Honey Moon (2 page)

Honey regarded them with satisfaction. The Rat Den was the best part of the House of Horror, because the animals were real. They had been stuffed by a New Jersey taxidermist in 1952 for the spook house

at Palisades Park in Fort Lee. In the late sixties her Uncle Earl had bought them thirdhand from a North Carolina man whose park near Forest City had gone bust.

"Chantal?" She called out her cousin's name one more time, and when she got no response left the House of Horror through the back fire exit. Dodging power cables, she cut behind the Roundup and headed for the midway.

Only a few of the colored light bulbs strung through the sagging pennants that zigzagged over the midway were still working. The hanky-panks were boarded up for the night: the milk-bottle pitch and the fish tank, the Crazy Ball game, and the Iron Claw with its glass case full of combs, dice, and Dukes of Hazzard key chains. The stale smell of popcorn, pizza, and rancid oil from the funnel cakes clung to everything.

It was the smell of Honey's rapidly vanishing childhood, and she breathed it deeply into her lungs. If the Disney people took over, the smell would disappear forever, right along with the hanky-panks, Kiddieland, and the House of Horror. She clasped her arms over her small chest and hugged herself, a habit she had developed over the years because no one else would do it.

Since her mother had died when she was six, this was the only home she'd known, and she loved it with all her heart. Writing the Disney people had been the worst thing she'd ever had to do. She had been forced to suppress all of her softer emotions in a desperate attempt to find the money she needed to keep her family together, the money that would keep them out of the welfare system and allow them to buy a small house in a clean neighborhood where they could maybe have some nice furniture and a garden. But as she stood in the middle of the deserted midway, she wished that she were old enough and smart enough to make things turn out differently. Because most of all, she couldn't bear the idea that she was losing Black Thunder, and if the coaster had still been running, nothing in the world could have made her give up this park.

The eerie night quiet and the smell of old popcorn brought back the memory of a small child huddled in the corner of the trailer, scabby knees drawn up to her chin, light blue eyes large and stunned. An angry voice from the past echoed in her mind.

"Get her out of here, Sophie! Goddamnit, she's givin' me the willies. She's hardly moved since she you brung her here last night. All she's done is sit in that corner and stare." She heard the crash of her Uncle Earl's meaty fist on the kitchen table, Sophie's monotonous whine.

"Where am I gonna put her, Earl?"

"I don't give a shit where you put her. It's not my fault your sister went and got herself drowned. Those Alabama welfare people had no right to make you go get her. I want to eat my lunch in goddamn peace without her spookin' me!"

Sophie came over to the corner of the trailer's living area and poked the sole of Honey's cheap canvas sneaker with the toe of her own red espadrille. "You stop actin' like that, Honey. You go on outside and find Chantal. You haven't seen the park yet. She'll show it to you."

"I want my mama," Honey whispered.

"Goddamnit! Get her out of here, Sophie!"

"Now see what you done," Sophie signed. "You got your Uncle Earl all mad."

She grasped Honey's upper arm and tugged on it. "Come on. Let's go get you some cotton candy."

She took Honey from the trailer and led her through the pines and out into the scorching sun of a Carolina afternoon. Honey moved like a tiny robot. She didn't want any cotton candy. Sophie'd made her eat some Captain Crunch that morning, and she'd thrown up.

Sophie dropped her arm. Honey already sensed that her aunt didn't like to touch people, not like Honey's mother, Carolann. Carolann was always picking Honey up and cuddling her and calling her sweetie pie, even when she was tired from working all day at the dry cleaners in Montgomery.

"I want my mama," Honey whispered as they stepped through the grass into a colonnade of great wooden posts.

"Your mama's dead. She's not—"

The rest of Sophie's reply was drowned out as a monster screamed above Honey's head.

Honey screamed then, too. All the grief and fear that had been building up inside her since her mother had died and she was snatched away from everything familiar were released by the terror of that unexpected noise. Again and again she screamed.

She had a vague idea what a roller coaster was, but she had never ridden one, never seen one this size, and it didn't occur to her to connect the sound with the ride. She heard only a monster, the monster that hides in the closet and skulks under the bed and carries off little girls' mothers in fearsome fiery jaws.

