They all went in Steve’s car. It was after midnight and the streets were empty apart from those people who are always walking or driving somewhere, who knew where, who knew why. Hannah had wondered sometimes – when she’d glimpsed them sleepily while being driven home from a grown-ups’ party – if they were forever in motion, wandering the streets on feet or wheels, tracing some dark and uncertain web only they could see; wondered too what they did in the daytime, or if they only ever came out in darkness – if they were in fact in some way part of the night. She realized that the person (or being, or thing) sitting silently in the passenger seat of her father’s car might know, but she didn’t ask. Never ask questions if you might not want to know the answers, lest you are pulled into those stories and the truths they reveal. Sometimes ignorance is better. It would probably not be so popular otherwise.
Her father drove quickly through downtown and to the front. If Santa Cruz is an island, the boardwalk is an island within an island. It stretches almost the entire width of a beach between two headlands, half a mile long, with a gap at the northern end yielding access to the wharf, which stretches out into the bay. In front of this had once been a motley spread of cheap motels and vacation bungalows, but most of these are gone, razed into a vast parking lot to hold the summer crowds. Behind the lot is a big hill, with houses, which cuts all this off from downtown.
The boardwalk stood dark.
The parking lot was closed, so Hannah’s father found a spot up a road nearby. ‘I still don’t get why we’re here,’ he said as they all got out.
Nobody answered. The Devil and Granddad set off quickly, Vaneclaw trotting after. They were the people who understood things (with the likely exception of the imp). Dad and Aunt Zo followed – the people who did not.
Hannah found herself somewhere in between.
The boardwalk is anchored at one end by a large building that was a casino and swimming baths and now holds slot machines and laser tag and conference rooms. Spaced along the landward side are structures holding the rides and attractions. There are fences between these, and entry gates. These were locked, of course, but Granddad was able to rapidly overcome this. There were signs all over the fences saying that the place was guarded by security.
‘Won’t someone hear?’
‘No,’ the Devil said. He did not elaborate.
They slipped inside and headed out into the promenade. On a summer’s afternoon this would be packed with families from San Jose and Watsonville and Gilroy, stuffing themselves with corn dogs and garlic fries, about as cheerful and boisterous a scene as you could imagine. Hannah thought that as it was now, after midnight in October and deserted, it was like creeping into the body of someone who was so deeply asleep you’d need a doctor to tell you they hadn’t actually died.
They walked the entire length, right to the end where there was a section of rides for smaller kids.
‘What’s that?’ Zo hissed suddenly.
A man was lying on the ground near the mini-golf, flat on his back, arms outstretched. He was wearing a dark blue uniform. ‘Security,’ the Devil said.
‘Is he …’
‘Sleeping.’ He turned to Granddad. ‘Are you confident this mechanism will take us to the Behind?’
‘I believe it was actually built for the role, by someone whose name and purpose is now lost. Whether it’s still capable of performing it … that’s a totally different question.’
‘Lead on, Engineer. Quickly.’
Granddad took them back along the promenade, and before long Hannah realized where he was taking them.
The rollercoaster.
The Giant Dipper on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk was built in 1924, making it the fifth oldest in the United States. Its tangled half-mile of track is constructed predominantly of wood, and tolerates – barely – speeds of up to fifty-five miles an hour along the fastest stretches.
Hannah knew all this (and she’d once known how many rivets it had too, but had forgotten, though she thought it was about twenty-one billion) because while you stood in line there was a video telling you. She remembered Granddad muttering that being informed it was the fifth youngest in the country might be more appealing at this stage. They’d climbed on when their turn came, nonetheless, side by side in one of its six blue carriages, each of which held four passengers. The two ladies in front had been nearly as old as Granddad, and said they’d been riding the Dipper every year since they were kids of Hannah’s age. This was mildly reassuring, but then as they’d been ratcheted up to the top of the first drop, Hannah experienced an abrupt change of heart, blurting that she’d changed her mind and would like to get off, immediately, like, urgently, totally right now.
Granddad had grasped the bar across their laps, and – looking serene and resigned – said that wasn’t possible. All they could do was hold tight and go through with it.
She remembered almost nothing about the ride apart from violent creaking and flashing speed and getting her knees banged on turns which threw you around like a car crash. That, and screaming until her throat was hoarse.
When they had emerged at the other end, exhilarated but shaken, Granddad turned to her, somewhat pale, and asked if she’d enjoyed the experience.
‘No,’ Hannah said. It had scared her witless.
‘Nor me,’ Granddad said. He’d been looking up at the track towering above them with an odd expression on his face. ‘Let’s never do that again.’
And yet here they were, walking towards it.
Granddad led them to an area at the side where a door was discreetly inset into the wooden panelling, near the window where you could buy photos of yourself being terrified on the ride you’d just endured. This door had a ‘NO ENTRY’ sign on it.
After a minute’s work with one of the endless series of tools he seemed to have secreted about his person, Granddad had it unlocked. The interior thus revealed was dark and shadowy. Granddad peered around to get his bearings, then set off in the direction of the machinery.
‘I know I’m sounding like a broken record,’ Hannah’s dad asked, ‘but what are we doing here?’
