House_of_Rice-FanFics-TheHorror10

Chapter 8: A Loud Silence...

       As I breached the gates to the park I had cold shivers running through my body, making every
hair on my body stand on end. The amusement park was mostly quiet when I heard the sound that now
instinctively pushed my senses to full alert. The radio, the only thing I could depend on besides his
G11, began blaring static. It had created a Pavlovian reaction in me over the time since I had found it. I
heard the white noise of the radio, and knew that there was something going to crawl, run, or fly out of
the darkness and try to kill me. Whenever that white noise began to crescendo, I listened for every
sound, stared the darkness in the face until it revealed what was after me. This time was no exception.
The pitch-black abyss harboured nothing but monsters. I had given up on hoping that Cheryl would
suddenly walk out of the dark, smile at me in the strange, knowing way she always did... Then we'd
suddenly be back in our car on the highway rather than in the middle of someone's demented version of
hell. I had long since stopped hoping that this could be a dream. If it were, I'd have to be insane to
dream it.
      The white noise from the radio got louder. Since actually looking for the creature was fruitless
until it got the flashlight's radius, I tried other tricks I'd picked up for detecting where the attack was
going to come from. The rusty metal grating that served as the ground in this dark, decayed version of
the Boulder Springs Lakeside Amusement Park did not quiver. Okay, so it wasn't anything big, those
mummy creatures made the ground quiver a little when they jumped around at me. But it could be one
of those ‘Zombie’ kids we saw at the Medwich Elementary School. I wished more than ever that I
could see everywhere at once. There was a faint squeaking from somewhere around me.
My finger twitched on the trigger of the gun. My heart was racing already, and I hadn't even seen the
monster yet. The anticipation was probably going to be worse than the actual battle. I'd been in this
exact situation so many times by now, but being used to it did not stop it from being terrifying. More
squeaking. The second I saw movement in the dark abyss around me, I fired the G11. My gun was the
only reason I'd survived this nightmare so far, and it would help me again now. The movement didn't
stop, even though I was sure I'd hit my target. I was not even close to an expert with guns, but I was
sure I'd hit it that time. Warily, I moved closer, watching the moving darkness to keep my target in
sight. It wasn't until he moved closer that he saw what it was. My alertness relaxed slightly. Not a
monster, at least not one I could fight or that could hurt me. It made me want to curse a lot more. I'd
wasted a bullet from his very limited supply on something that wasn't even a threat. It was hard to
make out the creature, but its outline looked like that of a baby or small child. Except it had a larger
head and it was black-transparent, as insubstantial as a ghost. I hadn’t run across these little things
before, but it set the radio off, so it was bound to be a threat. They didn't seem to notice me, in fact, as
if they existed only half in this dimension. I watched as this one stumbled forward, making a small
squeak when it hit the ground. It was only there a second before it slowly faded away for no apparent
reason. The radio dimmed with the creature until it was deathly silent again.
Telling myself not to be so jumpy next time, I continued to move around the perimeter of the
amusement park. The only clear objective I had at the moment was finding Alessa, who was trapped in
this hellish nightmare as well. Now I was creeping around a twisted nightmare version of the
amusement park looking for her when she was very likely dead. Not that his chances for surviving
were much better.
       Finding the answer to what had happened to this town was still at the front of his mind, but at
least he had an idea of where Alessa was. Once he found Alessa, they might find some hint of where to
go next. I hadn't realized it until a little while ago, but someone had set up this town like a puzzle, with
only one right way to go and dead ends everywhere else. Whether it was just rotten luck, I was being
herded somewhere, or someone was playing games with me, I didn't like it.
For some reason I had a faint memory of the layout of the park, but the vague memories of the
amusement park's layout turned out to be little help. I had intended to head for the ferris wheel first to
get my bearings, but the only path going there dropped sharply, into nothing but blackness and remains
of twisted metal. It looked like the aftermath of an earthquake. So the ferris wheel was no longer an
option. The only place I could think of to go was the carousel. If that was collapsed as well, I was
really in trouble. Most of the paths had collapsed, leaving dead ends into the seemingly infinite
blackness below the metal ground. I'd never figured out whether it was bottomless or not. If it was, it
certainly wouldn't surprise me. I liked to think that there was very little that could surprise me any
more, but every time I said it, something else came along that could knock me on my ass. I couldn't
count how many times my radio had blared and one of those things had popped out of the dark, scaring
the hell out of me. A few feet didn't give much time to get my gun out, but 'not much' was just enough.
