Life's Golden Ticket Read online

  DEDICATION

  Dedicated to my parents,

  Mel and Christiane Burchard,

  and my brothers and sister,

  David, Bryan, and Helen,

  for surrounding me with the

  beauty of faith, love, and friendship.

  I am forever grateful. I love you all.

  And to Denise.

  Thank you, Sunshine,

  for your support, patience, and belief in me.

  I love you.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Part 1 1. The Envelope

  2. Admission Charges

  3. The Truth Booth

  4. The Staging Tent

  5. The Ferris Wheel

  6. The Park’s Theme

  7. The Screaming Carnies

  8. The Hypnotist

  Part 2 9. The Elephant’s Leash

  10. The Pirate Ship

  11. The Merry-Go-Round

  12. The Hall of Mirrors

  Part 3 13. The Livestock Pavilion

  14. The Bumper Boats

  15. The Loop-De-Loop

  16. The Fortune-Teller

  Part 4 17. The Tightrope

  18. The Lion Tamer

  19. The Strong Man

  20. The Center Ring

  21. The Last Ride

  22. Opening the Envelope

  A Note About the Author

  Also by Brendon Burchard

  An Invitation

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Death twitches my ear.

  “Live,” he says, “I’m coming.”

  PART 1

  1

  THE ENVELOPE

  I was standing in the bathroom shaving when I heard the voice from the television: “We interrupt this program to report breaking news on the Mary Higgins disappearance.”

  I dropped the razor in the sink, threw a towel around my waist, and bolted for the living room. Mary’s picture filled the left half of the screen. The stoic local evening news anchor said, “Miss Higgins, who mysteriously disappeared forty days ago, has reportedly been found. . . .”

  Oh my God. I waited for the worst.

  “. . . A spokesperson for the Highway Patrol said Higgins was taken . . .”

  The telephone rang, and I scrambled for it, still keeping an eye on the TV.

  “. . . hospital just fifteen minutes ago, where she is reportedly . . .”

  I snatched the phone in mid-ring. It was Mary’s mother, Linda, talking so quickly I could catch only half of what she said.

  “Linda, slow down,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  “. . . We’re here with her . . . you’ve got to get down here . . . they found her. . . . They found Mary!”

  I glanced at the picture of Mary on the screen. “Jesus, Linda,” I breathed. “It’s on the news. Is she okay?”

  “We’re at the hospital. You’ve got to get down here . . . now!” she said.

  “Linda, is Mary okay?”

  “Just come over as fast as you can. Room four-ten. I gotta go. Hurry.”

  The line went dead.

  I burst into the hospital lobby and was blinded by camera flashes. A wall of reporters surrounded me, shoving their cameras and microphones in my face, barking questions.

  “What is Mary’s condition?” . . . “Do you know what happened?” . . . “Have you spoken with her parents?”

  I’d never been so glad to see a nurse in my life. A sturdy woman in white pushed through the reporters and grabbed my forearm. “Give the man some privacy!” she commanded. “You—out of the way.” She pulled me forward, parting the reporters with a running back’s stiff-arm. Guiding me to the elevators, she shoved me in one and turned, blocking off the reporters behind her. “Fourth floor,” she mouthed.

  I pushed the button and felt a chill of dread at seeing the words next to it: INTENSIVE CARE.

  The doors closed, muffling the reporters’ shouted questions. I breathed in the sterile bleach-and-ether hospital smell, thinking how much I hated these places. Images of my grandfather, then my mother, flashed in my mind. Please don’t let it be like that, I thought.

  The doors opened. A nurse was at the desk.

  “Ma’am, I’m looking for room four-ten. I’m—”

  “I know,” she said. “Go down the hall and take your first right. Fifth door on your left.”

  By the time she had said it I was halfway down the hall.

  Rounding the corner, I saw Mary’s mother, Linda, crying in her husband Jim’s arms. A doctor was speaking to them quietly. A respectful distance away, Detective Kershaw, the officer in charge of the missing persons unit, stood staring at his feet.

  I took a deep breath and tried to slow my heart. As I walked toward them I told myself to be strong.

  Jim saw me first and whispered in Linda’s ear. She wiped her tears, pulled away, and looked at me with sorrow-filled eyes.

  Oh, no, I thought. Please don’t . . .

  My face felt numb as I reached them.

  “Linda, is she alive?”

  Kershaw sat across from me, fidgeting with his notepad and glancing up every so often at one of those awful seaside paintings that seem to be the required decor on waiting room walls. He probably knew that if he looked me in the eye I’d take a swing at him. In a contrite voice, he said, “Look, I got you all wrong—I admit that. Finding Mary the way we did, it proves you had nothing to do with her disappearance.”

  “It’s about time you figured that out, you—”

  “Whoa, now,” Kershaw said, leaning back and putting his hands in the air, palms out. “I know you’re upset. But like I said, I was just doing my job. You can’t blame me for thinking you had something to do with it. . . .”

  Still seething, I said nothing.

