15
Dangerous Driving
The St John Ambulance people were there very quickly. To keep himself from panicking, Ryan silently ran through a list of prime numbers, each as cool, smooth and regular in his mind as a pearl on a string. He was relieved to see that the ambulance men did not shake their heads at each other or cover Will’s face.
‘I don’t think he’s dead,’ Ryan whispered.
Josh said nothing. His jaw was clenched.
Ryan felt another tingle across his knuckles as Will was moved very gently on to the stretcher. Sun bubbles danced on Ryan’s lashes, and for a moment there was a streak of glisten on his vision, like the sort he would sometimes see before a migraine. He took off his glasses and blinked hard to clear the streak. Everything instantly got much worse.
With his normal eyes open and his glasses off, he was muzzy with double vision. During the second that his eyes were closed, however, the scene before him jumped into a new clarity. With only his secret eyes open he could clearly see, extending from Will’s chest, a single translucent tentacle, softly snaking. As he watched, a non-existent wind tore it ragged and chased it into nothingness, like a smoke ring.
‘Oh no.’ He clutched his hands up against his chest. Don’t let that be his spirit leaving don’t let that be his spirit leaving . . . A terrible, horrible, unworthy thought sprang into his mind. If he dies then we’ll never grant his wish and we’ll be like this forever . . .
‘Hold it in.’ Josh had a hand on his shoulder and was glaring down the few concerned onlookers who had noticed Ryan’s behaviour.
‘I’m not going to be sick,’ hissed Ryan with unusual fierceness, hoping that he was telling the truth. ‘I’m just having a laugh a minute with my “power” right now, all right?’ He squeezed his eyes shut reflexively, and again the air about him was thick with migraine-streaks, ghost snakes. When he opened his normal eyes the snakes were still faintly visible, pushing from the chests of the people around him, distorting the world behind them like wrinkles in a glass pane.
‘Ryan? What’s happening?’ It didn’t help to look at Chelle. Little ghost-snakes kept venturing questingly, fearfully, from her chest like eels from a hide-hole, then pulling back as if stung. Josh was no better, with a great, translucent python thrashing and whiplashing, seemingly trying to tear itself free from his breastbone. Ryan pushed his fists into his armpits and doubled up, closing his real eyes tight. He felt hands grab his elbows and start to lead him away. The voices of the crowd faded slightly, and the megaphone announcements became a smudge of sound.
‘OK, we’re clear.’ He felt a grip on his sleeve. ‘Ryan, look at me.’ Ryan straightened and slowly opened his normal eyes to stare through Josh’s yellow lenses at the pale-lashed eyes behind. They were wide, focused and sincere. ‘You’re OK, Ryan. Breathe.’
Ryan took a few deep breaths before letting his eyes stray from Josh’s steadying gaze. The distorting snakes that had streaked his vision seemed to have gone.
‘Everybody in the crowd had these . . .’ Ryan swallowed, ‘. . . these things, like tentacles, coming out of them and waving around . . . except Will. He had one but when he was on the stretcher it . . . it . . . kind of melted away . . . Josh, maybe that was his soul, maybe we killed him . . .’
‘Just look at me and listen, OK? He’s not dead. It’s OK. He tucked up his legs just before the bike hit, didn’t he? You both saw that, didn’t you? The bike didn’t hit him, just the chair. It’s not a big platform to fall off. He’s OK. It’s OK.’
Josh was right.
The next day, after a sleepless night, Ryan read in the local paper, to his intense relief, that ‘Will Wruthers’ injuries proved to be slight and he is recovering well in St Barnabas’ Hospital.’ Silverwing magazine had apologized for the incident, and to make amends had promised to pay for Will to go on a ‘Direct Access’ course to learn how to ride a motorcycle. They were also willing to make a payment towards any motorcycle of his choice.
I wonder if that’ll be enough to help him buy a Harley-Davidson, thought Ryan. And I wonder if he still wants one.
‘Ryan!’
Ryan jumped to hear his mother’s voice just behind him.
‘Let me see those.’ She snatched hold of both of his hands, pulling the bandage back to expose his warts fully. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’
Ryan dropped his gaze to his hands. His warts were pale and bulging like blisters, but there were no signs of eyelashes or eyeballs.
