Everlost

CHAPTER 24 Nick’s Journey

Over a treacherous bridge, and across the entire breadth of Brooklyn, Nick marched from Rockaway Point to Manhattan. He had no way of knowing that even as he crossed that first bridge, Allie was being chimed by the McGill.

His mission was clear, but by no means simple: Get help. More specifically, get help from Mary. That was the hard part, because Allie had already told him how Mary had refused to put her children at risk before. As much as it hurt Nick that Mary chose to leave him in a barrel, he admired the selflessness it implied. Her motto wasn’t “Leave no child behind,” it was “Put no child in danger.” It made getting help from her tricky.

Nick encountered no Afterlights on his trek toward Mary’s domain. Certainly there were many dead-spots on the way, and perhaps there were Afterlights hiding here and there, but he wasn’t looking for them. He was single-minded.

He marched down the center of Flatbush Avenue, cars and pedestrians passing through him. Unlike Allie he had no skill for connecting with the living world, and he found that the more he ignored that world, the more it slipped into shadow. The living world was as insubstantial to him as beams of light from a movie projector, and the living themselves were like the movie on the screen; only important if he chose to watch. He could see how Mary had come to see Everlost as the real world. The true world. It would be easy to trick himself into believing the same thing—but did he want to do that?

For a moment he chose to focus on the “movie” of the living; a child and mother crossing the street to catch a bus; an old woman taking her time, and a cabbie who honked at her, only to get a rap on the hood from her cane. It made Nick laugh. Even if he was not a part of it, that world was charged with a vibrant spark that Everlost didn’t have. No, the living world could not be dismissed or ignored, and for the first time he began to wonder if perhaps Mary’s disregard for the living world was nothing more than envy.

As he neared Manhattan, his memory of a heart began to pound in anticipation. What would Mary do when she saw him? Would she be reserved and dignified? Would she scold him for having left in the first place? He knew he still had feelings for her that could not be destroyed by barrel or beast, but did she have any real feelings toward him? He had thought to learn a skill from the Haunter—a skill Mary could use. Well, Nick had no new skills to offer her, but he had been changed. He was fearless – or if not truly fearless, then at least no longer fearful. By the time he got to Manhattan he was running and he didn’t stop until he reached her towers.

Mary knew something must be horribly wrong. She knew because of the look of anguish on Vari’s face. She’d never seen him look so bleak.

“Vari, what is it? What’s happened?”

“He’s back,” was all Vari said. Then he shuffled away, hanging his head low in a dejected defeat she didn’t quite understand. Before she could ask him anything else, she saw someone she thought she’d never see again, standing in her doorway.

“Nick?”

“Hi, Mary.”

There was more chocolate on his face now than before. As with many Afterlights, changes weren’t always the desired ones, but Mary didn’t care, because he was here, and beneath the chocolate there was a smile just for her.

It was rare that Mary lost herself, but this was one occasion where the control and poise she prided herself on flew out the window. She ran to Nick and hugged him tightly, not wanting to let him go. It was only now in this moment that Mary realized the fondness she had felt for him was more than that. It was love—something she had not felt in all her years in Everlost. It had been easier to suppress it when she thought he was lost, but now the emotion came in a wellspring, and she kissed him, giving herself over to the heady smell and rich taste of milk chocolate.

Nick was not quite expecting this. Maybe in his wildest dreams, but his wildest dreams had a tendency not to come true. For a moment he found himself going limp like an opossum playing dead, before finally putting his arms around her waist and returning the embrace. It occurred to Nick that since they didn’t actually have to breathe, they could stay like this forever. If it was inevitable for Afterlights to lock themselves in ruts, this was a rut he could handle.

But the moment ended, as such moments do, and Mary took a step back, regaining her composure.

“Wow,” said Nick. “I guess you missed me.”

“I thought I lost you,” Mary said. “Can you ever forgive me for not coming after you? Do you understand why I couldn’t?”

Nick found himself slow to answer. He understood, but that didn’t mean he could completely forgive it. “I won’t talk about it if you won’t,” Nick said, and left it at that.

“How did you escape?” Mary asked.

“It’s a long story, but that’s not important. I need your help.”

Nick sat her down and told her about the McGill, his ghost ship, and his cargo of captured Afterlights. “I know you never really believed in the McGill…”

“No,” said Mary. “I’ve always known he existed—but like the Haunter he kept away.”

“Allies figured out a way to defeat him.”

“Allie!” Nick could hear the disdain in her voice. “Allies a very foolish girl.

She’s learned nothing from what happened with the Haunter, has she?”

“I believe her,” Nick said. “No matter what you think of her, she’s smart. When I left, she practically had the McGill eating out of her hand.”

Mary sighed. “So then, what does she want me to do? “

This “was the hard part. Nick knew he had to sell this, and sell it right. “She wants you to bring your kids to Atlantic City. It’ll take all of them to fight the McGill.”

Mary shook her head. “No! I can’t do that. I won’t put my children in danger.”

