JOYLAND - by Stephen King

   The gates were open, as promised. I drove through them and tried to park in front of the now-shuttered Shootin’ Gallery. He gave his horn a brief blip and flashed his lights: Drive on. When I got to the Spin, he flashed his lights again. I turned off my Ford, very aware that I might never start it again. The hoister’s red neon cast a blood-colored light over the dashboard, the seats, my own skin.

The truck’s headlights went out. I heard the door open and shut. And I heard the wind blowing through the Spin’s struts—tonight that sound was a harpy’s screech. There was a steady, almost syncopated rattling sound, as well. The wheel was shaking on its tree-thick axle.

The Gray girl’s killer—and DeeDee Mowbray’s, and Claudine Sharp’s, and Darlene Stamnacher’s—walked to my car and tapped on the window with the barrel of a pistol. With his other hand he made a beckoning gesture. I opened the door and got out.

“You said you weren’t going to kill me.” It sounded as weak as my legs felt.

Lane smiled his charming smile. “Well…we’ll see which way the flow’s gonna go. Won’t we?”

Tonight his derby was cocked to the left and pulled down tight so it wouldn’t fly off. His hair, let loose from its workday ponytail, blew around his neck. The wind gusted and the Spin gave an unhappy screech. The red glow of the neon flickered across his face as it shook.

“Don’t worry about the hoister,” he said. “If it was solid it might blow over, but the wind shoots right through the struts. You’ve got other things to worry about. Tell me about the funhouse car. That’s what I really want to know. How’d you do that? Was it some kind of remote gadget? I’m very interested in those things. They’re the wave of the future, that’s what I think.”

“There was no gadget.”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “Also what was the point? Was it supposed to flush me out? If it was, you didn’t need to bother. I was already flushed.”

“She did it,” I said. I didn’t know if that was strictly true, but I had no intention of bringing Mike into this conversation. “Linda Gray. Didn’t you see her?”

The smile died. “Is that the best you can manage? The old ghost-in-the-funhouse story? You’ll have to do a little better than that.”

So he hadn’t seen her any more than I had. But I think he knew there was something. I’ll never know for sure, but I think that was why he offered to go after Milo. He hadn’t wanted us anywhere near Horror House.

“Oh, she was there. I saw her headband. Remember me looking in? It was under the seat.”

He lashed out so suddenly I didn’t even have a chance to get my hand up. The barrel of the gun slammed across my forehead, opening a gash. I saw stars. Then blood poured into my eyes and I saw only that. I staggered back against the rail beside the ramp leading to the Spin and gripped it to keep from falling down. I swiped at my face with the sleeve of my slicker.

“I don’t know why you’d bother trying to spook me with a campfire story at this late date,” he said, “and I don’t appreciate it. You know about the headband because there was a picture of it in the folder your nosy college-cunt girlfriend brought you.” He smiled. There was nothing charming about this one; it was all teeth. “Don’t kid a kidder, kiddo.”

“But…you didn’t see the folder.” The answer to that one was a simple deduction even with my head ringing. “Fred saw it. And told you. Didn’t he?”

“Yep. On Monday. We were having lunch together in his office. He said that you and the college cunt were playing Hardy Boys, although he didn’t put it quite that way. He thought it was sort of cute. I didn’t, because I’d seen you stripping off Eddie Parks’s gloves after he had his heart attack. That’s when I knew you were playing Hardy Boys. That folder…Fred said the cunt had pages of notes. I knew it was only a matter of time before she put me with Wellman’s and Southern Star.”

I had an alarming picture of Lane Hardy riding the train to Annandale with a straight razor in his pocket. “Erin doesn’t know anything.”

“Oh, relax. Do you think I’m going after her? Apply some strain and use your brain. And take a little stroll while you do it. Up the ramp, champ. You and I are going for a ride. Up there where the air is rare.”

I started to ask him if he was crazy, but that would have been sort of a stupid question at this late date, wouldn’t it?

“What have you got to grin about, Jonesy?”

“Nothing,” I said. “You don’t really want to go up with the wind blowing like this, do you?” But the Spin’s engine was running. I hadn’t been aware of it over the wind, the surf, and the eerie scream of the ride itself, but now that I was listening, I heard it: a steady rumble. Almost a purr. Something fairly obvious came to me: he was probably planning to turn the gun on himself after he finished with me. Maybe you think that should have occurred to me sooner, because crazy people have a way of doing that—you read about it in the paper all the time. Maybe you’d be right. But I was under a lot of stress.

