They are the perfect family.

But perfection is fragile.

Cal Hudson knows the world can be an ugly place. As a reporter for a big Chicago newspaper, Cal has journeyed into society’s darkest corners to expose the vilest crimes. But the world he and his devoted wife, Faith, share with their son is much nicer. They have made sure of it, creating a tranquil haven in suburban River Ridge to protect the person most precious to them.

Until the unthinkable happens, and nine-year-old Gage vanishes.

In a split second at a local carnival, the Hudson’s storybook world begins unraveling. A frantic search starts to uncover splinters in their carefully crafted facade, revealing buried secrets that cast just as much suspicion on Cal and Faith as any ill-meaning stranger, and proving that the line between love and violence can disappear as suddenly as a child on a chaotic midway.

Also by Rick Mofina

FREE FALL

FULL TILT

EVERY SECOND

WHIRLWIND

INTO THE DARK

THEY DISAPPEARED

THE BURNING EDGE

IN DESPERATION

THE PANIC ZONE

VENGEANCE ROAD

SIX SECONDS

Other books by Rick Mofina

A PERFECT GRAVE

EVERY FEAR

THE DYING HOUR

BE MINE

NO WAY BACK

BLOOD OF OTHERS

COLD FEAR

IF ANGELS FALL

BEFORE SUNRISE

THE ONLY HUMAN

For more information, please visit www.rickmofina.com.

Last Seen

Rick Mofina

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Highway Nine Inc 2018

Rick Mofina asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © February 2018 ISBN: 9781474074780

Version: 2018-01-22

This book is for my hero, my father

Praise for the novels of Rick Mofina

“Rick Mofina’s books are edge-of-your seat thrilling. Page turners that don’t let up.”

—Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Six Seconds should be Rick Mofina’s breakout thriller. It moves like a tornado.”

—James Patterson, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Six Seconds is a great read. Echoing Ludlum and Forsythe, author Mofina has penned a big, solid international thriller that grabs your gut—and your heart—in the opening scenes and never lets go.”

—Jeffery Deaver, New York Times bestselling author

“The Panic Zone is a headlong rush toward Armageddon. Its brisk pace and tight focus remind me of early Michael Crichton.”

—Dean Koontz, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Rick Mofina’s tense, taut writing makes every thriller he writes an adrenaline-packed ride.”

—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author

“Mofina’s clipped prose reads like short bursts of gunfire.”

—Publishers Weekly on No Way Back

“Mofina is one of the best thriller writers in the business.”

—Library Journal (starred review) on They Disappeared

“Vengeance Road is a thriller with no speed limit! It’s a great read!”

—Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Praise

Epigraph

The First Day

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

The Second Day

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

The Third Day

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

The Fourth Day

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

The Fifth Day

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Epilogue

Acknowledgments & Author’s Note

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind...

—William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III, act 5, scene 6

The First Day

1

River Ridge, Illinois

“You’re doomed!” the fat man on the stool said.

He was missing two lower front teeth. Peppered stubble whorled on his cheeks; vines of long hair framed his face. His eyes locked on Gage as he extended his hand, raising his voice over the chaos of the midway.

“Give me your ticket, kid.”

Smiling, Gage placed his ticket in the man’s red-stained palm, then raised his voice. “Hey, is that real blood?”

“You tell me, kid. Look where fate has brought you.” The fat man cast his tattooed arm back to the huge arching sign bearing blood-dripping words that proclaimed the attraction.

The Chambers of Dread: America’s Biggest Traveling World of Horrors!

“This is so cool!” Gage said.

“Cool? How old is your young soul?”

“What?”

“How old are you?”

“Nine!”

The man’s eyes narrowed into reptilian slits as he assessed Gage, then his dad, then his mom. They stayed on Mom long enough to border on being unsavory before coming back to Gage. Then the man knocked on the wooden advisory bolted to the metal barricade next to him.

Warning! This attraction may be too intense for pregnant women and people with heart conditions. It is not recommended for children under the age of 12 unless they are accompanied by an adult.

A fat finger, tipped with a long, yellowed and chipped fingernail, pointed at Gage. “Mark my words, kid. These Chambers is cursed. No one who enters is ever the same when, and if, they leave. Now’s the time to run home with your mama. Otherwise, move ahead. Next! You, there! You’re doomed!”

“Whoa!” Gage’s laugh betrayed excited nervousness as he and his parents inched forward in the crowded line that snaked between barricades to the entrance. The aroma of deep-fried food, grilled meat and cotton candy wafted from the food stands. He felt his mother’s hands on his shoulders before she leaned into his ear.

