Croaked (4 page)

***

Tanna had a plan, and it involved me. The next Monday I called Alan Forbeck with an unusual request. He wasn’t in favor of it at first, but I talked him into it. He made some calls, and eventually worked out the details. I was granted a private interview with Titus Barstow at his Nashville office.

Barstow’s secretary, a beautiful young Southern belle-type who probably watched “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” to perfect her smirking disdain, looked me over. I’d never impressed a woman with my looks, and she was no exception. Tanna, however, was another story. She wore a figure-accenting blue sundress, and the round sunglasses that were a concession to her daytime blindness. The jealousy was plain in the secretary’s sneer.

“Y’all have an appointment?” she asked.

“We do,” I said. “Ry Tully.”

She checked her computer screen, then picked up the phone. “Mr. Barstow, your eleven o’clock is here.” She smiled coldly at us. “Y’all can go right in.”

Barstow’s sun-filled office was wallpapered with framed 8 X 10 glossies showing him with celebrities, mostly country music stars and Republican politicians, all photographed beneath the sign at the Redneck Riviera’s main entrance. He had the exact same expression in each one, a kind of plastered smile that didn’t hide the haunted circles under his eyes. I’d missed that in our first encounter, maybe because the threat of legal action always scares the bejeezus out of me.

I could tell Tanna’s presence surprised him. “Mr. Tully, it’s very nice to see you. Is this Mrs. Tully?”

Tanna extended her hand. “Dr. Tanna Tully, Mr. Barstow. I’m on the faculty at West Tennessee University.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he said. “One of my sons went to band camp at WesTN. He’s an investment banker now.”

“Then the camp didn’t help,” she said, deadpan.

I spoke up. “I appreciate this opportunity to clear up our misunderstanding. And I also appreciate your agreeing to meet without lawyers present.”

“I’m almost an old man,” Barstow said with that forced grin. “I remember a time when you didn’t need a lawyer every five minutes.”

We all laughed. None of us meant it.

“Mr. Barstow,” Tanna said, “I’m actually the reason we’re here. I asked Ry to arrange this meeting because I didn’t think you’d agree to see just me.”

Again the fake smile. I noticed how the lines of his face followed that grimace exactly. How many years had he gone without really smiling? “Why, I’ve never turned down a meeting with a lovely young lady,” Barstow said. “What can I do for you?”

“We need to talk about Tatagliani’s Spiral,” Tanna said.

She got him. He did his best to hide it, but I saw him start, and within moments sweat appeared around his hairline. Hot anger boiled in me as I remembered his righteous indignation at my office.

“Is that a dessert?” he asked with a chuckle that came out more like a nervous wheeze.

Tanna smiled. “Don’t. There’s no point. I know you know exactly what the Descent is, and you suspect what truly happened to that boy who vanished.  I need two answers from you, one favor, and then we’ll go. No press, no legal action.”

He looked at me. “You’re the press.”

“Not on this one,” I said. “It’s all off the record.”

“You should be paying more attention to me,” Tanna said. “My specialty is parapsychology, and I’m probably the only person in the world with the skills to help you who won’t ask for money or publicity.”

“I don’t know what you’re--”

“
Stop it
,” Tanna said. “Did you know this ride was built in this pattern before you opened it to the public?”

Barstow licked his lips. “No.”

“But you found out. And you changed it.”

He spoke with the relief of someone glad to unburden himself. “Yes. The designer was one of those California software whiz kids. He thought it would be a joke to create a ride based on that pattern, or at least that’s what he said when I confronted him with it.” Barstow looked at me. “It was your story in the paper, Mr. Tully, that prompted us to re-evaluate the Descent. And of course bring legal action against the designer.”

“I’d like to talk to him,” Tanna said.

“I’m sorry. I believe the young man committed suicide soon after we started proceedings against him.”

Experience taught me that the change in Tanna’s body language meant she was getting angry. I stood ready to intervene in case she went after him physically. “But you didn’t change the ride’s design right away, did you?”

“Mrs. Tully, you--”

“
Doctor
Tully,” she corrected sternly.

“Dr. Tully, this is a multi-million dollar operation. We changed it as soon as the maintenance schedule permitted.”

“Which was after Jere Rundle disappeared.”

He nodded slowly.

Tanna stepped closer, fists clenched, but she channeled all the fury into her voice. “There is indeed a Hell, Mr. Barlow. It’s for people who violate their own beliefs out of selfishness. It doesn’t matter if you’re Buddhist, or Hindi, or even atheist. If you ignore your own morality just for personal gain, that’s a mortal sin. And you go to Hell.” She paused. “And that’s where you sent that boy, that
child
. Because of money. You sent innocent people in and out of the gates of hell, and the spirits there eventually noticed. And decided to play.”

“That’s...that’s insane,” Barlow said weakly. He sat on the edge of his desk, and the wood creaked under his weight. Or maybe it was just his rusty conscience.

“Yes,” Tanna agreed. “But you and I know it’s true, and we have the only opinions that matter right now. I said I needed a favor. I want you to put the ride back like it was. Recreate Tatigliani’s Spiral. And I want to ride it.”

“But--”

“I’m going in after him,” Tanna said. “Believe me, I’m the only person you know who might be able to do it. And for the sake of your eternal soul, Mr. Barstow, you better do all you can to help me, and then pray to whoever you think is listening that I pull it off.”

***

Midnight the next night; the witching hour, and believe me, I didn’t miss the irony. It had taken that long for Barstow to get the tracks returned to their original position. The adjustment had been a minor one, just a change in the angle of one turn, but as with anything involving heavy equipment, it had to be done carefully.

