Joyland

Terrence Sheppard wasn’t sure why he decided to run in an isolated wooded section of Prospect Park that afternoon.  Usually he jogged one of the paved roads that divided the park into sections, or else satisfied himself with a couple laps around an open field where people tossed shiny Frisbees and chased their hyperkinetic dogs back and forth.  But he was in a more restless mood than usual—he could feel a ragged pulse in his blood—so followed a dirt path that turned increasingly narrow the deeper he ran into the woods.  Soon the blood pulse weakened, and with it, his energy.  After another minute of increasingly sluggish running, he slowed to a walk and then sat to rest on a roughly cut tree stump just off one side of the trail.  The scribbles of sky visible through the trees were gray and overcast.  An abandoned strip of yellow crime tape—Do Not Enter—hung in tatters from a nearby tree that had a couple of nails pounded into its trunk.  Beside the spiked tree was a pair of