Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

“So did you come looking for me because you missed me, or because you heard I might be able to get you into Lowryland?”

The question was asked in jest: I was laughing by the time I finished. The look Sam gave me was pure seriousness.

“I’m here for you,” he said, tucking his phone into his pocket. “I just. You know. Wanted to meet them.”

“Hey, and I’m cool with that,” I assured him. “Come on. Let me show you where I work.”

I offered him my hand. He took it without hesitation, and we strolled, together, like a couple of tourists, out of the entry plaza and onto the long small town stretch of Lowry’s Welcoming World.

Some people like to say that Lowryland is nothing more than an expensive Disneyland knockoff, planned for Florida before Michael Lowry learned about Disney’s Florida Project, by which time it was too late to change the construction plans. Nowhere is that comparison more apt than in the Welcoming World. It was designed in conjunction with a couple of comic artists who’d done work for the sci-fi pulps back in the fifties, and it’s like what would happen if Main Street, USA, got rebuilt by Martians using nothing but a book of postcards. The overall effect is cartoonish and strange, like something out of a dream. Even the landscaping is designed to enhance the idea that everyone who goes there has somehow been transported to another planet, someplace where the ordinary rules of an ordinary world couldn’t quite apply.

Kids love it, except for the occasional hyper-aware ones who look around themselves with wide, almost terrified eyes before bursting into betrayed tears, unable to resolve what they expect to see with what’s actually in front of them. Adults, who have a lot more years of inherent visual assumptions to claw through, mostly don’t notice the architectural oddities, or dismiss them as “quaint” and “old-fashioned,” dragging their sometimes weeping children through the last standing remnants of someone else’s idea of occupied Mars.

Sam clutched my hand a little tighter as he gawked shamelessly, taking in every inch. We walked straight down the middle of the street toward the center hub, the Park rising around us like a mountain range. The Welcoming World ended, not at anything so gauche as a castle or a roller coaster, but with a huge central plaza contained inside a gigantic artificial geode. Crystals sparkled from the walls, lit from within by soft LED bulbs that gave everything a twinkling, glimmering effect. A tilted bronze map of Lowryland stood on a small dais, separated from everything around it and surrounded by tourists snapping photos, chattering all the while.

“Fairyland is closed today, but that still leaves us with Chapter and Verse, Deep-Down, Candyland, and Metropolis,” I said, pointing to the relevant areas on the map. “If you want to watch the fireworks tonight, the best viewing area is lakeside in Deep-Down. I think we have an aquatic-themed area that isn’t a water park mostly because of the fireworks. It’s way harder to accidentally set things on fire when they’re wet.”

“I want to see everything,” said Sam.

I laughed. “That’s not going to happen in one day. The Park was designed to make it as close to impossible as they could, because they want people to come back over and over again. But we can see a lot.”

Sam turned to give me a hopeful look. “And then we can come back?”

“On my next day off, sure.” Megan and Fern had sign-in privileges, too, and as far as I knew, had never really used them. We could get Sam good and sick of Lowryland.

The thought was oddly appealing. While he was here, I knew I had someone in a position to watch my back. Fern was a good friend, but she was currently in the Enchanted Grove over in Chapter and Verse, smiling for the camera. She wouldn’t be able to come if I called. Whereas Sam, for all that he was looking around himself like a kid in a candy store, seemed inclined to stick to my side for as long as I’d let him.

I was starting to suspect that it would be a long, long time.

Now he was looking at the “geode” wall. “I would love to climb that,” he said thoughtfully.

“The Park used to allow it.”

He shot me a startled glance. “Really?”

“Yup. Twice a year, as part of a Park-wide field day thing. You could sign up for the half-marathon, for swimming laps in the Kraken’s Lagoon, or for free-climbing on the geode wall. They still do the half-marathon, although the rest of the activities have been discontinued for safety reasons. Which really sucks. I’d love to climb it, too.”

“Did someone fall?”

“No, but there was a concern that someone would.” I shrugged. “The people who climbed during the field day were volunteers who’d signed up and filled out forms promising not to sue the Park if they fell for any reason other than the wall collapsing. There were cushions and athletic gear and trained climbing instructors and you know how many people noticed those details when they looked at the pictures?”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say ‘not many,’” said Sam.

I nodded. “Incidents of people who hadn’t filled out any of that paperwork trying to sneakily climb the wall spiked after every field day. When parents started boosting their kids up to the wall so they could get a ‘cool rock-climbing picture,’ the Park shut the whole thing down.”

“People are why we can’t have nice things.”

“Pretty much.” I gestured to the map again. “Where do you want to start?”

Lowryland is set up in a wheel-like shape, making it possible to walk from one zone to the next in a never-ending loop. All zones connect to the hub, which was going to be important today: with Fairyland closed off, the hub was the only way between Candyland and Deep-Down.

Sam looked at the map for a moment before pointing to Chapter and Verse, which was the first zone to the left of the hub. “There.”

“There it is,” I said. Taking his hand again, I started for the wall. He came without any resistance, letting me lead while he goggled in wide-eyed delight at everything around us.

“Chapter and Verse is technically the literary-themed zone, but really it’s where they stick everything that doesn’t work somewhere else,” I said. “Aspen and Elm are usually there, and sometimes you can catch Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in the mornings, although they move around more. They spend a lot of time in the Welcoming World.” Because what a kid who was afraid of the angles of the architecture needed was an anthropomorphic Big Bad Wolf popping around the corner to say howdy.

Sometimes I wonder how anyone loves these places at all. The roller coasters are nice, sure, but the atmospheric trappings that make the theme parks so successful also turn them into nightmare factories.

Sam grinned at me. “We’re gonna see everything,” he said, and we plunged on, through the gateway to Chapter and Verse—stylized to look like it was made of frozen ink and flying manuscript pages—and into the true body of the Park.



* * *