Empty Smiles by Katherine Arden

Author:Katherine Arden [Arden, Katherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2022-08-09T00:00:00+00:00

12

OLLIE HAD PLAYED chess with the smiling man six times since the night she saw her dad, but the smiling man hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe he was giving her time to think. Or maybe he was waiting for something to happen. What, she didn’t know, and that made her nervous.

While the train clacked down its track, Ollie turned the first key over in her hand, and thought. Then the train stopped again, and the carnival unfurled like a poisonous flower in the summer dust. As soon as it did, Ollie went straight to the funhouse, with the mirrored key tucked snug in her jeans pocket.

Of course, it wasn’t her first visit to the funhouse. But she’d never searched it over as carefully as she did now. She tapped every mirror, trying to find hidden passages behind them. She looked everywhere for a keyhole. She tried waving the key in front of the mirrors to see if a keyhole would magically appear.

But nothing happened. The funhouse remained just as it always had. Galleries and corridors of mirrors, kids squealing and making faces in the glass. Laughter echoing. Stairs, ramps, spirals, narrow passages, all twisting your face into a stranger’s. Carnival music drifting in through the walls. Ollie had the first key. But she couldn’t find any clue about the second.

Her frustration mounted.

The second night of that stop, two lost kids appeared in front of the haunted house window. It was after dark. Ollie saw them down there and remembered what Morgan had said about kids getting lost. That sometimes the clowns found them.

And these kids certainly looked lost.

She didn’t know what she could do, but she ran downstairs anyway. To her shock, they could see her. Probably, she thought, getting lost means you stumbled behind the mist somehow, where I am. Where the clowns are.

She tried to warn them.

She was too late.

But the kids told her two things she hadn’t known.

That night, she sat upright in her bed, shivering, trying not to remember how Ruth Jenkins had screamed. Trying to focus on facts.

The kids said we’re in Rutland. I’m pretty sure the next stop is Evansburg.

Maybe Brian and Coco and Phil will come soon. Maybe they’ll help me.

Maybe they aren’t coming.

Or maybe they’ll come and be turned to dolls.

The next time the smiling man came to play chess, he said, “Will you stay, Olivia?”

She took a deep breath. She looked him straight in the face. “My friends are coming. And I’m going home with them.”

She didn’t say anything else. She moved a piece.

A click made her look up. He was gone. He’d resigned the game. The click was the black king toppling over.

Well, Ollie thought, I really, really need the second key now. She couldn’t think where it would be besides the funhouse. But she’d only gone into the funhouse by day.

Maybe she’d always known that she’d have to go in by night. She’d found the first key at night, after all. She imagined all the lights going out. Or hearing invisible, clacking footsteps.

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