Joyland

The first thing Devin notices he arrives at the park with Annie, Mike, and Milo is that Joyland is awake—the loudspeakers blasting summer music. Fred Dean meets them at the wide-open gates, wearing the fancy suit he reserves for special VIP guests. He greets Annie like a visiting queen, and then he shakes hands with both Mike and Milo.

Lane runs the Choo-Choo Wiggle. He is wearing an engineer’s cap instead of his bowler, but he wears it tilted at the same cocky angle.

Mike goes on a few rides. He is starting to tire when he and Annie mount the merry-go-round. Fred Dean tells Devin to meet them at the Ferris wheel, and Devin knows just what’s expected of him. Devin gets into his Howie costume for the last time. As Annie, Mike, and Fred approach the wheel, Devin leaps from cover and goes into his Howie dance. Then, he throws his arms wide, and Mike falls into them, telling Mike he is a really good Howie.

Their final ride is the Carolina Spin. The wheel carries Devin, Mike, and Annie up until the world opens beneath them with the ocean on one side and the North Carolina lowlands on the other. At the top of the arch, Mike throws his hands in the air and says that he is flying, and he knows how it feels to be a kite.

After the Ferris wheel, they pass the Annie Oakley shy, and Fred asks if they want to try their skill. Mike tells his mother to try. Taking one of the little .22 BB guns, Annie takes 10 shots and hits five of the bigger targets. Then, having got the range and adjusted the sights, she takes another 10 shots, and this time, she hits eight of the smallest targets. Devin notices Lane wiping a smudge of grime off the back of his neck.

Looking around, Annie realizes Milo isn’t with them. They spot the little dog sitting in front of the Horror House. Devin and Mike go to fetch him. When they reach the ride, they hear the rumble of one of the ride cars rolling along its track. The doors bang open, and an empty car emerges. It rolls to the end of the track and comes to a gentle stop. Devin, standing at Mike’s side, hears him whisper, “Okay.” Devin glances into the stalled car and glimpses something under the seat—the blue hairband Linda Gray was wearing when she died.

Back at home, Devin and Annie get Mike to bed exhausted but radiant, Mike asks if Devin saw Linda, and Devin shakes his head. He had been jealous of Tom seeing Linda, but he could never be jealous of Mike. As Devin leaves, he hears Mike say, “Be careful, Dev, it’s not white. (240).

Devin joins Annie in the kitchen. Annie talks a little about the things she wanted to do with her life before Mike was born. Since then, Mike has been her whole life, and everything after he is gone is a blank. She never finished college. She had thought of becoming a famous anthropologist, also of winning a gold medal in marksmanship at the Olympics and try to win back her father’s love. Rifle marksmanship had been the only real connection may have between them before Mike was born. On stage, he’s a charismatic preacher with a thick shock of white hair in the real world, he’s a jerk with a few good points; at least he has a good relationship with Mike, even if he still believes in his heart that Mike’s illness and death are a punishment on Annie. Annie is tired of holding a grudge; she is going to take Mike to see his grandfather before he dies.

Annie invites Devin to go upstairs with her. When Devin he confesses that this will be his first time, she says, “Good.” She first makes sure that Devin understands this is a one-time experience, not a romantic relationship. Devin’s first attempt is premature. His second goes somewhat better. The third time around, he does himself proud.

Lying in bed, Annie reminisces again about her father. She was never able to share his beliefs however hard she tried. Shooting was the only thing that worked between them. She remarks that he probably has half a dozen guns locked in a safe in this house.

Devin returns to his room at Mrs. Shoplaw’s house. He wakes in the middle of the night when the tropical storm makes landfall, rattling the house. He lies awake thinking about the pictures Erin gave him of Linda Gray and her anonymous murderer. He thinks of Mike’s repeated insistence that “it’s not white” and of something that has been subconsciously nagging him about those pictures. Suddenly, it all crashes together in his mind. He lays out the photographs and recognizes the killer.

At that moment, the phone rings. It’s the killer. Devin asks what he wants, but the killer says Devin already knows. He tells Devin to meet him at Joyland. If he doesn’t, the killer will break into Annie’s house and cut her and Mike’s throats.

Passing the payphone in Heaven’s Bay, Devin sees a maintenance truck falling behind him and knows that the killer, Lane Hardy, is following him. Devin finds the gates of Joyland open and drives to the Ferris wheel. Lane signals him to get out of his car. Lane asks them how he got the Horror House car to roll the way it did. He thinks it was some kind of remote-control gadget. Devin replies that there was no gadget, and asks whether Lane saw Linda Gray. Lane sneers that Devin can’t scare him with a ghost story. He has known Devin was after him ever since he pulled off Eddie Parks’s gloves when he had the heart attack. After that, it was only a matter of time before Devin and Erin figured out the truth.

Lane forces Devin to climb onto the Ferris wheel and gets in behind him, handing Devin a remote control to start the wheel. As the wheel turns and the car rises into the storm, he makes Devin throw the remote over the side.

Devin guesses that once Lane has satisfied his curiosity as to how Devin figured out he was the killer, Lane will shoot him and then himself. Devin tells him he actually didn’t figure it out until moments before Lane telephoned him, but Lane doesn’t believe him.

As the car is swooping down, Devin sees something moving up Joyland Avenue toward them like a sheet of dark canvas blown in the wind. Hoping to buy time, he tells Lane how he figured out Lane was the killer. The main thing was the cap the killer wore. In each shot of him taken by one of the Hollywood girls, he was wearing his hat tipped at a different angle. Lane has a habit of doing that with his derby; he’s not even aware of it. Then, there were the gray streaks he saw in Lane’s hair. The killer in the photos was blond. When Devin noticed Lane wiping a smudge off the back of his neck that day, it wasn’t dirt or grease, it was hair dye.

As the wheel comes down again, Devin recognizes the moving object on the main drag as a vehicle with its lights off. To keep Lane distracted, Devin says that Lane must have known about the Hollywood girls going around taking pictures; that was part of the fun for him—killing Linda practically in public. It’s the risk that gives him the thrill.

Their car is coming down for the third time when Devin hears someone shout “Devin, duck!” He does and hears a liquid whip-crack report. The car passes the loading point again, and Devin sees Annie Ross with a rifle in her hands. Beside him, Lane collapses with a bullet hole in the middle of his face.

When Devin gets off the wheel, he and Annie work out a cover story so they don’t have to tell the police that Eddie Parks died of a second heart attack that night and warned Mike that Devin was in trouble. Mike awakened Annie and told her she had to get a gun and go to Devin’s aid.

Six days later, Mike, Annie, and Devin are sitting on the boardwalk in front of the old Victorian. Mike and Annie are getting ready to leave. Devin is planning to stay on at the park until Thanksgiving and help Fred get everything buttoned up. He’s going back to school for the spring semester.

About five months after that, Devin is back in school, living in a grubby apartment and in love with a girl named Jennifer when he gets a call from Annie. Mike has died—quickly and without pain from a fever.

A few weeks later, Devin and Annie are back in Heaven’s Bay. Milo is with them, grieving the disappearance of his boy. Annie’s father isn’t there. He refused to participate in a “pagan ceremony.” Putting a handful of Mike’s ashes in a pocket taped to his kite, they launch it, watching it rise higher and higher as the ashes stream out into the wind.