Croaked Page 3

  And of course, immediately the radio greeted us with Three Dog Night singing, “Jeremiah was a--”

  Well. You know.

  ~III~

  THE DESCENT

  A copy of my own newspaper smacked onto my desk. A jowly man in an expensive suit glowered down at me.

  “Can I help you?” I asked.

  “Are you the editor?”

  The nameplate on my desk clearly established this. “Yes, I’m Ry Tully,” I said as I stood. He didn’t offer his hand, and neither did I.

  “I’m Titus Barstow, the director of the Redneck Riviera,” he snapped. “What do you think you’re trying to do?”

  I stared blankly. I was good at that.

  “Your story on the Descent ride,” he went on. “Flying demons, screaming skeletons. What kind of theme park do you think I run?”

  Now I blinked. “The Descent?”

  “We have nothing sacrilegious at the Redneck Riviera,” Barstow said. “I’m a Christian, a father, and a Baptist lay minister, and I would never condone that sort of thing. We run a family theme park, and we’re proud of that.”

  “But...I talked to people when they came out,” I said weakly. “That’s what they said.”

  “So you didn’t take the ride yourself, you just relied on hearsay? That may fly in blue states, Mr. Tully, but this is Tennessee, and we don’t accept that. Not at all!”

  He stomped out in a cloud of legal threats, leaving me open-mouthed and astounded. Two seconds after the door closed behind him, I was on the phone to our lawyer.

  ***

  “Do you have your notes from the kids you interviewed?” Alan Forbeck asked after I described the encounter. We were in his office, four doors down from my own.

  “I’ve got the audio file, yes. I mean, dang, this was just the opening of some new ride. I went for Tanna’s sake, she wanted to hit the Hangman rollercoaster.”

  “And why didn’t you ride the Descent?”

  “They didn’t give me a free pass, and I’ll be damned if I was going to stand in line for an hour just to take some five-minute haunted house ride.”

  Alan picked up the brochure and looked at it. “Is that what it is?”

  “That’s what the kids I talked to said it was. I don’t know what the hell Barstow thinks it is.”

  “Man, I haven’t been to the Redneck Riviera since I was a kid and my church youth group went. I’m surprised they haven’t turned it into a shopping mall.”

  “I guess it’ll stick around as long as there are church youth groups willing to make the drive to Nashville.”

  He unfolded the brochure. “According to this flyer, it’s ‘a ride through a futuristic nightmare’.”

  “Doesn’t that sound like a haunted house ride to you?”

  “Maybe. If they pursue it, though, they’ll just end up looking silly.”

  “Like that’s ever stopped anybody,” I said.

  ***

  Nothing came of Barstow’s threat, but something happened two weeks later that reminded me of the encounter.

  The wire service put out a story from its Nashville bureau. A fourteen year old boy named Jere Rundle disappeared somewhere inside the Descent. He went in with three friends, and when the car returned to the start, he was gone. The Descent building and the Redneck Riviera grounds were thoroughly searched. They found nothing.

  The Descent was closed while the safety measures were revamped. After all, if he’d been able to voluntarily leave the moving car, someone could just as easily fall out. The general consensus was that the boy had run away from home; nothing further was heard from him.

  Until the next full moon. And from the least likely source.

  ***

  That June, the full moon was on a night that threatened to be stormy, so Tanna’s coven, the Circle of Evening Light, met indoors at our house, specifically in her study. We had hardwood floors, and Tanna painted a permanent circle in the middle of the room. A small table served as the altar, and wax stained the floor at the four cardinal points from years of candles.

  Tanna’s coven was still small that year. She, as the high priestess, was picky about who she invited into her circle. There were three other women and a man, none of whom shared either Tanna’s third-degree rank or experience. In fact, most of them were new to the Craft, learning it under her tutelage.

  Most senior was Andrea Lewis, another professor at West Tennessee University. She taught, predictably enough, Woman’s Studies, and could be counted on to turn any conversation to feminism. Yet she also spent three weeks escorting young women into a clinic past screaming and ranting protestors, at a time when doctors who performed abortions were being shot and killed. That sort of bravery made the pedantry easier to take.

