Granddad had grasped the bar across their laps, and – looking serene and resigned – said that wasn’t possible. All they could do was hold tight and go through with it.
She remembered almost nothing about the ride apart from violent creaking and flashing speed and getting her knees banged on turns which threw you around like a car crash. That, and screaming until her throat was hoarse.
When they had emerged at the other end, exhilarated but shaken, Granddad turned to her, somewhat pale, and asked if she’d enjoyed the experience.
‘No,’ Hannah said. It had scared her witless.
‘Nor me,’ Granddad said. He’d been looking up at the track towering above them with an odd expression on his face. ‘Let’s never do that again.’
And yet here they were, walking towards it.
Granddad led them to an area at the side where a door was discreetly inset into the wooden panelling, near the window where you could buy photos of yourself being terrified on the ride you’d just endured. This door had a ‘NO ENTRY’ sign on it.
After a minute’s work with one of the endless series of tools he seemed to have secreted about his person, Granddad had it unlocked. The interior thus revealed was dark and shadowy. Granddad peered around to get his bearings, then set off in the direction of the machinery.
‘I know I’m sounding like a broken record,’ Hannah’s dad asked, ‘but what are we doing here?’
‘Steve?’ Granddad called from deep in the shadows of the machine. ‘Come here a moment, would you?’
Hannah followed her father towards the sound of Granddad’s voice. When they found him, he was experimentally moving levers and dials on some kind of control panel. The panel was old and battered and looked like the kind of thing you might find on an ancient tractor, rusting in a field, rather than something that governed the movement of the edifice that ducked and rolled high over their heads. On one side was a long lever.
‘Could you see if you can move that?’
Hannah’s dad grabbed the end. He tugged. It resisted for a moment but then rotated downward.
‘Excellent,’ Granddad said as he started to undo screws on the front of the panel. ‘In which case, that’s going to be your job. I couldn’t even get it to budge.’
‘Dad,’ Steve said, ‘what are you about to do?’
‘Ever wondered what rollercoasters are for?’
‘People ride them, get scared, go eat tacos.’
Granddad lifted off the panel. A tangle of wires and cogs lay beyond. He reached into his jacket for glasses, put them on, and peered into the chaos. ‘That’s what they became, yes. And of course, the ones they’re building now, that’s all they’re for. Most people don’t know the original purpose.’
‘Which was …?’
‘Why do you think people enjoy riding them?’
‘No idea. Personally, I don’t.’
‘They enjoy it because they feel something. It’s scary, yes, and thrilling too. But it can also make them experience … something else. A rollercoaster constructed in the correct way, with precisely the right twists and turns and rises and falls, running at a very particular speed … it can get behind.’
‘Behind what?’
‘That’s very hard to explain. Aha.’ Granddad reached into the jumble of wires towards a small dial, placed so deep inside that it looked as if it had been hidden.
The Devil appeared at his shoulder. ‘Does that confirm its original purpose?’
‘Yes. It doesn’t prove it’s still up to the job.’
‘That’s a risk we’re going to have to take.’
‘Wait,’ Hannah’s dad said. ‘Whoa, hold on. We’re not getting on this thing?’
‘You’re not, no,’ Granddad said. ‘That lever you pulled is the fail-safe. It will halt the entire machine quickly. And … hopefully safely.’
‘I don’t like the word “hopefully”,’ Steve said. ‘It’s especially not-good in this context.’
‘It’s the best I’ve got. We’re going to stand here – me operating the controls, you with your hand on the lever. If I tell you to pull it … pull it. Right away.’
‘No way,’ Hannah’s dad said very firmly, turning to the Devil. ‘Hannah is not getting on this thing. Are you out of your mind?’
The Devil raised an eyebrow. ‘I have no idea what the question means. Hannah must ride the machine. We need the strength of her bond to her mother.’
‘But you don’t care about Kristen,’ Aunt Zo said, walking out of the shadows. Her arms were folded. ‘Only about your machine. You think the two of them are together. This is nothing to do with Kristen. Not for you.’
