Inferno Park Read Free Page B

Dark Mansion, if you dare...guaranteed to scare the pants right off your legs! And believe me, I know about legs, folks.”
    They passed a booth selling glittering star-studded caps and t-shirts emblazoned with the fiery face of a cartoon devil, which bragged I SURVIVED INFERNO MOUNTAIN!
    “Do you see her?” Carter asked, gazing anxiously at the thick crowd.
    “Who?” Jared asked. “What do we ride first? The Swingin’ Scalawag?” He pointed toward the water attractions in the “Pirate Island” section of the park to their right—the Log Drop, Crashdown Falls, the green dome of the Jungle Land boat ride covered with fake tropical plants. The Swingin’ Scalawag was a pirate ship that swung back and forth, higher and higher, ultimately turning upside down.
    “Come on, this might be my last chance to talk to her before school starts,” Carter said.
    “So what? You can talk to her at school.”
    “That’s different...tonight would be better.” Carter didn’t want to explain how awkward he felt talking to her at school, surrounded by everyone. His conversations with Tricia had never gone far, and he always felt like everyone was watching him. If he caught up with her tonight, they could actually have fun together. Almost like a date.
    They passed under a temporary banner strung across the midway:
     
    STARLAND AMUSEMENT PARK
    “Forty Years of Fun in the Sun!”
     
     
    Struggling to reclaim an ever-dwindling tourist trade, the park had advertised its forty-year anniversary all over the Southeast, which had brought a bumper crop of business this year. This had provided a slight but noticeable bump in visitors to the Eight-Track and other nearby attractions, too.
    “I haven’t been to Starland all summer,” Jared complained. “I don’t want to waste the whole night helping you chase some girl.”
    “It won’t take long.”
    “Seriously? This place is huge.” Jared grinned and pointed ahead toward the space-themed attractions of Space City. “Hey, let’s go on the American Rockets! Then you can look down on the whole park at once. Maybe you’ll see her.”
    “That’s actually not a totally bad idea...” Carter looked to left, toward Fool’s Gold, the “Old West” town that was the lamest area of the park besides Tyke Town. It was mostly food and drink stands, a few game booths like Shoot-Em-Up Puppets, one kiddie ride called When Pigs Fly, and a roofed pavilion with a stage where bands sometimes played country and oldies music. Fool’s Gold was clearly laid out to snag money from tourists on their way to and from the old-timey depot station at the mock town’s west end, which was the boarding station for the grand attraction, the Starland Express roller coaster.
    “Or we could do Inferno Mountain,” Jared snickered.
    Carter didn’t say anything. He glanced to his right as they passed Haunted Alley, which only had two real attractions. The first was the haunted-house maze called the Dark Mansion, a two-story structure with bats and spiderwebs hung from the eaves and ghosts and skeletons peeking out through rickety window shutters. Recorded screams and wolf howls boomed out from the imposing, ramshackle house. The line for the haunted house was already long, snaking back and forth through the graveyard waiting area out front.
    Behind Dark Mansion loomed the black mass of Inferno Mountain, glowing red at its peak.
    Aside from the Starland Express, Inferno Mountain was the park’s signature attraction. It looked like a towering black volcano, complete with fiery red light and smoke pouring out of the caldera at the top. The roller coaster train would climb a steep hill into the open, fanged mouth of a two-story devil face at the top, a face adorned with curving goat horns and vertical black pupils. The interior of the devil’s open mouth was dark, but it occasionally strobed with flickering red light accompanied by deep, devilish laughter and cheesy recorded lines like “I will eat your