Ava is right. The structure groans in complaint, and they’ll have to be careful to stay as still as possible, but it doesn’t feel like collapse is imminent. They settle close to the edge, where it’s supported the most. This spot is better than Mack’s, anyway, with massive overhanging trees providing relief from the impending assault of the sun. They might not have to cover themselves with the blanket at all.
Mack sets up carefully, meticulously, anything she might need in easy reach. She didn’t shower last night, not after the bonfire, and she regrets it as she can smell a hint of her body and the smoke, but above the ground like this with a healthy breeze she doubts any human could smell it.
Ava settles in next to her, so close their bodies have barely a rumor of space between them. As the sun cracks the horizon, breaking open the tedium of the day ahead of them, Ava whispers, “If Jaden doesn’t get out today, I’ll beat the shit out of him tonight.”
It’s not a comment on Mack, or her past. It’s not a question, or a demand. It’s an offer. An intimacy. Ava has her back.
Mack shifts slightly away.
* * *
—
It’s still predawn when Rebecca finds the old carousel. There’s something unnerving about the whimsical animals, once brightly painted, now chipped and faded to the wood beneath. She knows it’s wood—she knows it—but with the twin ruin of rot and sun bleach, her brain tells her she’s looking at bones, tortured and impaled in place forever, gruesome horrors of life.
Actually, she kind of loves it. It looks like a movie set. She can feel the camera behind her, taking in the view with her, letting the audience reach their own conclusions about what waits in the middle of the carousel, lurking in the shadows. Don’t go in, she almost hears them saying.
The hairs on the back of her neck rise, and she rubs her arms, though the slight early morning chill is already evaporating. No. Not a horror movie. Doubtless with her food allergies, a horror movie would find some really terrible, traumatic way of killing her. As if she hasn’t imagined asphyxiating nearly every day her entire life. As if her allergies are a plot gimmick and not a very real, constant source of everything from inconvenience to incredible pain and fear.
Not horror. A rom-com. She’s inherited a dilapidated old amusement park from a distant uncle. No. An estranged parent, so there are more emotional complications. This is her first tour, and she’s aghast at the state of it. What’s she supposed to do with a broken-down amusement park? Never mind that her fondest childhood memories took place here, the last time she spent a happy summer with her father. (Mother? Father. Paternal estrangement is less painful than maternal estrangement. At least for audiences. She finds both plenty painful, herself. But back to the movie.)
Now she’s going to turn around and run right into a man in a flannel shirt. Jeans that fit snuggly on a perfect ass. Sturdy boots, needed-to-shave-three-days-ago stubble, gruff voice, vibrant eyes. A contractor! Hired by her father before he passed! But why would she invest more in the park? Unless it means spending time with those vibrant eyes…
A stray breeze groans through the carousel, like the last breath pushed from dead lungs. No. This is not a rom-com set. This is a zombie movie set.
Focus, Rebecca. She steps into the carousel. It looks like the panels in the center are split apart. If she tries, she can squeeze inside. Bonus to not having her C-cups yet. Those would definitely get in the way.
But as she puts her first leg in, she looks down and sees a dull glint of silver. She knows that necklace. It looked so pretty on Rosiee. She had envied what a specific, clear sense of self Rosiee conveyed with her heavy silver jewelry. She crouches down and picks up the necklace. The clasp is broken.
Rebecca looks closer. There’s a black mark on the clasp. Sticky, and actually not quite black. Very dark red. If Rosiee’s necklace caught and dug in hard enough to draw blood, surely Rosiee would have noticed.
Rebecca slowly withdraws her leg. Looks closer at the opening.
There’s a scrap of cloth, torn. She recognizes it from Rosiee’s shirt. A few steps backward, bumping into one of the skeletal horses, grinning sightlessly at her. There, a boot. How hard would Rosiee have to be struggling to lose a boot? It isn’t like it’s a pump, or a slip-on. There are deep gouges in the boot, too, scrapes where it must have been dragged against the ground. Trying to find purchase.
Rebecca stumbles off the carousel platform, heart racing, eyes searching wildly. This is not a rom-com.
This is not a rom-com.
The sun cuts across the treetops, flooding the carousel with light. There are dark smears of what could be rust. Oil. Black water. Blood.
“Fuck this zombie shit,” Rebecca whispers. “Hey!” she shouts, hitting the nearest path. “Hey! Help! I need help! I think something bad happened to Rosiee! If anyone is watching, I don’t care if I’m out! Something is wrong! Something is seriously wrong!”
She runs into the hedges, pushing through toward the camp. With her shrill cries fading and muffled by the eager green, it’s as though the carousel has never been disturbed. All except for the glints of silver left behind, winking a code in the sunlight no one is there to decipher.
* * *
—
Mack feels the tension as Ava hears it, too. Whether the person shouting is near or far is hard to tell, with the structures and the trees and the general chaos of the park breaking up the sounds, flinging them haphazardly through the air.
Ava shifts and pushes her eye to the ivy. Mack does the same, only because she can’t bear not to.
They don’t see anything.
“Sounds like Rebecca,” Ava whispers.
Mack hisses in response. Someone got set up to lose yesterday. That had to be what the ringing metal was. This is probably another trick.
The shouting cuts off abruptly, and Mack nearly lets out a sigh of relief, but it catches in her ribs, static and terrible, as a single scream careens through the park, echoing and being torn apart as it looks for purchase in their ears. In any ears.
Ava moves. Mack’s hand shoots out, grabbing her arm.
“No,” she whispers. “It’s a trick.”
Footsteps, then. An awkward, uncoordinated run. LeGrand hurries past them in the direction of the screams. He’s an idiot.
He’s not an idiot. Mack knows it. She knows the difference between a horror movie scream, a scream meant to imitate human agony, and the real thing.
She turns and sees a single tear trace down Ava’s face before Ava squeezes her eyes closed and turns her head so she can’t see down anymore. Ava knows the difference, too. “Jaden,” Ava whispers, reassuring herself or Mack or neither of them. “I’ll bet it’s him, setting everyone up.”
They both stay where they are, trapped in the prison of silence left in the wake of an unanswered scream.
* * *
—