That afternoon she took him to a specialist. Dr Marston was a tall man with tired eyes. He prodded Ryan’s warts gently, then a little more firmly, and Ryan had to grit his teeth to stop himself wincing.
‘Well, there’s no redness, but the swelling is tight – probably full of fluid. I could pierce the swellings with a sterilized needle, but you’d have to keep them very clean to stop them getting infected . . .’
‘No!’ Ryan’s voice was squawky with panic. He hid his hands behind his back. It must have looked childish, but he was filled with terror at the thought of long steel points sliding into his hidden eyes.
‘Oh . . . we’ll try a tube of that cream you mentioned instead,’ Ryan’s mother declared impatiently, when at last she realized that for once Ryan would not give way. ‘We’ll come back if it doesn’t work.’
On the drive home, to Ryan’s dismay, she made it quite clear that he should leave his warts unbandaged from that point on, ‘to let the air get to them’. Now Ryan couldn’t even hide one hand.
Back at the house, Ryan discovered a message on the answering machine from Chelle, which took five minutes to ask him over for tea.
Josh and Chelle were already in the Cavern when he arrived. Josh had a new and darker pair of sunglasses.
‘We’ve been to Ebstowe Fair, the one the sandwich board was all about, and found out all kinds of stuff,’ began Chelle, ‘and I don’t like the new wisher; he’s even worse than Donna only in a different way, and when I have his thoughts in my head it’s like stirring really cold porridge round and round with your finger. It’s horrible . . .’
‘Yeah. Where were you?’ Josh’s new glasses had lenses shaped like slanting headlights. Evil beetle eyes. ‘We phoned, but your dad said you’d gone out.’
‘My mum took me to a doctor about my warts.’ It was ridiculous, but Ryan felt hurt to think that the others had gone to the fair without him.
‘Did you give anything away?’ When Ryan shook his head, Josh nodded approval. ‘Yeah, well, we couldn’t hang around waiting for you to get back. We’ve only got two weeks until term starts, haven’t we? Besides, I had to get out of the house. Donna and Punzell are driving me mad. My parents say they’ve got to stay and mend the feng shui so televisions don’t explode, and sometimes they just do, right? So they’re still in the house every day.’
‘It’s a bit like that with Miss Gossamer,’ Chelle said, nodding vigorously, ‘she’s always about, watching . . .’
‘And it makes me sick. I keep coming across them with Punzell rubbing her shoulders to “align her energies”, and her making little “ooh” noises. And when he’s not there, then she’s following me around everywhere and pretending not to. I think she’s scared I’ll tell Punzell she’s not really psychic. For God’s sake, we granted her wish, didn’t we? I hope Wet Will isn’t going to be such a royal pain now he’s got his wish.’
‘Has he definitely got the Harley then?’
‘Oh come on! They’re helping him buy any bike he chooses. What’s he going to get? Anyway, forget about him,’ Josh said impatiently. ‘Chelle, tell Ryan about the new wisher, and then I’ll tell him what we’re going to do.’
‘Oooh, it’s so sad, he’s so miserable, and I want to like him but I don’t because he hates everybody so much. And his brain’s got this, like this . . . smell, it’s like an old people’s kitchen smell but he isn’t really old enough for his kitchen to smell like that. And he’s an actor, and his name is Jacob Karlborough, and he just keeps
thinking about how he should have got this part in this play called The Case of the Strangled Parrot, then he had to work for the fair as a mime, playing Harlequin, and he hated it, but now they’ve made somebody younger Harlequin instead, and Jacob has to be just one of Harlequin’s helpers, and he hates that even more. And he thinks about all the people in the fair, and how they don’t realize he should be famous really. And he thinks about how some day he’ll show them, and get a part in a West End play, then he starts from the beginning and thinks about it all over again.’
‘So we need to make sure he shows ’em,’ Josh butted in enthusiastically. ‘Get him famous so he can get into a West End play and rub everyone’s nose in it. Listen – there’s going to be a “magic, mime and music show” on the last day of the fair, and he’s going to be Harlequin in it one last time. So we need to make sure lots of people see him performing, so he gets famous.’
