Danger at the Fair (11 page)

“
NO
,” the woman in the fair office said, as she looked at the picture of Corey that Mrs. Streater had in her wallet. “He has not come to the office for help. I’ve been here since noon. Are you sure he didn’t go home with a friend?”

“Positive,” Mr. Streater said.

“Did you have a meeting place selected, in case you became separated?”

“We didn’t bring him,” Mrs. Streater said. “He came with someone else.”

“The merry-go-round,” Ellen said. “Last year, when we came to the fair, we agreed to meet at the merry-go-round, if we got separated. Maybe Corey is waiting for us there.”

“I suggest you look there,” the woman said. “Meanwhile, I’ll alert the security guards to watch for him. What is he wearing?”

Mrs. Streater started to describe Corey’s clothing. Ellen added, “He has a big Batman bandage on his cheek.”

“I’ll have the guards look for him,” the woman said.

Mr. and Mrs. Streater and Ellen hurried to the merry-go-round. Corey was not there.

“Let’s check all of the most likely places, before we panic,” Mr. Streater said. “You know how Corey is. If he’s having fun, he probably hasn’t even realized what time it is. No doubt he is wandering around, making up some fantastic tale about carousel horses that fly or pretending he’s won first place in every competition and will have his picture in the newspaper.
Ellen, you look in the sheep barn. Maybe Corey is hanging around there, watching Caitlin’s cousin.”

“I’ll check out the rows of food stands,” Mrs. Streater said. “He always wants to eat everything they sell.”

“I’ll do the midway rides,” Mr. Streater said. “Meet back here as soon as you can.”

Corey was not in the sheep barn. Ellen’s panic increased. If I ever needed help from a guardian angel, Ellen thought, now is the time. And any spirits who cared to guide her to Corey would be welcome, too.

Ellen rushed out of the sheep barn and ran toward The Great Sybil’s trailer. The small ticket booth was empty. A sign on The Great Sybil’s door said,
CLOSED FOR DINNER, BACK IN
10
MINUTES
.

Ellen knocked on the door. When there was no response, she pounded as hard as she could. “Sybil!” she called. “It’s Ellen Streater. I need your help.”

The door opened an inch. The Great Sybil peeked out.

“My brother didn’t come home,” Ellen said. “We think he’s lost at the fair, or else something has happened to him.”

The Great Sybil opened the door and motioned for Ellen to enter. She sat on one of the chairs and Ellen sat on the other.

“I tried the automatic writing at home, by myself,” Ellen said. “I got another message. It said:
URGENT
.”

“Oh, my,” said The Great Sybil. “The smaller one needs your help right now.”

“The trouble is, I don’t know how to help him. I don’t know where he is or what has happened.”

“Let us begin,” said The Great Sybil, as she dimmed the lights.

“I don’t have anything to write with.”

The Great Sybil opened a drawer on her side of the table and removed a yellow legal tablet and a pencil.

Ellen held them in front of her and forced herself to breathe deeply, trying to calm her jangling nerves.

“We beg for your help, loving spirits,” said The Great Sybil, without any preliminaries. “Ellen needs guidance. Please enlighten her. Let her know where her brother is.”

Silently, Ellen added her own plea.
I know Corey is in danger. Please help me, spirits. Please help me find him before it’s too late.

Tears formed behind Ellen’s closed eyelids and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

“We await your message,” said The Great Sybil.

“Please hurry,” whispered Ellen. It was hard for her to keep her mind focused on the spirits. Her thoughts kept darting back to Corey and the various possibilities of where he might be. Should she be out searching for him instead of sitting here, hoping for a message that might never come?

“We await your message,” The Great Sybil said softly.

Ellen wondered how the woman could be so calm. Why didn’t she simply yell, “Hey, spirits! We need help fast!” If the angels or spirits or whomever she was talking to were as wise and loving as The Great Sybil said, they would understand the need to hurry.

“Please enlighten us,” The Great Sybil droned.

Ellen opened her eyes. She couldn’t waste any more time. “Sybil,” she said.

The Great Sybil’s eyes remained closed. Her hands were clasped tightly together as she silently beseeched the spirits for help.

As Ellen stared at the fortune-teller, the pencil leaped into
motion. It jerked quickly across the paper, writing frantically, as if her hand were the mechanical hand of a robot and, once programmed, there was no way to stop it.

This time, of course, Ellen didn’t try to stop it. If the message would help her find Corey, it didn’t matter how she got it. The spirits could make her stand on her head and write with her toes, for all she cared, as long as Corey was safe.

The writing stopped. The pencil dropped from Ellen’s hand. As soon as The Great Sybil turned the lights up, Ellen read the message aloud.

It was the same back-slanted handwriting as before. This time it said,
It is for you to know that there is darkness in the tunnel. The little one sees not. The sign is untrue. Go inside the darkness.

“The little one sees not!” Ellen said. “That sounds like Corey is blind.” The tears that she had been trying to hold back now trickled down her cheeks. “Why can’t the spirits talk in plain language?” she asked. “This sounds like they know where Corey is, so why can’t they just come out and tell us, instead of making it into a riddle?”