‘True. But for now, our interests coincide.’
‘This is not happening,’ Hannah’s dad said. ‘Think—’
‘Steve,’ Granddad said. ‘He’s right, I’m afraid. What we found at the house points in only one direction. This is the only feasible means of quickly getting to where it appears the machine and Kristen may have gone. There’s no choice, and meanwhile she is in very great danger. The world, too.’
‘So we call the police.’
‘They can do nothing except waste precious time. This is our only option, I promise.’
Hannah’s father swore and bit his lip.
She could tell that he really, really didn’t want this to go ahead – but that he was remembering what he’d said to her: if your father tells you something, then you should try to believe it. She could tell also that he was starting to realize that his own father had more tricks up his sleeve than he’d ever imagined. ‘It’ll be OK,’ she told him.
‘I don’t know that,’ he said. ‘How can I? Dad – what are you actually going to do?’
‘Not much,’ Granddad said. ‘Just make it go a little faster.’
‘Faster?’
‘At fifty miles an hour, this is a rollercoaster. At higher speeds it becomes something else.’
‘Yes – a rickety old antique that could tear itself apart.’
‘It shouldn’t,’ Granddad said, with less than 100 per cent confidence. ‘It looks quite well maintained.’
‘To run at its normal speed.’
‘There’s no time for discussion,’ the Devil told Steve. ‘I can make it so that you are unable to intervene, but your father urged me to give you the chance to make a choice. I have honoured the Engineer’s request, but I’m losing patience and we’re running out of time.’
‘I’ll come too,’ Aunt Zo said.
‘But you hate rollercoasters,’ Hannah said.
‘I surely do. But I’ll go with you.’
Hannah’s father stared at her. ‘But how does that help, Zo? It just means if this thing blows apart I’ve lost even more.’
‘Dad says it’s not going to,’ Zo said. ‘I believe him. And when … whatever happens, happens, I’ll be with her.’
‘We have to find Mom, Dad,’ Hannah said, near tears. ‘We have to. Now. And this is the only thing there is to try.’
Her father tried to find one further argument. ‘OK, so, tell me this – what are we supposed to say if the cops hear the racket and turn up and ask what the heck we’re up to?’
The man in the black suit winked. ‘Tell them the Devil made you do it.’
Chapter 37
Aunt Zo found an interior doorway that led to the stairs to the embarking point for the rollercoaster, high above. She, Hannah, the Devil and Vaneclaw hurried to the top together.
There was silence as they stood on the platform, then a distant clanking from below. After a minute the carriages juddered into view from a side chamber.
The Devil indicated for Hannah to get in the front of the first, next to him. Aunt Zo got in behind, with Vaneclaw. The protective bar dropped into their laps.
Suddenly they were going forwards. For the first fifteen seconds they moved at moderate speed through a dark area, banking left and then emerging into the outside air. Hannah remembered from last time how the carriages chugged slowly up the fir
st slope, before plummeting almost immediately.
Her stomach turned over in anticipation. There was a clackety-clackety sound as they were winched higher and higher and higher, and then there they were, right at the very top, the front of their carriage nosing out into the cold night air, the mouth of the San Lorenzo River visible quite some distance below, glinting in the moonlight.
‘Dear God,’ Aunt Zo said, very quietly.
‘Wicked,’ cackled Vaneclaw. ‘Bring it on.’
And then it happened. The carriage teetered over the edge and was suddenly in rapid downward movement, feeling like a mistake. Just when you’d started to adapt to this it made a wrenching turn to the left, then right, then left again – after which it basically went nuts: up and down and left and right, hectic, ear-dunning downward clattering punctuated by brief periods of unpleasant suspense as the carriage sailed higher, in preparation for another vertiginous drop.
