Games Boys Play (23 page)

Asked if there was any connection between Thomas’s disappearance and the disappearance of actors Joseph Donovan and Patrick Carter or Irratic Pulse singer Brandon Fryes, police said they were keeping all possibilities open but had not as yet found evidence tying the Thomas disappearance to the others.

Brian typed back a response:
You haven’t lost your phone recently, have you?

A few minutes later, a message came back:
Nope. Got it right here.

That was it for communication for a couple days, until Brian received a text from Dylan about an underground show he wanted to catch the next night.

Brian’s first thought was
oh yay, hipsters
, but then he turned it around in terms of the game. Was Dylan going to lead him to the basement of some empty house? The last place he’d “ever be seen again”? That put a thrill through him.

I’m free. Where and when?

Dylan texted back a street corner to meet at shortly before midnight.

Who’s playing?
Brian asked.

You’ll see.

Brian smiled.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

At eleven forty the following night, he locked his car and walked half a block to the corner Dylan had given him. It was in a residential area of the city, the chain-link fence of a basketball court running along the sidewalk. He stood half within the pool of light from a streetlamp and played Angry Birds with his phone muted, killing time, glancing up when the occasional headlights turned down the street.

He’d have parked closer to the corner, but a white cargo van had the closest spot, followed by an old K-car with a dented door panel, and a Chevy Blazer.

He checked the time. Ten till.

Headlights dipped and rose as a car came up the street from a few blocks away. He watched it approach, watched it go right by. Hoped the guy inside didn’t make a call to the cops to report a hustler working the corner. He took a deep breath and went back to his phone.

In another minute or so, he thought he heard music, softly. He shut off his screen and listened. It grew a little louder, coming from his left, a tiny, tinny sound. He turned his head. A little louder yet. Circus music? A calliope? Maybe an organ. He was looking right at the white van for as much as half a minute before he actually focused his attention on it. He looked around, over his shoulder, then back at the van. Circus music.

Slipping his phone into a jacket pocket, he moved toward the van.

The cargo section was windowless. The passenger window, up at the front, was dark. He put his hand against it to block the reflection from the streetlight. No one up front. He tilted his head, trying to see the back. Either it was pitch black, or there was a wall between front and back.

The calliope music wasn’t coming from up front, but it was definitely coming from the van.

Just as he took a step past the side cargo door, the door locks thunked open, causing him to take a quick step back. He eyed the side door while keeping an ear toward the rear of the van in case those doors popped open instead.

Nothing happened.

“Entry of the Gladiators”—that’s the song that was playing. Carousel music. The volume had come up another notch. It hit its end and started over again with hardly a breath in between.

The van just sat there, playing music, its doors unlocked.

If this were a horror movie, he thought, he’d walk up and open a door.

Not
a horror movie. He stood watching with his hands in his back pockets, glancing left and right. Was anyone else out here? Was anyone watching him? It was surely pushing midnight by now. Dylan was ten minutes late.

“Why so far away?”

Brian drew down his brows. That seemed to come from
under
the van. Fuck anyone watching him—he dropped to a crouch, fingertips on the concrete, and tipped his head to see who was under the van.

No one.

“Come closer, friend.”

Still crouched, Brian glanced around, up one street, down the other, twisting his torso to look through the fence into the empty basketball court.

“You know you want to.”

He stood slowly.

“That’s right.”

He looked left and right again, then over his shoulder.

“Do do doodle-oodle oot-doot doo do,” sang the voice, mocking the circus calliope. “Open the fucking door already. Someone wants to be let out. Or maybe…in.”

He pulled in a deep breath, bracing against the surprise he suspected was coming, and started to take a step. A red dot appeared on the side door. He stopped, watching it do a little dance, squiggling over the door handle, before it disappeared.

He turned on his heels, scanning where it might have come from.

“The way forward is behind you. You should always endeavor to move forward in life, unless you are facing the wrong way. Not to mention: I am not where you think I am.”

