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“Home from America, the renegade bastard,” Seamus said, as he raised his knife. “And just in time for supper.”
Pirate Dave’s Haunted Amusement Park
TONI L. P. KELNER
Toni L. P. Kelner is the author of the “Where Are They Now?” mysteries, featuring Boston-based freelance entertainment reporter Tilda Harper, and the Laura Fleming series, which won a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award. She’s also a prolific writer of short stories, many of which have been nominated for awards. Her story “Sleeping with the Plush” won the Agatha Award. This is the third anthology Kelner has coedited with Charlaine Harris, and she looks forward to many more. Kelner lives north of Boston with author/husband Stephen Kelner, two daughters, and two guinea pigs.
FROM as early as I could remember to the year I turned eighteen, my parents and I spent part of every summer at Bartholomew Lake. We always stayed in a hotel made up of lakeside cabins, which was naturally called Lakeside Cabins, and spent our days swimming in the lake, eating fried fish, and making at least one expedition to the local amusement park.
So when I decided to get out of town to get my head together before making a decision that would affect the rest of my life, it only seemed natural to head for that same lakeside hotel. My psychologist would probably have suggested that I was trying to recapture my lost girlhood, but I hadn’t seen my psychologist since the attack that nearly killed me.
While I was in the hospital recovering, a delegation had come to tell me the truth about the thing that had attacked me. After that, I stopped going to therapy. Though my guy had done a great job helping me deal with the loss of my parents, I didn’t think he’d have much insight into the loss of my humanity. In fact, he’d probably have tried to put me away if I’d told him I’d become a werewolf.
I spent most of the first part of the week at Lake Bartholomew swimming and su
But by the end of the week, the pack was concerned that I was lonely. In fact, several of the packs in the area were concerned, and they wanted me to know how concerned they were. I’m sure their feelings had nothing to do with the fact that the a
It wouldn’t have surprised my former psychologist a bit when I decided to retreat further into my past, which is how I found myself at Pirate Dave’s Adventure Cove.
The amusement park was as campy as ever, starting at the gate with the ticket taker’s red-and-white striped shirt and the jaunty kerchief on his head. The entrance to the park was a giant pirate ship shaped out of concrete, with sails permanently hoisted and a Jolly Roger flying proudly above. The graffiti on the sign was new, though. Though an effort had been made to remove the spray-painted words, it was still easy to see that somebody had X’ed out the word Adventure and scrawled Haunted instead. I briefly considered texting the woman who’d presented the “Other Supernatural Species” slideshow at Werewolf Orientation to ask if ghosts were real but decided it might lead to a support group rushing to Lake Bartholomew to be there for me.
The posted park rules—no ru
The influence of the movies was even more obvious when I made it inside the park, where Pirate Dave himself was standing atop an ersatz crow’s nest to greet arriving guests. In my day, Pirate Dave had been a dapper Captain Hook type, with a red coat and abundant black curls. This version was an homage to Joh
Still, I waved and enjoyed the appreciation in Pirate Dave’s eye when he bowed in my direction. After all the diets I’d endured and the exercise regimens I’d abandoned, it had taken being turned into a werewolf to give me the figure I’d always wanted. Though my denim shorts weren’t outrageously short and my tank top showed only a modest amount of cleavage, I knew I looked good. So it was gratifying to finally be noticed by Pirate Dave.
I’d had crushes on quite a few Pirate Daves over the years, particularly the one who’d worked the late shift when I was in my teens. Neither a clone of Captain Hook nor of Captain Jack Sparrow, the nighttime Pirate Dave had worn a snowy white shirt with tantalizingly tight breeches. His auburn hair had been just long enough to pull back into a ponytail with a leather thong, and he’d had a way of looking at me that had made my teenaged hormones rise like a stormy tide.
The current Pirate Dave just didn’t compare. In fact, as I wandered through the park, I decided that very little in the place compared with my memories. Admittedly it was larger than it had been, with several roller coasters and thrill rides added, but two of the biggest draws were closed for repairs, and most of the others could have used a fresh coat of paint. The crew members were cranky, and the place just looked grubby. No wonder the crowds were smaller than I’d expected at the height of the season.
Still, I enjoyed not having to stand in long lines for rides, and the games were a lot more fun now that I had werewolf strength and speed. Though I didn’t particularly need a plush sea monster or mermaid, I couldn’t resist the temptation to shock the stuffing out of the pirates ma
As the day wore on, I told myself that the only reason I was sticking around was to watch the parade at dusk, with its fanciful floats, appropriately attired musicians and dancers, and cheap plastic doubloons thrown to the crowd. It had nothing to do with a yen to see if the night shift Pirate Dave was as good-looking as the one I remembered.
In years past, the parade had paused in front of the Shiver-Me-Timbers Ice Cream Shoppe, which was about halfway through the route. That’s when Pirate Dave would a