“You’re sure you’re okay to do this, sweetie? You’re not too scared?”

“Mom, I’m not scared!”

“We could skip this and get something to eat over there.”

“He’s fine, Faith. You’re always babying him,” Gage’s dad said, while checking messages on his phone and texting responses.

Always working, Faith Hudson thought, irritated. It was as if his phone was part of his anatomy. Now he was dialing.

“Seriously, you’re calling someone?”

Phone pressed to his ear, Cal flashed his free palm to Faith, signaling her to quiet down. She bit her bottom lip, hesitating, then said what she was thinking. “And I was going to thank you for making time for us today.”

Cal never heard her, focused on his call. “Yeah, it’s Hudson,” he said into the receiver. “You gotta tell Stu the number’s wrong in the story—it’s fifty thousand, not five... Right. Good. Bye.”

He turned to his wife. “I’m sorry, what’d you say?”

“Nothing.”

Cal looked at her for a long moment while across from them the Polar Rocket erupted with a diesel roar, frenzied squeals and Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song. After absorbing everything that Faith’s silence screamed at him, Cal leaned into her ear.

“I had to make that call—it was important.”

“They’re always important calls.”

“I had to correct an editing error. What were you trying to tell me?”

She stared at him. “I was going to thank you for making time to be with us, but you’re not with us. You’re working.”

“Cripes. I’m here, Faith.”

“Are you?”

“Please, don’t start.”

“No, no, I’m not.” Faith glimpsed the family behind them, the mother and father awkwardly pretending not to be watching them. Immediately Faith rubbed Cal’s shoulder lovingly and smiled for all to see. “Everything’s fine. Really.”

Sure, everything’s perfect, Calvin Hudson told himself, turning from Faith and scanning the top of the Mega-Roller Ferris wheel. She’d never truly understood his work, he thought. He was a journalist; it was in his DNA. The demands were 24/7. She never really grasped how deeply involved he was with his stories. He couldn’t just switch it off, like she insisted; or like she could at the PR firm. Now there were rumors of layoffs at his paper, the Chicago Star-News, making him uneasy. He had to work that much harder to prove he was still valuable to his editors. Jobs in the business were scarce. But the way Faith had said, “Don’t worry, we’ll get by on my salary and you’ll find something else,” had wounded him. How could she be so dismissive, as if his position in life didn’t matter, as if she wanted him to lose his job. She had no clue how much he’d given to it—his blood, sweat and tears along with much of his soul. She had no idea the things he’d done.

And if Cal’s uncertainty about his job at the paper wasn’t bad enough, the situation at home was worse. He and Faith were no longer as intimate as they used to be. She had grown colder over the past few years. Their lovemaking was infrequent. Her displays of affection—spontaneous handholding, touching or even kissing, which used to be common—were now rare.

She’d become more impatient, more demanding. And the way she babied Gage... “Is your pizza too hot for you? Want me to cut it for you? Maybe that movie’s too scary for you?” The boy was nine. And he clearly hated when his mother treated him this way. It was no wonder Gage lived for any free time with his dad—with Faith, it was as if he was drowning and desperate to come up for air.

But no one knew that Cal and Faith were grappling with these problems—not their relatives, not their friends. “We don’t need everyone to know our business,” Faith had decreed.

In keeping with a job as a public relations manager, appearances were important to Faith.

Given her personality and her professional skills, she was good at hiding the truth when it counted. Maybe that’s why buried in a corner of Cal’s heart was the fear that Faith would take Gage and leave. Cal would never see it coming.

He forced himself to shift away from all these thoughts and stay positive. He found comfort in the line he had on a potential reporting job overseas. The chances that he’d get it were slim, but if he did it would mean a big change in their lives.

Still, no matter what he and Faith felt, Gage came first.

Cal looked at his son, thinking that he must sense his parents were having problems.

Like powerful telescopes scouring space for signs of life, kids like Gage could pick up infinitesimal traces of parental discord. They’d internalize it without voicing a word, while alone at night in their beds they’d hope and pray that everything between Mom and Dad would be okay.

Looking at Gage in his beloved Cubs cap and T-shirt, the one with the faded mustard stain, his khaki shorts and sneakers, Cal felt a surge of love for his son. He would do anything for him.

No matter what problems Cal and Faith had, they needed to show Gage that they were still a family intact; that’s why they were here at the River Ridge Summer Carnival. Every year the big traveling midway of games and thrill rides visited their suburb on Chicago’s West Side for ten days. Gage had ached to come, specifically to respond to the double dares from his friends about going through the Chambers of Dread.

