Masquerade--Chapter Five

Chapter five

What I hadn’t expected was what the haunt slider had kept hidden under his trenchcoat. I sort of expected not to see any exposed skin, but the intricately brocaded leather waistcoat over a high-collared shirt and tie, tucked snugly around his snood, was a bit of a surprise, as was the skull-shaped buttons along his abdomen and matching skull and crossbones belt buckle, reminiscent of a poison warning label. I’m not sure what the long-sleeved shirt, tucked into his elbow-length buckle gloves, is made of, but it looks sturdier than cotton or silk, silver buckles up his forearms, metal scutes at his elbows,

The tooling in the waistcoat is hypnotic, like swirls of mist. I could lose myself, following the pattern for hours.

He seems wrong without his coat, too small, like a bird without feathers. I feel bad for having taken it, watching a slight tremor form in his shoulders, like he might be cold despite the leather gloves and long sleeves. Even his tail seems to coil into itself for warmth, fretfully stroking the studs of his belt at his hip, making nervous little tapping noises.

A cheer went up when the lights went out, the sound of clowns excited for the show to start, from the sound of it, mistaking it for a curtain dropping. We knew it was taken as a sign to start performing, because we turn a corner to find the show in full swing, the helpless non-costumed administrative and backstage personnel for Wonderland as the audience participants.

Some enterprising individuals have brought out a knife-throwing wheel, the test of strength thing with the bell on top, and part of a dog’s agility course. Naturally, it’s the clown throwing the knives while the regular, uncostumed human spins, the clown wielding the hammer and clapping delightedly as the regular, uncostumed human slides up the town and bangs their head on the bell, and the giant, human-like pitbull leading the regular, uncostumed human along the agility course by a leash, shoveling popcorn from an overflowing machine into their mouth when they do it right.

Isaac takes a step forward, I grab his arm and pull him back, which makes him flinch and pull away like I stuck with with hot iron.

“No touching, please!” he snaps.

“Don’t,” I whisper pleadingly, trying to figure out why I’m thinking of hamburgers, fear gripping my chest so tightly that I can barely breathe.

“That’s my supervisor on the wheel,” he hisses. “He’s got kids.”

“They’re not right,” I whisper back, somewhere at a Fourth of July picnic in the back of my head. “And they’ve got knives. And hammers.”

My hood is spread defensively, wings outstretched under the heavy leather coat, a bitter taste in my mouth. There’s a familiar smell in the air, that warms my stomach and reflexively makes me hungry.

I remember asking once, why the air above the grill looked like water, seated on my mother’s lap. It’s the cooking gas, the propane.

The air around the haunt slider’s mask looks like water.
“Осовец,” Isaac breathes quietly. “Don’t move.”

The haunt slider stands stock-still, staring down the hallway toward the impromptu circus performance, at the lady clown lying languidly on her belly as she uses her feet to throw knives at the wheel, the male clown’s merry dance when he strikes the bell, the big dog’s hackles raised when his leash-bound captive misses the mark.

“Ozzy,” Isaac whispers again. “Calm down…and don’t move.”

I look down at the haunt slider’s dinosaur-like feet, the claws hidden inside protective metal sheathes, the round puck of sparking material at the spot between his soles and his toes.

“…Don’t…move…”

The haunt slider’s gaze never leaves the sadistic display before us. He makes no noise except the wheezing beyond his mask.

“Ozzy,” Isaac pleads urgently. “Ozzy, look at me…deep breaths…don’t…move…”

The haunt slider raises his left foot less than an inch above the ground, and Isaac’s wrench collides with his thin chest, bending the smaller figure nearly in half, the smell of propane giving way to frying oil, perfume, and bleach. In one motion, Isaac has the haunt slider over his shoulder, a cloud of roses, ammonia, and butter in his wake.

“Run!” Isaac shouts.

He doesn’t need to tell me twice, seeing as the clowns have realized there’s new playmates and dogs chase things that run.

“First left!” I shout after him. “Second door on the right!”

Pleasebeopenpleasebeopenpleasebeopen…

It’s supposed to be lock, but it can be a pain in the ass to track down someone with a key to open it, so some, especially Wonderland employees, leave the door open, or stopped with a box.

Isaac dashes into the room, slamming the door with a kick of his boots, engaging the auto-lock and sealing us inside. He immediately finds a stepstool and leans the haunt slider he called Ozzy down on it, bent in half and hissing orange blossom, pine cleaner, and bitter almond, silently bearing his pain, using his shovel to hold himself up.

