Last Seen: A gripping edge-of-your-seat thriller that you won’t be able to put down

3

“I can’t believe this,” Cal said as he and Faith walked the perimeter of the chutes, searching the slides and the clusters of people shuffling along the exit barricades for Gage.

He wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere.

“Maybe he got out ahead of us and ran to another ride?” Faith said. “Maybe he went to a food stand?”

“I doubt it, but wait here for him and I’ll check.”

Cal shouldered his way through the exit lines, battling frustration and unease while searching the rivers of people that were flowing into the midway crowds. Gage wouldn’t have left the chutes without us, he thought. He knows better. Unless he was confused and figured we’d got out first and left without him? Maybe he rushed to the next ride. No. No way. He’d wait. He’s a good kid—he’s sharp, like his mother. No matter how tempting the midway would be he’d wait for us.

Come on, Gage, come on. Where is he?

Cal continued, turning full circle, bumping into people, scanning faces of boys Gage’s age until they began blurring. Cal scoured the Polar Express—nothing there. Then he stopped in front of the Zipper where Bob Seger’s Hollywood Nights was throbbing amid the grind of the thrill ride’s diesel and roaring crowds.

No sign of Gage.

Quickly, he circled food stands that were selling burgers and fries, pizza, ice cream, nuts, pretzels and cotton candy, scanning the people ordering, waiting or those eating at the small tables nearby.

No sign of Gage.

Cal thought it unlikely Gage would travel down this way alone in such a short amount of time, and trotted back to Faith at the Chambers of Dread.

Her hope that he’d have Gage with him died on her face as they exchanged sobering looks.

“He hasn’t come out here,” Faith said, turning to the chutes. “Do something, Cal!”

Near them, they saw a man in his thirties wearing a work shirt with an embroidered Ultra-Fun Amusement Corp roller-coaster logo above his left pocket, a ball cap and Ray-Ban sunglasses. Obviously a midway worker, he was helping women recover at the slides, his rolled sleeves displaying tattoo-laced biceps.

“Our son hasn’t come out yet,” Cal said. “Can you help us?”

The man was unshaven; his long hair curled from his cap, the toothpick in the corner of his mouth punctuated an expression that told Cal he’d been everywhere, seen everything, heard it all and was bored.

“People get hung up in there. Take it easy, pal, he’ll be out.”

“He’s only nine!” Faith interjected. “He was right at the exit curtains with us and he’s not here. It’s been more than five minutes!”

Cal saw Faith’s body reflected in the man’s mirrored glasses as he assessed her summer top and shorts. His toothpick shifted and he nodded to the Chambers.

“Did you see him on the spinner?”

“Yes, if that’s what you call the last thing before these slides, yes,” she said.

“Hang on.” The man unclipped a walkie-talkie from his studded belt, turned and spoke into it. “Alma, it’s Sid. We got a straggler in the spinner.” He turned to Faith. “What’s he wearing?”

“A Cubs T-shirt, ball cap and sand-colored shorts, khakis,” Faith said.

“Got a lotta kids wearing that same stuff,” he said.

“A blue Cubs shirt and ball cap,” Cal added. “And he’s wearing sneakers, blue SkySlyders.”

“How old did you say?”

“Nine,” Faith said.

After Sid relayed Gage’s description into the walkie-talkie, it crackled and a woman’s bored-sounding voice said, “Roger. Stand by.”

“Your people can see in the dark?” Cal asked.

“We got infrared cameras everywhere in the Chambers and Alma watches from a control desk.”

Several moments passed with Sid’s silent calm countering Cal and Faith’s anxiety, projecting an attitude that this sort of thing happened all the time. He scratched his whiskered jaw, then raised his walkie-talkie again.

“Check the graveyard and the crusher.”

“Stand by. I think...” the radio said. “Yup! Got him. He’s coming your way.”

“Oh, good!” Faith said, relief washing through her.

“He should be at the chutes about...now,” the radio said.

A middle-aged woman with glasses whooshed down one slide, then two teenage girls shot down another, then a big-bellied man followed by a boy in shorts and a Cubs T-shirt—a red one. The kid looked more like twelve.

