The Burning

exhibits within displayed on fake windows: The Haunted Skeleton, The Petrified Tree, The Noose of Justice, The Garden of Natural Wonders.

It was a tourist trap, one of those roadside attractions he'd heard about, read about and seen in bad horror movies but had never before encountered in real life. He pulled into the parking lot, swinging into a space next to the entrance. The only other vehicle in the lot was a beat-up red pickup truck in the corner. Dennis assumed it belonged to the proprietor. He got out of the car, stretched his tired limbs, breathed deeply. The air seemed heavier and more humid than it had when he'd been in the car and moving.

The entrance to The Keep was through a gate in the fence that was open and made to look like a drawbridge. Behind it was the largest building, and Dennis stepped inside a shabby gift shop filled with printed T- shirts, novelty knickknacks, polished-rock bookends and crappy children's toys. A tired-looking older woman with incongruous Jackie O. glasses sat on a high stool behind the cash register, working on a crossword puzzle book. He walked up to the counter. 'I'd like to see The Keep,' he said.

'One dollar,' she told him without looking up. The price was definitely right. He withdrew his

wallet, took out a dollar bill and handed it to her. The woman's eyes met his for a brief second, and though he didn't think about it until later, the emotion he saw in them was fear. She pulled a purple ticket from a large roll, tore it in half and handed him the stub. 'Right through there,' she said, pointing. On the far wall was a painting of a castle, in the middle of it a real door.

'Thanks,' he said. He walked over, pushed open the door and found himself in a darkened room. Fluorescent lights sputtered to life as the door closed behind him, and on the floor he could see several large pieces of drywall with what looked like Indian carvings on them. Two long tables on either side of the room were host to a variety of pots and grinding stones. But the focal point of the room was a built-in alcove covered by a clear sheet of glass. Behind the glass, propped up against the wall was a skeleton.

Dennis walked over to the alcove, peering in. He had no doubt that the skeleton was real. The bones weren't clean and bleached like the ones in movies or Halloween displays: rather the skull was cracked and yellowed, the ribs chipped and deteriorating, the legs and arms dirty and discolored. On the wall above and behind the figure were painted the words The Haunted Skeleton, and below that was a short description of how the man who had discovered this intact specimen in a river cave had died under mysterious circumstances, and how the succession of subsequent owners had all come to bad ends. The paragraph concluded, 'Although it has been behind glass and has not been touched since entering The Keep in 1999, the proprietors will sometimes discover that the skeleton has moved on its own in the middle of the night, and more than one customer has returned to reveal that they have had nightmares about the skeleton and have seen its image in their own homes! Believe it or don't!'

Dennis smiled, kept walking.

He passed through a series of rooms in the connected buildings he'd seen from the parking lot, most of them filled with local Indian and pioneer artifacts. In the last chamber, which was larger than the others and had a much higher ceiling, there was a full-sized replica of a gallows. A worn thick-roped noose hung from the center beam, and text on a laminated board attached to the adjacent wall read, 'The Noose of Justice. This was used to hang Niggers and Kikes in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when those outsiders threatened to disrupt forever the idyllic life created by our forebears... .'

Dennis looked away from the words, glancing back up at the noose. He had a queasy, unpleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was shocked and offended by the blatantly racist description, and he felt more than a little uneasy when he considered how far out in the middle of nowhere he really was. He thought of that one lone pickup in the parking lot.

If he disappeared, no one would know where he was. His body might never be found.

Niggers and Kikes.

He'd left his cell phone in the car.

Dennis looked again at the description. There were a lot of militia groups in Missouri, weren't there? For all he knew, this little tourist attraction was a front for some white supremacist organization.

He suddenly felt the need to get as far away from here as possible. He considered doubling back the way he'd come, but those dark rooms filled with old artifacts and that skeleton in the alcove now seemed a lot more sinister than they had, and instead he pressed ahead and walked outside to the Garden of Natural Wonders. This property was much bigger than he'd originally thought. According to the small hand-painted signs that pointed toward three diverging paths, the Petrified Tree was off to his right, the Ancient Indian Burial Ground was straight ahead, and the Olde Faithful Geyser and exit were off to the left.

He took the path on the left.

The trail looked as though it ran along the side of the buildings back toward the entrance, but several yards in, after a short jog around a bush, the dirt path suddenly veered off in another direction, through a copse of trees behind the buildings, opening out before a small rocky rise. A series of stone steps had been carved into the side of the low ridge, and, curious, Dennis climbed them, holding on to the welded pipes that served as a railing. What was this?

Before him was a pit filled with what looked like liquid clay, a bubbling grayish green mud that gurgled and popped as though boiling.

'It's where they used to throw them.'

Dennis jumped at the sound of the voice. He whirled around to see a gnomish little man standing to the right of him.

He pretended he hadn't been startled. 'Throw who?' he asked, keeping his voice calm.

'Evildoers,' the old man said. 'Witches, unbelievers. You know.' He looked at Dennis as if he should know, and Dennis wanted to say, / don't know, I don't want to know, I don't care, I only stopped here because I was tired of driving and got suckered by your sign.

Instead, he just nodded.

Niggers and Kikes.

He turned to go.

'Did you see my noose?'

Dennis stopped, a chill caressing his spine.

'Bought it off a farmer. He had it in his barn all these years.'

Dennis didn't know what to say. He forced out a noncommittal smile that he hoped was polite.

'I saw a video once of a fat guy trying to hang himself. He put the noose around his neck, then jumped off a picnic table. He weighed so much that his head popped off; his neck wasn't strong enough to support the weight underneath, you see?'

Why is the old man telling me this? Dennis wondered.

Was it because he was Chinese?

Niggers and Kikes.

He should've stayed in Pennsylvania. He should never have left.

Why had he left his damn cell phone in the car?

The gnomelike man had moved closer. / can take him if I have to, Dennis thought. The old man was scrawny and his breath came out in a hard, harsh wheeze. One kick to the balls and he would be down. Then Dennis could run away. Unless, of course, the man's compatriots were waiting farther up the path.

'I was going to add a sex room to The Keep, but my old lady put her foot down. I have stories. ... I remember one time I ate out this one skank's pussy. She'd filled it up with salsa before spreading her legs.' His laugh turned into a cough. 'It was like chowing down on an old fish taco.'

'I have to go,' Dennis said disgustedly. The old man grabbed his arm, bony fingers digging painfully into muscle. 'They're coming back,' he said, and there was fear as well as fervor in his eyes. 'They're rising again.' Against his will, Dennis felt a twinge of alarm. 'Who?' he forced himself to ask. 'Them.'

As if on cue, a hand popped out of the muck, a spindly skeletal arm attached to a horribly wrinkled palm from which protruded five writhing clawlike fingers. It shot up from the middle of the pit, grasping at air.

'I told you!' the old man cried, and began beating down the arm with a long-handled wooden pole that looked like an extra-thick broomstick handle. Dennis hadn't seen the pole before, didn't know where it had come from-