Chapter 2: The Last Ride
Bursting out of the funhouse’s exit, they were plunged back into the overwhelming sensory assault of the carnival. The manic music, the flashing lights, the relentless motion of the empty rides—it was all still there, a vibrant, terrifying purgatory. The guttural roar of frustration from the funhouse faded, replaced once again by the cheerful, tinny calliope tune that felt more threatening than any scream.
They stood for a moment, gasping for air on the midway, hearts still hammering from their confrontation in the hall of mirrors. The smell of licorice and burnt sugar clung to them, a phantom reminder of the illusion they had shattered.
“Okay, that was… not fun,” Jasper panted, leaning against a garishly painted hot dog stand. “On a scale of one to ten, I give that funhouse a solid negative a million.”
“It’s angry now,” Luna said, her gaze sweeping across the empty carnival. “We weren’t supposed to get out. We broke its toy.”
“Good,” Ash grunted, a fierce, defiant light in his eyes. “Let’s break some more.”
“We need a plan that doesn’t involve running into the nearest scary-looking building,” Finn said, wiping a sheen of cold sweat from his forehead. “We need to find a way out of the whole carnival, not just one attraction.”
Raven nodded, her mind racing. The Shadow Man had called this place a “playground.” Playgrounds had rules. They had boundaries. “He’s right. We need to find the edge. The exit. It can’t go on forever.”
They chose a direction, away from the leering clown face of the funhouse, and started walking down the main midway. The air was thick with the manufactured smells of a fair—the buttery scent of popcorn, the sugary sweetness of caramel, the crisp tang of candy apples. The aromas mingled with the smell of old, damp wood, creating a perfume of joyous nostalgia turned rotten.
They walked with purpose, trying to ignore the spinning rides and the beckoning, empty game stalls. They passed a ring toss where the plastic rings were stacked in perfect, untouched pyramids. They walked by a water gun race where the targets, painted like grinning goblins, remained stubbornly down. The emptiness was the most terrifying part. It was a world built for crowds, for laughter, for life—and it had none.
After walking for what felt like ten minutes, they rounded a corner and stopped dead. Before them stood a colossal wooden structure, a skeleton of beams and trestles reaching into the dark, starless sky. It was a roller coaster, ancient and rickety, its tracks a winding ribbon of potential death. A large, hand-painted sign, its colors faded and peeling, hung above the entrance. It read: “The Last Ride.”
It was the same roller coaster they had seen when they first arrived.
“We’ve been here before,” Willow said, her voice trembling. “This is where we came out of the forest.”
“No,” Finn said, shaking his head in disbelief as he consulted the mental map he’d been building. “We walked in the opposite direction. We should be on the other side of the carnival. It’s not possible.”
A chilling sense of futility settled over them. The carnival was playing with them, twisting its own geography to herd them where it wanted them to go.
“Let’s go back,” Raven said, her jaw tight. “We’ll retrace our steps. We won’t let it win.”
They turned and walked back the way they came, their pace quicker, more desperate. They kept their eyes fixed straight ahead, ignoring the taunting emptiness around them. They walked past the same hot dog stand, the same empty game stalls. But when they rounded the next corner, expecting to see the mocking face of the funhouse, they were met with the same sight: the towering, skeletal frame of The Last Ride.
It was impossible. A wave of despair washed over the group.
“It’s an endless path,” Willow whispered, the words from the Black Hollow legend taking on a new, horrifying meaning. “Just like the forest. No matter which way you go, you always end up back here.”
They tried again, taking a different path, cutting across a field of trampled, confetti-strewn grass. They walked for fifteen minutes, a tense, silent march. And when they emerged from between a Skee-Ball alley and a cotton candy stand, there it was, waiting for them. “The Last Ride.”
It was the only option. The carnival had made its choice for them.
Defeated, they trudged toward the entrance of the coaster. The scent of caramel, treats and aged wood was strongest here, a final, pleasant memory before the terror. A single ride car, designed to look like a minecart, was waiting at the loading platform. And standing beside the control lever was a figure.
He was tall and thin, shrouded in the dark, greasy overalls of a ride operator. His face was hidden in the deep shadow of a worn cap, but as they approached, he looked up, and a grin split the darkness. It was a wide, toothy smile, filled with too many teeth, all of them sharpened to fine points. He didn’t speak. He simply beckoned them aboard with one long, grease-stained finger.
“I am not getting on that thing,” Jasper said, his voice a terrified squeak. “Did you see his teeth? He looks like a piranha in a hat.”
The operator’s grin widened. He gestured again, more insistently this time. The path behind them, the midway they had just walked down, dissolved into a swirling, impenetrable black fog. There was no going back.
