Burn the Dark by S. A. Hunt

Author:S. A. Hunt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

13

Rust stains streaked down from the clown’s giant eyes and mouth as if it were bleeding from the inside. On closer inspection, Wayne saw it was a sort of cart, a roller-coaster car or part of a carousel.

“Is this your surprise?” asked Amanda.

“No,” said Pete, shaking his head and walking away. “That’s cool, but it’s not what I wanted to show you.”

Pine needles and briars choked the passenger seat of the clown-face car. The mess was dark, tangled, ominous. Wayne wanted to get away from it, so he overtook Pete and jogged down the trail.

“Wait up,” said Johnny.

Wayne went down a short slope and found a break in the trees where the last dregs of sunlight slanted in from a clearing. He stepped over a half-buried train track and emerged into what might have been one of the coolest things he had ever seen.

The stark umbrella-skeleton of a hulking Spider ride threw stripes of shadow over them, its suspended cars rusting quietly in the white sun. He had come out onto what appeared to be a go-kart track, a paved oval about ten feet wide and painted green. Grass and milkweed thrust up through cracks.

“Ho-lee Moses.” The forest stood vigil over the ruins of an abandoned amusement park. A tree grew up through the middle of a small roller-coaster track, shadowing more rusted-out clown-cars and a broken scaffolding no taller than an adult man.

His friends crunched up out of the woods and stood next to him.

“Now that’s cool,” said Johnny.

Amanda picked a careful path across the buckled road. “I had no idea this was out here. You found this last summer?”

Pete forged ahead, leading them through an aluminum garage at one end of the track. The ground was oily and nothing grew, which made for easy walking. “Yeah. I came out here to, ahh … look for Bigfoot. My mom said this is the old fairgrounds. It’s supposed to be one of those travelin’ amusement park things—you know, how they go from city to city, settin’ up in mall parking lots and stuff. But she said this one, the people set it up, and then they disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Wayne’s neck prickled. A go-kart was overturned against the wall, its axle bent, its guts pulled out. Parts lay strewn around it.

Leading them through the heart of the overgrown carnival, Pete lurched over the dead weeds, trampling briars, sticks cracking under his shoes. “Yeah. She said it happened back in the eighties. Before any of us were born.”

Gradually the brush gave way to open gravel and dirt. “Mom said the city tried to open it anyway, and it ran for like a year, but they couldn’t make any money on it and it was too expensive to clear it out. So they left it here.”

A long arcade leaned over a bushy promenade, its game booths frothing with hickory and blackberry bushes. HIT THE PINS! POP THE BALLOONS! THROW A DART! WIN A PRIZE!

“Y’all don’t tell her we were out here. She said not to come back.

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