Hide(33)

Another good joke, and no way to write it down or share it.

The hell ride reminds him of something, and he feels a rush of embarrassment that arrives before his realization why this place fills him with humiliation. Then he remembers: Gorky. Maksim Gorky. Ian had gotten weirdly obsessed with the Russian dissident writer during undergrad. At parties his go-to line was to quote Gorky and his thoughts on the repulsiveness of American excess. He tried it so many times, and he never got a single date. The last time he used it, the girl he was talking to actually knew who Gorky was. He thought he had finally met a good match, until the girl laughed and said, “Yeah, he was hot, that’s how he got away with being such a pretentious asshole. How do you think you’re going to get away with it?”

Ian shoves down the reflexive, residual shame. Gorky had written about Coney Island, hadn’t he? He had! How did Ian not think of it until now? Gorky had a way of shoving more over-the-top emotional descriptions into a single paragraph than most people did in an entire piece. He wasn’t a pretentious asshole, he was a genius. He had gone to Coney Island and hated every moment of it and written beautifully about how awful it was. There was something about a monkey, something about a banal hell ride like this one, something about infant incubators. Initially Ian had imagined those as a weird ride designed like strollers for adults, but it turned out it was a building that was literally built to house premature babies in incubators. Amusement parks used to be a lot weirder. Maybe they even had one of those here, but it doesn’t seem quite old enough.

He tries to think of what else Gorky wrote. He had underlined so much of that essay. But Ian can’t remember any specifics other than Gorky only truly being happy while imagining the whole place on fire.

Maybe Ian can find inspiration here. If Gorky, Russian dissident genius, could write soul-searingly beautiful hatred about Coney fucking Island, Ian can write about the Amazement Park. But if he wants to do that, he needs more time here.

He pulls out his phone. He turned it off as soon as it was clear there was no reception, so it’s not dead. Powering it up, he turns on the flashlight. The sun still hasn’t risen, and he needs a better idea of what this building offers before picking a hiding spot. He doesn’t doubt whoever is looking for them will cheat with lights, so he can’t trust simple darkness to hide him. Plus, with the caved-in roof, who knows how bright it might get.

He sweeps the light back and forth. There are a few rotting boats pushed up against a wall, one capsized in the center of the dried-up river. He could crawl under it, maybe, but the idea of being that close to the mildew smell makes him gag. Maybe there’s a back room. A closet. Anything. His flashlight catches a set of teeth, and he jumps back, heart racing.

The teeth don’t move. They can’t move. They’re painted on. Annoyed with his panic-induced itchy pit sweat, he stalks forward to face his artistic foe. This wall, farthest from the caved-in ceiling and protected from the elements, has been painted. He doesn’t think it’s part of the original design. It doesn’t make sense, as it couldn’t be seen from the boats.

There are a bunch of men and women in white clothes, surrounding a fire. The next image is men and women, sitting on thrones on top of a rocky hill.

No. Not a rocky hill. A hill made of bodies. Charming. The next image is more men and women, this time in red, all in a circle. Seven of each. Ian pauses. Seven men and seven women. He trails the flashlight along the wall to the next scene. It looks like a maze as seen from above, and in the center, black paint so thick it actually tricks his eyes into thinking there’s a hole in the wall.

The next image is the teeth. The ones he saw before. But he was wrong—they aren’t teeth, because they’re all going the same direction, pointing upward, long and curving and sharp. What’s behind them is indistinct, blurry, either on purpose or with age. But lovingly painted beneath it, with so much detail it’s almost respectful, are fourteen skulls.

Fourteen. Again.

He doesn’t like that number. Or these images. Who painted them here? Why go to all the trouble of painting creepy murals in a decades-old abandoned amusement park attraction on the off chance someone tries to hide in here and sees them?

Chekhov’s mural. If a monster appears in a mural in the first act, it must necessarily eat someone in the final act. Chekhov was another Russian. Why couldn’t Ian’s ancestry have been Russian? He could be on a soul-discovery trip to Moscow right now instead of stuck in an abandoned amusement park.

This is stupid. It’s all so stupid. Ian keeps whispering that word to himself—stupid stupid stupid—in an effort to combat the dread that keeps finding new depths for his stomach to drop to. He doesn’t like this. Not this room, this building, this park, this contest. He turns to leave but trips on old cans of paint left here. They must have been used to paint the mural.

He goes back to the black hole at the center of the maze picture, shines his light right on it. And…he was right. It is a hole! Someone left this here deliberately, added it after the fact. Which means it’s part of the game. Which means…

He takes a deep breath and reaches inside the hole, ready to have his arm bitten off or mangled or something. But his fingers come down on something dusty and rectangular. He knows a book when he feels it.

“Ha!” he shouts, then cringes as it echoes off the walls and ceiling. “Ha,” he repeats in a much softer voice. He found the book. He found the fucking book. But it’s too late to hurry back to the camp. He settles in the darkest corner of the building, beneath a pile of the roof materials that will shield him from view if anyone comes inside, and examines his prize.