  “Okay,” he said. “Look—I don’t blame you. Let’s just start over. Let’s talk like two people who want to figure out how Mary ended up on that highway. I know we’ve been through this a thousand times, but can you tell me once more about the last time you saw her? Can you tell me exactly what she said again? Now that we know where she ended up, maybe there’s a clue in your last conversation.”

  Our last “conversation,” I’m sad to say, was a shouting match. Shame and regret flooded my heart when I thought about it.

  We were screaming at each other in the kitchen. Mary was on another of her we’ve-got-to-change-our-lives rants. The same old fight—every night, it seemed, right after dinner, for the past six months. She was tired of me sitting in front of the TV after work, tired of my being “distant,” tired of my cynicism, tired of feeling weak, tired of living a life that she considered below us. Tired, she said, of being tired.

  “We’re drowning here,” she said. “Drowning in despair, in our own pools of pessimism.” That was her favorite phrase in combat: “pools of pessimism.”

  “You don’t know how lucky we have it,” I shot back. “My folks would have killed for a pool.”

  A line like that usually broke her stride and cooled her down—I was always good at making her laugh and changing the subject. But not this time. Her face sagged, and she started to cry. After a few moments of sobbing, she looked up and said, “I think I need to go away for the weekend. . . . I was going to ask you to come with me, but I don’t think you’re ready.”

  She’d never said anything in a voice that serious before.

  “Where are you going?” I asked. “I’m not ready for what?”

  She paused. “Change—you’re not ready for change.”

  Here we go again, I thought. I braced for the laundry list she’d been working the past two months: Get off the couch. Put the beer down. Quit moping. Open up. Tell me what’s going on. That
was Mary, always trying to control me, make me follow her rules for how to live, make me someone I was not—a bright, shiny, sensitive sap.

  “Will you stop trying to control me all the time? I don’t need another mother, and I don’t need you to tell me how much I need to change. Just let me live my life.”

  “But you’re not living your life,” she cried. “You’re hiding from it. You sit in front of that television every night, trying to forget the fact that your life is miserable.”

  There—she’d said it. I looked at her, shocked.

  She looked down, her long eyelashes almost resting on her cheeks, and let out a sigh of exhaustion. “Like I said, you’re not ready to change. But I am. And I’m going. A friend invited me to a place that can supposedly change my life. He said the experience will challenge and inspire me, a place where I can learn about myself and make my dreams come true.”

  “Wow, honey, cool, you’re going to Disneyland?”

  “I’m serious. I’m going.”

  I laughed at her, not believing she would leave. “Say hi to Mickey for me,” I said.

  Her eyes widened, and she threw her coffee cup into the sink, where it shattered. She swiped her keys off the counter and headed for the door, saying, “I’ve heard this place can work miracles. For our relationship’s sake, you’d better hope so.”

  She slammed the door behind her. I almost said, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” But I hadn’t, thank God.

  That was forty days ago.

  I never told Kershaw all the details of the fight—he didn’t need to know. Besides, I trusted authority about as much as I trusted used-car salesmen. I knew he’d crucify me if he found out we were fighting when she left.

  “You’re right,” I said to Kershaw as I stood up. “We have been through this a thousand times, and I’ve got nothing more to say to you.” I turned to walk over to Mary’s father, Jim, who was down the hall at the coffee machine.

  “Okay,” Kershaw said. “I’m sure we’ll find out what happened to Mary when she . . . if she wakes up.”

  Jim had a cup of machine instant coffee ready for me.

  “Here ya go,” he said softly. He wasn’t the kind of guy to cry, but his eyes looked red.

  I looked at him, knowing I was to blame for this—all of it.

  “Jim . . . I’m so sorry. . . .”

  He raised his hand, cutting me off.

  “Don’t,” he said gently. “It’s not your fault. Forget Kershaw and all this mess in the media the last few weeks. There’s nothing you could have done. You’ve got to tell yourself that. Linda and I believe that. We do. No matter what happened between you and Mary, we know it’s not your fault she disappeared. And it’s not your fault she’s in here.”

  His voice cracked, and he looked toward Mary’s room.

  “I just find myself praying and wishing our little Mary could open her eyes and tell us what’s been going on these past forty days. I just wish she could . . . tell us she’s okay.”

  Tears streamed down his broad, strong face.

  I felt my shoulder being nudged, and opened my eyes. Mary’s doctor knelt in front of me.

  “I must’ve fallen asleep,” I said groggily.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “But Mary is conscious, and I don’t know how long she’ll be that way. She’s very fragile, and we don’t know if she’ll . . .” He shook his head. “She’s asked for you.”

  I tried to jump to my feet, forgetting that I was lying across four waiting room chairs. I crashed to the floor, bruising my tailbone.

  The doctor helped me to my feet and said, “Take it easy now. We’d rather have you as a visitor than a patient.”

  I shook the sleep from my head and sprinted down the hall to 410.

  Linda was coming out. She gently closed the door behind her.

  “She’s conscious?” I asked, breathing hard.

  “Yes,” Linda said. “She can talk, but she’s very weak and not making much sense. She keeps muttering something about a miracle. And she’s asking for you.” Linda was pale, and the fine lines on her face looked deeper. “Talk to her. . . . Tell her you love her. It might be the last . . .” She paused in the doorway, smiling sadly. “Just tell her you love her.”