“Allie says there’s a powerful gang there—a gang that defeated him before, so we won’t be alone.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s talking about!”

“Then all the more reason to help her, if you know things she doesn’t.” And when Mary didn’t say anything more, Nick put his cards on the table. “If you don’t help then I’ll go there without you.”

“That,” said Vari, slumped in a chair in the corner, “is the best idea I’ve heard yet.”

They both ignored him. “The McGill will destroy you,” Mary said. “You can’t fight him.”

“You’re probably right, but if you won’t help, I’ll have no choice but to go alone.”

Mary turned away, and pounded a fist against a window. Nick couldn’t tell if she was angry at him or herself. “I… I… can’t…”

Nick was not bluffing, and soon Mary would realize that. He knew his feelings for her were strong, but he also knew that some things were stronger. “I love you, Mary,” he said, “but there are things I have to do, even if you won’t.” And he turned to leave.

She called to him before he reached the door. Nick had truly thought she wouldn’t, because, in his experience, when Mary made up her mind, the case was closed. But maybe she was changing, too.

“I won’t put my children in danger,” she said again, fiddling nervously with the locket around her neck. “But I can’t leave a thousand children in the McGill’s hands either. So I’ll go with you.”

“What!” said Vari.

Nick wasn’t expecting that either. “But… but that won’t help. We need an army to fight the McGill.”

But apparently Mary knew better, as Mary always did.

Mary had a secret cache of clout that ran deeper than anyone knew. In other words, she could get her hands on things that most Afterlights could only dream about, were they able to dream. Today, she had arranged luxury transportation: a ghost train out of old Penn Station.

She did not say good-bye to the children, because she didn’t want to worry them.

She left Meadow in charge, and Vari, who refused to be left behind, became the third member of their traveling party. “Do you think I’m going to let you take all the glory?” Vari told Nick as the three of them trudged uptown. “One way or another I’m going to end up on top. Just see if I don’t!”

“Personally,” said Nick, “I think you’d look best hanging upside down by your ankles.”

Vari sneered at him. “You’ve got more chocolate on your mouth than ever. Pretty soon it’ll cover your whole stupid face.”

Nick shrugged. “Mary doesn’t seem to mind.”

Nick suspected that if Vari had had his violin he would have kabonged him over the head.

“Will you two stop,” chided Mary. “We’re supposed to fight the McGill, not each other.”

Actually, Nick found himself enjoying his bickering with Vari—maybe because he finally had the upper hand.

It was dusk by the time they reached old Penn Station—a glorious stone-faced, glass-domed building that had been torn down half a century ago, in the questionable name of progress, and replaced with a miserable underground rat warren beneath Madison Square Garden. The new Penn Station was generally considered the ugliest train station in Western civilization, but luckily, the old Penn persisted in Everlost, if only out of its own indignation.

Nick was duly impressed—and also impressed that Mary was willing to ride a train, considering the nature of her death. As for the conductor, he was an old friend of Mary’s: a nine-year-old Afterlight who called himself Choo-Choo Charlie. In life he was obsessed with model trains, and so to him, old Penn Station, with its many ghost trains, was as good as making it to heaven.

“I can’t take you to Atlantic City,” he told them. “On account a’ there’s no dead tracks down there. I can get you halfway, though, is that okay?”

“Can you get us as far as Lakehurst?” Mary asked. “I have a friend there who can take us the rest of the way.”

Then, with Charlie in the engine, the ghost train lit out on the memory of tracks, heading for New Jersey.

They arrived in Lakehurst a few hours later, but it took the rest of the night to seek out Mary’s friend there: a Finder named Speedo. After meeting him, Nick decided he preferred a chocolate eternity to an eternity in a wet bathing suit.

Nick figured Speedo must have been a pretty good Finder though, because he had himself a late-model Jaguar.

“It’s a sweet ride,” he told them, as he drove them around the dead-roads of an old naval air station, showing the car off, “but it can only go on roads that don’t exist anymore – do you know how hard those are to find?” Then he threw an accusing look at Mary. “You never told me about that when you gave me the car!”

Mary smirked. “You never asked.”

Speedo told them it would take weeks to navigate a dead-road course all the way to Atlantic City, but Mary didn’t seem concerned.

“Actually,” she said, “it’s your other ’sweet ride’ that I’m interested in.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that,” said Speedo, as they pulled, onto a huge airfield tarmac. “But I drive.”

When Nick saw the ride they were talking about, even in his amazement he had to smile. Miss Mary Hightower didn’t travel often, but when she did, she sure knew how to travel in style!

CHAPTER 25 The Piers of Defeat

As the Sulphur Queen pulled into Atlantic City, a dense morning fog blanketed the shore, hiding the many beachfront hotels from view—but the two dead piers sliced through the fog, jutting out like two arms reaching to grasp the approaching ghost ship.

