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Authors: Brendan Ritchie

Carousel (6 page)

BOOK: Carousel
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I took a final glance at the familiar fluorescence of the corridor and turned to follow them down.

We were inside a car park. Not one of the large
customer parking areas at the back of the centre, but a smaller version, for staff maybe. There were three steps leading down from the door, then a cold concrete floor with vehicle bays. Taylor had stopped a few metres from the door and seemed to be sniffing the air.

Immediately I thought of the masks. It had been stupid to head out there without putting them on. I inhaled cautiously. The smell was a new one. Not fresh, but with a kind of life we didn't have in the centre. Maybe it was the lack of air conditioning. A sudden chill ran across my shoulders. The air was cool.

A car park had to have an exit, but in the darkness there was no sign of one.

‘Did you pack torches, Nox?' whispered Lizzy.

‘Yeah, in the pocket inside,' I replied and reached around to find mine. The others followed. Our rustling resonated through the space.

We scanned the area in front of us. Concrete floors ran into brick walls broken only by the labels of stores in the centre. Coffee Club. Curry in a Hurry. Dinkum Donuts. Dymocks Books. Lizzy shone her torch across this sign.

‘My park is free,' she said.

I smiled but nobody could see.

Rocky's torch was fixed on something near the left
wall. Taylor and I noticed and turned to look. It looked like a ramp down to a lower level.

‘Turn your lights off,' whispered Taylor.

‘No fucking way,' replied Lizzy.

‘Just for a second,' said Taylor.

She switched off her torch and the rest of us followed. For a moment it was close to pitch black. When our eyes adjusted we noticed a dim glow of light emanating from the ramp.

‘It's light down there,' I whispered.

‘Holy shit,' said Lizzy.

‘We should take a look,' said Taylor.

We switched our torches back on and moved carefully over to the ramp. I turned and looked back at the door into the centre. It was open as we'd left it.

At the incline of the ramp the light ahead was still dull, but somewhat wider. We headed downward, swinging our Maglites around to catch anything out of the ordinary. The concrete levelled beneath us. There were no further ramps.

We were on the ground floor.

It was easy to see where the light was coming from. There was a large roller door on the far wall. The sides of the door didn't seem to fit squarely against the concrete wall. Daylight seeped in from outside creating
a dull hue around the door.

The four of us drifted to it like lemmings.

The door was big but not huge, just enough room for two cars, side by side. Taylor gripped a metal crossbar and tried to lift it.

Nothing moved.

We shone our torches along the base. Something was fastening the door to the concrete floor, but it wasn't visible.

Lizzy and I moved to the side, close to the dull blue light. To our disappointment the slit of daylight was minuscule. We wedged our heads in against the wall and tried to gaze out. The view was grey and, in all likelihood, just of another wall outside.

‘Fail,' whispered Lizzy next to me.

‘Yep,' I replied.

Taylor was doing the same on the other side of the door. I shone a torch at her face. She looked deflated. She shone hers back at Lizzy and me. We shrugged.

Suddenly I remembered Rocky.

I swiped my torch sideways to find him. Taylor and Lizzy followed, seemingly with the same thought. We found him a few metres behind us. He was standing still with his torch fixed on something. We followed his light across the car park. Lizzy inhaled beside me.

There was a car parked in the corner.

The three of us stared at it. Rocky fidgeted and looked back at us.

‘It's a Ford Fiesta,' he said, his voice booming through the space.

‘Shhh, Rock,' said Taylor, moving past him.

Lizzy, Rocky and I followed. We kept our torches fixed on the car and approached.

Rocky was right. It was a newish Ford Fiesta parked roughly across a couple of unmarked bays behind the ramp. The tinted windows reflected our torchlight so that we had to get right up close to see inside. The cab was clean and empty. No rubbish or shopping. Just a folded-up sun reflector on the back seat, and a pine tree freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror. Lizzy took hold of the passenger door handle and looked at us.

Taylor nodded slightly. Lizzy pulled back on the handle. The door was locked.

