Welcome to the Dark House (23 page)

I
PULL DOWN THE GRAVEL
road that leads to the amusement park. My car is compact and I’m able to pull up
in front of the gate.

It appears that I’m alone. The sign welcoming me to the amusement park still hangs
above the entrance, only it’s no longer illuminated, and the words are slightly crooked.

I get out of the car.
It’s midday and the air is chilled, especially with the tree boughs shrouding the
area.
I go up to the gate, past the police tape that tells me not to. It’s amazing how different
things look in the daylight, no longer sparkly and alluring, but stark, drab, and
haunted. I reach out through the bars, picturing Parker on the other side, the pleading
look in his eyes, the tears running down his face.

I hate myself for leaving him here.

After I escaped and made it to the street, and flagged down help, called the police,
and showed them where to look, it was two hours later and Parker couldn’t be found.

The others couldn’t either. Not even Frankie. When investigators went to dig him up,
all they found was an empty hole.

The investigation turned cold quickly. The FBI believes whoever is responsible is
smart, rich, and demented. The rest remains a mystery—a string of false leads and
dead ends.

I look back at the welcome sign, thinking how excited everyone was by it. The statue
of Eureka is still there too, only it’s been blasted with a paintball gun. There are
splotches of orange and green over her smiling wooden face.

This gated entrance area has been littered, too: soda cans, beer bottles, and snack
packages strewn all over the ground—new and old Blake fans, desperate to get a taste
of the “fun.”

The sound of creaking metal startles me. The Nightmare Elf’s Train of Terror must
have a few loose hinges. The tarp on the snack shack rustles in the breeze. A set
of wind chimes jangles.

A gust sweeps over my shoulders, blowing back my hair. I turn to get an extra scarf.
But then I come to a sudden halt. I blink a couple of times, trying to make sense
of what I see.

The Nightmare Elf doll. It’s perched on the roof of my car. The same doll that we
found in Tommy’s nightmare chamber, with the missing eye and the dirty clothes.

My chest tightens. My mind begins to race. I look around—in the trees, down the road,
beneath my car, in the park. But I don’t see a single soul.

The gate creaks, making me jump. I turn to look. It’s open a crack—just enough for
me to slip through.

Music begins to play. The musical score to
Haunt Me
. The layering of violins, that haunting viola, the strum of the cello. It’s coming
from behind the merry-go-round, from my nightmare ride; I’m sure of it.

He’s been waiting for me to come back.

I grab my keys, positioning the sharpest one—ironically, a skeleton key, just like
Little Sally Jacobs’s—between my index and middle fingers, ready to fight. And then
I move through the gate and across the park, toward the merry-go-round, pausing at
one of the horses. Its eyes are slanted and blue, reminding me of Parker’s. Its golden
mane is the same color as Parker’s hair, too. It’s crying bloody tears.

The merry-go-round music starts up, but it’s so slow and tired that eventually it
stops playing altogether.

But still the musical score to
Haunt Me
lingers—a pulsing beat that pelts against my heart.

The picket-fence gate in front of the house—my nightmare ride—opens and closes in
the wind. I move to stand in front of it, reaching for my aromatherapy necklace, suddenly
reminded that I gave it to Parker. I keep grabbing for it, forgetting that it’s no
longer a part of me.

I move through the gate. The front door is already open. Still gripping the key, I
head inside and go to flick on a light. But it isn’t working. The windows have been
covered over, too. The only light is from the open door.

I keep it propped open with a loose walkway brick, and then I move up the stairs,
past the photos. The music grows louder with each step. My skin feels hot. The key
is sweaty between my fingertips.

Just a step away from reaching the second floor, I hear a scuffling sound. It radiates
down my spine. My mother screams. The front door slams behind me. More sounds follow:
a bolt locking, glass breaking. Did someone throw a brick?

“Ivy?” Parker’s voice. It’s coming from outside.

“Your friend won’t be able to get in,” another voice whispers.
Garth?
Where is he?

My adrenaline racing, I climb another step looking all around. Standing outside my
parents’ room, I wrap my hand around the knob, feeling my body tremble.

The knob turns. The door opens with a whine.

“Good evening, Princess,” he says, his raspy voice speaking over the music.

It’s my parents’ killer. The birdlike eyes. The silver hair. He’s got Parker in a
headlock with a knife pressed against his neck. Wasn’t Parker just outside? Is it
possible that I heard wrong?

The killer smiles when he sees me, his head cocked to the side. “Welcome to the sequel.”

I grip the key tighter. “I’ve been waiting for this moment,” I tell him.

