Rick watched him go. ‘Good grief,’ he muttered. He turned back to the service door to the Giant Dipper, and banged his fist on it. ‘Open up,’ he shouted. ‘Police.’
The men inside looked at each other.
‘Now what?’ Hannah’s dad asked his father.
‘They don’t have a key, and they’re holding off on battering it down. We hold tight.’
Hannah’s dad had spent a lifetime avoiding situations in which a functionary with official power would have cause to address him, much less issue a command. On the few occasions on which it had nonetheless happened – the security line at airports, or a super-officious dental receptionist – he had taken care to do exactly what he was told, immediately. He wasn’t scared of these people, not as such. He simply understood that they held the potential to bring great disappointment into your life.
To ‘hold tight’, therefore, when someone in a uniform was banging on the door … that took resolve.
‘Yessir,’ he said.
Ray made it to the end of the boardwalk without seeing any sign of the security guys, which didn’t surprise him. Most likely they gave it a quick walk-around every couple of hours and spent the rest of the night holed up in a basement bar a mile away.
Then he saw the body on the ground near the entrance to the kiddie section. He stopped, pulled out his gun.
‘Stand up,’ he barked, training his weapon on the chest of the supine figure. ‘Stand up now.’
There was no response. Ray approached, carefully, doing it by the book, moving in a wide arc around the body.
Before long he caught sight of a badge on the figure’s chest, and a similar one on its shoulder. First Response. The firm that ran security on the ‘walk’. The guy on the ground was breathing, he could see that. So … was he drunk? Gotten himself so blasted that he’d fallen flat on his back on the job?
‘Seriously,’ Ray said. ‘Get up, asshole. This is the real cops.’
Ray went right up, his gun still pointing steadily down. The guy’s eyes were open. As Ray watched, he blinked. Then a few seconds later, he blinked again. Ray nudged him with his foot.
Nothing changed. Ray took a couple of steps back, reaching for his radio. Rick needed to see this.
He froze with the radio halfway to his mouth, however, staring into the darkness on the other side of the supine security guard. Another shape lay in the shadows. This wasn’t another guard, however, at least not a human one.
It was an Alsatian. The dog was flat on its side. Ray could see its chest gently rising and falling too.
Maybe a local bar would let a dog in, but Ray doubted they’d let it drink enough beer to pass out, even down here in Beach Flats.
He held up his radio, composing the most professional-sounding way to convey this information. This was going to go big. It would probably even make the Santa Cruz Sentinel. He wanted to get his lines right. His mouth felt dry, though.
Suddenly very dry.
He turned. The security guy was still flat on his back. The dog remained out of it too.
He kept turning in a circle, gun held out. He thought it would be kind of nice at this point to have an additional hand, so he could use his flashlight too. He didn’t want to let go of the radio, so he didn’t know what he could do about that.
‘Who’s there?’
It was hard to be sure because of deep shadows, but it looked as though a tall figure was standing at the end of the concourse, watching him.
When he blinked, though, it was no longer there.
Ray decided that, from a purely tactical and strategic point of view, it might be better to get the hell back to Rick and tell him in person about what he’d found.
He started backing away, fast.
Chapter 45
In the parking lot, Hannah and Zo were startled by a sudden smashing sound behind them, very loud. They whirled round to see Vaneclaw running towards them down the slope.
‘We need to go,’ he said. ‘Sharpish.’
A broken piece of wood was lying on the ground. It had originally been painted white but was now cracked and faded by years of sunlight.
Zo looked up at the low concrete ceiling of the parking lot, only a few feet above their heads. ‘Where did that even come from?’ She followed the imp and Hannah as they jogged the length of the basement towards the ramp. ‘And where are we going?’
‘Don’t know,’ the imp said tersely, peering up the slope. ‘But we need a way out of the Behind, with a quickness. The edge isn’t holding. If we don’t get out before it folds then we’re stuck Behind forever.’ He coughed. ‘Well, you are, anyway.’
