James Moore - The Haunted Forest Tour

Uncle Perry was punching numbers on his cell phone, mumbling to himself. Maybe Aunt Jean thought they were all adding scares to the tour—which he had to admit was already plenty scary—just for fun, but Uncle Perry was breathing like he’d been running for a long time and couldn’t get enough air.

In front of them, a fat man tugged at his tie, pulling it loose and staring out the window as something that looked like it was made of black smoke pressed against the glass and bared wickedly sharp teeth. His wide, flabby fingers grabbed at the edge of Barbara’s khakis as she walked past. “Are you sure those things can’t get inside here? Because I gotta tell ya, that thing looks hungry!”

Barbara looked first at the fat man and then back at Tommy. She was chewing on her bottom lip too, but she suddenly smiled when she looked at the fat man and nodded her head. “Absolutely. It’s not possible for anything to get inside one of the tram cars.” Her smile still didn’t look right. It looked like Mommy’s smile whenever she said everything was fine between her and Daddy. It looked more like a wish than the truth. “Now, just to be on the safe side, I’m going to talk to the driver and we’re going to try to get hold of the main office to see if they know what the delay is.” Barbara flashed another smile at Tommy and pushed forward.

The snakey-boney-bug thing had slithered off the window and moved on, but there were other things behind it. Something with very thick, powerfully built arms and what looked like three eyes moved past in the trees, but it didn’t come any closer. Tommy was glad, because the thing was taller than the tram.

“Son of a whore!” Uncle Perry closed his cell phone and muttered under his breath as several people looked his way.

“What is it?” Aunt Jean gave him a look that said there’s a little kid here, behave yourself —an expression that Tommy saw a lot whenever his parents were talking in whispers.

“I can’t get any reception on this thing.”

“Well, we’re in a thick forest, honey. I’d be surprised if you could.”

“The lady at the store said I should get reception anywhere.”

“Perry, it’s not a top-of-the-line phone. It doesn’t even have a camera.”

Behind Tommy, a brown-haired girl around twelve years old let out a piercing shriek as something came lumbering toward the tram car. It had gray skin that fell in thick folds from its neck and shoulders, and if it had a face at all, Tommy couldn’t see it. Where the face should have been there was just a warty lump of more gray skin with an upside down Y-shape. As he looked, the slit on the face opened up and revealed row after row of teeth and a purplish tongue that dripped thick, foamy spittle.

The open mouth clamped down on the tram and the window near the girl with a loud rude noise. The girl screamed again and jumped from her seat with both of her hands over her mouth to stop any more screams from getting out. The man across the aisle from her reached over and pulled her into his lap. “Calm down, Carrie. It’s fine. We’re going to be just fine.” He was a big man, beefy with short brown hair. His voice was deep and cheerful as he pulled his daughter closer. Tommy smiled at the sight of him, because he looked large enough to be Superman.

Neal Whistler looked out the window, and a snake woman looked back. She wasn’t really a woman, per se, but she had breasts and she had a nice upper body of a woman, if you looked past the scales. From the navel down her body got scalier and tapered off into a powerfully thick snake body that was coiled below her as she gazed at him.

She had black eyes, just like the garter snake he’d kept as a pet for three weeks before his mom found it and had a fit. That had been messy.

The snake girl leaned in closer and smiled at him with full, sensuous, and slightly green lips. He smiled back, a little nervously. At thirty-four years of age, Neal was still a virgin. He hadn’t even tried dating a girl since the one time he’d built up the courage to ask Shaileen Stillers to the prom and she’d laughed in his face in the middle of the cafeteria. He’d been telling himself for years that the problems were glandular, but that was a lie and he’d finally accepted the simple fact that he was fat. Not a little large, not pleasantly plump or big boned, but fat.

It was an ugly truth, but the fifty-four-inch waistline on his pants put an end to his arguments. He’d been forcing himself into pants with a forty-eight-inch waistline for a long time, because the weight around his waist was malleable, but after last week, when he’d blown out the backside of his slacks while trying to sit down at his office cubicle, he’d finally had to accept that some things are inevitable.

Getting new clothes always depressed him but not as much as the idea of dieting. As he was doing both next week, this was his little motivational trip. Today he ate, watched monsters and enjoyed himself. Monday bright and early, it was time to become a better man, even if it killed him.

The snake woman moved closer to the glass, a Mona Lisa smile on her face. She wasn’t human, no two ways about that, but she was exotic and he stared, fascinated by her.

Right up until the time she opened her mouth and bared the four-inch fangs that slid out from her upper and lower jaws. The fact that her mouth opened wide enough to swallow his head was a little unsettling, too.

Still, he thought, she’s cute.

“Stupid piece of shit.”

Perry gave up and shut off his phone. Back in the car, he had a top of the line, state-of-the-art satellite phone, set up to receive a signal anywhere in the world. He’d paid more than most of the people he knew growing up made in a fucking year. But he’d left it behind, because—oh no!—they didn’t dare have camera phones in their precious fucking forest. So instead he’d brought this crap phone, that the bitch clerk had promised him would work. The unemployed bitch clerk, after he returned home.

He didn’t even want to be here. He had things to do, but no, Jean had to watch her little nephew, because her stuck-up sister couldn’t keep her husband happy anymore. And who had to pay for it? Perry, of course. He had the money, it wasn’t a cost thing, it was a matter of the inconvenience.

Perry didn’t want kids, didn’t like kids, didn’t much care if there were kids anywhere around him. It was just the way he lived. Nothing personal against Tommy—who was a good kid as kids went—but he could have been back at the office or working on the publicity stills for the next movie. He couldn’t even enjoy himself on what was supposed to be the coolest tourist attraction ever because he needed to get a few more calls in before he could relax. Instead, they were stuck in the fucking woods.

Tommy looked over his way with wide eyes, and Perry made himself smile. The kid was okay. A pain in the ass, but as long as they had him around now and then, at least Jeanie was shutting up about having kids of their own someday. Having kids would have ruined all the sweet stuff he had going on the side, because you never, ever wanted to risk a family with kids in it. Cheating on Jean was kind of shitty, but cheating on her after they had kids? That was like being a Nazi or something.

Which reminded him, it was time for his monthly check-up. No need to take risks on getting herpes or something worse.

Movement from the corner of his eye caught his attention just in time to let him see a lizard man flick its tongue in his direction. Okay, a nine-foot-tall lizard man, with a dark blue tongue.

Perry opened his phone again and prayed for a signal.

Up at the front of the tram, Tommy watched Barbara as she spoke to the driver. The driver tried talking into a radio and waited for answers that didn’t come. He and Barbara whispered to each other, and neither of them would look back into the car behind them.