Felix the Shark Read online

  “Oh, I’m really sorry.”

  “Thank you.” Wendy’s eyes glazed a bit, but she continued. “I wish I could tell you more. Felix became a sort of local legend around here after Freddy’s closed. When the former owner died, there were tons of rumors going around, no way to tell what’s true anymore.”

  “Rumors … like what?”

  “Oh, crazy stuff. Like that the owner had kept Felix functioning, even after Freddy’s was closed. That he had some secret project related to that shark. Kids used to go hunting for him, saying the owner had a way of sneaking back in to Freddy’s to see Felix.”

  Dirk opened his mouth to ask a question, but a man shouted, “Wendy! Order up!”

  She gave Dirk an apologetic look. “That’s all I know. Sorry.” She handed him his change. He gave half of it back to her, then left the diner in a daze.

  The next morning, Dirk returned to the Crawberry Cradle Roadside Inn’s tiny rose-wallpaper-covered office. “You like the wallpaper?” Maude asked when she noticed him staring at it.

  Maude’s gray hair had been in a bun the day before, but today it was in a long braid that hung down the back of her green plaid flannel shirt.

  “No,” Dirk said, still in a fog. “Sorry, I mean—”

  Maude cackled. “You’re a funny young man. Same wallpaper was in Floyd Crawberry’s momma’s drawing room. I had this made special.”

  “Well, it’s really, um, red,” Dirk said.

  Maude let loose another cackle. “It is that.”

  “Um, I need to stay another night,” Dirk said. He glanced at his watch. He wanted to pay quickly and then get on the road. He planned to drive the forty-five miles to the county seat and visit the clerk’s office. Unless …

  “You don’t happen to know where the old Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza was, do you? With the animatronics?”

  Maude took his money and paused before opening the register.

  Dirk had spent the previous evening talking to people around the town, trying to figure out what had been built over Freddy’s. He’d gotten about two dozen different potential locations from this bit of sleuthing.

  “Join me for some peppermint tea, youngster,” Maude said. “And I’ll have a think about that.”

  Dirk groaned inwardly, but he agreed. If Maude did remember, at least it would save him the cost of gas from driving to the county clerk’s office.

  Maude got him settled at a rickety oak table in a tiny kitchen behind the hotel office. She set a fragile-looking cup and saucer in front of him—which he was terrified he’d break—and then set down another plate before him. This one held a large blueberry muffin. Okay, maybe tea wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  The muffin was good, and Maude was entertaining. “Used to be a different kind of inn right about where we are now—the restaurant kind.” Maude handed him a second muffin. “Woman who ran it was the best cook in the state. As the story goes, some feller who’d planned to go farther west to set up a homestead got one taste of her chicken-fried steak and said to his wife, ‘The fork stops here.’ He bought a bunch of land, started a farm, and founded a town.”

  “Are you making that up?” Dirk asked.

  Maude blasted him with her laugh. “God’s honest truth, young man!”

  Dirk decided to nudge her back toward Freddy’s. Over the next half hour, he and Maude went through the twenty-four potential Freddy’s locations from his list. She managed to whittle the list down to nine. She didn’t know where Freddy’s had been, but she knew for sure where it hadn’t been.

  This meant Dirk still had to go to the county seat, which he did. He spent several hours in the clerk’s office—they needed someone to come in and reorganize their records—but at least the time he was there was worth it. Triumphant, Dirk left the county seat with an address for the defunct Freddy’s and for what was at that location now: the water park Wendy had mentioned.

  Dirk had read about the water park the night before. It was the biggest Crawberry-themed venture to spring up when the town had decided to use its villain as a tourist attraction. And it was also the most successful … for a very short time. Now the Crawberry Flows Water Park was, according to an angry letter-to-the-editor writer, a “dried-up eyesore.”

  Even though it was getting late in the day when Dirk returned to Forkstop, he used a map he’d bought from a crusty old gas station to guide his way to the attraction. Buoyed by anticipation, Dirk was practically dancing in his seat as he drove past boarded-up stores, padlocked warehouses, and vacant lots. The scenery wasn’t anything to get excited about, but Dirk was on a high. He was about to find it. He was going to bring back evidence to shove in his friends’ pitying, patronizing faces.