‘I’m not leaving,’ Hannah said as they emerged back on to the street. The clouds now looked angry, flash-flickering as some terrible kind of lightning sparked deep within, arcing back and forth. ‘We have to find my mom.’
‘We don’t even know for sure she’s here.’
‘She disappeared from Hannah’s room,’ Aunt Zo said. ‘From behind a locked gate. Where else could she be?’
‘Look, fine, yeah. She’s in the Behind somewhere. But the big man gave me one job, and one job only. Have a look for her and the machine, then get you two back safely. All right, that’s two jobs. Whatever. And bear in mind he’s evil, and only cares a tiny bit, because you’re the Engineer’s family. Anybody else, I’d be long gone, trust me. See those flashes up above? That’ll be the Fallen, on their way. Snivel was only going to be able to hold them back for so long.’
‘But you don’t even know how to get us out.’
‘True. I am hoping to address that strategic shortfall. But it’s not going to happen from here, that’s for sure.’
‘Home,’ Hannah said. ‘We need to go home.’
‘But we’ve tried that,’ Aunt Zo said. ‘Remember? We got in here through what looked like the front door to your house.’
‘This whole town is my home,’ Hannah said. ‘But home is really home. That’s why I told her to go there.’
‘Told who?’ Vaneclaw said.
‘My mom. She was here – or nearly here. We need to go home. That’s where the gate is.’
‘The … Oh,’ Vaneclaw said. ‘Interesting. I see what you’re thinking.’
‘I don’t,’ Zo said.
‘It’s the entrance to Hell,’ Hannah said. ‘If we go through it … maybe that’ll get us back out again. And it’s the place where our paths here cross – me and Mom.’
‘I don’t have any better ideas,’ the imp admitted. ‘But then I am famously dense. How far’s your gaff from here?’
‘About twenty minutes, if we run.’
Hannah led them across the next street but then lost her sense of direction. Hannah’s dad had a habit of never walking home the same way twice, with the intention of giving her a sense of how it all fitted together. What he’d actually achieved was to fail to provide a dependable route. As she stood confused on the corner, turning in a circle, it struck Hannah this happened all the time – grown-ups trying to teach you things in the wrong way, their way, that only made sense if you already knew what you were trying to learn.
‘So …?’
‘Um,’ Hannah said. She pointed across at what had long ago been a small hotel. It still had the rusted sign outside, though now held a burrito shop. ‘I think it’s that way.’
‘But … that’s north, isn’t it?’ Aunt Zo asked.
‘I don’t know about north,’ Hannah shouted, frustrated and afraid. ‘North’ was another incredibly annoying adult thing. ‘I just think it’s that way.’
They ran across and up the street, and then it started looking more familiar. The buildings changed, became more functional as downtown shaded into the nameless bit between the shops and where the houses started. The road began to slope as they approached the big hill, and Vaneclaw was soon puffing.
Aunt Zo grabbed Hannah’s arm. ‘Watch out!’
A piece of wood fell out of the sky and shattered on the ground between them and the imp. It
was the same kind that had landed in the lot – old, white-painted, knotted with ancient rivets. Hannah stared at it. ‘Is that …?’
‘Yes,’ Aunt Zo said, sounding scared. ‘It’s from the Giant Dipper. That can’t be good.’
‘This would be my point,’ Vaneclaw said. ‘Come on – run.’
Mission Hill is steep. Hannah remembered times not so long ago when she would wail and moan to be carried; now here she was, sprinting up it, overtaking Aunt Zo. Vaneclaw was having trouble keeping up. Hannah grabbed his hand and tried to help. Her own legs were aching but she knew it was only another hundred yards until the slope levelled out at Holy Cross Park.
‘What was that weird noise?’ Zo panted.
Finally they reached the flat part, and Hannah led them into the park – the one sometimes called the Homeless Hotel by the kind of parents that made her mom glare and mutter rude words under her breath. There was nobody there now. There was a noise, though: she could hear it now too. A rustling sound, like wind rushing through a canyon in the night, or the muffled sob of a child locked in a closet.
