 I've been having dreams about that summer. Persistent dreams. I can't fall asleep without seeing my dad's face. It's why I started seeing a therapist in the first place because of those dreams. Those damn dreams. They always start when I first saw the theme park or in his office. I must have been sad because he claps me on the back and says there's no reason to cry. No reason at all. His voice scratches at my ears that I remember. There's little I do remember of my father. Lee says that has something to do with trauma, but I don't think so. He was quiet when I was young and absent when I was older. That did more to cover him up than anything he did, but he did a lot of things. My dad owned the theme park. He built it. He bought some old farmer's property and built a roller coaster on it. I don't know whether it was the divorce that caused it or it caused the divorce. It's not like I can ask. He wasn't even planning on even selling tickets to the place at first. My dad was never particularly stable. My mom got full custody for the first few years after the divorce and he moved halfway across the country as soon as the papers were filed. That's where he built it. They negotiated terms when I was about 11. I would stay with him during the summers, but I stayed at my old school. That always made sense to me. Summer was peak season. He built the roller coaster first. I remember that. He hired a bunch of contractors, painted it green, and then called it Nessie. That thing broke down three times a week, I swear to God. I can't believe they even let us keep it running. That thing was a death trap. Then came the carnival games, those types of things with water guns and two small hoops. He hired a couple townies to do that, to man the stands, too. It's been a while, a long while. I'm sorry if I don't get everything right. It all blew up from there. We had more attractions when I was 17. There were bumper cars themed like a circus with elephants and clowns and chipped paint. Those were always popular. His favorite was the tunnel of love. I don't think we ever got more than six people to ride that on a day. I guess I should say why I said we. My dad, even though he was very well off, was cheap, or maybe he was trying to get closer to me. I don't know. I don't know a lot about my dad looking back. Whatever it was, he made me work there through the summer. He never left that park. I swear he would just hand me the keys to his place and then say he'd get back when he could. He always came home at one in the morning and left at five. He always went back to the park, setting everything up, doing paperwork. I was 17 when it happened. I had already decided by then, by the time I left that place and turned 18, I would never look back. I hated that theme park. I hated it so much. It was all he could talk about, too. He always said this place had a history, even though he built it 10 years before. That summer, I was mainly running the bumper cars in the coaster, as my dad squirreled himself in an office at the edge of the property. I know everyone who worked there that summer. There weren't ever more than 20 in the best years, but that year we had 13. I was the only one from out of town. Everyone else was from the surrounding area, townies, my dad called them, as if he hadn't been a history professor 11 years earlier. There were about five of us that always hung out and messed around. There was Chuck, who went to the college nearby and needed extra cash. There was Landon, a year older than me, who was always the odd man out, with his black dyed hair and metal t-shirts, and who we knew nothing about. We always joked with increasingly unconvincing tales about his family life. There was Sarah, who worked there since I did, but legally, minors were almost certainly not allowed to be doing the stuff I was doing around the park. So she was 22, at least. Then there was Lucy. This was her first year at the park, and I was crushing on her hard. I could barely get a sentence finished around her. It was almost sad, really, how much I fell for this girl within the first week. Chuck and Sarah teased me mercilessly. I can't remember her voice. It's crazy what you forget. It's like a silent movie when I think about her. But I know she had a pretty voice. God, I don't know what she's doing now. I hope she's alright. I know we never talked after that summer. How could we, really? How could anyone? I'm getting ahead of myself again. Every time I try to tell this story, I just jump to the end. What else am I supposed to jump to? I shouldn't. I know. Lee says that doesn't help with the sessions. It just makes me relive the trauma without contextualizing it. That just sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me. I remember that summer a lot when I actually tried to think about it. I can remember the way the paint peeled off of the sign. I can remember the way that one bumper car, red three, kept breaking down because a couple of kids always managed to slam it against the wall at full force. I can remember the day the first kid disappeared. It was bright and sunny. The place was overrun with locals. I was leaning against the control panel for the coaster as some guy barfed up his cotton candy a couple feet left of me. She came up to me, crying, God, she was crying. She wasn't worried or angry or scared. She was already