The Sky Giant

Rollercoasters. I hated them. I always did. When it came to school trips to the local theme parks, I always sat them out. I could enjoy the lazy rapids or the log flumes, the tilt-a-whirls or the space wheels; anything with a bit of height to feel the light breeze on my face or the shock reaction to a friend getting soaked by freezing cold artificially-colored water, but looking up and even watching those gigantic steel skeleton tracks sending a carriage full of screaming people into a frenzy really put fear into me. They always felt like an unnatural accident waiting to happen.

I remember as a kid hearing about one of the old-timey wooden coasters in Germany that derailed and killed ten children. The image of fun and laughter suddenly brought to a halt with visions of screaming parents and crying park staff waiting for the cleanup crew to arrive.

I was seventeen years old, and a girl from class insisted on us going to Towering Heights Adventure World for a date. It was early days, and I was keen to impress, so we planned the day. My friends, Jenn and Chris, were keen to come with us, excited to try some of the new rides out.

I’m not sure if it was just bad luck or bad karma, but the clouds opened on us at the park. It was like a show opening above us, filling the air with a mist of rain and thunder. Water rides would be pointless. After a reasonably exhilarating turn on the runaway ghost train, I asked what we wanted to try out next, and Chris with his mouthful of pink cotton candy kept giving me a look as though he was keeping something from me. That’s when Jenn told me.

Jenn didn’t know about my fear, and she carefully described the one rollercoaster they had made the trip specifically for – The Sky Giant.

Fifty storeys high. Two thousand and nine meters long. Ten loops. A maximum speed of two hundred kilometers an hour. The ride itself legendary for its g-force and trains that head into a cloak of mist.

My date begged me to go on with her. I buckled and said yes, but my legs felt weak just thinking about it.

The ride entrance was a mesmerizing mixture of Skull Island and the Land that Time Forgot vibes. A colossal wooden door that led into a darkened cave barely lit by reddened sconces and blue-hued lantern-lights hanging down from moving gargantuan flour sacks filled with screaming people.

Once we were lined up, many people were passing us, either leaving due to the rain, or because they were frightened. I saw a fully grown adult man shaking so fiercely it could have passed for a mild seizure. The Sky Giant character himself was designed as this hairy cackling giant with a wooden club. A sort of cartoon white-bearded troll with an unnaturally wide smile and black soulless eye sockets. It was like something from an old European Christmas card. I tried to keep up the pretense of enjoyment during this carnival of unnerving theater and hide the freshly drawn blood from my chewed fingernails.

We were forced to listen to this childish shrieking fairytale tune that featured the sounds of bashing, like wood on bone, and deeply guttural ugly laughter. The combination was more like something you’d hear in a haunted house for Halloween, and more people were passing us to get off, put off by this twisted spectacle of ugly showmanship.

The lighting dimmed the further along we walked, deeper and darker, with people huddled together. The mud from trudging shoes and sweat from thrill-seeking armpits had woken a smell that put me in mind of Viking farmers herding and then slaughtering sheep. There was no more comfort to be had in holding hands with my date; a chill ran through my back and the fear struck a chord in my spine. I couldn’t see a thing through these blackened fake cave walls, but my ears picked up the echoes of screams on top of trundling, rattling tracks.

We turned another corner and entered a narrow tunnel, and we could now see the train, the nose of it resembling a large wooden log but made of steel, its front poking out at the end of this confined tunnel like a warped image in the back of an old photograph. It reminded me of one of those nightmares where you knew something truly horrifying was just in front of you, and you’d plead with yourself to wake up, but you’d keep walking towards it, that complete loss of control.

Those sounds. That bashing, crunching, deep resonating cackling, the screaming of helpless people. My mind was once again bringing me back to those images of derailed coasters and various theme park accidents and fatalities, all in the name of that cheap surge of adrenaline. My legs were so shaky I had to hold the guardrails to keep myself from collapsing. My date asked if I was okay. I lied.

After several boardings, our time was now. The empty train trundled into place in front of us beyond the large metal safety railings. It was streaming with rainwater, and I was concerned that you weren’t able to see anybody exit the ride. It was a fresh empty train every time, like a constant feed of meat entering a conveyor belt. People were smiling. People were hyperventilating. People were pumped. They couldn’t wait to experience this. I breathed deeply, and I felt my hand squeeze the railing hard. This was the most terrified I’d ever been in my life.

