Roller Coaster Ride

We are meeting at the fenced off old amusement park tonight. The one with the signs warning about danger and not entering, and we are going to ride the roller coaster that is still under official investigation after that terrible accident there last month. The one that claimed two young lives and inflicted what the mealy-mouthed call life-altering injuries on two more. We will walk past the deflated bouncy castle, where pools of water have already gathered in the flaccid, fading plastic folds, and past the waltzers that waltz no more, and past the dodgem cars that do not bump into each other with flashes of fluorescent light, and past the ghost train where the synthetic screams have been silenced. 

     I have never much seen the appeal of roller-coasters, though I’m not afraid of them of course (and this is a simple statement of self-evident fact, not a boast). But we believe in playing fair, and Naomi loves roller coasters and fairgrounds. It’s my turn to pick next month. I have already made my mind up. We are going to dash back and forth across the railway line, and we are going to do it where it comes close to that old-fashioned and over-priced hotel where I once stayed for a couple of nights, listening to the trains as they disappeared into the woods and the limbo land between stations. I love trains. Perhaps someone arriving late or early at the hotel will see us, and will tut-tut, and will report us, maybe, but will end up feeling either foolish or frustrated, because we will not be caught.

     Last month it was Ian’s choice. He fancies himself as a scientist, and perhaps he may have been one, if things had turned out differently. We wandered around the laboratory that was inside an electrified perimeter fence with skulls and crossbones signs and spent a strange sort of night surrounded by all manner of bacteria and viruses and chemicals and radiation. I had thought it would be rather boring, but there was something oddly compelling about the equipment and the constant half-light. I was reminded of when I started at college, and ended up getting hopelessly lost (I never did have a sense of direction) and wandered into the science block though I was a languages student. Looking back I realise that what I caught glimpse of was a bog standard chemistry lab in a bog standard campus university, but it made me think of science fiction B movies. 

     There is an element of hypocrisy about being reminded and remembering. It is not actually forbidden as one of the rules of the society, but it is disapproved of, it will “serve no purpose”. But we all do it. Mike, who took us to the forest where the wildfires were raging the month before last, said it might be better if we had all lost our memories. But I don’t think he meant it. 

     I fancy this place was dilapidated and well past its prime even before the accident on the rusting roller coaster. The little stalls that once sold doughnuts and ice cream and candy floss and cones of chips are now blind behind their shutters, their paint flaking. It is a place that seems lost and forgotten. Which is suitable enough for those who are lost and forgotten.

     Except, of course, we are supposed to call ourselves The Immortals. We are the ones who have dared death, and who have escaped its clutches, and now we cannot die. I have heard a rumour that there is one way we can be released, but I don’t believe it.

     To be sure, some great writers and artists and composers have evoked our ilk. But they are like legends and fairytales, even to us. Especially to us. We are the dull and drab ones, who are not swathed in soaring music or winding words or glorious colours. We are the second-grade, the mundane ones, who are left to our own devices, to organise our own meetings. 

     Our newest member, Andy, doesn’t seem to quite get it. He is barely old enough to scrape in. He asks why we seek out danger when we know there is none. He will learn. I daresay all of us asked the same question once, even when we were older. He is sitting on one of the down at hoof horses on the carousel that always did moan and creek and disappoint, and looking as if he is trying to figure things out, and I wonder if the scream will come tonight, the scream that you think will never stop but does, eventually. Or does not. It will be a few months before he is allowed to decide where we meet. The power has come back on now. The carousel is turning and we can ride the roller coaster. I have dull, futile thoughts about those young lives that were claimed and maimed. I do not pity them. They would not pity me. 

     “Beware,” says Henrietta, quietly. We are supposed to be equals, but of course that is so much nonsense, and she is the leader, or at least we act as if she is. But we all know what is meant by the single word “beware”. It does not, of course, mean be careful, or watch your step. It means that there is at least a chance that someone who is not one of us has penetrated, unwittingly, our meeting. Two things can happen now. The first is the more usual. They can go away, or their own volition, or with some presentiment prompting them. Then they will have strange dreams, and wonder why, and avoid the place where they had trespassed, and all places resembling it, and not be able to explain it, but they will have had a lucky escape. Or they can choose to investigate further and give in to the promptings or curiosity and daring, and then they will become one of us, but never wholly one of us. They will be in a limbo within a limbo. For reasons I don’t quite know I am willing the intruder in the amusement park to feel uneasy, to realise that they have made a mistake, and to slip back through the barrier they have somehow penetrated without the skills that we have.

     They have not. They intend on staying. They have paused by the chipped and closed booth where cones of chips used to be sold. And I have a sudden urge to break the rules, to break one of our most strict rules, and to try to meet them. The consequences of this could be so awful that even we only speak of them obliquely.

     I jump down from the apex of the damaged roller coaster and land safely on the concrete beneath, ignoring the warning cries of my companions, who truly do seem to have been stirred to a sort of panic. Andy is still on the carousel, as if he hasn’t quite grasped his unasked-for powers and doesn’t want to go on the roller coaster, and makes as if to follow me, whilst unable to believe what I am doing at the same time. “Dora, where are you going?”

     “Stay there!” I command. He obeys.

     I am coming nearer and nearer, and see that the person standing by the booth is a woman. Quite an elderly woman, though still, I think, sprightly enough, despite her slightly bowed posture. She is wearing a dark green coat that seems to glow both darker and brighter green in the lights of the amusement park, and seems to be lost in thought. 

     An emotion is swelling through me that is both terrible and wonderful. When I was at school we once went on a trip to an amusement park, and I did not enjoy it. Perhaps because I’d had a tummy bug lately anyway, I had turned queasy on the roller coaster and, as I thought, shamed myself, and I had started crying. But our class teacher, Mrs Holt, could not have been kinder. She cleaned me up as best she could, and told me she’d had something similar happen to her, and looking back I wonder if it was a kind lie, but at the time I believed her. She took me to a stall to buy a cone of chips to “put a lining on my stomach,” as she said. They tasted good and the world became a slightly better place again. She had been wearing a green coat that day.

     I am vaguely aware of voices calling, warning, unable to believe that I am breaking this taboo of all taboos. They seem to fade into a grey mist. Mrs Holt is smiling, and holding out her arms, and says, “Dora! What a lovely surprise!” 

   It is a warm, human voice from a kind person whom I had almost forgotten. But she had not forgotten me. And that is what matters. I step into her arms, and there is peace.