distraught. Did she know somehow? Did she figure it out? She ran up to me and screamed about some lost kid. I call it in on my walkie talkie. Chuck made some joke about it, which he heard and started crying louder about. Not here, he says. I checked with Andrew, who's manning the customer relations desk, which is our bullshit name for a help kiosk. Not here, he says. I checked with Sarah on the bumper car. Maybe if they have any kids running around there, not here, she says. I check around concessions, not there. I check around walkie talkies for another five minutes before we do a search. It takes an hour before we call the cops. My dad shut down the park early that day. To help the investigation, he said, I can remember how he said it and I can smell the whiskey on his breath. The police search for three hours in the park and the woods around as this mother's wailing the whole time. I can remember how that sounds. It's stuck in my head. I don't think I'll ever forget it. They called off the search at midnight. I heard they say they'll fully search the woods in the morning. My dad came home on time that night. He slept soundly. The police do it again in the morning with less effort, but they don't find him. Nobody ever saw that kid again. It's a sad thing, sure, but that's happened before. Sometimes people disappear. It's sad, but you keep on going. The next three weeks pass in a flash. I remember the energy of the place afterward. All of us were shaken up by it, but Lucy was definitely the worst off of all of us. She'd never really done that sort of stuff before, and all this missing kid stuff messed with her bad. I remember Chuck making a joke about it, and then she left in a huff. Must have been 30 out. We were closing up for the night. It was the first time we really talked. We had made jokes or whatever, but that's when we actually started to trust each other. We started dating a week later. I don't remember how it started, but I knew I was happy. For a brief moment, I had a normal summer. The second kid disappeared not long after that. It was a dad this time, a single father worried out of his mind. Thomas Earhart. I remember seeing the kid getting caught in candy and then running around. I saw a lot of kids around there, but I remember him. Red hair, glasses, teeth missing from his mouth. I don't know why I remember that kid. Memories a strange thing, and sometimes it picks up only the least important stuff. That time, it caught him. I was watching him. I know that. Nothing about him struck me. I guess it's a sort of intuition. He vanished into that crowd. Thomas Earhart. I remember his name even now. I remember the picture the cop showed me. That same kid smiling happy with a family. There were two sisters, two parents. They were so happy. God, they were so damn happy. He was never seen again. He vanished into that crowd, screaming, laughing, and then we never saw him again. It was the same routine. We searched for an hour and then the police were called and then nothing. They took our statements and then found nothing. They always said, I had the problem of not seeing it sooner, but the cops had the same information I did. They knew what I knew. They did nothing. I'm getting out of order. I jumped to the end, but I know I don't want to go there. Not yet. After Thomas disappeared, I was reassigned. I'd been working on bumper cars for the past two weeks, but I got reassigned. My dad put Chuck on the bumper cars because he caught me smoking outside the back of the park. He always hated me smoking, called it morally abhorrent that it would tear up my lungs. They were his cigarettes. He reassigned me to the tunnel of love because he knew I hated it. I was overjoyed. Lucy was working just next door. Every second I wasn't watching the tunnel, I would let the controls go on autopilot and then flirt with her. Of course, when it didn't break down. That thing broke down every day, even when it couldn't have had more than a dozen people going on it. I guess I should explain the ride just a little bit. It was a dark ride, a slow meandering trot through the world of love. Whatever bullshit that is. There was this disgusting river of water below the boats as the boat moved from room to room. So you could admire the scenery. It was never my thing. I don't think it was anyone's thing. It just was. My dad had to have put a lot of money into it. There were the dioramas, the little paintings on the walls and a second track to put the boats on for maintenance. That second track was really just a tunnel into a storage area, a couple of dilapidated props and some shit he'd bought from a garage sale. And then there were the animatronics. I hated those animatronics. Big cartoon animals, pink with hearts everywhere. There were teddy bears and chickens and all these animals with eyes that were too big. They gave kids nightmares whenever they went on it and couples who were the only consistent group to go on it never came back after they saw those things. I told my dad to take them out so many times just let it be a dark ride. But he couldn't let that happen. My dad was a mess at home and in his office, but he obsessed over the tunnel. He couldn't do anything but think about that thing. That's why it reeked of cleaning supplies. He was cleaning it every single day, whenever it was closed, even as people dipped