against the back cover and shakes you with head-splitting strength
to the bottom. There was no car for me to ride in that night -no
seat, no belt, no safety bar to pull against my slumped torso. And
as I sailed to the bottom, my mind made a different rule that I was
forced to follow - Don't look.
The wind stopped suddenly in my hair, and I realized that I was
down on the bottom rails of the coaster, hanging dreadfully close
to the murky waters of Skybar Pond. And as I hung there
momentarily I could picture Randy Stayner waiting below, a
mossy green hand beginning to emerge to the surface, and as I
imagined this, I also visualized others like him in a sea of arms,
reaching for my dangling shirt tail as I hung there, all of them
coming up to the surface to get me, or desperately reaching out as
they were dragged down. A splurge of violent bubbling water
popped to the surface, jolting me back to Skybar and, getting to my
feet, I pulled myself to the shore and somehow managed to pull
Kirby with me. He was still standing in a daze, eyes fixed on the
tracks where the coaster car was falling toward us.
And as we ran through the depot station past the empty coaster
cars, I could hear the steady thud-thud-thud of the one car
advancing on us. I shot a glance over my shoulder as we both ran
on, my feet and eyes growing with every step.
Then I let go of Kirby. I can't clearly remember when, but I
remember all that ran through my mind was Run Like Hell! I flew
up the chain link fence behind Pop Dupree's, cutting my hands
severely on the barbed wire. After jumping to the safe ground on
the other side, I didn't stop running until I was almost a mile away
on Granges Point, where I could still hear the soft screaming
laughter of the seabreeze through the Funhouse clown, and could
see the vague form of the SkyCoaster winding through the trees.
Somewhere behind one of the tents - I can still swear it was the
freak tent - a light glowed softly. I sat there, staring at it,
wondering if it was Kirby trying to find his way out of the dark.
Then I heard the cracking grass of footsteps behind me and whirled
to find Kirby standing in front of me. My legs were shaking, and
my teeth began to chatter softly, and he walked up to me and put
his arm around me.
'It's okay. We made it. We're pretty brave, huh? Right up and right
down those rails. We're far away from it now, though. We're not
there now' I stared at him and wondered how the hell he got there.
I couldn't recall dragging him with me. I couldn't believe how calm
he stood there-how he acted like it was all a scary movie at
Starboard Cinema and we were walking home in the dark trying to
calm ourselves down. Then he turned me toward the park and
started to walk away.
'Coming?' 'Kirb, you're headin' the wrong way.'
I turned toward home and started to run again. After a while. Kirby
came running up to me, and we didn't stop until we were five miles
away from Skybar and on my front porch. I can still see the horror
in poor Kirby's eyes as he saw his best friends and the Dragons