“Old Carolina’s safe as houses,” he said. “I’d go up in her if the wind was blowing sixty instead of just thirty. It blew at least that hard when Carla skimmed past the coast two years ago, and she was just fine.”

“How are you going to put it in gear if we’re both in the car?”

“Get in and see. Or…” He lifted the gun. “Or I can shoot you right here. I’m good with it either way.”

I walked up the ramp, opened the door of the car currently sitting at the loading station, and started to climb in.

“No, no, no,” he said. “You want to be on the outside. Better view. Stand aside, Clyde. And put your hands in your pockets.”

Lane sidled past me, the gun leveled. More blood was trickling into my eyes and down my cheeks, but I didn’t dare take a hand from my slicker pocket to wipe it off. I could see how white his finger was on the trigger of the pistol. He sat down on the inside of the car.

“Now you.”

I got in. I didn’t see any choice.

“And close the door, that’s what it’s there for.”

“You sound like Dr. Seuss,” I said.

He grinned. “Flattery will get you nowhere. Close the door or I’ll put a bullet in your knee. You think anyone will hear it over this wind? I don’t.”

I closed the door. When I looked at him again, he had the pistol in one hand and a square metal gadget in the other. It had a stubby antenna. “Told you, I love these gadgets. This one’s your basic garage door-opener with a couple of small modifications. Sends a radio signal. Showed it to Mr. Easterbrook this spring, told him it was the perfect thing for wheel maintenance when there wasn’t a greenie or a gazoonie around to run the groundside controls. He said I couldn’t use it because it hasn’t been safety-approved by the state commission. Cautious old sonofabitch. I was going to patent it. Too late now, I guess. Take it.”

I took it. It was a garage door opener. A Genie. My dad had one almost exactly like it.

“See the button with the up arrow?”

“Yes.”

“Push it.”

I put my thumb on the button, but didn’t push it. The wind was strong down here; how much stronger up there, where the air was rare? We’re flying! Mike had shouted.

“Push it or take one in the knee, Jonesy.”

I pushed the button. The Spin’s motor geared down at once, and our car began to rise.

“Now throw it over the side.”

“What?”

“Throw it over the side or you get one in the knee and you’ll never two-step again. I’ll give you a three-count. One…t—”

I threw his controller over the side. The wheel rose and rose into the windy night. To my right I could see the waves pounding in, their crests marked by foam so white it looked phosphorescent. On the left, the land was dark and sleeping. Not a single set of headlights moved on Beach Row. The wind gusted. My blood-sticky hair flew back from my forehead in clumps. The car rocked. Lane threw himself forward, then back, making the car rock more…but the gun, now pointed at my side, never wavered. Red neon skimmed lines along the barrel.

He shouted, “Not so much like a grandma ride tonight, is it, Jonesy?”

It sure wasn’t. Tonight the staid old Carolina Spin was terrifying. As we reached the top, a savage gust shook the wheel so hard I heard our car rattling on the steel supports that held it. Lane’s derby flew off into the night.

“Shit! Well, there’s always another one.”

Lane, how are we going to get off? The question rose behind my lips, but I didn’t ask. I was too afraid he’d tell me we weren’t, that if the storm didn’t blow the Spin over and if the power didn’t go out, we’d still be going around and around when Fred got here in the morning. Two dead men on Joyland’s chump-hoister. which made my next move rather obvious.

Lane was smiling. “You want to try for the gun, don’t you? I can see it in your eyes. Well, it’s like Dirty Harry said in that movie—you have to ask yourself if you feel lucky.”

We were going down now, the car still rocking but not quite so much. I decided I didn’t feel lucky at all.

“How many have you killed, Lane?”

“None of your fucking business. And since I have the gun, I think I should get to ask the questions. How long have you known? Quite a while, right? At least since the college cunt showed you the pictures. You just held off so the cripple could get his day at the park. Your mistake, Jonesy. A rube’s mistake.”

“I only figured it out tonight,” I said.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

We swept past the ramp and started up again. I thought, He’s probably going to shoot me when the car’s at the top. Then he’ll either shoot himself or push me out, slide over, and jump onto the ramp when the car comes back down. Take his chances on not breaking a leg or a collarbone. I was betting on the murder-suicide scenario, but not until his curiosity was satisfied.

I said, “Call me stupid if you want, but don’t call me a liar. I kept looking at the pictures, and I kept seeing something in them, something familiar, but until tonight I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. It was the hat. You were wearing a fishtop baseball cap in the photos, not a derby, but it was tilted one way when you and the Gray girl were at the Whirly Cups, and the other when you were at the Shootin’ Gallery. I looked at the rest, the ones where the two of you are only in the background, and saw the same thing. Back and forth, back and forth. You do it all the time. You don’t even think about it.”

