Scared Stiff by Willo Davis Roberts Page A

check out the Pirate’s Cave the way you were checking out everything else, so I ducked in here. Thought I’d give you a surprise. Didn’t cost you anything, either.”
    The boy laughed again, only this time he didn’t sound crazy.
    â€œIt was stupid,” Julie said, but she wasn’t angry. “Just like that stupid play you wrote for the sixth grade to put on at school. That’s how I knew it was you. It was the same stupid laugh.”
    The flashlight dropped a little, and I finally saw the face behind it and realized why it had been so difficult to make out. Connie Morse—what kind of name was that for a boy?—was black.
    â€œThe play wasn’t stupid. It was a fantasy,” the boy called Connie stated. “I got an A for writing it, and another one for being the insane Dr. Murder.”
    â€œWhat are you doing in Wonderland? Nobody’s supposed to be in here.”
    Including us, I thought. Kenny was staring at the other kid and didn’t seem scared anymore.
    â€œSame thing you are,” Connie Morse said. “I been watching you for weeks. I followed you in here a few times.”
    â€œSpying on me?” Julie was mildly indignant, probably remembering how silly she might have appeared as she played she was going to the moon in the rocket ride.
    â€œWell, you helped entertain me. Mostly, I really came in here to have a place to hide when my old man is drunk,” Connie said. “He starts fights with my mom and I can’t take it; when I say anything, or sometimes if all I do is look like I might say something, he belts me. One time he did it and I took off, didn’t have anywhere to go. I came into the RV park to use the Coke machine and saw where there were loose boards in the back fence. I worked ’em open farther and I been coming here ever since. Nobody else ever shows up except you. It’s safe. I go home after I figure my old man has passed out.”
    â€œWell, it’s getting dark outside. Let’s get out of here,” Julie said, and I muttered agreement.
    â€œWho are these guys?” Connie wanted to know, swinging the beam of light across us again.
    â€œRick and Kenny Van Huler. They’re staying with their uncle, Mr. Svoboda.”
    â€œThe old guy in the purple bus?”
    Connie was crouched in a hollowed-out place where he was surrounded, I could now see dimly, by a tropical beach with a treasure chest spilling gold coins and jewels onto the sand. For a few minutes I’d forgotten this was a scary place for kids, and that it was supposed to be about pirates.
    Connie suddenly slid off the shelf into the water, which must have been barely deep enough to float the gondolas. “Come on, I’ll take you on the rest of the tour,” he offered. “I’m Conrad Morse, only everybody calls me Connie. I’ll pull the front boat, you hang on from behind, okay?”
    So we got the tour. The tunnel twisted and turned inside the artificial mountain, and around every corner was a new scene on one of the shelves of “rock” on each side.
    â€œWhen the park’s operating,” Connie told us as he waded forward through the shallow water, “there’re electric eyes that trigger the lights so each scene pops up at you when you reach it. It’s not as dramatic with a flashlight, but you can see what’s here.”
    He’d obviously been through here often, because he knew what came next each time. He’d shine the flashlight on the pirates as they buried their treasure, and on their ship as they made someone walk the plank, and then there was a pretty spooky scene where everything was supposed to be underwater—there were fish suspended around the hulk of a sunken ship, and another pirate treasure spilling out onto the bottom of the sea.
    Our guide stopped at that one, playing the flashlight over sea urchins and starfish and a corroded anchor so we could see the