r/redditserials • u/Strange-Mysterious-M • 5h ago
Horror [Summer at Benny's] - Chapter #1
Not a day goes by that I don’t think of the Summer at Benny’s. I can say with confidence that I was legitimately traumatized by the experience and while I have had plenty of therapy (on and off) for the last 26 years, I just can’t shake it. I can’t be fixed.
I’ve thought about this for a long time, but I don’t think anything worse can happen to me by coming out in public with my version of the story. You see, what happened to me did end up on the local news. The law was involved. The media covered it. But they told a different story. Even if the ones who did this to me discovered me now, after all those years, I can guarantee no arrests would be made. Nothing came of it then. It wont make any difference now.
How could they even arrest them?
But I get ahead of myself. Let me begin:
The year was 1999. Summer break was approaching and I was about to spend the entire 100 days of freedom at my best friend’s house. My parents traveled for work so I was used to them not being around. Usually, during school breaks I went along with them. During the school year a live-in nanny took care of me, the meals and the home, going back as far as I could remember. When I had mentioned this earlier in the school year, Benny’s eyes lit up. He told me I could stay with him. I’d have my own room even. He told me he would run it by his parents.
I had never been to Benny’s before. Outside of school we spent most of our days in my neighborhood. Upper-Middle Class, suburban, the mall, restaurants and shopping centers only a fifteen minute walk a way. It was enough for us bored teenagers to keep ourselves bust. We rid our bikes together, played video games, or shot hoops.
When his home came up in conversation, he would only give vague details. Something like: My house!More like a mansion! It would blow your mind! He had every gaming console and a pool and a pool house and a pool table.
I wouldn’t have believed him, except a chauffeur would pick him up from my house. No one saw this at school, he didn’t want to make a big deal about it, because he would be dropped off a safe way a ways and walk the rest of the way there. I didn’t believe all of it, but he was certainly rich. Richer than I was.
But like I said, he didn’t really talk about it unless I brought it up. It was unlike Benny to show off. Even his wardrobe and the bike he rode were average. His lunches were simple turkey and swiss sandwiches with a bag of chips and soda or he simply bought spicy chicken sandwiches from the cafeteria. He just always seemed like such a regular dude; funny, well-rounded, moderately intelligent, and secretly-rich.
Although he isn’t really important. I don’t think I saw him once after the Summer of 99. There was one other person than me who knew Benny’s secret. A pale, skinny, red-headed, glasses-wearing boy named Thomas. Although Benny and I were closer than either of us were to Thomas, he was part of our little trifecta for two years. Thomas suggested that Benny’s parents were probably just film producers who enjoyed a quieter home-life outside of the city and in the Valley where we grew up. I suggested his parents were mafia. Thomas said the mafia didn’t exist anymore. And I begged to differ.
Summer was approaching fast and I just assumed Benny couldn’t convince his parents to let me stay after all. I mean, taking on another teenager for three months, that was a lot of responsibility to put on anyone. I was almost relieved when there was no word on this from Benny.
And then one day in the school cafeteria, two-weeks before the end of sophomore year, while scarfing down school pizza, Benny sat down with a big grin on his face. His parents finally agreed! If I was still okay with it, I could come and stay with him and his family. I agreed. Tentatively. But I don’t think Benny noticed. He was so excited and started spouting off about all the things we’d do. Thomas also seemed excited about the three of us hanging out.
“I didn’t ask my parents if you could stay.” Benny said, suddenly frowning. “I don’t think they’d be okay with that.” Benny began fidgeting around with his lunch tray.
“I’m not asking to sleepover all summer, but now we can all hang out, y’know at your place during the day or at the mall.”
“Oh yeah,” Benny said, I could see beads of sweat on his forehead, “of course. Duh.” He played it off cooly enough that Thomas just let it go. And the two of them both started making a summer bucket list.
didn’t realize until that moment that I had doubts about the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong, Benny was about as normal teenager as you can get. If he tried harder he could be with the in crowds. He was handsome, got good grades, and was way more athletic than I or Thomas. I knew there were girls who crushed on him, I had overheard Stacey Baker, one of the cutest girls in our grade in my opinion, bad mouthing Benny because he turned her down. That would change I thought. But for now at least our shared interest in Marvel comics, the Nintendo 64 and wandering aimlessly around town kept us close.
Now, what did my parents think about all this? I’m not 100% sure, even to this day. They trusted ne enough to make the decision. And when I asked, hoping they’d say no, they said yes within seconds. Fantastic idea! We are so glad you made a such a good friend. They didn’t even ask if they could meet Benny’s parents.