“That’s all? A fucking tilted cap?”

“No.”

We were reaching the top for the second time, but I thought I was good for at least one more turn. He wanted to hear this. Then the rain started, a hard squall that turned on like a shower spigot. At least it’ll wash the blood off my face, I thought. When I looked at him, I saw that wasn’t all it was washing off.

“One day I saw you with your hat off and I thought your hair was showing the first strands of white.” I was almost yelling to be heard over the wind and the rush of the rain. It was coming sideways, hitting us in the face. “Yesterday I saw you wiping the back of your neck. I thought it was dirt. Then tonight, after I got the thing about the cap, I started thinking about the fake bird tattoo. Erin saw how the sweat made it run. I guess the cops missed that.”

I could see my car and the maintenance truck, growing larger as the Spin neared the bottom of its circle for the second time. Beyond them, something large—a wind-loosened swatch of canvas, maybe—was blowing up Joyland Avenue.

“It wasn’t dirt you were wiping off, it was dye. It was running, just like the tattoo ran. Like it’s running now. It’s all over your neck. It wasn’t strands of white hair I saw, it was strands of blond.”

He wiped his neck and looked at the black smear on his palm. I almost went for him then, but he raised the gun and all at once I was looking into a black eye. It was small but terrible.

“I used to be blond,” he said, “but under the black I’m mostly gray now. I’ve lived a stressful life, Jonesy.” He smiled ruefully, as though this were some sad joke we were both in on.

We were going up again, and I had just a moment to think that the thing I’d seen blowing up the midway—what I’d taken for a big square of loose canvas—could have been a car with its headlights out. It was crazy to hope, but I hoped, anyway.

The rain slashed at us. My slicker rippled. Lane’s hair flew like a ragged flag. I hoped I could keep him from pulling the trigger for at least one more spin. Maybe two? Possible but not probable.

“Once I let myself think of you as Linda Gray’s killer—and it wasn’t easy, Lane, not after the way you took me in and showed me the ropes—I could see past the hat and sunglasses and face-hair. I could see you. You weren’t working here—”

“I was running a forklift in a warehouse in Florence.” He wrinkled his nose. “Rube work. I hated it.”

“You were working in Florence, you met Linda Gray in Florence, but you knew all about Joyland over here in NC, didn’t you? I don’t know if you’re carny-from-carny, but you’ve never been able to stay away from the shows. And when you suggested a little road trip, she went along with it.”

“I was her secret boyfriend. I told her I had to be. Because I was older.” He smiled. “She bought it. They all do. You’d be surprised how much the young ones will buy.”

You sick fuck, I thought. You sick, sick fuck.

“You brought her to Heaven’s Bay, you stayed at a motel, and then you killed her here at Joyland even though you must have known about the Hollywood Girls running around with their cameras. Bold as brass. That was part of the kick, wasn’t it? Sure it was. You did it on a ride full of conies—”

“Rubes,” he said. The hardest gust yet shook the Spin, but he seemed not to feel it. Of course, he was on the inside of the wheel where things were a little calmer. “Call em what they are. They’re just rubes, all of them. They see nothing. It’s like their eyes are connected to their assholes instead of their brains. Everything goes right through.”

“You get off on the risk, don’t you? That’s why you came back and hired on.”

“Not even a month later.” His smile widened. “All this time I’ve been right under their noses. And you know what? I’ve been…you know, good…ever since that night in the funhouse. All the bad stuff was behind me. I could have gone on being good. I like it here. I was building a life. I had my gadget, and I was going to patent it.”

“Oh, I think sooner or later you would have done it again.” We were back at the top. The wind and rain pelted us. I was shivering. My clothes were soaked; Lane’s cheeks were dark with hair-dye. It ran down his skin in tendrils. His mind is like that, I thought. On the inside, where he never smiles.

“No. I was cured. I have to do you, Jonesy, but only because you stuck your nose in where it doesn’t belong. It’s too bad, because I liked you. I really did.”

I thought he was telling the truth, which made what was happening even more horrible.

We were going back down. The world below was windy and rain-soaked. There had been no car with its headlights out, only a blowing piece of canvas that for a moment looked like that to my yearning mind. The cavalry wasn’t coming. Thinking it was would only get me killed. I had to do this myself, and the only chance I had was to make him mad. Really mad.