The Steeplechase Pier stood on the left, with its dozens of rides, all still whirring and spinning like a great gear work churning out time. The Steel Pier was on the right, a grand showplace of the rich and famous. Its signs still advertised in giant letters its golden days before fire burned it into the sea:

“Tonight Frank Sinatra,” “Dancing till Dawn in the Marine Ballroom,” and, of course, “Come See Shiloh, the World Famous High-Diving Horse.”

The living world could no longer see the piers, of course. All the living saw were the casinos that sucked their money away like a riptide, and the garish new Steel Pier, built near the ruins of the original—but like the old and new Penn Stations, there was no comparison. When Everlost eyes looked upon Atlantic City’s sandy shore, the two dead piers stood apart, just as the two lost towers stood apart from the skyline of New York, like grand beacons of eternity.

The crew of the Sulphur Queen gathered on deck to watch as they neared the piers.

“We’re going to crash into them!” Pinhead said.

“No we won’t,” said the McGill, with the confidence of a monster certain of his own destiny. The two piers were only twenty yards apart from one another, leaving a space between them that was just the right size for the Sulphur Queen to dock. It was the perfect berth, as if it was an intentional part of some greater design. It was another indication to the McGill that the universe and he were in perfect alignment—and just as the McGill predicted, the Sulphur Queen slid smoothly between the two piers with just a few feet to spare on either side. A perfect fit.

“Kill the engine,” he told his bridge crew, and they waited until the Sulphur Queen’s forward momentum grounded it in the sandy bottom of this huge dead-spot, bringing them to a halt.

“What now?” asked Pinhead. His apprehension rolled off him like sweat from the living. After all, Pinhead had abandoned the cutthroat gang that called themselves the Twin Pier Marauders. They would not take kindly to a traitor if they got their hands on him.

The McGill knew that the battle today would be the greatest of his death, but he would be triumphant. The fortunes didn’t lie.

“Prepare to lower the gangway to the Steel Pier,” he told Pinhead. “The rest of you come with me.” Then the McGill led his entire crew down to the chiming chamber.

All this time, Lief hung by his ankles, patiently waiting for something to happen. Very little ever happened in the chiming chamber—and even less since Nick left. It was nice that Allie had joined them, although she didn’t seem too happy about it.

Lief did not share her frustration. Things made sense to Lief now. It was like his whole existence was a jigsaw puzzle that finally had every single piece in place. No matter what image the puzzle showed, be it the darkness of a pickle barrel, or the image of a thousand kids hanging upside down, it didn’t matter because the puzzle was complete. He was complete, and that mattered more than his circumstance. No amount of unpleasantness could take away that sense of absolute completion. He couldn’t explain this to Allie—any more than he was able to explain it to Nick. All he knew was that he felt no real desire to leave the chiming chamber, or to stay for that matter. He was content to simply…be.

He knew there were others here like him. Many of the chimed kids had also found their peace.

Through the forest of souls, Lief caught sight of Allie watching him with sadness in her eyes. Lief pulled up a dangling hand to wave to her. He felt sorry for Allie. She had not found her peace. Neither had Nick. They fought so hard against everything: so full of fear, loneliness, resentment, anger. Lief remembered feeling those same things, but the memory was fading, as so many other memories had. He didn’t fear the McGill, because there was only one feeling left to him. Patience. Patience to wait for whatever came next.

“We should have stayed with you in your forest,” Allie said.

Lief smiled gently. “It would have been a fun forever.” Then he looked at the kids all around him. “But that’s okay. I don’t mind. I’m ready.”

“Ready for what?” Allie asked.

Lief found himself perplexed by the question. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Just…ready.”

That’s when the drone of the Sulphur Queen’s. engines died. A few moments later the entire chimed mob swung forward, then back as the ship ran aground.

“We’ve stopped,” said the high-chimed Boy Scout.

“We always stop,” said another.

“No, this is different.”

“Quiet,” shouted Allie. “Listen!”

There came the sound of far off footsteps on metal that quickly grew louder. It wasn’t just one person descending into the bowels of the ship, but dozens.

Allie was the last. Allie was the first, just as the fortune had said: She was the last to be chimed, and the first cut down.

The McGill burst into the chiming chamber with the full complement of his crew behind him. He came straight to Allie.

Allie found the McGill even more hideous when looking at him upside down. She could see into his massive misshapen nostrils full of metaphysical nastiness.

Fortunately she didn’t have to look for long, because with a single slash of his razor-sharp claws, he cut Allies rope, and she fell headfirst to the sulphur-dusted floor. She got up quickly, determined to stand eye to eye with the beast.

“Where are we?” she asked. “Why did we stop?”

The McGill never took his eyes off her, but he didn’t answer her either. Instead he spoke to his crew. “Cut them all down,” he said, “and use the ropes to tie their hands behind their backs.”

“You’re setting us free?” asked the high-strung Boy Scout, to which the McGill answered, “I’m sending you to your reward.”

“Yay!” cried Lief.

“It’s not that kind of reward,” Allie told him.

