Full Tilt Part 7

"She didn't. I just heard." Quinn hesitated for a moment. I thought he might take a step closer. "Is it true that you're the only one who survived?"

I took a deep breath. "Let's go home, and we can talk about it there."

Quinn thought about it and shrugged sadly. "Some people are survivors. Some aren't."

"And how do you know you're not? Just because things stink now and you feel empty inside, it doesn't mean you'll feel that way next week, or next month, or next year!"

"That's just words!" Quinn said, getting more frustrated. "h.e.l.l, I don't have the patience to play a game of Scrabble, and I'm supposed to hang on your words for months and years?" He looked down. His shoulders dropped. I could see into his works now-the angry pistons, the overheated gears, and that pit inside of him. He kept it so well hidden back home with att.i.tude, but here, it was bare and bottomless. A wave crashed behind me. I could feel it vibrating up my legs and into my joints.

"Sometimes I just want to disappear . . . y'know?" Quinn looked around at the tortured faces in the rocks around us. "Can you think of a better place to do it?"

"I'll never let you disappear, Quinn."

I locked on his teary eyes and imagined that I had tractor beams in mine, that my gaze would somehow pull him in. "Come on," I told him. "We'll ride out of this place together."

He took one step closer, then another. I reached my hand toward him, he reached out his- And then the symbol on the back of his hand began to glow.

From deep in a cave behind him came the distant, hollow cries of other kids in the middle of one last thrill.

Quinn backed away from me. "I kinda got used to riding alone." Then he turned toward the cave.

I was losing him again. I didn't know what else to say that would get through to him, so I leveled the truth at him with both barrels.

"You're lying in a coma in the hospital!" I shouted. "They carted you away in an ambulance, and that's where you are!"

It was harsh, like waking a sleepwalker; but it stopped him in his tracks. "At least that's what Mom thinks," I said, trying to ease the blow.

Without even turning to look at me, he said, "Maybe it's best she thinks that." Then he leaped into the gaping mouth of the cave and the darkness swallowed him.

I sat on the rocks among the silent stone faces, with no desire to go on. I could have leaped into the darkness after Quinn, following him to his next ride, but what was the point? How do you help someone who refuses to be helped? Was I supposed to knock him unconscious and drag him out of here? He was already unconscious.

There was a flash of yellow light. Far off in the ocean a new s.h.i.+p appeared out of nowhere, sailing closer. This time it was a Spanish galleon-somebody else's nightmare. The swinging boat sailed again, filled with a whole new batch of riders headed toward some different adventure but the same fate.

"You're not playing," I heard Ca.s.sandra say. She sat on a rock just a few feet away, dressed in a bright yellow silk gown, a garland of flowers and sh.e.l.ls woven into her hair. She looked like something from mythology: a beautiful siren, luring sailors to their death. "You made it through this ride. Now move to the next." Although her voice was restrained, her words still sounded like an order.

"Why are you following me? You have a park full of riders, happy to hand their lives to you. Leave me alone! Like you said, I didn't come for your rides."

"No, you came for your brother. But he'll be lost, just like everyone else."

Her words echoed around inside my head a few times before catching on some receptive brain tissue. "What do you mean, 'like everyone else'?"

She stood and came closer. "Seven rides, each one harder than the last. Think about it, Blake."

"Are you saying that no one's ever made it through all seven rides?"

She turned with only mild interest at the approaching galleon. "They're lured by the thrill, and soon there's nothing else. Even though there's a way out of every single ride, they rarely find it, or even look for it. They let the thrill consume them. In the end either the ride takes them or they get caught at dawn. Either way, they never leave."

In the sea beside us the galleon careened along the reef until something huge, green, and reptilian rose from the depths to grab its masts, pulling it over on its side, flinging riders into the sea. If there was a way out of every ride, like she said, these riders had missed their chance. The creature pulled riders from the ratlines with its clawed hands, shoving them into its tooth-filled mouth. Rocks eroded into astonished faces. Here be serpents, the medieval maps all warned.

"How can you do this to people? Lure them here, only to destroy them?"

"It's a matter of balance," she said coolly.

"What are you talking about?"

She laughed at me. "You don't think this park grows out of nowhere, do you? It has to be built, attraction by attraction, on the spirits of those who visit."

A roar from the serpent, and the last of the galleon was taken under the waves. So if this park was a living thing, a creature existing in the rift between dreams and the real world, then the riders-all the riders-were merely prey; and I had been watching the creature feed.

Ca.s.sandra took another step forward. "You're afraid! Tell me about your fear, Blake."

