Wild Ride Read Free

for you, young man, you come right to my trailer when you’re done with Gus. Tomorrow I’ll get Hank’s old trailer cleaned out and made up for you. You’ll have a place of your own.” Her eyes welled up again. “I’m so happy you’re home, Ethan.”
    â€œRight,” Ethan said. “Don’t clean up the trailer, I’d rather sleep in the woods. Are you sure you’re all right walking around here? If somebody’s in the park—”
    â€œWe’re fine,” his mother said firmly, and he thought,
She knows who it was
. “I’m so glad you’re back,” she added.
    â€œMe too, Mom,” he lied, and made plans to get whatever the hell was going on out of Glenda once they were alone.
    Â 
    O nce he was away from the carousel, the park seemed darker than Ethan remembered it, and he realized it was because there was orange cellophane over the streetlights for the park’s Screamland weekends, the reason for the skeletons somebody had strewn around along with—
    A ghost flew in his face, empty-eyed and openmouthed, and he held off on drawing his gun as the pulley it was on yanked it back into the tree he’d just passed, not a ghost, just a skull beneath some white stuff that looked like fog but was probably cheesecloth.
    â€œGeez,”
he said to Gus, and Gus nodded.
    â€œMab knows how to make a ghost,” Gus said, and Ethan thought,
I know how to make ghosts, too
, as he relaxed his grip on his pistol.
    He looked closer at the fence and saw the flickering red light of the infrared beam that had tripped the ghost, the same thing he’d seen in Afghanistan trip explosives. He shivered.
    â€œMab’s uncle got her the job,” Gus said as they headed down the midway to the back of the park. “Glenda wasn’t too sure about her, since her uncle’s Ray Brannigan, and you know them Brannigans, but once Mab got here, it was fine. Hard worker.”
    â€œBrannigans?” Ethan said, keeping an eye out for more trip-wire ghosts among the skeletons and giant spiders, which wasn’t easy, given his current alcohol content.
    â€œYeah, you know, that crazy family, always trying to shut us down.”
    Ethan bumped into the fence and another ghost flew at him. He batted it out of the way as its pulley yanked it back into the trees. “Of all the times I could have picked to come home, I had to come for Screamland.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” Gus said, cocking his head.
    â€œI had to come home for Screamland,” Ethan said in a louder voice.
    â€œ ’Course you did,” Gus said. “Big party planned for Halloween ’cause that’s when the park’s gonna be all restored. We got media coming in Friday after next, get it on the news so a lotta people’ll come.” He sounded proud, like he talked about the media all the time.
    â€œGreat,” Ethan said in a normal voice and noticed that Gus didn’t hear. Well, he was old, and running the damn Dragon Coaster couldn’t be easy on the ears.
    The good news was the park would close after Halloween and stay closed until spring. He could stand two more weekends of the park full of screaming people and cheesecloth ghosts to spend whatever months he had left in solitude and quiet.
    They passed the paddleboat dock. A figure moved in the shadows outthere, watching them, and Ethan’s hand again went toward the gun tucked into his vest.
    â€œThat’s Young Fred,” Gus said.
    Ethan relaxed. “Related to Old Fred?”
    â€œGrandson. Old Fred died ’bout seven years ago. Young Fred took over. He was only fifteen, but he stepped up.” Gus raised his voice to call out to the boy on the dock. “What are you doing out here?”
    Young Fred shrugged as he came closer. “Heard the commotion from upstairs. Everything okay?”
    â€œMab fell down,” Gus said. “We gotta go run the Dragon.”