The eyeless man drops to his knees and seizes the haunt slider’s right boot, growling, “Get this stuff off of you before you blow us all to kingdom come.”

The haunt slider kicks him with his free foot, slapping him with the tail for good measure.

“How were you exhaling propane?!” I shriek as something heavy collides with the bolted door behind me, making us all flinch.

Isaac, nursing a forming bruise on his cheek and a cut lip from one of his fangs, jumps up in alarm.

“It auto-locks,” I explain, grateful, for once, that someone violated the rules by leaving the door open for easy access. “They can’t get in.”

“And we can’t get out,” Isaac growls.

“Service hatch,” I reply, pointing upward at the ladder leading toward a vacant space, and the ceiling beyond. “Goes up to the roof, I think.”

Ozzy’s smoke has a bloody smell to it, coppery, under notes of cherry blossom and rubbing alcohol. He inclines his head, looking at his surroundings, his smoke starting to cycle into a more reasonable combination of lavender and chamomile.

“Are you alright?” Isaac demands, stern but a touch of apology, letting the haunt slider groggily seize his arm and place two fingers at his wrist. “You could have…I’m…sorry.”

“Supply…closet…” Ozzy murmurs, dropping the eyeless man’s wrist, evidently starting to notice his environs. He stands up off the stepstool and begins rummaging in the nearest first aid box, reaching to place bandages and alcohol pads in the coat he doesn’t have, pausing in apparent confusion, and then stuffing them into his leather waistcoat.

A flash of embarrassment warms my face. I shouldn’t have taken his coat.

“How did you know this was here?” Isaac asks, looking up at the hatch. “Do you work for Wonderland, too?”
I blush, looking away, not wanting to admit that I don’t really belong here, not in the park, and not with them
.
“Not…really…” I mumble.

“No, you’re the girl that cleans the makeup tables,” Isaac says, snapping his fingers…somehow. “He thought he recognized you.”

I blink, pretty sure I’d recognize Isaac as he was coming out of makeup, a figure like that being hard to miss, over six and a half feet tall with definite scoliosis. When I realize he knows what I am, I turn a few shades redder.

“We really appreciate it, makes things go smoother the morning after a busy night,” he smiles. “The makeup artists always seem to find things a little faster after you’ve been working.”

“He…doesn’t like…being on…the floor…” Ozzy murmurs, examining the first aid box for what he can fit in his pockets.

Feeling self-conscious in his coat, I take it off and hold it out to him.

“Here…um…it’s yours,” I say as he turns his vacant gaze in my direction.

“…Cold…” he replies, still holding a box of bandages, not reaching for the coat.

“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him, shaking my head. “There’s worse going on out there.”

My exposed thighs seem a small thing to complain about, when I’m not the one on a knife wheel, or taking wrenches to the gut.

“…Kind…”

Ozzy puts the bandages down long enough to shrug into his coat, feeling the material in a way that makes him look like he’s welcoming an old friend back. Once buttoned back up, he goes back to his foraging.

“He seems to like you,” Isaac observes, watching the haunt slider’s magpie-like hoarding, chewing his bracelet thoughtfully.

“Huh?”

“Giving you his coat,” Isaac shrugs. “The carrion birds…the world they come from is dead. The air will kill you. The sun will kill you. They dress like that to keep everything out, to protect themselves, a side effect of the haunt slider safety gear. It’s basically his skin, and he took it off for you.”

I twist my clawed hands in front of me. The haunt slider called me kind, but I haven’t really done a single kind thing in his presence, not like offering someone the coat off my back, or carrying them to safety when I could have just left the potential incendiary device behind. I didn’t even try to help those people, talking someone out of it, in fact.

“You’re a professional scareactor?” I ask, changing the subject.

“Zone ambience, I’m regular, not seasonal,” Isaac replies proudly, letting his voice slip into a Bostonian accent. “Most days I’m a reporter in front of Full Throttle’s facade, disguising guest surveys as hard-hitting news reports.”

“Did you do the stage show? For Monsterland, this year, I mean.”

He shrugs, his accent going back to normal. “Understudy. I’ve done one or two.”

“I might have seen you. Online, I mean. Someone recorded a showing.”

The eyeless man shrugs, Harlequin peeking out from her nest at his throat. “Might have been.”

“And um…him…” I ask. “You know him?”

