Inferno Park Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Other books by J. L. Bryan

  Introduction

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  From the author

  Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper Chapter One

  INFERNO PARK

  by

  J. L. Bryan

  Inferno Park by J.L. Bryan

  Copyright 2014 Jeffrey L. Bryan

  All rights reserved

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Also by J.L. Bryan:

  The Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper series

  Ellie Jordan, Ghost Trapper

  Cold Shadows

  (more coming soon!)

  The Jenny Pox series (supernatural/horror)

  Jenny Pox

  Tommy Nightmare

  Alexander Death

  Jenny Plague-Bringer

  Urban Fantasy/Horror

  The Unseen

  Science Fiction Novels

  Nomad

  Helix

  The Songs of Magic Series (YA/Fantasy)

  Fairy Metal Thunder

  Fairy Blues

  Fairystruck

  Fairyland

  Fairyvision

  Introduction

  When I was a child, our family vacations usually involved visiting beachside resorts like Hilton Head, South Carolina and Panama City Beach, Florida. We also traveled to tourist traps like Weeki Wachee Springs, best known for its mermaids and water slides. I also never missed a state fair if I could help it.

  These childhood memories inspired Inferno Park. Particularly worth mentioning is the old Miracle Strip Amusement Park in Panama City Beach, which opened in 1963, closed in 2004, and was finally demolished in 2010. Looking at pictures of the old park lying in ruins stirred me to write this book, though inspiration is also drawn from other parks and carnivals of my childhood. For me, this novel is an expression of childhood loss and the pain of growing up and dealing with loss. (Don’t worry, there are also ghosts and monsters!)

  Of particular note is the “Old House” that stood in Miracle Strip Amusement Park. It was a maze of a haunted house—you had to find your way through secret doors and hidden panels. This strongly influenced the Jenny Pox series, readers of which will remember the maze-like third floor of Barrett House, as well as the major role of haunted-house attractions in the first and fourth books.

  The Old House was created by an artist named Vincent “Val” Valentine, who built a number of haunted houses around the country, including one at The Dells in Wisconsin and the Mystery Mansion in Gatlinburg, Tennessee (which is still open!). Val Valentine also created amusement attractions around Ocala and Panama City Beach in Florida, as well as around the country, but he’s most famous for his haunted houses.

  I was fortunate enough to meet with Val Valentine during the course of writing this book, and he was generous enough to sit down and show me his decades of work that had shaped roadside America. I was excited and grateful to meet the individual who had created so much of the lost geography of my childhood.

  This is a story that comes from the deepest chambers of my heart and soul. I hope you enjoy it.

  -J. L. Bryan

  August 10, 2014

  Acknowledgments

  This book took much longer to write and revise than usual. I appreciate most of all the patience of my wife and son while I spend so much of my time writing.

  For editing and beta reading, I’m grateful to Vicki Keire, Robert J. Duperre, Daniel Arenson, and Michelle Muto, as well as my wife, who read this book multiple times. The cover art is by Damonza.com.

  I’m also grateful to pop culture historian Tim Hollis, whose books helped me recall lost details of my own childhood and filled me in on the deeper history of Gulf Coast tourist resorts. His books Dixie Before Disney: 100 Years of Roadside Fun and Florida’s Miracle Strip: From Redneck Riviera to Emerald Coast were of particular importance.

  In addition, Mr. Hollis put me in touch with Vincent “Val” Valentine, the artist who designed so many lost attractions that I remember from childhood (particularly his award-winning haunted houses). I am deeply grateful to Mr. Valentine himself for spending several hours showing me scrapbooks of his life’s work. The child in me was thrilled to learn the backstory of these major roadside attractions of yesteryear.

  I also must thank all the book bloggers who’d supported my career for years, including Danny, Heather, and Heather from Bewitched Bookworks; Mandy from I Read Indie; Michelle from Much Loved Books; Shirley from Creative Deeds; Katie and Krisha from Inkk Reviews; Lori from Contagious Reads; Heather from Buried in Books; Kristina from Ladybug Storytime; Chandra from Unabridged Bookshelf; Kelly from Reading the Paranormal; AimeeKay from Reviews from My First Reads Shelf and Melissa from as Books and Things; Kristin from Blood, Sweat, and Books; Lauren from Lose Time Reading; Kat from Aussie Zombie; Andra from Unabridged Andralyn; Jennifer from A Tale of Many Reviews; Giselle from Xpresso Reads; Ashley from Bookish Brunette; Loretta from Between the Pages; Ashley from Bibliophile’s Corner; Lili from Lili Lost in a Book; Line from Moonstar’s Fantasy World; Lindsay from The Violet Hour; Rebecca from Bending the Spine; Holly from Geek Glitter; Louise from Nerdette Reviews; Isalys from Book Soulmates; Jennifer from The Feminist Fairy; Heidi from Rainy Day Ramblings; Kristilyn from Reading in Winter; Kelsey from Kelsey’s Cluttered Bookshelf; Lizzy from Lizzy’s Dark Fiction; Shanon from Escaping with Fiction; Savannah from Books with Bite; Tara from Basically Books; and everyone else I missed!

