Reggie and Henry ran inside the elevator, but still the clack of heels neared, and ice began to coat the inside of the compartment. Henry pushed the button, but his finger stuck to the frozen surface. Mom appeared at the other end of the dark hospital corridor.
“Running away from home? Shame on you.”
Reggie pounded the button. The frosty doors closed with a splintering groan. The car raced up and then fell backward. Both Henry and Reggie slammed against the wall just as the corny jazz music cut out and the elevator lights popped. The worms and maggots broke through the rotting coffin and leached onto them, swelling fat and thick on Henry’s mounting fear.
“Don’t let them scare you. Use them!” Reggie shouted. “Command them. Make them dig us out. You said you were tired of being afraid. Get us out of here! Do it!”
Henry closed his eyes. She felt the worms struggle, fighting his will with a fierce determination. It was one thing for Reggie to defeat the fear in this place, but for Henry to conquer it was another game entirely.
“Dig,” Henry said. “Dig us up!”
Reggie felt the earth and wood dissolve away around them. The worms were obeying. Within moments they were cracking the weedy surface and crawling out from the ground.
But so were all the other bodies in Cutter’s Wedge Cemetery. All around them corpses broke through the dirt. Some bodies were covered in decomposing flesh and ragged dresses, recent residents in the graveyard. Others were bone and wiry hair.
“Damn it, Henry! Cut it out!” Reggie pulled her brother out of the grave and dragged him down the slope toward the mirrors. “Your fear is making this worse! Calm down, damn it!”
“You swore, Reggie! Twice!”
Reggie shouldered and shoved her way through the undead hordes, her willpower causing them to collapse and crumble at her touch. Henry followed close at her heels, amazed at his sister’s strength.
They ran into the Hall of Mirrors at the bottom of the hill just as Mom rose from the dirt of Henry’s grave. Inside, horrible reflections played out on the evil mirrors as they stumbled back through the maze toward the carnival.
“Don’t watch,” Reggie said, knowing it was impossible to turn away. “Don’t fear this place!”
They emerged from the mirrors, dashed through the spinning cone and out of the fun house.
“How did you get here, Henry?” Reggie demanded. “Where did you come in?”
“Over there,” said Henry, pointing across the carnival grounds to the red turnstile Reggie had entered on her first visit. She nodded.
“Then that’s how we’re getting out.”
They hopped up onto the carousel to cut across toward the carnival entrance. As Henry passed, horrible metallic groans cried out to him. The hideous beasts on the ride tore away from the carousel platform. Winged gargoyles, demons, and nightmare horses wrenched free from the metal poles and chased Reggie and Henry down the midway. Children with smoking eyes cheered and whistled from all sides.
“Hey, it’s scaredy cat and his loser sister!” shouted the boy in thick glasses. “Where ya goin’, scaredy cat?”
“You guys better quit clowning around!” jeered the blond girl, her head still caved in. “Berzerko’s hopping mad at you now!”
They could see the entrance and the red turnstile that marked the edge of Henry’s fearscape, but before they could reach it, they heard the blare of the air horn. Berzerko hopped onto the midway. He blocked the way out.
Behind, the gargoyles and demons bore down on them in a screeching swarm of teeth, horns, and wings. One of the gargoyles snatched Reggie in its talons and pinned her to the sawdust-coated ground. It grinned with teeth of pointed stone and drooled gray slime on her forehead.
Henry stood in the center of the midway, half frozen. The chil-dren hooted and clapped until an angry roar silenced them all.
“Insolent brats!”
All the fiendish children cowered. The carousel demons went fearfully still, and even the clown dared not move. One fear permeated them all. One fear ripped across all boundaries and flooded over this entire world, briefly freezing time itself.
Mom.
She limped down the midway toward Henry, a broken-heeled shoe in her remaining hand.
“I’ve tried to be a good mother, Henry.” With each step, the ground behind her iced over. “But you just refuse to be a good son. Look at all the trouble you’ve caused.” She lifted up her blackened arm. “And you wonder why I left you?”
“Henry!” Reggie blurted. “Don’t listen to that thing!”
The gargoyle on top of Reggie dug its claws into her chest and she screamed in agony. Now, instead of blood, black smoke poured out of her. She was becoming a part of this place. They needed to get out now, before it consumed both of them.
The deranged clown loomed behind her brother, but in front of him stood a fear so much closer to his heart. He faced the foreboding that crossed all boundaries, the dread that could cut him deeper than any blade.
“Come along, Henry.” The monster dropped the shoe and raised its hand to his cheek. “Come home with Mommy.”
Henry took the photograph out of his shirt pocket.
“You left us,” he said through flowing tears.
“Of course I did, you little toad. You and your useless sister drove me away. I couldn’t stand to be around either of you a day more. All you did was complain. All you did was want. All you did was take.”
“It’s not your fault, Henry.” Reggie’s voice was barely louder than a puff of smoke.
“What if it was my fault?” cried Henry.
Mom’s mouth spread into a cavernous black hole. The gaping maw was like a dark cyclone, poised to pull him in. The air swirled furiously. Reggie thought she could feel bits of herself tearing away, disappearing into the void of the fearscape. Henry was losing.
“I think she did her best to take care of us, Henry,” she whispered. “But something happened inside her. Something made her feel like all she could do was run away.”
Mom towered over the boy, and the ground around them turned to ice.
“Mom wasn’t brave enough, Henry,” said Reggie. “She was the one who was scared. She couldn’t face her fear. Not you. You stand up to it. We practiced together, remember?”
That conversation they’d had on Henry’s bed seemed ages ago now. Could Henry even recall it?
“That’s right, we practiced,” said Henry slowly, as if digging up a memory long buried. He turned to his sister and spoke so softly. “I believe you, Reggie.”
Behind Henry, Berzerko raised the hatchet. The red-slick blade shone in the dull light before it came swinging down.
The boy gazed at the photograph of his family, the last vestige of love and warmth.
“I love you, Mommy, but we’ll be all right without you.”
The distorted image of his mother leaned forward, ready to swallow Henry whole, just as the hatchet sailed through the air. Berzerko’s blade sheared into her neck and passed clean through. Chocolate hair twirled and danced like ribbons in the breeze as her head tumbled, severed, to the ground.
“Oops,” said the boy in the glasses. “I think he missed.”
The clown stumbled backward, smoke wafting from his eyes and mouth. He shook as if being electrocuted and then vanished into a column of golden flames. Only the hatchet-hand remained, laying on the ground and smoldering. Soon it disappeared as well.
The gargoyle on Reggie exploded into white powder. All around her, creatures and children crackled and burst into brilliant flashes of white. The rides quavered and imploded into tiny suns, and the ice and sawdust beneath them turned to cottony down. A deafening roar shook the world as Mom’s body swirled like oily paint down a storm drain. Soon only Reggie, Henry, and the red turnstile remained on the emptied fearscape’s canvas.
Reggie threw her arms around her brother. “You did it, Henry. You battled your worst fears. And you won.”
For a moment he hung limp in her arms, and then he hugged her back. Exhausted, they walked to the turnstile.
“Henry,” Reggie said. “I need to tell you something before we go. Our bodies may still be in danger. We might —”
“It’s okay,” said Henry. “Whatever happens, I’m not scared.”
“Me neither.” Reggie gestured to the turnstile, catching just the slightest whiff of buttered popcorn. “After you.”
Henry pushed through the turnstile and Reggie followed.
The entire fearscape collapsed behind them.