He couldn’t see her, not even now the crowds were thinning rapidly and the rides were shutting down for the day.

She did not want to be seen.

He was the elder. The elder but not the oldest. Right now there was not an older sibling in sight. Not even a parent. Mum was making an hysterical claim at the lost children’s tent. She had been lead away by an off duty clown, his jolly face half smeared with cold cream and tired professional concern.

Maybe they would have to search the elephant enclosure. He liked elephants. They were always calm and assured. His sister did not like elephants. She liked the merry-go-round. She called it the wheel. Or the "wheel-thing". His mother laughed at this, and he echoed. He was not sure what the joke was, if there was a joke. Mum laughed at the strangest times these days. Tears to laughter in a second. And back again.

He stood under the bright circle of a flood light. Somewhere to his right he could still hear mum gabbering and bemoaning her lax parenting, and the faint hum of the clown’s calming blandishments.

He flubbered his lips together. Flu-bur-bur-bur-bur-bur-ba-ba-ba. It was a favourite. His grandmother did it when she was tired or bored or wanted to distract a weeping grandchild. They shared the flubbering until recently. Until the taxi driver with eyes only for a fare with long legs and not enough skirt.

He flubbered, and wrapped his arms backwards around the light pole. He had not flubbered at the funeral. Out of respect. This was despite the endless album of emoting relatives. Red eyes and wet noses. Dark glasses. Moody pats on the head. Desperately clinging hugs that went on and on and on beyond his breath. He could still close his eyes and be back there, sniffing the musty church air dappled with flowers and stained with perfume. He had not cried. Not a tear.

His mother still stared at him. She had a look, an uncomfortable look, that said — I’m very worried about you. He didn’t really know why. His grandmother had winked a goodbye, stepped into the road and flew into the air. The taxi stopped hard, and the driver cursed and thumped the wheel. Somewhere people were screaming. Out of the corner of his eye his mum ran and ran and ran to where he was taking small steps towards his grandmother. She lay on her side, face sideways to his, eyes closed by blood and deep grazing. Her skirt was torn, and her legs splayed wide. Her lips flubbered feebly as he knelt down small beside her head. Without thinking why he reached out and placed one hand on her neck, and another on her shoulder. He felt a little awkward. Everything moved slowly. Her lips flubbered again. Slower this time. His grandmother’s face seemed very, very white. Her winking eye fluttered large and soft in front of him, but as he bent closer he felt a shudder through his hands. Her lips parted slightly, and let out a sigh of air. Not unhappy or resentful like his mother’s at breakfast time. Just a sigh, a calm sigh like at the end of a favourite movie. Like the sigh he heard her give when grandfather’s last days of protracted illness forced her to leave his last birthday party hours early.

His funeral a week later was brief and, he felt, embarrassed. No one said anything bad, so little was said at all. His sister had burst into a screaming fit halfway into the service and had to be escorted to the car amid sad and relieved smiles and more than enough helping hands. The few that knew why she alone was in such a state bit their lips and mimicked with the rest. He watched them. He didn’t cry.

Right now he was watching the merry go round. The plaster elephant just happened to be closest to him, between the fat kangaroo and an orange tiger without any ears. The elephant, however, seemed perfect. Its trunk was raised in victory and one foot was raised well into the air, preparing for the next step it would never take. He half turned his head to watch his inconsolable mother. She was in a state of such self reproach she seemed to have no mind for him whatsoever. The plaster elephant was little more than a stroll away through the quickly encroaching evening gloom, and with an eye on his mother he gamely stepped forward out of the tight floodlit ring around him.

He paused once he reached the dark, feeling suddenly quite small and alone. It was obvious now that no-one but the staff remained in the fair, and even the staff seemed to be elsewhere just now. Before him the merry go round was still, glittered surfaces gleaming faintly with light sourced from somewhere unseen. The tiny ticket stall held an attendant whistling his way slowly through an Evening Standard. The stall seemed full of the rippling broadsheet, held by old hands shaking slightly and lit by a dim pulsing bulb.

