The Paradise Trap

by Catherine Jinks

‘Let’s key in this code number,’ he panted. ‘Six-zero-zero-eight-two-three . . .’

  Once again, Prot was given the job of pressing buttons. And as soon as Newt’s code had been entered, the scratching noise stopped.

  Then the lift began to move.

  ‘It’s going up again,’ Holly remarked. ‘How can it be going up again?’

  No one answered. Sterling was too busy trying to get his breath back; he was doubled over with his hands on his knees, puffing and blowing. Coco was looking around in consternation. ‘Where did this lift come from?’ she demanded. ‘I don’t remember a lift.’

  As for Marcus, he was wondering what to do about the enormous, tattooed bouncer at the door of Newt’s club.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘last time I tried to get into Newt’s party, a bouncer threw me out. Because I’m underage.’

  Holly frowned, but Coco seemed unconcerned.

  ‘That’s all right,’ she assured Marcus. ‘You can wait right here with your mum. Sterling and I will go and get Newt.’ Cutting an uncertain look at her breathless husband, she added, ‘Unless you want to stay here too, sweetie?’

  ‘Nuh-uh,’ Sterling gasped. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’ He straightened up, as if to demonstrate how fit he was. ‘I want to see this club. I want to see what it’s like.’

  Marcus thrust the brochure at him.

  ‘It’s kind oflike the spa, only without all those cats,’ Marcus warned. ‘No one in there will want Newt to leave. They’ll try to stop you from taking her. And there are hundreds of people.’ After a moment’s reflection, he said glumly, ‘I hope they don’t start throwing bottles at you.’

  ‘Oh dear. So do I.’ Holly sounded nervous. Once again, however, Coco was completely unfazed.

  ‘I’ve had more than enough practice making Newt leave parties,’ she said, with complete confidence. ‘A few hundred drunk teenagers never stopped me before.’ Then she turned to her husband. ‘This is taking an awfully long time. How many floors are there?’

  Sterling shrugged. He was examining the dance-party brochure. ‘Join Newton Huckstepp and her friends at the world’s hottest venue,’ he read aloud. ‘Meet all her favourite bands and movie stars . . .

  ’ Suddenly the lift stopped. The door opened. They heard the throb of muffled music: ooompa-ooompa-ooompa-ooompa. In front of them was a brick wall and a cleaner’s bucket.

  Coco blinked. ‘Is this it?’ she asked.

  ‘I think it may be around the corner . . .’ Holly stuck her head out the door, craning to her left. ‘Oh. Yes. Looks like we’re here, all right.’

  ‘Then off we go,’ Coco muttered. She seized Sterling’s hand and took a step forward.

  ‘Be careful, Coco!’ Holly begged. ‘Remember – if you’re worried, we can always come back with the police!’

  Marcus stared at his mother. The police? His mind boggled at the prospect; how on earth was she planning to explain all this to the police?

  Coco seemed equally unimpressed. She waved the suggestion aside. ‘I’m not worried,’ she said. ‘I used to hang out in worse places than this when I was young.’ As she disappeared around the corner, Marcus could hear her voice floating back towards him. ‘If there’s a ladies’ room in here, I might be able to wash this mask off . . .’

  Marcus hoped fervently that she wasn’t going to linger.

  ‘They’ll have trouble finding Newt in a mob like this,’ Holly commented. She was still leaning out of the lift, squinting at the dimly lit dance floor. ‘And what if there’s a dress code? What if Coco gets thrown out because she isn’t dressed properly?’

  Marcus sniffed. As far as he could recall, many of the dancers he’d seen on his previous visit had been wearing what looked like strips of silver duct tape. ‘I doubt there’s a dress code,’ he mumbled. Then he joined his mother at the door of the lift, where – by stretching their necks – they could just make out a swirling, swaying, steaming crush of bodies. At one point Holly gave a start. ‘Look!’ she exclaimed. ‘Isn’t that the latest James Bond?’ Before Marcus could even shift his gaze, however, James Bond was sucked back into the scrum from which he’d emerged.

  After about five minutes – just as Marcus was beginning to feel uneasy – he became aware of a slight commotion at one end of the smoky, cavernous dance floor. Someone was shouting. The movement of the crowd in that particular spot had become less rhythmic and more jagged. Then Marcus spied the tattooed bouncer, who stood head and shoulders above everyone else. Though the strobe lights made it hard to work out exactly what was going on, it appeared that the bouncer had become involved in some kind of argument.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Holly. ‘I hope that’s not Coco.’