  For all my friends lost to age and time

  Chapter One

  On the day of the Starland Amusement Park disaster, the one that would send the minor resort town of Conch Beach into its slow death spiral and destroy his family, Carter was only a week away from his twelfth birthday.

  The day of the horror was beautiful, with bright blue skies glowing high above the sugar-white beach, the tourists crowding the sidewalks. They snapped pictures of one another in their swimsuits and bought frozen lemonade and airbrushed shirts from the brightly colored shanties along Beachview Drive. It was a day when all the doors and windows in town stood open to catch the sweet breeze off the ocean.

  If the sidewalks, sna
ck shacks, and video arcades were a bit less crowded with tourists than they’d been five or ten years earlier, it was much too nice of a day to grumble about it.

  “Can I go yet?” Carter asked his dad. They stood by the go-kart course at seven in the evening, watching tourist kids fly past in the roaring vehicles, zooming around curves and over the single bridge. The course was a simple figure-eight shape, which had inspired Carter’s parents to name it the Eight-Track. Led Zeppelin’s “Dancing Days” blasted over the outdoor speakers, even louder than the dozen go-kart engines.

  “You sweep up the shop?” his dad asked. His arms were crossed over his tie-dyed “Eight-Track Racing Course” shirt—tourists could buy their very own tie-dyed Eight-Track shirts inside the front shop for a mere twenty-five bucks each. His dad’s shoulder-length hair blew in the gasoline breeze from the engines, his mouth a serious flat line under his sunglasses.

  “Yeah, I swept and dusted!” Carter said, impatient to slip out of work and have fun.

  “Filled the candy display? Restocked the soda fountain?”

  “Yeah, yeah! I did everything. Jared’s probably already out front. It’s his first day off grounding. Can I please go?”

  Carter’s dad rubbed his chin as though deep in thought, but a hint of a smile was forming on his lips. He was toying with Carter.

  “I don’t know...we could get hit with a lot of business,” he said. “It might not be responsible for you to wander off.”

  “It hasn’t been that busy this summer,” Carter said. It was unfortunately true, and the comment chased the playful smile from his dad’s face.

  “Why was Jared grounded, again?” his dad asked.

  “He egged his sister during her birthday,” Carter said. “But she totally deserved it for being such a b...uh...” Carter stopped himself.

  “A what?” His dad’s eyebrows raised behind his sunglasses. “What word beginning with ‘b’ were you about to say?”

  “For being mean.” Carter shrugged. “She’s always mean to him, and me, too. Can I please go now?”

  “And where are you going?”

  “The beach. Maybe down the Starwalk,” Carter told him. Where else was there to go in town?

  According to the town’s tourism brochures, the “Starwalk” referred to the long stretch of Beachview Drive just across the road from the motel-lined beach, a brightly lit row of attractions anchored by the enormous Starland Amusement Park.

  Sprawling out in both directions from the amusement park’s high fences lay a wonderland of gaudily painted businesses jammed close together on the precious real estate—miniature golf and go-kart courses (including the Eight-Track itself, owned and operated by Carter’s parents), plus skee ball, an arcade, foods stands offering ice cream and greasy hamburgers, and junk shops that sold cheap souvenirs, postcards, and sandals that would fall apart after a week, just about the time the tourists who bought them returned home. All of these little spots fed off the tourist traffic drawn by the motels and the big amusement park.

  Carter’s dad pretended to ponder Carter’s question, and then jogged over to meet a couple of tourists pulling their go-karts back into the yellow-striped starting lane. One of the kart-driving tourists was a fat kid, nine or ten years old, in a cheap yellow sun visor hat with the Starland Amusement Park logo, and the other was the kid’s father, also obese, in a camouflage-print Tennessee Volunteers hat.

  “Did everybody have fun?” Carter’s dad asked them.

  “I want to go again!” the kid demanded.

  “We don’t have time,” the kid’s dad said, unwrapping his legs from the steering wheel and heaving himself onto unsteady feet. “We gotta go catch up with your momma.”

  “I don’t want to!” the kid insisted. He remained in his go-kart, pouting. “I want to drive again.”

  “We gonna have supper,” the kid’s dad said. “Fried catfish.”

  The kid raised his eyebrows. “Can I have hush puppies and tarter sauce?”

  “You got it, champ,” the dad told him.

  Carter watched the boy and his father leave, then asked his dad, “Now can I go?”

  “I guess we can survive one Wednesday in August without you,” Carter’s dad told him. “Gas ‘em up and wash ‘em down, and I’ll let you go.”

