Dark Ride (12 page)

Luka started fumbling with his keys.

‘What are you doing?’ I hissed and he shushed me. I heard the key turn and the wall suddenly gave way. I realised there was a door there all along. He pulled me inside and then closed the door, fumbling for a light switch. The room was illuminated by a single dusty light-bulb that swung a little, sending slices of orange light across the gloom.

It looked like a disused storeroom. There were loads of levers and piles of metal plus some bits of other rides, including a starey-eyed lion head attached to a small seat, which looked like it came from a carousel for small kids. There were also a few bits and pieces from the ghost train, like a mouldering King Kong costume and a pile of plastic skeleton parts.

‘I never knew this was here until yesterday,’ said Luka quietly. ‘I just discovered it. It’s completely hidden unless you know about it. But I’ve found some fag ends and they were Mum’s brand. She smoked these smelly French ones. So she obviously knew it was here too.’

I started to say something and he guessed what was coming. ‘And yeah, I’ve looked everywhere and found nothing.’

The floor was covered in large thick boards and as I went to move forward I stumbled.

‘Whoa,’ I said, righting myself. I stood still for a moment and then gave a gentle jump. I could feel that the floor was sort of springy. Mind racing, I got down on my knees, trying to prise away the edge of the board.

‘What are you doing?’ said Luka.

‘Give me a hand,’ I said.

He got down beside me. With a heave, we both pulled the board at the same time and it came away in our hands. There was a small space in the earth below it. We exchanged glances and then Luka reached down with his hand to feel around. His eyes widened and he lay down on the boards flat so he could get more of his arm in there. He gasped and then it emerged, holding a thick brown A4 envelope.

‘Quick, let’s see what’s in there!’ I said and with fumbling fingers Luka opened the envelope and pulled out a handful of photos and some paper.

Several of the pictures showed foreign people with black eyes and other injuries. One man was holding up his T-shirt to reveal a deep bruise across his belly. Another showed a pile of passports in the open safe I’d seen. There was a picture of a room where people were crammed into a small space, lying in sleeping bags. The walls were peeling and damp and it looked horrible. The next picture showed Lex McAllistair arriving at a house with boarded-up windows and looking over his shoulder as he opened the door.

‘I bet that’s where lots of the slave workers live,’ I said quietly and Luka nodded.

‘Yeah, and I bet it’s a house owned by that scumbag.’

One of the sheets of paper had foreign names on it and bank details with sums of money written on, most of them three or four hundred pounds. It didn’t make much sense to me but the final piece of paper did. It was a letter, written in broken English.

 

I am being held in this contry aganst my wil. I was brot here to work and told I wold make mony for my family but since here my passport taken and I am prisner. Many more lik me at 77 and 78 Manley road. My name is Lili Babic.

 

I looked at Luka excitedly. ‘That’s her,’ I said, ‘the girl I told you about.’

‘Right, well, guard this with your life,’ said Luka, putting the stuff back into the envelope. I had no bag to put it in so I undid my coat and put the envelope inside my jumper, tightening my belt round it to keep it safe.

‘What now?’ I said.

‘I’m going to try and get you safely out of here,’ he said.

C
HAPTER
26

 

I Don’t Want
to Say Goodbye

 

He opened the door a crack and then grabbed my hand and pulled me outside. Loud bangs and metallic screeches filled the air. I flinched at every noise, but Luka moved in a purposeful way, holding my hand tightly as he led me through the darkness and back towards the entrance of the ghost train.

When we got there, Luka gently held me back against the wall before sticking his head out. I almost cried out until I remembered that only I could see him.

‘There are loads of workmen milling about now and I can’t tell if McAllistair is there but there are some blokes with clipboards standing near the rollercoaster. They’ve got cranes and stuff starting to break it apart. Look, Bel, I’m going to create a distraction and I want you to run for the exit gates the second I’ve got their attention. Got that?’

‘Yeah, but what are you going to do, Luka?’ I said.

‘Don’t do anything dangerous!’ My voice went into a squeak. We both knew it was a stupid thing to say, but instead of mocking me, he just gently put his finger on my lips and then leaned over and kissed me. He looked intently into my eyes then – his own looked so dark and serious that I felt my throat tighten with fear as the selfish realisation washed over me that
he
couldn’t get hurt but I could.