Lief gave her an upside-down shrug. “Yay, anyway.”

The McGill grabbed Allie’s arm, and although she tried to shake him off, he held tight. “You will come with me, and you will do exactly as I say.” Then he brought her up on deck.

Allie had lived in South Jersey before her fateful car crash—Cape May to be exact, the state’s southernmost tip. Yet even though it was only an hour from Atlantic City, Allie had never been. Her parents despised the crowds and general vulgarity, and so they avoided Atlantic City as if they were making a political statement.

Still, Allie knew where she was the moment she came onto the deck of the Sulphur Queen. She had to hide her excitement or the McGill might be suspicious. Her plan had worked! Or at least it had worked so far. There was a long way to go – a dozen things that could go wrong—but there was one thing she knew she could count on: the McGill’s arrogance, and his blind faith in her false fortune.

Perhaps that would give the Twin Pier Marauders the edge they needed to defeat him again. My enemy’s enemy is my friend, thought Allie. No matter how savage the Marauders were, if they brought down the McGill, they would be good friends to have.

The McGill led her to the gangway. The ramp sloped down sharply from the Sulphur Queen’s deck to the boardwalk surface of the Steel Pier. “You first,” he said, and prodded her along. So she was the bait. “Go!” he demanded, and so Allie stepped down the gangway and onto the vast boardwalk of the pier.

“Keep walking,” the McGill said. He waited with his crew just off the gangway—perhaps ready to make a quick escape if the situation called for it.

Allie strode forward, past shops and signs: Schmidt’s Beer, Planter’s Peanuts, Saltwater Taffy, Chicken in a Basket. They were all empty. If any food had crossed over when the pier had burned down, that food was long gone.

At first the only sounds were seagulls and eerie calliope music coming from the Steeplechase Pier. The utter soullessness of the place reminded her of the feeling she got when she had walked the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Then she spun at the sudden clatter of hoofbeats on wood, and saw the strangest thing. Toward the end of the pier, a horse leapt from a platform that had to be fifty feet high, into a tank of water with a great splash. Then the horse climbed a ramp out of the tank and wended its way up the ramp toward the high dive again. This diving horse was part of the pier’s memory, and was the only animal Allie had seen that had crossed into Everlost. She felt an intense pity for the creature and its peculiar eternity.

“Ignore it!” said the McGill. “It does what it does. Keep walking.”

Allie kept walking forward, but saw no one. The Marauders must have known they were there, but they were keeping quiet.

“Hello!” she called out, but no one answered. “Anyone here?”

Then to her right she heard the long slow creak of a rusty hinge. She turned to see the dark gaping entrance of some grand ballroom, but a sign taken from one of the steeplechase rides hung crookedly over the entrance. The sign read THE HELL HOLE. This, she realized, was the den of the Marauders. Out of the darkness stepped a boy, his face stretched into a pit bull snarl. He wore a black T-shirt that said “Megadeth,” and held a baseball bat with metal spikes sticking out all over it.

“Get off my pier!” he growled.

Then the McGill stepped forward. “I am the McGill and I am calling you out!” he turned and shouted to the entire pier. “Come out from hiding, you cowards! Come out and fight… or flee.”

Allie knew what would happen next. The kids who were hiding in the woodwork everywhere, dozens upon dozens of them, would come out. They had to have powers if they had defeated the McGill before—they’d have even more powers now. They would surround the McGill and his crew. The McGill wouldn’t stand a chance.

But that’s not how it happened.

The lone marauder with the pit bull snarl stood there posturing for a few more seconds. Then he dropped his spiked bat, turned tail, and ran like a frightened puppy as fast as his legs could carry him toward the shore, disappearing into Atlantic City. Fight or flee, the McGill had said. The boy had made his choice.

The McGill began to laugh loudly for the whole pier to hear, but still no delinquents came from secret hiding places. “The Mighty Marauders! Hah!”

The crew checked every inch of both piers, and even the barnacle encrusted pilings beneath. The dead piers were truly dead. The Marauders were gone, and Allie’s hope plunged with the same horrible heaviness of Shiloh, the diving horse.

CHAPTER 26 Oh, the Humanity

The McGill’s glorious moment had come, and he was ready for it. He had been preparing for this day for more than twenty years. With no one to challenge his dominion, he began to unload his cargo of Afterlights, and soon the pier had filled with all the kids the McGill had collected, blinking in the light of the hazy morning, with hands tied behind their backs. The fighting instinct had left so many of them, they simply waited for whatever doom the McGill had in store for them.

The McGill took in the sight of his thousand souls, pleased with himself beyond measure, and, clutching his two most valuable fortunes in his hand, he readied himself to complete the bargain.

He looked up into the gray fog shrouding the sky, and called out to the heavens for a sign of whoever it was that had set this bargain before him.

“I’m here!” cried out the McGill, but the sky did not answer. He waved his fortunes in the air. “The life of one brave man is worth a thousand cowardly souls! I have the thousand souls—and I’ve brought them here, just as the fortunes instructed.”

