21
THE LAST RIDE
H enry and I stood in silence for several moments. Then the spotlight above us dimmed.
Henry looked up and sighed. “It’s time for me to complete my miracle.”
“Wait!” I cried out, surprising myself with the urgency in my voice. A thousand questions flashed in my mind. What would happen to Henry? Where would he go? Where had the other performers gone? What was this place? But this all paled in comparison to the most important question of all.
“What happened to Mary? Before this is all over, Henry—whatever this is—I have to know what happened. You said thousands of people have come here or will come here to experience something similar to what I experienced. Is that what happened to Mary? Did she go through the same things as I did?”
Henry nodded. “Similar lessons, yes. But all relevant to her life.”
“So what happened to her then? You said you could figure out what went wrong.” I looked at Henry anxiously. “Did you?”
He nodded. “I did. Something went terribly wrong on one of the rides. But I can’t tell you what went wrong. You’ll have to see for yourself.” He paused and peered into the left ring. “Now it’s time for me to finish my work. . . .”
“But I have so many—”
“Tell me,” Henry interrupted loudly, “who would you say is the person who cared about you most in life?”
I heard his question but wanted to stop whatever was happening. I had too many questions. “Henry, I—”
“Who cared about you the most?” Henry asked again. He put a hand on my shoulder and looked into my eyes intently.
“My mom.”
Henry smiled. “That’s what I thought.”
He turned and looked into the left ring once more. I followed his gaze.
My mom stood in the middle of the ring. She looked exactly as she had on the day of my barbecue, the day of the car accident. She walked toward us and stopped at the intersection of the two rings.
“Hi, honey,” she said to me.
I looked at her with almost no emotion. I figured she was a mirage or something like Mary had been, or that in the blink of a spotlight she would disappear.
Then she stepped into the center ring and hugged me. I felt her arms around me. I felt her heart beating. I smelled her perfume. She was real.
“Mom?” I asked, pulling her in close. I squeezed her as hard as I could to see if she was real. Earlier, at the Truth Booth, all I wanted to do was hug her. All my life, all I’ve wanted to do was hug her once more. “Mom? Is it really you?”
“Yes, honey,” she said, embracing me tightly, “and I have something to give you. But first, do you remember the promise you made to me earlier?”
I tried to say yes, but the lump in my throat stopped the sound. I nodded my head.
“Good. I’m glad,” she said happily. “Now, I have something to remind you of that promise. I want you to keep it with you as long as you keep that promise, okay?”
Mom pulled away from me and handed me an envelope. She smiled and stepped back into the left ring. “I’m proud of you, son. I’m proud of how far you’ve come. Now, keep hold of that envelope and don’t open it until you’re told, okay?”
I nodded and wiped the tears from my eyes. I looked at her standing in the left ring and felt terribly empty. I stepped toward her.
She raised her hand, stopping me. “It’s okay, son. You just stay there. Right there in the present. That’s where you belong now. That’s where you’ll fulfill your promise.” She looked at me and smiled with tears in her eyes. “Live your life, honey. I love you.”
The spotlight above her faded, and she disappeared.
Tears filled my eyes, and I had to bite my lip not to lose all control. I looked down at the envelope, then pulled Mary’s envelope out of my back pocket. They were the same size and color, except that Mary’s was stained with blood.
I looked up for Henry and saw him hobbling slowly across the center ring, toward the exit aisle.
“Wait! Henry!” I ran and caught up to him. I held out the envelope Mom had just given me. “It’s the same envelope Mary received, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he said. His voice was frail and wispy, and his face was so pale, it looked as if he were about to pass out.
“Henry, are you okay?”
He smiled and kept trudging toward the exit.
“Henry. The envelope. Mary got it in the same way I did? By someone she thought cared about her the most?”
Henry nodded. “Her little brother.”
I stopped walking. I could imagine Mary breaking down when she saw her little brother again, when he gave her the envelope.
“What’s in the envelope, Henry? Why didn’t Mary ever open it? Why did she give it to me? Why did she ask me to give it to her brother?”
Henry eyed the ground carefully as he continued slowly toward the edge of the center ring. “I’m afraid it is not yet time for you to know what the envelope contains. Why didn’t Mary open her envelope? Because she was never told to. Just like your mother told you not to open the envelope until you were instructed to, Todd told her not to open hers. Because she never finished her journey here, no one had the chance to tell her to open the envelope. Why did she give her envelope to you? Because she thought she knew what it contained.”
Henry stopped and looked at me. “Do you remember why I had to vouch for you to get in the park?”
“Yes. I didn’t have an invitation.”
“Exactly. You see, everyone who comes here has been invited, just as you heard the wizard say when you began this journey. Everyone who comes has received a ticket from someone who cares about them; that ticket gets them inside this magical place. Mary received a ticket from someone too. My guess is that she thought the envelope contained the invitation, and that’s why she gave it to you. Just as she told you, she wanted you to experience this place.”
I thought for a moment, trying to digest what he had said. A question came to my mind. “Who gave her the invitation?”
Henry shook his head and said, “I don’t know,” then started shuffling again to the edge of the center ring.