  It was dark except for a dim light over Mary’s head. I’d been in the room several times in the past few hours, but still I had to fight back the tears when I saw her lying there. Her head was swathed in bandages, and her cheeks looked fat, pushed up by the collar of a neck brace. Her right leg was elevated, frozen in place in a thick cast. A half-dozen machines sighed and beeped around her in a terrifying, tuneless chorus; her breath came in short, painful rasps. Every inch of her soft skin seemed to be bruised and bloated.

  I just couldn’t understand it. She had been standing on an old roadway up in the mountains when the truck hit her. What was she doing out there?

  “Honey,” I whispered, leaning over the bed rail. “Honey, it’s me. . . .”

  Nothing.

  I brushed her cheek. “Honey, please.. . .” I choked back a sob. “I’m so sorry.”

  She opened her eyes.

  “Hey, you,” she said through cracked lips. “It’s okay.” Her voice was so delicate I could barely hear.

  The words gushed out in a torrent. “Mary, I’m so sorry. I love you so much. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, honey.”

  Her lips crooked up into half a smile; her quick, alert gaze surprised me.

  “Everything’s going to be okay,” she said tenderly. As if I were the one lying in bed, about to die.

  “Mary, you’ve been in an accident. You’re in the hosp—”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  I looked at her with wonder.

  She spoke softly and slowly. “I have something to tell you. . . . I have to ask you to do something for me.”

  “Anything,” I said, trying desperately to keep the tears at bay. “Anything.”

  She drew a deep breath. “Bowman’s Park. I need you to go back there for me. For you.”

  I shook my head. Bowman’s Park?

  Her eyes fixed on mine. “Yes, Bowman’s. You need to go there.”

  My mind reeled. Bowman’s was an old amusement park up in the mountains. They shut it down twenty years ago after a small boy—Mary’s eight-year-old brother—fell to his death from the Ferris wheel.

  A few years after the park closed, rumors had floated that it was haunted. The rumors rose and subsided every few years with the incoming freshman classes at the local high schools. A year and a half ago, though, the allegations took a strange twist, and suddenly the place went from haunted to holy. A bunch of crazies started saying that miracles were happening up there. The local news stations scrambled to investigate but, of course, turned up nothing. No one who claimed to have witnessed any miracles would talk about them.

  “Mary,” I said softly, still shaking my head, “you weren’t at Bowman’s Park. I know that’s where your brother died, but it’s closed, remember? You were miles from there, all the way on the other side of the mountain.”

  “I know. . . . Listen,” she said, the strength in her voice waning. “I was there. And now you have to go, or you won’t understand. Find my coat. There’s an envelope in the pocket. Don’t open it. Take it to the park gate. Give the envelope to my brother.”

  Tears stung my eyes. She was obviously delirious. She even thought her brother was alive. How could our last conversation on earth go like this? The doctor had warned me that she was heavily sedated, likely to be drifting between reality and dreams, but this was madness. I turned so she didn’t have to see me cry.

  “Wait,” she said, straining. “Look at me.”

  I turned back, tears flowing freely now.

  She took another long breath. “You remember the rumors? About miracles at the park?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why I went there—we needed a miracle. . . .”

  How could I have let it get so bad between us
that she was reduced to grasping at such straws?

  Her eyes widened. “The rumors are true.”

  She paused. Her face strained, and her eyes blinked. I worried that she might pass out. “Miracles . . .” she repeated. “Get the envelope . . . go . . . find out what happened to me . . . experience what I did . . . Go. . . .”

  Her slender fingers grasped my arm with as much strength as she could muster, which wasn’t much. “Promise me you’ll go there . . . right now.”

  “Mary,” I cried, hot tears running down my face, my chest constricting in pain. “Honey, I’m not leaving you.”

  She gave a soft cry, as though something hurt her deep inside. Her hand fell back to the bed. “If you don’t go now . . . you’ll never know what happened. . . .”

  She paused, closing her eyes tight. “Promise me you’ll go—the second you walk out of this room.”

  I shook my head. “I won’t leave you.”

  Her body tensed; her breath came in shallow pants. “Go . . . now!”

  I stood silently stroking her hand, not knowing what to say. My tears splashed silently off the thin hospital blanket. A tear struck her hand, and her brow wrinkled. She took a long breath in and pushed out a soft whimper: “Promise,” she whispered, her lips quivering and her voice trailing away.

  That was it then; I had no choice—this was her last wish. I closed my eyes and tried to think of what to say before she was gone.

  “I promise,” I said softly. Still holding her hand, I leaned in and kissed her forehead. My voice cracked. “I’ll love you forever.”

  Her lips curved into a faint smile as she mouthed, “I love you.”

  Then her eyes closed, and the tension left her face.

  The bank of machines around her beeped and whirred loudly.

  What do you mean, you’re leaving?” Linda looked at me in disbelief. “Now?”

  “Yes,” I said sheepishly. I didn’t know how to explain what Mary had said, or what I had promised her I would do.