  Sara Brine was a graduate student in comparative religion, studying some eclectic mix of archaeology and parapsychology. She was gay, and tended to be quiet and observant, two qualities I also cultivated. She missed very little, and often had the most interesting comments.

  The youngest woman was Jo Slade. She was still in high school, but her parents, who had grown up on a commune, whole-heartedly supported her interest in Paganism and Wicca. She had the zeal of a convert and the beauty of a potential bikini model.

  The only male was Wade Stevens. He was one of those people you’d never expect to be Pagan: he attended West Tennessee University (called “WesTN” for short) on a tennis scholarship, and looked every inch the East Coast scion of wealthy bankers that he was. He sometimes acted as Tanna’s ritual priest, and was preparing to take his own second degree.

  I was not involved in the coven at all. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in the things Tanna worshipped, it was simply that I couldn’t step out of my own cynicism about the world. Wiccans and Pagans were, if nothing else, idealists, and I both envied and pitied them that.

  So while the coven was meeting in her study, I sat in the living room surfing the net on my iPad. My job was ostensibly Guardian of the Circle, which meant protecting the coven with my life if necessary. Usually my sobriety wasn’t even necessary, which is why I sipped my third beer of the night.

  Then the study door flew open, slammed against the wall and Tanna called, “Ry, come here!”

  She’d gone to the trouble to cut herself an exit from the circle’s energy, so I knew this was important. She grabbed my hand and pulled me into her study, up to the edge of the circle; I knew better than to cross the line.

  Although the lights were out, I had no trouble seeing. Dozens of fireflies, admitted through the two wide-open windows, lit the room. They perched on every available wooden surface, avoiding anything inorganic, and pulsed in unison like a slow strobe. Candles flickered in the pre-storm wind gusting from outside.

  It was also very warm and humid in the study. We had air conditioning in the rest of the house, but not here. It wasn’t a problem, because Tanna’s coven met “skyclad,” i.e., naked. That could be a little disconcerting, especially since they were mostly female, but I’d gotten as used to it as I was likely to. That meant I knew where to direct my gaze to avoid either embarrassment or a slap.

  It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim, fluctuating light. At first I couldn’t make out anything unusual. Then, like one of those 3D images that suddenly resolves when you’ve stared long enough, I saw a smoky shape that I thought at first literally was smoke. It didn’t billow or change direction like the smoke from the candles.

  It was a person. A ghost.

  The shape was masculine, and youthfully lean. This cloud-man lay on his side, his back to us, one hand reaching out toward the altar.

  “You see it?” Tanna said softly.

  “Yeah,” I said, matching her tone. The skin on my neck and arms was pebbled with goose bumps. “So you’re conjuring ghosts?”

  “No, it’s nothing we did. It came to us, on its own.”

  “But is it a ghost?”

  “Maybe. Maybe an astral body from someone living. I’m going to try to talk t
o it. Everyone else is concentrating on holding the circle, so I want you to be my observer.”

  The other four stood at the cardinal points, eyes closed in concentration. Tanna held a small ceremonial knife, called an athame, and cut a doorway in the air at the edge of the circle, just like the one she’d used to exit. She knelt by the ghostly silhouette.

  “Hello,” she said softly. “I’m Lady Firefly. Why have you come here?”

  The ghost-man turned slowly, as if sudden movement would dissipate him. His features were blurry and indefinite. The smoky hand reached for my wife’s face. Tanna gasped when it touched her.

  “I can help you,” Tanna said, “but you have to communicate with me. Try, please.”

  The hand slowly pulled away from her face and pointed across the circle.

  At me.

  I blinked. “Uh....” I said, glib as always.

  The hand formed a writing shape.

  “He wants your pen,” Tanna said. “Slide it to me. Use the door I cut.”

  I took the pen from my shirt pocket, removed the cap and rolled it across the floor. She placed it on the floor, and the ghostly hand closed around it.

  Laboriously, as if it weighed a ton, the pen lifted and the tip scraped across the wooden boards. In the silence it sounded almost industrial.

