Beyond Carousel (10 page)

But there were bars in there. Lots of them, if I remembered correctly. I just had to find the closest one, load up with waters and get back out to the foyer.

I weaved my way slowly forward into the darkness. The tables were abandoned mid-game. Half-empty bourbon-and-Cokes festering away on sponsored coasters. Chips and cards spread in careful clusters on the felt. I looked in on a blackjack game. One player had loaded up on a King Queen. Another was clinging to their final chips on sixteen, hoping to hell the dealer
would bust. There were chips set out across the numbers and colours of a roulette table. Cups of coins resting on the holders of pokey machines. A wheel set to spin full of cherries, gold bars and lemons. Nothing moved a whisker. It was as if fate itself hung in limbo all around me. Nowhere else we had seen had spoken of the Disappearance like the casino. But then casinos didn't sleep.

The room seemed to be getting larger the further I ventured in. My torch couldn't reach the side walls anymore. I turned around and shone it back towards the entrance. I had to squint, but it was still there.

I rounded a big enclosure where plush seating circled a decadent poker table. At the other side I finally caught a glimpse of a bar to my right. It was a small, freestanding island at the junction of some walkways heading off to different gaming areas. I headed over and stepped inside. The knee-high fridges were fully stocked with imported beers and colourful pre-mix. I fished around and found two lonely rows of water amid the alcohol. They still had a hint of cool and I skulled one, then the best part of another, and sat down to catch my breath.

The room was deathly quiet.

Conscious of the time I had spent away from the foyer, I packed the remaining waters into a garbage bag I found in the bar and set off back to the staircase. I found the enclosed poker table without a problem, turned and
kept moving toward the exit. I still had a long way to go when my torch dropped out.

I froze. The darkness around me felt immense. I put down the waters and gave the torch a gentle shake. There was a half-second of light, then nothing. The battery was dead and my spare was outside beaming away into nothingness.

I took a breath and tried to stay calm. Maybe I could rotate the batteries and get a bit longer out of them. I sat down on the floor and carefully worked my way through the process. Again the torch flickered back on. This time for a long, teasing second, before dropping out once again. Now for good.

My eyes still hadn't adjusted to the dark. Long moments passed but nothing seemed to change. I thought of the cave Dad and I had visited down south. The guide had told us that you could experience
total darkness
in there; meaning that there was insufficient light for the human eye to adjust. Could that be the same in a casino? Surely I could pick out something to guide me back to the staircase.

For a while I stood, craning my head around the space, trying desperately to make something out within the blackness. It was impossible. I quietly swallowed down my panic and edged my way forward. Tables emerged like icebergs out of the dark to turn me left, then right, then right again in a mishmash and ridiculous fashion. I knew that I was no longer heading
in the direction of the staircase. That felt impossible in this kind of darkness. But I figured if I kept walking until I hit a wall, then maybe I could follow it around to the exit.

It was slow going. The empty spaces were the worst. When I could run my hand on a table or some stools it felt okay. Like I had some sense of forward trajectory. But in the spaces between these objects I felt dizzy and disorientated. Twice I stumbled forward too quickly and crunched my foot into the thick wooden leg of a chair. Other times I felt for sure that I had turned a one-eighty and returned to a table I had only just passed.

After a while my hand found a railing and I felt the floor taking a slight incline beneath me. I shuffled forward until it levelled again into a bank of pokey machines running in rows away from me. I followed the length of one of these rows, then found myself being turned at a right angle as another row of machines began. At the end of these there were more again.

It felt like
Labyrinth
without Bowie and the puppets.

I started to smell something ahead of me. It was sweet and citrusy. I slowed down and tried to figure out what it was. It was different to the fresher smell of the lobby. As I rounded out of the final row of pokeys, a wave of it hit me flush in the face.

Rotting food.

I was on a walkway with a buffet ahead of me somewhere. I covered my nose and veered right. The
way was clear and had a railing so I moved quickly until the smell had drifted away behind me. It was hard to imagine that nobody left in Perth had been in here yet. My decision to enter the casino felt like a giant mistake.