  Heads turned. The high-pitched yells grew louder. There was a disturbance in the tightly pressed throng around the bar, where people were being roughly pushed aside.

  Marcus squinted into the crush. He was expecting to see Coco and Sterling being escorted out of it by the club’s security team. Instead, Newton Huckstepp came stomping towards the lift, red-faced and furious.

  ‘I’m going!’ she screamed. ‘How can I stay when you’ve ruined everything? You always ruin everything with your big, fat, stupid mouths!’

  It took Marcus a couple of seconds to realise that she was talking to her dad and her stepmother.

  23

  PARTY POOPERS

  ‘WAIT! NEWT! DON’T GO!’

  About half a dozen teenage girls were chasing Newt, begging her to reconsider. Marcus recognised Hayley, the blonde girl in the shiny red dress, who was urging her friend not to let a couple of dumb jerks spoil the whole party.

  ‘Everyone’s got embarrassing parents!’ Hayley cried. ‘And nobody cares that you’re in love with Ryan . . .’

  ‘I’m not!’ Newt shrieked. As she charged into the lift, Marcus and Holly shrank against the rear wall – because it looked as if Newt’s entire entourage was about to pile in after her. Even Prot began to trundle backwards out of the way.

  But Newt was the only girl who crossed the threshold. Her friends all stopped short, as if blocked by an invisible barrier.

  ‘You haven’t finished your drink!’ Hayley pointed out. ‘You haven’t heard what that DJ said about you!’

  ‘Like it even matters, now that everyone thinks I’ve been stalking Ryan!’ Newt raised her voice to yell at Coco and Sterling, who were closing in fast. ‘Thanks to a pair of total morons with the biggest mouths on the planet!’

  Sobbing with rage, she punched wildly at the control panel. Marcus cleared his throat.

  ‘Ah – Newt?’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you . . .’

  ‘Shuddup!’ she snapped, much to Holly’s annoyance.

  ‘Excuse me, Newton,’ Holly remonstrated. ‘Please don’t talk to my son like that.’

  ‘Newton!’ By now Coco was trying to push through the gaggle of teenage girls in her path. It wasn’t easy; they kept stepping on her feet with their stiletto heels and spilling their drinks down the front of her bathrobe. ‘Newt, stop pushing those buttons or you’ll land us in even bigger trouble!’ she scolded. Then, when Newt ignored her, Coco turned to address her husband – who was busy fending off the tattooed bouncer. ‘Sterling! Hurry up, or she’ll leave without us!’

  ‘Coming, sweetheart . . .’ Sterling had been shaking up a can of soft drink that he’d snitched from some innocent bystander. Now he yanked at its ring-pull, blinding the bouncer with a spray of carbonated fizz.

  Although there wasn’t enough fizz to pick off the teenage girls barring his way, Sterling managed to force himself through them by using his belly as a battering ram.

  ‘’Scuse me . . . coming through . . . whoops-a-daisy!’ he said.

  Marcus, meanwhile, had made a reassuring discovery. ‘I don’t think this lift’s going anywhere,’ he observed. ‘Not if Newt’s pushing the buttons.’ He wondered why. Could it be something to do with the number she was
keying in? Or did the problem lie in the fact that she wasn’t a robot?

  ‘Go away!’ she bawled, as her parents joined her. ‘Leave me alone!’

  ‘Sweetie,’ Coco argued, ‘you’re always on the phone to Ryan. That’s why I figured that he had to be your new boyfriend . . .’

  ‘SHUDDUP!’ Newt screeched, covering her ears and screwing up her eyes.

  Marcus pulled the amusement-park brochure out of his pocket. Then he leaned down to address Prot.

  ‘Hey, Prot,’ he instructed, in a quiet, careful voice, ‘I want you to press these buttons: eight-six-five-zero-zero-three . . .’

  At that instant, a famous face appeared in the crowd that was building up outside the lift. Though Marcus recognised the face, he couldn’t put a name to it. He felt sure, however, that it belonged to a Hollywood actor. Only a Hollywood actor would have had such perfect, shiny teeth.

  ‘Where are you going, Newton?’ the actor inquired. ‘I thought you were going to tell me about your poetry?’