Hannah gripped the bar with all her might, trying to decide whether having her eyes open or shut was less terrifying. Eyes open meant you could see how high you were above the boardwalk, which wasn’t good; but closing them meant you got no warning of the next abrupt turn, which felt like you’d left your stomach behind and might never see it again. It was all very loud and very fast and very scary. It went on for two dreadful minutes, though felt so much longer.
And then suddenly they slowed. The carriage pulled back into the interior, still decelerating. The ride was finished. The carriage stopped at the platform with a jerk. Aunt Zo made a quiet, unhappy noise.
Vaneclaw was bouncing up and down. ‘Again! Again!’
The protective bar flipped up. Hannah looked at the Devil. His eyes were narrowed and thoughtful. ‘Did you see anything?’
She shook her head. ‘Though … there was one turn, right up high, where …’
‘What?’
‘I’m not sure. I had my eyes shut, and you know how it’s dark and sparkly in your head when you do that? For a moment it seemed … it was much lighter, I think. Like a flash of white.’
‘Probably brain cells getting crushed against the insides of your skull,’ Aunt Zo muttered. ‘May I get out now? There’s a reasonably high chance I’m going to barf.’
‘I saw that too,’ the Devil told Hannah. ‘Vaneclaw?’
‘Boss?’
‘Explosively,’ Aunt Zo insisted.
The Devil ignored her. ‘Go to the Engineer, imp. Tell him to turn it up.’
‘Turn it up?’ Zo shouted. ‘Are you insane?’
‘Awesome!’ The imp hopped out, hooting with glee, and went haring away into the darkness.
They sat in silence but for quiet moaning sounds from Aunt Zo, who evidently really didn’t feel well. Then they heard the sound of tiny feet pattering back up the wooden stairs.
‘Her dad’s not happy,’ he said as he jumped back into the carriage. ‘The Engineer neither. He said he’d put it up two more notches, but that’s your lot. He won’t vouch for it after that.’
‘Then we shall have to hope it’s enough,’ the Devil said.
Three minutes later the clanking started, and the bar came back down. The prospect of doing the ride again made Hannah feel very scared indeed, but she knew she had no choice, and that if this was the only way to save her mom then she’d do it as many times as it took. As the carriage started to clunk its way up the first rise, Hannah saw Aunt Zo gripping on to the bar as if her life depended on it. Her face was pale.
‘I never liked you,’ Zo told her with a wan smile. ‘And I’m never coming to Santa Cruz ever again.’
And then it felt like some giant reached down, picked the carriage up and threw it.
The increase in speed was very noticeable. When you’re on a rollercoaster you often fear it’s going too quickly, that centrifugal force and crafty design surely can’t be enough to keep you on a narrow track when you’re going so fast, that the clanking and thumps that come at you like a swarm of random bees mean the whole thing’s going to fly apart. You tell yourself that’s the point of the enterprise, that’s why these things are supposed to be fun, and the idea may be reassuring.
But when you know the contraption’s been hotwired to go at far greater than usual speed, there is no reassurance to be found.
We’re going to die, you think.
Right here, right now.
Squish, splat.
The carriage flew up and down and around and back so fast this time that the big drops didn’t seem that much scarier than the shorter ones. It was all dreadful, and after thirty seconds Hannah started to notice the framework making creaking sounds that definitely hadn’t happened the last time.
‘Oh crap,’ Aunt Zo moaned. ‘Oh … crap on a stick.’
Faster and faster it went, picking up yet more speed until its velocity started to feel wrong and utterly out of kilter with the possible. Hannah went from scared to very scared to flat-out terrified, unable even to see, head and body thrashed from side to side, eyeballs juddering in their sockets. She began to fear that Aunt Zo had been right, and the only question was whether her brain would burst before her neck snapped.
The carriage soared and ducked, sometimes lost in the tangle of tracks, at others points flying above it on a line high above the boardwalk. As it hurtled up to the top of the highest of these, Hannah discerned a new sound, hard to disentangle first from the mechanical cacophony all around her, but then clear as a bell.
It was a siren.
