Medusa (15 page)

They would need to be from far away, and they should just happen in. That way, no one would know where they had gone off to, until it was too late. It seemed like every week or two such people happened along. It was Louisiana, after all. Plenty of people came down just to get away. And get away is exactly what some of them did, in fact. Forever.

Chapter 18

Vacation was something that James Prescott always looked forward to with some ambivalence. He liked getting out of the office and out from under the pressure of responsibility that at times was crushing. He was Operations Manager for a media firm in Great Falls, Virginia. Business was pretty hectic throughout the year, and sometimes he wondered what the long-term health effects of such prolonged stress was going to be. Retirement was approaching, and he wanted to be healthy enough to enjoy it.
 

Last year, business had been so good that he had skipped vacation altogether. Earlier this year, his doctor had told him he had borderline hypertension. She had also informed him that his cholesterol and triglycerides were off the charts. He was eating all wrong, and not getting enough sleep, or exercise. James Prescott had been a college track star, and had always prided himself on his youthful looks. But now he was pushing fifty, a husband and father of three, and time was having its way with him.
 

This year, Angela, his wife of sixteen years, had insisted there would be no excuses; the entire family would load up and hit the road. Angela had, in previous years, planned vacation schedules that were so hectic they scarcely felt like vacations. They were, instead, excursions that typically left everyone tired, rather than refreshed, upon their return home and school and work.
 

Instead of what they had done in previous years, this year, they had all opted for a laid-back, meandering plan, with fewer fixed activities, just a do-what-feels-good approach. Perhaps part of this was Angela deferring to her spouse’s perceived ill health. Or maybe time was having its way with her, too.
 

So, one sunny summer day, the Prescott Family loaded up their SUV, and headed south, down toward the Gulf of Mexico, thinking of beaches and blue water, of crawfish and oysters and pirates and palm trees. James Prescott left loads of instructions—too many instructions—for his office manager, who would fill in for him until he got back. She was a young woman, four or five years out of college, competent as all get out, but James Prescott was the kind of guy who liked to know what was going on in his business at all times.
 

The Suburban was a bright yellow monster that he’d let his kids pick out when he had gone car-shopping the year before. The kids called it “Big Bird.” James Prescott was a little on the doting side, he knew. He also had a dry sense of humor and enjoyed the looks that the big yellow SUV drew in his staid neighborhood. Regardless of its appearance, though, Big Bird was just the vehicle for a family excursion.
 

At 11:00 a.m., he finally managed to let go of business, and, turning off his cell phone with a rueful expression, got the whole family loaded into Big Bird: snacks, cooler, wet wipes, GPS, DVDs, and suitcases. And finally his family: Angela, his wife; Tina, their fifteen-year-old daughter; Conrad, his eleven-year-old son; and Jana, their eight-year-old daughter. They were situated and ready to go around noon. The house keys were handed over to Angela’s kid sister, Marilyn by 12:30 p.m. She would house-sit for them until their return. He left clear instructions for Marilyn: No big parties, and no diving in the pool, in the event these forbidden parties actually somehow occurred, anyway.
 

Everyone was kissed and hugged goodbye by one-thirty. By 2:00 p.m. Big Bird and the Prescott family were on the Interstate at last, headed happily south. At 3:46 p.m., James Prescott was pulled over by a Virginia Highway Patrolman, and given a verbal warning, as the officer had observed him driving erratically. Mr. Prescott had explained to the officer that he swerved due to the fact he was changing the movie in the overhead DVD player for his teenaged daughter. The officer admonished Mr. Prescott to be more careful, let his daughter change her own DVDs, and told the Prescotts he hoped they had a happy and safe vacation.
 

By 4:15 p.m., the Prescotts were back on their way to the Gulf Coast, and the bliss of a well-deserved family vacation.
 

No one ever saw them again.

* * *

THE HOUSE OF RISING FUN
 

COME ON IN AND LAUGH TILL YOU SCREAM!
 

I read the sign again and scratched my head. It was a fun-house, all right, but for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine bringing kids out here; the place was just too damned spooky. The weathered sign proclaimed the place was “The House of Rising Fun.” I winced at the bad pun on the old song title. “Come on in and Laugh till you Scream!”
 

The huge old house was once a plantation home, and it was clear that it had known several periods of use and neglect. The current period was strictly neglect, and perhaps the final one. Everywhere weathered wood showed through multiple layers of peeling paint, and boards canted and warped away from the outer walls.
 

They’re waiting for you
, the little voice in my head told me. The weight of the .45 in its holster sling tugged at my shoulder as I climbed the stairs. The door was open, a black rectangle in the glaring heat. I stepped over the threshold and realized that I was blind as a bat. I blinked rapidly, trying to adjust my eyes to the darker interior. I was beginning to see dimly when I heard a creak in the back of the big room, and heavy footsteps going away from me.
 

Fain? I pulled the .45 out now and paused. Give it a second. Still can’t see very well. I stepped cautiously into the room and my eyes were coming into focus now. I could see that the room was full of mannequins, dressed as clowns, dripping with Mardis Gras beads and medallions. Nice. Nice and creepy.
 

I stepped forward into the room and slowly walked through the weird, frozen forms that bent toward me, grinning and leering in their garish clothing and painted-on smiles.
Don’t go in there don’t go in there don’t go in there
, the little voice in my head was fairly screaming, but into that dark place I did go, because somewhere, perhaps close by, was Danielle LeGrandville, dead or alive, and Samson Fain—and with him the answers to a million questions that would give some kind of peace to others who had lost their daughters to that careful, quiet, monstrous man.
 

