Travel Bug (23 page)

“I hope he gets back soon,” whispered Kirk.

“He will,” answered Phil.

“I’m starting to doubt his abilities and his judgment,” Kirk said.

“Don’t think like that,” said Phil.

Ralph gave a small grin as he entered the barn again. He was alone.

“The prodigal son returns,” said Kirk. “What about the girl?”

“I took care of it. Nice girl.”

“Good.”

The actors started to climb on the wagons before heading for their various diverse haunts. The three young men were not really all that nervous. Their money occupied their minds. Henley, the son of the farmer who owned the farm, spoke to the actors.

“Remember, there is no touching of any customers. We jump out and we get a good scare but that’s it.”

The crowd of actors all nodded in agreement.

“No smoking, drinking, inappropriate language. Got it, folks?”

“Yes,” said all the ghouls unanimously.

“Excellent.”

“This is where you get off,” said Mr. Henley.

Phil the vampire jumped off the wagon. He immediately went to the empty coffin that was right beside some tiki torches. Phil was always ready to scare people. He always loved the old vampire movies. This was a fiendish dream come true.

“Okay, the circus has come to town,” said Mr. Henley.

The fiendish circus scenes had some devilish clown scarecrows surrounded by some gruesome stuff, severed head pieces and of course, tiki torches. The killer clown was happy to get paid tonight to terrorize customers.

“Ahoy.”

“Thanks, Mr. Henley,” Todd blurted out.

Kirk was displeased again. There was no reason to talk unless absolutely necessary. The folks could always identify voices after a robbery almost as easily as faces.

Todd wildly jumped onto the fake wooden pirate ship and started doing some kind of ridiculous dance. He was having a good time, no doubt about. He was doing his little death dance.

Death, of course came last. The two of them went to the end of the hayride, a sort of secret macabre maze. Henley simply played a farmer who was being harvested by death.

“You look good,” said Henley Kirk nodded.

“Good, don’t talk. Way to stay in character. I’ve been typecast as a dumb hick who gets harvested for four years now!”

Kirk tried hard not to laugh but he couldn’t help himself. This man was bringing joy into his miserable life with his old country wit and genuine good nature. He liked him. Kirk couldn’t help it. He could even see this man becoming a friend.

“Here come the first victims,” screamed one of the characters, at the beginning of the hayride.

The vampire scene was first. Phil could actually hear his heart beating rapidly as he waited inside his coffin. The folks inside the wagon watched a series of bland, stuffed coffins lit up by the tacky tiki torches. Then Phil at the last moment jumped out of his coffin and scared the living hell out of the back of the wagon.

“I’m good at this,” he said to himself.

The folks laughed because they enjoyed a good scare. That’s why they went to this attraction on a night like this. Phil was pleased with himself. He wanted them to get their money’s worth. There was of course, no way in the world that they would get their money’s worth. They would all panic and trample all over each other if they knew what he actually had to do in order to get paid.

“This is fun,” Phil said out loud.

Phil was a smart kid. He knew that even the possibility of a death during a robbery would make most people go crazy. That was not what most robbers wanted to do. They actually wanted things to go right. Steal the cash and get the hell away from the bank or whatever as quickly as humanly possible. This was, at least a decent haunted attraction. Phil had been to some really bad haunted hayrides. The folks who ran them were the real criminals! Charging a fortune for cheap props and teenagers dressed up in bad costumes. There was at least certain honesty in putting a gun to someone’s head and demanding money. In that case, the people at least knew for sure they were being robbed!

Ralph was having a ball. The irony of it all was the fact that he was a little afraid of clowns himself. Those old movies from the 80’s were good reason enough for that. He saw many of them with his friends on cable. Clown dolls coming to life to kill people. Psychotic men dressed like clowns hacking their victims to pieces. Scary enough alone that was. A serial killer who was a clown for kids shows. That unfortunately was not a movie.

“I hate clowns,” said a little girl sitting in the back of the wagon. She was obviously too young to be on a dark ride like this. The bastard in Ralph knew he had to try to scare her to death.

