Six short stories to shake you to your core. O ut and Back by Barbara Roden An abandoned amusement park attracts unwary thrill seekers The Game of Bear - Reggie Oliver & M. R. James Reggie Oliver completes M. R. James' unfinished classic. Shem-el-Nessim: An Inspiration in Perfume - Chris Bell Venturi - Richard Christian Matheson Party Talk - John Gaskin Princess of the Night - Michael Kelly
Release date:
July 26, 2012
Publisher:
Robinson
Print pages:
66
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BARBARA RODEN IS A World Fantasy Award-winning editor and publisher (for Ash-Tree Press), whose short stories have appeared in numerous publications, including Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Nineteenth Annual Collection, Horror: Best of the Year 2005, Bound for Evil, Strange Tales 2, Gaslight Grimoire and Gaslight Grotesque, and Poe. Her first collection, Northwest Passages, was published by Prime Books in October 2009.
“My cousin-by-marriage Sean Lavery, knowing my love for weird and outré websites, sent me a link to the Dark Roasted Blend site (www.darkroastedblend.com),” reveals the author, “where I found several pages featuring photographs of abandoned places.
“My imagination was fired by pictures taken at Chippewa Lake Park in Medina, Ohio, which opened in 1878 and was abandoned in 1978, with the buildings and rides left to rot where they stood, and I began looking around for some information about the park.
“I’ve always had a fondness for amusement parks, ever since I was a child visiting Vancouver’s Pacific National Exhibition with my father and my brother: an annual trip which was one of the red-letter days on my childhood calendar. The photographs of Chippewa Lake Park were equal parts eerie and sad, for anyone who has ever thrilled to the sights and sounds of a midway, and the story sprang, almost fully-formed, into my head; one of the few times that’s happened.”
To see some of the pictures that inspired the following story, visit: www.defunctparks.com/parks/OH/ChippewaLake/chippewa-lake.htm.
“KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN. I don’t want to miss it.”
“How hard can it be to miss?” Linda asked, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s not the sort of thing you’re going to drive past and not see.”
“It’s been abandoned for a long time,” said Allan patiently. “It’s not like there are going to be signs. Besides,” – he waved one hand at the dispirited housing development they were driving through – “the place has grown up a lot. Back when it was built it was a long way from anywhere; nothing but scrub and fields.”
“So why’d anyone build an amusement park miles from where people lived?” Linda wasn’t particularly interested in the answer, but it had been a long drive, and she was tired of the silence; tired, full stop.
Allan shrugged. “I dunno. Guess land was cheap. And there’s a lake; that’s what it was named after. Must’ve been a popular spot for people to come with their families.”
“What are you expecting to see?”
“I’m not sure. I haven’t been able to find out much. It’s kind of off the beaten track” – Linda gave a hollow laugh, as if to say You’re kidding me – “and not too many people seem to have been here. I’m hoping to get some good pictures; put them up on my website.”
“Great.” Linda stared out the window. “We take a day out of our vacation just so you can maybe get some pictures of you’re not sure what – if it’s still there, and if we find it – and then you’ll spend hours putting them up on a website for three people to see. Hooray.”
Allan glanced sideways at her. “Hey, it’s just one day. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Well, you got it wrong then. It’s one day out of the vacation I’ve been looking forward to for months, thinking – stupid me – that we’d have a nice relaxing time, no chasing around like we do every weekend, me being dragged off to some abandoned place or weird site that you just have to see. All I want is a rest, Allan.”
“You didn’t have to come, you know. You could have stayed back at the hotel.”
“Yeah, I guess I could. While you took the car, I could’ve stayed in the hotel room, and then when I got bored I could’ve gone down to the pool, and then I could’ve gone back to the room. Thrilling. Holidays are supposed to be about doing things together.”
Allan shook his head. There was no point arguing with her when she got like this. When he’d realized their trip would take them so close – well, within a hundred miles or so – to White Lake Park he’d planned to visit it; he just hadn’t mentioned it to Linda until that morning. He’d honestly thought that the idea of visiting another abandoned amusement park would appeal to her as much as it did to him. It wasn’t every day you got a chance to see something like this. He was trying to figure out a way to say that without provoking her further when he glanced to his left and saw something that made him start, so that the car swerved and Linda uttered a startled “Hey!”
“Look! Over there! Do you see it?” Allan slowed the car to a crawl. “There!”
Linda craned her neck and peered through the driver’s window. Behind the tired, sagging houses that lined the road she could see the tops of trees, an unbroken line stretching in both directions and apparently away from the houses as well. For a few moments that was all she could see, and she was about to ask what he was looking at when she saw it too.
It came into focus so suddenly that she almost jerked her head back in surprise. One moment she was looking at an innocuous treescape, leafy green boughs of maples and oaks and buckeyes fluttering in the breeze, and the next she could see, twisting its way through the branches, the unmistakable silhouette of a roller coaster track, wooden supports criss-crossing beneath. Her eye followed the track and she saw it dip out of sight behind the houses; then, further ahead, it rose again, and she had an impression as of some huge beast crouched behind the houses, watching, waiting. She shook her head and blinked, and despite the heat of the day she shivered.
Allan had pulled onto the shoulder and stopped the car. “There must be a way in,” he muttered. “Some sort of entrance . . .”
“Long gone, I’ll bet,” said Linda. “Place is probably locked up tighter than a drum. Can you imagine the lawsuits?”
Allan didn’t hear; or at least pretended not to. “There’s got to be access from behind these houses. They back right on to it.”
“What are you going to do? Walk through someone’s back yard, climb their fence? Honestly, Allan . . .”
“There.” He pointed to a house that stood slightly apart from its neighbours. It was a good deal older than most of the other houses in the area, sitting in the middle of an unkempt lawn choked with dandelions, a battered wooden fence which had once been white standing guard in front like a mouthful of broken teeth. To one side was a dusty laneway with a half-dozen cars parked in it, and Allan looked at them with suspicion.
“Typical,” he muttered. “Bet all these people are here to look at the park. Won’t be able to move for tripping over them, gawking, taking pictures.”
“And that makes them different to you – how, exactly?”
Allan said nothing as he pulled in beside the last one in the row, a dirty Ford Focus with a baby seat in the back. He reached into the back of their own car and fished around for the bag containing his camera and notebook. When he got out, he slammed the door with more force than Linda thought was strictly necessary, although she refrained from commenting.
The late morning heat was oppressive, like a wet woollen blanket. Linda pushed a limp strand of brown hair behind one ear, then smoothed out her skirt, which felt damp and clammy. Allan glanced at her.
“Don’t know why you wore that,” he muttered. “Not very practical.”
“Yeah, well, maybe if you’d told me we’. . .
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