“Marshall and Colton said they were going to get their parents to come to the fair today, too. I hope so because if I see them I’m gonna tell them, ‘In your face, dudes! I conquered the Chambers of Dread!’”

Cal mussed Gage’s hair, smiling and thinking that maybe this fear, the kind that was manufactured and sold, would take their minds off the real things they feared in their lives. Maybe for a short time they could pretend to be a happy family.

Cal glanced back at the fat man on the stool, saw him raise a walkie-talkie and say something into it.

The Hudsons were next in line.

As they entered the Chambers of Dread through the yawning jaws of the Demon King, the carnival barker’s warning of doom echoed.

Cal and Faith exchanged measured looks before they and Gage stepped into the darkness.

2

Thick waist-high fog enveloped the Hudsons in the dim light; wisps of it curled around Gage’s chest as they began their journey through the Chambers of Dread. Screams from the unseen visitors mingled with moaning in the darkness ahead of them. They moved toward ominous rumbling, coming to a passageway formed by a large, tunnellike drum, continually spinning, inviting visitors to step through the Portal to the Grim World Beyond, according to the twisted neon sign above it.

Keeping their balance while walking through the portal with a few other people, the Hudsons found a deeper darkness on the other side and began moving slowly through a maze when a large, cloaked figure emerged in front of them.

“Oh my God!” Faith gasped as the figure raised a severed human head before them, then vanished.

“It’s not real, Mom!” Gage laughed.

“I know, sweetie. It just startled me. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, this is so dope!”

But the underlying nervousness in Gage’s voice worried Faith, making her wonder if he’d be okay. Especially with what seemed to be up ahead.

Agonizing pleas beckoned them to the Dungeons of Dread and a darkened narrow walkway that reeked of rotten eggs and had water trickling down its jagged stone walls.

“Oh, no, let go! No!” a teenager ahead of them shrieked.

Something scratched at Faith’s ankles. Then it gripped them before she kicked free. Looking to her feet she saw clawlike hands reaching out from barred windows where the condemned, confined in a subterranean prison, grabbed desperately at them, calling, “Save us! Don’t leave us!”

Hurrying through the dungeons, the Hudsons came to another dark twisting connection echoing with wails, growing louder as they got closer to the next chamber.

There, the entire scene glowed in flickering orange, yellow and red as flames licked from a massive mound of wood and bramble. A large post protruded from the center. Bound to it, a woman wrapped in a white nightshirt, her head shorn, face glistening, her eyes inflamed, screeched, “So you think burning me, the witch queen, will be my end! Fools! I curse you all! I’ll torment you from hell!”

The temperature soared, giving the scene a heightened degree of authenticity. Faith saw one man point out for his wife how the flames were controlled from a gas line, that the wood pile was a prop, like the gas fireplace in an expensive home.

“Did you hear me?” the witch queen screamed. “You’re all cursed! Forever!”

Faith found kinship with the witch queen.

Her writhing against her bindings echoed how Faith felt, bound to her heartache. Cal had grown distant over the last couple years and she didn’t know why. After one of his big stories he’d grow pensive. Faith didn’t know what was happening with him. Whenever she tried to talk about it, he’d shut her down. He’d become absorbed in his work and was never home. She was always alone, making her feel that he preferred the long hours of working with cops, criminals and street-smart, pretty female reporters to being with her.

Had he fallen out of love with her? Once, she’d overheard him on a call joking to someone that journalists were truth seekers and PR people were professional liars. Did he feel that way about her? Most of her work was for big nonprofit groups and charities, and that was the only time she’d heard him talk that way, so she let it go.

Or tried to.

Faith needed to hold things together for Gage’s sake. But it wasn’t easy. She knew Gage idolized his father and lived for any free moment Cal spared for him. But it only happened when it was convenient for Cal. How many times had he canceled at the last minute on promised father-son days to see a movie, or the Cubs, or check out video games because he had to work late?

Gage was crushed every time. He was resilient, but still, it broke Faith’s heart.

Cal had promised her that he would leave the crime beat and advance up the editorial ladder toward a more stable job and life. It never happened—and she knew it never would because he loved what he was doing. That’s why she saw the looming layoffs 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.

3

“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 wait for us.

Come on, Gage, come on. Where is he?

Cal continued, turning full circle, bumping into people, scanning faces of boys Gage’s age until they began blurring. Cal scoured the Polar Express—nothing there. Then he stopped in front of the Zipper where Bob Seger’s Hollywood Nights was throbbing amid the grind of the thrill ride’s diesel and roaring crowds.

No sign of Gage.