  ‘Oh my God! Newt! Did you hear that?’ Hayley squealed. ‘Get back here right now!’

  But it was too late. Prot had keyed in Edison’s code number – and the lift door was sliding shut. There was a final glimpse of Hayley’s agonised expression before the whole scene vanished behind a wall of steel.

  Newt flung herself into a corner, folding her arms across her chest.

  ‘There! Are you satisfied?’ she spat, glaring at Coco. ‘You’ve made me look like a complete loser in front of all my friends! And you’ve completely wrecked my chances of ever going out with the greatest bass player in the history of the world! Thanks a lot!’

  Coco sighed. She began to massage the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.

  Marcus said, ‘None of those people were your real friends, Newt. The whole thing was a fake.’

  ‘So what?’ Newt didn’t seem to care. She just scowled at him. ‘How do you know?’ she continued. ‘What makes you such an expert, anyway?’

  Marcus shrugged.

  ‘You don’t have to be an expert,’ he replied. ‘All you need is common sense.’ Before she could do more than flush angrily, he added, ‘Everyone has a dream holiday. Yours seemed real because there weren’t any giant pink cats or talking dodgem cars in it. But that doesn’t mean it was real.’

  Newt eyed him as if he were insane. ‘Giant pink cats?’ she echoed. ‘For God’s sake, what are you on?’

  Sterling, however, was more interested in the dodgem cars.

  ‘Talking dodgem cars?’ His eyes lit up.’Where were they? I didn’t see any talking dodgem cars.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You will,’ Marcus assured him – just as the lift bounced to a sudden halt.

  24

  LOST IN THE DARK

  MARCUS DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT FROM EDISON’S amusement park. Would the runaway ferris wheel still be rolling around? Would the clowns be back in their boxes? Would the grouchy dodgem cars have smashed each other to smithereens?

  He was prepared for almost anything. But when the door opened onto a pitch black interior, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

  ‘Are we – are we back in the cellar?’ asked Holly, sounding worried.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Marcus checked his brochure again. Had he got the code number wrong? ‘We shouldn’t be . . .’

  ‘Of course we’re back in the cellar!’ said Newt. She had no sooner stepped forward, however, than a distant cackle of crazed laughter pulled her up short.

  There was a tense silence.

  ‘What was that?’ she demanded at last, in a high-pitched voice that echoed slightly as if she were shouting down a tunnel.

  Everyone listened. Marcus sniffed the air. It smelled of dust and damp and something else. Oil? Hot steel? As his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness beyond the lift, he began to pick out some vague shapes: a dense shadow, a thin gleam, a pale patch.

  Then someone nearby uttered a long, deathly, gurgling groan.

  ‘Let’s get out of here!’ Holly squeaked. Newt jumped backwards, reaching for the control panel. But before Marcus could remind her that she shouldn’t waste her time pressing buttons, there was an enormous crash – followed by a drawn-out, metallic squeal.

  Off to the left, a set of double doors burst open. Light poured in as two rubbery flaps were slammed apart by a four-seater buggy on rails. At the same instant, a luminous green skeleton dropped from the ceiling, swaying and jiggling at the end of a hangman’s noose. For a split second the skeleton’s bony toes were dangling directly over the buggy’s empty front seat. ‘Haah-ha-ha-hoo-hoo-hoo!’ laughed a disembodied voice. Then the buggy changed direction and banged through another set of doors off to the right, its headlights briefly illuminating several plaster gravestones before it vanished.

  There was a chorus of screams from everyone except Marcus, who heaved a sigh of relief.

  ‘It’s the ghost train,’ he declared. ‘Don’t worry, it’s only the ghost train. I knew I didn’t get that code wrong.’

  ‘Ghost train?’ Newt bleated. ‘What ghost train?’

  ‘Edison’s ghost train.’ Marcus was keeping a wary eye on the skeleton, which was close enough to hear every word he said. ‘This is Edison’s wonderful amusement park,’ he went on, trying to sound enthusiastic. ‘It’s the best place on earth, because all the dodgem cars and things are actually alive.’

  Jerking his chin towards the suspended skeleton, he pulled a face at his mother – who immediately grasped the message that he was trying to convey.

  ‘Oh! Right!’ she said. ‘Yes, of course. I’ve heard about this place. It’s the kind of place you’d never want to leave.’

