One More Ride

Mara came back to the carnival to photograph what remained. The booths had collapsed, weeds grew through the roller-coaster platform, and someone had stolen every letter from the entrance sign except the O.

The carousel was untouched. Its canvas cover had been folded neatly beside the operator’s booth. Thirty painted horses waited beneath a ceiling of cloudy mirrors. As a child, Mara had always chosen the black horse with the silver mane.

Someone had put a fresh red ribbon around its neck.

She raised her camera. Through the lens, every horse was empty except that one. A girl sat on its saddle with her back to Mara. When Mara lowered the camera, the girl was gone.

‘You still have a ride left.’

A man stood in the booth. His striped shirt was spotless, but the brass buttons on his cuffs had turned green. He slid a ticket through the window. On the back, in the handwriting she had practiced as a child, was her own name.

Mara remembered the night the park closed. She remembered rain, her mother pulling her toward the gate, and a smaller hand slipping out of hers. She had spent thirty years trying to remember anything after that.

‘My sister,’ she said.

The man glanced toward the carousel. ‘She’s been holding your place.’

The music started with a deep mechanical cough. Mara climbed onto the platform. In the mirror above the black horse, she saw two little girls: herself and June, who had been six the night she disappeared.

‘You said one more ride,’ June whispered.

Mara reached for the silver mane. The wood was warm. Around her, the ruined midway brightened: strings of bulbs, paper prizes, steam rising from a food stand. She heard her mother calling their names from somewhere beyond the music.

June held out a hand. Mara almost took it. Then she saw the other riders in the mirrors. Adults in old-fashioned coats. Children clutching sun-bleached toys. All of them staring at the gate. None of the horses had moved an inch.

Only their reflections were turning.

‘I can stay,’ Mara told her sister.

June shook her head. For the first time, she looked older than six. ‘You have to finish the ride.’ She pointed to the ticket in Mara’s hand.

Mara tore it in half.

The music stopped. Every mirror cracked from corner to corner. In the sudden quiet she felt a small hand squeeze hers once, very hard, and let go.

At the gate, Mara found a red ribbon tied around the single remaining letter. Her camera held thirty blank photographs and one picture of an empty black horse. She took the ribbon home.

Months later, a demolition crew called the number on her photography website. They had found something beneath the carousel floor: a tin full of tickets, each carrying a different name.

Hers was the only one torn.

‘There’s music coming from down there,’ the foreman said. ‘Do you know how to turn it off?’