Just then, there was a massive clang of metal as a section of the rollercoaster’s tracks was pulled away. We both jumped and even Luka looked unnerved by it.

‘Look, I’m going first because I want to make sure I get their attention. You make a run for it as soon as I’m gone.’ He skimmed my lips with his one more time, squeezed me hard and then ran out into the fairground. He was a fair bit away from me when he turned and said something like, ‘I’ll see you at the ...!’ but it was so noisy his words were swallowed up.

‘Luka!’ I hissed. ‘I don’t know where to meet you!’

But I was speaking to myself because he’d already gone. For a second I was so filled with panic at being alone that I wanted to curl into a ball on the ground and just hide.

There was no way they would hurt a teenage girl in front of all those people, but I knew exactly what McAllistair was capable of and if he saw me here, this town could be seriously dangerous for me and Mum. He knew where I lived. I thought about Mum pottering about at home, thinking I was safely with Abbie and I almost sobbed.

I knew I had to move, even though my feet felt like lead weights. I took several deep breaths and then forced myself out of the entrance to the ghost train, a step at a time. There were plenty of people around but most of them seemed to be focusing on the rollercoaster. The noises it made as it was dismantled were like the cries of a huge dying beast and sadness washed over me that no one would ever ride on it again. The whole fairground with all its memories would soon be smashed into the dust.

I put my head down and started to scurry fast towards the exit, stepping round huge piles of plaster and metal. The turnstiles at the exit had been ripped out so there was just a gaping hole now. Relief bloomed in my chest. I was almost there, I just had to get across one last bit.

I started to move forwards again.

It was then that I saw that the same black 4x4 was parked right outside and a tall man in a long grey coat was unfolding himself from the driver’s seat. Of course, it would be easier to come in that way now. I froze, just like they say rabbits do in headlights, at the exact moment he looked up.

He didn’t speak or call out, which was somehow even more scary. His expression didn’t change that much at all. I turned around and started to run the other way back into the fairground and soon heard the thump of his heavy feet behind me. I was almost back to the ghost train but was so scared that I didn’t notice the debris until my foot made contact and I was flying through the air in slow motion before I smashed down in the dirt.

A rough hand hauled me to my feet and I was looking into McAllistair’s furious face. My knee was throbbing and felt wet but I didn’t dare look at it. I couldn’t look away from the cold eyes in front of me.

‘What the hell do you want? Why are you always snooping around?’ I could smell the smoke on his breath and even felt a fine spray of spit.

I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, so I just tried to wriggle free but his grip was unbelievably strong.

‘I’m going to take you to my car and we’re going to have a little chat, young lady,’ he said. ‘I want to know what it is you think you’re up to.’

A group of men in hard hats came round the corner and one of them made a questioning face to McAllistair, who shouted something about ‘vandals’ and just carried on pushing me towards the exit.

But then I heard someone cry out in shock and, although McAllistair didn’t loosen his grip, he stopped and turned. The ground seemed to be rumbling and I looked around in confusion, not understanding what was going on until one of the men near us shouted to McAllistair.

‘Some idiot’s turned the ’coaster on!’

I looked up and realised that the cars on the rollercoaster had started to move along the tracks even though a huge section had been taken away. Lots of people started shouting in panic then and several of the men ran over to try and turn it all off before the cars reached the broken section. But there was no time. The cars suddenly shot forward and there was a moment where every single person just stared as the first one shot off the end, dragging the rest behind it in a long, deadly ribbon. Then everything just went mad around me. McAllistair let go of my arm and people were running in panic in all directions to get away from the cars smashing down like missiles. There was smoke and flames and confusion and I took my chance and ran as fast as I could towards the exit and out.

I kept running until I was far along the promenade and had to stop to pull in my breath, my chest aching. I could hear sirens in the distance and still see a plume of smoke rising above the fairground.

I hugged myself, shivering hard. Luka had created a distraction all right. I just hoped no one had got hurt in there, not that I cared that much if it was Lex McAllistair. I sat down on a bench and looked at the sea, still trying to get my breath back and cursing myself for not having heard what Luka had said about where he would meet me.

Where would he go? What other place
could
he go? I felt angry with him then, especially because if his theory was right, then maybe the destruction of the fairground would bring things to an end for him even sooner.

I gasped as a realisation fizzed through me.

Luka would go to the place where it all ended the first time. I just knew it.