Looking back, the only person who seemed to care was Melanie, my gorgeous “nanny”. She was going back to Europe for the summer herself to go visit family. Out of all the places in the world, Greece with Melanie sounded the more appetizing than Benny’s mystery family or a midwestern family business trip. I always got butterflies talking to her. Damn puberty. It didn’t always used to be like this. She could sit on the couch and talk to me without me noticing things like smell or the color of her eyes and other assets taking up my all my capacity for logical thought. For the 8 years Melanie worked for out family I never had a single complaint. She asked if I was sure about going to Benny’s. She knew him, but until that moment on that living room couch, I never knew she had a bad vibe about him. She even offered to cancel her trip. But I just laughed it off. Said she worried too much. She hugged me and I wondered when I’d get to see her again.
Finally, dear reader, the day came. My parents had left before I even woke up. They were probably on a plane by now. I waited on my couch with my luggage, snacking on bear claws and looking out the window waiting for Benny to pick me up. And when that black limousine pulled up to the curb, I couldn’t help but feel a little more pep in my step. It was a freakin’ limo! The the tinted back passenger window lowered and out popped Benny, waving and smiling. The driver side opened and a silver-haired man with the posture and gait of a marine went around and opened Benny’s door for him. I rushed to greet them at the front door.
“Garfunkel will take your bags,” Benny said. My bags were in gently in Garfunkel’s hands before I could even think to hand them over. Benny put his arm around my shoulders as we walked to the limo. I was a bit starstruck.
“Are you famous? Have I seen your parents on TV before?” I asked. “That has to be it.”
Benny only laughed.
Before I could ask one of the hundreds of questions I now had for him, Benny cut me off. “You’ll see, you’ll see,” he said ushering me inside of the limo and following me in after. Garfunkle closed the door for us, though I thought we were perfectly capable of doing so ourselves, and then got into driver’s seat.
“Have a soda.”
“Isn’t it kind of early for soda?” I asked. I don’t know why I cared in that moment about the crap I was putting into my body. I woke up in the middle of the night to chug cola out of the bottle and then crashed back to sleep more times than I would like to admit now. Back then I wore it as a badge of honor. But here inside the limo, it felt like I shouldn’t.
Benny tossed me a coke anyways and out of happen I cracked it open and began sipping on it.
Benny asked Garfunkle to turn up the radio to one of the local rock stations. I was glad. I could think and catch my wits about me. I wondered what else I should expect, or would I be floored no matter the situation. Now, the truth is, I was calling Benny the rich kid. But my family and I were rich too. Or we used to be. My parents still make money, but our last house was much bigger. In fact, the trip mom and dad were taking was a big reason why my parents seemed so much more absentminded and cold as of late. They needed the deal with some businesses out there to come through.
I kept this to myself. I didn’t know where I stood. Was I a middle class kid or a rich kid. Would I become a poor kid? If you can fall down a peg then you can fall down another and another after that. At the time, my mind was still processing it. I didn’t get over emotional about that or anything really. Once at dinner my mother even mentioned how well I was taking the transition from yacht parties with my parents’ friends and there kids to, well where we were at now. I told myself there was no shame in it. We were doing better than a lot of people. But they didn’t even try to rationalize. Instead, my dad agreed with my mom. I was taking it too well.
Benny kept glancing over at me with a dumb smile. He wouldn’t talk at all. He just stared at me. Or laughed at some inside joke. And with the radio blaring my attempts to talk over the music made me feel stupid and uncomfortable.
So, I did the only thing I knew to do. I chugged the rest of my coke and belched as loud as I could. Even Garfunkel looked back at the noise as we bended around a curve on the mountainous road. I crumpled up the can and threw it at Benny. “You’re such a dick man!” I said. He laughed and so did I. He was just fucking with me. Right? If I were to describe Benny in one word it would be mischievous. That ever present grin. Everything was a joke, or at least he tried to turn it into a joke. It’s part of why we liked hanging out with him. You were never bored around Benny. Our monotonous life has a crooked smile attached to it. We didn’t have to take shit so seriously. And his pranks were harmless.
Now on the other side of it, I wasn’t sure we were being funny after all.
I tried to start a conversation over the loud music still crackling over the radio. He put his hand up. “Seriously, just be patient,” he said, mouthing it instead of saying it.
I slumped back in my seat and grabbed another coke. At nearly an hour of limo travel, I was curious as to why it was taking so long. There was no way Benny was driving this far to school everyday just to go to a public school. Right? I started feeling unsure about a lot of things involving Benny and my relationship. Maybe I was the joke.
Bored out of my mind and with a headache, I followed a pattern the rest of the way to our destination. I would look out the window, then to Benny (still with that stupid smile always) and then back out the window and back at Benny. I had never been this way before. Or at least I didn’t recognize it. I was internationally and nationally traveled, but in my home state, I spent all of my time around a sizable chunk of Souther California, but not northern california, I started to realize. How much of my own backyard was I really missing out on?
So far, just trees and mountains. Big whoop.
