Maxwell’s Ride Read Free

at the same time that the West Midlands woman perforated his eardrum with a scream. He daren’t let go to protect himself and he knew his knuckles were white on the lion frame.
    Lucy and Tiffany were screaming too, their hair flying back in the slipstream. Maxwell couldn’t hear them above the noise he was making and he tried to focus on the neon electronic figures whipping past on his left. It registered, at terrifying speed, the thousands of miles they were falling through the earth s atmosphere, out of space. He tried to clear his mind, to catch his breath, to shut out the suffocating pain in his throat. Films, his first love. Think of that. But all Maxwell could think of was David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth . Not much comfort, really. Lights were flashing all around him, hells ringing. A robotic voice screaming ‘Impact! Impact!’
    Then it stopped. Ahead the scene was a peaceful, sunbathed earth, the sea silver and safe. He knew his body was the right way up again and that the girls were still there, laughing with the relief of it all. Rigor mortis had set in on the face of the West Midlands woman, her lips peeled back over her teeth. Maxwell was wiping toffee apple off his shirt.
    ‘Bloody Hell!’ He’d barely glanced ahead again when the rocket ploughed into the sea and a spray of freezing water hit him full in the face.
    ‘So how come you’re both bone dry?’ Maxwell wanted to know as they tagged onto the end of yet another twisting, chattering, excited line.
    ‘We’ve done this before, Uncle, dear,’ Tiffany winked at him. ‘Feel up to The Cauldron, then?’
    It looked innocuous enough. Walt Disney stuff, really. They were wending their way into a vast black cooking pot resting on massive concrete logs. A green concrete slime was oozing from its rim and Maxwell couldn’t help reciting the mantra ‘Hubble bubble’. Tiffany clapped her hands over her ears and shut her eyes.
    ‘Macbeth,’ Lucy chirped, ever delighted at her sister’s discomfort. ‘The Scottish play. Tiffs doing it for GCSE.’
    ‘Not Miss Montague?’ Maxwell checked.
    Tiffany had dropped her hands. ‘Do pay attention, Uncle Maxie. Monty’s history. It’s worse,’ she moaned. ‘Ms Frensham.’
    ‘Ah, Ms.’ Maxwell’s face fell ominously. ‘That says it all, my dear. On the shelf and hideously embarrassed by the fact.’
    ‘She’s a lesbian,’ Lucy contributed to the conversation.
    ‘Oh course,’ Maxwell nodded. ‘Oh, God.’
    The savage sun had gone and they stood on the edge of Hell. Fires flared here and there and their ears were assailed with groans and cries. He shepherded the girls into a car and moulded restraints slid down over their shoulders. The woman from the West Midlands had gone, probably with the men in white coats, and she’d been replaced on his left by a rather dismal looking man with weasel eyes. He didn’t seem to be with anyone and looked utterly bored by the whole experience. What struck Maxwell as being particularly odd was that the man was wearing a three-piece suit.
    ‘Now, I’m not going to get wet this time, am I?’ Maxwell checked with the gormless girl who was ushering them into their seats.
    ‘Not unless somebody chucks up on yer,’ came the reply. She’d obviously graduated from the Liam Gallagher Charm School. An impossibly deep electronic laugh sent shivers up Lucy’s spine. At sub-Paul Robeson levels, it even brought tears to Maxwell’s eyes.
    ‘Is it me?’ he whispered in the sudden pitch darkness, ‘or are we spiralling upwards?’
    Weird howlings and rattlings of chains filled their ears now, and writhing things coiled from the shadows to leer at them, snarling and slavering like demon wolves. Lucy’s eyes were wide in the dim, misty red light and Tiffany, for all her sang froid was leaning as close as she could to her uncle.
    Something cold and clammy parted Maxwell’s hair. By the screams, it was happening to other people too. At least, he could still feel