Slowly Brian turned to face the van again. The red light appeared, flitted to the door handle, did its dance, then flashed off. Then on. Then off.

He approached the door, rubbing the heel of his hand against his thigh like his palm was itching. The music volume rose again, loud for a few seconds before dropping back down. He looked at the door handle. Then he reached out and put his fingers under it. Pulled it up. Hesitated. With no more instructions forthcoming, he steeled himself and slid the door aside.

The music was louder for a second, more immediate, and then the volume adjusted for the open door.

Inside, the van was immaculate and spartan: a clean, black-ribbed, nonslip rubber floor, sparkling white wheel humps, and in the very center, a large box. A road case, in fact, black-sided with steel-reinforced edges and corners and locking wheels, similar to what the band’s equipment traveled in, only without the band’s stencil on it. In fact, this one looked brand-new, as immaculate as the van.

He twisted his head a little, putting an ear toward the box. Something thumped in it. It came again, a thump against the wall, not hard, but hard enough to hear. He leaned in, trying to listen to both the vicinity around him and the box at the same time, his muscles tensed and ready to pull back, drop out of the way if he heard footsteps coming up behind him.

A muffled sound—a human-sounding “
oomf
”—came from the box.

Crazy.

Crazy
. Could Dylan have put himself in a road case and still managed to unlock the van doors, play with the music volume,
know
where he was standing outside the van, and flash a laser pointer at the van door—from
inside
a road case?

“Hmmuh? Llo?” said the box.

How would he have closed the case’s latches if he was inside the case?

“Is curiosity getting the cat yet?” The voice seemed to come from between his knees. He glanced down, nearly stepping away out of fear a hand would close around his ankle, but he’d already checked under the van. There was nothing under the van.

The road case thumped again.

“Dickery, dickery dare. The cat wondered, ‘What the fuck’s in there?’ He crawled in to see—did he set his friend free? Dickery, dickery dare. Do you dare, dickery?”

“Mmmff!”
Thump.

Fuck it. Fuck it fuck it fuck it
. His nerves thrumming, he set his knee on the van’s floor, and the rest of him followed in. With his attention darting between the case and the door, he touched the side of the case.

It thumped again, its side vibrating for a second against his palm, the thump coming from near the bottom of the box.

Quickly he reached for the latches, unsnapped them. On his knees, he pushed the lid up, revealing the dark inside…

He sensed the shadow rising up into the doorway too late. The van shifted as a body swung in and hauled the door shut.

The locks thunked again.

Heart pounding, he launched himself around the case, scrambling over the wheel hump, feeling the brush of fingers against his foot before he was behind the case. He scrabbled for the handle on the back doors so he could get the fuck out.

Except there was no handle; there were no doors. His fingers brushed plywood. He swept his palms across it, up, down. It had been cut to fit against the back of the van.

Laughter came from behind him.

Whatever was thumping in the road case was still thumping, hitting one wall, then another, then another, louder with the case hanging open.

He tried to get purchase at the side of the plywood to pull it out of the way, his back bumping against the open lid of the road case.

The circus music grew louder, then louder yet. Blue light swept the walls. He could see, at least, in the spinning light. He could get the plywood to shake slightly, but something wedged it in place.

Fuck!

The laughter came again, rising to high-pitched giggles.

He turned and pressed his back against the wood, panting in panic, hoping to figure another way out, but instead—

Oh my God.

The ski mask had been abandoned for a white-faced, grinning clown with two horns of blue hair rising from just behind each of its ears.

The clown crouched on the other side of the case, a police light spinning behind him, spraying blue everywhere. The clown’s hands were blue too, pale blue, instead of gloved in black leather.

And the calliope played on.

“Entry of the Gladiators” was quickly becoming his least favorite piece of music ever.

“How are you doing there, dickery?” the clown called over the music.

“This isn’t funny.”