The comment takes him off guard. I can see it in the flutter of his eyelids, the swallowing
in his throat.

Before he can rebound, I lunge forward, swiping at his face with the key. The motion
causes him to release Parker.

I swipe at him again. This time I get his chest. He lets out a scream, but then I
realize that I’m screaming too. I’m screaming as I cut him, as I stab him, as I plunge
my key deep into his heart.

“Ivy!” Parker shouts, holding me back, taking the key, pinning my arms to the bed.

Someone else sits on my legs.

There’s a hand on my forehead.

I wake up.

Parker isn’t here.

It’s Apple and Core, my foster parents. Rosie and Willow linger in the doorway, looking
on.

I’m in my room. My covers are dark, dark blue. My walls are pale green and there are
angled ceilings. A shag carpet covers the floor. And there’s an armoire in place of
a vanity. There are no soccer banners, nor is there a single reference to Katrina
Rowe.

Apple gets up from my legs, sends Rosie and Willow back to bed, and then gently closes
the door. Meanwhile, Core’s got my knife—not a skeleton key—in his hands. My double-action
switchblade; I’ve been keeping it beneath my pillow while I sleep.

Neither of them show alarm. Nights like this have been an all-too-regular occurrence—my
subconscious wreaking havoc during my sleep, blurring the lines of reality, creating
a mishmash of nightmarish visions from my nightmarish life. So far my parents have
confiscated four knives and five keys, even though we were supposed to be playing
by the “three strikes” rule.

Three strikes and they were going to check me in someplace, afraid that I might hurt
myself, terrified that I might hurt one of the others. I can’t really say I blame
them.

“You know what this means,” Core says, sadness in his voice.

Apple nods, her eyes filled with tears. But instead of talking about the consequences
now, she crawls into my bed and holds on to me for dear life. For just a moment, I
forget that she isn’t my real mother.

I face the window as she snuggles me close. The breeze filters in through the window
screen, and I can hear the sounds from outside: the tinkling of backyard wind chimes,
the banging of shutters somewhere, and the rattling of overturned trash cans.

The musical score to
Haunt Me
still plays in my mind.

I vow to make it stop.

I vow to find Parker.

I
REACH FOR THE LARGE
manila envelope hidden beneath my bed—a package that arrived last week. With no postmark
and no return address, I assumed it was another anonymous gift from my parents’ killer,
like the pink soccer jersey from two years ago. But then I saw that my name and address
were written in red crayon, just like the
WELCOME TO THE DARK HOUSE
sign, and I knew that wasn’t the case.

I open the envelope and pull out the winning essays. A note attached to the first
one reads
See you for the sequel, Princess.

As has become my my bedtime ritual, I begin to reread:

In a thousand words or less, describe your worst nightmare.

By Frankie Rice

At five years old, I was too young to be at a wake, but I was, and I saw the body.
Dressed in a navy blue suit and a slim red tie, Uncle Pete was no longer as I remembered
him: the funny guy at the end of the dinner table telling jokes. Instead, he was lying
in a box with no reason to laugh at all.

I climbed up on a stool to view the casket and focused on just his hands, unable to
bring myself to look at his face. Gone were the oil stains from working on cars. His
hands were cleaned, polished, and powdered. If it weren’t for the watch around his
wrist—the same braided leather one that my dad has—and his long, callused fingers,
I’d have sworn those hands weren’t his.

Dad said that Uncle Pete had died in his sleep from accidentally taking too many pills.
I hated pills after that. I hated even more that his death came only a few months
after my mother had walked out without so much as a good-bye.

Later, at the burial, I was surrounded by rows and rows of headstones, perched over
hundreds of dead, buried bodies—proof positive that happily ever after doesn’t exist.

I watched as they lowered Uncle Pete down into the ground, and a wave of panic struck
me. What if my dad died in his sleep? Who would I have then? For as long as I could
remember, Dad had been taking pills from the little brown bottle beside his bed.

I folded to the ground, a broken-glass sensation inside my chest. Soon, no one was
paying attention to poor Uncle Pete, covered in dirt. They were focused on me, the
five-year-old nephew, as I tried my hardest to breathe.

I passed out and was rushed to the hospital. Doctors insisted that I needed therapy,
attention, and rest. Dad laughed at the first two suggestions. And that last one was
impossible, because that’s when my nightmares started.

That night, back at home, lying in bed, I kept a firm hold of my teddy bear—the blue
one with no mouth (the threading tore) and only one eye—so that it wouldn’t leave
me too. I tossed and turned for hours.