It was coming from ahead, but then the carriage smacked into another hairpin bend. Hannah wrenched herself round in the seat and saw that way down below, on the street that came from downtown, a police car was driving very fast towards the boardwalk, lights flashing, siren blaring.
Her dad had been right. Someone had called the cops. So now what? Were they all going to get arrested?
Right at that moment the carriage hurtled through the high and viciously banking turn where Hannah thought she’d seen a flash of light on the first ride – and in that instant, jerked for a moment out of experiencing the ride, her mind was slapped sideways. A combination of speed and sudden change in direction – and other dark forces that even Granddad didn’t properly understand – ripped a temporary edge in the world, a gap that led to the Behind.
The flash of white light was very bright this time.
And then …
Chapter 38
… it was very cold.
Chillingly, oh-my-God cold. So very and extremely cold that the first thing Hannah thought was they’d somehow flown off the track and been flung all the way back to Siberia.
It was also pitch-dark.
She could hear, or feel, a faint humming. When she sniffed against the cold – which was so acute it started settling into her bones immediately – the sound was flat, as if she was enclosed. She felt around with her hands and determined that she was sitting on some kind of surface, in the exact same position as she had been in the carriage of the rollercoaster.
She stood, carefully, grateful not to have the coldness in such direct contact with her butt. Then she realized something was right behind her. She let out a shriek and jumped away.
‘Hannah? Is that you?’ It was Aunt Zo’s voice. She sounded notably freaked out.
‘Yes! Is that you?’
‘I hope so. I mean, yes. Where … where are we?’
‘I don’t know. Siberia, maybe?’
‘What?’
Hannah reached for her aunt’s hand. When she had it, she felt a little better. Zo’s hand was just as cold as her own, though. Being this cold couldn’t be good for them.
She turned back in the direction she’d been facing and felt in front with her other hand. It flapped about in space. She shuffled a small step forwards. Finally her fingers touched something. It was cold and smooth. It felt like metal.
‘We’re inside something,’ she said.
She could hear Zo’s fingers swishing as they moved around on the walls too. Then they stopped. ‘Can you hea
r something?’
‘Just you,’ Hannah said. ‘Why?’
‘Shh.’
After a moment Hannah realized Aunt Zo was right. She could hear faint voices, and an occasional clang. ‘What is that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Zo said, sounding disconcerted.
‘We have to get out of here.’ Hannah’s teeth had started to chatter. ‘We have to go find Mom. Right now.’
‘I’m going to try pushing. See if I can get this thing to open. It feels like there’s some give.’
‘OK.’
Aunt Zo pushed. Hannah could hear the sound of her straining against it. There was a loud clunk, and then a strip of light going from the floor to about six inches above her head.
The noise they’d heard was suddenly louder. It sounded like people talking and shouting – not as if they were angry, just busy. More clanks. And a hiss, as though something very hot had been put in cold water. More clattering, and voices.
Hannah suddenly knew where she’d heard this collection of sounds before. Right after they’d first entered Hell through the gate in Siberia. But what did that mean?
Zo gently pushed the metal door. ‘It’s heavy,’ she said. She pushed harder – and it suddenly swung open.
Revealing a hectic kitchen.
Aunt Zo teetered forwards. Hannah followed. She looked back and saw a tall, shiny metal door hanging open. The space they’d emerged from was filled with neatly stacked piles and boxes of fruit and lettuce and steaks. It looked like the fridge at home when Dad had just got back from going nuts in CostCo.
‘What the good goddamned hell are you doing here?’
A fat man in a buttoned-up white jacket was standing furiously in front of Aunt Zo, hands aggressively on his hips.
‘Um,’ Zo said. She couldn’t for the moment come up with an explanation for where they were – in the middle of a large, frantically busy kitchen. Lots of people, most of them Latino and almost all men, rushed back and forth with pans and plates, or stood at stoves banging things, enveloped in steam and heat and rich cooking smells.
Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence Page 22