The railing stopped and the walkway met a junction or something. I felt my way around, trying to work out the options. My hands met a bench or table. It was higher than the others. I moved closer and found some fridges. One of the doors was open.

Shit.

I was back at the bar.

I dropped the bag of water and slumped down to the floor. The place felt so oppressive. Not just the darkness, but the air or the energy or something. I felt lower than I had for ages and didn't have the Finns around for company. They could be in the foyer right now wondering what the hell had happened to me. I closed my stinging eyes and, alone under a gaming room bar, sank into a dreamless sleep.

For three days I was stuck in that hellhole place, surviving on stale peanuts and warm OJ. Eating, sleeping, then clearing my head, shuffling around anxiously, and eating and sleeping some more. The casino was swiftly swallowing me into a dark and permanent void.

Clocks weren't allowed in a gaming room, but I found a barman's watch stashed away under the counter. It had a tiny blue light that showed me the hours that were passing. This reminded me that a world existed outside of the room. There was daylight out there, and, somewhere beneath this, Taylor and Lizzy. I gathered myself and strapped the watch tightly to my wrist. With the tiny blue light I searched the surrounding tables where, eventually, I found a cigarette lighter.

The flame was too dim to guide me so I lit a coaster on fire. It crackled away and I waved the extra light around excitedly for three or four seconds before it burnt my fingers and I dropped it on the floor. Fuelled by this I made a stack of coasters on the bar and splashed it with
some one-hundred-proof whisky. The stack lit up with a whoosh and I stepped back and looked around.

Flickering light radiated out from the bar. I could see walkways, some gaming tables and what looked to be the edge of the poker area. Beyond this it was still dark. I took a pile of fresh coasters from the bar, along with the whisky, and set out to the edge of the light. When I could no longer see I made another fire on a blackjack table. More light spat out into the room. Gaming tables. Money wheels. Another bar. I pushed on with the fires. Moving to the edge of darkness before lining myself up with the smouldering lumps behind me and lighting another. I had six fires going but there was still no sign of a wall or door.

Then something smashed behind me.

I turned and saw flames spreading across the bar where I had started. There was another smash and a whoosh of light. The spirits were on fire. An evil, plasticy smell started to fill the room. It felt chemical and dangerous, but at least now there was some light. I had played a hand. Not a great one, but maybe the only one available. Now I had no choice but to find an exit.

I dashed forward and something flickered to my right. I stopped and stared at it hard. It flickered again. It was a fake gold sign reading
Cashiers
.

Fucking bingo.

I stumbled over to it. Thick smoke was filling the room and stinging my eyes. I found the sign, and the wall it was stuck to. I swung left and traced it along.
My lungs burned from exhaustion and smoke. The wall continued, uninterrupted.

Abruptly the room was wet and screaming with sirens. The smoke alarms and sprinklers had triggered.

Immediately it got darker.

Shit. The fires were going out.

A wall jutted out in front of me. I smacked into it and almost knocked myself out completely. I dragged myself up and followed it. My head was swampy and vague from the fumes and noise.

I couldn't see anymore. All the fires were out but for the bar that hissed away angrily in the distance. I kicked into chairs and signs and other things that I couldn't see. Still my hands found nothing but the smooth of a never-ending wall.

Then ahead of me I saw a light. Not a tiny reflection this time, but a big wash of light coming from a doorway. Somebody was holding a lantern and propping the door open. I ran for it like a drunken kid who had started a whole bunch of stuff he shouldn't have. The light rose up in front of me. I felt a tingle on my neck and suddenly worried who it was in the doorway. I squinted hard and looked up.

In a wash of warm light and smoke, straight out of some crappy eighties music video, stood a woman wrapped in a plush casino robe, holding, of all things, a cigarette, and a look of mild annoyance. It was an expression I had seen before. On a shopping centre cleaning lady. On Rachel.

