Chapter Sixteen
Caitlin walked up to one of the white spires, threw her head back and gazed up. The smooth conical wall tapered to a spike as it entered the clouds. She walked around the wide base until she came to a large opening where she disappeared into the darkness.
Inside, there was nothing; no stairs or lifts just a large empty area perhaps three metres high. She touched the wall; it was cool and smooth.
Caitlin ran out and looked around the city. Where were all the people? She looked in another building; it was the same- a façade - an empty city with empty buildings which had spires that reached the clouds. What a very strange place!
Fairground organ music filled the air. Caitlin ran through the spires, on and on in the direction of the music. Eventually she saw it in what seemed to be the central square of the city: a large blue and white helter-skelter surrounded by stalls and tents. At the back of the conical slide stood a large motionless suspended chair ride, which came to life and rotated with no one on board.
Caitlin walked past the stalls of coconut shies while, above the sound of the music, her name was mockingly chanted. She ignored the ranting and stopped at a stall which had the heads of six clowns at the back. The heads with huge distorted mouths turned from side to side. Coloured balls of the type jugglers used sat in piles on the front of the stall. She picked up a ball and threw it at one of the heads. The ball bounced off the top of the clowns head. She threw another and another until all the balls were used up. She moved on toward a large white tent. A sign above the opening read: The Hall of Mirrors. Inside, the tent was a maze of mirrors. Caitlin stopped to look at her reflection in the first mirror; she had a small squat body with a long, thin neck and a bullet shaped head. She giggled as she moved on to look in another where she had a tiny head and neck with a huge body and long thin legs. Moving further into the tent Caitlin looked at her appearance in a wide, gold framed mirror. Her attention was drawn by the distorted image of a girl in a cream dress. “Lilim!” She shouted, turning round to find another mirror with only her distorted image looking back at her.
“You can’t catch me Caitlin, haitlin! Lilim shouted, her voice filling the tent.
Caitlin moved further around the glass maze and looked in a round mirror. Lilim’s face suddenly gazed into the mirror from behind her.
“Boo!” Lilim shouted.
Caitlin spun round, but again she saw her reflection in a mirror across from the round one. “Caitlin, taitlin! You can’t catch me. You’re not going home!”
Caitlin then heard laughter become distant. She ran out of the tent and surveyed the fairground, but there was no sign of Lilim. She walked past the helter skelter and the remaining stalls before leaving the fairground. The music and the chair ride stopped as she passed through the exit.
She strolled along a street of shops wondering if she would be going home anytime soon. She stopped outside an old-fashioned sweet shop. Brightly coloured confectionaries of every type filled large jars in the big, latticed window.
Inside, teddy bears in satin suits of various colours sat on shelves between coloured boxes with big, red bows on their lids. Caitlin walked over to the counter where a box of fudge lay. She loved fudge and couldn’t resist taking a piece and popping it in her mouth. But she spat it out - the sweet had no taste! She opened a jar and grabbed a red and white gob-stopper and stuck it in her mouth. But again she spat the sweet out. The sweets were like the whole place, she thought–a sham!
Caitlin walked along the rest of the street with one thing on her mind: how was she going to catch the bitch. She recalled the childish way Lilim reacted when she refused to do something. If, Caitlin thought, she was to take it a bit further!
She stopped and stood at the bottom of a spire. “I’m not playing this childish game anymore!” She shouted at the top of her voice
The violet sky darkened slightly. “Caitlin, saitlin! Come find me if you can.”
“I told you I’m not playing anymore, this whole place is a sham!”
The spires shimmered and faded. “You will find me now or I will...”
“Or you’ll what? It’s time you grew up Lilim!”
The buildings disappeared, and darkness descended around Caitlin. She shivered as coldness crept over her body. Then in the eerie twilight she saw a black mist head toward her, closer and closer it came until she was engulfed. She heard whispering, but she couldn’t make out what was being said. Then, a dark figure moved toward her.