No answer. Just hoofbeats, a whinny, and a splash. It was as if the pier itself was mocking him. He yelled even louder. “I’ve lived up to my end of the bargain—now return my life to me! Free me from Everlost, and give me back my life.”

The McGill waited. The crew waited, the thousand souls waited. Even the off-key calliope music from the Steeplechase Pier sounded muted and hushed by the gravity of the moment.

And then another sound began to pierce through the music. It was a faint hum, like a distant chorus of moaning angels, growing louder and louder until it could be felt as much as heard.

Then something materialized out of the fog. Something huge.

“Oh my God!” said Allie. “What is that!”

It was so massive, it didn’t just assault the eye, but the mind as well, until it blocked everything else out.

“I’m here,” cried the McGill in absolute joy. “I’m heeeeeeeere!” And he spread his arms wide, opening his entire soul to receive his reward as it descended in glory from the heavens.

Not everything that meets an untimely end crosses into Everlost. Like the atmospheric conditions that lead to a tornado, conditions must be right for crossing. The love of the living, and the occasional sunspot both play a part—but perhaps the most consistent factor is the persistence of memory. There are certain things and places that the living will never—can never forget. These are the things and places that are destined to cross over.

In Everlost, Pompeii is a pristine city, and the great library of Alexandria still houses the wisdom of the ancient world.

In Everlost the Challenger is still on a Florida launchpad, forever hopeful of a successful blastoff, and the Columbia is on the end of the runway, basking in the moment of a perfect landing.

The same is true of the world’s largest airship.

Zeppelin LZ-129, better known as the Hindenburg, crossed into Everlost in May of 1937 in a fiery hydrogen blaze that sent thirty-five passengers where they were going, and brought one German boy with it, crossing him into Everlost. Thus, the great airship was reborn, flight ready, filled with a memory of hydrogen gas, and freed from the swastikas on its tail fins, which were denied admittance into Everlost when the rest of the ship crossed.

As for the boy, he eventually took on the name Zepp, and had the distinction of being Everlost’s first airship pilot. His plan was to offer rides to any Afterlights he happened to come across, in exchange for whatever they could give him. However, like so many in Everlost, he fell victim to his own rut, and for reasons no one has ever been able to explain, he did nothing for sixty years but fly the thing back and forth between Lakehurst, New Jersey, and Roswell, New Mexico.

It caused quite a stir when sunspot activity briefly made it visible, but that’s another story.

Eventually Zepp traded the Hindenburg to the Finder known as Speedo for a few cases of bratwurst, and Speedo became the proud owner of the largest airborne vessel ever constructed by man. A sweet ride, if ever there was one.

The nose of the great gray zeppelin seemed to materialize out of the fog as if arriving from another dimension.

“I’m here!” cried the McGill in absolute joy. “I’m heeeeeeeeere!”

Most of the airship’s eight-hundred feet were shrouded in fog as it settled down gently on the Steel Pier, right in front of the McGill. It used its own tiny piloting gondola, which hung beneath, as a makeshift landing gear.

A gangway opened in the airship’s superstructure in front of the pilot’s gondola, revealing that the great gray balloon was not a balloon at all, for it was filled with structure. It was all silver flesh stretched over a steel skeleton, and massive lungs holding their hydrogen breath, giving more than a hundred tons of lift against gravity. It was a marvel of engineering, but the McGill did not see a zeppelin at all. He saw a chariot of the gods.

“I’m here!” said the McGill again, but such was his awe that this time it came out as barely a whisper.

The lowering gangway touched the deck of the pier, and the McGill waited to get a glimpse of the being with magic enough to give him back his life. It didn’t matter that the living world had moved on without him, or that anyone he knew would be long dead—he barely remembered any of them anyway. Once his spirit was housed in a living body again, he would adapt to this twenty-first century, reclaiming the right to grow, and grow old—a right that death had denied him.

Three figures descended the gangway, but it was the first who seized the McGill’s attention. A girl in a green velvet dress. As she stepped onto the pier, and strode toward him, the McGill’s crooked jaw went slack, his arms went limp, and the two tiny fortunes he clutched in his claw fell to the ground. This could not be. It simply could not be!

“Megan?”

The girl smiled at the sound of the name. “Megan,” she repeated. “Now I remember. That was my name.” She stood there ten feet away from the McGill, and as she looked at him the smile faded from her face, but not entirely. Only now did he notice the other two who had come out with her. A small boy with curly blond hair, and another boy with a face smudged brown. Hadn’t the McGill chimed that boy?

“Megan,” she said again, clearly enjoying the memory of the name. “But that was a long time ago. Now my name is Mary Hightower.”

The veins in the McGill’s mismatched eyeballs began pulsing. “You’re Mary Hightower? No! That’s not possible!”

“I knew you’d be surprised. But I’ve always known who you were, Mikey. How could I help but know?”