With a collective sense of doom, they climbed into the ride car. The wooden seats were cold and worn smooth by time. Raven and Ash took the front seat, followed by Finn and Willow, with Luna and Jasper in the back. As Jasper sat, the operator reached over and pulled down a heavy, metal lap bar for each pair of seats. It locked into place with a heavy, final-sounding clank.
The operator’s smile never wavered. He placed a hand on the large, wooden lever that controlled the ride, gave them a final, knowing nod, and pulled it back.
With a lurch and a groan of protesting wood, the ride began. It moved slowly at first, the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of the chain lift pulling them up the steep incline. They rose higher and higher, the rest of the garish, empty carnival spreading out below them like a blueprint for a nightmare. The scents of caramel, popcorn, and candy apples wafted up from the midway, a sweet, deceptive perfume.
“This isn’t so bad,” Jasper muttered, his eyes squeezed shut. “It’s just a roller coaster. A rickety, ancient, probably-not-up-to-code roller coaster operated by a creature from the abyss. But still.”
The higher they climbed, the colder the air became. The cheerful carnival music faded away, replaced by the howling of a wind that seemed to come from nowhere. They looked up. The peak of the hill wasn’t getting any closer. The track seemed to be stretching, building itself as they ascended, climbing endlessly into the black sky.
“This isn’t right,” Finn said, his knuckles white on the lap bar. “We should have reached the top by now.”
They looked down. The carnival was a tiny, distant smear of colored lights. They were impossibly high, shrouded in a cold, unnatural darkness. The clack-clack-clack of the chain lift stopped.
They reached the crest. For a moment, the car teetered on the edge, balanced between the endless climb and the terrifying drop. They weren’t just at the top of a roller coaster. They were at the top of the world, looking down into a sheer, vertical drop that plunged into absolute blackness. The track below was gone.
And then, with a sound like a final, metallic sigh, their safety restraints lifted up and away from them, vanishing into thin air.
There was nothing holding them in.
Before a scream could even form in their throats, the car plunged over the edge.
It was not a ride; it was a freefall. The wind ripped at them, a physical force that tried to tear them out the back of the car, while the lack of a restraint threatened to fling them up and out into the void.
“Hold on!” Raven screamed over the roar of the wind.
Instinct took over. Finn grabbed Willow, holding her firmly in her seat. Ash and Raven linked arms, bracing themselves against the front of the car. In the back, Jasper was sliding out of his seat, his eyes wide with sheer terror. Luna grabbed the back of his shirt with one hand and held onto the side of the car with the other, her jaw set with grim determination.
The track reappeared beneath them just as suddenly as it had vanished. The car slammed onto it with a bone-jarring crash, and the ride became a chaotic, violent frenzy. It twisted and turned in impossible ways, executing loops that weren’t there a second before and corkscrews that defied physics. The wooden structure groaned and splintered around them, pieces of the track breaking off and plummeting into the darkness just moments after they passed over them.
It was a ride that was actively trying to kill them. They worked together, a desperate, silent unit, shifting their weight, holding each other down, a life-or-death ballet against physics gone mad. Every brutal turn, every stomach-lurching drop was a new test. The forest, the carnival, whatever this entity was—it didn’t want to just scare them; it wanted them to feel hopeless, to feel the fragile, breakable nature of their own bodies. It wanted them to fall.
Just when they felt their strength giving out, their grips failing, the ride smoothed out. The violent twists ceased. The car slowed, gliding smoothly along a straight stretch of track. They collapsed back into their seats, gasping, bruised, and trembling with a mixture of terror and relief.
The car rolled to a gentle stop. But they weren’t at the loading platform. The grinning operator was gone. They were in a different part of the carnival, a section they hadn’t seen before. It was darker here, the lights fewer and farther between. The boisterous music was gone, replaced by an eerie, profound silence. The only scent was the cold, damp smell of old wood and impending rain.
The lap bars reappeared and lifted, releasing them. Wordlessly, they stumbled out of the car and onto the deserted midway, their legs shaking uncontrollably. They had survived The Last Ride.
They looked back at the coaster. It was no longer a towering, impossible structure. It was a small, dilapidated kiddie coaster, its highest point no more than fifteen feet off the ground. The sign, “The Last Ride,” was still there, but it looked pathetic now, not menacing. The illusion was broken.
“It… it was all in our heads,” Finn stammered, looking from the small coaster back to his friends.
“The fall felt real enough,” Ash said, rubbing a bruise on his arm.
They had been played with, terrorized, and deposited in a new, even more menacing section of the park. The game wasn’t over. It was just entering a new phase. And as they stood in the heavy, watchful silence, they knew the carnival was just getting started with them.
The Legend Of Black Hollow. © 2025 | Horrified Candles. All Rights Reserved.