A sick feeling of dread curdled in my stomach. I didn’t want to see where he’d died. It made it all too real. But I somehow knew this was where I’d find him. I just had to go there now.

An old man was shuffling along nearby and I ran up to him, making him start. My hair was wild and I realised I probably looked a sight. I tried to smile in an unthreatening way so I didn’t frighten him off.

‘Sorry to bother you, but can you tell me where St Lawrence’s Headland is, please?’

‘Well, now ...’ He proceeded to go into an incredibly long-winded description. I wanted to shake him and was practically hopping with impatience but I soon got the gist and was able to thank him and get away. It was about a ten-minute walk and the drizzly rain started to come down much more heavily. I could feel it creeping down the back of my neck and my hair was sticking to my face like rats’ tails. But I didn’t care any more. I just wanted to see Luka.

Following the old man’s instructions, I soon came to a bend in the road and saw where a long section of cliff jutted right out over the sea. There was a broken fence with orange netting across it and a sign said,
Danger: Cliff Erosion.
I thought about Luka and Eva’s car smashing across here and falling into the sea. I turned round and looked inland. Sure enough, there was a road which could well have been the one they would have travelled down on that awful night, just as Luka had described. The thought of it made me feel sick and shaky. It was too late to make any of that right, but if I didn’t see him again, I didn’t think I could bear it.

I climbed over the fence, wincing at my cut knee, which was bleeding through my jeans. It was raining properly now and I shielded my face and looked out towards the sea, which was pounding furiously against the rocks, the rain slanting into it like millions of long needles.

There was a bench right on the edge of the cliff. I guessed that before the cliff eroded, it had been much further inland. I walked carefully towards it and saw it was still safe enough, just about. Trembling with exhaustion, I sat down and tried to examine my throbbing knee.

‘Hey.’

I jumped up and turned to see Luka. He was just standing there and, although he smiled, there was something serious in his face that stopped me from going to him.

‘Quite the stunt you pulled back there,’ I said, a bit stupidly.

‘I couldn’t think of anything else,’ said Luka. ‘Are you okay? They didn’t see you, did they?’

‘I’m okay.’ I said quietly.

We stood in silence for a second. The rain had made Luka’s hair cling to his face and his eyes looked darker than ever. I realised with a jolt there was wetness in them that wasn’t rain.

‘Bel...’ he said, and for a minute I wanted to cover my ears and scream that I didn’t want to hear it. He stepped forward and took my hands, searching my face with his eyes. ‘You know that it’s nearly time, don’t you?’

‘You can’t know that,’ I wailed but he just smiled sadly.

‘I do. You know why I know.’ He pulled his collar away from his throat and I could see the same shimmery effect I’d seen before. It had spread. I reached out and touched where his throat met his collarbone and, although it was still solid, his skin made the tips of my fingers shiver.

‘Aren’t you frightened?’ I said, not caring about the tears that were starting to spill down my cheeks.

‘No, I’m really not. I feel tired now. Meeting you has been, well, just the best thing. But we both knew it couldn’t really last, didn’t we?’

Then he pulled me close and we kissed for a long time, our faces wet with rain and tears. When we broke apart, I saw that Luka was looking over my shoulder at something. His eyes went wide and then he gave a sad smile.

‘What is it, Luka?’ I turned and with a jolt realised that in the mist along the cliff was a small dark-haired woman, standing with her feet neatly together.

I gasped. ‘Is that her?’ I whispered and Luka nodded.

He leaned down and kissed me again and I clung onto him.

‘I don’t want you to go yet!’ I cried out but he gently pulled away from me.

‘I have to, Bel. I have to go. You know that.’

‘Okay, but don’t say goodbye. I can’t stand to hear you say goodbye.’ I was babbling nonsense now but it seemed that if I didn’t hear the word, maybe it wouldn’t be quite so true. ‘You’d better just go.’

He pulled me into his arms one last time and squeezed me so hard I couldn’t breathe. I heard him whisper, ‘Bel,’ again, then he let go of me and started to walk away. I bowed my head and rain dripped off my chin but I couldn’t stop myself from looking.

Eva and Luka both started to run at the same time. I heard her cry out, ‘Luka, baby!’ and he enveloped her in his arms.

The rain was coming so heavily now that it was hard to see. I went to wipe my eyes with my sleeve and closed them for a split second, but when I opened them again there was no one there at all standing on the cliff.

I was completely alone.