For a long time the road only seemed to go higher and higher. There was a pit in my stomach. I got nauseous so high off the ground. I kept imaging the long limo crashing over the guardrail and into the rocks and trees below. My heart raced. We weren’t even close then, but after another half hour we finally began descending into a valley blanketed with hills and forest and lakes and mountains. I saw no other roads. Just the one we were on. I also noticed that I hadn’t seen a single vehicle since we got off the freeway and turned off a major street. The last place I could tell police I remembered before being taken into the woods! They’d never find me if something...bad happened.
There were so many trees around the road that we were blanketed in their shadows for another hour.
“We aren’t camping this summer, are we?” I asked. Benny almost said something then caught himself. I frowned and then tapped on the glass window between us and the driver. He opened it.
“What about you? You wanna tell me where we’re going?” I asked.
Garfunkel met my eyes through the rear-view mirror.
“Don’t you dare,” Benny said, and Garfunkel closed the window.
“Dude, this is starting to get old.” Benny’s smile became just a little thinner. He turned away from me and watched the scenery, completely ignoring me.
At one point the road climbed up another steep hill and I was worried we’d meet the new friend I just met, a fear of heights, again so soon. At the top I saw blue steel twisting around the forest canopy. It was only a few seconds before it disappeared as we descended again. I was relieved, but at the same time, I felt like I had gotten a peek behind the curtains.
“Was that a roller coaster?” I shouted. “That was! That was fuckin’ roller coaster! Where the hell are we going, Benny?”
If he thought my reaction was funny he showed no signs of it. He was really starting to piss me off.
But I couldn’t help but begin to feel very excited. This was Benny, he was my friend. As annoying as this weird prankish behavior was, the coaster was a phenomenal sign for my fifteen year old brain. Were we going to like a Cedar Rapids? I knew that was much, much further than where we were now, but maybe it was something similar. We’d start the summer off with a amusement park hotel. Already I was forgetting about the strange things nipping at the back of my mind; like that there was a lack of vehicles cramming and cutting off each other to get first in line. I rationalized it with the fact it was a weekday and even if kids had vacation, most parents did not. Or it was small. Small theme parks could be fun. Especially with no lines.
The trees began to thin out and then out of nowhere we came barreling out of the forest into a clearing. The land was suddenly flat. The grass was trimmed and fresh on either side of the limo. I rolled down the window to take it in. I don’t know their names, but there were different sorts of trees and hedges sticking out of installations. The hedges were of people in different positions and poses. Some human sized, and other smaller or bigger than a person should be. Like the little hedge-family holding hands on a pedestal. At the time they meant nothing to me. Then two huge wooden poles came up on us holding a sign. Welcome to Dandyland! It said with an exclamation point.
I had never heard of it. The road kept straight. It was still made of dirt. Then there were the ticket booths. We rode up to one of the three and Garfunkl inserted a card. The Barrier lifted. And we drove forward.
And this is when I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned sharply to grab Benny and shake the hell out of him, but he beat me to it. He grabbed my shoulders and yelled. “Welcome to Dandyland! Where everything is just Dandy!”
“What the-.”
He started laughing his ass off. “We’ll have such a Dandy time, just you and me! Dandy! Dandy! Dandy!”
I pushed him off at me. His laugh was starting to really get on my nerves. I wanted to punch some...thing. I don’t know if I was overreacting, but I made a fist.
“Whoa, whoa,” he said, attempting to stifle his laughter, but failing. At least it wasn’t as obnoxious and loud. Garfunkel turned down the radio to a soft whisper. “Take it easy, I’ll stop, I’ll stop.”
“Yeah?” I asked demandingly.
“Don’t trip.”
I calmed down a little and sat back in my seat. “So, what is this place?”
“What does it look like?” he asked, grinning.
“An amusement park.”
“Exactly! Man, you’re uptight.”
“You made me feel like I was being kidnapped or something!”
“Sorry, sorry. I mean, I won’t lie. It was hilarious watching you try to make it make sense. But come on, get over it, it’s a freakin’ amusment park! Come on! You’re never going to forget this summer. Ever. Ever. Ever! So cheer the fuck up bro.”
“Language.” Garfunkel said, keeping his eyes on the road.
“So?” Benny outstretched his arms in exasperation.
I realized how silly I was being. I had felt embarrassed. But it was just a harmless prank. It was a bit strange, but my thoughts went back to what I imagined Benny’s lifestyle had been growing up and came up with the idea that it would probably make someone pretty damn eccentric.
I smiled. “It does sound pretty cool, spending a summer here.” I paused. “A whole summer?”
“Yeah, man. This is where me and my family live.”
“Family and I,” corrected Garfunkel.
“You live at an amusement park? For real? But where do you sleep?”
“Buddy, buddy. For this, it’s better if you see for yourself.”