Misery County

Chapter 12 - Part 1

"Hello, you have reached Eric Weber's phone. I'm not available to take your call. Please leave a message after the tone, unless you're Cassie, in which case, take the damned day off until I call you." Beep.

"Hey, Eric, it's me. I know this is the third time I'm calling, but I sorted out that revenant I told you about in the last voicemail. Good thing we'd done it before, right? Yeah, so, um, in your notes you said to avoid the abandoned fun fair near Charles Creek at all costs, but I'm doing really well today, and I feel like I can move up, you know, and, uh, take out some bigger threats or something. Anyway, I think that –" Beep.

"Oh fuck off!" Cassie yelled out, throwing her phone onto the passenger's seat. No matter, she thought. She'll just have to update Eric next time around, or better yet, in person. With the battery on her phone flashing hard at 1%, it seemed like it would have to be in person regardless of preference.

After consulting her map of the area for a few minutes, plotting out her path along back county roads, she put it aside and fired up her engine. The sound of Dream Theater filled the car as the radio came to life. Hm, prog metal. All right. I can dig it.

Over the course of the next hour, Rainbow kept her company while she was navigating a particularly nasty dirt road, Whitesnake commiserated when she got lost on the wrong side of a hill, and Opeth provided the soundtrack as she passed the Charles Creek cemetery and pulled into the parking lot of the long-abandoned fun fair. She couldn't complain. It wasn't her jam all the way, but it beat out the pop country station by about a light-year or two. If she had to listen to another Keith Urban song on her drive, the only other life she'd be taking that day would be her own.

Birds sang their sweet song around her, belying the sinister nature of the complex. While it certainly didn't look particularly threatening from where Cassie was standing, after the last two visits she paid based on the notes that Eric had written while interrogating the dearly departed skin-walker, she knew better than to relax too readily.

The utility vest slid on easily, and one by one, she loaded up items from her trunk into each of the pockets. Silver, salt, holy water – she didn't know what exactly she'd need, but she was going to be prepared for whatever she might find inside. Her trusty handbag alone just would not be enough in this case.

The trunk closed with a thump, and Cassie began her heavily-laden saunter over to the entrance of the park. A locked gate was waiting to greet her, a gate much newer and shinier than anything else around. This place was still in use. It was a smart move, she supposed. Whoever owned the place had clearly forgotten about it or simply no longer cared. As charming as she found the 70s décor, it was a sign of a business that hadn't made money for longer than Cassie had been alive. Between the permanent closure and its repurposing as a base for monsters, it was evident that whatever were to happen to it in the following hours, it certainly couldn't make things any worse than they already were.

Unlike the locked gate, the fence enclosing the grounds hadn't been touched in decades, and it didn't take long for Cassie to find a stretched-out spot that she could pull up and climb under.

The atmosphere completely changed as she emerged on the other side. She couldn't explain it. The air smelled different, the ambient sounds were partially muted and had a different timbre, even the colors seemed to be tinted a sickly orange – it was like she'd stepped into another dimension. As much as she wanted to chalk it all down to a combination of fear, adrenaline, and her imagination, she couldn't deny that she felt something more, something deep in her bones – something evil.