The phone ringing finally pulled me out of bed. I was convinced that it was my mother
calling to tell me where she was and that the phone extension was buried underground,
right along with my uncle. If I wanted to speak to my mother again, I knew I had to
dig up Uncle Pete’s grave.

I walked past a long row of headstones. The ringing of the phone grew louder with
each step. Tarantula-like trees bordered the cemetery on both sides. They looked like
they could spring to life at any moment and take someone else from me.

I got down on my hands and knees as the phone continued to ring. “Don’t hang up,”
I shouted to my mother. “I’m going as fast as I can.” I dug my fingertips into the
dirt, desperate to answer her call.

The dirt came up easily at first, but around three feet deep, my fingers started to
burn. Still, I kept going, my wrists aching, my shoulders throbbing. My heart pounded
as I got closer—just a few feet more. I climbed inside the hole, using my heels to
dig in too.

Finally I got to the casket. With trembling hands, I lifted the cover.

Uncle Pete’s eyes opened. “Hey, champ. I really dig it that you dug me out,” he joked.

He’d been buried alive.

I couldn’t stop shaking. Sitting at the foot of the casket, teetering on the frame,
I stablized myself to keep from tumbling forward.

“Thanks so much for rescuing me,” he continued. “I suppose now you’d like to answer
the phone.” The phone extension was in his grip—in his powdery white hand.

I reached out to take it. At the same moment, Uncle Pete grabbed my arm and pulled
me forward. I toppled on top of
him.

The casket cover closed, locking me inside.

I woke up, out of breath, in my parents’ bedroom closet. Two layers of skin had burned
off my fingertips from digging into the carpeted floor.

The phone had stopped ringing by then, so I have no proof that it was my mother calling
that night, but I have a strong suspicion that it was—that she wanted to say sorry
about Uncle Pete.

I can’t help but blame myself for missing that call—my one and only chance to get
her back.

In a thousand words or less, describe your worst nightmare.

By Taylor Monroe

I should probably start off by saying that I hate camping—like, I really hate it.
A deep-seated loathing that burrows to the depths of my soul. I’m not exaggerating,
either. There’s just so much to detest: sleeping in the woods, eating charcoal-blackened
food, peeing in an outhouse, getting bitten by mosquitoes. I hate tents, dirt, greenhead
flies, bug spray, lawn chairs, air mattresses, wild animals, and “Kumbaya” by the
fire.

Of course, as luck would have it (please read sarcasm here), my parents insist that
we go camping each year. This torture started at the age of eleven. I just turned
eighteen (eighteen = a legal adult
…
and guess which legal adult will be exercising her right not to go camping this year).
In case you haven’t yet done the math, that’s seven years of torture. Almost half
of my life.

Don’t get me wrong; I didn’t always hate camping. That first year, I was really into
it (or at least the idea of it). I had the dates marked on my calendar and I talked
it up to friends, practically making myself out to be G. I. Jane, the star of the
next hit reality TV show—one that has a wilderness theme. I was also packed and ready
to go before anyone else in my family.

But then we got there and I discovered, much to my chagrin, that it wasn’t at all
like that episode of
The Darkashians
…when the family drove a luxury RV two hours outside of LA to set up camp and spend
the night.

“Can you find us some long sticks?” Dad asked me on our first day there. He was standing
by the fire, getting ready to make dinner, but he’d forgotten to pack skewers. “Six
of them,” he added.

With my mom and brother off swimming in the leech-infested lake, I had no other choice
but to oblige. I abandoned my magazine and went up the trail, where we’d all hiked
earlier in the day.

Trees and brush surrounded me on both sides of the path. With the sun sinking in the
sky, peeking down through the limbs, I had to admit, the forest looked really striking.

I scanned the ground, searching for fallen sticks at least a couple feet in length.
Maybe camping’s not so bad, I thought, my mind flashing to the cute boy at the campsite
next to ours. Maybe I’d ask him to toast marshmallows with us later. I smiled at the
idea, and then reached out to snag a curved branch, catching a glimpse of something
brown and furry in the corner of my eye.

I stopped to get a better look. Its eyes were watching me from beyond the tree, a
stone’s throw away.

A cub. So irresistibly cute, like something you’d see on the cover of
National Geographic
or on that reality show
Super Cute
. The cub had a friend, who appeared to be cleaning himself off, licking his coat.

I wondered if they were lost, but no sooner did that thought cross my mind than I
spotted the mother. She emerged from some brush. And stared back at me.

My heart immediately sank. I didn’t have time to react. There was a flash of fur,
and the sound of a growl.