Of course Rachel was living at Burswood. She was a battling single mother, paroled for who knows what, cleaning toilets in the largest shopping centre in the city while bickering over her kids with her slobby council-worker ex. That is, until fate sheltered her from the weirdest apocalypse on record and left her footloose in a world without rules, only Artists. Taking up residence in the swankiest room in the state of WA was a great big
fuck you
to the world. Life had kicked Rachel around from day one. If this felt like she was getting her own back, then good luck to her.

I had followed her upstairs through a careful pathway of stairs and halls, sucking in the stale but smoke-free air, still unsure if she recognised me from Carousel. It grew lighter as we moved upward. My eyes cowered away from windows full of sunlight and sweeping river views. Ornate pots with evergreen plastic plants rested in corners and beside elevators. Door tags hung on handles, their owners asking not to be disturbed and getting
their wish a thousandfold. By the time we reached the penthouse level the smoke alarms had stopped. It was serene and spacious and hard to tell that anything had happened.

There were four doors spread out across a wide marble hall. Each of them was propped open with a pot plant. Rachel headed inside the closest one. I hesitated, then trailed after her. She fished a Diet Coke out of a fridge and turned to look me over.

‘You trying to burn this place down with the rest of the city?' she snapped.

‘No. Sorry,' I replied. My voice was weak and croaky. ‘I got stuck in there.'

I coughed. Rachel handed me a Diet Coke of my own. I wasn't normally a fan but skulled it down thirstily. It was icy cold.

‘Does this place have power?' I asked.

‘A bit,' she replied, defensively. ‘There's gennies downstairs. Can't have Taylor Swift stuck up here in a blackout.'

I looked past her. The room was giant. A wall of glass peered westward past the river to a smoke-shrouded city. Daylight filtered in across ottomans and lazyboys, funnelling into bedrooms and spa-filled ensuites.

‘Do you live here?' I asked.

‘Across the hall,' nodded Rachel. ‘Where are your friends? The skater kid and those twins?' she added.

‘Have you seen Taylor and Lizzy?' I asked, rapidly.

Rachel shook her head, uninterested.

‘We lost each other in the fire. Were supposed to meet downstairs but I got stuck in that fucking gaming room,' I said. ‘You definitely haven't seen anyone else outside or anything?'

‘I don't go downstairs,' she replied. ‘Unless there's a fire.'

She glared at me, still a little pissed that I had put her new home at risk. She looked the same, from what I could remember. Thin, with a wiry, kind of boyish figure. Overtanned like she had taken one too many trips to Bali. A round, symmetrical face that was pretty in a burnt-out British pop star sort of way. Her hair was a disaster though. Half grown out of a bad self-dye job. Hacked up at the back where she couldn't see. A telltale sign of the local apocalyptic survivor.

‘Is there anyone else here?' I asked.

‘Doubt it,' she replied. ‘Were some hippy kids on level five for a while. They took off to get food and didn't come back.'

Rachel finished her drink and put the can in the sink.

‘Anyway, I'm going back to bed,' she said. ‘Show you how the place works later.'

She pushed through the door back out into the hall.

‘Wait,' I said. ‘How do I get to the taxi rank?'

‘You want to go back downstairs?' she asked.

‘My friends might be down there,' I replied.

Rachel sighed and looked like she actually regretted saving me.

‘Remember that staircase at the end of the hall on level twenty?' she asked.

I nodded.

‘It's a fire escape. Take it all the way down to the last floor and push the door open. You'll be outside. The taxis will be out there somewhere,' said Rachel.

‘Thanks,' I replied.

‘Don't lock yourself out,' she said. ‘I'm not trudging up those stairs twice in one fucking day.'

She turned and walked away from me down the big, lonely hall.

‘Did you find your kids?' I asked.

She paused and turned back around. Her eyes were stony and fierce.

‘They're sporty. Not arty,' she replied, and disappeared back into her room.

I bolted down the fire escape for what seemed like forever before exiting onto a concrete landing on the south side of the building. Lawn and trees stretched away peacefully into the distance. Most of the smoke had cleared, replaced by a bright and breezy Perth morning. I took a gulp of the freshest air I had ever tasted and took off around the building.