Full Tilt

Full Tilt Page 6

Russ tapped me on the shoulder and whispered uneasily, “Look at that earpiece.”

Only then did I notice that the wire from the earphone didn’t wrap around his ear. It went directly into his head. I suppressed a shiver.

The cashier turned to us. “You have permission to enter.”

“Permission from whom?”

“If you have to ask, then you haven’t met her.”

“Maybe I have.”

He punched some keys on the computer. “It looks like your brother’s been inside for an hour.”

So there it was. Confirmation. I looked to Maggie and Russ. There was surprise in their faces but not all that much. Deep down, they had known, just as I had.

“So will you be riding with us today or not?” the cashier asked impatiently.

I nodded. “I’ll ride.”

“We all will,” Maggie said. She pulled Russ forward, who, big talker that he was, suddenly had cold feet for this amusement park.

“Alrighty, then,” said the cashier. “Take a look at your right hand.”

I looked down. The wave-and-spiral symbol was branded in red across the back of my hand. Maggie and Russ had the symbol too.

“Where’d that come from?” Maggie asked.

“Trick of the trade,” the cashier answered.

“Yeah, but can he pull a coin out of an ear?” Russ said nervously.

At the suggestion the cashier glanced at Russ thoughtfully, as if he might actually shove a hand through his ear and pull a coin out of Russ’s brain.

“Run your hand across the scanners in the park to activate a turnstile,” the cashier said. “The mark is good for seven rides. No more, no less. You can’t leave the park until you ride all seven, and you’ve got to do it by dawn. Did you get that? Is there any part of that you don’t understand? Do I need to repeat it?”

“Our hands activate the turnstiles, and we have to ride seven rides by dawn. Got it.”

“Dawn today is at 6 A.M. That gives you more than three hours. Enjoy yourselves.”

“What happens if we’re not done by dawn?” Russ asked, but the cashier had already shifted his attention to the next people in line.

Before us stood the arched entrance, painted with the bright trappings of amusement. Happy faces and balloons. The promise of thrills. The iron gate was open wide, and a force pulled us toward the arch, as if the ground were at an awkward tilt. Other excited guests pushed in front of us to get through. I thought about Quinn. Somewhere in the outside world Quinn’s body was being shuttled through an emergency room, pored over by doctors, but nothing they could do would help him, because he wasn’t there. His mind and his spirit were here, and I had to go in, body and soul, to bring him back.

I turned to my friends. “You don’t have to come,” I told them. “He’s my brother.”

Maggie looked at the entry gate. I could see she was afraid, but she pushed the fear back. If we stepped through the gate, I knew the last threads of sanity that bound together the world we knew, the real world, would pull part. I could almost feel my fingers holding tightly on to those threads, ready to pull on them and make them all unravel.

“Are you kidding?” Maggie said. “Let you ride all alone?”

“Yeah,” said Russ, glancing around anxiously, as if already looking for a way out. “We’re here for you, pal.”

I turned toward the flashing lights and led us under the arch, crossing the threshold into the park with no name.

5

Carousel

“So what’s the big deal?”

Russ was unimpressed by the place, and kind of relieved. I can’t say that I blamed him. There was one main path winding through the park with rides on either side. To our right was a mural of a tall ship lurching on a wild sea, its sails shredded by a storm. The once-bright colors had faded, and the peeling paint revealed warping plywood beneath. Beyond the mural was the swinging boat ride it advertised: a miniature ship, swinging back and forth on a single axle—a typical carnival ride. In fact, everything seemed typical. There was a pint-size bumper car arena, a carousel piping out calliope music, and any number of spinning rides. Each one was the kind of attraction that could easily be taken down and reassembled in a day.

Russ picked at the peeling paint of the ocean mural. “This is nothing but a kiddie park.”

I began to doubt the intuition that led me here. Maybe my mind had connected the dots and found an unlikely pattern, the way people once looked at the stars and found the figures of gods in the constellations. Maybe the lights spinning in Quinn’s eyes had just been a reflection of the ambulance lights. Maybe this place was exactly what it claimed to be and the cashier mentioning my brother was just making it up. I found myself wanting to believe that more and more.

To our right a black-and-white eggbeater ride picked up speed. It was a Tilt-A-Whirl with eight spinning arms. At the end of each arm a pair of pods revolved around each other, and in each of the pods disoriented riders screamed with the thrill of the speed.

Maggie was the first to notice something strange. “Look at them,” she said. “What’s wrong with them?”

I caught glimpses of the kids on the ride as they swooped past. Their faces were blurry, and the color of their clothes bled off into the air around them, until the ride spun so fast that I couldn’t see them anymore. No ride I’d ever seen could move that fast! Then all at once the lights on the ride went out. The hydraulic pistons that held the revolving cars in the air began to hiss, bringing the pods back down to the ground. When the ride beat itself to a halt, the pods were empty. The riders were gone. Lap bars popped up with a clang; the lights of the ride flickered back on. A new crew of excited riders hurried to take their seats.