Quickly, he circled food stands that were selling burgers and fries, pizza, ice cream, nuts, pretzels and cotton candy, scanning the people ordering, waiting or those eating at the small tables nearby.

No sign of Gage.

Cal thought it unlikely Gage would travel down this way alone in such a short amount of time, and trotted back to Faith at the Chambers of Dread.

Her hope that he’d have Gage with him died on her face as they exchanged sobering looks.

“He hasn’t come out here,” Faith said, turning to the chutes. “Do something, Cal!”

Near them, they saw a man in his thirties wearing a work shirt with an embroidered Ultra-Fun Amusement Corp roller-coaster logo above his left pocket, a ball cap and Ray-Ban sunglasses. Obviously a midway worker, he was helping women recover at the slides, his rolled sleeves displaying tattoo-laced biceps.

“Our son hasn’t come out yet,” Cal said. “Can you help us?”

The man was unshaven; his long hair curled from his cap, the toothpick in the corner of his mouth punctuated an expression that told Cal he’d been everywhere, seen everything, heard it all and was bored.

“People get hung up in there. Take it easy, pal, he’ll be out.”

“He’s only nine!” Faith interjected. “He was right at the exit curtains with us and he’s not here. It’s been more than five minutes!”

Cal saw Faith’s body reflected in the man’s mirrored glasses as he assessed her summer top and shorts. His toothpick shifted and he nodded to the Chambers.

“Did you see him on the spinner?”

“Yes, if that’s what you call the last thing before these slides, yes,” she said.

“Hang on.” The man unclipped a walkie-talkie from his studded belt, turned and spoke into it. “Alma, it’s Sid. We got a straggler in the spinner.” He turned to Faith. “What’s he wearing?”

“A Cubs T-shirt, ball cap and sand-colored shorts, khakis,” Faith said.

“Got a lotta kids wearing that same stuff,” he said.

“A blue Cubs shirt and ball cap,” Cal added. “And he’s wearing sneakers, blue SkySlyders.”

“How old did you say?”

“Nine,” Faith said.

After Sid relayed Gage’s description into the walkie-talkie, it crackled and a woman’s bored-sounding voice said, “Roger. Stand by.”

“Your people can see in the dark?” Cal asked.

“We got infrared cameras everywhere in the Chambers and Alma watches from a control desk.”

Several moments passed with Sid’s silent calm countering Cal and Faith’s anxiety, projecting an attitude that this sort of thing happened all the time. He scratched his whiskered jaw, then raised his walkie-talkie again.

“Check the graveyard and the crusher.”

“Stand by. I think...” the radio said. “Yup! Got him. He’s coming your way.”

“Oh, good!” Faith said, relief washing through her.

“He should be at the chutes about...now,” the radio said.

A middle-aged woman with glasses whooshed down one slide, then two teenage girls shot down another, then a big-bellied man followed by a boy in shorts and a Cubs T-shirt—a red one. The kid looked more like twelve.

“That’s not Gage! That boy’s not our son!” Faith said.

“We need to do something now, Sid!” Cal said.

Sid held up a hand to stem their rising concern and he spoke into his radio.

“Alma, that’s not him. Go back farther—the witch, the clown, the butcher—and double-check. Shorts and Cubs T-shirt. Nine years old.”

“A blue T-shirt!” Faith said.

Sid shook his head. “The cameras don’t pick up colors, just shades, black, white and in between.”

A few more tense moments passed, then Faith said, “Sid, we’re losing time and this is getting serious. Gage could’ve fallen. He could be hurt or unconscious in there! You’ve got to shut it down, turn on the lights and let us search for him now!”

“Relax, ma’am. We have procedures for these situations.”

“Then use them, dammit!” Faith said.

“Hang on.” Sid pulled the walkie-talkie to his mouth and took a few steps away, but even with the noise Faith and Cal could hear him.

“Still nothing, Alma?”

“Still looking.”

“Call a Code 99.”

“Vaughn won’t like it.”

“Call it.” Sid turned back to the Hudsons. “What’s your son’s name?”

“Gage Hudson,” Faith said.

Sid nodded and relayed it to Alma, setting in motion Ultra-Fun Amusement Corp’s procedure for a serious incident at an attraction. Within minutes, more staff emerged amid radio dispatches and workers talking on cell phones. Some went to various points to help visitors leave the Chambers of Dread through emergency exit doors and down stairs, apologizing and handing them vouchers for a free return. Other staff converged at the chutes. One of them, a man in his early sixties with a white cowboy hat and aviator glasses, had a private huddle with Sid before he came directly to Faith and Cal. He was wearing a navy golf shirt with the Ultra-Fun logo.

