Devils Cavern (eBook)

Scott Stohler (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
270 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-8008-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Pretty much everyone loves theme parks. But dark things happen - An American tradition, from a Danish inspiration. Walt Disney completed the picture in 1955. Creating a special place where young and old imaginations run wild - An American Theme Park. Kinder-un Haus Marchen, 'A Place Where Fairy Tales Come True', is a theme park from yesteryear. A park created before Walt's twinkle in his eye. Nestled in the German Black Forest this aging park created by Herr Gossler needed a sprucing up. Two design firms were hired - they disappeared. The Brothers Grimm amusing tales were the tinder that Disney used to build his vision. The Brothers Grimm other stories were the bridge that Herr Gossler used to cross into Hades and create his twisted version. Tales of murder, sexual and physical abuse, infanticide, genocide and incest told a different story. Franklin Thompson finds himself caught in the crossfire as he searches for his estranged and now vanished brother. Fleeing the authorities, he immerses himself into a decade's old mystery. Brigette Monchau leads her group of designers with dreams of making a financial killing, but finds that she is dead right. This is not a horror story in the cerebral way of thinking scary, this is a tale - a fairy tale, that takes you on a spine-chilling white-knuckled ride into Hell. Pretty much everyone loves theme parks - but, oh there are a few that do not and they should count their blessings. Fairy tales live on in Kinder-un Haus Marchen.

Textauszug

Devils Cavern

Chapter One ~
Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen Haaren

“I can’t bloody believe it. It seems every frigging time I step away, these damn sketches take on the same hideous expressions we’re trying to rid them of!”

“Danielle, take is easy luv.” Amanda called from across the klieg lit stage-set; “We’ll nail this sucker within the night. Calm down. Trust me.”

“Oh sure, trust you, brilliant.” Came a high-pitched voice across the black edged space. “Trust you. The one that begged to get to come to the Black Forest, begged and cajoled, and was down on her knees for some…”

“Jeremy,” A spectral voice powered over the darkened space, “shut the hell up and ‘just’ try and finish your direction for tonight.”

“What’s that crack supposed to mean, JON?” Jeremy was up from his portable drafting table in a flash, hazel eyes inflamed as he swept his collection of oil pastels from the vellum-drawing medium onto the uneven floor in a rage.

“DON’T even think of stepping from that mess Jeremy, you’ll kill yourself slipping on one of these damn heads. Just sit back down and lets all take a couple of deep calming breaths, we sure as bloody hell deserve it. And then, let’s think of what kind of take-out from the food courts we haven’t tried.”

“Not sure there is any cuisine we haven’t tried Danielle. And anyway, after the last few days I can damn well say that there isn’t a foodstuff in the world that goes well with sulfur fumes.” Came the throaty reply from Amanda.

“Point well put,” answered Danielle as she took her own breath of the vitriolic acid-tinged air that hung humid and heavy in the cavern. “I’ve been here so long I am starting to get used to the bloody stuff.”

“Not me,” replied Amanda as she gingerly stepped away from her canvas-backed chair and stretched her lithe body, slowly and sensuously. Long golden blond hair falling back in a cascade as she rotated like a willow twig caught in a gentle eddy. Several pops were audible as her shoulders adjusted, eliminating some of her tension.

“Doesn’t that hurt like hell, Amanda?” Auburn haired Danielle asked as she also peeled herself away from her brightly lit workspace.

“Not a bit. Jeremy, you mellowed out yet?” Amanda asked as the six-foot eight dark chocolate skinned designer slowly picked his precious coloring sticks from the cracked skulls and bleached eye sockets that carpeted the cavernous room.

“Sure, not a friggin problem luv. I can cope with the best of them.” He arranged a handful of the pastels in the proper color spectrum. “It’s just this space, it’s so…”

“Hellaous!”

“Jon, you coming down?” Amanda yelled to the fly space over the attraction, where the incorporeal voice originated.

“Just a couple more minutes.” Came the reply, floating disembodied from the obscure heights, to waft across the frozen animatronic figure that represented the main attraction for this section of an infamous ride through hell.

“Don’t sweat it, we’ll get consensus out of this mess and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be out of here tonight before three friggin AM.”

“Jesus, Amanda, you’re starting to sound just like me. A foul mouthed, foul tempered, foul…”

“Foul breathed.” Interjected a laughing Danielle, her stretching exercises halted mid back bend.

“Up yours,” Chuckled Jeremy, bringing the two women to smiles. “OK, what the bloody hell do we have to show for tonight? Ross’s detailed explanation of the mechanical and electrical machinations can wait till dinner, or breakfast, or whatever the bloody hell we’re up to. Just how many hours have we been at it today?”

