Page 112 of Serenity Falls

Sadie clambers after her, through fake, cobwebby-type curtains. The plastic rustles. Part of her feels uneasy, part curious. Their lights illuminate the track. Either side, inactive animatronics loom. A large plastic skeleton. A zombie. A witch. Obviously designed to leap out at opportune moments. Sadie thought she’d outgrown these cheap scare rides, but her stomach is tense. Her mind keeps thinking about the kid that died in here. How far are they from the spot where his mangled body lay?

‘How much further?’ she asks Ellis.

‘Not much.’ Ellis is scanning the animatronics with her flashlight.

‘Here.’

She crosses the track, pushes past the zombie and stops. Sadie follows and realizes they’ve reached an obscured exit door, obviously for staff and maintenance. It’s slightly ajar. Ellis yanks it open and steps inside. There’s barely room for two of them. It’s a tiny space that stinks of decades-old BO. There’s a battered chair and an unused CCTV camera on the wall, obviously for monitoring the ride. Hanging next to it is an old Winsom Wonderland calendar. It’s open on June 1997. Is this what Ellis wanted to show her? And where are Ramona and Dax? Then Ellis kneels. Only now does Sadie notice that there’s a square hatch of some sort set into the floor, like a trap door.

‘Here we are,’ Ellis says.

She runs her fingers around the edge of the hatch, finds a release and heaves it up. She shines the flashlight inside. Sadie can just make out steps leading down into darkness.

Ellis grins. ‘You’re about to see what no one in Serenity Falls wants you to see.’

Cash

I told myself I didn’t want to know. That I can unknow. But all the way home that piece of paper was just about burning a hole in my pocket.

When I got back to Mrs Grayson’s, I grabbed my satchel and headed straight upstairs. I unrolled the wad of paper and stared at it. A list of dates. I frowned. One of them – 19th May 1997 – rang a bell, but I couldn’t think why. The others, I didn’t have a clue. But they must be important, or else why did Carrie hide them like she did?

I was sweating and tired and all I really wanted to do was shower, chow down on a burger and take a nap. But I kept thinking about those dates. All those accidents and disappearances. Carrie and her cat. The cat she gave to Mr Bryson because she knew. And now she was dead.

I made a snap decision. I hurried down the stairs, hopped on my bike and cycled back downtown. The stationery and copy shop was open till six-thirty. I darted in, copied the log and the list of dates, bought a roll of bubble wrap, then climbed back on my bike and cycled home.

Mrs Grayson always had a nap after supper. I waited till I could hear her snoring and then I padded down the stairs and into the hall. In the cupboard under the stairs, there was a small toolbox. I grabbed it and tiptoed back up to my room. I looked around.

Under the window, the flooring had risen a little. The window frame had leaked a while back (I’d fixed it with some wood filler since) and the damp had got under the boards. I knelt and wedged a screwdriver in the loose section and prised up the laminate floor. It came up pretty easy and I put the flooring to one side. Next, I used a small handsaw to cut out a section of the underlay, revealing a small gap between the joists. Just big enough. I took my photocopied papers, bound with elastic bands and wrapped in the bubble wrap, and wedged them into the gap. I stared at them for moment and then I came to another decision. I grabbed a writing pad, sat on the bed and I wrote out a note:

To who it may concern,

If you’re reading this, then I guess maybe something bad has happened to me. I hope not. I hope I’m just being paranoid. But if it has, then you need to take this stuff to the police out of town. I think some bad things are happening here. People are disappearing and dying in accidents, and it doesn’t seem right.

Take care,

Cash Leonards.

July 7th 2011

I peeled back the bubble wrap and slipped the note under the elastic bands. Then I stuck the floor back down as neatly as I could. It looked all right, if you weren’t looking too closely.

I had another idea. I dragged and pushed my bed across the room, so it was now against the wall by the window, covering the prised-up flooring. Then I shifted the wardrobe and chest of drawers over to the wall where the bed used to be. It kind of worked. I paused for a moment, listening for sounds of movement downstairs, worried I might have woken Mrs Grayson. But all was quiet.

The list of dates I put in my work pants for tomorrow. After my shift I planned to visit the library and look up some old newspapers. See if I could find any events that might match up with the dates.

Satisfied that I had everything covered and feeling pretty darn clever for once, I washed and brushed my teeth and slipped my pyjamas on. When my head hit the pillow, I fell straight asleep.

32

We finish the bottle of wine. The conversation flows with the alcohol.

It’s pleasant, easy. Something I’ve missed. Tonight is reminding me how nice it is to enjoy a woman’s company. It’s so bittersweet it almost hurts. We talk about all sort of things: childhood, work, the surprise turn of events that brought Sadie and I here.

‘So, you had no idea?’

‘Nope. Mum never left the UK, as far as I know. She hated the thought of flying. And we never had much money, growing up, after Dad left. And yet …’ I hold my hands out.

Lori traces her finger around the rim of her wineglass. ‘Well, people will always surprise you.’