11. The Haunted House Has a Name and I’m Not Using It
THE HAUNTED HOUSE HAS A NAME AND I'M NOT USING IT
GRACE
The Haunted House stands at the far end of the adventure part's main avenue, past the castle, past the forge, nestled into a fake mountainside that's made of painted concrete and theatrical lighting and the kind of architectural ambition that says "we want you to feel like you're entering another world" and currently says "we want you to feel like you're entering your own grave. "
The entrance is a stone archway, fake stone, with torches, fake torches, that are still flickering because they're LED and LED doesn't care about the apocalypse.
A sign above the arch reads ENCHANTED QUEST: DARE TO ENTER THE REALM OF MYSTERY AND WONDER!
in a font that's trying to be spooky and achieving it better than intended.
"Absolutely not."
"Grace," Joel says. "We have to clear it. It's the last building."
"Then it can stay unclear. The realm of mystery and wonder can keep its mystery and its wonder. I'll be outside, in the sun, with my friendship paddle and my skull mugs, living my best life."
"There might be supplies inside," Beck says.
"Name one supply that's worth going into a haunted house for."
"The ride vehicles have battery packs. Industrial ones. We could use those for portable power."
I look at the archway. "I hate that you're right."
"I love that I'm right."
"Joel, he's right and I hate it."
"He's right," Joel says.
We go in.
The entrance corridor is narrow, themed to look like a castle hallway. Stone walls, fake, lined with suits of armor, also fake, holding swords and shields and standing in alcoves with the rigid posture of things that have never and will never move.
Except.
"Joel, is that one breathing?"
"It's a suit of armor, Grace."
"That armor is breathing. The chest plate. Watch the chest plate. It's moving."
All three of us stare at the suit of armor in the alcove. It's standing there completely inanimate.
"It's not breathing," Joel says.
"Beck, was it breathing?"
Beck tilts his head and examines the armor with his flashlight. "I mean... I don't think so? But now I'm going to think about it forever, so thanks for that."
We move past the armor. I keep the friendship paddle between me and it. The armor watches us pass with its empty visor stare.
The corridor opens into the first scene room.
The ride track runs through the center, a rail embedded in the floor.
The vehicles themselves are scattered: some on the track, some derailed, one flipped on its side like a mechanical turtle that can't right itself.
They're medieval-themed, shaped like enchanted carriages, and they have the battery packs Beck mentioned, bulky black boxes mounted under the chassis.
The scene room is themed as an enchanted forest. Fake trees with fiber-optic leaves.
A mechanical owl on a branch that's frozen mid-hoot, beak open, eyes lit from within by a bulb that's still burning.
Fog machines, dead. Projected star effects on the ceiling, also dead.
But the animatronics are partially operational, running on whatever backup power feeds the ride systems, and they're moving.
A fairy on a wire does a half-rotation and sticks, her wand arm raised in permanent mid-wave.
A talking mushroom opens and closes its mouth but the audio is gone so it's just a mushroom doing silent screams. A gnome at a workbench hammers repeatedly on nothing, his arm going up and down in a rhythm that was cute yesterday and is now the stuff of therapy.
"I don't like any of this," I say.
"Noted," Joel says.
"I don't like the fairy. I don't like the mushroom. I especially don't like the gnome. The gnome is doing a thing and I don't like the thing."
"The gnome is an animatronic."
"The gnome is haunted. Look at his eyes."
The gnome's eyes are painted. They radiate the manufactured joy of a theme park character designed to delight children and they're staring at me like the small bearded man knows what I did.
"Moving on," Joel says.
We move through the enchanted forest. Beck checks the ride vehicles, prying open battery compartments and evaluating the packs. Joel checks the structural elements: walls, ceiling, exits.
I check for wrong people by the highly scientific method of looking around wildly and holding my friendship paddle like a woman who knows how to use it, which I don't, but the paddle doesn't know that and confidence is contagious.
The second scene room is the dragon's lair.
It's bigger than the first room. Darker.
The theming here is caves and treasure: fake gold coins scattered on the floor, painted stalactites hanging from the ceiling, gem-colored lights set into the walls that pulse in slow red and amber patterns.
In the center of the room, on a raised platform, is the dragon.