"I won't tell you anything!"

"Please. I want to know what it's like. I want to know fear."

As I forced myself to look at her I could see she wasn't just toying with me. She wanted to know. She wanted to feel what I felt. She studied me. I could feel her pulling at my thoughts, trying to get ahold of my feelings, and failing. She didn't know fear. How could she, when the danger was always someone else's?

This time it was I who took a step closer to her. I've always suspected that my life-maybe everyone's life-is like an hourgla.s.s, in which the past and the future converge on a single point in time, that narrow channel where the sands pa.s.s. A single event that defines who you are. Until now I had thought that the bus accident was that event for me; yet here was a moment not of blind helplessness, but of decision. Everything could rest in the balance of the choice I now made.

Without daring to think about it, I reached for Ca.s.sandra, pulled her toward me, and kissed her. It wasn't a kiss of pa.s.sion-well, maybe just a little. But more than anything it was a kiss of defiance. A fear-conquering, do-or-die act of affirmation. Of determination.

In the instant that our lips touched, I felt what she truly was. Intense heat encased in intense cold. Two opposing extremes. But I was neither seared nor frozen by her.

I will not die in this place. I refuse to be plunged from existence. I will no longer be at the mercy of these rides. They will be at my mercy. I will make it through all seven, and I will get out. I will be the one.

I pulled away, my fear gone. The strength of my resolve was like an engine inside of me.

Ca.s.sandra smiled. She knew what that kiss meant every bit as much as I did.

"I accept your challenge," she said. "From this moment on, no more games. The next time you see me I'll be coming in for the kill."

Perhaps she couldn't sense my feelings, but I could sense hers. Excitement-perhaps for the first time. I was the ticket to her own private thrill ride.

Another flash of yellow light. In the distance a s.h.i.+p appeared again-this time a Viking s.h.i.+p. I imagined it was about to sail off the edge of the earth or something equally unpleasant.

"I'm making it out of here before dawn," I told Ca.s.sandra. "Me and anyone I can take with me."

Again that sultry grin. "Knock yourself out."

I turned my back on her and marched toward the wailing cave into which Quinn had hurled himself. But Ca.s.sandra took her first strike against me unexpectedly.

"You began riding young, didn't you, Blake?"

I didn't want to listen, but I couldn't keep myself from hearing. I couldn't keep her words from piercing my brain.

"And your bus never made it to school that day."

It was a shot in the back-not a shot to kill me, but one to disable me. Her words sliced through my defenses like a hot blade, and I could feel it searing deep inside me. Was I that vulnerable? I winced, feeling the blow almost like a physical pain, but I found that I could tolerate it without falling apart. I was finding a whole lot of things I could tolerate more than I thought I could.

Before me was a cave that appeared to have no bottom. An abyss of darkness. But somehow that unknown was less intimidating than it had been only a few moments before.

Three rides done. Four to go.

With my eyes open wide, I leaped into the cave.

8.

Our Lady of Perpetual Reflection The rides are different for everyone. I'm convinced of that now. I mean, sure, there are some we ride together. Either we find ourselves drawn to some common experience, or maybe we're pulled in by the people we care about. Our friends, our families can drag us onto coasters and Tilt-A-Whirls that are really meant for them. But in the end, no matter whose rides we find ourselves on, the experience is all our own.

Out of the blackness of the pit I had leaped into came a flash of green. I hit ground suddenly, a bruising belly flop on hard-packed earth. In the outside world I would have been killed, but here, there were other things to kill you besides the drop. Here, it only stung for a few moments.

With the wind knocked out of me, I took a few seconds to catch my breath before sitting up to take in my surroundings. I was on a wasteland-a cracked, blistered salt flat, void of life. Bleak desolation spread out in all directions like a place G.o.d had leveled for construction and then abandoned.

The sky was a flat pea green and made my skin look pallid and sickly. Only one structure stood on the endless salt flat. It was a mile or so ahead, s.h.i.+mmering like a mirage in the misty air. I ran toward it, not wanting to waste any more of my precious time. According to my watch, it was already three thirty in real time. That gave me only two and a half hours to make it through four more rides.

As I neared the structure in the distance I could see others like myself running toward the building from all directions. More riders gathering for their next ride. One of them b.u.mped past me as if I weren't even there. He was in a trance. They were all like that. To these riders, the s.p.a.ce between rides was just mental airs.p.a.ce, devoid of anything but the will to move through the next turnstile. I was different. Yes, I could feel the gravity of the ride pulling me toward it, but it didn't capture me the way it captured the others. Why not? I wondered. What was it about me that made me able to resist? What was it about me that made Ca.s.sandra see me as a worthy adversary?

