Part 6 (2/2)
”No! I mean, yes! I mean, I don't know!”
The bow crashed down again, and as we rose and crested the next swell I saw a reef off the starboard bow-jagged granite rocks that thrust up through the churning sea like teeth. I could see bits and pieces of other s.h.i.+ps in the crevices of the stone monoliths.
”Follow her into the reef!” shouted mad Captain Carl. A sailor at the helm wildly spun the tiller, and the s.h.i.+p turned toward the rocks.
Up above me the riders still wailed with joy as they swung from the ratlines. One of those voices sounded familiar. It was a shrill whoop that I'd heard so many times, I could place it a mile away. I looked up. In a flash of lightning across the mottled yellow sky, I saw Quinn clinging to the highest of the ratlines, right beneath the crow's nest. He screamed in defiance of the cras.h.i.+ng waves, daring them to shake him loose.
Fighting the violent pitching of the s.h.i.+p, I climbed the ratlines toward him. I was almost thrown from the ropes, but I held on with what little strength my fingers had left, until I finally reached him high up where the ratlines met the mast.
”Toward thee I roll,” the mad captain shouted at the whale with my mother's eyes. ”To the last, I grapple with thee!”
”Quinn!” I could barely hear my own voice over the thunder and wind. I was right next to him now, and still he didn't know I was there. He just kept whooping as the boat pitched up and down, the motion intensified by the height of the mast. He was oblivious to Carl, our mother the whale, or anything else outside the rush of the ride.
”Quinn!”
Finally he turned to me, blinking like he had just come out of a trance. His eyes were wide and wet from the cold wind. ”Blake? When did you get here?”
There was a deafening blast, and a surge of electricity made my arm hairs tingle. A kid on the foremast had been struck by lightning. His smoking body tumbled limply, missing the deck and plunging into the sea. Then I caught sight of one of the pa.s.sing spires of rock. Part of the stone seemed to melt away, forming a face. In fact, all over the reef, I could swear I saw giant faces in the stone, the wailing mouths and hopeless eyes of those whose lives were given to the ride.
Lightning sparked in the sky again as I realized we were clinging to the highest point of the boat. Then I looked at Quinn's moronically metallic face. Dangling chains and rings-all perfect electrical conductors.
”You're a lightning rod! You've got to get down from here!”
”No way!” He returned his gaze forward. ”I'm not letting you spoil this! It's the best ride yet!”
With Quinn, action always speaks louder than words, so I tugged him from the rope net, and we both fell, rolling down the rough ratlines, bouncing painfully off the boom, and landing hard on the deck.
”This s.h.i.+p's going down!” I told him, ignoring my aches from the fall.
”How do you know? You don't know everything.”
”I know the story. One way or another, this s.h.i.+p is going down.” I looked around for something-anything that would give us an out. Then I caught sight of a strange, unearthly light escaping around the edges of a closed hatch. I knelt down and pulled at the hatch with all my strength. Finally it popped open.
The light within was too bright. My eyes fought to adjust, and for an instant I got the briefest glimpse of bright chrome gears turning. They were pieces of some colossal gear-work that couldn't possibly fit in the hold of a s.h.i.+p. This hatch was a doorway to another place entirely!
The Works, I thought. It must be The Works!
Beyond that hatch was the mechanism that ran every ride. But before I could get a better look, crazy Captain Carl slammed it shut with his foot.
”n.o.body goes below!”
Just then the whale breached right beside the s.h.i.+p.
”Was that a whale?” Quinn asked, clueless as ever. ”What's up with that?”
As the whale with my mother's eyes came down, the force of its wake threw the s.h.i.+p against the rocks with a shattering of wood.
”Blast ye!” yelled that strange blending of Captain Ahab and my mother's fiance. He threw his fists to the sky. ”The madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood, and the smoking brow!”
”That's it, we're outta here.” I pushed Quinn to the railing. ”Jump. Now!”
”Are we gonna ride the whale? Is that part of the ride?”
”Just jump!” I practically hurled him over the side, and followed right behind. I hit the icy water. Then, for an instant, I felt something huge and rough brush right past me. I fought my way to the surface, breaking through into the noise of the storm.
Quinn sputtered beside me. He wasn't as strong a swimmer as I was, so I tried to help him, but he wouldn't let me. He kicked me away and began swimming toward the rocks. I turned back to see the s.h.i.+p, twenty yards away now . . . and then a blue gray wall rose in front of me. The whale breached again, but this time it came down right on the s.h.i.+p. Riders were thrown from the ratlines. The s.h.i.+p cracked in half, and in a few moments both whale and s.h.i.+p were gone into the darkness of the churning sea.
A wave hurled me onto the rocks, where brand-new faces were appearing. I tried not to look directly at them; I was afraid I'd be too horrified to move if I did.
When I turned to look for Quinn, he was scrambling away over the rocks.
”No!” I grabbed him by his collar as we reached a wide plateau. I was so mad, I would have grabbed him by his nose ring if I could get my finger through it. ”You're not getting away from me again!”
”Why did you have to come?” he yelled. ”You ruined everything! You made me miss the best part of the ride!”
”Best part? What, are you out of your mind? If you went down with that s.h.i.+p, you wouldn't be coming back up.”
And then Quinn looked me dead in the eyes. ”Who says I wanted to?”
If my temper was a burning fuse, that pinched it right off. My head reeled from what he said. From what he meant.
”Who says I want to do anything but finish the ride?”
I took a deep breath, and another, as I stared at him. The sound of the ocean raged behind us, but right now I could hear only him. ”What are you saying, Quinn?”
”You came here to save me from this place, didn't you? But who said I want to be saved this time?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but all my words had been robbed from me. What could I say to him? What could I say to my brother, who came here not just for the thrills, but for something else? As much as I didn't want to face it, I had to now. Somehow he knew where these rides would end. He knew that once he crossed through the gates, he wasn't coming back. He knew, and still he had come.
”What's out there for me, huh?” Quinn's eyes flowed with tears, and those tears flowed with a dozen different emotions. ”What's ever been out there for me? When I'm at home, it's like I'm . . . it's like I'm empty on the inside. You don't know what that's like.”
They say that before someone takes their own life, there's always a cry for help. Sometimes it's loud, and you have to be seriously deaf not to hear it. Sometimes it's just a word or a look, like the look Quinn was giving me right now. I might have been deaf to it before, but that look screamed louder than anything now. I had no skill in talking someone in from the edge, and that s.p.a.ce between us was still a whole universe wide.
”Quinn . . .”
”It's not your job to save me, so give it up, huh? Please . . . just give it up.”
”It's not a job,” I told him. ”It's something I've got to do. Something that I need to do.”
”But why?” Quinn asked. ”Is it because of what happened on the school bus?”
I looked away from him. ”Mom shouldn't have told you about that.”
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