‘Let’s hope he isn’t rubbish,’ Ryan muttered. ‘How do we make everyone see him?’
‘Oh, I’ve got lots of ideas about that. I mean, what if all the rides and everything started going wrong? Everybody’ll end up going to the Harlequin tent instead—’
‘Josh, no, please, really, really, no . . .’ Ryan had visions of Ferris wheels spinning away from their axles, roller coasters slingshotting their cars at the sky . . .
Josh looked sullen, but was brought round by concentrated begging from the other two. ‘OK. Whatever. Anyway, Ryan – here’s the really clever bit. Your dad’s a theatre critic, isn’t he? So you just make him come along, and then afterwards get him to write his column on this clown guy.’
‘He’s never going to do that!’ Ryan exclaimed, horrified. ‘He mostly reviews big London shows and touring plays . . .’
‘Well, you can get him there, can’t you? And afterwards just . . . keep going on about the best bits of the show, so he doesn’t forget them. Look, we’ve only got a few days till the big show happens. This is all you’ve got to do, Ryan; we already scouted everything out and did all the planning.’ When Josh put things like that, it was impossible to say no.
‘I just hope I can get away without Miss Gossamer following me,’ twittered Chelle faintly, ‘and yesterday when I was going to the post office to get some stamps for Mum she kept saying, “Can’t you send one of the older girls? Little Chelle and I were having such a lovely conversation” . . .’ Chelle’s words had a comforting patter, like gentle rain, but this did not console Ryan much. His father hated pantomimes and magic shows. He wasn’t sure he could even make him sit through a whole ‘mime and magic’ show, let alone like it.
Chelle was still talking. ‘And even though I knew it was a dream it was really scary because the legs of her chair kept moving and creeping her closer and closer to me and she was just sitting there pretending she wasn’t moving, and the worst thing was I kept trying to tell everybody and make them see her following me all around the house, but it was like they couldn’t hear me . . .’
Josh’s eyes were still hidden behind the evil beetle glasses, but Ryan could tell that he was watching him.
‘You’ll do it, Ryan,’ Josh said suddenly. ‘You’re smart.’ He said this as if it ended the matter, which of course it did.
They had to clear out of the Cavern a little before six because Miss Gossamer wanted Chelle’s help with sorting through clothes for a jumble sale.
During dinner, Ryan’s mother enthused about everything she had discovered concerning the voodoo symbols painted on the milk bottles. As far as she could tell, she had been cursed with death, childlessness and having her eyes eaten by the god Legbar. She was thoroughly delighted about all of this. And then, halfway through sawing at a block of cheese, she suddenly looked misty-eyed, and left the table to look for a better knife, rubbing sternly at one eye with the heel of her hand. Ryan’s father sighed deeply without seeming at all surprised. It did not seem to be a good time to talk about funfairs.
Breakfast did not seem like a good time to bring it up either. His parents were in the throes of an icy post-argument lull.
He finally took the plunge the following morning, when his father was giving him a lift to collect the prescription cream from the chemist.
‘Dad . . . I’d really like to go to the Ebstowe fair.’ There. ‘I just thought it would be nice . . . as a family . . . all together.’
His father glanced at him in the rear-view mirror, quite cautiously, as if he really was looking out for something dangerous incoming. ‘Well . . . perhaps. We’ll see, shall we?’
It was fortunate that Ryan’s father also checked the wing mirror before pulling out. He slammed on his brakes as a motorcycle with a red L-plate sliced past the window, its rider garish in his neon-yellow over-jacket. The bike wobbled to a halt at the lights ahead, and the rider placed an unsteady foot down. Looking out through the back window, Ryan spotted two more motorcyclists wearing the same yellow jackets, one with the words ‘instructor’ emblazoned on it in black.
The lights changed, and the motorcyclist ahead looked over his shoulder, revved the engine, lifted his feet on to the rests and toppled over sideways with a crash. A bobbly bit broke off a lever that stuck out from the right handlebar. The queue of traffic had to wait while he crawled out from under the bike, lifted it with great effort, straddled it again and wobbled off down the road.
Ryan watched the luminous yellow figure until it was out of sight. The rider’s face had mostly been hidden by the helmet, but the part visible through the visor had looked an awful lot like Will Wruthers.
