The Best Horror of the Year Volume 14 by Ellen Datlow;

Author:Ellen Datlow;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Best Horror of the Year
Publisher: National Book Network
Published: 2022-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

2.

What can I say about that first visit that hasn’t already been discussed on countless message boards and blogs? We visited all seven of the Realms. We rode all the rides. We ate lunch—not at one of the sit-down restaurants, obviously, but at the cheapest snack stand Dad could locate on the guidemap.

Was it a fun day? Yes. A little strange, not quite like anything I’d experienced before. Sure, fun, yet a little off somehow, too. I remember moments of amazement—a few of awe, even—and moments of exhaustion and boredom. A few times I laughed out loud at how hokey an effect seemed, but a moment later I’d become convinced this was all part of a larger plan: I’d been meant to laugh and relax so as to be caught off guard by what followed.

Our parents’ constant presence—by which I mean my father’s— made it hard to truly lose ourselves in the experience. Half the time my father was expounding on the scientific principles behind a ride and its Realm, while the other half he spent pointing out what he saw as factual or design errors. By that age, we’d learned it was better to let him run on: if we cut him off or told him we already knew what he was telling us, he’d be bluntly offended and would feel the need to give a lecture on respecting your parents. Better by far to nod along and zone out.

By late afternoon my brother had had enough. To be honest, so had I. My brother, though, was older than me, seventeen, which meant he’d been putting up with dad for two years longer. I could tell by the way he was fidgeting and scowling that he was on the verge of saying something that would ruin Dad’s mood—which would, in turn, ruin the day for the rest of us.

We were in the Realm of Time, strolling through the garden of the ersatz Victorian mansion, when Dad’s veneer of patience began to crack. He had stepped a few paces away to scrutinize a display of statues holding antique timepieces, and was complaining to anyone within earshot that there was no replica of a water clock—that a whole class of ancient timepieces was missing. When no one paid him any attention, his mood began to darken.

It darkened further once we entered the mansion itself and climbed one of the grand staircases leading to the upper rooms. The mansion’s library, filled with leatherbound volumes titled with time-related wordplay, struck him as possessed of a levity inappropriate to serious scientific endeavor. As he inspected some of the most obviously fictional fossils and “far-future” artifacts I saw his nose wrinkle.

“This whole place is ridiculous,” my father announced. “We’re skipping the Time Machine ride.”

“Why?” my brother asked. I could hear the edge to his voice. “We walked through the rest of this Realm. We should do the ride.”

“Why? Because time travel is impossible,” said my father.

“Says who?” my brother shot back.

“It’s just a ride,” I said quickly.

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