  Dirk pulled his car over to a cracked curb and frowned at the sprawl of concrete slides and plastic tubes winding around the property. A couple dozen small buildings loomed over a tall chain-link fence. If ever a place looked like a serial killer hangout, or where zombies would shuffle en masse, or where Gordon’s stupid android apocalypse would begin … it was the Crawberry Flows Water Park.

  Its entrance was guarded by a huge stone archway, designed to look like two gravestones connected by a sculpted shovel, hoe, and pitchfork—apparently three of Floyd’s murderous weapons of choice. For all the girls at the diner bashed Felix for being scary, this water park didn’t look like anything a child might want to visit. From what Dirk had read, though, the place had been quite popular with kids. Maybe the gravestones and murder weapons looked less threatening in their heyday, under bright blue-sky summers … before they’d been covered with green mold, black mildew, and various colors of angry graffiti.

  The same mold, mildew, and graffiti appeared to cover all the park’s buildings as well as the tubes and slides curling idly through the park. Overgrown by scraggly bushes, all the expanses and contraptions that used to hold water now held only dirt, dried leaves, and trash.

  The park gave off an odor of decay that was so sickly sweet it made Dirk’s nose twitch. Not far from the entrance, something metallic made a rhythmic screech-and-tap, maybe a rusted sign swinging in the breeze. Beneath that sound, Dirk could hear a scratchy scrabbling. He envisioned rats scurrying through the empty tube slides.

  Dirk really didn’t want to go in to the abandoned water park. He really didn’t. And he wasn’t even sure he could get in. The chain-link fence was topped with barbed wire.

  But he’d come this far. If what Wendy had told him was right, Freddy’s was hidden somewhere in this water park. And Felix was still there. Dirk had to try to find him.

  Sighing, Dirk opened his car door and looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He saw no one, so he closed his car door and walked toward the water park’s entrance. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as he did. A few drops of rain spotted the dust-covered sidewalk in front of him. One hit his nose.

  He looked up at the gray sky, nearly identical to the one that had hung low over the town the previous day. Nearly identical. This one was a little darker, a little more threatening.

  Dirk quickened his pace.

  From his research, Dirk had learned that the water park sat on fifteen acres. The land was pretty much square-shaped. That meant each side of its perimeter was a little over 250 yards long—about the length of two-and-a-half football fields.

  Dirk glanced up at the sky again. Not only were the clouds threatening, but what little sunlight that shined through them was clearly sinking toward the horizon. Evening was coming. He didn’t relish the idea of exploring the place after dark.

  Dirk set out at a jog and began circling the outside of the park, running alongside the chain-link fence. As he ran, he divided his gaze between his feet—not wanting to stumble over anything—and the fence. He was searching for a way through or under it. He figured there had to be some way in. How else did all that graffiti show up on the tubes and slides and buildings?

  And his suspicions proved right—he found his way in along the back fence. Water runoff had
created a depression in the earth under one section, and there was a trough deep enough for someone Dirk’s size to slither through. When he spotted it, he didn’t hesitate. He immediately dropped to his belly and crawled under the fence.

  As soon as Dirk stood up inside the park, thunder rumbled. The air now smelled like ozone, and the few drops he’d felt began turning in to a steady rain.

  Great.

  Dirk had come prepared, sort of, for this excursion. His preparation consisted of his flashlight and an old map of the water park he’d found along with the map of the town. Dirk scanned his surroundings to find a place to shelter while he decided where to start.

  He spotted a covered picnic area and jogged over to it, ducking under its crumbling roof. The rain pattered just outside the overhang as he grabbed his flashlight and the map.

