Carnival of Crows (Butcher’s Bay #1)

1. Luci

Luci

There are places that refuse to die. Not because they’re haunted, but because people refuse to forget them.

Graves Park was one of those places.

Growing up in New Hampshire, almost everyone I knew had a Graves Park story.

Ask anyone over fifty and they’d smile before telling you about their first kiss at the top of the Ferris wheel.

My mom’s first summer job was scooping ice cream at the park.

My dad was a parking lot attendant. Their first kiss was on the carousel on a horse named Lucille.

That’s where I got my name, funny enough.

Ask anyone under thirty and you’d get something different.

“I went there a couple times as a kid.”

“I heard somebody died there.”

“My uncle snuck in once after it closed.”

“They say the rides still turn on by themselves.”

Nobody agreed on the details.

From my internet research, I found out that Arthur and Margaret Graves built the amusement park in the late seventies, pouring every ounce of themselves into it until it became a summertime staple.

Summers smelled like kettle corn and sunscreen.

Kids begged to stay until the lights came on.

Teenagers spent entire pay checks trying to win oversized stuffed animals they’d eventually leave in the backs of closets.

Then in 2001, Arthur died of a heart attack. Alzheimer’s took Margaret three years later. Their two sons, Michael and Thomas, inherited the park and wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. So, the gates were locked.

According to local lore, aka the gas station attendant I asked on the way here, Arthur’s will left enough money in a trust to keep paying the property’s taxes.

The land couldn’t be sold until every last dollar ran dry.

So, it sat. Year after year. Rusting. Fading.

Becoming less of an amusement park and more of a ghost.

Then, five years ago, the Graves grandchildren unlocked the gates.

Not to reopen the park and return it to its former amusement park glory, but to haunt it. Now, every October, Graves Park comes back to life for just thirty-one nights. If “life” was even the right word to describe it.

I stared through the passenger window as the tree line broke apart.

“There it is,” Sam whispered in awe.

The Ferris wheel rose above the pines like the skeleton of some enormous forgotten beast. Thousands of amber bulbs traced its rusted frame. Slowly and silently, it just barely turned.

A shiver crawled up my spine.

“I swear it’s gotten bigger since we were kids,” Amber muttered from the back seat.

“I don’t know, but,” Mary leaned between the seats, “it kind of looks like it’s staring at us.”

Nobody laughed. Because somehow, it did.

The closer we drove, the more impossible it became to tell where the original amusement park ended and the haunt began. Some attractions looked untouched. Others had been overtaken by ivy, pumpkins, fog, and towering scarecrows that stood motionless beneath the dying maple trees.

Black crows lined the entrance sign. Dozens of them. Watching. Waiting.

The wrought iron gates groaned open just as we reached them.

“Well…” Catherine said, gripping the steering wheel. “No turning back now.”

I smiled despite the butterflies rioting in my stomach.

For years, I’d explored abandoned hospitals, forgotten prisons, crumbling asylums, and ghost towns with a camera in my hand.

I’d been to countless haunted attractions and cornfields around New England.

It was only the middle of October and I’d already been to a Salem Ghost Tour, Witch’s Woods, Haunted Overload, Spooky World, Fright Kingdom, The Conjuring House, The Lizzie Borden House, and Blood Cemetery in Hollis, New Hampshire.

I absolutely hated the term influencer, but over five hundred thousand people followed me and my love for all things spooky.

I wasn’t trying to sell anyone anything.

I was just sharing what I loved. Somehow along the way, people started paying attention.

A lot of attention. It helped that I lived in the oldest part of the country.

There was always some place new, or old, to explore.

Graves Park was both. I remember coming here as a child with my parents.

The last time, I was maybe ten or eleven.

It was a company outing for my dad. There were face painters, balloon animal creators, and all the cotton candy you could eat paired with the rides and the fireworks by the lake at the end of the night. It was magic.

I looked past the gates. The old ticket booth still stood exactly where it always had. Fresh black paint covered the peeling wood. Jack-o’-lanterns glowed in the windows. Beyond them, the midway disappeared into rolling banks of fog.

Music drifted through the trees. Not loud. Not cheerful. Just the faint, distorted melody of a carousel that sounded like it had been playing for thirty years.

Something inside my chest tightened. Not exactly fear. Recognition.

Like the park remembered me…