The building resolved out of the mist. It was a cathedral. Notre Dame, to be exact. I knew from my poster of France. I recognized its two great spires on either side of a circular stained-gla.s.s window. Only in this Notre Dame, the stained-gla.s.s window was all red and leered like a single Cyclops eye. As for the stonework of the cathedral, it wasn't stone at all; it was reflective gla.s.s. A hall of mirrors.

Others kept pus.h.i.+ng past me, the ride symbols on the backs of their hands glowing as they approached the turnstile.

A mirror maze, I thought. How bad could it be? Then I laughed at the stupidity of my own question. Trapped in a maze of mirrors for eternity? Shredded by bits of broken gla.s.s? Yeah, it could be pretty bad.

I wondered if Quinn had pa.s.sed this way or if his path had taken him to another ride. Regardless, the only way now was forward through the gla.s.s doors of the crystalline Notre Dame Cathedral, so I ran my hand over the scanner and pushed myself through the turnstile, into the maze of mirrors.

I once got lost in the mall when I was really little. It was before I could read, before I knew left from right, and my mother's hand was the only thing that kept me safe from the big bad world. When you're scared like that, all the stores and all the turns begin to look the same. You truly believe in the pit of your little-kid mind that you're never going to be found. That's exactly how it felt to face the maze of mirrors.

The halls were narrow, the turns unpredictable, and the dead ends demoralizing. I kept winding my way down paths, swearing I could see the reflection of an exit, only to have to turn around and try again.

That wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was the clowns. I don't know if everyone saw them as clowns, but I sure did. Big floppy feet, a rim of ridiculous red hair-oh, and battle camouflage. These were commando clowns. It was a recurring nightmare I'd had ever since I was little. Don't ask.

But even worse than in my dreams, these clowns were all armed with heavy artillery, and they fired huge mortar sh.e.l.ls down the narrow gla.s.s corridors from bazookas on their shoulders. Those sh.e.l.ls never shattered the gla.s.s, instead, they rebounded off, reflected like light, ricocheting in all directions until some poor slob got in the way and was blown to kingdom come. Never once did a mirror break from the explosions.

I crawled and rolled to keep out of their sight and out of the killing path of their weapons. Bones littered the ground of this awful place, crunching beneath me as I crawled. They were dry and blanched, like bones left under a hot desert sun. These were the kinds of bones you always saw on the ground in bad westerns, before the wagon train got attacked by Indians or the settlers had to start eating one another to stay alive. The thing was, these bones in the maze didn't resemble anything I knew about. It wasn't so much their size as their shape that was grotesque. I shuddered to think what kind of monsters might lie deeper in this mirror maze that could have given rise to such remains.

As I dodged and crawled through the reflective battle zone, I began to get an understanding of the mirrors themselves. Some appeared to be plain old fun-house mirrors, pulling and twisting your reflection into something barely recognizable. Other mirrors were far worse. When you looked in some of them, your reflection appeared exactly the same, but the way you felt about what you saw was warped and distorted. There was this one mirror that made me see myself as weak and cowardly and another that made me feel so overwhelmingly inadequate, I felt I'd shrivel into nothingness if I looked too long. Another mirror made me feel as if I were intensely stupid, and another magnified the fear in my soul so much, I was afraid I might scream and never stop. No mirrors in the real world had the ability to reach inside you the way these did. You could tell yourself that the mirrors were simply telling lies, but you'd be wrong. They took tiny truths, swelling them out of proportion-and the fact that there was a kernel of truth in what they reflected made the effect devastating. Now I realized that all the wails I'd been hearing far off in the maze weren't just from riders falling victim to the bozo brigade; they were the wails of riders torn apart by the twisted reflections of their own inner selves.

I did my best to keep from looking in any more mirrors, but it was harder than you might think. Once you started looking into those mirrors, it was next to impossible to look away. I guess we all can't help peeking at our own imperfections, just like we can't help scratching a scab that keeps itching. When those imperfections are pasted across your face like that, exaggerated and magnified, it's hard to find all those good thoughts you have about yourself. If you believe those distorted reflections too deeply, you'll never get out of the maze.