“You must remember,” The Great Sybil said, “that the spirits are no longer of this world. It may be extremely difficult for them to send any message at all in a language that we can understand.”

“It says the sign is untrue,” Ellen said.

“That puzzles me. What sign? Perhaps it means the other messages.” The Great Sybil looked perplexed as she studied the piece of paper, shaking her head.

“I had some signs; I thought they proved the message was from Grandpa. This must mean they weren’t signs from Grandpa at all; they were just memories, like my dad said.”

“Do not sound sad to have memories,” The Great Sybil said. “Happy memories are treasures to be cherished. If you remember good times with your grandfather, you can be with him in your mind whenever you wish. That is better than waiting for a sign, over which you have no control.”

Ellen stood up. “I’m going to find my parents,” she said. “If they haven’t found Corey yet, I’ll tell them about this new message. Maybe they can get more meaning out of it than we can.”

“I will come with you,” The Great Sybil said. “They will have questions for me.”

Ellen nodded. “Thank you.”

The Great Sybil locked the trailer when they left. She and Ellen hurried together across the fairgrounds, toward the merry-go-round. As they approached The River of Fear ride, Ellen stopped.

“Corey wanted to go on The River of Fear,” she said, “and it has a tunnel. There was an article about it in the paper and Corey kept talking about the Tunnel of Terror and how he couldn’t wait to see what was in it.”

“The ride is out of order,” The Great Sybil said, pointing to the
CLOSED
sign which hung at the bottom of the steps to the platform. “They’ve had trouble with it all week.”

Ellen looked at the darkened River of Fear. The loudspeaker that had boomed the spiel across the midway earlier, when she and Caitlin walked past, was silent.

“Maybe he was on it when it broke,” Ellen said. “Maybe he got hurt.”

“There’s a first-aid building on the fairgrounds,” The Great Sybil said. “Let’s go there.”

They walked away from The River of Fear.

CHAPTER
11

TUCKER KICKED
The River of Fear control box. He did not like this plan. He did not like it one bit. It was easy for Mitch to tell him to stop the ride when the kid was inside the tunnel.

“Leave him in there until the fair closes,” Mitch had said. “By the time you let him out, it won’t matter how many cops he talks to. We’ll be long gone.”

“What about me?” Tucker said. “When he comes out, the kid will say I let you push him into the boat and the cops will start asking questions.”

“Just say the ride malfunctioned. You lunged for the Off switch and I accidentally knocked the kid into the boat. Nobody can prove otherwise. All you have to do is act concerned and make a fuss over him. It’ll be no problem. You’ll end up looking like a hero for fixing the ride and rescuing the kid.”

Tucker drank his coffee and looked at his watch. No problem. Ha. It was easy for Mitch to say, “No problem.” He wasn’t the one who would have to answer questions from the
fair’s security guards and the kid’s parents and probably the cops and who knows how many others. Mitch and Joan would be off selling the loot and Tucker would be left to cover their tracks for them. He wasn’t sure twenty percent of the profits was worth it. He suspected he wouldn’t get the full twenty percent, either. He and Mitch might be brothers but there had never been a strong bond between them. Mitch had made that clear enough, when he refused to put up the bail last year when Tucker asked.

Tucker poured another half cup of coffee from his Thermos, sipping it sullenly. The kid was trouble. If he was smart enough to figure out Mitch and Joan’s method of operation, he was smart enough to know that he was not knocked into the boat accidentally.

What if the kid said that Tucker threw him in the boat? What if his parents called the cops? What if the cops decided to run a check on Tucker and found out he was wanted in Oklahoma on that car insurance scam? What, then? Why should he risk going to jail while Mitch and Joan and that toady little Alan got off scot-free?

No! Tucker slammed his cup down on the control box so hard that coffee sloshed over the rim. No way was he going to take a chance on getting arrested again. He should never have tried to help Mitch in the first place but, now that he had, the only choice was to get rid of the kid.

He would turn the ride back on, right now, wait until the kid’s boat came out, and let the kid get off.

He wouldn’t say a word. He wouldn’t pretend it had been an accident. He wouldn’t lie and say the ride had malfunctioned.

He would help the kid out of the boat—and then the kid
would “accidentally” stumble and fall off the platform. The kid was short enough to go under the railing.

Tucker looked over the edge of the platform. There was no way a little kid could survive a fall from that height. It would be a horrible but completely believable accident. Lots of people stagger with dizziness when they get off The River of Fear ride; no one would doubt that the kid did, too.

Tucker himself would call for help. He would cry and go to pieces and tell how he tried to catch the kid before he went over the side. Tucker would give such a convincing performance that even the kid’s parents would end up feeling sorry for him. And the kid would never tell them anything. Not ever again.

COREY
huddled in the bottom of the boat, waiting to see if it would start moving again. After a few moments, he sat up, keeping his hands in front of his face to protect himself from the slimy fake seaweed that now hung limply all around him.