at the paper as a chance for him to start something new, for them to reconnect. Because little by little she felt something was slipping away from them. They were growing apart, forcing Faith to take a hard look at taking control of matters because she and Cal couldn’t go on like this.
They used to be so much in love. What was happening to them?
The cries of the witch queen soon faded as the Hudsons navigated another labyrinthian connection to the next chamber where they were met by the distinct sound of vigorous chopping. Then, emerging in the gloomy darkness, they saw a man in a blood-streaked apron swinging a cleaver, blood running down his arm while he chopped slabs of meat on a table.
“Whoa!” Gage said. “It’s the insane butcher!”
Legs and arms, some twitching, were displayed on the hooks and chains near the butcher as he worked. His hair as wild as Medusa’s, his face contorted and smeared with blood, as he stopped his work to offer the Hudsons delicacies from an array of bowls. One was filled with eyeballs, one brimmed with fingers and another held brains.
“Gross!” Gage laughed.
“No, thanks,” Cal said.
As the Hudsons moved on with a small group, the light grew increasingly darker, making it nearly impossible to see each other, let alone Gage’s face. The actors and sets were of a higher caliber than Faith had anticipated and she worried that Gage was going to have nightmares after this.
She reached for his hand but he shook her attempt away.
“I’m not a baby, Mom!”
Suddenly the air filled with a loud hellish combination of perverted circus music and a thousand fingernails scraping on chalkboards. They came to a clown, malevolent makeup covering his face. Enormous fangs jutted from his head. He sat before an organ on a stool of bones while playing a demonic tune on a keyboard of little skulls, offering entertainment at the gateway to the next chamber.
It was the darkest passage yet.
Faith felt the floor beneath them undulating as thunder cracked. They were walking on something twisting, rolling and squirming.
Something slimy and alive!
Sudden lightning flashes revealed they were on a stream of snakes.
“Oh God!” Faith screamed, rushing ahead, thinking they couldn’t be real—they must be some sort of animatronics or CGI, though they sure felt real.
The connection, dimly lit with the lightning flashes, led them through a cavern-like passage overwhelmed with spiders and bats, forcing Faith to swat frantically at her face and hair.
They’re not real, Faith assured herself, swatting around her hair.
“Gage? Cal?”
“Right behind you,” Cal said.
Continuing in the next narrow connection they were nearly blind in the dark. They came upon rumbling so powerful everything vibrated. Feeling their way forward they brushed against earthen walls that were moving, closing in on them, forcing them to turn sideways to pass through. Sounds grew louder with the foreboding rumbling and heightened the sickening sense of being crushed and entombed.
“I don’t like this,” Faith said.
“Keep pushing forward,” Cal said. “It’ll be okay.”
The walls were actually constructed of foam and, after the initial horror, the passage ended by opening to the next scene: a figure standing in a cemetery. Her skin was alabaster, her white gown torn and filthy as if she’d just crawled from her grave. She hovered a few feet over the burial grounds threading around headstones, stopping before the Hudsons and snarling at them. Throwing her head back, she opened her mouth to vomit a stream of blood that gushed by them.
“The executioner is coming for you and there’s no escape!”
Struggling to distinguish the entrance to the next scene, Faith, Cal and Gage searched the cemetery for an exit in vain before they were motivated to look again by the sudden rattle of a revving chain saw.
“There, by the crooked tree!” Gage shouted.
The lid of an upright coffin had opened, inviting an escape just as the executioner materialized from across the graveyard. A huge man, face wrapped in a ragged, grotesque mask, held the saw high over his head, gunning the motor as he approached them.
“Let’s go!”
Gage ran through the coffin door, his parents behind him with the chain-saw maniac pursuing them.
They entered the final chamber where the floor was akin to a big plate, a flat, spinning wheel, large enough to hold a car. The room went pitch-black. Faith couldn’t see her hand in front of her face as the floor rotated. She couldn’t see Gage or Cal as the air exploded. Earsplitting, menacing metal music thudded in time with the sudden hyperflash of strobe lights, creating confusion and terror. In the chaos, Faith now glimpsed Gage and Cal—was that them?—moving on the far side of the spinning wheel.
Or was she seeing other people?
“Gage! Cal!”
The music roared and she failed to hear a response—if there was one—as the floor turned and turned, disorienting her. Through the strobes, she spotted half a dozen curtained portals just as the chain saw’s whine grew louder, alerting her to the fact the lunatic was in the room.
“Save yourself!” a recorded demonic voice boomed. “Choose your exit now, or perish!”
Faith sensed that the saw-wielding lunatic had stepped onto the wheel and had her in his sights. That saw better not be real, she thought before jumping to one of the curtained portals. Her heart skipped as the floor beneath her gave way and she fell onto a cushioned rubber slide that dropped in darkness for a few seconds before gently delivering her to the lighted, safe world outside.
Catching her breath, Faith stood, stepping aside as a teenage girl slid down the chute behind her. Blinking in the sunlight, regaining her composure, Faith looked around the landing zone of half a dozen chutes that webbed out to deliver visitors on a large air mattress.
“Hey!” Faith spotted and joined Cal, who’d exited at the farthest chute. “That was wild! Where’s Gage?”
Cal’s grin began melting as he looked at her, then around.
“He’s not with you?”
“No, I thought you had him?”
“No, I saw him with you.”
“Cal, where’s Gage?”
Faith and Cal searched the chutes delivering a thrilled survivor every few seconds. Gage would be next. He had to be next. The seconds grew to one minute as their hearts continued to pound. Two minutes passed, then three.
Time ticked by with no sign of Gage.
“I can’t believe this,” Cal said as he and Faith walked the perimeter of the chutes, searching the slides and the clusters of people shuffling along the exit barricades for Gage.
He wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere.
“Maybe he got out ahead of us and ran to another ride?” Faith said. “Maybe he went to a food stand?”
“I doubt it, but wait here for him and I’ll check.”
Cal shouldered his way through the exit lines, battling frustration and unease while searching the rivers of people that were flowing into the midway crowds. Gage wouldn’t have left the chutes without us, he thought. He knows better. Unless he was confused and figured we’d got out first and left without him? Maybe he rushed to the next ride. No. No way. He’d wait. He’s a good kid—he’s sharp, like his mother. No matter how tempting the midway would be he’d