“You get off on risk, but you don’t get off on rape, do you? If you did, you would have taken them to some isolated place. I think what your secret girlfriends have between their legs scares you limp. What do you do later? Lie in bed and jack off thinking about how brave you are, killing defenseless girls?”

“Shut up.”

“You can fascinate them, but you can’t fuck them.” The wind shouted; the car rocked. I was going to die and at that moment I didn’t give shit one. I didn’t know how angry I was making him, but I was angry enough for both of us. “What happened to make you this way? Did your mother put a clothespin on your peepee when you went weewee in the corner? Did Uncle Stan make you give him a blowjob? Or was it—”

“Shut up!” He rose into a crouch, gripping the safety bar in one hand and pointing the gun at me with the other. A stroke of lightning lit him up: staring eyes, lank hair, working mouth. And the gun. “Shut your dirty mou—”

“DEVIN, DUCK!”

I didn’t think about it, I just did it. There was a whip-crack report, an almost liquid sound in the blowing night. The bullet must have gone right past me, but I didn’t hear it or feel it, the way characters do in books. The car we were in swept past the loading point and I saw Annie Ross standing on the ramp with a rifle in her hands. The van was behind her. Her hair was blowing around her bone-white face.

We started up again. I looked at Lane. He was frozen in his crouch, his mouth ajar. Black dye ran down his cheeks. His eyes were rolled up so only the bottom half of the irises showed. Most of his nose was gone. One nostril hung down by his upper lip, but the rest of it was just a red ruin surrounding a black hole the size of a dime.

He sat down on the seat, hard. Several of his front teeth rattled out of his mouth when he did. I plucked the gun from his hand and tossed it over the side. What I was feeling right then was…nothing. Except in some very deep part of me, where I had begun to realize this might not be my night to die, after all.

“Oh,” he said. Then he said “Ah.” Then he slumped forward, chin on chest. He looked like a man considering his options, and very carefully.

There was more lightning as the car reached the top. It illuminated my seatmate in a stutter of blue fire. The wind blew and the Spin moaned in protest. We were coming down again.

From below, almost lost in the storm: “Dev, how do I stop it?”

I first thought of telling her to look for the remote control gadget, but in the storm she could hunt for half an hour and still not find it. Even if she did, it might be broken or lying shorted out in a puddle. Besides, there was a better way.

“Go to the motor!” I shouted. “Look for the red button! RED BUTTON, ANNIE! It’s the emergency stop!”

I swept past her, registering the same jeans and sweater she’d worn earlier, both now soaked and plastered to her. No jacket, no hat. She had come in a hurry, and I knew who had sent her. How much simpler it would have been if Mike had focused on Lane at the start. But Rozzie never had, even though she’d known him for years, and I was to find out later that Mike never focused on Lane Hardy at all.

I was going back up again. Beside me, Lane’s soaking hair was dripping black rain into his lap. “Wait until I come back down!”

“What?”

I didn’t bother trying again; the wind would have drowned it out. I could only hope she wouldn’t hammer on the red button while I was at the top of the ride. As the car rose into the worst of the storm the lightning flashed again, and this time there was an accompanying crack of thunder. As if it had roused him—perhaps it had—Lane lifted his head and looked at me. Tried to look at me; his eyes had come back level in their sockets, but were now pointing in opposite directions. That terrible image has never left my mind, and still comes to me at the oddest times: going through turnpike tollbooths, drinking a cup of coffee in the morning with the CNN anchors baying bad news, getting up to piss at three AM, which some poet or other has rightly dubbed the Hour of the Wolf.

He opened his mouth and blood poured out. He made a grinding insectile sound, like a cicada burrowing into a tree. A spasm shook him. His feet tap-danced briefly on the steel floor of the car. They stilled, and his head dropped forward again.

Be dead, I thought. Please be dead this time.

As the Spin started down again, a bolt of lightning struck the Thunderball; I saw the tracks light up briefly. I thought, That could have been me. The hardest gust of wind yet struck the car. I held on for dear life. Lane flopped like a big doll.

I looked down at Annie—her white face staring up, her eyes squinted against the rain. She was inside the rail, standing next to the motor. So far, so good. I put my hands around my mouth. “The red button!”

“I see it!”

“Wait until I tell you!”

The ground was coming up. I grabbed the bar. When the late (at least I hoped he was) Lane Hardy was at the control stick, the Spin always came to an easy halt, the cars up top swaying gently. I had no idea what an emergency stop would be like, but I was going to find out.

“Now, Annie! Push it now!”

