The heavy stomp, stomp, stomp grew louder, shaking the very floor of the break room. It was coming from the funhouse entrance. They were inside.
“This way!” Sam hissed, kicking open a service door I hadn’t even noticed. “It leads to the back of the funhouse. We’ll be closer to The Inferno!”
There was no time to argue. I grabbed Maya’s hand, and the three of us plunged into a grimy, dark maintenance corridor. The wailing siren was deafening now. We ran, our footsteps echoing off the metal walls. Behind us, I heard a crash as the break room door was smashed off its hinges, followed by a low, guttural roar that wasn't even slightly human.
We burst out of the funhouse and into the blood-red twilight of the park. The Inferno loomed over us, a twisted mountain of steel and fire. The rhythmic stomping was right behind us. I risked a glance over my shoulder.
My breath hitched. They weren’t men in costumes. They were huge, hulking creatures, at least seven feet tall. Their bodies were lumpy and gray, like wet clay, and they had no faces—just a single, glowing red eye in the center of their heads. They were the Cleanup Crew. And they were fast.
“RUN!” I screamed.
We sprinted toward the entrance of The Inferno. The line was full of the same smiling, shuffling residents, all waiting patiently to board the roller coaster cars, which were shaped like demonic, skeletal dragons.
“We can’t wait in line!” I yelled.
“We don’t have to!” Sam shouted back, holding up the master key. “The control room is this way!”
He led us past the line, toward a small, unmarked steel door at the base of the ride. The key slid into the lock. With a click, the door opened. We scrambled inside, Sam slamming and locking it behind us just as one of the Cleanup Crew’s massive fists hammered against the metal. BOOM! BOOM! The whole door buckled inwards.
The room was filled with levers and blinking lights. A single, empty roller coaster car was sitting on a maintenance track right in front of us.
“This track leads directly to the main lift hill!” Sam explained, already climbing into the car. “It’s our only shot!”
Maya and I jumped in beside him. The pounding on the door was getting louder, the metal starting to tear. Sam jammed his key into a slot on the control panel and twisted it hard. With a violent jerk, the car shot forward, launching us out of the control room and onto the main track.
The ride was a nightmare. The lift hill pulled us up, up, up into the swirling red sky. I could see the whole park laid out below us—a twisted landscape of fear. Then, we plunged. It wasn’t a fun drop; it was a terrifying, stomach-lurching fall straight toward a pool of bubbling lava. Real lava. The heat was intense, washing over us in a blistering wave.
The skeletal dragon car swerved at the last second, roaring through a canyon of fake rock and real fire. We twisted through corkscrews that spun us so hard I saw stars, all while the demonic calliope music blared from speakers on the car itself.
“The office is at the top of the next peak!” Sam yelled over the noise. “Get ready!”
I could see it now—the dark little office perched at the very top of the track. As our car crested the hill, it slowed down for a terrifying half-second, hanging at the peak before the next drop.
“NOW!” Sam screamed.
He used his key on a panel inside the car, and our safety bars popped open. We leaped from the moving car onto the narrow platform in front of the Manager’s office. The car paused for a moment, its skeletal dragon head turning to look at us with empty sockets, before it plunged down the other side.
Sam was already at the office door, his hands shaking as he tried to fit the key in the lock. Through the window, I could see a figure inside—a tall, thin silhouette sitting behind a large desk, perfectly still. The Park Manager.
The key clicked. The door opened. We scrambled inside.
The office was dark and cold. The figure behind the desk didn't move. At the back of the room was another door, a simple wooden one. It had a single word on it: EXIT.
The siren was outside the office now. The Cleanup Crew was climbing the tracks.
We didn’t hesitate. We ran for the exit, pulled the door open, and stumbled out into… silence.
We were standing in the woods. The real woods. The air was cool and smelled of pine needles and damp earth. The blood-red sky was gone, replaced by the deep, dark blue of the real night, dotted with real stars. The screams and the horrible music had vanished.
We were out. We were free.
We ran. We didn’t look back. We ran until our lungs burned and our legs felt like jelly. Finally, through the trees, I saw the faint glimmer of the main road. And parked on the shoulder… our minivan.
“Look!” Maya cried, a sob of pure relief in her voice.
We burst out of the woods and ran to the car. The doors were unlocked. We piled inside, panting and crying. It was over. It was finally over.
I locked the doors and slumped back in my seat, my heart still racing. Sam was looking out the back window, his face pale. “I can’t believe we made it.”
“I just want to go home,” Maya whispered.
I nodded, my eyes scanning the familiar, messy interior of our car. Dad’s map was on the dashboard. Mom’s half-empty water bottle was in the cup holder. Everything was normal.
Everything was safe.
My eyes fell on the steering wheel. And my heart stopped.
Stuck to the center of the wheel, right over the car’s logo, was a small, round sticker. It was red and purple, with a familiar, winking face.
It was the Demon Land logo.
I stared at it, my blood turning to ice. It wasn’t a sticker you get at a gift shop. It looked… branded. Part of the car.
Then I saw another one. A smaller one, on the gearshift. And another, on the corner of the GPS screen.
My gaze drifted outside, to the road ahead. A pair of headlights was coming toward us. It was a truck, rumbling down the dark, empty road. As it got closer, its headlights seemed to glow with a faint, reddish light.
And on its front grille, where the manufacturer's emblem should have been, was a winking, chrome devil face.
Sam saw it too. His breath hitched. “Josh… what’s happening?”
I couldn’t answer. The truth was a cold, heavy stone sinking in my gut. The soul coin. One (1) soul coin per group. My dad hadn’t just paid for our souls. He had paid for a franchise.
We hadn’t escaped Demon Land.
We had just arrived in it.