“Vaughn King—I run the midway attractions.” He nodded. “We’ll find your son, folks.” King, face tanned with neat, trimmed white stubble, presented an air of authority as he turned and spoke softly into his phone.

Cal and Faith heard a loud announcement being made within the confines of the Chambers. It was muffled but they could make out a woman’s voice on the PA system calling Gage’s name, telling him to report to a staff member.

“We’ve shut down the ride,” King said. “We turned on all interior lighting. We’ve got staff inside who know every nook and cranny looking for your son. All the actors at the scenes are looking, too.”

“Does this happen often?” Cal asked.

King’s gaze was fixed on the Chambers as he stuck out his bottom lip.

“It happens. In Kansas City, we found a teenager who’d huddled in a corner of a set, her eyes shut tight. She’d refused to open them. Found the Chambers a little too scary. In Indianapolis, we had an eighty-three-year-old veteran off his medication who wandered behind the butcher’s scene without the actor knowing. Found him sleeping behind the meat props. In Cincinnati, a woman fainted near one of the spinner’s exits. Unfortunately, no one noticed until we searched for her. It happens.”

“What about the exits?” Faith asked. “We never saw exit signs inside.”

“They’re dimmed but activated and illuminated in an emergency.”

“Gage could’ve gone out one of them,” Cal said.

“An alarm goes off when they’re opened. Staff would’ve been alerted and that didn’t happen.”

Ten tense, solid minutes passed without results. King glanced at his watch, then spoke softly into his walkie-talkie. He looked at his watch again, bit his bottom lip and turned to Faith and Cal.

“Does your son possibly have a cell phone?”

King’s question thrust the situation up to a more serious level.

For a second Cal recalled how Gage had begged them for his own phone. Most of his friends had phones. But Cal and Faith had said no—it cost too much, he was too young, he’d be tempted to use it in class to play games. They’d refused to give him his own phone for all those reasons, at first. Then they’d caved and got him one, and Gage promptly lost it. They got him a second one and he’d lost that, too. So that was it. No more phones.

Now their rationale seemed infinitely feeble because, facing what they were facing, they’d have given the world to go back in time and get him another phone.

“No.” Faith blinked back tears. “He doesn’t have a phone.”

King’s Adam’s apple rose and fell. He removed his sunglasses and his blue eyes were tinged with concern.

“I’m sorry, folks, but we can’t seem to find him.”

4

Cal couldn’t accept what Vaughn King was implying—that somehow Gage had vanished.

“That’s ridiculous. He didn’t just disappear,” Cal said. “He’s in there.”

Faith cupped her hands over her face. “Where else could he be?”

King stared at Cal, then Faith.

“Our people have already searched. Are you certain he didn’t exit ahead of you and wander down the midway?”

“He was with us in the spinner!” Faith said. “Let us search for him.”

King removed his hat, drew his forearm across his brow, a gesture suggesting that allowing the public access during a Code 99 was against company policy. A second later, as if he’d convinced himself that this situation was exceptional, or maybe to diminish potential liability—we did everything to help those parents—King found himself nodding and clicking the speaker on the small walkie-talkie again.

“This is Vaughn. I’m bringing the parents inside to search.” To Cal and Faith, he said, “All right, let’s go.”

His radio crackled. “But, Mr. King, the policy prohibits—”

“I know what the policy says.” King cut the speaker off. “I’m bringing them in!”

The key ring on King’s belt jingled as they all hurried toward the entrance. Moving around the other side of the attraction, Cal saw the Chambers of Dread for what they were: a series of interconnected truck trailers, forming an interlocking network that claimed to be America’s Biggest Traveling World of Horrors! He noticed the empty stool belonging to the fat ticket taker who’d eyed Faith and wondered if he was helping search for Gage.

King led them through the jaws of the Demon King. There was no fog when they entered; bright lights lit the inside. Their footsteps echoed as they rushed through the spinning portal, which was now stationary. Gage had to be in here. The ever-present thud of the midway outside hammered a deadened rhythm as Cal and Faith looked for their son.

“Gage!” Faith called. “It’s okay! Come out now. It’s Mom and Dad!”

All the interior walls were painted black; so were the floors and ceilings, where Cal noticed nozzles of the sprinkler system and the surveillance cameras. Suddenly the air exploded with ear-piercing staccato beeps. A side exit door opened and closed as a young woman in an Ultra-Fun shirt holding a walkie-talkie stepped inside.

“We checked the area around this exit, Mr. King. We didn’t find him.”

“Thank you, Hayley.”