“That’s not Gage! That boy’s not our son!” Faith said.

“We need to do something now, Sid!” Cal said.

Sid held up a hand to stem their rising concern and he spoke into his radio.

“Alma, that’s not him. Go back farther—the witch, the clown, the butcher—and double-check. Shorts and Cubs T-shirt. Nine years old.”

“A blue T-shirt!” Faith said.

Sid shook his head. “The cameras don’t pick up colors, just shades, black, white and in between.”

A few more tense moments passed, then Faith said, “Sid, we’re losing time and this is getting serious. Gage could’ve fallen. He could be hurt or unconscious in there! You’ve got to shut it down, turn on the lights and let us search for him now!”

“Relax, ma’am. We have procedures for these situations.”

“Then use them, dammit!” Faith said.

“Hang on.” Sid pulled the walkie-talkie to his mouth and took a few steps away, but even with the noise Faith and Cal could hear him.

“Still nothing, Alma?”

“Still looking.”

“Call a Code 99.”

“Vaughn won’t like it.”

“Call it.” Sid turned back to the Hudsons. “What’s your son’s name?”

“Gage Hudson,” Faith said.

Sid nodded and relayed it to Alma, setting in motion Ultra-Fun Amusement Corp’s procedure for a serious incident at an attraction. Within minutes, more staff emerged amid radio dispatches and workers talking on cell phones. Some went to various points to help visitors leave the Chambers of Dread through emergency exit doors and down stairs, apologizing and handing them vouchers for a free return. Other staff converged at the chutes. One of them, a man in his early sixties with a white cowboy hat and aviator glasses, had a private huddle with Sid before he came directly to Faith and Cal. He was wearing a navy golf shirt with the Ultra-Fun logo.

“Vaughn King—I run the midway attractions.” He nodded. “We’ll find your son, folks.” King, face tanned with neat, trimmed white stubble, presented an air of authority as he turned and spoke softly into his phone.

Cal and Faith heard a loud announcement being made within the confines of the Chambers. It was muffled but they could make out a woman’s voice on the PA system calling Gage’s name, telling him to report to a staff member.

“We’ve shut down the ride,” King said. “We turned on all interior lighting. We’ve got staff inside who know every nook and cranny looking for your son. All the actors at the scenes are looking, too.”

“Does this happen often?” Cal asked.

King’s gaze was fixed on the Chambers as he stuck out his bottom lip.

“It happens. In Kansas City, we found a teenager who’d huddled in a corner of a set, her eyes shut tight. She’d refused to open them. Found the Chambers a little too scary. In Indianapolis, we had an eighty-three-year-old veteran off his medication who wandered behind the butcher’s scene without the actor knowing. Found him sleeping behind the meat props. In Cincinnati, a woman fainted near one of the spinner’s exits. Unfortunately, no one noticed until we searched for her. It happens.”

“What about the exits?” Faith asked. “We never saw exit signs inside.”

“They’re dimmed but activated and illuminated in an emergency.”

“Gage could’ve gone out one of them,” Cal said.

“An alarm goes off when they’re opened. Staff would’ve been alerted and that didn’t happen.”

Ten tense, solid minutes passed without results. King glanced at his watch, then spoke softly into his walkie-talkie. He looked at his watch again, bit his bottom lip and turned to Faith and Cal.

“Does your son possibly have a cell phone?”

King’s question thrust the situation up to a more serious level.

For a second Cal recalled how Gage had begged them for his own phone. Most of his friends had phones. But Cal and Faith had said no—it cost too much, he was too young, he’d be tempted to use it in class to play games. They’d refused to give him his own phone for all those reasons, at first. Then they’d caved and got him one, and Gage promptly lost it. They got him a second one and he’d lost that, too. So that was it. No more phones.

Now their rationale seemed infinitely feeble because, facing what they were facing, they’d have given the world to go back in time and get him another phone.

“No.” Faith blinked back tears. “He doesn’t have a phone.”