“Not that I know of,” Isaac answers, reclining his chin on his long fingers, Harlequin shaking them playfully. “Most of the haunt sliders this year are outside consultants or seasonal workers, especially in Soul Survivor.”

“You called him by name.”

“‘Осовец,’ it’s the fortress he mentioned that inspired his costume. World War One story, Germans gassed it, then, thinking they killed everyone, went to claim it. Then, about a hundred pissed-off Russians, covered in chemical burns and coughing up their own lungs, chased them back out. The ‘Attack of the Dead Men.’ Seemed as good a thing as any to call him. You good there, Ozzy? You up for climbing the ladder?”

The haunt slider puts the cover back on the now-empty first aid kit, gingerly climbing to his feet and leaning on his telescopic shovel.

“He…will…manage…”

“…Right,” Isaac sighs, placing his braclet back in his mouth.

Before either of us can approach the ladder, in a corner by the mop drain, Ozzy pulls open a cabinet and starts staring at industrial-strength cleaning products.

“Nope!” Isaac barks, shooing the haunt slider away and toward the ladder.

His clawed feet grasp the ladder’s rungs as he makes his way up, his tail clacking as it brushes by. Isaac’s tail slides along the ladder’s sides. I look down at my own feet self-consciously, adjusting a strap starting to burn against my newly-formed scales.

“You got it, Sherene?” Isaac asks, kneeling from above and offering me his hand, pulling back slightly as I approach.

“Yeah, I got it,” I answer, immediately slipping when one of my sandals slides off the rung, my face getting hot again.

The service hatch leads to a small, unfinished room with a door on one side. Ozzy closes the hatch and turns the wheel that bolts it closed, keeping the clowns from following, even if they figure out how to wedge the door open like he did.

Isaac unlatches the door and steps out onto the roof, into the frigid, October breeze and a light pattering of rain, his lanky form outlined in moonlight. Far from the sound of a theme park at peak, the sound of screaming and gunfire flows into the little room.
I follow him out onto the rooftop, smelling smoke and gunpowder.

“What…is happening…?” Isaac breathes, looking down onto the park below.

It looks like someone ripped chunks of other places and threw them haphazardly into a pile. The relatively-untouched set pieces for Metropolis collide sharply with the barren and decayed Soul Survivor, butting straight up against the Victorian gaslamp Steampunk Singularity. At first, I think the power might have come back on, but it’s literally gaslamps lighting up the area near the steel Full Throttle coaster.

Over on the other side, the facades for Kiddie Carnival, now Psycho Circus, have changed from fiberglass and concrete to canvas and tarps. Deeper into the park’s Lost Garden, where the Dragon’s Breath coaster resides, what’s normally a soundstage from this angle is an ominous, dark castle with something large and reptilian curled on top.

“Full moon…unmasks…stranger in us…all…” Ozzy says, walking toward the edge of the building, head and hands raised to the sky. “Shadow…is cast…on who…you used to be…”

“You see that, right?” I ask Isaac, looking at the seams of cobblestone in Steampunk Singularity to the cracked asphalt of Soul Survivor, pointing over to where a circus tent sharply becomes a Victorian manor house along the barrier between the two sections.

“It’s like…it all became real,” Isaac breathes, turning his attention to Full Throttle, where a full-sized race track sits where the steel coaster used to.

Below us, a partially glass and copper unicorn has joined a herd of brightly-colored, circus-themed horses from the Kiddie Carnival carousel, a color palate of fur no horse was ever born with. Pirates, armed with cutlasses and flintlocks, have barricaded themselves in one of the collapsed Soul Survivor buildings, in an apparent standoff with steamborg soldiers.

“Are those the pirates from the whitewater ride?” I ask incredulously.

“…Halloween…full moon…very rare…” Ozzy rambles, still looking skyward, dropping to his knees, hands and head still held high.

“What are you…” I ask, following his gaze. “Isa…Isaac, look up.”

“What now?” Isaac whimpers, clearly expecting to see WW1 fighter planes from Kiddie Carnival’s plane ride, or an invasion of UFOs from the simulator ride, or some such.

The full moon, which rarely falls at the end of October, is a massive, orange jack o’lantern, its yellow gaze surveying the chaos bellow with a mirthful grin. It isn’t a color projection, it’s like the moon turned into a pumpkin, and then someone carved it and placed a candle inside

“Well…that…is some nonsense right there…” Isaac mumbles.