He continued his creep towards the elephant. The ride was very still. The flags above it dripped frozen from their poles despite the cool breeze. His feet stepped small over the chunky, uneven grass, avoiding the noise of a dozen kinds of litter which framed his path. The low railing was easily stooped. He looked back towards the tents and the flood lit circle he had left behind him. He felt a little distant now. His mum’s wail had left his ears. She would not have left the tent, but it was far away now and did seem to be empty. As he turned back to the merry go round he noted the absence of the attendant from the ticket stall. The broadsheet remained, somehow propped up on its edge. The elephant was still foremost in his mind. He was only separated from it by a step and a step.

Clambering silently onto the round platform he stood up, eye to eye with the replica. Just as his hand was about to reach for its fake hide there was a movement. He stopped. He was sure that something moved. Ever so slightly. He eyed the elephant closely, moving past its trunk to inspect its other side. From the deeper shadow he reached out again. The elephant flubbered.

He froze. Everything was very still. The tents of the fair seemed far away, very far away. The breeze had died, and there was warmth of a tingly sort nipping into his feet from below. He knelt down. The underside of the elephant was very much attached to a thick steel pole that disappeared through the platform to greasy darkness beneath. A faint hiss escaped from somewhere down there, and he looked closer, leaning in under the foot of the plaster elephant. Something moved. He struggled back just as the whole platform seemed to drop slightly, and narrowly avoided being pinned under the elephants foot. The merry go round was in motion.

The fair spun slowly before him, from left to right. He sat, holding his knees hard to his chest. The elephant rose and fell gently. He watched it closely. He could just make out what seemed like a tick alight on the grey hide. He watched. The tick strode a few tick paces towards the rolls of flesh behind the neck. It waited a moment, and then plunged into the elephants skin. The hide rippled. Shadows flowed easily up and down its sides as the elephant rose and fell, quickening slightly. The merry go round was speeding up.

He looked up and out. The tents of the fair seemed very few. He passed where he was sure the ticket stall should have been. It was not. A broadsheet newspaper was blowing in many parts away from the merry go round.

The nipping vibrations of the platform were getting stronger and he stood up. It was becoming uncomfortable to stand still. The merry go round turned a full circle as he hopped from foot to foot. He could no longer make out the lost children’s tent. In fact, as the merry go round made another full turn of the fair, none of the tents were there. Only the flood light and its bright circle was apparent to mark the progress of the ride.

Something touched his leg. He looked down. A slim grey trunk was reaching nimbly for his ankle. His eyes bulged. He took a step away, and the trunk followed, stretching itself out of proportion. He stepped back quicker, until his back came up against the centre of the ride. He could feel the cool smoothness of its mirrored surface, nipping and vibrating like the floor. Trying not to touch it, still eyeing the snaking trunk he edged around the centre until the elephant was out of sight.

The ride was spinning fast now. The floodlight circle he had left was turning into a pulsing band of light far away. Everything else was dark. The trunk was feeling it’s way dumbly, creeping like a two fingered hand along the platform. He edged further around the centre. His hand touched what felt like a door handle. It was hot. He tried to turn it, and the handle seemed somehow to grip his hand as he held it. The merry go round increased its speed, so markedly he was forced to hold the handle tight. It was getting hotter by the second, and sucking his hand onto itself. His wrist ached when he tried to turn it, but the door popped open.

Sound burst forth, shattering the silence. A booming, clanking mechanical rhythm broken by wheezes and high pitched squeals. He could see nothing, but as he stared hard into the blackness shapes, impossibly nimble shapes seemed to dance before his eyes. The force of the merry go round was so strong now there was a very real danger of being flung free. He struggled forward into the noise.

The door sucked shut behind him. The small space was intense with sound and now smell, musty and greasy. His eyes grew accustomed to the faint light and saw wheels of all sizes spinning, bouncing, turning inside out. Sparks leapt out at him, stinging his bare flesh. He tried to shelter his eyes, just as the machine gave another kick of power and span up to a new crescendo.

His ears sensed the empty space before his eyes saw it. From the ceiling down it was free of sound and motion. Right in the centre, the very steel surrounded centre of the intensity, feet rooted into bare oily earth, his tiny sister stood staring blankly back. She held up a thin arm. Everything stopped.