Dark Ride (7 page)

C
HAPTER
14

 

You’ve Got to
Help Me

 

‘Luka!’

I covered my face because I couldn’t bear to see it but I still heard the sound he made as he hit the ground. I opened my eyes and ran over. He was facing away from me, lying on his stomach, his arm at an awkward angle. He looked very still and I fell down onto my knees next to him, crying in big, wracking sobs. His eyes were open but glassy-looking and his cheek was pressed hard against the ground.

‘You’re going to be OK, Luka!’ I wailed. ‘I’m going to get help. Just stay still.’

I took off my jacket and laid it over his shoulders. I bent down and kissed his cold, dirty cheek. Then I ran faster than ever in my life towards the exit turnstile. The only person outside was a woman pushing a pram along the road. She looked alarmed as I ran up to her.

‘You’ve got to help me!’ I screamed. ‘It’s my friend! He’s had an accident!’

She jiggled the pram as the baby inside started to wail. ‘Where?’

‘He’s in there!’ I pointed to the fairground and the woman pulled a pink mobile phone from her pocket.

She made the call, darting suspicious glances at me the whole time. ‘They said they’d be here soon,’ she said when she’d hung up. She patted me awkwardly on the arm. ‘You know you shouldn’t be in there, don’t you? It’s dangerous.’

I just hung my head and cried quietly, wondering if there was anything they could do or if Luka was already dead.

It seemed like no time before a big yellow and green ambulance with all its nee-nawing and lights screeched up next to us. A man and a woman in paramedic gear leapt out, radio noises crackling in the background.

‘Where’s the casualty?’ said the woman to me.

‘He’s in there,’ I said and the two paramedics exchanged glances. They were looking at me differently now, as though I was some kind of vandal.

‘Look,’ said the woman, ‘it’s going to be very hard to get the rig in there. Take me to your friend and we can work out how we can help him, okay?’

I nodded miserably and the lady paramedic came with me through the gates using the tickets.

‘What were you doing in here anyway?’ she said, not unkindly as we hurried through the fairground, past all the boarded-up stalls. ‘Didn’t you see all those signs?’

I just snivelled.

‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ she said.

‘It’s my friend,’ I said. ‘He climbed up the side of the rollercoaster. Then he just threw himself off!’

‘Is he conscious?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘He’s just lying there. He’s right around this corner.’

We came towards the concession stands.

‘He’s just over...’

The words died in my throat.

‘Where?’ said the paramedic.

I rushed over to the spot and saw that my jacket had been slung over the bottom rail of the rollercoaster. I opened and closed my mouth a few times.

‘But what, where ... ?’ I ran around wildly, trying to see where he’d gone. ‘Luka!’ I yelled at the top of my voice. ‘Where are you? You need help!’

The paramedic started to speak into her radio. ‘Are you sure he was hurt?’ she said, turning to me. Her words were sharp but her eyes were kinder. ‘You know that wasting our time stops us from helping people who really need us.’

‘I’m sorry!’ I wailed. ‘But my friend really was here!’

Her face softened. ‘Look, I’m sure if he was able to run away then he’s just a bit shaken up. I’ll put a call in just in case he turns up at A&E, but I’m sure he’s fine.’

She carried on speaking but I wasn’t listening any more. None of it made sense. We came back through the gates and I mumbled that I was sorry again and walked quickly away.

I felt like I could hear the crackling radio all the way home.

C
HAPTER
15

 

Lockett’s Rise

 

It was
22
December, but there was no Christmas cheer in our house. Every time Mum tried to have that ‘proper talk’ with me, I walked off. So we passed each other like strangers, mouths set into lines.

But I wasn’t even thinking about the row any more. I couldn’t stop going over and over the pictures in my head of what had happened with Luka. Maybe I’d misjudged how far he fell? Then I remembered the awkward way he was lying. He must have been really badly hurt, he
must
have been. How could he have got up and walked away? I kept imagining him lying injured somewhere and I couldn’t bear it. Mum was at work, so I decided to look in the fairground again, just in case he’d come back.

I grabbed my jacket from the cupboard and put it on. My fingers closed around some paper in one of the pockets. It was an old envelope, folded into squares and then folded again. I opened it out, the creases like veins across the scrunched paper. The address read:

Ms Eva Novak

53 Lockett’s Rise

Seaforth Road

Slumpton

LM26 6RY

Eva? It hit me. Luka’s mum. He must have put this in my pocket after the fall. It was obviously a message. He wanted me to find him.

I wasn’t taking any chances this time and rooted about in a drawer for the map of the town Mum had bought when we moved in. I stuffed it into my pocket before heading out.

It was so cold the air hurt my lungs, but the sky was blue as a summer’s day as I trudged up the steep hill behind our houses.

It didn’t take long to find the beginning of Lockett’s Rise.

I don’t know why, but my heart started to bang against my chest like a trapped bird and the back of my neck prickled as I got further up the road.

47, 49,
51...

Number 53 had a neglected air. There were hanging baskets with dried brown stuff hanging out and the windows were dirty. I peered inside and could see a small kitchen with just a table and a few chairs. It felt like no one had lived here for a long time. Could this be the wrong house? I fumbled for the envelope, but no, it definitely said number 53.