“Oh my God,” she screamed.

He shook the back of the wagon and screamed at the top of his lungs. She screamed back in such sheer horror that he could not believe his own work. He had never in his wildest dreams thought he could scare someone so much.

“I hope the dragon isn’t as scary,” the little girl said to her mom.

“Don’t worry, the worst is over,” her mom answered.

“Oh, if that were only true,” Ralph whispered to himself.

The elaborate but obviously phony ship stood out. Todd the pirate was trying to put on a show. He was sort of dancing around the plastic skeleton crew to try to make the scene come alive.

“This is cheesy, I don’t buy it,” a customer said.

“Oh, a pirate ship in the middle of a corn field. You have a hard time believing that, do you?” said another customer sarcastically.

“Ahoy!”

“A dork!” said another customer.

Todd could take being called stupid, gay, dumb, dork and loser. Those were mere words. He tried to block out the names kids used to call him in school. If these stupid customers knew even for a moment the money he was really making. Well… there would be a whole lot more respect and dread coming his way.

“We got to make this look good,” said Henley.

Kirk nodded at his fellow actor.

“You see, my old man is always on the first wagon,” Henley said.

The grim reaper nodded once more.

“I guess I need to impress him, that’s all.”

If Kirk ever impressed his dad, he knew that it would have meant the world officially came to an end. It would take the Apocalypse before his dad would ever have been impressed. The boss man had become in time, Kirk’s real dad. He hated his father. That’s why Kirk never even bothered to go to his old man’s funeral.

“You pretend to kill me and then well… I’ll play… dead.”

Kirk nodded again.

“You really stay in character, don’t you?”

The hayride was starting to get kind of crowded. Not all farmers could produce a good attraction. He was proud of the aspiring actors that took their craft and more importantly this job very seriously. He was delighted that most of his competitors did a truly dreadful job of entertaining their customers. Henley was definitely making a huge profit but his son was a little too obsessed with coveting the kings to the haunted kingdom. There was more than one occasion where he saw him glancing over his shoulder, like a vulture, perhaps wishing for something bad to happen.

The grim reaper’s performance was dreadful and scary.

“Please I have a family,” said the young Henley.

Kirk nodded his head no.

“I’ll give you anything you want. You just name it. I’m begging here.”

He nodded no and picked up his scythe. Kirk was truly doing his best to perform death personified. He liked Henley, he really did.

“Oh, no!” screamed Henley. Then he noticed something kind of disturbing. He fell backwards and tripped on the scythe. Young Henley cut himself. The scythe was real metal and not plastic.

“Good God!”

The folks in the wagon were none the wiser. They thought this was part of the act. Henley didn’t see spilling real blood as part of his job description.

“Why the hell isn’t your prop made of plastic?”

There was no nod. Kirk took off his mask and revealed his true face. He smiled at Henley.

“I’m not part of your hayride.”

“What?”

“My name is Kirk.”

“Okay. Why are you here?”

“You see, I’m the head of a crew.”

“You mean to rob my family and me tonight.”

“I do.”

“How much do you want?”

“We want it all.”

“What?”

“I don’t think that you understand, Henley. You see we do rob people but not of their money. We don’t care too much about that. We rob them of their lives.”

“Please, I…”

Kirk plunged the scythe deep into Henley’s stomach and twisted it around a bit. It wasn’t that he was being sadistic; he just wanted to make sure that Henley died. That he did and rather quickly. Now it was time to page the rest of the crew. First the vampire……

“My God, it’s time.” He answered his page. Then he crawled back into his coffin. This time his heart was really, truly beating a mile a minute. He heard the wagon coming and he knew one person from that ride had to be put to death.

“Look, a vampire,” said a teenage girl. She was in the back of the wagon.

“I’m not afraid of you,” said her boyfriend to Phil.

That was it. The dumb thing the kid said made him the winner in death’s lottery. Phil grabbed him from the wagon and held him by the neck. There was no way he was any older than sixteen. The kid screamed. Phil didn’t care. He heard the other folks in the wagon laughing.