Cal looked at the small exit light overhead and how the door was also painted black. It blended in with the walls, like camouflage, almost invisible.

“Hold on, I want to look out there,” he said.

The girl let Cal step through the door. The alarm bleated as he took stock of the backside of the structure, one not seen from the midway crowd. His heart was thumping faster now as he saw tentacles of huge power cables flowing on the ground and breathed in the smell of diesel and hydraulic fluid wafting from the generators and the pumps powering the rides nearby. The area was congested with an array of truck trailers, positioned to form narrow walkways leading to RVs and campers where Ultra-Fun staff lived while on the road—a netherworld of latter-day gypsies. Cal scoured the area, then the alarm bleated and King appeared on the stairs with Faith.

“Mr. Hudson!” King shouted. “The alarm would’ve been activated if your son used one of these exits!”

Cal took a second sweep under the trailers for anything that would lead him to Gage. Finding nothing, he conceded King’s point and returned.

Resuming their hunt in the Chambers, Faith and Cal came to the large cloaked figure they’d encountered earlier, the one toting a head. The figure had adjusted the costume. In the naked light, Cal and Faith saw that he was an acne-faced young man of linebacker proportions.

“Hi, Mr. King. We’ve searched everywhere in our section. He’s not here.”

“Thanks, Lonnie,” King said, moving on to the area smelling of rotten eggs—the Dungeons of Dread. Opening a door, he led the Hudsons down a few short steps to a cramped dugout set behind prison bars where actors with clawlike prop hands shook their heads.

“He’s not with us, sir,” a young woman—one of the “damned”—said.

Cal, Faith and King kept going, coming to another exit door, tripping the alarm. At this one, Faith exited and took the stairs, which landed tight to a chain-link fence. Trailers were backed against it. An empty lot stood on the other side of the fence, earthen, muddied and pot-holed with discarded tires, a stove and a filthy sofa—a menacing patch of misery.

“Gage! It’s Mom, honey! Gage!”

The fear that had seeped into her voice was unmistakable, Cal thought, joining her and searching the confined area for several minutes before returning inside. Once more they’d activated the alarm, underscoring their desperation on their way to the next set.

The air smelled as if a gas stove had been switched off when they got to where the burning witch queen had cursed them. The room’s temperature had dropped a little from the oven-level it had been during the act. The actress had left her stake and was still searching the edges of the prop wood pile.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” The witch shook her head. “He’s not here but I’m sure you’ll find him, don’t worry.”

Moving quickly to the next set they were greeted by the insane butcher still clad in his bloodstained apron and surrounded by props of limbs. Faith was thankful they’d stopped twitching. Still, the scene sent a shiver coiling up her spine. She dropped to her hands and knees, looking under the table and around the suspended torsos. Cal crawled on the floor from the opposite side, the chains creaking as they brushed against the props, which marked them with streaks of stage blood.

“Gage! Gage, come out, son!” Cal called as the butcher and King exchanged a look.

They’d found nothing here.

The butcher shook his hideous face, telling the Hudsons, “We looked everywhere in this section, folks. He’s not with us.”

Cal and Faith hurried ahead with King, stopping to inspect the areas surrounding every exit that they came to. They didn’t find Gage with the fanged clown, who’d hefted the organ from a wall in order to look behind and under it. There was nothing to search at the river of snakes and the cavern of bats and spiders. Those areas had been filled with computer-generated images. Under the lights, these sets were void of anything searchable.

Gage was not among the tombstones in the graveyard. There, the wretched zombie woman offered a sympathetic smile, shaking her head—“He’s not here”—but with her makeup she came off looking like the possessed girl in The Exorcist.

In the spinner, the large round floor was motionless. At the six curtained exits leading to the slides, they saw the chain-saw executioner. He’d pushed his mask up to the top of his head, revealing the face of a handsome man in his thirties.

“I’m so sorry if I scared your little boy.” He offered the Hudsons a small, warm smile. “He’s not here but I’m sure you’ll find him.”

They didn’t.

Cal and Faith’s search of the Chambers had proven to be fruitless.

“This way.” King led them to one of the exits, and the outside stairs down, returning them to the chutes to where a small group of Ultra-Fun staff had gathered.

Amid the chattering walkie-talkies, some of the staff cast looks of awkward pity at the Hudsons standing helplessly at the slides—their faces bearing small smears of stage blood. It had now been nearly half an hour since Cal and Faith had last seen Gage, yet all around them the fair kept going, people kept squealing with joy, the thrill rides kept spinning and twirling, the music kept rocking, as if nothing had changed.

But everything had changed.