Hannah steered them across the park towards the darkest corner. The imp regarded it dubiously. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘Definitely,’ she said. ‘It’s our secret shortcut. There’s a bridge over the highway.’
Round the corner was a dead end that stopped at a chain-link fence. Thirty feet below it ran Highway 1. Hannah took them to the footbridge. It wasn’t actually ‘secret’, but not many people seemed to know about it, so she’d always thought of it as belonging to her and her dad.
‘Oh,’ Vaneclaw said as they reached the top of the stairs. ‘That’ll be what’s making the noise.’
It was suddenly much louder, and from the bridge you could see that there were eleven shadowy figures down on the highway.
Looking up at them without faces.
And screaming.
Chapter 46
Inside the Giant Dipper, two generations held tight. Hannah’s father remained in position with his arm held up, ready to pull down on the lever. Granddad kept an eye on the controls as the machine went round and round, sending the carriages over the soaring loops and falls of the tracks above their head.
And he listened, increasingly carefully, trying to hear beyond the sound of the cop hammering on the door.
Officer Rick was growing tired of banging on the door. It wouldn’t be long before he came round to Ray’s way of thinking and went with the plan of kicking the damned thing down.
He took a step back, hands on hips, preparing for a final shouted warning – and saw his partner backing rapidly towards him along the concourse, gun held out.
‘Heck are you doing, Ray?’
‘I found one of the guards – and a dog. They’re out cold. Not dead. But, like, eyes open.’
‘Huh,’ Rick said.
‘And then … I saw something else. A guy, I think.’
‘Huh,’ Rick said again, placing his hand on his holster. ‘Where?’
‘Down the other end. In fact … I dunno. He seemed more like shadows than an actual … guy.’
Rick got ready to say something sarcastic, but then realized his partner was genuinely scared. Ray might be young and dumb and gung-ho, but a scaredy-cat? Not so much.
He unclipped his holster. ‘Well, we don’t like random guys standing in the shadows freaking people out,’ he said, to Ray’s relief. ‘Let’s go take a look.’
But before they could even take a step, every single light on the boardwalk lit up.
Both officers were blinded. To go from middle-of-the-night dark to tens of thousands of bulbs all on at once – tiny lights on all the rides, all over the food concessions and the souvenir stores, in every shade from white to yellow and red and green and purple, all maxed out as if the power had been turned up as high as it would go – was a change you could have seen from space. All you could do was slam your eyes shut.
When they managed to open them again, they still had to squint, it was so bright. Rick had instinctively pulled out his gun in the meantime.
‘Jesus,’ Ray whispered.
Then most of the lights went out, only those on the structures ten yards either side staying lit, a pocket of illumination. The glow they shed was enough to reveal that something had joined them on the concourse. Both officers stared at it.
‘Heck is that?’
‘It’s … a squirrel.’
The squirrel was black and had tufty ears. It stood staring at them with beady eyes, panting after its abrupt transferral from another place. The cops trained their guns on it.
‘Now what, Rick?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are we going to arrest it?’
‘Ray, it’s a squirrel.’
‘Not just that,’ a voice said from behind.
The cops whirled round. A tall, old-looking man in a black suit was now standing a few yards feet away, also having rapidly transferred from another place. He had a big nose and pale, mottled hands. He did not appear in the least disconcerted to have two policemen shakily pointing guns at him.
‘You need to leave,’ he said. ‘Now.’
The cops, because they were cops, held their ground.
‘What do we do, Rick?’ the younger one whispered.
Rick thought about it, keeping his gun trained on the old man’s chest. In theory the answer was straightforward. You read the guy his rights and take him into custody and try not to make the rap sheet sound too bizarre. Trespass, that’d do for now.