I heard a noise and noticed a round, pink face at the window next door, two bright eyes looking at me. Before I could turn away, an old lady was out the front, her arms crossed over her chest and her chin raised.

‘Can I help you, dear?’ she said.

‘Urgh.’ Better try again. I cleared my throat and tried to speak like a normal person. ‘Have you seen the boy who lived here?’

The old lady stared at me for ages and a horrible feeling began to curdle in my stomach.

‘Oh dear,’ she said at last, her hand fluttering to her chest. ‘Hasn’t anyone told you?’

‘Told me what?’ I whispered. I had a horrible premonition that I didn’t want to know the answer.

‘I think you’d better come inside.’

‘No!’ I didn’t mean to say it like that and the lady flinched. ‘Sorry, but can you just tell me? Have you seen him?’

‘Oh dear,’ she said again. ‘Oh dear ... Well, the thing is, lovey, I’m afraid he, he passed away.’

I had a rushing feeling in my ears and a big hot wave of sick in my throat.

Tears splintered everything at the thought of Luka crawling away from his fall and dying alone.

The old lady was speaking again but my brain wasn’t able to untangle what she was saying.

‘What?’ I squeaked.

‘It was a dreadful thing,’ she said. ‘As it’s the anniversary coming up, I was just thinking about it.’

What was she talking about? ‘What do you mean,
anniversary?’

She hesitated again. ‘Well... it’s almost a year since the boy and his mother died.’

Grey pavement rushed towards me like a wall.

A strong grip was on my arm and then a hallway smelt of furniture polish.

A sofa with patterns and wallpaper with different patterns swam in front of me, so that they all mixed together and made the sick in my throat keep rising until it blurted out of my mouth, right into a basin that was magically in front of me.

I sat there, too numb to think straight and she was back, removing the stinky basin without a word, and then putting down a tray with a teapot and a plate of ginger biscuits. The room was silent apart from the sound of a clock ticking and completely wrong, cheerful radio noises from another room.

The old lady handed me a cup of milky tea and I took a sip, my hands shaking so much I slopped some on my jeans.

‘Lots of sugar,’ she said. ‘That’s what you need for shock. Have a biscuit too.’

I didn’t want one but took one like a robot and bit into it. The taste seemed to bring everything back into focus along with a bright thudding in my chest.

‘Did you know him well, lovey?’ The old lady had her head on one side like a bird.

I just nodded. Protests were screaming inside my head.
It’s obviously a mistake! How can he be dead when I’ve spent half the week with him? You’ve got it wrong, that’s all. It’s just a stupid mistake.

But the words didn’t come. I just sat there, while she talked quietly.

‘It was an awful thing. There was an accident, a car accident. The police said she lost control of the vehicle and they drove straight off St Lawrence’s Headland into the sea.’

I was staring at her, still unable to take in her words.

‘They said they ...’ she hesitated,’... died instantly.’ She cleared her throat.

I got up abruptly. ‘I have to go now.’ My voice was hoarse and every part of me was hurting like someone had punched me all over.

She got up too and placed her warm, dry hand on mine. ‘I know it’s a shock. But time is a great healer and you’re still young. You’ll get over this, really you will.’

I pulled my hand away and walked out of the room. I didn’t even thank her for being so kind to me. I just had to be alone. As I walked out of the front door and back down the road, I could feel her concerned eyes boring into my back.

It couldn’t possibly be true. It was too crazy to be true.

But maybe it
was
true? Maybe it had been right in front of my nose all along and I’d just been too dumb to see it.

No one could have fallen from that height and walked away. He wouldn’t let me see his hand when he cut it on the glass either. I thought of the waitress in the café, looking at me so weirdly. She must have thought I was cracked, sitting there talking to myself.

I’ve been figuring some things out, Bel.
That’s what he said, right before he jumped.

I knew exactly where to look, but when I got to the outside of the fairground, everything was different. There were vans parked all over the place. A big green portakabin was in pieces on the side of the road. I stood there, unsure what to do next when a low whistle came from nearby. I looked over and saw there was another old building with a tatty yard behind it. I slipped through a gap in the fence and there was Luka, sitting on a wall.

He looked like he’d been waiting for ages. We didn’t speak. All I could do was stare at his face and neck and hands which looked so real and fleshy, and his trainers and jeans and hoodie. Just like any other boy. There was the hole in the knee of his jeans where you could even see a circle of pink skin. I remembered touching his cheek and how cold he was. But
real.

‘Go on then.’

When he spoke it made me jump. ‘Go on then, what?’

‘Get all the questions you’re gagging to ask out the way.’

‘Is it... is it true?’

He shrugged. ‘Seems so, doesn’t it?’

‘But you’re so ... solid.’We stared at each other again and then I had a mad notion. ‘Is this some sort of stupid joke, Luka, because if it is ...’ My voice went into a squeak.

He did a disgusted swoop with his eyes. ‘It’s not looking very funny to me,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know until yesterday either. It was seeing the date on that calendar in the café. It made a bunch of weird things make sense.’

