She knew this park.
And it had never scared her before.
Now, she wasn’t staring at a weathered sign with faded and peeling paint. She wasn’t staring at the locked gate and rusty chain. The notice declaring legal woe upon any who set foot inside the fairgrounds was gone.
The metal was no longer rusted. The paint was no longer peeling. It was all…brand new. It looked like it had just been installed. She parked her car, stopped the engine, and climbed out.
“Grand Reopening! Tonight!” read the painted drop cloth that hung from the brand-new entry sign. But it wasn’t just the sign that looked new. Looking past the gate to the ticket booth and beyond, she stared in shocked silence. She turned off her car and opened the door, standing there like she was gaping at Godzilla.
Harrow Faire wasn’t abandoned anymore.
The tilted, dilapidated structures had been straightened. The paint was fresh. The light sockets that had been missing most of their bulbs had been fixed and replaced. The signs were bright and legible. All the rot and wear had simply…been erased.
But nothing looked modern, either. It all looked vintage, like a careful restoration of the original park. It was a style that just wasn’t done anymore.
Who had done it? When? And how? And…why? It wasn’t like there was a lot of business up in bumble-fuck-nowhere New Hampshire.
How did I miss this? How the hell did I drive past this every day and not see people working on it? I know my mind wanders when I drive, but this is a new level of oblivious.
There was no other explanation for the restored park. She must simply be that dense.
“Hello, there!”
Cora shrieked and jumped a foot in the air, whirling to face the sudden voice. She hadn’t seen the man on the ladder behind the entrance sign over the parking lot gate. He looked like he had just finished hanging up the banner.
He was climbing down and waved at her with a friendly smile. “Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.”
“It’s okay.” She smiled warily back at him. The man seemed perfectly fine, but something about him seemed… somehow odd. He was handsome. There was nothing obviously unusual about him. But he was dressed in clothing that looked like it dated from the forties. He had a white shirt and wore black suspenders over it that held up a pair of trousers stained with paint. He was broad at the shoulders and had an easy, casual flair about him. Even with the weird dated outfit. “When did all this happen?” She gestured at the Faire.
“Huh?”
“I swear this place was still abandoned yesterday.”
“Oh!” He laughed. “Eh, time flies, doesn’t it?” He shrugged. When he walked up to her car, he took a moment to look it over with a broad smile on his face. She wasn’t sure why. It was a beat-up old Ford Focus. “Nice car.”
“Thanks?” She chuckled. What a weird man. Maybe he was hitting on her. That was the only reason anybody would complement her ugly-ass car.
“I’m Jack.” He reached out to shake her hand and realized his own was covered in paint. He wiped it off, looked at his palm, then, seeing that it was all still there because it was dry, shrugged and held it out again.
“Cora.” She smiled and shook his hand. She wasn’t surprised at how firm the gesture was, what with the muscles the guy was sporting. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too! You should come to the Faire tonight. See the shows. Ride the rides. Eat the terrible fried food. I mean—well, the food’s honestly great, but it’s terrible for you.” Jack scratched the back of his neck.
“I love pretty much any food whose method of delivery’s a stick.” Cora shook her head with a smile and looked out at the park. The signage had all been redone in careful hand-painted curling letters. She could see the Ferris wheel rotating slowly. “Who paid for all this?”
“Oh? Mr. Harrow, of course.” She looked back at the guy like he had grown a second head. He looked confused at best. “What?”
“Mr. Harrow? The guy who used to own the park?”
“Who else?”
“I’m assuming he’s been dead for, like, a hundred years.”
“Well, yes, but his estate still exists.” Jack smiled helpfully. Now she felt like the moron. “Things got hung up in legal battles when the last of his kids died. But now the funds got freed up, and here we are.”
It must have taken millions of dollars to restore the park. She honestly couldn’t believe what she was looking at. She swore it had been abandoned just yesterday. This kind of work would take months, if not years, and there would have been articles in the paper about it.
Not just poof.
Maybe she had simply missed it. She ran her hand over her face. That must be it. That was the only option. Seriously, the only option.
She looked back over to Jack. He seemed like a nice guy. She was surprised she didn’t recognize him—Glendale was a small-ass town. But he probably was brought in from elsewhere to do the work. It wasn’t like there was a cadre of restoration specialists hanging out in Nowhere, New Hampshire. Maybe he was a theatre guy from New York or something.
“Are you coming tonight?” He smiled hopefully.
Nothing interesting happened in Nowhere, New Hampshire. So, how could she resist? “Yeah. I think that sounds like fun.”
“Bring some friends! I’ll be working in the big top all night, but if I see you, I’ll wave at you from the rigging. I run the lines.” He scratched at his short dark hair with stubby fingernails. He clearly worked with his hands all day. “Nice to meet you, Cora.”
“You too, Jack. Have a good one.”
He walked away with another casual wave. She climbed back into her car. Shutting the door, she winced in pain. She had woken up with a dislocated wrist, and it was still sore. Such was the joy of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, she supposed. Her muscles and tendons were hypermobile.
Sure, she was super bendy, but it wasn’t as fun as it sounded. It meant that some days she felt like a ragdoll whose stitching was coming undone.
After putting the joint back where it belonged that morning, she had just taken some Naproxen and gone about her day. It happened more often than not. Nothing ruined a day like waking up to play the new game of “that was fine last night…”
All the way to work, she was lost in thought and cruised along on autopilot. She got her coffee from the breakroom, and nearly missed saying hello to half her coworkers. She couldn’t stop thinking about Harrow Faire.
Weird. This whole thing is just so weird.
Luckily, her job was mind-numbingly routine. It always was. She could just phone it in, coast through, and do just fine. Overqualified, her boss called her. But there wasn’t much else to do in the small town. No promotions were available in the tiny branch, and there weren’t many other prospects.
So, she was happy to pay her mortgage and go on with her life. Just like most people, she supposed. She had wanted to move to Boston or New York, or even settle for Portland, before she had to give up photography.
But with her chronic pain, she couldn’t lug the equipment anymore. Not even for weddings. It had just become too much.
She couldn’t do a lot of things anymore.
At lunch, she searched for news articles about Harrow Faire reopening. She came back empty-handed. Just Wikipedia pages and old photographs. She asked her coworkers—who were lovely people, but all had thirty-plus years on her and were all just as boring as the job itself—and came up just as empty. None of them had even noticed it had been restored.