King’s Adam’s apple rose and fell. He removed his sunglasses and his blue eyes were tinged with concern.

“I’m sorry, folks, but we can’t seem to find him.”

4

Cal couldn’t accept what Vaughn King was implying—that somehow Gage had vanished.

“That’s ridiculous. He didn’t just disappear,” Cal said. “He’s in there.”

Faith cupped her hands over her face. “Where else could he be?”

King stared at Cal, then Faith.

“Our people have already searched. Are you certain he didn’t exit ahead of you and wander down the midway?”

“He was with us in the spinner!” Faith said. “Let us search for him.”

King removed his hat, drew his forearm across his brow, a gesture suggesting that allowing the public access during a Code 99 was against company policy. A second later, as if he’d convinced himself that this situation was exceptional, or maybe to diminish potential liability—we did everything to help those parents—King found himself nodding and clicking the speaker on the small walkie-talkie again.

“This is Vaughn. I’m bringing the parents inside to search.” To Cal and Faith, he said, “All right, let’s go.”

His radio crackled. “But, Mr. King, the policy prohibits—”

“I know what the policy says.” King cut the speaker off. “I’m bringing them in!”

The key ring on King’s belt jingled as they all hurried toward the entrance. Moving around the other side of the attraction, Cal saw the Chambers of Dread for what they were: a series of interconnected truck trailers, forming an interlocking network that claimed to be America’s Biggest Traveling World of Horrors! He noticed the empty stool belonging to the fat ticket taker who’d eyed Faith and wondered if he was helping search for Gage.

King led them through the jaws of the Demon King. There was no fog when they entered; bright lights lit the inside. Their footsteps echoed as they rushed through the spinning portal, which was now stationary. Gage had to be in here. The ever-present thud of the midway outside hammered a deadened rhythm as Cal and Faith looked for their son.

“Gage!” Faith called. “It’s okay! Come out now. It’s Mom and Dad!”

All the interior walls were painted black; so were the floors and ceilings, where Cal noticed nozzles of the sprinkler system and the surveillance cameras. Suddenly the air exploded with ear-piercing staccato beeps. A side exit door opened and closed as a young woman in an Ultra-Fun shirt holding a walkie-talkie stepped inside.

“We checked the area around this exit, Mr. King. We didn’t find him.”

“Thank you, Hayley.”

Cal looked at the small exit light overhead and how the door was also painted black. It blended in with the walls, like camouflage, almost invisible.

“Hold on, I want to look out there,” he said.

The girl let Cal step through the door. The alarm bleated as he took stock of the backside of the structure, one not seen from the midway crowd. His heart was thumping faster now as he saw tentacles of huge power cables flowing on the ground and breathed in the smell of diesel and hydraulic fluid wafting from the generators and the pumps powering the rides nearby. The area was congested with an array of truck trailers, positioned to form narrow walkways leading to RVs and campers where Ultra-Fun staff lived while on the road—a netherworld of latter-day gypsies. Cal scoured the area, then the alarm bleated and King appeared on the stairs with Faith.

“Mr. Hudson!” King shouted. “The alarm would’ve been activated if your son used one of these exits!”

Cal took a second sweep under the trailers for anything that would lead him to Gage. Finding nothing, he conceded King’s point and returned.

Resuming their hunt in the Chambers, Faith and Cal came to the large cloaked figure they’d encountered earlier, the one toting a head. The figure had adjusted the costume. In the naked light, Cal and Faith saw that he was an acne-faced young man of linebacker proportions.

“Hi, Mr. King. We’ve searched everywhere in our section. He’s not here.”

“Thanks, Lonnie,” King said, moving on to the area smelling of rotten eggs—the Dungeons of Dread. Opening a door, he led the Hudsons down a few short steps to a cramped dugout set behind prison bars where actors with clawlike prop hands shook their heads.

“He’s not with us, sir,” a young woman—one of the “damned”—said.

Cal, Faith and King kept going, coming to another exit door, tripping the alarm. At this one, Faith exited and took the stairs, which landed tight to a chain-link fence. Trailers were backed against it. An empty lot stood on the other side of the fence, earthen, muddied and pot-holed with discarded tires, a stove and a filthy sofa—a menacing patch of misery.

“Gage! It’s Mom, honey! Gage!”

The fear that had seeped into her voice was unmistakable, Cal thought, joining her and searching the confined area for several minutes before returning inside. Once more they’d activated the alarm, underscoring their desperation on their way to the next set.

The air smelled as if a gas stove had been switched off when they got to where the burning witch queen had cursed them. The room’s temperature had dropped a little from the oven-level it had been during the act. The actress had left her stake and was still searching the edges of the prop wood pile.

“I’m sorry, ma’am.” The witch shook her head. “He’s not here but I’m sure you’ll find him, don’t worry.”

Moving quickly to the next set they were greeted by the insane butcher still clad in his bloodstained apron and surrounded by props of limbs. Faith was thankful they’d stopped twitching. Still, the scene sent a shiver coiling up her spine. She dropped to her hands and knees, looking under the table and around the suspended torsos. Cal crawled on the floor from the opposite side, the chains creaking as they brushed against the props, which marked them with streaks of stage blood.

“Gage! Gage, come out, son!” Cal called as the butcher and King exchanged a look.

They’d found nothing here.

The butcher shook his hideous face, telling the Hudsons, “We looked everywhere in this section, folks. He’s not with us.”

Cal and Faith hurried ahead with King, stopping to inspect the areas surrounding every exit that they came to. They didn’t find Gage with the fanged clown, who’d hefted the organ from a wall in order to look behind and under it. There was nothing to search at the river of snakes and the cavern of bats and spiders. Those areas had been filled with computer-generated images. Under the lights, these sets were void of anything searchable.

Gage was not among the tombstones in the graveyard. There, the wretched zombie woman offered a sympathetic smile, shaking her head—“He’s not here”—but with her makeup she came off looking like the possessed girl in The Exorcist.

In the spinner, the large round floor was motionless. At the six curtained exits leading to the slides, they saw the chain-saw executioner. He’d pushed his mask up to the top of his head, revealing the face of a handsome man in his thirties.

“I’m so sorry if I scared your little boy.” He offered the Hudsons a small, warm smile. “He’s not here but I’m sure you’ll find him.”

They didn’t.

Cal and Faith’s search of the Chambers had proven to be fruitless.

“This way.” King led them to one of the exits, and the outside stairs down, returning them to the chutes to where a small group of Ultra-Fun staff had gathered.

Amid the chattering walkie-talkies, some of the staff cast looks of awkward pity at the Hudsons standing helplessly at the slides—their faces bearing small smears of stage blood. It had now been nearly half an hour since Cal and Faith had last seen Gage, yet all around them the fair kept going, people kept squealing with joy, the thrill rides kept spinning and twirling, the music kept rocking, as if nothing had changed.

But everything had changed.

Faith’s breaths started coming in gasps; her hands started shaking. “Cal, this can’t be happening, not to us!”

“Take it easy.”

“Maybe, maybe Marshall’s and Colton’s families are here and this is a big joke to scare us? That’s got to be it, right?”

“Faith, I don’t think so.”

“No. No!” Faith’s knees buckled and Cal caught her. “Gage!”

Gage couldn’t be missing, Cal thought. It couldn’t be true. Maybe it was part of some pranking TV show? He struggled to grasp it all but their futile search of the Chambers with its grotesque faces and sets was a descent into Dante’s circles of hell.

Cal felt something monstrous had raked a claw across their lives while the screams of the midway grew louder and he reached for his phone. His fingers were trembling when he pressed the numbers for 911.

“River Ridge Emergency Dispatch, what’s your emergency?”

“My son is—” Cal started but his heart was hammering in his chest and his mind was swirling with disbelief. He glanced at Faith, her anguish piercing him. He couldn’t believe this was happening. What kind of parents lose their kid? He had to stop thinking that way and stay in control.

“Sir, what’s your emergency?”

Cal gripped his cell phone with such force he nearly cracked the casing. “My son is missing.” He resumed reporting Gage’s disappearance, but for one burning instant he felt trapped in a dream.

Wake up, go to Gage’s room—you’ll see he’s there. Wake up!

But Cal didn’t wake up because he wasn’t dreaming.

5

Four minutes after Cal’s call, River Ridge police officers Angie Berg and Erik Ripkowski arrived at the chutes. Already briefed by their dispatcher, they wasted no time and followed procedure.

“We need to talk to you separately, folks,” said Berg, reaching for her notebook before taking Cal aside while her partner stayed with Faith.

The two officers had been close by. Today was their third shift on midway patrol, which was considered a semivacation usually involving nothing more than community relations duty. Berg had become partial to the fudge, while Ripkowski loved the Polish dogs. Up to now, their most serious call had been a woman who’d attempted to steal a fifteen-year-old girl’s phone. Turned out the woman was the intoxicated mother of the boy the girl had dumped. The woman’s husband, who was embarrassed, apologized and took his wife home.

But the Hudson call was different.

It went well beyond a midway nuisance, and of all the young officers on the River Ridge force, Berg and Ripkowski were two of the brightest.

“Take a breath, sir, start at the beginning,” Berg, her sandy hair pulled up in small bun, told Cal, her pen poised.

At this point Gage had been missing for almost forty-five minutes.

Nearby, Ripkowski, whose bodybuilder arms strained his uniform, was taking careful notes as Faith recounted to him what had taken place. At the same time the officers had requested that Vaughn King, who was watching from the distance, keep the Chambers of Dread closed and keep all staff on hand.

“We mean everybody.” Ripkowski pointed his pen. “Nobody leaves.”

After obtaining the Hudsons’ initial statements, details on Gage’s height, weight, hair and eye color, Berg and Ripkowski moved fast, making a number of transmissions on their shoulder microphones and calls on their phones, to their sergeant, and to the River Ridge Fairgrounds security and operations people.

“Do you have a recent photo of your son?” Ripkowski asked. “We need to get it circulated as soon as possible.”

Faith rummaged through her bag, seizing her phone. “Last Saturday—no, sorry, it was Sunday—Gage went to his friend Ethan Clark’s birthday party. I’ve got a picture.” She swiped through images, stopping at Gage smiling for the camera while behind him some joker, likely Marshall, was holding up two fingers bunny-ear-style above his head. “See, he’s wearing the same blue Cubs shirt. It’s got the mustard stain from his hot dog at the party. I told him to put it in the wash.” Faith was almost embarrassed. “I wanted to get the stain out but it’s his favorite shirt.”

“Okay, send it to me now.” Ripkowski held up his phone displaying his email. His phone chimed receipt of the picture after Faith, fingers shaking, typed it into her email app and sent the photo. Ripkowski then forwarded it to a number of addresses and made a call, speaking urgently to a fairgrounds person while nodding to the billboard-size TV screen suspended high above their section of the midway.

The sign was flashing with ads, selfies and images of people having fun at the fair, much like the giant screens at Times Square. There were four screens overlooking the grounds, one at pretty much every compass point.

“Here we go,” Ripkowski said.

Faith gasped when the screen suddenly went blank, then popped to life with Gage smiling down at her, the words Lost/Missing shouted above his head. Gage’s name and description appeared next to his face, in missing-person poster-style with a message urging anyone who’d seen him to call 911.

“That’s up now and will stay up on all the screens,” Ripkowski said. “I’ll send copies to you and your husband to spread the word, too.”

* * *

In the minutes that followed, Cal and Faith called the parents of Gage’s friends hoping that by some wild coincidence they were in fact also here, and maybe Gage had seen them and joined them.

“Hey, Pam, it’s Faith. This is going to sound weird, but are you guys at the fair today?”

“No, I’m home doing a wash. Dean’s with Colton at Walmart looking at fishing rods, or reels, or some man-thing. Why, what’s up?”

Faith stifled her tears, cupping her hand to her face as she spun around in the chaos, seeing Cal on his phone, hearing him speaking to their friends the Thompsons.

“Jack, any chance you, Michelle and Marshall are down here at the fair right now?” he was saying.

Those calls and the others they’d made didn’t yield Gage, but their friends, shocked by the gravity of Gage’s disappearance, began mobilizing to come to the fairgrounds to help. Cal and Faith, both ashen-faced, watched from a few yards away as the search for Gage continued widening with great speed. There was one thing that could help.

Cal called Stu Kroll, his editor at the Star-News.

“It’s Cal again—listen—”

“Hey, it’s okay, we caught it. Changed it to fifty. It’s all good.”

“No, Stu, listen. Our son’s missing down here at the River Ridge fair.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to send you his picture and information from the police—”

“The police?”

“Yeah, it’s looking serious. We need to get the word out now. Would you guys put it up on the site and tweet it out?”

“I—I’m not sure. I mean, you’re an employee—”

“Please, Stu! Please! I’m sending it now. I gotta go.”

Ripkowski and Berg had arranged for a River Ridge patrol car to park at the Hudsons’ house just in case Gage somehow made his way home. Cal and Faith contacted their nearest neighbors—Ethan’s parents, Sam and Rory Clark—who upon hearing the news immediately agreed to join the police at their house to watch for Gage.

Meanwhile, the fairgrounds chief, Herb Dulka, had trotted to the chutes, phone pressed to his ear, joining Ripkowski and Berg, who’d waved in Vaughn King, while more police officers and other security people arrived.

“We’ve circulated Gage’s picture force-wide,” Ripkowski said. “It’ll be up on social media any minute now, notifying everyone across Chicago, the state, the entire country. And I’ll talk to my supervisor to ensure we cover all our bases and look into possibly issuing an Amber Alert.”

Dulka said, “We’ve given the photo to all our people on the grounds at the gates and in the parking lots and we’re starting the shutdown process for the announcement.”

“Good.” Berg turned to King. “Our people and firefighters are going to search the attraction and we’re going to take statements from all of your people working it.”

“Not a problem.” Vaughn nodded.

“But first—” Ripkowski nodded to the Chambers “—what about your cameras in there? You got surveillance footage? It might show us something.”

“Yes, we have cameras and we’re working on getting the footage but there’s a problem.”

“What’s the problem?”

“The playback’s frozen. The Chambers took a lightning strike last week when we were in Milwaukee and the system’s been skittish ever since.”

“We need that footage,” Ripkowski said.

“We’re working on it.”

Near them the Polar Express emitted a hydraulic sigh as it slowed. Then the Zipper groaned to a halt as ride cycles ended and riders disembarked. People were kept off and the rides across the midway remained idle while everywhere the blaring rock music at each ride ceased.

“Almost ready.” Dulka was on his phone, then nodded. “Okay, go!”

A public address system awoke, screeching feedback, then a woman’s voice crackled through it with a message that came through loud and clear.

“Attention everyone. We have an emergency. We’re looking for a little boy, Gage Hudson. He’s nine and he got separated from his folks near the Chambers of Dread a little while ago. Gage’s picture is up on the big screens. Please take a look now, then look around you. Gage, if you’re seeing this, go to any ticket booth, police officer or security person, and they’ll find your folks for you. Everyone, please look around your area for Gage and let’s get him back to his folks. Please, do it now—it’ll only take a moment. Thank you.”

The chaos had been subdued and a somber air fell across the thousands of people at the River Ridge Fairgrounds. It was soon interrupted by the distant calling of people shouting, “Gage!” from various corners, as if engaged in a Marco Polo game. But it wasn’t long before the murmuring gave way to demands for the party to resume as some calls devolved into “Gage, you’re in deep shit!” and “Your mama’s gonna whip your ass, Gage!”

During the fifteen minutes the midway was halted, no walkie-talkies crackled and no phones rang to end Cal and Faith’s agony. No one had spotted Gage. With each terrible, surreal second that passed, Cal and Faith felt their horrible fear increasing and their panic rising.

It was all they could do to keep from falling off the earth.