I sat down in the train and my jeans were immediately soaked, giving discomfort to my already clammy skin, with the outside elements giving me an afflictive teaser as to what was coming. The overhead shoulder restraints tightened over me, dwarfing my slim shoulders and wetting my hoodie. The bars on the front were freezing cold, it was like holding onto a frozen railing outside a skyscraper. My friends were talking to me, but nothing was registering. It was as though they were off in the distance, the background noise of smashing, laughing, and deep rumbling the only things filtering through.

Ahead of the train was a black hole filled with twinkling silver pot lights and artificial mist, with the uncomfortable image of the cackling behemoth right above us. That was when I heard the noise.

A humming underneath us, followed by a warped straining noise, like bending metal.

*crunch*

The train took off and I was glued to my seat. The dark tunnel we entered suddenly gave way to a steep track that sped at such a high rate of speed, my stomach felt like it caved in. Jolted screams and curse words were sounded out by the clunking metal and sudden roar of the turbulence. My eyes were closed, and my hands were red from gripping the bars on the shoulder restraint. The knot in my belly continued getting tighter, dropping at each dip, and I passed out.

It only felt like a moment, but when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t tell where we were. The rollercoaster had stopped on the track somewhere, and convulsions of mass panic had spread throughout the riders.

“Is nobody coming to get us? How long are we gonna stay up here?” I heard one person ask.

Up here.

Apparently after the last drop we took; the train began to climb way up into the clouds. But these didn’t look like the same clouds. Looking around, I could barely see the track in front of us, it was as if we were floating, surrounded by pure white clouds and mist. It was so bright, as though the sun was shining through the clouds like a spotlight. I could feel my forehead burning. In amongst the chatter of people panicking, a noise made itself known.

It sounded like groans of bending metal coming from beneath us. It was so loud it made my heart murmur.

“Is that the track?” I heard a woman ask.

At that moment, the sunburn on my head was blocked by something, like a large shadow before us, as if something massive had stood in its way. The fog slowly parted, and that’s when we all saw it, looking up at this shape in the clouds, this humongous man with scraggly long hair, wiry beard, and deep eyeless sockets. His face looked down on us, and his barren expression one moment turned to a cursing grimace the next.

People began screaming.

Gripped in this leviathan’s hand was a grisly wooden club. The groaning metal sound echoed again, and the noise that rattled from this thing’s putrid toothless mouth was a deep-bellied growl of laughter. The wind heaved into all of us when he swung his club with hysterical force.

I heard a crack behind me, like a hundred different tiny bones had all snapped at once, and felt a sudden rain of something wet, realizing in seconds that a blast of pure gore had showered through the train. The terrorized screams of instant madness paled in the presence of this mythical thing, and another crack sounded through the carriage, the blasting wind warm against my face with every whack of that club.

I closed my eyes, I tried to phase it all out, this was nothing more than a nightmare. I tried everything in my mind to convince myself it was not happening. The screams and sprays repeated with every big laugh. After a few festering moments, there was a pause.

I opened my eyes, and it was stood in front of me. His troll-like body stood high up through the clouds as he looked down at me. A beam of pure elation. There were no more screams. There was no more panic. Everybody was dead, smashed to an unrecognizable pulp like the receiving end of a live game of ‘splat the rats’. I watched him bring the club back while pinned to my seat, and that’s when I mustered what I could, a screeching expression of absolute terror as the wind pushed itself against me with the club behind it.

I woke up, and overheard the doctors say I was the lucky one. The only survivor. Both of my legs were obliterated and had to be amputated just below the thighs.

The reports said that the Coaster reached speeds of two hundred and seventy miles an hour, which is still under investigation. After it left the final stretch, it disappeared into heavy clouds and collided with an empty train that was stuck on the highest loop. This is also under investigation. The biggest mystery of all, on top of the severity of the deaths, is where the oak splinters in the train came from. Nobody will listen to me. I just sit there and cackle to myself all day long.

Credit: Alex McIntosh