from one room of the ride to another. This was his small world and he wasn't going to let me ruin that. It was something compulsive. We knew that. He'd been like that around certain rooms of the house before the divorce. I worked on that ride for the rest of the summer. It was supposed to be completely normal even after those kids disappeared. Well, we'd had something bad like that before, but never together. The police kept looking, but an officer on the premises wasn't a common sight anymore. They told us that they believed it was just a random chance that these two got lost at the same time. They told us to keep a lookout. That was supposed to be it. I began thinking of getting out of there again. I told myself I'd work another year, maybe move out of here, even though I hated the place because Lucy and I were starting to seem somewhat serious, even though it had only been a month and a half. We were kids. Everything seemed like it would last forever. The third kid disappeared at the end of June. A girl. Her name was Charlotte. I remember all of their names. The police swarmed the place and we had to shut it down. My dad hated that. He was cheap and losing a whole day. Even to this seemed like the loss of the century. That was the first time I saw Detective Green. I'll call him that because his name was kind of like that. Big guy, big bald guy, probably around 300 pounds, six foot three. My dad was dwarfed by him. Detective Green told us that there was an active investigation. Landon, the weirdo, had a cousin on the force. He was the one who told me they thought it was somebody who did it. Three kids disappearing within two months wasn't a coincidence. That made my stomach sink. Even though I hated the place, I still felt a little for my dad. He put his whole life in this place and if they shut it down, a week with the low overheads could kill the place. I know that probably wasn't what I should have first thought of. Those were kids. They vanished, disappeared. I still think of Thomas first, red hair, glasses disappearing into the crowd. He seemed invincible running around and I couldn't imagine someone wanting to hurt that kid. I couldn't comprehend it that any of these people wandering throughout the park could have done it hundreds of strangers, hundreds of suspects. The whole thing scared me, even though I wouldn't have admitted it. We were all pretty messed up about it, Lucy especially. Everyone except Landon. Landon had always been weird, loved true crime, horror movies, anything scary. He was a year or two older than me, went to the university nearby, I think. We barely talked to him, I'll be honest, because Landon always creeped us out. He was a friend, I guess, but I knew we talked shit about him a lot. We were kids. I feel awful about how we treated him. We knew better, at least we should have. Landon was never weirded out by all these disappearances, even as much as we were. I'll never forget what he told me when talking about it one day. It was bound to happen sometime. I never liked talking to Landon. They swarmed the place after they shut it down. We still work there, some days, but they shut it down to any public presence. They didn't want to contaminate the evidence, or whatever, but they had no proof that the kids were anywhere on the property. The woods outside the park were just short of being a state park. The Rangers were looking for those kids day and night and having an officer in the park wouldn't have done anything. I wonder if Detective Green did that for a reason. I have no real clue what went on in that guy's head, not even now. All I know is that he weirded me out. A lot of things weirded me out. Maybe it was just the circumstances, but Green would always look at me like I was a monster. We worked on the park, just checking on rides, making sure that everything was functional. That was the only concession my dad could ring out of the cops. If the park rides broke down while closed and we didn't get to them until reopening, we'd be screwed. That I was alright with. I needed that check. Moving out of my mom's house was never going to be cheap. That's funny. I was always focused on the future those days. And now I can't stop thinking about the past. They promised they'd reopen the park after two weeks if they didn't find anything. They checked that place from head to toe, the roller coaster, the bumper cars, the backshed, the offices, even taking a glance through the tunnel of love. But they didn't find a thing. Not a shred. The police department shifted towards combing through the forest, but everyone in town knew they had screwed up. If they had focused on the forest in the first place, then those kids wouldn't have had more time to fall into the caverns or vanish into the woods. Three kids disappearing around the same time in a theme park is a horrific coincidence, we said. We were trying to rationalize it because we couldn't believe that someone could have taken those kids. I remember all five of us hanging out, smoking outside of a convenience store, way past midnight. It was the hottest August night I can remember. My dad would have either been asleep or at work by then. Either way, he wouldn't have noticed I was gone. We were dumb kids. I remember that. We thought the world was going to be ours and that seemed so realistic. I thought I was going to make