James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

Barbara laughed at that one. “I remember that! You know what? He couldn’t even find the manuscript he’d allegedly written when the time came for a court case. He said it had been stolen by goblins or some such and tried to prove that the Haunted Forest was all the evidence he needed.”

“Please tell me he lost the case.”

Barbara nodded emphatically. “Oh, yes. He lost. Then he came down to the actual forest and spent two months carrying a sign around that claimed the monsters inside were plagiarists.”

“Seriously?”

“Hand to God.” She crossed herself and lifted her right hand in a salute to heaven.

“Whatever happened to him?”

Barbara shook her head and smiled despite her desire to be serious. “I think he got an actual book deal based on the publicity.”

“Bastard.”

“Yep.”

“Well, at least he was dedicated in his dementia.” Lee was about to say something else when they heard the sound of something moving its way down the darkened hallway. He held up one hand, made a shushing gesture, and shut off his flashlight. Barbara did the same.

Whatever was heading in their direction had a breathing problem. The sounds it made were phlegmy and strained. Barbara’s cousin Amelia had asthma, and the worst attack she’d ever witnessed sounded mild in comparison to the noises coming from down the hallway.

Lee urged her back against the wall and she followed his lead, moving out of the hallway to give whatever it was coming their way plenty of space. Of course, she also made sure that her pistol was in the right position and that the safety was off, just in case whatever came along was hungry.

Lee leaned against the wall next to her, and the fact that he was trembling was oddly comforting. If he’d been steady and calm, it would have meant she was either the only one of them that was weak and cowardly, or the only one that was human. Either way, having him with her and just as nervous made her feel a little stronger.

Whatever was coming their way was also dripping fluids. The sound of the liquid splashing along the tiled floor was very distinctive. It was also loud enough to tell her that the thing was very, very wet.

It stopped moving. The noisy breathing calmed down and the constant trickle of water came no closer.

Barbara had the sudden need to sneeze. Her nose tingled and her sinuses felt clogged. Her eyes started watering and she resisted the urge to sniff as best she could while her whole face seemed determined to build into the sort of sneeze that would blow down walls.

Lee twitched next to her and sniffled faintly. It seemed he was having the exact same problem.

The stalled trickles started moving forward again. She looked past Lee and saw nothing at all. Not so much as a shadow moved, but she still heard whatever it was in that area.

Lee’s hand moved slowly over to hers and tapped lightly at her wrist. Because she knew he was there, she managed not to scream. She looked away from the empty hallway and over toward him. When she finally saw Lee in the darkness and moved her hand to let him know, he took his fingers from her wrist and pointed upward.

Barbara looked and saw the thing slithering across the ceiling. All she could really make out was the uneven shape in the darkness and the oversized eyes that glowed very dimly.

Neither of them moved, and though the stuck sneeze kept threatening a rebellion, Barbara eventually won out. Lee watched the ceiling right along with her until the big-eyed monster was out of sight. It slithered along the tiles until it came to a hallway, and then turned left, into the area they hadn’t yet explored.

Barbara no longer wanted to explore it.

Lee must have been reading her mind. He leaned in close and whispered, “Screw this. Whatever else we can say about that first office, it’s safer than anything we’re going to find down here.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “And at least we know the way out of the building if we need to run.”

Slowly, reluctantly, they headed back the way they’d come, checking every door and the ceiling above them to make sure nothing was waiting to pounce.

Mark shook his head as he watched the four Security Detail trucks drive single file into the Haunted Forest. He wanted to see what was about to happen. Part of him wanted to know that the good guys were winning the battle. Another part of him—a part that did not make him proud—wanted desperately to see some of the Haunted Forest’s denizens in action. Seeing a creature, marking its height, probable weight, and body structure and listing large conjectures on what it might be capable of doing, that was all good and well, but to actually have visual documentation of the damned things in action… that he wanted to see.

Not that he’d get to. Along with the complete communication failure, none of the cameras in the Haunted Forest were working. It was as if the equipment, trams, and people inside had simply ceased to exist.

The trucks would have to stay near the tram track, since that was the only area cleared out enough for a vehicle to drive through. Hopefully the tourists were just sitting patiently in their trams, awaiting assistance.

“Absolutely bizarre, isn’t it?” asked Steve, who Mark hadn’t even realized was standing behind him. “How the hell did something take out power to the entire line of cameras?”

“Should’ve been impossible,” said Mark, turning around to face the man who, until Booth returned, was responsible for the whole operation and did not look happy about it. “They’re on different feed lines.”

Steve nodded. “Yeah, near as we can figure, either we had a catastrophic computer failure, which we didn’t, or something out there destroyed a lot of cameras all at once.”

“There’s over a hundred camera feeds out there. There’s no way one thing could have done that.”

Steve looked him in the eyes and nodded again. “I know. That means it was a lot of things working together.”

Working together? In all of the time since Mark had taken the job and started observing and making notes on the different creatures in the Haunted Forest, he’d never run across a case where any of the different creatures out in the woods worked in unison. Well, okay, there were packs of gigglers working together, because that was how they hunted, but none of the creatures he’d ever seen in the woods worked with other life forms to do anything.

“That’s crazy,” said Hannah. She’d been standing there the whole time, and not once had Mark thought about her breasts. This was a bad, bad situation.

Steve shook his head. “No, that’s scary.”

Several of the people at the windows let out a unified gasp, and Mark, Hannah, and Steve all turned as one and moved over to see what was happening.

The entrance to the Haunted Forest was monitored constantly by the now-defunct cameras, but it was also easily seen from the control center. The heavy armored bay windows—the entire facility was built to withstand unexpected visits, even though nothing had ever visited—showed a clear view of the forest and both the entrance for the tram cars and the exit a hundred yards away. Aside from the rails that ran into the woods and the carousels where the trams were stored and turned to be sent back into the forest, there was nothing to see on most days but the almost impenetrable wall of trees that stood taller than should have been possible.

Fifty feet into the thick woods, the tracks vanished into shadows. Beyond that, they’d always depended on the cameras.

Something was different this time. There were flickers of light coming from the depths of the forest. They couldn’t hear anything, because the heavy windows were virtually soundproof, but they could see the flashes of activity that made it quite obvious that the security team in their armored vehicles had encountered something already.