Through the crew, and even among the captive kids, a whisper rolled like an ocean wave… Mikey Mikey she called him Mikey…

“Don’t call me that!” yelled the McGill. “That’s not my name! I am the McGill: the One True Monster of Everlost!”

“You,” said his older sister, “are Michael Edward McGill. And you’re no monster. You’re my little brother.”

A second wave rolled through all those gathered, this time a bit louder… Brother brother he’s Mary’s brother…

The McGill was filled with so many conflicting emotions, he felt he would blow into a thousand pieces, and didn’t doubt that such a thing was possible for an Afterlight who was tormented enough. He was filled both with joy at seeing his sister again, and the fury that this was not the deliverance he had waited for.

He was filled with humiliation at having been exposed for who he truly was, and the dread of being forced to face it.

“I have a gift for you, Mikey,” she said. “It’s a gift I should have given you a long time ago.” She reached up and opened the silver locket she wore around her neck, then held it out toward him the way a priest might hold a cross up to a vampire – and although the McGill tried to look away, the gaze of his eyes, both the large and the small, was transfixed by what he saw.

In one half of the locket was an old-fashioned tin picture of his sister, looking exactly as she looked now. And in the other half was a picture of the boy named Michael Edward McGill.

“No!!!” screamed the McGill, but it was too late; he had seen the picture, and knew it for what it was—he knew it right down to the core of his being. “Nooooo…” he cried, but the slithery slipperiness of his voice had already begun to change, because Mikey McGill suddenly remembered what he looked like.

To those around him—to Nick, to Allie, to the crowd and the crew, the transformation was nothing short of miraculous. The McGill went from beast to boy in seconds. His head shrunk, and his spidery tuft of hair coiffed into a short, neat cut. His dangling eye drew back into his face, and his swollen one deflated. He sprouted five manicured fingers where once claws had been. Even the fetid rags that covered his body stitched themselves back into the memory of the clothes he wore in the photo, and when it was done, the McGill was nothing more than a clean-cut fourteen-year-old boy who could have been his mother’s pride and joy.

Mikey touched his face, realizing what had happened and screamed. “You can’t do this to me! I am the McGill! You can’t do this!” But it had already been done.

The monstrous image he had taken years to cultivate was gone, replaced by his own humanity. Mary closed her locket. Mission accomplished.

Allie could only stare. This boy, this Mikey—could this be the same person who had captured and chimed a thousand kids? Allie had to remember that humanity had returned to his face, but it would take much more than a photograph to return it to his soul.

While everyone else just gawked, it was the high-strung Boy Scout who saw this moment for what it was. This was the moment of their liberation. And the moment of their revenge.

“Get him!” he screamed, and he raced forward. With his hands still tied behind his back, he hurled himself at Mikey McGill, knocking him to the ground. The others were quick to follow, and in a few seconds, a thousand kids were pushing forward. With their feet their only weapons, they began kicking him, and with so many of them, they could have kicked Mikey clear into the next world.

“No!”yelled Mary, “Stop!” But mob mentality had taken over, and no one was listening to her. The crowd became louder, wilder, as if the spirit of the Twin Pier Marauders had filled them.

In the middle of it all, Mikey suffered the stomping and kicking of this nightmare dance. It could not kill him. It could not even bruise him – but the pain of his absolute humiliation was far greater than any physical pain could have been.

“Stop them!” he yelled to his crew, but he had no power over them now. Instead of obeying his orders, his entire crew deserted, running from the pier in a panic, escaping into Atlantic City just as the lone Marauder had. Mikey was now truly alone.

Then someone began cutting the ropes that bound his captives’ hands, and they weren’t just kicking him anymore, they were swinging and pulling and trying their best to tear him apart.

This was not what the fortune predicted. The fortune was wrong! How could the fortune be wrong? It was only now, whipped and beaten down by the fury of the Afterlights he had enslaved, that he came to see the truth. He was not the brave man the fortune spoke of. He was the cowardly soul.

With what strength Mikey McGill had left in him, he fought through the angry mob, toward the far end of the pier—because jumping into the sea and sinking back to the center of the Earth would be a better fate than this.

There were very few who did not participate in the punishment of Mikey McGill.

Allie, Nick, and Lief did not. Neither did Mary, Vari, or even Pinhead, who was the only crewman with the courage to stay. They didn’t join the mob, but they didn’t stop it either. Mary did keep calling to the crowd, begging them to calm down and leave her brother be, but her voice was not even heard. In the end, she could only turn away.

“He’s getting what he deserves,” said Nick.

“But we should do something,” said Allie. “This is awful!”

“No,” said Pinhead, sadly. “He came here to find his destiny, and he did. We have to let destiny take its course.”

They watched the mob push closer to the end of the pier with Mikey somewhere in the middle. and Allie found, like Mary, she couldn’t look. Instead she turned to Pinhead, who picked up the two fortunes Mikey had dropped.

