Sir Reginald Wicked's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Sir Reginald Wicked spread his sketches on the barn floor and weighed the corners with stones. Twelve drawings. A ghost train. A tower. A wooden track that curved past a painted cliff. He had the whole park in his head. He had no land to build it on. A park needs ground, and no man would sell ground to a person named Wicked. He stood and looked at the woman tied to the chair behind him. Sweet Nell wore a heavy cream dress. Her blonde curls hung in long tubes past her shoulders. She was the daughter of a man who owned half the valley. Reginald had watched her family for weeks. Rich people, he had learned, would pay anything for their own. "You've read the note," he said. "I want the empty field by the river. Your father signs it over to me. Then you go home." "You want land for a park," Nell said. "About screaming children." "About genuine screams," he corrected. "There is a difference. Children at fairs know the ghost is paint. They laugh. I want the real thing." Nell studied the sketches without much fear. "My father won't sign. He doesn't like paying for problems. He waits them out." Reginald smiled. He had planned for a stubborn father. He set his pocket watch on the table where she could see it. "There is a train," he said. "The 4:15. It comes through the valley on the far track every day. If your father does not sign the deed by then, I move you to the rails. He will sign after he sees where you sat." He left her tied and rode to the father's house with the deed and the note. He knocked. He waited on the step with his hat in his hands. The father read the note twice. He did not shout. He did not weep. He fetched a pen from his coat. "The river field is worthless," the father said. "It floods. Nothing grows there. Take it. Bring her back by supper." He signed the deed and pushed it across the step. Reginald read the paper three times on the ride back. His name sat on the line. The empty field by the river was his. His park had ground at last. He untied Nell and set the deed before her like a trophy. "You got your field," she said, rubbing her wrists. She did not run. She read the deed slowly, the way she read everything. "That land floods every spring," she said. "Wooden track rots in standing water. Your ghost train will sink to the axles by June." She looked up at him. "My father didn't lose today. He gave away a swamp." Reginald looked at the deed in his hand. The signature was real. The land was real. The water was real too. He had won the ground. Now he had to make a park stand on it.