I slowly circled the car, looking for dust or dirt or something that would tell us if it had been parked there for a while. The body was clean but not shiny and gave nothing away. I noticed Rocky had a hand on the bonnet. I placed mine beside his. The steel was cool to touch.

‘Not today,' he said softly.

I nodded and gave him a smile. Taylor and Lizzy
were together by the passenger's side. Both looked a little freaked out. I moved over to them.

‘Do you want to try the crow-bar on that roller door?' I asked Taylor.

She turned and looked at the door as if she had forgotten it was there.

‘I don't know. What do you guys think?' she asked.

Before we could answer there was a sharp snap from the upper level. We jumped and looked at the ramp. The light drifting down from the door had gone. Like it was closed.

‘Fuck. Fuck,' I said.

‘Did you prop it?' asked Taylor.

I looked around for Rocky but couldn't find him.

‘Nox?' she asked again.

‘Rocky?' I said.

Suddenly he was beside me.

‘Nox!?' asked Taylor a third time.

‘Yeah I propped it. Come on,' I said and pulled her and Lizzy toward the ramp.

We forgot the car and bolted back upstairs under the weight of our bags. As the ramp levelled off we turned to find only a slither of light spilling from the centre door.

‘Shit,' I whispered.

The aircon in the centre had timed out and the drop in pressure had sucked it shut.

We raced over, fearing we had trapped ourselves out. The crowbar had fallen flat with the force of the door. My heart sank at the sight of the mallet head beside it.

Taylor crouched and followed the handle with her torch. The very end was still wedged in the door. She slipped her fingers in the small gap of light that remained. I followed. We pulled backward but it didn't move. For a horrible moment it seemed like the airlock would be too strong for us. We pulled again. It broke and the door swung open freely.

A moment later we were back in Carousel.

6

We didn't speak about our venture outside the centre for some days. Taylor's and Lizzy's nerves were shot. Mine too, probably. Rocky seemed normal, which was slightly concerning in itself. We had closed the door and trudged back to JB's, backpacks full of supplies, where we watched
Parks and Recreation
, ate junk food and were gentle with one another.

When it was really late and we could no longer pretend we weren't scared to be alone, each of us left JB's. I walked back to my bed in Myer, too tired to cycle with just a Maglite to guide me. The normally welcoming glow of the fragrance section felt dull and lifeless. I passed giant glowing advertisements with Natalie Portman and Beyoncé like they were old trees in a neglected garden and trudged up the escalator, not bothering to carry any cardboard for the next trip down.

The lights had already timed out to three-quarter dark but I switched off the torch, knowing my way without them. I stopped at the pile of sheet sets bundled outside my bunks. I had only replaced my sheets a few days ago but felt like I could do with some fresh ones again tonight. I grabbed a random bundle and stepped through into my cove.

I made the bed in the murky light and ran over the events of the morning once again. Our failure to break out of the centre was no big deal. Well, perhaps it was, but I don't think any of us, even Taylor, were really expecting success. I had packed the backpacks as comprehensively as I could, but never felt that my decisions would prove significant.

Even the discovery of the car park was a little underwhelming. We were always finding new places within this sleeping giant of a centre. Some nice toilets next to the Wendys outlet. A new row of video games at a bend in the corridor at Hoyts. The small garden with real plants lining some windows at the back entrance. I guess we could just add the staff car park onto this list and forget about it.

But there had been the Fiesta.

Nowhere else in our limited view of the exterior of the centre had we seen a car. Perhaps if they had been
present from the first day, left outside or undercover at the back entrance, another part of our bizarre new world, then the solitary Fiesta might not have creeped us out.

I couldn't think of a reason why there shouldn't be a Fiesta in the staff car park. But Carousel had a kind of weird logic that its presence there disrupted. There were four of us. The power remained on. The food supply was abundant. This was the logic we understood. Or if not understood, at least accepted.

The Fiesta left us swinging limply in the realm of fate. It reminded us that, however much we adapted to the centre, our existence remained fluid. We could attempt to break out and set our own agenda. But the reality was that our circumstances were being defined for us, and the Fiesta was part of that.

