The peppy music of a pipe organ collided with the bright and upbeat orchestrations emitted from a carousel. They, in turn, gave way to the roar of a roller coaster and the joyfully terrified screams of the brave souls who'd chosen to ride it. All around were the bright colors, sounds and smells unique to a winter carnival. The lakeside setting offered a spectacular view of both the carnival and the city beyond, to thrill seekers perched at the top of the ferris wheel. Carnival goers stuffed themselves on the various wares from food vendors ranging from the usual (peanuts, cotton candy, and popcorn), to the exotic (sugar-coated frog legs, chocolate-covered seaweed and deep-fried ice cream). The game booths raked in their fair share of ill-gotten gains, too, since the odds of winning were stacked heavily against any paying challenger.
Virtually unnoticed by everyone amidst the hustle and bustle of the carnival atmosphere, were a frantic mother and father as they reported their child missing. That is, unnoticed by everyone except Lucas Wahl, Assistant Medical Examiner in New York City's OCME. He enjoyed his work and was proud of his accomplishments there under the expert tutelage of his boss, Dr. Henry Morgan. Ever since he was a kid and saw the movie, "Big", starring Tom Hanks, he'd become a frequent carnival-goer and had hoped to find a machine like in the movie, that would make him...well...he hadn't quite made up his mind what he'd wish to be since he'd been taller than his peers since the age of four. So no need to wish to be big. Maybe smart. No. Fearless. Yeah, fearless. And smart. A regular Sherlock Holmes. He laughed to himself. 'A regular Henry Morgan.'
It was hard for him to ignore the pained and worried expressions of the parents as they huddled close to someone who represented the carnival's management and a couple of security guards. He casually drifted closer to them to gather information. Once he was within earshot, he feigned interest in an elderly woman who attempted the ring toss. Or, rather, lost the ring toss for the fifth time in a row. The attendant behind the counter loudly declared the woman's latest defeat and dared another challenger from the small crowd of onlookers. The woman refused to budge, though, and plunked down a $20 for another set of eight rings. Lucas shook his head but he admired the old lady's feistiness.
His attention was divided between the ring toss and the parents of the missing child, but he managed to hear that they were Paul and Betty Freeman and it was their eight-year-old son, Mark, who was missing. He was last seen going into the Hall of Wonders, they said, at the far end of the carnival grounds. The odd thing was that both the management rep and the security guards repeatedly denied the existence of any such attraction or building. The parents, now angered, protested louder that he'd run ahead of them into the building and the door to the entrance had opened, seemingly by itself. Once inside, the door closed again, seemingly by itself. Once they'd gotten to the door, however, they'd found it locked. So they'd pounded on the door in vain and then contacted the security office.
Lucas didn't want to interfere, but it didn't make sense to him. He wondered why the carnival management and the security guards told the parents that the building didn't exist. He'd seen it plain as day as soon as he'd arrived. And it was always there. It had never attracted many visitors because it always looked as if it were unfinished. Once or twice he'd walked up to the door and peeped inside but he'd never actually entered. It had always been empty just like the parents had said. He decided he'd had enough and walked over to join the discussion in support of the parents. As far as he was concerned, any missing kid was everyone's missing kid.
Suddenly, the parents stormed off in the direction they'd said the Hall of Wonders was. Lucas followed them at a distance. Past the shooting gallery, past the public restrooms and past the last ice cream cart until they were at the northeast corner of the carnival grounds. And, sure enough, there it was: the Hall of Wonders. The parents jogged up to the entrance door and it slowly opened as if on cue. They ran inside and repeatedly called to their son, Mark, in desperation. Lucas hesitated a few seconds, then ran up to the entrance. Strange, he thought, that he'd never had the courage to enter. The door hung open as if it sensed his presence and waited for him to go inside. The parents' running footsteps and voices gradually became faint echoes, then ceased. Lucas suddenly felt the need to distance himself from the structure. He took a step backwards from the entrance but before he could turn and run, he felt himself being pushed through the door and into the building. His forward momentum caused him to lose his footing and fall face down on the hard cement floor. He closed his eyes and grunted in pain as he shakily rose to his feet. 'Elbows, knees, forearms and palms scraped and bruised.' Force of habit now to self-diagnose his own injuries. He brushed himself off and rubbed his sore spots.
Then the door slammed shut and blocked out what small amount of light there had been inside. He spun around in time to see the door's three deadbolts lock themselves. Horrified, Lucas ran to the door and attacked it and the locks but to no avail. Panicked and breathing heavily, he stepped back from the door and desperately spun around as he searched for another way out. "Heyyyy!" he yelled, his echo the only response. "Hey, uh, Mark's parents! Uh, Paul! Betty! Anybody! Anybody here?!" His heart raced and he thought it would burst right out of his chest. He ran shaky hands through his hair and wiped the sweat from his face. He looked up. There was an upper level. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw a rickety wooden staircase and ran towards it.
He practically flew up the stairs. "Okay, okay, okay." he muttered to himself. There were several glass-enclosed offices. At least they looked like offices but there was nobody in them. He tried the doors to a few of the offices but they were locked. Just like the entrance door, the locked doors refused to yield either to his poundings or pryings. 'The glass. Break the glass. Get inside, see if there's a phone or, or something.' Breathless with fear, he looked around desperately for something with which to break the glass. Nothing. He quickly removed his top pullover (thanks, Mom, for teaching me to wear layered clothing in winter), wrapped it several times around his hand and banged against the glass again and again and again. 'This must be some of that bullet-proof crap!' But the banging was doing a job on his hand. He held it to him and grimaced. 'My only chance, though.' He wrapped the pullover around his non-dominant right hand this time and gave it another go. Nothing.