“But why would she want me to give the envelope to her brother?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she was delusional after the accident. Since her brother had given her the envelope, maybe she was thinking of him. I don’t know.”
Henry reached the edge of the center ring and peered at the dirt on the other side. He looked at me with a serene gaze. “It’s time for me to go.”
“Wait!” I said, my mind still reeling with questions. “Henry, please, don’t go. I still don’t know what happened to Mary. Why didn’t she finish this?”
Henry looked at the border of the center ring and didn’t answer. He looked as if he were about to fall asleep.
“Henry?” I asked, shaking his shoulder.
He looked up at me as if waking from a dream. Then he said plainly, “Everyone gets one last ride before they leave to go home; then they open their envelope on the way out. That’s the best part of an amusement park: the last ride. Mary never finished her ride, so she never opened her envelope.”
“What ride, Henry? Why didn’t she finish her last ride?”
Henry looked up to the exit of the tent.
“Crank is outside waiting for you. He’ll take you to her last ride.”
Henry turned to me and weakly stuck out his hand for me to shake it. “It’s time for me to go.”
“No!” I cried. “I’m not ready.” I thought about all I’d been through, all the questions I still had. I wasn’t sure if I could face what happened to Mary without Henry by my side. “You can’t go, Henry. You can’t go.”
Henry stepped into me and gave me a gentle hug, then whispered in my ear, “Thank you, kiddo. You did good here. If it weren’t for you, we would have never discovered a mistake in the miracle.”
He pulled back, tears in his eyes. “You remember your promise to your mom?
??you always keep in mind the fact that you can be whoever you want to be and you can do whatever you want to do. And don’t you open that envelope until you’re told.”
He stepped to the center ring’s edge, and I reached out and grabbed his elbow. I looked at him urgently and then realized I didn’t know what else to say. I felt tears stinging my eyes. My voice wavered. “Henry, I . . . I don’t know how to thank you. . . . I can’t even begin to . . .” I stopped and stared at him apologetically.
Henry reached up and gently released my hand from his elbow. “I know, kid. Don’t worry about it. You’re welcome.” He patted my hand, then let it go. “Listen, I’m proud of you. I’m happy you were my last.”
He smiled lovingly, stepped over the edge of the ring, and vanished.
Crank stood outside the tent, fidgeting with his tool belt. When he noticed me standing at the exit, I tried to say hello. All that came out, though, was, “Henry’s gone.”
Crank nodded. “I know. It’s okay. I got to say my good-byes to him earlier. We all did.”
We walked in silence around the corner where the animal cages were, then up the walkway between the bumper boats and the Hall of Mirrors. I was so lost in thought that I didn’t realize all the crowds were gone until we passed the merry-go-round. It wasn’t running. Neither was the Cyclone. The park was eerily silent again. The dirt and rocks beneath our shoes seemed to echo for miles into the night air as we continued walking north toward the mountain.
The walkway veered right at a group of tall pine trees just past the pirate ship, where it intersected with the end of the midway and opened into the grassy field where Harsh the Hypnotist’s tent stood.
Crank led me onto a small dirt path that encircled the field. We followed the path past the field and into a wooded area at the base of the mountain. The lights mounted on the poles surrounding the field didn’t quite reach the spot where we stood, so Crank pulled a flashlight from his tool belt and illuminated the path ahead. I could see that the path dropped a few feet and then opened to a small dock on a pond.
“There,” he said, aiming the flashlight at an archway and sign above the dock, “is where things went wrong for Mary.”
The sign above the dock read TUNNEL OF LOVE.
We climbed into the two-seat paddleboat moored to the dock. “Listen up, cutie pie,” Crank said. “Don’t think for a second you’re going to get any action from me.” He laughed and flashed his light into the crystal-clear water in front of us, illuminating tracks just below the surface. “You won’t have to do any paddling—this here’s automated now. We used to let couples just paddle into the tunnel, but they’d stay in there all night making out and causing traffic jams. So we ended up shutting down the ride and setting it up on tracks so that we could control the pace. To do it we had to drain as much of the water out of the pond as we could, then lay in the tracking. It was a nightmare. I was soaking wet for a year helping build this thing. That’s why Henry asked me to take you—I know every inch of this ride.”
“So this is the ride Mary chose as her last?”
“Yep,” Crank said. “In the end, love is always the last ride.”
“Do you know what happened to Mary here?”
“I’ve got an idea, but I can’t be sure. I’ve checked out the ride a dozen times since Henry told me to, but I haven’t found a single problem. But, see, this ride, like all the others, is different for everyone who goes on it. I’m hoping that by riding it with you, we can find out what happened to Mary. Since Henry says you two were lovers, you should have a similar experience in there. You were in love, right?”
I nodded.
“Good.” Crank reached for a small box on the dock, which was connected to a thick electric cable. He pressed a green button, and our boat lurched forward.
“Here we go!” he said.
Our boat floated gently forward into the pond and toward the dark mouth of a tunnel in the base of the mountain.
I looked at the tunnel and asked, “Is there lighting in there? Will we be able to see?”