Faith’s breaths started coming in gasps; her hands started shaking. “Cal, this can’t be happening, not to us!”

“Take it easy.”

“Maybe, maybe Marshall’s and Colton’s families are here and this is a big joke to scare us? That’s got to be it, right?”

“Faith, I don’t think so.”

“No. No!” Faith’s knees buckled and Cal caught her. “Gage!”

Gage couldn’t be missing, Cal thought. It couldn’t be true. Maybe it was part of some pranking TV show? He struggled to grasp it all but their futile search of the Chambers with its grotesque faces and sets was a descent into Dante’s circles of hell.

Cal felt something monstrous had raked a claw across their lives while the screams of the midway grew louder and he reached for his phone. His fingers were trembling when he pressed the numbers for 911.

“River Ridge Emergency Dispatch, what’s your emergency?”

“My son is—” Cal started but his heart was hammering in his chest and his mind was swirling with disbelief. He glanced at Faith, her anguish piercing him. He couldn’t believe this was happening. What kind of parents lose their kid? He had to stop thinking that way and stay in control.

“Sir, what’s your emergency?”

Cal gripped his cell phone with such force he nearly cracked the casing. “My son is missing.” He resumed reporting Gage’s disappearance, but for one burning instant he felt trapped in a dream.

Wake up, go to Gage’s room—you’ll see he’s there. Wake up!

But Cal didn’t wake up because he wasn’t dreaming.

5

Four minutes after Cal’s call, River Ridge police officers Angie Berg and Erik Ripkowski arrived at the chutes. Already briefed by their dispatcher, they wasted no time and followed procedure.

“We need to talk to you separately, folks,” said Berg, reaching for her notebook before taking Cal aside while her partner stayed with Faith.

The two officers had been close by. Today was their third shift on midway patrol, which was considered a semivacation usually involving nothing more than community relations duty. Berg had become partial to the fudge, while Ripkowski loved the Polish dogs. Up to now, their most serious call had been a woman who’d attempted to steal a fifteen-year-old girl’s phone. Turned out the woman was the intoxicated mother of the boy the girl had dumped. The woman’s husband, who was embarrassed, apologized and took his wife home.

But the Hudson call was different.

It went well beyond a midway nuisance, and of all the young officers on the River Ridge force, Berg and Ripkowski were two of the brightest.

“Take a breath, sir, start at the beginning,” Berg, her sandy hair pulled up in small bun, told Cal, her pen poised.

At this point Gage had been missing for almost forty-five minutes.

Nearby, Ripkowski, whose bodybuilder arms strained his uniform, was taking careful notes as Faith recounted to him what had taken place. At the same time the officers had requested that Vaughn King, who was watching from the distance, keep the Chambers of Dread closed and keep all staff on hand.

“We mean everybody.” Ripkowski pointed his pen. “Nobody leaves.”

After obtaining the Hudsons’ initial statements, details on Gage’s height, weight, hair and eye color, Berg and Ripkowski moved fast, making a number of transmissions on their shoulder microphones and calls on their phones, to their sergeant, and to the River Ridge Fairgrounds security and operations people.

“Do you have a recent photo of your son?” Ripkowski asked. “We need to get it circulated as soon as possible.”

Faith rummaged through her bag, seizing her phone. “Last Saturday—no, sorry, it was Sunday—Gage went to his friend Ethan Clark’s birthday party. I’ve got a picture.” She swiped through images, stopping at Gage smiling for the camera while behind him some joker, likely Marshall, was holding up two fingers bunny-ear-style above his head. “See, he’s wearing the same blue Cubs shirt. It’s got the mustard stain from his hot dog at the party. I told him to put it in the wash.” Faith was almost embarrassed. “I wanted to get the stain out but it’s his favorite shirt.”

“Okay, send it to me now.” Ripkowski held up his phone displaying his email. His phone chimed receipt of the picture after Faith, fingers shaking, typed it into her email app and sent the photo. Ripkowski then forwarded it to a number of addresses and made a call, speaking urgently to a fairgrounds person while nodding to the billboard-size TV screen suspended high above their section of the midway.

The sign was flashing with ads, selfies and images of people having fun at the fair, much like the giant screens at Times Square. There were four screens overlooking the grounds, one at pretty much every compass point.

“Here we go,” Ripkowski said.

Faith gasped when the screen suddenly went blank, then popped to life with Gage smiling down at her, the words Lost/Missing shouted above his head. Gage’s name and description appeared next to his face, in missing-person poster-style with a message urging anyone who’d seen him to call 911.

“That’s up now and will stay up on all the screens,” Ripkowski said. “I’ll send copies to you and your husband to spread the word, too.”

