Dark Winter Tales: a collection of horror short stories. Paul Finch

its rear there was an open space about the size of two football fields. This had formerly been a car park, but was now a wasteland of gravel and cinders. The odd forlorn structure remained: an abandoned caravan; a roofless brick shack that had once been a public lavatory. Geoff Slater’s motor, a white Toyota Esprit, was also there – sitting unattended next to Fun Land’s rear fence.

      Sharon surveyed it through her headlights. It was tempting to park up alongside it, but again there was a worry that someone might happen along – not necessarily Sergeant Pugh, but maybe one of the other patrols. Then the idle tongues in the office would really wag, even if she hadn’t had something going with the tough, handsome detective. In many ways Slater was a good catch, but she’d told herself again and again that it was a mistake to get involved with a married man. The moral issue nagged at her, not to mention all the practical day-to-day frustrations inherent to being ‘the bit on the side’.

      She depressed the accelerator and veered away. On the face of it, it seemed a bit pointless parking elsewhere – what matter if they were one yard apart or a hundred? It would still be obvious they were here together. All she could do was park the Corsa out of sight, so she pulled up leeward of the derelict toilet block, hoping that it would mask her from the road. She switched the interior light on and briefly assessed her makeup in the sun-visor mirror. She was a good-looking girl and always had been. There was something of the feline about her: green eyes; delicate, diagonal brows; a small, sharp nose; pink lips. Whenever she took off her ridiculous uniform-hat and unpinned her black hair, it fell in a lush wave to her shoulders. Oh, she had lots going for her, except that she didn’t have Geoff Slater. Not totally. Not yet. And this was something they had to sort out tonight.

      Checking she had her mobile and all her ‘appointments’ – her cuffs, baton, CS canister and torch – she climbed from the car, replaced her yellow ‘high visibility’ coat with a normal black anorak, and attached her radio to its lapel.

      She locked the vehicle up, and walked around the toilet block towards the Toyota. It seemed odd that Slater wasn’t here, waiting for her. She reached his car and peeked inside; from the blipping red light on its dashboard, it had been secured properly.

      Peering across the windswept waste, nothing stirred – just a few rags of litter tossing on the sea-breeze. She pulled on her leather gloves as she looked to the fence. An explanation as to why Slater had chosen this exact spot suggested itself; at some time in the past a couple of railings had been bent apart, presumably by kids, and there was now sufficient space to slide through. Not that she had any idea why Slater would actually have wanted to enter the park. She fished out her phone and keyed in a quick text.

       Where R U?

      There was no immediate response, which there probably wouldn’t be given the poor reception in this area. She pocketed the phone, and approached the gap, sliding through it shoulder-first and emerging in a passage between two sheds, at the far end of which a rubbish bin lay overturned, disgorging a mass of refuse so old that it had coagulated into a solid mass. Sharon stepped gingerly around this, and entered the park proper. As her eyes hadn’t yet attuned, its variety of once brightly coloured attractions was still a clutter of brooding, featureless structures. The breeze stiffened, droning between wires and girders and loose sections of clapboard, which tapped in response. To the west, she could make out the high gantry of the Crazy Train.

      There was a creak directly behind her.

      She spun around, torch in hand, beam flicked on full.

      The loose shutter creaked again on the shed to her left.

      A sign overarched what had once been its open frontage. The jolly crimson paint now turned to grey, read: Hoopla. She glanced at the shed on her right: Buffalo Bill’s Shoot ’Em Up. A rifle range. The frontage to this one was still open, tatters of blue and white striped awning hanging down over it. Again, the question bugged her: what was Slater up to? Had he got wind that she was after some kind of commitment from him? Was he playing a stupid trick? Overhead, the moon slipped out from the clouds – a reduced oval, but it cast a welcome silver glow, embossing the tarmac footways snaking between the attractions, though of course it created deeper shadows too, blotting out some buildings entirely, cloaking the black, throat-like alleys between them.

      When Sharon suddenly heard a shrill clarion call, she almost jumped out of her skin. Swearing, she retrieved the phone from her pocket. The return text said:

       Here. Where R U?

      “For Christ’s sake,” she murmured, keying in a quick response:

       Where is here?

       Need a location

      While she waited, she walked. She’d last been in here as a young teenager, and possessed no real knowledge of the park’s layout, so she ambled in a vague northerly direction, trying always to keep the open sky over the sea on her left, though as she had to turn a few corners to do this, it soon became confusing.

      She eased the volume down on her radio. She hadn’t heard anything on it for quite a while, most likely because of the mountains; if not for that, she was certain the incident on South Shore would have kept the airwaves busy. But even so, she didn’t like the idea that a sudden burst of static might announce her presence. This was a habit she’d fallen into while making night-time property checks; it was far better to catch the felons in the act than alert them you were coming. Of course, at this moment she wasn’t trying to stop anyone doing something they shouldn’t – it was the other way around, she thought guiltily.

      She passed the Flying Teacups on her right and the Surf Rider on her left. They were grim relics of their former selves: jibs hanging, cables trailing. From what Sharon could see, any attempt to regenerate the park in the future looked doomed to fail. Everything she saw here was broken, begrimed, gutted. Where the Dodgems had once collided in time to a coordinated dirge of all the latest pop songs, silent emptiness yawned under a rotted iron pagoda. The billboard on top of it had once advertised the latest shows at the Fun Land Emporium; now it hung charred and soggy. In fact, arson looked to have been the sole reason anyone had visited Fun Land in the last few years. Though the lower section of the Downhill Racer was caged off, its main tower had been reduced to blackened bones, while a flame-damaged effigy of Bubbles wearing a scarf and bob-cap and holding a pair of skis, which had once stood on top of this, lay on the footway.

      A short distance on, she accessed a timber boardwalk, which thudded loudly as she strode along it. This was partly due to the empty space underneath. It was one of the unusual features of Fun Land that, to facilitate drainage of the autumn rains or spring melt-water from the heights of Diffwys and Cadair Idris, numerous channels had been tunnelled underneath the park, leading eventually to the sea. Back in 1920, during construction, the park’s original designers had made a special feature out of this: the Fun Land Marina had been built. This was a deep, octagonal harbour, about sixty yards in diameter, into which numerous of the drainage channels discharged, their vents carved into dolphin heads or the mouths of tritons and sea gods, but more importantly, from which motorised mock-Venetian gondolas would take paying guests out along the so-called Royal Canal for a ride around the bay, calling eventually at the Jubilee Pier, where they would ascend via a special stairway decked in a red carpet, then walk about for a bit and presumably buy a different brand of candyfloss from that on sale in the park.

      Sharon crossed over the Marina via an arching metal footbridge. Rather to her surprise, the tide lapped against the aged pilings below. If nothing else, she’d expected the Royal Canal to have bogged itself up by now, but apparently not. There were even a few boats on view, though most looked like hulks banked in silt. As she reached the far side, a second clarion call announced that she’d received another text from Slater.

       Haunted Palace

      “What?” she groaned. “What the bloody …”

      A voice she didn’t recognise replied to her.

      Sharon turned, surprised. The bridge arched away through