‘Steve?’ Granddad called from deep in the shadows of the machine. ‘Come here a moment, would you?’
Hannah followed her father towards the sound of Granddad’s voice. When they found him, he was experimentally moving levers and dials on some kind of control panel. The panel was old and battered and looked like the kind of thing you might find on an ancient tractor, rusting in a field, rather than something that governed the movement of the edifice that ducked and rolled high over their heads. On one side was a long lever.
‘Could you see if you can move that?’
Hannah’s dad grabbed the end. He tugged. It resisted for a moment but then rotated downward.
‘Excellent,’ Granddad said as he started to undo screws on the front of the panel. ‘In which case, that’s going to be your job. I couldn’t even get it to budge.’
‘Dad,’ Steve said, ‘what are you about to do?’
‘Ever wondered what rollercoasters are for?’
‘People ride them, get scared, go eat tacos.’
Granddad lifted off the panel. A tangle of wires and cogs lay beyond. He reached into his jacket for glasses, put them on, and peered into the chaos. ‘That’s what they became, yes. And of course, the ones they’re building now, that’s all they’re for. Most people don’t know the original purpose.’
‘Which was …?’
‘Why do you think people enjoy riding them?’
‘No idea. Personally, I don’t.’
‘They enjoy it because they feel something. It’s scary, yes, and thrilling too. But it can also make them experience … something else. A rollercoaster constructed in the correct way, with precisely the right twists and turns and rises and falls, running at a very particular speed … it can get behind.’
‘Behind what?’
‘That’s very hard to explain. Aha.’ Granddad reached into the jumble of wires towards a small dial, placed so deep inside that it looked as if it had been hidden.
The Devil appeared at his shoulder. ‘Does that confirm its original purpose?’
‘Yes. It doesn’t prove it’s still up to the job.’
‘That’s a risk we’re going to have to take.’
‘Wait,’ Hannah’s dad said. ‘Whoa, hold on. We’re not getting on this thing?’
‘You’re not, no,’ Granddad said. ‘That lever you pulled is the fail-safe. It will halt the entire machine quickly. And … hopefully safely.’
‘I don’t like the word “hopefully”,’ Steve said. ‘It’s especially not-good in this context.’
‘It’s the best I’ve got. We’re going to stand here – me operating the controls, you with your hand on the lever. If I tell you to pull it … pull it. Right away.’
‘No way,’ Hannah’s dad said very firmly, turning to the Devil. ‘Hannah is not getting on this thing. Are you out of your mind?’
The Devil raised an eyebrow. ‘I have no idea what the question means. Hannah must ride the machine. We need the strength of her bond to her mother.’
‘But you don’t care about Kristen,’ Aunt Zo said, walking out of the shadows. Her arms were folded. ‘Only about your machine. You think the two of them are together. This is nothing to do with Kristen. Not for you.’
‘True. But for now, our interests coincide.’
‘This is not happening,’ Hannah’s dad said. ‘Think—’
‘Steve,’ Granddad said. ‘He’s right, I’m afraid. What we found at the house points in only one direction. This is the only feasible means of quickly getting to where it appears the machine and Kristen may have gone. There’s no choice, and meanwhile she is in very great danger. The world, too.’
‘So we call the police.’
‘They can do nothing except waste precious time. This is our only option, I promise.’
Hannah’s father swore and bit his lip.
She could tell that he really, really didn’t want this to go ahead – but that he was remembering what he’d said to her: if your father tells you something, then you should try to believe it. She could tell also that he was starting to realize that his own father had more tricks up his sleeve than he’d ever imagined. ‘It’ll be OK,’ she told him.
‘I don’t know that,’ he said. ‘How can I? Dad – what are you actually going to do?’
‘Not much,’ Granddad said. ‘Just make it go a little faster.’
‘Faster?’
‘At fifty miles an hour, this is a rollercoaster. At higher speeds it becomes something else.’
‘Yes – a rickety old antique that could tear itself apart.’
‘It shouldn’t,’ Granddad said, with less than 100 per cent confidence. ‘It looks quite well maintained.’
‘To run at its normal speed.’
‘There’s no time for discussion,’ the Devil told Steve. ‘I can make it so that you are unable to intervene, but your father urged me to give you the chance to make a choice. I have honoured the Engineer’s request, but I’m losing patience and we’re running out of time.’
‘I’ll come too,’ Aunt Zo said.
‘But you hate rollercoasters,’ Hannah said.
‘I surely do. But I’ll go with you.’
Hannah’s father stared at her. ‘But how does that help, Zo? It just means if this thing blows apart I’ve lost even more.’
‘Dad says it’s not going to,’ Zo said. ‘I believe him. And when … whatever happens, happens, I’ll be with her.’
‘We have to find Mom, Dad,’ Hannah said, near tears. ‘We have to. Now. And this is the only thing there is to try.’
Her father tried to find one further argument. ‘OK, so, tell me this – what are we supposed to say if the cops hear the racket and turn up and ask what the heck we’re up to?’
The man in the black suit winked. ‘Tell them the Devil made you do it.’