Rick had been a policeman for a long time, however. He’d handled a hundred domestic disputes, fielded a thousand weekend warriors with beer-pitcher hard-ons, seen the ten thousand things that people will do when they think the Man isn’t watching. Somewhere in between these events and encounters he’d learned to taste a common flavour, and he knew in his heart that right now he was standing in front of its motherlode.
That this man was where all the bad things came from.
He didn’t know what that meant, and didn’t care. Rick was smart enough to know that your real and only job in life is to get to the next episode without your character being cut.
‘This something to do with the Dipper running?’
The old man nodded.
‘Anybody going to get hurt?’
‘Not if I can help it. But time is of the essence.’
Rick lowered his gun and put it back in his holster. ‘My partner and I will return to our vehicle,’ he said. ‘We’re going to hang there maybe twenty minutes. After that, anyone on the boardwalk who shouldn’t be here is going straight to jail.’
‘Good enough.’
Ray was staring at him. ‘Rick – are you serious?’
‘Come on,’ Rick said. ‘And put that thing away. I’ve got a feeling it wouldn’t do much good.’
When the younger officer had holstered his weapon, they turned. The squirrel was still there, its hard black eyes seeming to sum up and judge them.
‘I am the Squirrel of Destiny,’ it said.
Rick and Ray walked stiffly up the concourse towards the gate they’d entered by, expecting at any moment to feel a sudden, fatal impact in the back.
The old man in the suit turned to the squirrel. ‘Go back to the Behind, Xjynthucx,’ the Devil said. ‘I will return there myself in a moment. This is taking too long. Do what you can, but fall back if you can’t find the machine soon. I have no especial desire to destroy this town. Yet.’
The squirrel scratched itself vigorously behind the ear for a moment, then folded itself into a ball, tighter and tighter, and smaller and smaller, and disappeared.
Inside the Dipper, Hannah’s father swapped hands on the lever. Granddad tended the controls. They had no knowledge of what had just happened outside, but the cessation of the banging on the door was welcome.
It did however reveal that the machinery surrounding them was sounding different.
‘What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know,�
�� Granddad said. He peered up into the chaos of tracks above their head.
There was a grinding sound. A moment later, a short section of wooden support came tumbling down out of the darkness to smash to pieces on the floor between them.
‘What the …’
‘It’s coming apart,’ Granddad whispered.
The Devil waited until he was sure the two policemen were going to keep their side of the bargain. A man called Nietzsche once observed that there is no such thing as moral phenomena, only a moral interpretation of them. The Devil had a certain amount of time for Nietzsche, despite the moustache. He’d understood. We look at a squirrel and say it is jumping; but we might as well think about a jump in its essence, and claim that the jump is squirrelling. We do bad things, in other words, but the bad things also do us. This is almost never a successful defence in a court of law, but it’s true.
Good things are part of us, too – and so you can’t always resist the temptation to do them, either. Whoever you are.
So the Devil stepped back into the Behind, appearing from nowhere in the middle of its version of downtown. He paused a moment, then smiled, causing the immediate death of a nearby mouse.
He stretched out his arms, roared up at the sky – and changed.
Chapter 47
‘Are they those … ’ Aunt Zo whispered.
‘Yeah,’ Vaneclaw said. ‘Which is very poor news.’
‘What do they want?’
‘Oh, to kill us. Definitely.’
‘What happens if you die in the Behind?’
‘A fate far worse than death. So let’s go, eh?’
They sprinted along the bridge and down the spiral into another dead-end street. Ten feet ahead, another section of track support plummeted out of the sky and crashed into the fence, exploding into a blizzard of splinters.
There was silence from the highway for a moment. And then the howling sound of the Fallen gliding up the embankment and towards the breach in the fence.
Hannah, Zo and Vaneclaw turned as one and ran up the hill. Hannah knew that they had to get up this stretch and then take a right up a road so vertically inclined it was called ‘High Street’. But off this lay another locals’ shortcut, a sharp set of old steps that would get them to within a few hundred yards of home.
Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence Page 26