16
Fair Punishment
That evening Ryan’s father brought up the idea of visiting the fair ‘as a family’. Ryan’s mother, ever unpredictable, decided it was a wonderful idea. A wonderful idea, that is, until the day itself, when she had an early phone call from Saul Paladine’s ex-wife, who wanted to tell Ryan’s mother all about him and give her his letters. Ryan’s mother got extremely excited and drove off to Nottinghamshire, leaving a note.
Ryan’s father handed Ryan the note without saying anything. He drove Ryan to the Ebstowe fair without saying anything.
Ryan had not noticed on his last visit what a sad town Ebstowe was. Apparently it had been very popular about a hundred years before. The big sweeping promenade along the sea front looked a bit lost, as if it was wondering where the women with big hats and white parasols had gone. Now that the pocked, brightly coloured plastic towers of the funfair came into view, Ryan thought it seemed very strange next to the rest of Ebstowe, strange and wrong. It was as if somebody had found a gentle, dignified old lady whose friends were all dead, and forced her to wear a funny hat.
‘I shall insist on you enjoying this,’ muttered Ryan’s father, unbuttoning the collar of his shirt as they approached the turnstile. ‘I will want proof of glee.’ He did not like heat or crowds, and Ryan felt at once guilty and pleased that his father had agreed to brave the fair for him.
It was worse than Ryan had expected. When he was eight, the fair had been a magical, sun-soaked place. He hadn’t been back since, however, and time had done strange and terrible things.
He remembered riding a carousel with swings that swung out sideways when it spun, and feeling as if he was flying. That ride was gone, leaving only a stripped round hub with steps set in the sides. A row of inexplicable plastic camels lurched in a line, bug-eyed and grinning despite their missing noses and chipped knees. The sides of the crazy house were painted with clumsy rip-off Disney figures, Mickey and Donald’s ugly cousins.
While he was staring about himself, trying to smile for the benefit of his father, Chelle ran up to him.
‘Have you seen, you have to pay for the rides as well as to get in! It wasn’t like that last year, oh hello, Mr Doyle.’
‘Hello, Chelle.’ Ryan’s father was giving him a shrewd sideways look. ‘Would I be right in thinking that Josh is somewhere here too?’
‘Yes, but he’s busy shooting things at the moment and he’s already won a dolphin but lo
ok he gave it to me.’ Delighted, she waved a bright blue dolphin in their faces. Its pupils wobbled in its plastic eyes. Ryan’s father recoiled slightly.
The threesome walked on in what would have been an uncomfortable silence if one of them had not been Chelle.
‘. . . and the dodgems were too scary, not properly scary like the ghost train but nasty. I paid and tried to get into a car but all these boys got there first and nobody noticed I didn’t have a car and so I just stood at the side . . .’
There was a look of quiet suffering on Ryan’s father’s face. Ryan had a feeling that before long it would get a lot less quiet. Chelle, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying herself.
Ahead at the rifle range they saw Josh surrendering his gun and being handed a red cowboy hat by the stallholder. He brought the hat over and dropped it on to Ryan’s head.
‘Good morning, Mr Doyle.’ He was doing his talking-to-parents voice again. ‘I’m very glad that you and Ryan were able to come.’
‘I wish fewer people had had the same idea,’ said Ryan’s father. Indeed, there were long snaky queues in front of most of the rides, all already full of hot and impatient young children. Looking around, Ryan noticed that there seemed to be quite a crowd massing outside the entrance gates. Strangely, the crowd seemed to be chiefly made up of grown men and boys in their late teens.
Ryan’s father had noticed this as well, and was frowning at it. There was a silence, and then Chelle gave a small squeak as if she had spotted something.
‘Oh . . . look at that!’ With rather unconvincing surprise, she pointed across the fairground towards a large blue tent. ‘That poster says there’s a show inside with mimes, magic and music . . . and it starts in five minutes. Let’s . . . all go inside right now.’
‘It is in the shade, I suppose,’ assented Ryan’s father.
‘Perhaps you two could go in ahead and save a place,’ Ryan said quickly. ‘Josh and I can get some drinks.’
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