Linwood Barclay - Broken Promise - A Thriller

She’d worked for the corporation that owned Five Mountains and several other parks across the country, and she’d been posted at some of those other locations through the years. And that had meant being there in the off-season, winding things down after the children had gone back to school, their parents back to the drudgery of their jobs.

Fenwick was accustomed to strolling past riderless horses stuck in their tracks on the merry-go-round. She could never bring herself to ride any of the parks’ roller coasters, so the stillness of the Five Mountains Super Collider Coaster actually gave her comfort. She couldn’t stand close to it when it was in operation, feeling the supporting structure tremble and vibrate, always fearing the apparatus would collapse, sending dozens of people to their deaths.

The empty concession stands, the driverless bumper cars, the deserted parking lot. It was all just fine with Fenwick.

In the daytime.

But at night, well, that was a different story. At night, the place really did creep her out.

She felt reasonably secure in the park’s administrative offices, where she was now, as darkness fell. She had a mountain of work — no pun intended — still to deal with. There were several offers from different amusement parks for some of the Five Mountains rides. An Italian firm was putting up several million dollars for the Super Collider, which could be dismantled, shipped overseas, and reassembled. A group involved in the ongoing rebuilding of the Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy was interested in some of the concession stands. A representative from Disney wanted information on laid-off employees. They might have work for them at one of their theme parks.

Fenwick not only had to reply to all of them, but let the head office know about incoming offers. All the big decisions were made there. She was just the traffic cop, directing inquiries this way and that.

Plus, there were countless other duties involved in winding the place down. Dealing with creditors. One pending lawsuit from a woman whose dentures flew out while on the coaster. If all she’d wanted was some new teeth, Five Mountains would have bought her a set, but the woman was claiming emotional distress, too.

What a fucking world, Fenwick thought.

She didn’t work here entirely alone. She had an assistant most days, but he took off promptly at five, whether there was work left to deal with or not. And Five Mountains had engaged a security firm to watch the place, keep it from being vandalized, make sure homeless folks weren’t camped out in the inner workings of the log ride. Usually it was a guy named Norm through the day, who did three rounds: one at nine, another at one, and his last at five. In the evenings it was Malcolm. She knew for sure he inspected the park at ten, because she’d been here working that late on more than one occasion. He was supposed to come through again at two in the morning, and then four hours later at six.

Gloria was thinking she wouldn’t see Malcolm tonight. She hoped to get out of here around half past nine at the latest.

She was making a list of things she had to do the next day when her cell rang. She smiled. It was Jason. From the head office. Hundreds of miles away. When he called this late, it was not to talk business.

“Hey,” she said.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“I’m still here.”

“Oh, go home. You’re working too hard.” A pause. “And speaking of hard...”

“Stop it,” she said, grinning, putting down her pen and running her fingers through her hair.

“Are you going to get here this weekend?”

“I’m going to try,” she said, picking up the pen again, writing, Call denture lawyer. “What about Memorial Day?” The May holiday weekend, a little more than two weeks away. “You coming here for that?”

“Oh, yeah. But I need to see you before then. I really need to see you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I had this idea of something new we could try,” Jason said.

“Go on.”

“Okay, so picture this. You’re on the bed, on your back, and—”

“What am I wearing?” she asked, scribbling, Review offer on bumper cars.

“A pair of high heels,” he said. “The black pumps.”

“I like those,” Gloria said. “They make me feel dirty. But they’re hard to walk in.”

“You won’t be doing any walking,” Jason said.

“Okay, so I’m on my back, in heels, and then what? Tell me this. Are you there with me? Because, the way this is sounding, I just might be getting off without you.” Underlining, with a question mark at the end, Tell head office about Finley?

“Oh, I’m there, and my cock is very, very—”

There was a flash of light outside Gloria Fenwick’s window.

“Hold that thought,” she said, and put the cell phone on her desk. She got up and walked to the window. The light remained constant, but was somehow moving .

“No,” she said.

The light, which was being cast on a row of gift-shop buildings across from the admin offices, was coming from behind the building Fenwick worked in, where most of the rides were.

The rides that had all been powered down, that were in the process of being decommissioned.

She went back to her desk, picked up the phone, and said, “I’ll have to call you back.”

“What’s—”

She ended the call, then contacted the security company. “Yeah, hey, it’s Gloria at Five Mountains. There’s something going on here. You need to get someone here now. Yeah, right.”

Gloria, keeping the phone in her pocket, left the office, went down a flight of stairs, and exited onto the park’s main street. To the left, the admission gates. Heading right would take her deeper into the park.

When she rounded the corner of the building, she could not believe what she was seeing.

The six-story-tall Ferris wheel was alive.

Fully lit, it was a low-hanging, revolving roulette wheel against the dark night sky. A dazzling, monstrous twirling eye that always reminded Fenwick of the pinwheels she loved to blow into as a child.

“This is not happening,” she said, starting to walk toward the base of the ride.

It was not impossible, of course. All the rides were still connected to the park’s electrical source. They had to be turned on when prospective buyers came to pick through what Five Mountains was selling.

The big wheel moved almost noiselessly. With the carriages empty, there was not the usual screaming and laughing of passengers.

Except...

Fenwick stopped dead, waited for the Ferris wheel to make another complete rotation. Allowed her eyes to focus on the ride. She thought she saw someone — no, more than one person — sitting in one of the carriages as it did a swing near the bottom, where there were more lights.

The wheel went around again, and this time Fenwick was sure. There looked to be three people in one carriage. All the others were empty.

Goddamn kids, she thought. Snuck onto the grounds, figured out how to start the ride, decided to have some fun.

Except there had to be someone else. Someone who could stop the ride, or those three would be stuck on there for a very long time.

As she neared the wheel, it was making another loop. She saw the numbers stenciled onto the side of each carriage: 19... 20... 21... 22...

Here it was. Carriage twenty-three. Three people sitting side by side.

“Hey!” she shouted. “What the hell do you think—”

As the carriage swept past, Fenwick noticed that none of the passengers was moving.

And it didn’t look like any of them were wearing clothes, either.

She reached the base of the Ferris wheel, located the controls. She’d never worked as a ride operator, but she’d been around them often enough to know the basics. She grabbed the lever to power back the wheel, to start slowing it gradually. She craned her neck upward, watching for carriage twenty-three, hoping she could time it right so that it stopped at the boarding platform.