It also meant that there could be someone else in the centre with us. The thought sent a spike of adrenaline through my arms and I tucked the sheets in hard. Discovering Rocky in Target had been a great thing for us, and him. But there was something sinister about the owner of the small hatchback parked below. All of us had felt it. The way they had parked the car across two bays. As if well aware that the centre was, or would remain, empty. If this person had been here since the
first day then they were actively hiding from us, or dead. If they had arrived recently through the fastened door then they were somehow in on the Carousel phenomenon. Either way the Fiesta appeared to spell trouble.

I finished with the sheets and turned all the lamps out bar one. I slid into bed and pulled a quilt up around my face. The level felt too quiet for me to sleep, so I played some XX on a new iPod and stared at the display chest opposite. I was almost asleep when I realised it was Sunday and I hadn't given Lizzy a With Regret card.

I lay still and considered whether the day's events rendered this acceptable. I sighed, knowing that if anything they probably made the card routine even more important.

I dragged myself out of the beautiful warmth and pulled on my favourite grey hoodie and some jeans. Not wanting to clunk around the centre and wake up the others, I went for some quiet loafers. Then I took the Maglite over to the giftware section to find a card.

I had given Lizzy some truly terrible cards over the weeks.
Life gets in the way – I'll make it next time.
Or
The dog ate my homework … you know the deal.
Bordering on delirium, I wasn't too fussy this time. I went for a card with an illustrated bird flying through a
grey urban landscape on the front, with the destination of a solitary birdbath on the back. Inside it said,
Good luck in your new oasis, my apologies that I couldn't make a splash.
It didn't make a lot of sense but I wrote inside, sealed it up and set off to Dymocks.

Lizzy was in her bed reading
Burning for Revenge
from the John Marsden teen series. She dipped the cover at the soft shuffle of my approach and looked at her watch.

‘Cutting it fine, Nox,' she said.

‘Yeah,' I replied and passed her the card.

She opened it and smirked briefly at the contents. I sat on a sofa beside the bed and wrapped myself in a blanket.

‘You okay?' she asked.

‘Yeah. Bit creeped out,' I replied. ‘You?'

‘Not really,' she said.

‘Serious?'

‘I bet the normal demographic for Fiesta owners in Perth is like, female, nineteen to twenty-six,' she replied.

I smiled a little.

‘You think there's been a car-full of ladies shopping in Miss Shop all this time?' I asked.

‘Most likely,' she said.

‘Wow, they must be shy,' I said.

‘Shy is fine,' said Lizzy.

Usually we could go on talking crap like this for a while. Tonight it felt a little forced.

‘How is Taylor?' I asked, more seriously.

‘No idea,' she replied.

‘Do you really think there's somebody else in here with us?' I asked.

‘God, I don't know,' she answered.

We sat in silence for a while.

‘I was thinking about last time we played here in Perth. At that old arts centre,' she said.

‘In Fremantle. I was there,' I said. ‘You guys totally ignored me.'

‘We're famous. Of course we did,' said Lizzy.

‘Anyway, we were so pumped about hanging out in the place before the show. It's like this tiny castle, yeah. They pretty much gave us an entire wing to ourselves. I remember sitting in this big room after sound check, drinking a beer and looking up at the awesome ceilings. And Taylor was just wandering through the halls, looking at people's art projects. Nobody around.'

I nodded.

‘Then we googled and found out the place was built as an insane asylum where they locked people up and
dished out shock therapy and shit like that. Both of us got creeped out and spent the rest of the pre-show in a van out the front.'

Lizzy looked at me.

‘Nothing changed in the place except what we knew about it,' she said. ‘I don't want that to happen here. I'm not going to let a fucking Ford Fiesta creep me out of the only good stuff about being alive and living in a mall.'

Her eyes were fierce and they were posing me a question. Maybe not a question, but a challenge. The idea of not meeting it scared the hell out of me.

7

Life in Carousel felt pretty normal in the weeks that followed. There wasn't much we could do about the mysterious Fiesta. If it meant that somebody else was in the centre then it seemed inevitable we would eventually meet them. But we weren't going to go out looking. They would have to come to us.

BOOK: Carousel
12.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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