  “Thanks!” Carter jumped behind the wheel of the first go-kart and pulled it around to the fueling and washing station.

  Carter had worked at the track all his life, sweeping, mopping, and dusting from the time he was a toddler. As he grew older, he washed and polished the go-karts and helped touch up the paint on the flats that created scenery alongside the track—a desert scene here, city buildings there. It was a fun job for a middle school kid.

  His dad generally supervised the track, keeping the karts gassed up, watching the figure-eight track for troublemakers, while his mom ran the front end, collecting admission money and selling overpriced candy and soda. His family worked hard, but they spent lots of time together. His dad, who had long ago moved down from Ohio to be a beach bum in the Florida panhandle, rarely woke up before eleven, since the business didn’t open until noon.

  It was a fairly happy life, in many ways an idyllic one, and it was about to end.

  His chores done, Carter hurried out through the little shop at the front of the track, where his mom was checking in a family of tourists—two parents with three boys around Carter’s age. His mom was in her late thirties, like his dad, her skin browned by constant exposure to the sun. She also wore the obligatory tie-dyed “Eight-Track” t-shirt.

  “Where are you going?” she asked him.

  “Out with Jared,” he said.

  “Where’s ‘out’?”

  “Probably just see who’s out along the Starwalk.”

  “You’re done helping your dad?”

  “He said I could go.” Carter lingered by the glass front door with its pink flamingo door chimes. He pretended not to notice the new handprint someone had left there—if his mom saw it, she would make him wipe it down with glass cleaner. He could see Jared in the gravel parking lot out front, sitting on one of the mildly decayed railroad ties that marked the boundary with the parking lot of the surf shop next door, reading a Batman comic.

  “Come here,” his mom said, and Carter reluctantly walked back to the counter, wondering what new set of chores he would have to finish.

  Instead, his mom gave him a twenty-dollar bill. He smiled as he reached for it.

  “Thanks!” he said, but she held it tight, looking him in the eye.

  “Stay out of trouble,” she said. “Stay safe.”

  “I will.” Carter was unsettled by the serious look in her eyes. He knew she didn’t like Jared and considered him a little delinquent...which he was, but usually for a good cause. Jared had once convinced Carter to go spray paint profanity all over the trailer where the biggest bully in their grade lived. They’d gotten away with that one, just barely.

  “I want you home by nine,” his mom said. Carter could smell the tequila on her breath—she’d been drinking in the morning again. “I got a bad feeling.”

  “Okay. Thanks again,” he said, waving the twenty before he pocketed it.

  “I love you, Carter,” she told him, which brought snickers from the three tourist boys. Why did she have to embarrass him like that?

  “Thanks, Mom,” he mumbled, blushing. He pushed his way out the door.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Jared stood up, grinning. He wore his favorite Joker cap, turned backwards on his head.

  “Man, it feels good to be out on parole. Let’s see who’s out tonight.”

  “Should be everybody.” Carter and Jared followed the sidewalk across the parking lot of Big Billy’s Surf Shop, which sold mostly boogie boards, snorkels, and t-shirts, since this stretch of the Gulf wasn’t great for actual surfing.

  “Sucks that school starts next week,” Jared said. “My parents robbed me of like half the summer.”

  “Yeah.” They were both going i
nto eighth grade. “I hate middle school.”

  “One more year, then things get cool,” Jared told him. “High school is all about the wild parties, the girls, the beer...”

  “One more year,” Carter sighed.

  “Forget school. I don’t want to think about it.”

  They walked down the Starwalk, passing little knots of tourists enjoying the last week of summer. On this colorful stretch of Beachview Drive, densely packed with amusements, the “sidewalk” was just a series of short, hastily crafted wooden boardwalks connecting one parking lot to the next, raised a few inches above the weedy muck of drainage ditches. Many of the parking lots were simple patches of gravel and sand. All the fun spots had sprung up in the shadow of the amusement park, with no real planning.

  Across the street, motels painted eye-snagging colors like pink, lavender, and screaming green sat along the beach, their tourist curb appeal enhanced by an array of oversized figures that crowded the roadside competing for attention, most noticeably the gorilla holding the lighted sun at one end of Sunny Breeze Motor Court, and also the two-story suit of reddish armor guarding the Good Knight Inn.

  Being locals, Carter and Jared were savvy about the ways of the Starwalk. Sharkfin Pizza was delicious and only cost a buck a slice. A deep-fried sandwich at the Fish Bowl, a wooden stand painted with glittering goldfish, would make you sick for two days.

  They passed an airbrush shop and a shed that offered temporary tattoos and face painting. Jared started nudging him every time a cute girl in a bikini passed, as though Carter would otherwise be blind to them.

  Carter wasn’t interested in checking out the tourist girls, though. He peered into arcades and cheap jewelry shops as they walked, his mind distracted.

  “Don’t tell me you’re looking for Tricia,” Jared said.