* * *

In the minutes that followed, Cal and Faith called the parents of Gage’s friends hoping that by some wild coincidence they were in fact also here, and maybe Gage had seen them and joined them.

“Hey, Pam, it’s Faith. This is going to sound weird, but are you guys at the fair today?”

“No, I’m home doing a wash. Dean’s with Colton at Walmart looking at fishing rods, or reels, or some man-thing. Why, what’s up?”

Faith stifled her tears, cupping her hand to her face as she spun around in the chaos, seeing Cal on his phone, hearing him speaking to their friends the Thompsons.

“Jack, any chance you, Michelle and Marshall are down here at the fair right now?” he was saying.

Those calls and the others they’d made didn’t yield Gage, but their friends, shocked by the gravity of Gage’s disappearance, began mobilizing to come to the fairgrounds to help. Cal and Faith, both ashen-faced, watched from a few yards away as the search for Gage continued widening with great speed. There was one thing that could help.

Cal called Stu Kroll, his editor at the Star-News.

“It’s Cal again—listen—”

“Hey, it’s okay, we caught it. Changed it to fifty. It’s all good.”

“No, Stu, listen. Our son’s missing down here at the River Ridge fair.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to send you his picture and information from the police—”

“The police?”

“Yeah, it’s looking serious. We need to get the word out now. Would you guys put it up on the site and tweet it out?”

“I—I’m not sure. I mean, you’re an employee—”

“Please, Stu! Please! I’m sending it now. I gotta go.”

Ripkowski and Berg had arranged for a River Ridge patrol car to park at the Hudsons’ house just in case Gage somehow made his way home. Cal and Faith contacted their nearest neighbors—Ethan’s parents, Sam and Rory Clark—who upon hearing the news immediately agreed to join the police at their house to watch for Gage.

Meanwhile, the fairgrounds chief, Herb Dulka, had trotted to the chutes, phone pressed to his ear, joining Ripkowski and Berg, who’d waved in Vaughn King, while more police officers and other security people arrived.

“We’ve circulated Gage’s picture force-wide,” Ripkowski said. “It’ll be up on social media any minute now, notifying everyone across Chicago, the state, the entire country. And I’ll talk to my supervisor to ensure we cover all our bases and look into possibly issuing an Amber Alert.”

Dulka said, “We’ve given the photo to all our people on the grounds at the gates and in the parking lots and we’re starting the shutdown process for the announcement.”

“Good.” Berg turned to King. “Our people and firefighters are going to search the attraction and we’re going to take statements from all of your people working it.”

“Not a problem.” Vaughn nodded.

“But first—” Ripkowski nodded to the Chambers “—what about your cameras in there? You got surveillance footage? It might show us something.”

“Yes, we have cameras and we’re working on getting the footage but there’s a problem.”

“What’s the problem?”

“The playback’s frozen. The Chambers took a lightning strike last week when we were in Milwaukee and the system’s been skittish ever since.”

“We need that footage,” Ripkowski said.

“We’re working on it.”

Near them the Polar Express emitted a hydraulic sigh as it slowed. Then the Zipper groaned to a halt as ride cycles ended and riders disembarked. People were kept off and the rides across the midway remained idle while everywhere the blaring rock music at each ride ceased.

“Almost ready.” Dulka was on his phone, then nodded. “Okay, go!”

A public address system awoke, screeching feedback, then a woman’s voice crackled through it with a message that came through loud and clear.

“Attention everyone. We have an emergency. We’re looking for a little boy, Gage Hudson. He’s nine and he got separated from his folks near the Chambers of Dread a little while ago. Gage’s picture is up on the big screens. Please take a look now, then look around you. Gage, if you’re seeing this, go to any ticket booth, police officer or security person, and they’ll find your folks for you. Everyone, please look around your area for Gage and let’s get him back to his folks. Please, do it now—it’ll only take a moment. Thank you.”

The chaos had been subdued and a somber air fell across the thousands of people at the River Ridge Fairgrounds. It was soon interrupted by the distant calling of people shouting, “Gage!” from various corners, as if engaged in a Marco Polo game. But it wasn’t long before the murmuring gave way to demands for the party to resume as some calls devolved into “Gage, you’re in deep shit!” and “Your mama’s gonna whip your ass, Gage!”

During the fifteen minutes the midway was halted, no walkie-talkies crackled and no phones rang to end Cal and Faith’s agony. No one had spotted Gage. With each terrible, surreal second that passed, Cal and Faith felt their horrible fear increasing and their panic rising.

It was all they could do to keep from falling off the earth.

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