Barstow himself stood at the controls to operate the Descent, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows and his tie loosened. Everyone else had gone, and the park’s security guards knew only that the boss was entertaining guests.

Tanna sat in the first car. She wore a black t-shirt and jeans, carried my biggest Case knife in her pocket, and wore a selection of small charms around her neck. The car’s safety devices had been disabled so that she could leave if needed. It also meant she could easily fall out on one of the ride’s sharp turns.

“I’m not really in favor of this, you know,” I said.

She smiled wryly. “Yeah, I’ve caught on to that.”

“I think I should come with you.”

“You’d follow me through the gates of hell?”

“Why not? I’ve already spent the holidays with your parents, how much worse can it be?”

“I can’t protect you,” she said seriously, “only myself, and hopefully Jere, if I find him. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I understand it intellectually, but my male ego is having a hard time with it.”

She winked. “Your male ego has nothing to worry about.”

We kissed, long and a bit desperate, and then I signaled Barstow that Tanna was ready. He pushed some buttons, and the four-car train moved toward the tunnel that led into the ride itself. The music began as well, the bass so loud I felt it in my chest. “Do we need that?” I shouted.

“A little problem with the cut-off switch,” Barstow called back. Sorry!”

Tanna flashed an “OK” sign, but I thought,
Oh, great
. What other “little problems” might strike?

It normally took thirteen minutes for the car to return to the starting position. For the first ten or eleven, nothing seemed unusual. Then I felt a deep, regular tremor through the floor, different from the music’s beat. I looked over at Barstow.

He checked the control panel. “Something’s holding up the car. The motors are straining.”

“Where?”

“Near the final turn.”

My heart jumped up my throat. “Can we get there from here?”

Barstow pointed toward a walkway that paralleled the track. Before he could say anything I jumped down onto the walkway and ran toward the black arch where the car should have emerged.

This last section of tunnel brought passengers through a moment of pitch darkness before they emerged into the brightly-lit exit/entry area. I stumbled along, pummeled by techno, and finally emerged into the building’s great open dome.

The ride was in full progress. Lights and lasers streaked through the dry ice mist, and the black-painted walls shimmered with tiny pinpoint bulbs. The track spiraled around the walls above me like some Salvador Dali catwalk, held in position by chains and thick supports. I heard the shriek of twisting metal, followed by a weird clacking sound.

I looked up.

Tanna’s train was stopped fifteen feet above me, in the last turn. I didn’t see her, but something as large as the car itself, composed of straight lines and sharp angles, seemed to be wrapped around the last car in line. I thought at first part of the support scaffold had collapsed, but as my eyes adjusted further I saw it more clearly. And wished I hadn’t.

Clutching the rear of the car was a gigantic, blackened and deformed human skeleton.

As I watched, the great eyeless skull turned and looked down straight at me. When it moved, its joints all loudly popped.

I started climbing the service ladder toward the car, and yelled, “Tanna!” over the music.

Her face appeared at the front of the car. “Ry!” she yelled. “Get out of here!”

I ignored that, and continued climbing. This close, the skeleton looked as big as King Kong. Was it part of the ride that had malfunctioned like the music, I wondered? It certainly fit with the motif. Then one giant hand rose and formed a fist.

Tanna pushed a limp human form out the front of the car onto the track. The fist plunged toward her just as she got him over the edge, and she had an instant to jump aside. The fist bent the metal as if it were aluminum foil. Then the hand groped past her, reaching for the one she’d saved.

As Tanna stabbed the bony forearm with my knife, I rushed forward and grabbed the boy by one arm and his hair. He was slick with something, and naked. I pulled him toward me, just as the big skeleton fingers closed over the spot where he’d fallen.

“Ry, look out!” Tanna screamed. Too late.

The skeleton’s hand closed around my waist. Okay, it wasn’t as big as King Kong, but it was plenty big enough to lift me and damn near crush the life out of me. I let go of the boy, wished I had the breath to scream, and fought to stay conscious.

I felt myself yanked backwards, then a blast of intense heat washed over me. The smell of sulphur filled my lungs. I couldn’t see, but I heard a roaring sound that, a moment later, resolved itself into millions of individual screaming voices. Over them I heard Tanna call my name, impossibly distant.

A voice much closer spoke to me then, breathing the words in my ear like some lover’s whisper. I recognized it from nightmares of childhood that still troubled me as an adult. I knew who it was. And it knew me.

Hello, son
, my dad’s voice said.
You got any vodka? I’d give my soul for a drink right now, I tell you what.

I screamed. Then I saw spots.

But not because I was being crushed. They were spots of light, yellowish-green, spots I immediately recognized. Fireflies.

They surrounded me in a blanket of pulsing, comforting light. The horrible pressure around my torso vanished, and I fell, still screaming, gathering speed each moment. I had time to reflect that the impact was really going to hurt.

It did.

I lay across the tracks gasping and coughing. I opened my eyes and saw Tanna’s dirt-streaked face as she bent over me.

I choked out, “I’ll never tell...anybody to...go to hell...again.”

“Thank the Goddess,” she cried with relief, and kissed me. “You dumb redneck bastard, I told you I couldn’t protect you.”

“I think I broke my arm,” I croaked.

“Well, at least you can
walk, I can’t carry you both.”

I held my injured arm to my stomach and got to my feet, while Tanna lifted Jere fireman-style. We were almost to the exit when I sniffed and said, “Hey, do you smell smoke? Normal smoke?”

***

The Descent burned to the ground that night, with Titus Barstow inside it. Because of that, it was decided not to rebuild the thing, and a “meditation garden” in his honor was erected on the spot. Rumors that he’d kidnapped the boy we found and kept him as a sex slave made the rounds, but were never substantiated.