” ‘Your victory waits at the piers of defeat.’” he read. “You wrote this, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Allie admitted, “but that one about the thousand souls—that was real.”

“Not exactly,” said Pinhead. “You see, I found that old typewriter long before you did.”

Allie was both impressed and horrified. Pinhead shrugged. “I had to think of something to keep the McGill busy for the last twenty years.”

The mob was almost down to the far end of the pier now. Allie almost hoped that Mikey would find a way to escape back onto the Sulphur Queen, but that wouldn’t really be escape at all, because the mob would simply chime him, and spend the rest of time using him as an unbreakable pinata.

Allie could do nothing to help Mikey McGill, and so rather than pondering his fate, she tried to fill her mind with the job that was now at hand. Her plan. Her goal. Allie knew what she had to do now, because she had imagined it and worked out every angle even before arriving in Atlantic City. Although Mikey McGill didn’t know it, by coming to Atlantic City, he was bringing her within sixty miles of home—the closest she’d been since arriving in Everlost.

Allie had freed her friends, and now she was free from the McGill. All that remained was for her to complete her journey home.

“Gotta go,” she said, catching the others by surprise. She quickly hugged Lief, and then Nick, thanking him for everything, and for being her accidental companion on the journey.

“Allie, I—” but Allie put up her hand to shut him up. She despised long emotional good-byes, and refused to let this turn into one.

Then she turned to Mary. In spite of everything that had gone on between them, she gave Mary a respectful nod, and glanced at the Hindenburg. “You win the award for Best Grand Entrance.”

“We’ve got a lot to do here,” Mary told her. “Why don’t you stay and help us?”

“I would, but I’ve got other plans.”

Mary accepted it without asking what those plans were. Allie figured she knew.

“We could have been friends,” said Mary, with some regret.

“I don’t think so,” Allie said, as politely as she could, “but I’m glad we’re not enemies.”

Then Allie turned, and, forcing herself not to look back, she strode past the giant airship, and left the pier.

The mob levied its fury on Mikey McGill as he fought his way toward the end of the pier to escape. He was fully prepared to take the plunge once more.

Fate, however, had other plans for him.

As he neared the end of the pier a sound came to his ears, faint behind the raging mob, but he heard it all the same. Hoof beats. A whinny. A splash. He turned to see, through the flailing arms and legs of the mob, Shiloh, the Famous Diving Horse, climbing out of his “water tank, onto the ramp that would take him up to the high dive again.

Out of the water will come your salvation.

Mikey McGill made a sharp turn, pushing his way through the angry mob, and toward the horse.

Allie once more had to get used to the soft, sucking nature of living ground.

The Atlantic City boardwalk kept drawing her feet into it, and she had to stay on the move to keep from sinking. She could walk the sixty miles home. She could even make a fresh pair of road-shoes to make the journey easier, but she didn’t even know which roads to take.

“Excuse me,” she said to a passing couple, “could you please tell me how to – “

But the couple walked by as if they didn’t see her.

Well duh, of course they didn’t see her. Had she forgotten the simple fact that she was a ghost? Yes. She could admit it now. “Afterlight,” and all the other nice words for it, didn’t change the fact. She was dead. She was a ghost. But she was also a ghost with powers… As she considered her options, she heard a sound that made her look back toward the two dead piers. It was the sound of hoofbeats on wood. She waited for the telltale splash of the diving horse, but this time there was none. Instead she saw the horse—now with a rider—race out from behind the giant zeppelin.

Following the horse was a mob of kids in pursuit, but the horse was too fast.

The moment the horse hit the living-world boardwalk, the sound of its hoofbeats stopped, but its momentum barely slowed. It turned toward her, surging forward—and in a moment it was close enough for her to see the rider. Mikey McGill. He saw her at the same moment she saw him, and she could see the anger in his eyes.

Allie was terrified. To her, the eyes of this angry boy were even more frightening than the eyes of the monster.

She tried to run, but it was useless, the horse was too fast. Mikey was bearing down on her, and there was nothing she could do. He would trample her, he would capture her. He would punish her for betraying him. She looked back again; his eyes were still on her. Those eyes said, “You will suffer for what you did to me.” Those eyes said, “You can’t hide from me!”

And then Allie realized that maybe she could.

In front of her was a girl in sweats, jogging down the boardwalk. She was nineteen or so, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Allie turned to look behind her once more. Mikey McGill was only a few yards away. The horse was in a full gallop, and he was already leaning to the side, reaching for her. With no time to lose, Allie leaped into the girl, catching the wave of her body, and surfing it for all she was worth.

In the hiccup of an instant, Mikey McGill and his horse vanished. The piers and the Hindenburg vanished. All she could see was the misty morning of the living world through this living girl’s eyes. Allie felt the full chill of the day and goose bumps on her skin. She felt the pounding of a heart. She felt the exhaustion of a body that had jogged up and down the boardwalk for at least an hour.