  Marcus wasn’t impressed by his mother’s acting abilities. He didn’t find her forced eagerness at all convincing.

  Newt, however, seemed completely fooled.

  ‘I want to leave,’ she whined. ‘I want to leave right now.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ said Sterling. He was rubbing his hands together in anticipation. ‘Why would you want to miss out on this? You won’t find talking dodgem cars anywhere else in the world.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Coco chimed in. She too was now nervously watching the skeleton. ‘You’re coming with us, Newt, because this is going to be . . . um . . . extremely interesting. And educational. And fun.’

  ‘And Prot can stay here,’ Marcus added. He began to spell out his orders, very slowly and clearly. ‘Stay here, Prot. Hold the lift door open until we come back. Understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ the robot confirmed. ‘I will hold the lift door open until you come back.’

  ‘But how are we going to get out?’ Holly asked. ‘I mean – which way should we go? It’s all so dark and dangerous . . .’

  ‘In a good way,’ Marcus corrected hastily. ‘Dangerous in a good way. Because this is a ghost train and ghost trains are meant to be scary.’

  ‘Oh, yes. In a good way, of course.’ When Holly flicked another anxious look at the skeleton, Marcus had a sudden brainwave.

  He cleared his throat.

  ‘Uh – Mr Skeleton?’ he quavered. ‘Where do we go to see the rest of this magnificent and enjoyable park of yours?’

  In the sudden shocked silence that followed, Holly’s acrylic talons closed tightly around her son’s arm. Newt stared at him in absolute disbelief. Coco winced and Sterling raised his eyebrows.

  Then the skeleton turned its naked, gleaming skull towards Marcus.

  ‘There’ll be a car along any moment,’ it announced, its jaw flapping. And as everyone gasped, the skeleton suddenly disappeared, yanked up into the shadows overhead.

  A few seconds later, the promised car arrived. Boom-CRASH went the double doors. Eeeeeek went the wheels. ‘Haah-ha-ha-hoo-hoo-hoo,’ laughed the invisible maniac. Once again, the skeleton dropped from its hidey-hole in the ceiling.

  This time, however, the buggy screeched to a standstill, planting itself directly beneath the rattling bundle of bones.

  �
�Hop in,’ said the buggy. It had a tired voice and a jack-o’-lantern face. ‘I’m already behind schedule.’

  25

  ALL ABOARD

  STERLING DIDN’T HESITATE. HE JUMPED STRAIGHT INTO THE buggy’s front seat.

  ‘Come on!’ he cried. ‘There’s plenty of room if we all squeeze up!’

  Coco and Holly exchanged an apprehensive look. Holly said, ‘Are you sure it’s safe in that thing?’

  ‘It’ll be safer than getting knocked down by another one,’ Sterling retorted. ‘Which is what will happen if we try walking along the rails.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Coco had to admit. Meanwhile, Marcus was already climbing into the buggy, which had begun to make impatient hydraulic noises.

  ‘All aboard,’ it droned. ‘All aboard who’s coming aboard.’

  ‘Quick!’ Marcus beckoned to his mother. ‘Before it leaves!’

  Holly made up her mind then. She slid into the back seat beside Marcus, leaving a small wedge of space for Newt. But Newt wouldn’t budge. She hung back, stubbornly resisting all Coco’s efforts to coax her out of the lift.

  ‘I’m not going,’ Newt insisted. When the buggy released its brakes, signalling its imminent departure with a mighty hiss, Coco gave up. She joined Sterling in the front seat. ‘Just stay there!’ she told her stepdaughter, as the buggy started to move. ‘Don’t for God’s sake do anything you’ll—’

  Crash! Before she could even finish, the buggy slammed through the next set of doors, which opened onto a kind of fake tomb lined with Egyptian hieroglyphs. A couple of bandaged mummies jerked to life; one sat up in its sarcophagus, while another stiffly raised its arms.

  Though Marcus wasn’t impressed by this creaky display, he didn’t dare say so. Not while the mummies were listening in.

  ‘I hope Newton’s going to be all right,’ Coco fretted.

  ‘She can’t go back home,’ Holly pointed out. ‘Nothing happened last time she pushed those buttons.’

  ‘Yeah, but she could always tell Prot to push them,’ Marcus weighed in. He was about to suggest that they send someone back when Sterling suddenly addressed one of the mummies in a booming voice.