“You’ll see what your heart has seen and needs to see,” he replied softly.
Crank left his flashlight on for the first ten yards or so into the tunnel. The stone walls were low, narrow, and wet. I felt claustrophobic.
Crank turned off his flashlight. “Keep your eyes open.”
The tunnel was an eerie black. My senses sharpened, and I felt the damp, cool air cause the hair on my arms to stand up. I heard water running and trickling all around us. There was a musty mildew smell. I felt my own heart beating softly.
“Look!” Crank said.
I couldn’t see anything.
“Look!” he said again.
Up ahead of us I saw a little glow of light appear and disappear, like a firefly. I squinted my eyes.
Another glow, this time closer.
Another, closer . . .
Then the tunnel walls started glowing a deep purple, just bright enough that I could see the tip of my nose. Our boat was picking up speed. The walls started changing colors: bluish black . . . purple again . . . fuchsia . . . pink. The colors started swirling all together.
Our boat picked up more speed. The waves of water being pushed aside by the boat made an almost deafening roar, and the glowing colors of the walls began to swirl into images:
My mom held me in her arms as an infant. Her voice suddenly boomed throughout the tunnel. “You’re such a beautiful baby. . . . I love you, son.”
My dad held my hand at a park when I was small, and laughed when I picked up a turtle and put it back down. His voice echoed with my mother’s. “Hey, my little turtle, did I ever tell you I love you?”
My grandpa hugged me and then lifted me over his head. “You’re such a good boy! I love you!”
My grandma sat me atop a horse and smiled. “I’m so happy you’re here. I love you!”
The boat lurched forward again.
The color of the tunnel walls blurred together faster.
I saw myself standing next to the car I owned in high school. My first girlfriend leaned in and kissed me. Her whisper exploded throughout the tunnel. “I love you.”
I leaned across a table and took the hands of my college sweetheart. “I love you too,” her voice blasted.
I embraced my best friend on graduation day. “We’ll keep in touch—love you, man,” he said.
The boat surged ahead; the walls of the tunnel churned a deep purple, then pink, then blue.
Mary’s face flashed on the walls; the colors churned faster.
She and I are in bed. “I love you,” she says, and snuggles against my chest.
We’re at her parents’ dinner table. She leans over. “Thank you for being such a good man. I love you.”
We’re standing side by side at the sink, brushing our teeth. “I wuvvv uuuu,” she mumbles.
We’re embracing after I proposed. “I love you,” she says, her face full of tears.
The boat plunged on ahead again, faster.
Water started flying off the bow, into my lap and onto my face. The walls turned a dark red. Images of Mary and me fighting started flashing on the walls . . . thousands of images. The sounds of hundreds of arguments blasted through the tunnel and deafened my ears.
“What’s going on?!” I screamed to Crank.
He didn’t reply.
I heard the sound of roaring water mix with the sounds of the arguments.
The images on the walls all bled together, and a new image appeared.
Mary is sitting at a table with a crystal ball on top of it. She is crying profusely.
“Should I leave him?” she asks.
Meg’s face blurs into focus on the walls. “Yes,” she says. “He’ll never change. He’s a drifter.”
Mary bursts into tears.
“No!” I heard myself scream over the noise of the water and the echoes bouncing around the tunnel.
“Oh, no,” I heard Crank say. “It was Meg. She caused this. She killed lov
e!”
“What?!” I yelled, my heart and mind racing.
“Meg told Mary to leave you! She derailed love. That’s where it all went wrong.”
A wave of water crashed into our boat from the left, and I heard a loud pop.
“The tracks!” Crank screamed.
The rushing water lifted our boat and sent it sideways down another tunnel. Water flowed over our laps. The boat was sinking. The walls stopped glowing. It was pitch-black.
“What’s happening?!” I screamed.
Our boat turned over with the flow of water, dumping us into the current. I was slammed into the walls of the tunnel by the force of the water. I fought to keep my head above the rushing water.
“Crank!”
No reply.
I heard the roar of the water getting louder ahead of us, then saw a light coming from around the corner. It looked like moonlight.
“It’s the end!” Crank screamed from somewhere far behind me.
The current took me around a corner, and I could see a small opening into the night ahead of me.
The walls narrowed, and the current shot me out of the opening like water from a fire hydrant. I hit the ground, and the stream of water behind me sent me rolling down a hill of leaves and twigs and mud. I ended up in a small ravine next to a road, gasping for air and looking back in the direction I had come from. A forceful stream of water was shooting out a narrow cave entrance in the side of the mountain.
I heard Crank screaming from inside the cave, and suddenly he shot out of its mouth. The water pushed him down the hill with great force and washed him just past me and up onto the road.
I heard the sound of a truck.
“No!”
Crank stood over me lying in the ditch. His face was full of mud, but he smiled.
A horn blared.
“Now you know what happened to Mary,” Crank said.
The horn blared again, making me wince. When I opened my eyes, a semi plowed through Crank.
“Nooo!” I screamed.
The truck’s brakes squealed and smoked. I pulled myself to my feet and hobbled quickly toward it.
The driver jumped out, wide-eyed.