some moron is vandalizing it, I'd appreciate it if you'd find him and stop him, but other than that, I don't know what's going on.”

“Okay,” Ethan said. “Keep your eyes open. Tell me if you see anything strange.”

Mab looked back at the Fortune-Telling Machine. “Right.”

Ethan nodded and began to walk off and then turned back to her. “Anybody ever say anything to you about demons in the park?”

“Only my grandmother, who sold anti-demon charms, so she had a financial interest in the rumor. And my mother, who was nuts.”

Ethan nodded. “How about Fufluns? Anybody ever say anything about somebody named Fufluns?”

“No,” Mab said, frowning. “You mean FunFun?”

“No,” Ethan said. “Thanks for your time.”

He walked down the midway toward the back of the park, and Mab tried to put her mind back on her paint.

Demons
.

The iron clown had said, “Mab” as it stretched out its hand to help her up. Maybe that week she'd been staring at it, leaning in close to put the details in the face, maybe something inside it had been staring back. She tried to look inside the box at Vanth, but the glass was too clouded. Maybe it was staring back, too, shuffing through its cards, getting ready to send her another message. Like
STAY AWAY FROM THE CLOWN, HE'S MINE
.

Well, that was crazy.
I am not crazy.

Maybe she should tell somebody the machine was talking to her with cards. Of course, that on top of everything else could get her committed.

“I need help,” she said out loud.

The machine whirred and spit out a card:

FIND THE KEY AND OPEN THE DOOR AND HELP WILL BE AT HAND
.

Mab stared at it for a long time. That could be a fortune. It wasn't a
great
fortune, but it was . . . optimistic. Optimistic was good.

“Okay, then,” she said, and went back to open her can of primer.

 

A
t six thirty, Mab straightened up, pushing at the small of her back to shove her spine into place, and looked at the Fortune-Telling Machine in the light from her miner's hat. She had the entire exterior cleaned, primed, and ready for the undercoat, as long as it didn't rain or drop below fifty degrees the next day. But she still hadn't found a way into the box.

“There's got to be a way,” she told Vanth.