  The Crawberry Flows Water Park had three twisting, enclosed-tube slides, one tall straight open slide, two meandering channels that had been rivers with various levels of “rapids,” a couple of pools—the smaller one was Floyd’s Pond, and the larger one was Floyd’s Swimming Hole—and one “beach,” a big-wave pool painted to look like the ocean and sand. It also had multiple eating and gathering areas, some covered, some not. The one Dirk was using for protection from the rain was called Floyd’s Fury.

  Obviously, Freddy’s wasn’t disguised by any of the water features or the eating areas. It also wasn’t in the hut-like buildings that had housed snack shops, little gift shops, and restrooms. It couldn’t have been in the pump house, which was the size of a single-car garage, and it couldn’t have been in either of the two maintenance buildings, which were each about the size of a triple-car garage. Freddy’s would have been too big to be camouflaged by these smaller components of the park. But four of the park’s buildings were possible candidates. These included a guest services building, one large building that housed the park’s group of indoor slides, and two restaurants—a grill and a café.

  Dirk thought this relatively small selection of possibilities made his quest doable. And so, map in hand, he pulled his jacket up over his head to keep at least some of the rain off, and set off to explore with the assumption he’d be successful in a relatively short amount of time.

  Dirk’s assumption was incorrect, horribly so. Three hours after he’d entered the park, he returned to his room, defeated and dejected … and cold.

  Not sure what else to do, he took a long, hot shower. In the shower, he assessed his situation, which was, at the moment, bleak.

  Dirk had scoured every inch of the water park. At first, he’d been full of energy, and he’d been thrilled when he’d easily been able to break in to the first building that might have hidden Freddy’s—the guest services building. His spirits had dipped a little when he didn’t find Freddy’s in that building, but he was still hopeful. He remained hopeful as he managed to get in to both restaurants. When those proved to be lost causes, he moved on, a little less hopeful, to the building that had the indoor slides. That building was harder to enter. He’d actually had to break glass to get in, something he felt bad about, but he’d come too far not to do it.

  However, his one bad deed had been a wasted one. As soon as Dirk was in the building, it was clear it didn’t hold Freddy’s. Aside from disturbing shadows and dripping and tapping sounds that made all the hairs on Dirk’s body stand up, the building held nothing but a tangle of snakelike plastic tubes. The murky exterior of the slides pushed Dirk’s overactive imagination just a little too far … he’d come up with dozens of ideas about what might’ve been hiding in those tubes. Unfortunately, Freddy’s wasn’t one of those ideas.

  Losing hope, Dirk had made his way back toward the dip under the fence. By then, he was soaked through, but he still shined his light this way and that in case he’d missed something. The only thing he’d noticed on his return trip was the heavy-duty dead-bolt locks on all the small buildings. For some reason, they were all more secure than the large buildings he’d gotten into. But it didn’t matter. What he wanted wasn’t in those buildings anyway.

  After his shower, Dirk fell in to bed. He was asleep in seconds, but his sleep was restless. All night, he was in a dream in which Felix stared at him through a glass wall and begged Dirk to find him and keep him company.

  When he’d gotten up to pee during the night, his inner vision taken up by Felix’s longing gaze, Dirk realized he had one more avenue to pursue. When he’d been at the clerk’s office, he’d gotten the name of the person who’d owned the Freddy’s in Forkstop. Yes, the owner was dead, but perhaps the owner’s heirs would know if Freddy’s was somewhere inside the water park, and if they did, maybe they’d have a way to access the building. Or maybe they could point Dirk to someone who could.

  A reasonable person probably would have concluded by now that Felix and his swimming tube were a lost cause, but luckily Dirk wasn’t reasonable. And he wasn’t ready to stop his search.

  When Dirk got up in the morning, he returned to Maude’s office and told her that he needed to stay another night.

  “You got it, young man!” Maude turned to her computer and began tapping slowly at the keyboard.

  Staring at her bony, age-spotted hands, it occurred to Dirk that Maude had the most knowledge of anyone he’d met in town. She might be able to help him track down the heirs he was after.

  “Did you know an Aaron Sanders?” Dirk asked.

  Maude made a little tsk sound as she hit the wrong key on her keyboard.

  Dirk winced. “Sorry.”