something of myself. That summer killed a lot of things in me. Lucy always made me feel like everything was going to be all right. That's why I liked her at first. She kept me at ease. We were smoking in the parking lot and talking about how the police mess this up. Three kids, three kids missing. I don't remember who said it, but someone got the idea we should go into the theme park. Do some detective work ourselves. Maybe it was just because we were stoned out of our minds, but it seemed like a good idea. At least two half of us. Landon thought it was stupid, ran off and Sarah had no interest in skulking around that place anymore at night than she did at day. That left Chuck, me and Lucy, but she barely wanted to go. The place looked so much worse. In the day it was charming and a bit rickety, but at night all the wrong things stood out. The shadows of the coaster were silhouetted black against the dark blue sky. The only thing lit was the do not enter sign, a little hint of brightness among the night. The whole thing gave me the creeps. I didn't let myself show it. Chuck turned back as soon as we'd come, leaving the two of us, screw this, he said. We should have followed him away. I fished a flashlight from my glove compartment, flicked it on, and bathed the fence in the flickering light. I remember that, too. I remember the way the light glittered off of the fence, shining in the night. We tried to push the gate open, but my dad had locked it with a chain. He didn't want anyone to get in. I navigated around the fence, searching for a hole in the place. Lucy told me to give it up, but I kept urging her forward. Whoever's doing this is too scared to get anyone besides kids. I was an asshole back then. It took me about 15 minutes before we found a hole in the mesh. I could barely fit through, even though I wasn't the tallest. Lucy followed in after me, clutching in my arm. She was shivering in the heat. We took to the bumper cars first. Their shadows were massive with the flashlight, drenching the walls in dark. All the magic, the bare hint of it my father had managed to accumulate, vanished in the harsh shadows and light of the night. My teeth began to chatter when I remembered the girl, Charlotte. She had vanished around the bumper cars. We continued walking, but I stopped talking. Lucy was right about this, I realized then. I never should have gone there. We went to the darts next, then the concessions. Lucy saw a rat by the cotton candy and screamed to high heaven. We went to the roller coaster, but that had been shut down for repairs a week earlier. Everything was always breaking down, everything. I don't think my dad spent more than a penny on that place looking back, it's like he wanted it all to end with an accident. We wandered throughout the whole park, ducking under cobwebs and searching into the corners my dad wouldn't want us to go. We looked through his office, this short fat building that could see the rest of the park hidden next to the log flume. The door was locked, but if you jiggle the window just right, you could get it open. I'd done that a dozen times to steal rum from his cabinet. It was covered with papers, head to toe, it looked like the place had been ripped apart. If the police really had been investigating thoroughly, maybe that was their work. Steve Green had probably read every single document in here. The place looked like a tornado had gone through. We got out of there. Quick, I didn't want to linger and leave a trace. My dad was methodical. My stomach twisted up as soon as we got back outside and as soon as I noticed it. Do you smell that? She had said, and I can still see her there standing in the night. The wind was blowing from the north end of the park bleach. I started walking towards the tunnel of love, not even thinking about what I was doing. Everything goes in slow motion as I look back on it. It feels like it took an eternity to walk from my dad's office to the tunnel. I told myself that there was nothing to fear, nothing had gone wrong. It didn't stop my stomach from twisting up further. I was never that good of a liar, not even to myself. In the day it had been kitschy, maybe a bit rickety, but it looked haunted in the middle of the night. The smell of bleach overtook me. It couldn't have been that long since it was sprayed, minutes even. It could have been minutes since my father put another spray of disinfectant in there and I still think of that all these years later. What if he'd seen me? What would he say? What would he do? We stalked inside, moving as slowly as we could. We were afraid because it hit us, then it made us realize what truly could have been happening. The place was horrifically dark and it felt like my flashlight was barely peeking through it. I fumbled for the power switch right under the main console. It was a great big lever and I yanked it down, making the whole place a light. We were supposed to be stealthy of course, but I didn't even think of it as I turned the switch on. We rarely pulled the full lights on in the tunnel, usually we'd do a lesser rig, a couple lights to instill a romantic atmosphere. The place would be lit in purples and pinks, bright valentine's colors. It hid all the dirty parts, the holes in the wall, the dirty water. The place was drenched in that hideous light as soon as I pulled the lever. I had never