Gerry's Family Fun Zone

Untitled Part 10

I made them up. Wrote down a bunch of gibberish. They led miles outside of town in the opposite direction. And then I followed my directions - the ones the old man left me - and they led me right to it. It was real. This Uncle Gerry's place, it was real, man. It made no sense. And then Caroline showed up.

With the wrong directions?

I'll never forget it. Seeing her car pull up. She should have been forty miles away. But here she was. And that's when I knew. There was something wrong about her, something wrong about that old man, something wrong about that place. It was like Caroline was magnetically drawn to it. Uncle Gerry's Family Fun Zone. Like, it exists because she believes it exists. I decided at that moment that there was some form of evil forces in the world that I would never understand. Never. And Caroline was wrapped up in it.

How was the place real?

Like I said. It didn't make any sense. Nothing did. We even explored the place for a while, and it was...Christ, it feels like I'm going back there right now. And I never wanted to go back. Never. That musty smell, those animals that towered over us like monsters, it's just...

Will, why don't we end this. I can...

No, no, just a little more. There's some things that you should know. I'd never seen Caroline so excited. Still haven't. I swear she was bouncing around that place. Wanted to explore every inch. She even pulled me into some horrifying corn maze I thought we'd never get out of. And then we found it. We found the place where that kid had disappeared. Caroline pulled open this hatch in this enormous, empty ball-pit, and we wiggled through this crawlspace that dead-ended, and then we heard something. Someone else was inside the barn. We heard it's footsteps above us, and it was stomping around. I thought, maybe it was the old man, because who else would know we were here?

Was it the old man?

It wasn't. No way. We were huddled up at the end of the crawlspace, and my legs were shaking so bad I thought they would spring free from my body. Caroline held them down for me. She was so calm, just so calm. The hatch opened, and in the dark I saw this figure kind of lean down. It definitely wasn't the old man. It was too skinny. It couldn't have been a person. It just couldn't. So we stared at it from across this crawlspace, and at one point I turned to look at Caroline, and she was watching this thing with this little grin on her face. And that thing kept right on looking and breathing, and then, all of the sudden, it kind of sniffed the air. Like it was smelling us. And the voice, God, I'll never forget it. It was this voice that was deep and raspy and terrible all at the same time, it said, "Not young enough." Then it slammed down the hatch, and it was gone. We waited a while, and when we thought it was safe we ran back to our cars.

Will, if I thought that we'd talk about this I wouldn't have asked you to do this. I mean it. I never intended for it to be like this.

It's fine. It's just...someone needed to know. I'm just glad it's you.

If I can ask, and if you don't want to answer that's totally fine: why are you with her? Why are you married to Caroline?

Because someone had to marry her, and it had to be me. Does that make sense? I know what happened at that place. I know that there's evil things in this world that have grabbed hold of her. But she's better. She never wrote that article, never talked about Uncle Gerry's Family Fun Zone since then. I'm not sure if she even remembers it. Maybe the evil is gone. It could be gone forever. But I'm always waiting for it to come back. And that's why...I'll tell you this, but this goes to the grave. Yeah?

Yeah.

She wants to have kids. Caroline wants to have a baby. But it won't be with me. I got a vasectomy years ago, back in college, actually. I won't give her a baby, not after everything that I know. But now she wants one. More than anything

She'll find out. If you guys do fertility, the doctors will find out.

I know.

What will you do then?

I don't know. (pauses) I don't know.

My original hunch about my interview experiment was correct: there was just something about the microphones and tight space that elicits honesty. What I experienced with Caroline and Will was the rarest forms of honesty, an honesty I hope to never, ever experience again. I wanted to rid myself of the entire situation - even having the audio files just felt wrong, like I was allowing evil to fester - but then I remembered what Will told me: