The Hardy Fall Festival of Fun Day of Fun, Part Four

After beating a hasty retreat from Stuckey's Bridge, we quickly hightailed it to Meridian. The haints had given us the hungries, so we stopped at Cracker Barrell--where we'd begin eating only an hour after we arrived there. The place was as busy as I've ever seen it, and we had to wait thirty minutes in the gift shop trying to keep Georgia from breaking anything too expensive. After we sat down, Foot Foot and I decided to see how patient our children could be, so we ordered the slowest-cooking, longest-wait-time item on the menu: bigthick steaks--well done. Forty minutes later--after Foot Foot and I laughed ourselves silly watching Georgia throw licked-wet sugar and Sweet & Low packets at the foreheads of the patrons in all the surrounding tables and Nicholas unearth every nugget o' gold in every orivice and crevice, our food arrived; we ate it all in five minutes flat (I timed it), with Foot Foot finishing first.

After the gorge, we drove to nearby Marion to visit the Haunted Trail. In someone's front yard, we saw a wrecker, orange light flashing a warning and invitation to brave backroads travelers. The beacon worked as warning for us, as Foot Foot deemed it as a demarcation of a crime scene, and did I want to partake in that? Yes, I did, for I had my trusty Avengers membership card that would grant me security clearance, but my wife thought that though, yes, I did indeed have justifiable jurisdiction and was surely experienced and adept enough--as an Avenger--to handle the case, the children just might be put in harm's way, and that was not acceptable.

So, we turned around and headed back, deflated and defeated, but--hey! What's that? A spook in the front yard? No cop cars? Well, ah-hah, there we have it, and a' haunting we will go! I pulled into the yard and right by the port-a-john (in case the quicky-digested steak worked its way through Foot Foot's digestive system before it was time to, uh, go). Since Georgia was asleep, Foot Foot decided to stay in the Jeep to hold watch, while Nicholas and I disembarked. Walking over to the ticket table, I asked my son if he was too scared to go, and that it was alright if he was, that we could just go back home. He stopped in his tracks and told me to look in his face. I did so, and he laughed in my face, telling me then that he was going to laugh in the face of fear just like he had just done in mine--and he was going to hold my arm the whole way, too, just to make sure I wouldn't run away screaming. He'd be there for me, he told me.
We approached the ticket table, paid our admittance, and the young lady taking our money asked us how brave we were. I told her, "Not very," but Nicholas told the woman not to listen to that freak hippie, and that we were so brave that we'd go it alone, no need for the comfort of strangers. The girl peered deeply into his eyes and furrowed her brows, but Nicholas was blue steel, and the ticket taker started to sweat. She averted her eyes, beaten by the redhead, and she signaled her compatriots on her CB that Fat Man and Little Boy were on their way, for them--her peers--to drop the bomb on us, to hold nothing back. Nicholas gave her a wink and an upward nod of the head, and we walked through the entrance.

The first object I noticed was a tombstone that read, "Barry D. Live." A skeletal hand was reaching out from the earf, and I closed my eyes at the terror--and didn't open them for the remainder of the three-hour tour through the seven levels of Hell. Growls, wails, screams for our souls, cries for skin and blood and brain, deep-throated declarations of imminent injury, torturous moans of pain promised and received: all these sounds reverberating through my eardrums and calling forth evil imagery of Boschian and Dorian depravity. Throughout our wanderings, Nicholas held steadfast in resolve as I held tightly to his arm (so tightly that I left deep bruises), and my son never uttered a peep of cowardice, never any evidence of fear. I, o the other hand, never opened my eyes until we--his Virgil to my Dante--emerged unscathed on the other side; thus, I have no pictures to proffer, other than the one (pre-entrance) above and the one (with Mr. Tree) below, and in both cases, I have masked evidence of how frightened I was.

After leaving The Haunted Trail, we stopped at a convenience store to gas up and grab some strong cups of coffee. When I finished filling the tank, I stepped into the Jeep and noticed that Nicholas was sitting up straight with a blank expression on his face. I asked him if anything was wrong, but he didn't respond. Foot Foot shrugged her shoulders, and I drove away. Before we left Marion's city limits, Nicholas started moaning. Foot Foot and I looked back,

and Nicholas reached out his arm to grab Foot Foot! She dodged his initial reach, but he was quick and prepared, and when she leaned left, he grabbed her head with his other hand. He moaned louder and louder, and Foot Foot tried to break free, bumping into me, making me lose momentary control of the vehicle. The Jeep swirved and skuttered and skittered, and Foot Foot's camera (for the only time it is free of her hand is when I pry it away from her at bedtime) started taking pictures, the flash popping brightly in all directions, and I was blinded.

I saw an open field just before the last flash blinded my eyes, and I pulled over, jumping a curb in the process, jarring Nicholas (and Foot Foot) in the process. I stopped the Jeep, and I asked Foot Foot if she was okay. She groaned and complained and nagged about my driving, so I knew she was just fine. I looked back to tend to Nicholas, and he was rubbing his head. "Son," I asked him, "Son, are you alright?" He rubbed his head some more, and he moaned...but this time his moan was more normal, less gutteral and low pitched.

"Dad?" he asked.

"Yes, son?"

"Dad...." His quizzical countenance morphed into a sly grin. "Do you wanna see something really scary?"