“What do you mean? It’s a riot! Just look at my face!” The latex smile actually seemed to widen at that.

As the clown started to move forward, Brian’s gaze darted around the inside of the van. There was another plywood wall at the front of the van, blocking off the cab. His only way out was the side door.

The lid of the road case was practically in his lap. He slid a hand under it and shifted to a better position, ready to spring. Just as the clown reached the other side of the case, he threw the lid up and forward while launching himself to the right, tripping over the wheel hump, landing hard on a knee—but he was near the side door. Pulling himself forward with one hand, he stretched for the lock with the other.

The clown grabbed him around the waist and dumped him, still reaching toward the door, onto his side. He squirmed and pulled back onto his knees—and had his knees jerked out from under him.

The
oof
of hitting the floor knocked some of the air from him, but he rocked onto his other hip and kicked out while trying to drag himself with his elbows closer to the door handle.

The clown caught one of his feet in a hand.

Brian rolled onto his back to free up the other leg.

The clown just pushed his legs between Brian’s, spreading them. They fought with hands, the clown trying to pin him down, Brian prying and hitting the clown’s hands off him—latex, he was wearing pale blue latex gloves instead of leather, like the kind he would have found in Brian’s secret duffel bag.

He elbowed the clown and tried to roll away, to disentangle himself.

The clown hit him in the face, openhanded, and grabbed his hair.

Grimacing with the pain, he closed both hands over the clown’s one, holding on to the warm latex, leaving the clown’s other hand free to hit him in the face again. He bucked his hips, tried to get a knee up, dig it in, push the clown off with the music going “do do doodle-oodle oot-doot doo do” like he was in a Rob Zombie movie.

“Get off me,” he said through gritted teeth, through smooshed cheeks, through the smell of leather and tobacco and cheap latex rubber. He dug his fingers under the hand gripping his face. “Get the fuck
off
me.”

The clown mask dipped toward him, brushing his cheekbone, pressing right up against his ear, hard enough that Brian could feel the solidness of the chin under the mask jutting against the side of his jaw.

“Jack be nimble,” the clown said. “Jack be quick. Does Jack want to say something about a banana split?”

“Fuck you.” He got his hips turned, his shirt and jacket rucking up, the rubber ridges of the floor scraping his exposed skin. He thought he might be able to slip out to the side or at least flip the situation around, get on top of the clown—and then what? He didn’t have to worry about the
then what
—a hard knee in the stomach doubled him forward. He gripped the mask, holding on to the clown’s head, but he had to gather his bearings in order to do anything with it, and another knee to his stomach put a stop to that. The clown shoved him. He flopped onto his back, gasping for air. Then onto his stomach when the clown jerked him over again and straddled his waist.

His cheek pressed against the rubber ridges of the van’s floor, his breaths huffing across it. The clown wrenched his arms behind him.

“Shit,” he managed with a breath. “Shit,” as he was dragged up onto his knees and pushed, arms still twisted behind him, toward the van wall. Air oofed from him as his chest hit the wall.

The clown was right up behind him, a knee between his knees, a hip jutting against his lower back, forcing his pelvis against the wall.

“That’s better,” the clown said. “Now it’s time to get Jack in the box.”

He forced a sound through his teeth that was supposed to be
no
but failed to contain any actual words. He struggled, pushing his hips back, trying to slip through sideways again, but the clown pressed a hand firmly between his shoulder blades. His arms were still jammed within the clown’s hand. He didn’t have any room to move, and every struggle banged his head against the wall.

With a particularly strong shove, the clown leaned in, saying, “Have you stopped to think how I texted you this location from your friend’s phone?”

Dylan
. A word came scraping up Brian’s throat, and he held on to it, keeping it lodged at the back of his mouth.

“You want to go see him?”

“What’d you do with Dylan?” There wasn’t anyone in the road case; he was certain of that much.

“I’m going to turn you around and let you open that box back up. But don’t go jumping in just yet. All right?”