It's an animatronic. Full-size, maybe fifteen feet from nose to tail, with articulated wings and a jaw that opens and closes and a smoke effect that's still partially working, weak puffs of theatrical fog escaping from its nostrils every few seconds like a beast with a mild respiratory issue.
Its eyes glow red. Its body shifts on the platform in a slow, hydraulic breathing pattern that makes its chest rise and fall.
"See?" I point at the dragon. "Breathing. Things in here breathe."
"It's a hydraulic motion actuator," Joel says.
"It's a breathing dragon and I was right about the armor and I was right about this."
"You were not right about the armor."
"The armor was definitely…"
"Grace." Beck's voice. Different tone. Not playful.
I stop.
He's at the far end of the dragon's lair, near the exit to the next scene room, and his flashlight is pointed at the ground and he's not moving.
"We've got company," he says.
The flashlight beam illuminates the entrance to scene room three. The doorway is wide, arched, themed as a castle gate. And standing in the gate, backlit by the dim emergency lighting of whatever room is beyond, are two wrong people.
One's wearing a WonderSphere staff jacket, the kind the ride operators wear, and whatever happened to them happened here, in this building, at their post.
The other is in civilian clothes, a guest, and they're missing a shoe, which makes this the second shoeless wrong person I've encountered in this park.
I'm starting to think shoes are the first thing the apocalypse takes from you, which is a metaphor I'm not going to unpack right now.
They haven't seen us. They're facing slightly away, oriented toward scene room three, doing the sway-and-chew routine. Staff Jacket's arm is moving in a repetitive motion, up and down.
It takes me a second to realize they're standing next to a ride vehicle and their hand is hitting the lap bar. Over and over. The way it would if you were checking restraints. A ghost of a job. A muscle memory that outlived the muscle's owner.
"Two," Beck whispers. "I can take two."
"Not in a confined space," Joel says. "The axe needs room to swing."
"I don't need the axe for two."
They look at each other. Two men, two approaches, two entirely different relationships with the concept of risk. They're going to argue about this for the rest of however long we survive together and I can see that clearly, the way you can see a TV show's whole dynamic in the pilot episode.
"I have an idea," I say.
They both look at me. The skepticism is bilateral and immediate.
"The ride vehicles," I say. "They're on a track. The track goes through every room. If the power to the ride system is on, can we send a vehicle through?"
I can see Joel's gears turning. "The ride operates on a continuous chain drive. If the motor has power, the vehicles move on the rail."
"You want to hit them with a ride car," Beck says.
"I want to use the existing infrastructure for its intended purpose, which is moving things through rooms. The things just happen to be ride vehicles and the rooms just happen to have wrong people in them."
Beck's grin returns. "That's the most violent use of a theme park ride I've ever heard and I love it."
Joel's already at the ride control panel on the wall. He examines the wiring. Flips a breaker.
A deep, mechanical vibration runs through the floor.
The chain drive engages in the guts of the building with a metallic grinding.
The ride vehicles on the track shudder. The one nearest to us, an enchanted carriage with a cracked fiberglass shell and a battery pack dangling from its underside, starts to move.
Slowly at first. Then with purpose.
The carriage rolls along the track, through the dragon's lair, and into the castle gate doorway.
Staff Jacket doesn't react. The carriage hits them at maybe five miles per hour, which isn't fast in any normal context but is fast enough when you're a body that's forgotten how to brace.
Staff Jacket goes down. The carriage's low fiberglass nose catches Staff Jacket across the hips and shoves them backward until their legs fold under the guide rail.
The carriage keeps moving, chain drive pulling it into scene room three, and Missing Shoe gets clipped on the follow-through, spinning sideways into the cave wall with a sound that I'm going to describe as "damp thud" and leave it at that.
The carriage continues into scene room three, out of sight, and I hear additional impacts. Additional damp thuds.
"Grace," Beck says. "You just invented zombie bowling."
"I invented practical use of existing infrastructure, Beck."
"You invented zombie bowling. I'm naming it and you scored at least a six."
"I don't want points. I want the building secured."
"You're getting so many points. Joel, how many points does she get?"
Joel's face is doing the almost-smile that lives in the neighborhood of his mouth and never quite moves in. "The vehicle took out at least four that I could hear."
"Four? A four-hit combo? Grace, that's... that's legendary. That's a high score. I've been killing them one at a time with an axe like a peasant and you just sent a theme park ride through them like a medieval Roomba."