Full Tilt Part 6

I finished my stupid Shirley Temple, crunching the ice and gnawing at the cherry stem as I thought of my possible fates. Which was worse? Scenery or slavery?

Ca.s.sandra studied me. "You're not like the others who come here," she said. "You really don't want to ride."

That much was true. It seemed everyone else here-all the other invitees-couldn't wait to be a part of the thrills and chills.

"I guess you invited the wrong guy."

Suddenly a plate covered with a silver dome was deposited in front of me with a clatter.

"Here you are, sir. The blue plate special." Sammy returned to the bar, and the instant he was gone, Ca.s.sandra leaned forward and whispered with the kind of hushed intensity reserved for the most important of secrets.

"You're not here by mistake or by accident. I wanted you here tonight. You more than anyone."

Hearing that sucked the breath right out of me. I began to feel light-headed. "But . . . why would you want me?"

"Enjoy your meal." She stood up and sauntered casually away. She pulled open the door, setting off a jingle of bells and letting in the awful sounds of crashing cars.

After she was gone, I could still feel the residue of her presence-both her malevolence and her allure. I was attracted and repelled at the same time.

I wanted you here tonight, she had said. You more than anyone.

It stunned me to think I was singled out. Me, who never looked for attention the way Quinn did. Did she know I would never have come here if my brother hadn't stolen the invitation and come here first? Or was luring my brother here all part of her plan? If Ca.s.sandra was the soul of this place, that meant the amus.e.m.e.nt park was alive, and it wanted me-specifically wanted me.

I closed my eyes and took a few moments to try to defragment my brain. Then I opened my eyes again, and looked down to the platter in front of me, wondering exactly what the blue plate special might be. I hoped it wasn't the broiled head of anyone I knew. A puff of steam escaped as I pulled away the dome, revealing that the plate was, indeed, blue. But there was nothing on it. Nothing but two words written across the plate: I had no idea what that meant until I realized that the D was printed backward. I rotated the plate around.

The glowing ride symbol on my hand went dark, as if it had been scanned by the blue plate special, and then the booth suddenly spun like one of those haunted-house bookshelves that leads to a tunnel. The booth was revolving into the wall like . . .

Like a turnstile!

The entire booth turned 180 degrees, closing out the restaurant and leaving me sitting on the other side of the wall.

7.

Big Blue Mother I was in a warehouse, and I was alone. That was what struck me instantly-being alone. Through everything, I'd been surrounded by others: wild riders on the carousel, frenzied drivers on the streets of Chicago. But the revolving tavern booth deposited me in a lonely warehouse graveyard of battered cars and piles of rusted automotive parts, the waste products of my last ride.

The warehouse was huge, at least fifty feet high, with great stone pillars holding up the ceiling and long windows made of hundreds of smaller panes of gla.s.s. I could see nothing through those panes, only the sky, casting a cage of shadows on the ground. Yet beyond the windows the sky was changing. The shades of orange spoiled to amber and a sickly yellow, like the skin around an old bruise. If the booth was a turnstile, then I was already on the approach to a new ride, but I didn't yet know what it was.

There was a sound now. It was the swish-swish-swish of something slicing back and forth like a pendulum. As I moved around a pile of junk I saw its shadow, huge and ominous, as it rose and fell. Only now did I hear the screams each time it fell. Finally it came into view, a thing strangely out of place within this warehouse.

It was the swinging boat-the one we had seen when we first entered the park. It was in the form of a three-masted schooner, and it hung from a single axle supported on both sides. It swung forward and back, forward and back, with a rhythm that was both hypnotic and nauseating. This was what the ride looked like from the outside. But from the inside, what would it be? I didn't have to wait long to find out. The warehouse had sprung a leak. As I leaned against a pillar water ran over my hand. I looked down to see myself standing in a puddle that kept growing deeper, because the water wasn't just dribbling down the pillar now, it was pouring. Beyond the windows of the huge warehouse an ocean was rising.