The piercing screams spilled from her mouth. After being nearly catatonic for the six days since her mother had died, she couldn't stop, not even when Sophie began to shake her arm.

"Quit that! Quit that screamin', you hear?"

But Honey couldn't quit. Instead, she fought against Sophie until she broke away. Then she began running beneath the tracks, arms flailing, her small lungs heaving as over and over she screamed her sorrow and fear. When she came to a dip in the track too low for her to pass beneath, she grasped one of the wooden posts. Splinters dug into her arms as she held onto the thing she feared most in the confused belief that it couldn't devour her if she clasped it tightly enough.

She wasn't aware of the passage of time, only the sound of her screams, the sporadic roar of the monster as it rushed overhead, the rough splinters of the post digging into the baby-soft skin of her arms, and the fact that she wasn't ever going to see her mother again.

"Goddamnit, stop that noise!"

While Sophie stood helplessly watching, Uncle Earl came up behind them and dragged her off the post with a bellow. "What's wrong with her? What the hell is wrong with her now?"

"I don't know," Sophie whined. "She started doin' that when she heard Black Thunder. I think she's afraid of it."

"Well, that's just too goddamn bad. We're not coddling her, goddamnit."

He snatched Honey up by the waist and pulled her out from beneath the coaster. Walking with great loping strides, he carried her through the clusters of people visiting the park that day and up the ramp into the station house where Black Thunder loaded its riders.

A train sat empty, ready for its next group of passengers. Ignoring the protests of the people waiting in line, he pushed her beneath the lap bar in the first car.

Her shrill screams echoed hollowly beneath the wooden roof. She struggled desperately to get out, but her uncle held her fast with one hairy arm.

"Earl, whatcha doin'?" Chester, the old man who ran Black Thunder, rushed up to him.

"She's goin' on a ride."

"She's too little, Earl. You know she's not tall enough for this coaster."

"That's too damn bad. Strap her in. And no goddamn brakes."

"But, Earl. . ."

"Do what I say, or pick up your paycheck."

She was vaguely aware of the loud objections of several of the adults waiting in line, but then the train began to move, and she realized that she was being delivered into the very stomach of the beast that had taken her mother.

"No!" she screamed. "No!
Mama!
"

Her fingers barely met at the tips as she clutched the lap bar in a death grip.

Sobs ripped through her. "Mama . . . Mama . . ."

The structure creaked and groaned as the train crawled up the great lift hill that had helped create the legend of Black Thunder. It moved with sadistic slowness, giving her child's mind time to conjure ghastly visions of terrifying horror. She was six years old and alone in the universe with the beast of death.

Utterly defenseless, she wasn't big enough, strong enough, old enough to protect herself, and there was

no adult left on earth who would do it for her.

Fear clogged her throat and her tiny heart throbbed in her chest as the car climbed inexorably to the top

of the great lift hill. Higher than the tallest mountain in the world. Beyond the comfort of clouds. Above the hot sky to a dark place where only devils lurked.

Her last scream ripped from her throat as the car cleared the top, and she had one glimpse of the terrifying descent before she was thrown into the stomach of the beast to be gobbled up and gnawed

apart through the darkest night of her child's soul only to ...

Rise again.

And then pitch back into hell.

And rise again.

She was plunged into hell and resurrected three times before she was hurled out over the lake and down into the devil's spiral. She slammed against the side of the car as she catapulted in a deadly whirlpool straight down into the water, only to level out at the last second, barely two feet above the surface, and be shot back to higher ground. The coaster slowed and gently delivered her to the station.

She was no longer crying.

The cars came to a stop. Her Uncle Earl had disappeared, but Chester, the ride operator, rushed up to

lift her out. She shook her head, her eyes still tragic, her tiny face chalky.

"Again," she whispered.

She was too young to articulate the feelings the coaster had given her. She knew only that she had to experience them again—the sense that there was a force greater than herself, a force that could punish but would also rescue. The sense that somehow that force had allowed her to touch her mother.

She rode Black Thunder a dozen times that day and on through the rest of her childhood whenever she needed to experience hope in the protection of a higher power. The coaster confronted her with all the terrors of human existence, but then carried her safely to the other side.