“You mean yesterday, we’ve been in here…” Danielle checked her scuffed and yellow lensed Mickey Mouse watch in the dim light, “ten hours straight.”

“No way!” Jeremy exclaimed, aghast at the revelation.

“Yes way.” Amanda replied as she finished limbering up her stiff joints. Her four-foot ten frame nowhere near the six-foot height of the sensuous model maker Danielle. “Ten bloody hours. What, suddenly you have a problem with overtime pay?”

“Well, no, but I was sure it was still early evening. This place is playing havoc on my body clock, when was that last joint work session?”

“About eleven, luv.” Amanda replied.

“AM or PM?” Jeremy inquired, still unbelieving as to the sudden passage of time. His long bony fingers massaged his suddenly pounding temples.

“PM, of course, Jeremy. What have you come up with since our last little charette?”

“I think I’ve been able to pull it all together, in model form.” Danielle cut in before Jeremy could get a word out. “It’s rough, way rough, but I think it captures the direction and feeling that we’ve all been focusing on.”

“Anything but grotesque, that’s the design direction I’m taking it away from. This is one scary place.” Amanda commented.

“And stanky.” Jeremy interjected with a chuckle.

“Scary and stanky,” Amanda laughed.

“Nobody is doubting that, the whole park is macabre.”

“Scary, it is. Frightening. Disturbing. Anti-Disney.” Jeremy expounded.

“The archbishop is anti-Disney to you, Jeremy.” Amanda replied.

“Well yeah, but don’t you think this place is creepy?” Jeremy asked as he balanced precariously on the top of a polished skull.

“You bet I do, we all do. Evil, that’s what it seems to me.” Replied Amanda and then with a little shudder added,” pure bloody evil.”

“I think that was the idea on opening day, luv.” Jeremy noted after a brief pause as the threesome glanced warily about the darkened cavern. “Let’s scare the hell out of the kiddies. See them soil their little blue sailor knickers, should be a jolly ole time for one and all. Brilliant, and wicked!” Jeremy raised his willowy arms over his close shaved dark hair and waved them menacingly, looking like an elongated character from Tim Burton’s, ‘Nightmare before Christmas’.

“Don’t kill yourself on this creepy floor, Jeremy.” Danielle cautioned the tall designer as he danced around his workspace. Stepping head-to-head.

Jeremy capriced along the fuzzy edge of utility light that pooled around his easel and chair. “Brothers Grimm, true to heart. No sugar coating the fairy tales here, no coddling to the young-uns, the real thing. Face to face with histories demons, 1940’s Hard Copy.”

“You really think they were twisted, Jeremy?” Amanda asked as she picked her way from her illuminated work area to join the art director alongside a themed ride vehicle parked in the sulfurous shadows.

“You read all that crap they sent with us, we’re the bloody experts now. And for damn sure those brothers were short a few screws, emotionally scarred, or such psycho-babble. They certainly added their own living interpretation to those timeless fables. They had to, just couldn’t leave it alone. This is ‘in-your-face’ realism.”

“You think?” Danielle joined in as she carefully carried a yellow foam cutout across the rough floor of the ride envelope. “I think they did what they could to portray an accurate picture of the stories, legends and fables that were handed down from generation to generation. They were historians, sure a bit on the strange side, but writers that were able to document history.”

“History of their own making, Danielle.” Jeremy responded caustically. “Just look around you.” His long arms embracing the darkened section of the cavern, toward a themed rattletrap wood slat wagon just past the narrow-blackened entry where the cavern swelled ten meters above the ride track. Gigantic stalactites hung menacingly from the darkened upper reaches. Cobwebs thick with spiders hung in drifts about them. Webs that when animated, with the application of gusts of chilled air, swayed through the stage set. Below the spider level was the stage flooring, a rolling landscape composed entirely of skulls. The whitewashed spheres were piled everywhere. The wagon, when it took its load of white-faced guests, passed right over the whitewashed skulls – seeming to crush them under their wobbly iron wheels.

“A creative interpretation by grandfather Gossler?” Danielle responded unsure of how to answer.

“Then what about that?” Jeremy pointed theatrically toward the obscenely large animatronic figure. A twisted evil form, extremely male in gender, loomed near the ride track, waiting to be energized so it could literally scare hell into the passing guests.

“A bit off mark that’s for sure. The backstory has the kindly devil’s grandmother helping the miller’s son when she finds him wandering through hell searching for the devil’s three golden hairs.” Amanda added for the design groups edification.

“If I ran into that I’d be out of here in a flash, beautiful princess or not.”...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 20.8.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-8008-8 / 1098380088
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-8008-3 / 9781098380083