I wanted to keep it out. I wanted to keep everything out: the fact that Ca.s.sandra had set her sights on me; that I'd lost Maggie and Russ; that my brother kept spiraling deeper into the rides....

The windows began to explode inward with the force of the ocean, spilling into the warehouse. A white-water wave rolled behind me, and in front of me was the swinging boat. All my hope rested in the sanctuary of that vessel.

The water that just a moment ago was at my ankles now rose past my knees, and I could hear the wave roaring behind me. The wave hit me, washing me off my feet. I reached up and managed to hook my arm around one of the support struts holding up the ride. With the icy water at my chest now, the boat crashed down, taking me under. It dragged me along its rough hull, pressing the air out of my lungs, bruising me, and sc.r.a.ping me across barnacles until I couldn't tell up from down.

When I finally surfaced, the support struts were gone, the warehouse was gone, but the boat and the waves were still there, much bigger than before. If swimming were not my sport, I would have drowned by now, but even so, it took all my strength to keep my head above the waves. The boat-now a life-size schooner-lurched forward and crashed down over the waves with a motion not all that different from when it had been attached to a greasy axle. Up above, a storm raged in a strange sky the color of dark mustard.

A rope dangled from the bow, and as the bow plunged I grabbed that rope with both hands, wrapped it around my right leg, and clamped it tightly to the instep of my left foot-just like they taught us in gym cla.s.s. As the boat rose with the next swell I was lifted out of the water.

Maybe it was adrenaline, or maybe I just weighed less in this weird world, but I was able to pull myself up hand over hand. I clasped the rope to keep from being hurled off each time the ship hit the bottom of a swell, and I used the upward energy to climb faster each time it peaked, until I finally spilled over onto the deck. My lungs were half full of water and my hands were red and raw, but I was still alive and riding.

The boat pitched beneath me with a regular stomach-churning rhythm, a feeling that just grew worse with each wave. And with each of those waves, the old schooner peaked and I heard voices screaming up above. I looked up to see kids-dozens of them-high above the deck, clinging to the web of ropes that hung from the masts and beams. Ratlines, that's the word. They swung from the ratlines. Some of them swung from the beams themselves, and others gripped the tattered fragments of the shredding sails.

You know how when you were little, your dad would throw you up and down in the pool until you were giddy with laughter? I know, because it's one of the few memories I have of my father. Well, that's how these riders were. Giddy. But when they fell from their high perches, doing cartwheels into the sea, n.o.body was there to catch them.

The schooner crested another wave, the bow rising and plunging again. Up above, the riders squealed with joy. Icy water rolled across the deck, washing me up against the foremast. Then a hairy hand grabbed me by the shirt and pulled me to my feet.

"What nature a' fool be ya, boy? Rollin' around on the deck when there's work t'be done!" The man's face was covered by a heavy beard. His voice, somehow familiar, was masked in an accent that was almost but not quite like a pirate's.

With his hand still on the collar of my shirt, he hauled me to the railing. "Fix your eyes on the sea and nothing else," he told me.

Then I caught something huge out of the corner of my eye, almost the color of the waves. I turned in time to see the tail end of a barnacle-encrusted whale larger than the ship. I was awestruck by the sight.

"Aye, breach your last to the sun!" the bearded man shouted to the whale. "The hour and thy harpoon are at hand!" The great whale's fluke cut a wide arc and slipped back into the water.

Oh no. By now I had a good idea what this ride was.

A huge wave caught us, the wake of the whale's breach. It almost washed me away from the railing, but I held on tight. Above us another unfortunate rider plunged into the frothing sea.

"Drive, drive in your nails, o ye waves. To their uttermost heads, drive them in!" the bearded captain raved.

I still had the feeling that this ride was neither random nor the manifestation of someone else's mind. Just as with the carousel, I had a powerful sense that Ca.s.sandra had reached inside my mind to create this ride, but I couldn't figure out why she had chosen this. I never even liked Moby d.i.c.k.

"Ready to lower the boats!" Captain Ahab shouted. "Today we take the great blue whale!"

