Below the Old Ferris Wheel
Something wasn’t right; Gwendolyn knew that much. She couldn’t describe the feeling precisely. In her young, six-year-old life she had never felt anything like it. Although you knew in your heart that something was wrong it could still feel right. Feel oh so right… Her cheeks blushed as the October wind stirred her pretty blond hair. Brown leaves twirled and blew across the lawn as if they were disturbed by some invisible force.
Over the horizon dusk had approached like a grizzly hand. Gwendolyn always had a strange feeling in the dusky hour because it seemed as if the world went into cramps and closed in on humans like narrowing walls. The world simply produced a far more intense scale of claustrophobia when darkness fell. At least to Gwendolyn… She shivered standing there on the porch-steps listening to the brushing sounds of the crops in the field near the house. It wasn’t just the cold wind that sent chills through her bones; it was also these husky sounds from the wavering crops. And, oh, my God, that voice…! Twitching and laughing and shrieking.
She knew she had to act fast if she wanted to avoid getting caught in the process by her dad. Gwendolyn turned around on the porch where the white paint had crackled and looked at the jack-o’-lantern. It stood there with the lit, looming grin beside the front door. The light inside it flickered and carved unsteady shadows on the wooden beams.
The attraction it had on her was indescribable. As soon she locked her eyes on the sharp-toothed, grinning face some transparent power field sank upon her and blocked everything else out. She gazed long into the pulsating, triangular eyeholes. The voice which had only been a whisper before intensified into a deep, blurring roar like fire catching on.
She remembered the day before when she and her dad carved the pumpkin in the kitchen. It had been fun and a late afternoon filled with laughs. At that time this… thing had only been a… pumpkin; something completely natural and safe. But now it was something more… something dark. Gwendolyn looked at her toes, embarrassed at her own thoughts. Even though it had this dark, intense magnetism it was all the same so… beautiful. The most beautiful thing she had ever seen. For the first time in her life she truly loved someone besides her mom (who died when she was three), dad and their dog, Sully.
Her dad was still not in sight. Quickly, she picked up the jack-o’-lantern and ran towards the cornfield. With the orange sculpture in her arms she rushed through the cornrows without looking back. The warmth from the surface of the jack-o’-lantern oozed into her palms and sowed an unknown, almost surreal, calm in her body although she ran along.
By the far end of the cornfield the old Ferris wheel at the abandoned carnival ground rose to the gloomy sky like a sad, forgotten iron mastodon.
As the cornrows ended she rushed into the carnival ground where nothing much was left besides the rusty, creaking Ferris wheel and a battered shed. Trips to the carnival came into her head like echoes of the past.
At the foot of the Ferris wheel she stopped, still holding the grinning head in her hands, and looked up at the big wheel where the gondolas swayed on their hinges. She knew she had reached her destination. A short gasp escaped her as the Ferris wheel began turning slowly. Flakes of rust fell to the ground; the gondolas cried out in high-pitched tones. The wheel stopped and she saw the black shape sitting in one of the gondolas.
“I’ve been expecting you,” the shape said in a strangely moist and musk-like voice. She climbed into the gondola and the wheel began turning.
Gwendolyn sensed a smell of burnt coal and sulfur. Below the old Ferris wheel the cornrows cackled.