seen it like this for long. The wallpaper was old and faded, ripped apart at the edges. All of it covered in hearts and mold, cupid looked rotten. The carts began moving through the unclean sludge of the water, filled with sick and stale water missing its weekly cleaning, turning brownish in the fluorescence. The river smelled terrible. Something else smelled like bleach, the walls, the floor, the air, everything. We had to cough to get through the stench. She asked me to head back then to turn the lights off. She didn't want to venture any further, but I didn't let her. We have to find out, I had said, but I don't think I really knew then what I could have found out. I don't think I ever had a chance. I got in one of the boats, careful not to get any of the water on me. Lucy followed, more out of duty than any want. The boats began to move sluggishly through the muck. You could hear it creak, no cute music to hide it. I could hear Lucy start to breathe heavier as the boat moved further and further along the track, the scent growing ever stronger. I don't think my hair was even on end. I wasn't brave. I just didn't understand what was happening. I hadn't figured out what the smell under the bleach under the piss was. It was some mystery scent, something I couldn't quite place deep and slightly fruity. I know it now. I know it like the back of my hand. Everything seemed a lot clearer with fluorescence on full blast. The hearts and the cupids were scattered around the ceiling. I could see now that the cupids were little baby dolls he had attached cardboard wings to. We moved further. The music started up then, which I know made both of us jump. The smell of bleach got stronger as we moved further and further. I clutched the flashlight. She was talking to me then, telling me we should turn back or something. I wasn't paying attention. All I did was stare forward as the boat moved slowly ever onwards. I wasn't thinking. I couldn't figure out what was going on. Even now it's hard to put it all together. The images flash and swap and all I know is that we're getting closer. As I write this, I can see us there trapped in that damn boat waiting for all of it to end because I know where it ends. I know what happens next. I've been having this nightmare for months, years, maybe. I always dreamt about this moment sitting in the boat knowing what happens next. Sometimes Lucy's there, sometimes not. Sometimes it's my dad sitting in the seat next to me and no matter how loud I yell, he can never hear me. I always wake up before we get there. It feels like a century before we finally make it to the animatronics. I say that, but they didn't move. They were big dolls standing still as preset music began to play. They seem so different in the normal light than they did in the pink one. Their cartoony faces seem close to plastic. Their heads are plastic and the bodies are some sort of plush suit. I'd never really looked at them closely. My dad had always said that it was too dangerous to step near them to let the professionals have it. What if I had looked early enough? What if I had seen what he had done? They were plastic and fluff, but they reeked of the bleach and the scent beneath. I wanted to run, really. I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible because every bit of me told me that this was wrong. But instead I stepped off the boat and onto the side of the ride where the animatronics, the mannequins stood so still. I wanted to vomit as I edged closer. Lucy was yelling now, telling me to get back in the boat, but I didn't listen. I moved to the mannequin, a pink bear whose eyes were a glittered blue and whose paint had been chipped off, and I pulled off the plastic head. The real one beneath almost came off with it. The face had rotted like a pumpkin, melting and graying as the innards came pouring out. I could barely tell that it was a human face, but I could make out the barest pieces. The red hair, the glasses, I could make out Thomas, the boy I had seen on the posters and in the park and who had vanished into the crowd, and then I vomited. The next few hours are a blur. I have no memory of leaving the tunnel, going through the park or calling the police. It took them a day to arrest my dad, a month for them to try him. I went home to live with my mom after that, and I never came back to that town. I never came back to that amusement park. I don't think I ever could have. All I can think about when I look up at that place or read about it or think about it is what those families could have had. What those families could have had if my father hadn't taken it away from them. Every time I think of it, in the end, I get out of sync. I get back to the beginning of the dream back when I was 11 years old, when my dad first took me to the park. But it wasn't sad, no, I wasn't. How could I be with my father owning a theme park? I was so happy. Everything stained with it now. I can't think of my dad without thinking of what he did. But I was so happy then. He took me across the park and there's this one sentence that stuck with me then. There's no reason to cry. No reason at all. He clapped me on the back, looked over the park, still halfway in construction, and smiled. I realize now he wasn't talking to me. He was looking dead on, right out the window of his office. Right at the tunnel of love.