I was on the ground in seconds. The mother bear was on top of me, biting my arm, growling
in my ear. Its razor-sharp teeth sank into my leg. It lifted me up and shook me from
side to side, thrashing me around like a rag doll.

Surprisingly, I felt no pain. My body went into some sort of self-protective mode.
I dropped to the ground, shielded my face, tucked into a fetal position.

But still the bear wouldn’t let me go. It bit the corner of my mouth. Then my shoulder.
And the back of my head. I could hear myself whimpering, could feel my body twitching.
Its claws ripped through my T-shirt, tearing up my skin.

My vision was blurry, but I was able to peek around me. Blood was everywhere. I touched
my shoulder, able to feel bone. I was sure I was going to die.

I reached for a rock, but it was beyond my grasp. I needed a few more inches.

The bear let out another roar before clawing at my side. I could feel my skin rip
free.

“Dad!” I tried to scream, but the word came out a wheeze.

Still, Dad was able to hear me. He shook me awake. I’d been sleeping in my tent, having
a bad dream. My magazine was on the ground beside me, splayed open to an article about
bear attacks.

“Taylor, are you okay?” he asked.

I sat up, my heart pounding, my eye still blurred from my being pressed against the
pillow. I collapsed into my dad’s arms, feeling insurmountable relief.

He stroked my hair back and then started to pull away. But I refused to let him go.
“Can you just hold me for a little while longer?”

“I’ll hold you for as long as you want,” he said, startled that I’d gotten so freaked.
(For the record, I don’t typically scare so easily; I mean, hello, I entered this
contest, didn’t
I?)

Anyway, you’d think that after seeing how horrified his firstborn had become, he’d
think twice about camping, right? No such luck.

In a thousand words or less, describe your worst nightmare.

By Garth Vader

I was seven years old when I got lost in the woods. It was during a camping trip with
my dad and brothers. I woke up around two in the morning, needing to take a piss.

I grabbed a flashlight and walked down a dirt path, searching for the grove of trees,
where my brothers and I had whizzed earlier in the day.

But I couldn’t find it. Nor could I find my way back to the campsite.

“Craig?” I shouted, hoping to wake my brothers. “Paul?” Was this another one of my
dad’s tricks?

No one answered.

I hurried up and down the path, shining my flashlight over trees and brush, continuing
to call out for help.

But no one came. And I was starting to panic.

Noises were coming from everywhere—sticks breaking, leaves shifting. Finally, after
an hour of walking, I found a cabin. The windows were dark. Maybe the owners were
sleeping. I shone my flashlight over the entrance. The words Welcome to the Dark House
were scribbled in red crayon.

I knocked and the door edged open. I went inside, hoping to find a phone.

A voice cut through the darkness: “Have you come to play?”

A creaking sound followed. I aimed my flashlight at a doll. The Nightmare Elf, rocking
back and forth in a wooden rocking chair.

The door slammed behind me. The lock bolted shut. The elf’s smile widened.

Desperate, I ran into a room with an open door, hoping to find a phone.

Little Sally Jacobs was there, sitting on the floor, playing a game of jacks. “Do
you want to play?” She looked up at me with skeleton keys jammed into her eyes. Blood
trickled down her cheeks. She went to remove one of the keys—a thick slopping sound.

I hurried to the window, but it was locked, and I couldn’t get the bolt to unlatch.

I turned back around.

Sally was there. “Leaving so soon?” she asked, coming at me with the bloody key.

I ran to the closet, closing the door behind me, and keeping my hand on the knob.

The doorknob twisted beneath my grip; she was trying to get in. I clenched my teeth
and struggled to hold the knob steady, my wrists aching, my forehead sweating.

Finally the knob stopped moving. I placed my ear against the door, unable to hear
a peep.

My pulse racing, I searched for something to protect myself, noticing a secret door
at the back of the closet. I opened it. A long, dark alleyway faced me, surrounded
on both sides by tall brick buildings.

I began down the alley, able to hear a rattling sound. I peered over my shoulder just
as a shopping cart came into view. A woman in a big blue dress was pushing it.

Lizzy Greer from
Halls of Horror
. She turned to face me, pulling a bloodstained ax from the heap of soda cans in her
cart. “Have you come to play?”

My body began to shake. I dropped my flashlight and tried to run past her, rounding
a corner, spotting the rear door of Hotel 9. I tore through it and mounted a flight
of stairs.

Someone was following me. I could hear the sound of footsteps, the creaking of a rocking
chair, the bouncing of Little Sally Jacobs’s ball, and the rattle of Lizzy’s cart.