"Uh . . . don't you mean great white whale?"

"Nay, boy. The blue whale be our quarry on this cursed voyage. The greatest creature on land or sea. She has no teeth to tear a man to shreds like the white whale of which you speak, but she is awesome and daunting prey, nonetheless."

A loud hiss, and I turned to see the great blue whale surface again, spouting spray from its blowhole. Its huge eye was somehow familiar. Its shape, its color. It wasn't the strange blue of Ca.s.sandra's eyes; this eye was speckled brown. I knew if I had time to think, I'd be able to place where I'd seen such an eye before.

I watched as the whale opened its tremendous mouth and drew in water. I could see tiny shrimp writhing against the bony lattice in its mouth.

"See how she opens her mouth to filter life from the sea!" said the captain. "I'd hate to be a krill caught in her baleen."

And all at once it clicked.

Krill. . . Baleen . . . This was a thought tugged right out of my mind. I took a good, hard look at the maniacal captain, trying to pick the shape of his face out from beneath his heavy beard. "Carl?" Then I looked to the sea, at the submerging whale. "Mom?"

Carl put his hand on my shoulder. "Keep your wits about you, boy."

"You can't really be here, right? You're just some figment of my imagination. Just a part of the ride, right? Right?"

He just ignored me, looking out to sea for a sign of the whale. "I struck my first whale as a boy harpooner of eighteen. But this one here is the great prize, and beyond her there will be no other. Will you help me, boy?"

"No! I mean, yes! I mean, I don't know!"

The bow crashed down again, and as we rose and crested the next swell I saw a reef off the starboard bow-jagged granite rocks that thrust up through the churning sea like teeth. I could see bits and pieces of other ships in the crevices of the stone monoliths.

"Follow her into the reef!" shouted mad Captain Carl. A sailor at the helm wildly spun the tiller, and the ship turned toward the rocks.

Up above me the riders still wailed with joy as they swung from the ratlines. One of those voices sounded familiar. It was a shrill whoop that I'd heard so many times, I could place it a mile away. I looked up. In a flash of lightning across the mottled yellow sky, I saw Quinn clinging to the highest of the ratlines, right beneath the crow's nest. He screamed in defiance of the crashing waves, daring them to shake him loose.

Fighting the violent pitching of the ship, I climbed the ratlines toward him. I was almost thrown from the ropes, but I held on with what little strength my fingers had left, until I finally reached him high up where the ratlines met the mast.

"Toward thee I roll," the mad captain shouted at the whale with my mother's eyes. "To the last, I grapple with thee!"

"Quinn!" I could barely hear my own voice over the thunder and wind. I was right next to him now, and still he didn't know I was there. He just kept whooping as the boat pitched up and down, the motion intensified by the height of the mast. He was oblivious to Carl, our mother the whale, or anything else outside the rush of the ride.

"Quinn!"

Finally he turned to me, blinking like he had just come out of a trance. His eyes were wide and wet from the cold wind. "Blake? When did you get here?"

There was a deafening blast, and a surge of electricity made my arm hairs tingle. A kid on the foremast had been struck by lightning. His smoking body tumbled limply, missing the deck and plunging into the sea. Then I caught sight of one of the pa.s.sing spires of rock. Part of the stone seemed to melt away, forming a face. In fact, all over the reef, I could swear I saw giant faces in the stone, the wailing mouths and hopeless eyes of those whose lives were given to the ride.

Lightning sparked in the sky again as I realized we were clinging to the highest point of the boat. Then I looked at Quinn's moronically metallic face. Dangling chains and rings-all perfect electrical conductors.

"You're a lightning rod! You've got to get down from here!"

"No way!" He returned his gaze forward. "I'm not letting you spoil this! It's the best ride yet!"

With Quinn, action always speaks louder than words, so I tugged him from the rope net, and we both fell, rolling down the rough ratlines, bouncing painfully off the boom, and landing hard on the deck.

"This ship's going down!" I told him, ignoring my aches from the fall.

"How do you know? You don't know everything."