Exhausted, he dragged himself back to the stairs and plopped down onto the top step. 'Wonderful. This would be the day that I called in sick to play hookey from work so's I could go to the carnival and have some fun.' He sarcastically drew the last word out. 'No one knows I'm here, so no one's gonna come lookin' for me. And they're not gonna miss me at work tomorrow because tomorrow's my OFF day. Brilliant, Wahl, brilliant.' He buried his face in his hands and lamented his inevitable demise in this obviously God forsaken rat trap.
'Twilight Zone.' he thought. 'This is like being in an episode of the 'Twilight Zone.' Lucas wasn't sure how the knowledge of that would help him but he felt it had to. He grinned, stood up and yelled to no one in particular. "I know what you're doing. Yeah, yeah, I figured it out." He laughed and slowly descended the stairs with a white-knuckled grip as he did so. "This is all one big joke. A practical joke." His voice echoed through the apparently vacant building. He lowered his voice and raised his index finger. "But I'm gonna get out." He then yelled maniacally, "I'm gonna get outta here! And when I do I'm gonna kick some serious butt!" He stopped and gripped the banister. He yelled into the emptiness, "Ya hear me?!" His echo reverberated and repeated over his outbursts and made his rantings unintelligable. He covered his ears against his own echoes until they faded out.
He traversed the final few steps and stood at the bottom of the stairs once again. Then he defiantly marched to the middle of the open space, his arms swinging like a determined soldier going into battle. He stopped and turned around slowly as he looked again for a way out. Nothing. No way out other than the locked entrance door. Wait...was that window there before? He couldn't recall. But it had to have been; he'd just overlooked it in his panicked state of mind.
As he ran to the window and tried to open it, a strange feeling came over him. He looked over his shoulder at the stairs - but - they were no longer there. His jaw dropped as he watched the upper level disappear, as well. Then the floor, little by little, beginning at the back wall. It was as if everything was being erased. Erased and replaced by - nothing. Just a vast, white nothing. He whirled around to face the window again. He wrapped the pullover around his dominant left hand again and banged on the window pane. It cracked. He shrieked with glee and banged it again. He felt the nothingness creeping towards him from behind and finally the window gave way.
Just as he felt the floor go out beneath him, he was able to hoist himself up and out of the window. He fell onto the ground in a painful heap. As he rose to his feet and brushed the broken glass from his clothes and out of his hair, the building vanished entirely. An open, grassy field was left in its place. His jaw dropped as he stared at the spot where the building had stood only a moment before. The young man dropped slowly to his knees and cried tears of - what? Joy? Relief? Sorrow? Paul and Betty Freeman and their son, Mark, never made it out, after all. What was to become of them? Why was he spared? "Why? Why? What just happened here?!" he moaned and wailed to an indifferent realilty.
"Sir?" A voice gently addressed him.
"Why? Why?" Lucas whispered, his eyes shut tight, his expression pained.
"Sir." The voice demanded with a bit of impatience.
"Why? Why? Huh?" Lucas' eyes fluttered open and took in his surroundings. A lounge area. Books. Magazines. He rubbed his eyes and wiped away some drool from his mouth and from the side of his face.
"Sir, you'll have to exit the reading room now." The young woman smiled pleasantly at him. "The bookstore's closing." She watched Lucas as he gathered his belongings up. "You were really knocked out. But I'm sorry, you'll have to finish your nap somewhere else."
He nodded and stood up. He looked down at the table where he'd sat and saw a graphic novel entitled, "Carnival of Fear". He laughed to himself and shook his head. 'A dream. It was just a silly dream.' He thanked his lucky stars and made his way out of the bookstore.
Lucas waited impatiently as the door was unlocked for him and he finally stepped back out onto the street. 'What a weird dream.' He rubbed the back of his neck and concluded that it was time to go home.
Next morning in the morgue...
"Good morning, Lucas." Henry greeted him as he sauntered in.
"Morning, Doc." He cleared his throat when Henry scowled. "Uh, I mean, Doctor."
Henry grinned and shook his head. "Oh, it's fine, Lucas, if you address me by the shortened version of my title. It seems to be the norm around here and I believe I'm getting quite used to it."
Lucas smiled and nodded. "Doc it is, then."
"Hey, Henry. Lucas." Jo greeted them as she walked into the morgue. They greeted her back. She held up a newspaper for them to see with the headline, "Police Search for Missing Family".
"So odd." She said and shook her head. "It says here that a Paul and Betty Freeman visited the winter carnival with their eight-year-old son, Mark. They reported the kid missing to security who thought they were daffy because, get this, the kid ran into the 'Hall of Wonder' but the carnival management and security swear there has never been such an attraction at their carnival in all of their 66 years of operation."
Henry frowned and took the paper to read the article himself. "Hmm, that is odd." He looked up at Jo. "So now the boy and his parents are missing?"
"Yup." Jo replied, tightlipped.
"Lucas, you claim to have frequented this carnival for several years. Had you ever seen such an attraction?" Henry asked. Lucas didn't respond. "Lucas." Henry waved his hand in front of Lucas' face. "Lucas!"
"Oh, my," Jo said, "he's really gone."
Lucas froze when he heard the news about the missing Freeman family. A family he'd only seen in a dream. A family he'd never even met. But somehow they had made their way into his dream. Or - was it a dream? Both Henry and Jo tried unsuccessfully to get a response from Lucas but they and their voices gradually faded as...
The peppy music of a pipe organ collided with the bright and upbeat orchestrations emitted from a carousel. They, in turn, gave way to the roar of a roller coaster and the joyfully terrified screams of the brave souls who'd chosen to ride it. All around were the bright colors, sounds and smells unique to a winter carnival...
Notes:
Just a one-shot that came to me after binge watching "Twilight Zone".