It was a good thing I was holding on. My car stopped dead about ten feet from the unloading point and still five feet above the ground. The car tilted. Lane was thrown forward, his head and torso flopping over the bar. Without thinking, I grabbed his shirt and pulled him back. One of his hands flopped into my lap and I flung it away with a grunt of disgust.

The bar wouldn’t unlock, so I had to wriggle out from beneath it.

“Be careful, Dev!” Annie was standing beside the car, holding up her hands, as if to catch me. She had propped the rifle she’d used to end Hardy’s life against the motor housing.

“Step back,” I said, and threw one leg over the side of the car. More lightning flashed. The wind howled and the Spin howled back. I got hold of a strut and swung out. My hands slipped on the wet metal and I dropped. I went to my knees. A moment later she was pulling me to my feet.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes.”

I wasn’t, though. The world was swimming, and I was on the edge of a faint. I lowered my head, gripped my legs just above the knees, and began taking deep breaths. For a moment it could have gone either way, but then things began to solidify. I stood up again, careful not to move too fast.

It was hard to tell with the rain bucketing down, but I was pretty sure she was crying. “I had to do it. He was going to kill you. Wasn’t he? Please, Dev, say he was going to kill you. Mike said he was, and—”

“You can quit worrying about that, believe me. And I wouldn’t have been his first. He’s killed four women.” I thought of Erin’s speculation about the years when there had been no bodies—none discovered, at least. “Maybe more. Probably more. We have to call the police. There’s a phone in—”

I started to point toward Mysterio’s Mirror Mansion, but she grabbed my arm. “No. You can’t. Not yet.”

“Annie—”

She thrust her face close to mine, almost kissing distance, but kissing was the last thing on her mind. “How did I get here? Am I supposed to tell the police that a ghost showed up in my son’s room in the middle of the night and told him you’d die on the Ferris wheel if I didn’t come? Mike can’t be a part of this, and if you tell me I’m being an overprotective mom, I’ll…I’ll kill you myself.”

“No,” I said. “I won’t tell you that.”

“So how did I get here?”

At first I didn’t know. You have to remember that I was still scared myself. Only scared doesn’t cover it. Scared isn’t even in the ballpark. I was in shock. Instead of Mysterio’s, I led her to her van and helped her sit behind the wheel. Then I went around and got in on the passenger side. By then I had an idea. It had the virtue of simplicity, and I thought it would fly. I shut the door and took my wallet out of my hip pocket. I almost dropped it on the floor when I opened it; I was shaking like crazy. Inside there were plenty of things to write on, but I had nothing to write with.

“Please tell me you have a pen or a pencil, Annie.”

“Maybe in the glove compartment. You’ll have to call the police, Dev. I have to get back to Mike. If they arrest me for leaving the scene or something…or for murder…”

“Nobody’s going to arrest you, Annie. You saved my life.” I was pawing through the glove compartment as I talked. There was an owner’s manual, piles of gasoline credit card receipts, Rolaids, a bag of M&Ms, even a Jehovah’s Witnesses pamphlet asking if I knew where I was going to spend the afterlife, but no pen or pencil.

“You can’t wait…in a situation like that…that’s what I was always told…” Her words came in chunks because her teeth were chattering. “Just aim…and squeeze before you can…you know…second-guess yourself…it was supposed to go between his eyes, but…the wind…I guess the wind…”

She shot out a hand and gripped my shoulder hard enough to hurt. Her eyes were huge.

“Did I hit you, too, Dev? There’s a gash in your forehead and blood on your shirt!”

“You didn’t hit me. He pistol-whipped me a little, that’s all. Annie, there’s nothing in here to write w—”

But there was: a ballpoint at the very back of the glove compartment. Printed on the barrel, faded but still legible, was LET’S GO KROGERING! I won’t say that pen saved Annie and Mike Ross serious police trouble, but I know it saved them a lot of questions about what had brought Annie to Joyland on such a dark and stormy night.

I passed her the pen and a business card from my wallet, blank side up. Earlier, sitting in my car and terribly afraid that my failure to buy a new battery was going to get Annie and Mike killed, I’d thought I could go back into the house and call her…only I didn’t have her number. Now I told her to write it down. “And below the number, write Call if plans change.”

While she did, I started the van’s engine and turned the heater on full blast. She returned the card. I tucked it into my wallet, shoved the wallet back into my pocket, and tossed the pen into the glove compartment. I took her in my arms and kissed her cold cheek. Her trembling didn’t stop, but it eased.

“You saved my life,” I said. “Now let’s make sure nothing happens to you or Mike because you did. Listen very carefully.”

She listened.