"I know the story. One way or another, this ship is going down." I looked around for something-anything that would give us an out. Then I caught sight of a strange, unearthly light escaping around the edges of a closed hatch. I knelt down and pulled at the hatch with all my strength. Finally it popped open.

The light within was too bright. My eyes fought to adjust, and for an instant I got the briefest glimpse of bright chrome gears turning. They were pieces of some colossal gear-work that couldn't possibly fit in the hold of a ship. This hatch was a doorway to another place entirely!

The Works, I thought. It must be The Works!

Beyond that hatch was the mechanism that ran every ride. But before I could get a better look, crazy Captain Carl slammed it shut with his foot.

"n.o.body goes below!"

Just then the whale breached right beside the ship.

"Was that a whale?" Quinn asked, clueless as ever. "What's up with that?"

As the whale with my mother's eyes came down, the force of its wake threw the ship against the rocks with a shattering of wood.

"Blast ye!" yelled that strange blending of Captain Ahab and my mother's fiance. He threw his fists to the sky. "The madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood, and the smoking brow!"

"That's it, we're outta here." I pushed Quinn to the railing. "Jump. Now!"

"Are we gonna ride the whale? Is that part of the ride?"

"Just jump!" I practically hurled him over the side, and followed right behind. I hit the icy water. Then, for an instant, I felt something huge and rough brush right past me. I fought my way to the surface, breaking through into the noise of the storm.

Quinn sputtered beside me. He wasn't as strong a swimmer as I was, so I tried to help him, but he wouldn't let me. He kicked me away and began swimming toward the rocks. I turned back to see the ship, twenty yards away now . . . and then a blue gray wall rose in front of me. The whale breached again, but this time it came down right on the ship. Riders were thrown from the ratlines. The ship cracked in half, and in a few moments both whale and ship were gone into the darkness of the churning sea.

A wave hurled me onto the rocks, where brand-new faces were appearing. I tried not to look directly at them; I was afraid I'd be too horrified to move if I did.

When I turned to look for Quinn, he was scrambling away over the rocks.

"No!" I grabbed him by his collar as we reached a wide plateau. I was so mad, I would have grabbed him by his nose ring if I could get my finger through it. "You're not getting away from me again!"

"Why did you have to come?" he yelled. "You ruined everything! You made me miss the best part of the ride!"

"Best part? What, are you out of your mind? If you went down with that ship, you wouldn't be coming back up."

And then Quinn looked me dead in the eyes. "Who says I wanted to?"

If my temper was a burning fuse, that pinched it right off. My head reeled from what he said. From what he meant.

"Who says I want to do anything but finish the ride?"

I took a deep breath, and another, as I stared at him. The sound of the ocean raged behind us, but right now I could hear only him. "What are you saying, Quinn?"

"You came here to save me from this place, didn't you? But who said I want to be saved this time?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but all my words had been robbed from me. What could I say to him? What could I say to my brother, who came here not just for the thrills, but for something else? As much as I didn't want to face it, I had to now. Somehow he knew where these rides would end. He knew that once he crossed through the gates, he wasn't coming back. He knew, and still he had come.

"What's out there for me, huh?" Quinn's eyes flowed with tears, and those tears flowed with a dozen different emotions. "What's ever been out there for me? When I'm at home, it's like I'm . . . it's like I'm empty on the inside. You don't know what that's like."

They say that before someone takes their own life, there's always a cry for help. Sometimes it's loud, and you have to be seriously deaf not to hear it. Sometimes it's just a word or a look, like the look Quinn was giving me right now. I might have been deaf to it before, but that look screamed louder than anything now. I had no skill in talking someone in from the edge, and that s.p.a.ce between us was still a whole universe wide.

"Quinn . . ."

"It's not your job to save me, so give it up, huh? Please . . . just give it up."

"It's not a job," I told him. "It's something I've got to do. Something that I need to do."

"But why?" Quinn asked. "Is it because of what happened on the school bus?"

I looked away from him. "Mom shouldn't have told you about that."