A mortar sh.e.l.l rocketed my way, and I hit the floor as it shot past, ricocheting deeper into the "fun" house. That's when I came face-to-face with a skull. I yelped in surprise. Like the other bones in this place, it was far from human. It was lopsided and gourd-shaped, with one eye socket the size of a baseball and the other the size of a marble. Its nasal cavity was as twisted as a snail sh.e.l.l, and its jaw was filled with mismatched teeth that would plague a dentist's darkest dreams. Not human. Not even close. There was a thigh bone, too-at least I think it was a thigh bone-in the shape of an S. I tried to imagine the creature that would have bones like this, but I couldn't fit it into my imagination. Turned out I didn't have to, because I suddenly heard a sickly, raspy breathing behind me.

One of those things had found me.

I turned to see it lumbering toward me. It was no larger than I was, but its ugliness made it seem immense. To say the thing was hideous did not do it justice. It was an awful mockery of life: ragged, protruding ears, one higher than the other; shoulders set in an uneven slouch, like a living landslide; and a spine hunched in a roller-coaster curve that made my back hurt just looking at it. It had one huge elephant eye, a tiny shrunken one, and its arms were shriveled like the limbs of a T-Rex, ending in stubby, clawlike fingers. Have you ever seen the figures Pica.s.so painted? Well, this thing was like a Pica.s.so from h.e.l.l. If I had one of those clown's bazookas, I would have put it out of its misery right then and there.

It loped closer, and I took a healthy step away. "Back off, Quasimodo!"

It opened its swollen, crooked mouth and let loose a moan. Then it lunged for me, claws reaching for my throat. I swung the skull at it, hitting it on the shoulder, and ran, making turn after turn in the narrow corridors of mirrors, until I found myself at yet another dead end. I pivoted, thinking the creature was still behind me, but I'd lost it, for now.

I was still holding the misshapen skull-a good thing too, because if I had dropped it on the way, I would never have made the connection. Now I happened to look at the mirror in front of me. It was your standard distorting mirror, stretching and distending my image, but the reflection of the skull didn't quite look that way. In fact, the twisted skull, when reflected by the twisted mirror, was the perfect reflection of a human skull! I looked at the lopsided skull again and back at its perfect reflection. Then I reached out with my free hand and touched the surface of the mirror.

My hand pa.s.sed through the gla.s.s as if there were no gla.s.s at all.

I could see my fingers on the other side of the mirror, and I almost screamed. They were short, stubby claws. I moved my fingers, feeling how my flesh had changed once they'd pa.s.sed through the looking gla.s.s. I pulled my hand back quickly, and my fingers returned to normal, tingling from the change they had undergone when they had pa.s.sed through.

Then I heard a sound behind me and turned to see the creature once more. It was breathing heavily, tears rolling down its stretched face, splas.h.i.+ng onto its huge, bulging belly. It didn't chase me, but loped toward me cautiously, and I grimaced. Does your face hurt? the old joke goes. Because it's killing me.

The creature got closer and looked at me for a long time. Then it looked down at its bloated belly and said in a wet, slippery voice, "Do I look fat to you?"

My knees buckled. I almost fell through one of the distorting mirrors but kept enough of my balance to stay on the right side of the gla.s.s.

"Maggie? Is that you?"

And she sadly nodded her lopsided head.

"Crashed our b.u.mper car," Maggie said as we crouched at the dead end, listening to the distant wails and explosions echoing in the maze. At first I couldn't understand her speech, filtered through that mess of a mouth. But after a while it was kind of like listening to Shakespeare: The more I listened, the more I could understand.

"Crashed our b.u.mper car but couldn't stop. Had to get another car. Had to ride. Don't know why. Couldn't stop."

"It's all right," I told her. "I know what this place does to you. Tell me what happened next."

She drew a deep breath and rested for a moment. It was a real ch.o.r.e for her to speak with her tongue so thick and her jaw so misaligned. "Found a manhole cover. Ride symbol on it. Knew it was the next ride. Pried it open. Jumped in. Wound up here." Maggie reached up a distorted hand and wiped away a tear from her smaller eye.

"Where's Russ?" I asked her. "What happened to him?"

She shuddered. I could see that this was the hardest part for her, and I braced myself for the worst.

"Running through the mirrors. Both of us. I fell. I fell again, through the mirrors. One mirror, then another, then another. Couldn't find the first one. Kept trying, couldn't find it." Her voice got higher and harder to understand. Now her large, swollen eye began to drip heavy tears. "Russ saw me. He saw me, and he didn't help me. He saw me like this, and he ran. Couldn't look at me. He ran!"

After that her words dissolved into sobs, I reached out and took her in my arms as best I could.

"I won't run from you," I told her.

"You did!" she accused. "You did, you did, you did!"

"I didn't know it was you!"

But that didn't stop her tears. "Russ knew!" she wailed. "Russ knew, and he ran anyway."

"I'm not Russ!"