A strange, tar-like substance oozed out of the central valves of the fountain, which didn't stop thinner liquid from squirting out along the edges. The fountain also appeared to have gained some strength, as the black slime started spraying farther than would appear possible, spewing those closest to the fountain. Then it began spraying those standing farther out.
"Get back!" For once, the staff seemed to be on top of it. "It's not hurting you, so just step out of range!"
A disgusted, muffled scream could be heard from the nearby water fountain. A girl stood with her hands by her side, afraid to touch anything. Tears gathered in her eyes. Her mouth was partially filled with black, thick liquid, and it streamed from the sides of her mouth and down the front of her shirt.
Everything happened at once.
The many staff members always gathered at Main Street jumped in immediately, appearing to work well as a team. Two salespeople gave instructions to the girl, helping her rinse and spit with a drink from a concession stand, while others kept her family calm. A man began angrily arguing with other staff, assuming that the Fright Fest decorations had simply gone too far. And many, many, many pictures were taken, which would no doubt be all over the news and in the managers' offices.
I remembered my team. Water fountains! Shut off the valves to all the water fountains in the park! I ordered them. I began to follow my own advice, too flustered to focus on answering the follow-up questions from my team.
It was only a few minutes before my orders were carried out. Fortunately, Six Flags had greatly reduced the number of working water fountains over the years, as they preferred the guests buying drinks from the concession stands. After my few fountains were off and I ascertained that the staff were still dealing with the situation as best they could, I began to focus on the reports from the others. They were all finished shortly before or after me, and wanted an explanation.
There was some kind of black slime spraying from the Main Fountain and the water fountains. It got on people's clothes, and a security guard turned off the fountain soon afterwards. One girl ingested some of it by accident, but she looks okay now, just disgusted. I looked everywhere and didn't see the ghost. Did this happen anywhere else?
One by one, they stated negative.
Then it was just Main Street—conveniently where all the photographers were. Ghoulmaster, what should we do now?
Silence followed my question. Come to think of it, he hadn't participated in this conversation at all.
Ghoulmaster? Chester's question was a lot more shaky and frightened than mine had been. No response.
Billasty…Falcon's voice was for mine alone. You've been here longer than any of us. With Ghoulmaster unresponsive, you have to take command now.
I felt a pit of dread forming in my stomach. I had leadership capabilities, but I was totally unprepared for this. I forced myself to respond to everyone.
Until Ghoulmaster responds or we find him, I will have to make decisions for the group. Chester and I will go to Movietown and make sure the water fountains are turned off, since we're the closest. The two of us will start looking for Ghoulmaster there, since that was his station. Johnny, I need you to come back to the park and help cover stations, since guest safety comes first. So Annabel, Falcon, Norma, and Johnny, you need to cover the park on a skeleton crew. Madame, I know it's unlikely, but we could really use those remains as soon as possible, and you're on your own to find them. Your crystal ball would sure come in handy right now.
Okay, I'm trying my best out here! I knew that my words had hurt her, and I instantly regretted them.
Chester and I met at Skull Mountain, and he started to sneeze from anxiety. We made short work of the few water fountains, and started at our house, then at the Dead Man's Party stage in our search for Ghoulmaster.
There were only so many places that a ghost could hide from other ghosts in Movietown, and I knew that Ghoulmaster would have died a thousand deaths before abandoning Six Flags Great Adventure. We ran through the Dark Knight and saw nothing, and ran through the crowds at the new $5-a-piece walkthrough attractions, finally ending up at the abandoned building around the corner from the Movietown attractions.
"I never got what this was," Chester remarked.
"They used to have shows here awhile back," I answered. "Shh—we're going in."
Utter darkness greeted us. Chester grabbed my elbow and I let him. Turning the corner, we saw a glow of light coming from a corner of the stage. Two figures hunched over it, speaking in low voices. I slowly crept closer, my heart in my throat, when Chester sneezed. The voices stopped.
"Chester!" I hissed in irritation. "Lamest possible giveaway!"
"Sorry—" he began, and was interrupted by, "No, no—come on in. We were expecting you." The voice sounded familiar.
We looked at each other, and cautiously approached the stage. Ghoulmaster sat on the left of the lantern, gazing downward distractedly. He wasn't restrained in any way. After ascertaining my leader's relative well-being, I turned to his counterpart—and gasped in surprise and anger.
"Vincent!" I exclaimed. In all our house meetings, we should have realized why our perpetrator was so familiar with our theme park: he was a former resident. Vincent Wolf Fang gazed at me over the dim light, his eyes piercing, a sad smile playing at the corner of his lips. I looked for Chester's reaction, and found him clutching his chest in a full-blown panic attack. I ignored him and faced our guest once more.
"Okay, I'll bite. Why?" I said bitterly, and heard the hurt in my own voice this time. Vincent had lived here since the beginning with Ghoulmaster, and had left several years ago for no exact reason stated then to keep wandering, searching for happiness. He had always been a negative, somewhat depressing person, but even looking back, he seemed perfectly loyal and trustworthy, someone that I had appreciated being on the same team with.
"Hello, Billasty. First things first. When are we finally going to invite the others?" He turned to Ghoulmaster.
"No," Ghoulmaster said softly, almost whispering. "We will hear what you have to say after the park closes. Guest safety comes first."