  “Jere,” Tanna read. “Your name? Where are you, Jere?”

  Again the pen rose, but the effort seemed greater. Suddenly it twirled, drawing some sort of spiral pattern on the floor. Then it fell, and the smoky boy vanished, blown away by the elements.

  The coven let out a group sigh. They were all sweaty and slumped with exhaustion.

  “That was intense,” Jo said.

  “It wasn’t a ghost,” Andrea said definitively. “I know what a ghost feels like.”

  “Then what was it?” Wade asked. “Who was it? Does anyone here know a Jere?”

  A bell went off in my head. “Jere. Jere Rundle. The boy who disappeared from the Redneck Riviera.”

  Tanna said, “If that’s true...then how do you explain this?” She tapped the floor, where the spiral design was visible on the wood. “If he vanished from an amusement park ride in Nashville, why is his spirit in Weakleyville, drawing a design that shows the path to Hell?”

  ***

  Later, after the circle ended and everyone got dressed, we crowded around Tanna’s desktop computer. The screen displayed two images side by side: a photo of the drawing on the study floor, and a page from an ancient alchemical manuscript. I couldn’t read the text--it seemed to be in Italian--but clearly the design was the same.

  “This is literally the road to Hell,” Tanna explained. “Drawn by Ignation Tatagliani in 655 AD. Only he was smart enough not to mark the starting point. After all, can’t have a bunch of tourists visiting Hades.”

  “I don’t get the connection,” one of the witches said.

  “I don’t either, yet,” Tanna admitted. “But this boy’s spirit was pretty desperate to pass this along to us.”

  ***

  So the next night, Tanna and I stood in line at the Redneck Riviera to ride the newly re-opened and improved Descent. Crowds of tourists filled the theme park, and I think half of them were in the Descent line with us. The outside of the hangar-sized building featured a landscape painting of a ruined urban skyline. Instead of promising a “futuristic nightmare,” it now claimed to be a “trip to the edge of the end of time”: grammatically iffy, but still undeniably catchy.

  Fireflies filled the trees scattered through the park, and clustered most strongly in the ones near us. Most patrons probably assumed they were special effects; in a sense they were right, because they let Tanna see as well as I did, as special an effect as there could be.

  An hour and fifteen minutes later, the safety bars finally snapped down around us, and the rollercoaster-style car lurched forward.

  The ride was okay. Lots of flashing lights, recorded screams and thumping techno music, as the car rose toward the cavernous ceiling then spiraled toward the ground. The other passengers screamed and laughed, but it was kind of a let-down. It certainly didn’t seem as exciting as those kids made it sound opening night. Maybe they’d toned it down after Jere Rundle disappeared.

  Afterwards, Tanna and I sat in the park’s fake New Orleans cafe, a plate of faux beignets (faux because you can get real ones only in New Orleans) untouched between us. Usually she couldn’t resist them, so I knew something was wrong.

  “Didn’t enjoy it?” I finally asked.

  “No, not at all,” Tanna said grimly. “I know where that boy is, and what happened to him.”

  “After one ride?”

  “Yep.” She looked over at the Descent building, her blue eyes cold. “That rollercoaster exactly duplicates Tatagliani’s Spiral, but in three dimensions, not two. He left that bit out of the drawing. For centuries, people have tried to use it on flat surfaces, like open fields and floors, and it’s never worked. That’s why Tatagliani never wrote down the starting point. You can enter Hell from anywhere, if you realize you have to spiral up and down as well as around.”

  “But I didn’t see any monsters tonight,” I said.

  “No, but the kids that first night did. Remember what they said? They saw a lake of fire, with screaming people swimming in it, and zombies, and monsters that flew up into a red sky. They said the spit from one of those monsters made the paint blister on the car they were in. They thought it was all part of the ride, and that it couldn’t hurt them. They had no idea how close they came.” She finally ate a beignet and delicately wiped her mouth. “Somebody’s obviously changed something. But not in time to save Jere Rundle.”

  ***

  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?”