I walked warily into the front room, past the frozen leering figures of clowns that set my spine tingling, and through the dusty front room and into the hallway beyond. I stepped into the hall and saw that it led to another room, down at the end. I walked stealthily toward that, and then I was falling.
 

I found myself sliding down a metal chute for a short distance. I judged it to be about twenty feet, more or less straight down. I landed rather solidly on a wooden floor. No real funhouse would ever install a trap that was as potentially dangerous as a metal chute that led down to a dark room. I considered the implications of the trap I’d just fallen into. Obviously, the only fun being had out on Patreaux Island was the kind no sane person would enjoy.
 

It was quite dark. I had held onto my .45 on the way down, and I holstered it now, rather than chance losing it in the darkness.
 

I stepped back warily and almost tripped over something. I heard a door slam and once again heard heavy footsteps moving away from me. I tried to move in the directions of the footsteps and found myself running straight into a wall.
 

How do I get out of this maze? And suddenly it came back to me. I remembered Tiller’s advice. “Put a hand on the wall and go in either direction, left or right. Never lose contact.”
 

It was worth a try. I put my hand on the wall and chose right for my direction. I stepped cautiously, keeping to the right, my feet never rising too high from the floor, searching with my leading foot for anything that I could possibly trip over. After several steps my foot bumped against something and I realized it was a set of stairs. I felt my way around to the front step with infinite care, and slowly, one step at a time, mounted the stairs until my outstretched hand found a door handle.
 

Bingo.
 

“Tiller, you are the man,” I whispered into the darkness.
 

I grasped the knob and turned with what seemed to me infinite slowness, well aware that whoever had rushed past me in the darkness might very well be lying in wait on the other side. I turned the knob slowly, and threw open the door. I went through the doorway and found myself in a hallway, dark but not completely so. There was a high window in the facing wall and moonlight found its way in, leaving everything with a thin silver illumination. After the Stygian darkness of the basement room, I could see very well, even in that minimal light.
 

I moved slowly up the hallway, sensing that no one was there. Who could have been in the room with me, and why? It suddenly occurred to me that whoever had passed through the room was moving rather quickly—they knew the room well enough to negotiate it, even in complete darkness. It was also possible that they hadn’t even realized that I was there in the dark room with them.
 

I moved through another room and frowned when I realized there was no door to the outside. I seemed to be moving deeper into the structure, which seemed dauntingly large, larger than it had seemed from the outside, by far. Perhaps I was moving deeper underground? It was hard to tell.
 

Misdirection, I thought to myself with a bitter smile. This was, after all, an old funhouse. I was probably walking around in circles without realizing it. Misdirection. I was really beginning to hate that word.
 

Abruptly I came to another door, and opened it. I was suddenly in open air, standing in front of a platform that led out onto a raised catwalk, twenty feet above the ground. Another door lay across the expanse of the catwalk, perhaps thirty feet away.
 

I moved cautiously out onto the catwalk. It was as dilapidated as the rest of the old house, and it creaked beneath my weight. Cool wind touched my face, and the spicy smell of the bayou was in my nose with every breath that I took. It was dark out there, too, as dark as the front room had been when I had first made my entrance from the dying sunlight earlier in the day. Night had fallen now, and stars wheeled above in the firmament, and twinkled over the shoulders of the faraway trees. Animals made low sounds that came faintly to me through the great Louisiana night. The rest was silence.

Chapter 19

The Prescott Family had been tired after their long night of driving, and so James had paid cash and stayed in an out-of-­the-way place, which was the first hotel that they happened upon after exhaustion set in. An old, stately place, it wasn’t really too bad, but no one had cared, anyway. Their getting-away day had started off way behind schedule, because extracting themselves from their busy routines had been so difficult.
 

They had awakened the next morning, refreshed and excited. James had headed toward New Orleans via a scenic back way, an old county road that wound past flooded fields that served dual purposes as both rice paddies and crawfish farms. The kids had gotten increasingly enthused with the picturesque sights: old, dilapidated barns sliding into ruin, grand white antebellum homes that stood out like castles in their green surroundings; terns, egrets, and gulls swooping over the vast swamps and shoreline beaches that were always on the left-hand side of the quaint two-lane highway.
 

Following his children’s pleadings, James Prescott decided to put off going into the city, just yet. Everyone was enjoying the sightseeing, himself included. The pace was so far removed from that of their everyday lives, it was positively blissful. On impulse, upon coming to a rural crossroads, he turned the yellow suburban down another sleepy country road, and away from New Orleans. The city would wait, for now. They were having fun. Besides, that’s what vacation is all about, he reasoned.
 

They drove out past a grove where row upon row of tiny Christmas trees were growing, awaiting their fates and the coming of winter. James Prescott wondered if it snowed here. Probably not. Still, families had to have Christmas, wherever they were. He smiled and glanced at Tina, his fifteen-year-old daughter, who sat with her big blue eyes glued to the window, drinking in the greenery. His kids were far too urbanized, he reflected. He decided to get them out to the country more.
 

Presently Conrad started shouting and pointing excitedly. James slowed the Suburban and read the sign that Conrad was taking such an interest in:
 

THE HOUSE OF RISING FUN
 

COME ON IN AND LAUGH TILL YOU SCREAM!
 

Below were listed the hours of operation. According to the sign, the place was open for business.
 

“Oh, please dad, let’s go in!”
 

Angela looked up from a travel guide she’d been immersed in. “Ooh, a funhouse. Interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever been to one of those.”