“I knew he was part of this show,” said the teenage girl. The others looked impressed that the young thing was dating a secret hayride actor.

“Good night, brave boy.”

Phil had a sharp razor blade in his pocket. He slit the kid’s throat. Then he stuffed the boy into an empty coffin. It was very ironic that this coffin had been promoted from prop to true coffin.

“The deed is done,” said Phil to Kirk.

“The boss man will be proud of you,” said Kirk out loud. “A young boy might just get you a bonus. The legal wrath of heartbroken parents cannot be accurately measured.”

Kirk was still stunned that he had killed such a nice man. He had done that before but there was an actual moment of hesitation this time. Even more troubling was that he felt morally obligated to reveal his true face. A good man like Henley deserved to have an unmasked executioner.

“It’s time,” said Ralph, when he received the page.

“Oh, look a scary clown, “said another sarcastic teen.

“Be quiet,” said a middle age woman. “My whole life I’ve been terrified of clowns!”

Ah they were so connected.

“That clown’s getting awfully close,” the woman said.

Then before she could utter a second sentence, he pulled her off the wagon. She starred at the face of the evil clown. There was a moment where Ralph was hauntingly reminded of his mother and hesitated. It was time to be strong. The woman almost fainted as she was being held tightly by this crazy actor. Ralph would show her that there was always a deep reason for her terrible phobia.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked.

Ralph took out one of those obnoxious clown horns. He squeezed it for a brief moment, the lady laughed.

“Is this some kind of joke?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Yes, it is. You really scared me. Was that what you were trying to do?”

He shook his head again.

“I’ve got a good sense of humor but you know that if someone were to get hurt because you drug them off the wagon…’

He shook his head.

“This is cool,” she said. She was playing with the horn and appeared to be completely relaxed. She hardly noticed when Ralph pulled out a hunting knife, the kind with a jagged edge. She didn’t even see him thrust it into her ribcage but she felt it, a sharp pain of disbelief and denial.

“Sorry,” he said. The sound was muffled under his clown mask.

“Why?”

“Sorry,” he repeated.

Kirk smiled, when he heard about the deed. The boss man was going to be ecstatic. It was far better to have random violence with no victim “type” than someone who just killed women or the young or the old, etc. Random chaos was the most frightening monster of all. People would wonder why this happened and would never know. There would certainly be more theories than one could ever hope to shake a stick at. A bestselling book might even be in the works. The whole affair made Kirk laugh out loud and it made the boss man very happy.

Phil and Ralph already met in the middle of the field at the meeting place. Kirk was with them. He smiled at them.

“You guys did great,” said Kirk.

“Thanks,” said Ralph.

“I tried my best,” said Phil.

“Only one more to go,” said Kirk.

“When do we get paid?” asked Ralph.

“Soon, be patient. I just paged Todd.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the young man.

“I must say. This is the best crew that I’ve ever had. The boss man is going to piss his pants after tonight.”

It wasn’t business as usual on the pirate ship…

“What the fuck is a pirate ship doing in a corn field?” asked a customer. The wagon was coming. Todd was very scared because he knew he would never be the same after taking a human life.

“Let’s get it on!”

Todd fell backwards. A crazy young lad had jumped onto the ship and grabbed his sword right from his pirate hands.

“Let’s duel,” said the young man.

“Fuck him up,” said a drunken friend of the young man. The wagon was filled with sarcastic, drunk know it all type of kids. They were cheering him on as he made a fool of the actor playing a pirate.

“Get out of here,” said Todd.

“No.”

The young man looked at Todd and thrust his sword deep into Todd’s chest. What he did not know, of course, was that this was no plastic sword! The young man screamed in sheer mortal horror. This was only a mere joke. It was not meant to end in death! He kept his head and ran towards the office to have someone call an ambulance.

“Something’s wrong,” said Kirk. “He’s not done the job yet. I’m going to see what the fuck is going on.”

Todd’s chest no longer hurt, it was numb. He could feel his heart beat… slower… slower… Now he was scared again. A dark figure came to see him. It was Kirk. He smiled at him.