A Song of Spiders

Chapter 9 - Crazy Golf

They were on a water taxi, traveling up the river. the small boat zig-zagged automatically in and out of  the larger pieces of rubbish and the other traffic: fruit and vegetable sellers and other bric-a-brac. The day was growing colder and greyer.

‘That flier was for Par-King Skill, Chicago, 1968, the miniature golf course. One of the old unpopular projections we worked on, archived now. We went there for Rachel's birthday about 4 years ago? We bought her that gnome phone as her birthday present.’ 

‘Oh yeah, I was totally smashed, don't remember a fecking thing, wasn't there some weird clown thing there?’ said Karma.

‘Yep, that's the one, though after a few beers you see clowns everywhere.’ said Dex.

The boat began to slow at it reached the quay beside the vast Time Tours be-movie theatre. 

'Plan is we sneak in with the crowd, keep our heads down go to one of the smaller, quieter projection rooms and log in with this voucher code.  We take a look round, see if that 'Orange, aqua, blue then black' makes any sense in there. It could be the colour of the golf flags or something?’

Karma shrugged, ‘OK, fine, may as well.’

They joined the large group of time tourists milling around in front of the the theatre then went in with them when the doors opened. They knew their way about so they quickly found a quiet time travel lodge. Dex entered the code for the be-movie. The next moment they were in Morton Grove, outside Chicago, Illinois, USA, around noon on the 4th of July 1968. It was hot and dry.

‘Hey groovy daddy-o’ said Karma. They were standing in front of a pastel pink castle, surrounded by a miniature golf course featuring shoals of giant tropical fish on poles, elephants, knights, jesters and the huge statue of a clown with one big, white-gloved hand. The air was warm and smelled of candyfloss. They head children playing in the distance. 

‘Hey, I do remember this place!’ Karma started to dance about and sing ‘Puff The Magic Dragon, lived by the sea’.

Dex, looked around. ‘Orange, orange... well, there's that thing.’ He pointed at a bright plastic pumpkin beside a number 12. He ran over to it and looked around for something aqua and immediately saw an aquamarine coloured thunderbird on top of a totem pole.

‘I think I've got this, there's a number for each colour.’ said Dex excitedly. 

The thunderbird looked down at him sternly. It was by the number 8. He glanced around for blue. Then he saw a blue fish, by the number 11. ‘OK, I've seen all the colours except black, and there's numbers too that might mean something, don't know yet.’ said Dex.

He walked up to the fish and searched for something black. At first, nothing jumped out at him. It was noon, blazing hot, and everything here was the colour of an explosion in a kid's paint box. Then he saw it. On the ground, by the fish was a black crucifix symbol. They must have played this hole, but he'd not noticed it. He looked closer and called Karma over. ‘Hey, I've got it!’ he yelled. 

‘Excellent, I'm starting to roast in this heat, what did you find?’ said Karma who as usual was only half paying attention to what was going on around her.

They bent closer and looked at the symbol more intently. 

Karma said ‘It's like it's there and not there, like it's 2D in a 3D world or something. This is definitely a symbol for a key? Or Egypt? Or both?’. Dex nodded, lost in thought, a little dizzy from the humid heat. 

‘The be-movies are usually so richly detailed only someone in the trade like us would spot this has be slotted in here. It has been grafted on. Crudely too. Someone must have gone into design mode and added this. That's not easy to do. Why put an Egyptian key here of all places? And we have numbers now, but what do they mean? Why hide them behind colours in a defunct retro golf course only we know about?’ he asked Karma.