I was still alive, after all. And if all else failed, I would just ran like hell. There was no shame in
running as fast as I could when I saw one of those mummies. I wasn't a marine or soldier or anything. I
was a writer for god's sake. I'd barely touched a gun before, never had a rational reason to be afraid of
the dark, and certainly hadn't believed much in magic and superstitions and alternate universes.
Something about being trapped in the middle of a nightmarish alternate dimension made me more
inclined to believe.
      It took almost twenty more tense minutes of wandering in the dark to find the carousel. I'd lost
his bearings more than once, had a grand total of five false alarms with those ghost creatures and met
one real mummy that had almost gutted me with a knife before I managed to blow it’s head off.
Every such battle made me more fearful for Alessa. Where the hell was she? Alessa was supposed to be
wandering around here somewhere. The memory of her begging me for help kept me going. The
memory of her voice, begging "Sebastian, help me.... Sebastian, where are you?" was all that I needed
to spur me on.
      "Oh god, please let me find her soon..." I whispered as he fumbled with the rusted gate that led
to the main part of the carousel. "She's just an innocent girl... I never..." He realized that talking might
attract more monsters, so he kept the rest in his mind. “Okay, so she's not my wife or anything, But I
have to find her, I have to tell her, I have to get her away from this place... She's just a girl, I can't let
her die here...” The latch on the carousel gate opened with a little effort. The path was collapsed
everywhere else, maybe I could cut across here and get to the rest of the park. I still had the ferris
wheel in mind as a destination. If I could see anything beyond my flashlight range, I would have been
able to see it from here.
      The ghostly stillness of the carousel made this place seem even more deserted. I had such fond
memories of being here with my wife, going on this ride with her just but because I had never been
here before, that confused me. Cheryl had a carousel toy in her bedroom back home, a music box that
played a distorted version of "Twinkle Twinkle". It seemed like the perfect vacation spot even though I
was still haunted by thoughts of my dead wife. I'd had the idea that coming here could somehow get me
past the loss, make something happy out of memories that made me depressed. Now I had memories
that would give me nightmares, nightmare of Alessa dying in my hands. Amazing how such happy
things were gone so fast. Cheryl was at home waiting for someone who might not come. My wife had
been dead for years, And the carousel was ironically just as dead. There was no movement, no music,
and it was in the middle of a nightmare world. Even the plastic horses seemed dead. Many of them
were broken off their poles and smashed to pieces. The ones that remained fixed in their permanent
gallop on the metal poles stared at me with dead, glassy eyes. The horses weren't the only thing staring
at me with dead eyes.
      I kept a firm grip on my gun as I walked across the still carousel. Even though my radio was
silent, I still expected something to jump out and attack me. It would take me forever to unwind from
this high-strung state of alertness. Assuming I get out of here alive. I still felt like the horses were
staring at me. Being here so long must be getting to me more than I thought.
Among the broken horses, something stirred. The soft groan was barely audible, and went unnoticed.
There were sirens in the distance that distracted me. I'd never figured out what they were for or where
they were coming from. The groan repeated, louder and longer, like the whisper of a demon being
summoned. This time I couldn't miss it. It made me freeze for a second, enough time for me to wonder
why my pocket radio wasn't going crazy with static. Then I scanned the dark carousel, my flashlight
beam bouncing around in the shadows. I'd met a few creatures that my radio didn't react to. The
flashlight beam revealed little out of the ordinary as it darted from shadow to shadow. The definition of
ordinary was quite different here, but I'd grown used to it. There were broken carousel horses.... rust...
some blood stains... Nothing strange. This dark amusement park had far less in the way of gruesome
scenery than the hospital or school had. Rooms full of blood-and -fluid-soaked hospital beds, mutilated
corpses hanging like decorations from walls and ceilings, mystery blood stains as abundant as rust on
the metal walls, rooms crawling with zombie-like mummies that had once been nurses and doctors...
That had to have taken ten years off my life.