  Maude shook her head. “No matter. I can fix it.” She turned and cocked her head. “Aaron Sanders, you say? Now there’s a name I haven’t thought of in years.” She sank down on to the stool behind the counter.

  “You knew him?” Dirk heard the excited squeak in his voice, but he didn’t care.

  “Sure enough,” Maude said. “I knew him when we were kids. He was kind of a strange boy, always playing pranks, making up stories, and making puzzles or mazes. He once spent the whole summer digging deep trenches on his parents’ property, creating mazes.” Maude shook her head. “I didn’t know Aaron as an adult. No one really did, after the tragedy.”

  “What tragedy?”

  Maude sighed. “It was so sad.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. Her breath smelled like mouthwash. “It all started so well for Aaron … that’s what makes it so sad. The promise he had, you know?”

  Dirk didn’t respond because he didn’t know. He just waited.

  “Aaron married this lovely girl right out of high school. Then he just started to take the world by its tail. Studied restaurant management. Had his own little hole-in-the-wall sandwich place by the time he was twenty. Also had a son by then, too, sweet little baby boy. Lonnie.”

  Maude stopped talking and looked beyond Dirk’s shoulder.

  Dirk waited some more.

  Maude blinked and shook herself. “Right about the time Aaron was looking in to getting the Freddy’s franchise, he took his wife and children to the coast for a vacation … by then he had a daughter, too. Now, I only know this story from newspaper articles and town gossip, so take it with a grain of salt. But if the story’s true, Lonnie was chasing a butterfly near the edge of the surf, and before Aaron or his wife could stop him, Lonnie chased the butterfly right in to the water. Got caught in the surf and drowned.”

  “That’s terrible,” Dirk said.

  Maude nodded. “Sure enough, it is. But then it gets strange. According to Aaron, Lonnie’s body would have been pulled out to sea, possibly never found, but a shark swam close to shore and bumped the body back in to shallow waters, where Aaron was able to recover it.”

  Dirk’s eyes widened. “Wow.”

  “Yeah, most people don’t believe that part of the story, but I tend to. It sure would explain his antics with the pizzeria.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, the controversy about him wanting to have an animatronic shark at Freddy’s.”

  Dirk leaned forward.
“Felix!” he said.

  Maude raised an eyebrow at him. “That’s right. Felix, the shark. The other Freddy’s pizzerias didn’t have a shark, so people said Felix would make Aaron’s Freddy’s inauthentic. He didn’t care. He came back from that vacation as a totally different person. His wife, too. Which was understandable, of course. She just shut down, withdrew from the world. Aaron, though, he pushed even harder in his businesses. But he was obsessed. Obsessed with sharks and butterflies.” She shook her head. “He was an odd duck. But then, he had good reason to be.”

  Dirk nodded.

  Maude rubbed her eyes and returned her attention to the computer keyboard.

  Dirk cleared his throat. “Do you know who inherited his estate? Is his wife still alive?”

  Maude raised her head and shook it. “No, she died not long after Lonnie did. Only Louisa is left. Aaron’s daughter.” Maude adjusted the old-fashioned combs that held back her gray hair today.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “Well, that’s an even sadder story there.”

  Dirk sighed. Now what? “What happened to her?” he asked.

  “Oh, poor Louisa. She’s a ward of the state now … spends her days locked in her mind. She’s completely gone from this world.”

  “Completely? She wouldn’t remember what happened to Freddy’s?”

  Maude shook her head. “Louisa’s last lucid thoughts went in to that book she wrote.”

  “What book?”

  Maude looked up at the ceiling. “What was the title? It was sort of a cult hit a few years back. Louisa wrote it right after her father died, dedicated it to him. Folks say she actually wrote it because he asked her to. And for some reason no one can explain, right after that, she just faded away. Some say it was just a matter of time. She was only a baby when Lonnie died, but having bereft parents can scar a child.” Maude tapped the counter with a gnarled finger. “I can never remember the name of that book. But I have a copy. Most folks in Forkstop do.”