“Maybe we’ll pass on the particle accelerator,” Russ said, backing away. If we had any doubts as to the nature of this place, they were gone now. We were all believers—although I wasn’t quite sure what we were being asked to believe.

Maggie gripped Russ’s arm. I could see her nails practically digging into his skin, but she was looking at me.

“Don’t get on it, Blake,” she said.

“I don’t intend to.” I looked at the new riders taking their seats, pulling down the lap bars, waiting for the ride to start. I wondered if they saw what had happened to the riders before them. Were they so blinded by their own excitement that they couldn’t see? Or didn’t they care?

“What do you suppose happened to them?” Maggie asked. “Where do you suppose they went?”

“I think it’s best if we don’t suppose anything.”

I turned away from the ride as it started up again. I’m here for a reason, I told myself. My stinking lousy brother is here. If I remembered that, then maybe I’d keep from losing my mind.

We walked into a crowd of kids. I’m pretty tall and could see over almost everyone. Far up ahead I spotted a kid wearing a black hat, walking away from me. Earrings dangled from his left ear. Was it Quinn? I was too far away to tell. I bolted forward, but once I’d fought my way through the crowd, the kid with the hat was nowhere to be seen. Had he dissolved into the park too, or did he just get lost in the mob? There was no telling. For an instant I felt the earth shifting beneath me, tilting to the left and to the right. It was only me. My equilibrium had been thrown off by the crowds, the lights, and the sound of gears grinding louder than the music that echoed around me. I turned to look for Russ and Maggie, but I instead caught sight of a girl with copper hair, watching me from a distance.

Cassandra.

She wasn’t flirting. She just seemed to be observing. Studying me. Although she stood in the midst of the moving masses, their footsteps avoided her, as if she were in a protective bubble. As if space itself were warped around her. She was more than just an agent of this place, passing out invitations. Even from this distance, I could feel a sense of . . . of propriety about her. This place is hers, I realized. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did.

She held my gaze for an instant, then turned, sauntering through the parting crowd toward the carousel, as if daring me to follow.

I took the dare.

“Blake. Don’t!”

I felt Maggie’s hand on my shoulder, but I pulled away, making my way as fast as I could to the carousel. I hit the turnstile. It snagged me painfully at the waist, not giving way. I pushed at it again until I realized why it held me back. I looked at my hand. The red symbol was glowing white-hot; I could feel its heat on my skin. I ran my hand across the scanner, and the glow faded to a smoldering crimson. The turnstile let me through. Ahead of me the carousel had already begun to move.

“Cassandra!”

I jumped on the ride, grabbing a pole as the carousel animals slowly began to rise and fall. She was standing on the far side of the platform, still scrutinizing me. I caught a glimpse of her smile and then lost sight of her among the riders and the herd of brightly painted animals. And what strange animals they were. The carousel had every nature of beast painted in loud, unexpected colors. There was a purple and yellow wolverine baring its teeth and a green and yellow ram, its wooden head down and ready to charge. I saw what looked like an anteater, blue and gold, looking absurd as it rose and fell with the rhythm of the ride. And yet, as strange as these animals appeared, they were also somehow familiar.

At the core of the ride was an array of mirrors. I felt if I could focus on any one of those mirrors long enough, I’d see Cassandra staring out at me. The carousel picked up speed, and when I came around near the turnstile again, Russ and Maggie leaped on.

“Let’s just grab Blake and get off,” Russ told Maggie.

But I wasn’t looking at Russ. I was looking at the purple and gray tiger behind him, at how its wooden eyes appeared to track his movements. The creature right in front of me was a menacing lion painted bright blue. Was it my imagination, or was its snarling mouth an inch wider than it had been a moment ago? The ride picked up more speed. The tempo of the carnival music accelerated, rising to the highest octaves. I could feel centrifugal force pushing me outward and—what was that I saw? Were the legs of these painted animals actually beginning to move?

All at once the wooden floorboards began to buckle and give, revealing a rocky terrain rushing beneath us.

“Grab on to something!” I shouted. “It’s coming apart!” As the floorboards fell away I leaped onto the animal closest to me, the blue lion. Maggie took the green and yellow ram, and Russ found himself an oversized gray and blue peacock. I gripped the pole, but the pole disappeared between my fingers. The last of the floorboards disintegrated. My blue lion opened his mouth, releasing a thunderous roar that resonated up my legs and into my chest. And finally I realized where I’d seen all these creatures before.

They were all college mascots.

Now the last thread that held the world together unraveled, and I plunged through its shredded fragments into a wholly different place. The ride had come undone—it had unfolded—into an endless rocky plain beneath a red sky and an eclipsed sun. I was riding through this unearthly landscape, clinging to the mane of a blue lion, surrounded by hundreds of other beasts. Some creatures had riders. Others didn’t. But every single one of them was a mascot. I knew them from sports and from TV, but mostly I knew them from the endless applications I had filled out to dozens of universities far from home.