I looked back and forth between the both of them. "Vincent, people have left the house since you've been here. The only people that you would still know are…Shadow Falcon and Madame Yersinia. How about we call them here and leave those you don't know to guard the park? Ghoulmaster?"
Ghoulmaster took a long time to answer. He eventually said, "Fine." He seemed like he was looking at something far away. I telepathically summoned Shadow Falcon.
Hurry up with your task—we need you now! I messaged urgently to Madame Pestis. "The Madame is in the middle of cleaning up one of the messes that you made, she might be awhile," I told my former housemate.
"So she must be the lucky one chosen to search for my remains," Wolf Fang commented pleasantly, a slight ironic smile on his face. "That's fine, she can join us later."
I didn't answer. "Are the guests safe, Vincent?"
"As I've said to your master so many times, yes. This was never about endangering the guests. This is something personal between me and Ghoulmaster."
"Where have you been?" I asked, unwilling to wait.
"Around. I did some soul-searching the past few years, pardon the pun, and did some research into my family history. I think I've finally figured out why so many of my family members linger here and don't pass on into the other world."
A low moan escaped from Ghoulmaster's lips, an eerie sound that I'd never heard from him. Shadow Falcon burst through the wall in record time and skidded to a halt, staring at Vincent Wolf Fang in utter shock.
"Join us," I said. "Now can we—"
"You found out," Ghoulmaster whispered in fear, his eyes slowly turning up to meet Vincent's.
Vincent met his gaze with a steely stoicism. "Yes."
Ghoulmaster wrapped his arms around himself, appearing to hug himself in a gesture wholly uncharacteristic of him.
"Found out what?" Chester gasped.
Vincent slowly stood up. He put his hands in his pockets and began to walk slowly back and forth. "Many, many years ago…I was born into a happy family, or at least certainly normal. We lived on a farm in the Midwest, barely eeking out a living, food on the table guaranteed only if we were having a good crop season. But that was okay, more or less—it's the American dream, right? My parents and I didn't have set working hours, so whenever chores were done, we spent a lot of happy hours together. As it would turn out, those were the happiest of my life. And afterlife."
I had heard a version of this story before, but not from him. The dread in the pit of my stomach was forming again.
"I was an older child when my siblings arrived, seven when my brother was born, and eight when my sister was born. From there, this might seem like the typical story: my parents unintentionally had a lot less time for me, my mother especially. Pretty soon she would mostly call my name only for help in taking care of the two of them. I knew I didn't love my little siblings as I should, and I felt guilty about that. Only later did I finally acknowledge my guilt for the jealousy that it was." Vincent paused and looked around the room, stopping at Ghoulmaster. Ghoulmaster looked paler than usual, still hugging himself in a sign of miserable self-soothing.
"It may have been the typical older sibling jealousy story, but then it turned into the "typical" tragedy story," Vincent continued. "I was supposed to be watching my siblings while they played in the field. My five-year-old sister was restless and wanted to play tag, but I didn't want to, so she ended up running in circles around me and my brother. I never left her, but she was just too far away for me to prevent anything from happening. She was bitten by a snake. I heard her screams and immediately took her inside, where our father tried to suck out the poison. We thought it might have worked, but a couple of feverish hours later, knew for certain that it hadn't."
Ghoulmaster's eyes appeared to shine in the light of the lantern, almost as if there were moisture there.
"I remember sitting in shock, staring at the wall as hours, then days, went by," Vincent recalled. "To their credit, my parents never said or even implied that they blamed me, although who knows what they thought. Some things in life aren't preventable, but when tragedy strikes, the finger-pointing isn't too far behind. My mother sobbed uncontrollably for a few days, and then took to her bed. My father didn't know how to handle her depression, and we saw less and less of him as he lost himself in the farm, now trying to support his family without any help. So it fell on my six-year-old brother to take care of me and my mother during our depression."
"For how long?" Falcon interjected.
"I don't know. I think it was a couple of weeks. Eventually I began to notice that my little brother was being forced to grow up far too quickly, so I forced myself to contribute more, a little at a time. I was getting more responsive to the outside world every day, and after a few days, was very relieved to see that my mother was too, but at a slower pace." Vincent appeared to look right through us, lost in his reverie. "I thought that even though I would live with guilt the rest of my life, a mother's grief was greater, but she would eventually come back to us with a few scars. On good days, she would hold me and my brother in bed with her, telling us stories, even giving us strained smiles occasionally. She told us that we would all get through this together, and gave us visions of how we would eventually be a happy family again.
"That's why it was all the more painful for us when she relapsed. I remember thinking that it came out of the clear blue sky. She continued to speak positively, but I could tell that it was more and more forced, and her physical symptoms returned with a vengeance. I remember sweat pouring off her face, her disposition in exact contrast to the hopeful words she would say. Her time with me and my brother became more frantic, more intense. I think she knew that her time was at an end. Only several weeks after my sister died, my mother joined her, from a broken heart."
Ghoulmaster rose and stood where he was, a more focused, determined look on his face.
"And that's what I went through my entire life and afterlife believing," Vincent finished calmly, looking at our leader. "Right, Ghoulmaster?"
Silence.
"I will give you one last chance to finally tell me the truth from your own lips. Is that an accurate interpretation of what happened, "Ghoulmaster?"" Vincent said harshly, a slight sneer on his face.
The room was silent as we waited for a response. Ghoulmaster took a step forward. "You do well not to refer to me by my birth name, Brother," he said softly. "That identity of mine died the day our mother died."