WELCOME, NEW RESIDENTS.
The words burned into my brain. My feet felt like they were glued to the pavement. New residents. They weren’t taking a tour. They were being… checked in.
Maya tugged hard on my sleeve, her little fingernails digging into my skin. “Josh, what’s happening? Where did Mom and Dad go?”
I couldn’t answer. I just stared at the dark tunnel that had swallowed the fake versions of our parents. The real screams echoing through the park suddenly made a whole lot more sense. This wasn't just a theme park. It was a processing plant. And we were next on the assembly line.
“We have to hide,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. I grabbed her hand and pulled her away from the boat ride, back into the shadows of the plaza. The shuffling residents were starting to notice us. A few of the blank, smiling faces turned in our direction, their doll-like eyes seeming to focus for the first time. They knew we didn’t belong.
My eyes darted around, searching for any place to go. The fiery Inferno coaster? No way. The spinning teacups of doom? Not a chance. Then I saw it. The funhouse. ‘The Devil’s Playground.’ It looked creepy, with a giant, leering devil face for an entrance, its open mouth a dark, gaping doorway. But it was a building. It had walls.
“In there,” I said, pointing. “Now!”
We sprinted across the plaza, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. A few of the residents turned and began to shuffle after us, their movements slow but steady. Relentless.
We dove into the devil’s mouth, plunging into darkness. The door slammed shut behind us with a sound like a coffin lid closing. A low, evil chuckle echoed all around us. Hee hee hee hee.
We were in a hall of mirrors. But these weren’t normal, wavy funhouse mirrors. The first one I looked into showed my reflection, but my skin was sickly green and my eyes were hollow black pits. I looked over at Maya’s reflection. She was a tiny, gray-haired old woman, her face a web of wrinkles. She screamed and hid behind me.
“Don’t look in the mirrors!” I yelled, pulling her along. We navigated the maze, trying to keep our eyes on the floor. But the mirrors weren't the worst part. The floor itself began to tilt, shifting and groaning beneath our feet. We were sliding, scrambling to keep our balance as the whole room seemed to turn upside down.
We tumbled through another doorway and landed in a heap on a soft, squishy floor. It was a room full of those big, padded rollers you have to squeeze through. But these were different. They were black and covered in something that felt… hairy. And they were vibrating, letting out a low, purring sound.
“I don’t like this, Josh,” Maya whimpered.
“We have to keep going,” I said, trying to sound braver than I felt. I took a deep breath and pushed my way into the hairy, purring rollers. It was like being squeezed by a giant, fuzzy animal. I pushed and squirmed, and finally burst out the other side, pulling Maya through with me.
We found ourselves in a small, quiet room. It looked like some kind of break room. There was a table, a couple of chairs, and a locker against the far wall. One of the lockers was slightly ajar.
It was the first normal-looking place we’d seen. But the silence was almost as scary as the screams outside.
A book was lying on the table, left open. It was a thick, black binder with the Demon Land logo on the front. I crept closer. The page was titled: New Resident Orientation.
My eyes scanned the page. It was filled with horrible, typed-out instructions.
Step 1: Separate the targets from their initial group. The ‘Scream Soda’ stand is effective for parental units.
Step 2: Administer the First Ride. The Witch’s Brew is calibrated for maximum disorientation and fear infusion. This primes the soul for conversion.
Step 3: Collect Payment. One (1) soul coin per group. Place in the designated collection purse to initiate the glamour.
Step 4: Activate the Glamour. The glamour will take the form of the parental units to lure any remaining subjects toward the ‘Tour of Your Future’ processing ride. NOTE: Glamours are temporary and have no advanced reasoning skills. Do not engage them in conversation.
My blood turned to ice. Soul coin. That’s what the black coin was. My dad had paid for this. He had paid for our souls.
But it was the next line that made my breath catch in my throat.
TROUBLESHOOTING: In the event of a subject escaping the First Ride, do not engage. Alert the Park Manager immediately. The Manager will initiate the ‘Cleanup Crew.’ Unprocessed subjects are considered property defects and must be collected and recycled.
Recycled.
GULP.
We weren’t just escapees. We were ‘property defects.’
Suddenly, I heard a noise from the locker. A faint scratching sound. I froze. Maya grabbed my arm.
Slowly, I tiptoed over to the locker and pulled the door open.
A boy was crammed inside. He couldn’t have been much older than me. He was wearing a red Demon Land employee uniform, but the plastic demon head was on the floor beside him. His face was pale with fear, and he was clutching a strange, twisted-looking key.
“Are you… one of them?” he whispered, his eyes wide with terror.
“No!” I whispered back. “Are you?”
“I work here. Or, I did,” he said, scrambling out of the locker. “My name is Sam. They caught my family last week. I’ve been hiding ever since. You guys are the first real people I’ve seen.”
“They have my parents,” I said, my voice shaking. “They think we’re ‘defects’.”
Sam’s eyes went wide. “Then you have to get out of here. Now! They’ve probably already called the Cleanup Crew!”
“The what?” Maya asked.
As if in answer, a new sound cut through the park, overriding the distorted music. It was a loud, wailing siren. It sounded like a fire truck and a howling wolf all at once.
Sam’s face went white. “It’s them. We’re out of time.”
“What do we do?” I asked, my panic rising.
“There’s only one way out,” Sam said, holding up the twisted key. “Every ride has an emergency control room. A real one, for the real-world machinery. This is the master key. But it won’t open the front gate.”
“So how do we get out?”
Sam looked at me, his expression grim. “We don’t go out the front. We go out the back. Through the Manager’s office.”
He pointed through a grimy window in the break room. Across the park, at the very top of the massive, fire-belching Inferno roller coaster, was a small, dark office. It was perched right at the highest peak, looking down on the entire park like a vulture.
“The Manager’s office is up there?” I stammered. “On the roller coaster?”
“It’s the only place in the park that has a back door to the real world,” Sam said, his voice low. “But getting to it… we have to ride The Inferno.”
The siren wailed again, closer this time. I could hear a new sound from outside the funhouse. A heavy, rhythmic stomp, stomp, stomp.
The Cleanup Crew was here. And they were hunting for us.
