Full Tilt (9 page)

“Yes, Miss Cassandra?”

“How long have you been with us?”

The smile drained from the bartender’s face, and his eyes darted back and forth like it was a trick question.

“It’s all right. You can answer,” Cassandra said.

Sammy swallowed hard. “Of course, I’d be guessing . . . but I’d say about thirty years now. I was fifteen then. I was on my third ride when I got caught.”

“Caught?”

“You know . . . dawn,” said Sammy.

“The sun rises, and we close our gates,” Cassandra said. “If you’re not out of the park by dawn, then you stay.”

I finally got the picture. Die on the ride and you’re part of the scenery. Get caught alive and you’re a slave of the park.

“There,” said Cassandra. “Consider that incentive to play hard.”

“It’s not all that bad here,” Sammy said, nervously wringing his hands. “I’d rather be here than in The Works, that’s for sure.”

“The Works? What’s that?”

But Sammy looked down, refusing to say another word about it. Instead, he took up his role as bartender
again. “Can I get anything more for you, sir?”

“I’m sure Blake must be hungry. Why don’t you bring him the blue plate special?”

“Coming right up.” Sammy disappeared into a small kitchen void of any chef.

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?

Cassandra 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, Cassandra 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 Cassandra was the soul of this place, that meant the amusement 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.

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 glass. 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 Cassandra 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 scraping 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 class. 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, nobody 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 Cassandra 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 Dick.

“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 Cassandra’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?”