Life with the Booker family gradually settled into a routine. Her Uncle Earl never liked her, but he put up with her because she became a much bigger help to him than either his wife or daughter. Sophie was as kind as it was possible for someone entirely self-absorbed to be. She made few demands other than to insist that Honey and Chantal go to Sunday school at least once a month.

But the great wooden coaster had taught Honey more about God than the Baptist Church, and the coaster's theology was easier to understand. For someone who was small for her age, orphaned, and female to boot, she drew courage from the knowledge that a higher power existed, something strong and eternal that would watch over her.

A sound coming from inside the arcade jolted Honey back to the present. She reprimanded herself for getting distracted from her purpose. Before long, she was going to be as bad as her cousin. Walking forward, she stuck her head into the arcade. "Hey, Buck, have you seen Chantal?"

Buck Ochs looked up from the pinball machine he was trying to fix because she had told him that if he didn't get at least a few of the machines running she was going to kick his big old ugly butt right back to Georgia. His beer gut pushed against the buttons of his dirty plaid shirt as he shifted his weight and gave her his doltish grin.

"Chantal who?"

He laughed uproariously at his wit. She wished she could fire him right there on the spot, but she had lost too many men already because she couldn't always meet her payroll on time, and she knew she couldn't afford to lose another.

Besides, Buck wasn't malicious, just stupid. He also had a disgusting habit of scratching himself right where he shouldn't when females were present.

"You're a real joker, aren't you, Buck? Has Chantal been around?"

"Naw, Honey. It's just been me, myself, and me."

"Well, let's see if one of you can get a couple of those damned machines working before morning."

With a quelling look, she left the arcade and continued to the end of the midway. The Bullpen, a run-down wooden building where the unmarried male employees bunked, sat in the trees behind the picnic grove. Only Buck and two others lived there now. She could see yellow light seeping from the windows, but she didn't go closer because she couldn't imagine Chantal visiting either Cliff or Rusty. Chantal wasn't one to sit and talk to people.

The uneasiness that had been growing inside her ever since she had realized how late it was settled

deeper into her stomach. This was no time for Chantal to disappear. Something was definitely wrong. And Honey was afraid she knew exactly what it was.

She turned in a circle, taking in the dilapidated trailers, the midway, the rides.

Dominating it all were the great hills of Black Thunder, stripped now of all their power to hurl a frightened young girl to a place where she could once again find hope in something eternal to protect her. Hesitating for only a moment, she began to head down the overgrown concrete walk that led to Silver Lake.

The night was deep and still. As the old pines closed over her head, shutting out the moonlight, the calliope sounds of "Dixie" began to drift through her memory.

Ladies and gentlemen. Children of all ages. Take a step back in time to those
grand old days when cotton was king. Join us for a ride on the paddle wheeler
Robert E. Lee and see beautiful Silver Lake, the largest lake in Paxawatchie
County, South Carolina. . . .

The pines ended at a dilapidated dock. She stopped walking and shivered. At the end of the dock rose the ghostly hulk of the
Bobby Lee
.

The
Robert E. Lee
sat right where it had been anchored when it had sunk in a winter storm a few months after the Black Thunder disaster. Now its bottom rested in the polluted muddy ooze of Silver Lake fifteen feet down. All of its lower deck was underwater, along with the once-proud paddle wheel that had churned at its stern. Only the upper deck and pilothouse rose above the lake's surface. The
Bobby Lee
sat at the end of the dock, useless and half submerged, a phantom ship in the eerie moonlight.

Honey shivered again and crossed her arms over her chest. Watery moonlight etched ghostly fingers over the dying lake, and her nostrils twitched at the musty scent of decaying vegetation, dead fish, and rotting wood. She wasn't a chicken, but she didn't like being around the
Bobby Lee
at night. She curled her toes in her flip-flops so they wouldn't make any noise as she took first one and then another step along the dock. Some of the boards were broken, and she could see the stagnant waters of the lake below. She slid forward another step and stopped, opening her mouth to call out Chantal's name. But creepy-crawlies were strangling her voice box and nothing came out.