‘Can everyone see you?’

‘No. Just you.’

‘Why me?’

‘Don’t know. No idea. Next?’

‘Where do you go at night? Do you sleep?’

He gave me such a look then, my insides withered a bit. ‘Of course I sleep. I’ve been sleeping rough in the fairground. You knew that.’

‘What about eating? Can you eat like other people?’

He looked up at the sky. ‘Probably. But I can’t remember being hungry or thirsty.’

I hesitated before speaking again. ‘Can you, you know, do stuff?’ He gave me a withering look and I instantly regretted it.

‘Stuff?’

‘Like, I don’t know, walking through walls.’

He got up, his expression icy. ‘Let’s see, shall we?’

And then to my horror, he ran full-pelt into the wall.

I screamed as he thumped into it and staggered back, clutching his head. But there was no mark and he seemed to recover quickly.

‘Doesn’t look like it, does it?’ he said, a bit out of breath.

I knew I should stop but I had one more question. It was the hardest of all to get out.

‘What does it... feel like?’

‘What, being dead?’

I flinched.

‘It’s a laugh-a-minute, what do you think?’ He spat the words out like hard pips. ‘You feel so lonely it’s like someone has scooped out your insides. Like you’re the only person in the world. It feels like a bad joke and everyone is in another room laughing. Any minute now someone will say, “Surprise!” and everything will be normal again.’ He was breathing heavily. He sank back against the wall. When he spoke again he sounded sort of hollow. ‘That’s how it feels.’

‘Do you remember anything?’ I said and he shook his head, his eyes fearful. I took a deep breath, knowing I was about to hurt him.

‘Luka, I’d better tell you some stuff,’ I said quietly.

C
HAPTER
16

 

Knowing

 

It was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. As I told him what the old lady had said, his eyes were sort of pleading, like he didn’t want to hear the words, but when I did hesitate, he hurried me on.

I finished speaking and reached for his hand. He gripped mine so hard it hurt.

‘I dream about being trapped. I can hear Eva’s voice calling to me but I can’t reach her.’ He stared at the ground. Then he said, ‘So she’s dead too?’ as though it had suddenly just hit him.

He jumped to his feet, and squeezed the heels of his hands into his eyes. He was saying, ‘No, no, no,’ over and over again and was bent almost double, like someone had actually punched him. I could see the soft skin at the back of his neck and I put my arms round him and held him, feeling his body shaking against me, trying to block the pictures flooding in my mind. I was crying now too, not caring about anything any more. I just held on for ages until he became still and he pulled away. His face was tight and his dark eyes were bloodshot and puffy.

‘Luka, I’m so sorry,’ I said.

He wiped his face with a shaky hand. ‘I tried to go home,’ he said. ‘When I first... well, found myself in the fairground. But it was like something was pulling me back. I just couldn’t do it. Maybe I didn’t want to face it.’

He looked at me then with a desperate expression. ‘Why am I here and not her?’ he said. ‘Why have I come back?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said miserably. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘I feel like she’s here sometimes,’ he said and he lifted his chin a little as though daring me to mock him. ‘I can’t see her, but I feel... something.’

We were silent for a moment. I didn’t know what to say.

‘Come and sit for a minute,’ I said and, taking his hand, led him over to a low wall. I felt shy about touching him again, now the worst of the news was out, but held onto his hand anyway.

‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ he said. ‘She was a really good driver. She was always careful on that bend. There’s no way she’d have driven too fast... unless

‘Unless someone forced her off the road,’ I finished the thought. ‘But why?’

Luka reached into the pocket of his hoodie, which meant letting go of my hand.

‘I don’t know. But look, I found her camera,’ he said, pulling out a battered leather case with a long strap.

‘I went into the ghost train yesterday and found this wedged right near the back. It looks like someone tried to get it off her because the strap’s broken.’

I gently took the leather case from Luka’s fingers. He was right. I could see that the shoulder strap had been snapped, as though it had been pulled hard.

‘Have you tried turning it on?’ I said.

‘Battery’s dead,’ said Luka. ‘And someone has taken out the memory card.’

‘Maybe she had some pictures someone wanted,’ I said and Luka nodded.

‘She used to say that a picture painted a thousand words. Her English was good, but she still sometimes couldn’t find the right expressions and she got frustrated. It was like her photos were, I dunno, her voice sometimes.’

I could feel that he was getting himself together and I almost minded. I wanted to hold him again and had no excuse now. I felt ashamed and let out a big breath to try and clear my own head.

‘So what now?’ I said. ‘We have nothing concrete, Luka. We don’t know why someone was after her. We don’t know anything, really.’

‘No, but maybe that’s why I’m here,’ said Luka, his voice determined now. ‘To find out what happened and get justice for Eva – and for me too, I guess. I don’t know what I’m meant to do, but I know I can’t do it alone, Bel. I wouldn’t blame you for running a mile, though.’

He was looking into my eyes intently and, again, I saw his gaze move across my face in a way that made me hold my breath. I saw him swallow and he looked down. My stomach gave another little jump.

‘I’m not going anywhere, Luka,’ I whispered.