Mikey McGill and the mob of kids that chased him were still there, but they were invisible, and she was untouchable. Nothing and no one in Everlost could get to her now, for she had hitched herself a ride into the living world.

What’s going on? said the confused soul who owned the body Allie had skinjacked. Why can’t I move my arms and legs? What’s wrong with me?

“Shhhh…” Allie told her. “It’s going to be all right.” Then Allie turned and jogged away.

CHAPTER 27 All Souls Day

Mikey had gotten away, and although Mary accepted that the monster known as the McGill deserved the mob’s wrath, she was secretly relieved that her brother was not sent back to the center of the Earth. Whatever had happened to make him such a monster, she would never know. But now the monster was gone—at least on the outside. What Mikey made of himself now would be entirely up to him.

The crowd had returned from their fruitless chase of her brother, and now looked to her for guidance.

Beside her, Nick surveyed the sheer mass of the crowd. “There didn’t seem to be this many when we were hanging upside down.”

Mary looked at the airship. It was only designed to carry about a hundred passengers. It would be crowded but it could be done. The passenger compartment was only a small portion of the ship. Most of it was catwalks and girders, holding the massive hydrogen bladders that gave the airship lift. There was room up inside for a thousand Afterlights, and Speedo assured her that weight wouldn’t be a problem since, technically, Afterlights had no actual weight, only the memory of it—memory enough to sink the unwary to the center of the Earth, but not enough to ground an airship determined to fly.

“What time is it?” asked a boy who looked curiously like a shark.

“Time to go home,” she told him, then she called out to the crowd. “Listen to me, everyone. We have much to do. I know some of you have been imprisoned for a very long time, but now you’re free—and I have a wonderful place for you!

There’s room for everyone, and you’ll never have to suffer again!”

“Are you the Sky Witch?” asked a small girl, no older than five.

Mary smiled, and knelt down to her. “Of course not,” she said. “There’s no such thing.”

“All right,” said Nick, “let’s form a single line right here—and line up by the numbers on your chest, so we know we’re not missing anyone!” The kids began to rearrange themselves, like it was a game. “No pushing—there’s room for everyone!”

Mary smiled. She and Nick were a team now. She could get used to this.

“Hey!” someone called. “Look what I got!”

They both turned to see Lief struggling with a heavy bucket. While the others went off chasing Mikey, Lief had gone back on board the Sulphur Queen. “The McGill left his safe open! I got the McGill’s treasure!”

Mary took the bucket from Lief. It was full of old, faceless coins.

“Some treasure,” mumbled Nick.

“It’s a wonderful treasure,” Mary said, and gave Nick a wink. “There’s enough here for everyone to get a wish at the fountain.” A few kids tried to look inside, but Mary held the bucket away from them.

They returned to the job at hand. The kids were still rearranging themselves into a line, trying to read their numbers, which were all written upside down.

Some kids stood back, not getting in line, not certain if they should—and so those were the kids Mary went to.

She handed Nick the bucket. “Hold this,” she said. “Make sure you keep it away from them until we’re at the fountain.” Then she went off to talk to the kids who were reluctant to get in line. In the end, with Mary’s kindness and charm, there wasn’t a single Afterlight who didn’t want to come.

So concerned was Mary with making sure that every Afterlight was accounted for, that there was one she forgot. It wasn’t until they were airborne and gently gliding north, thousands of feet above the shoreline, that Mary realized it.

“Where’s Vari?”

She turned to Nick, who just shrugged. “I haven’t seen him at all.”

Mary searched the airship—the cabins, corridors, and the catwalks up in the ship’s infrastructure. Vari was nowhere on board. Somehow they had left him behind.

In spite of 146 years in Everlost, some things about a small boy never change. A penchant toward moodiness. A limited attention span. And, of course, curiosity.

While Mary had loaded the thousand souls aboard the airship, Vari had boarded the deserted Sulphur Queen, along with Lief. While Lief might have been satisfied with a bucket of coins, Vari explored deeper until he found the treasure holds. The moment he saw them, Vari was in heaven, and he lost himself in the search and discovery of it all. Toys and jewels, and things he couldn’t identify. It was a wonderland of riches and mysteries.

By the time he emerged back on the deck with as much booty as his small arms could carry, the great zeppelin was gone, and his worst nightmare had finally come true. Mary had forgotten him. He dropped his plunder to the deck with a clatter.

“Who are you!”

Vari spun at the sound of the voice.

“Who are you, and why didn’t you leave with the others?”

It was a tall boy with a crooked smile, and a head that was just a little too small for his body. Although Vari was on the verge of tears, he sucked in his emotions, determined to show no weakness to this single straggler from the monster’s crew.

“Maybe I didn’t want to go,” said Vari. Although Vari couldn’t be sure, the small-headed boy seemed somewhat abandoned himself. “This is a good ship,” Vari said. “I like all the stuff below.”

“It served us for twenty years,” the boy said, and then he introduced himself as Pinhead. Vari could have laughed, but he didn’t. The name fit, as did all names in Everlost. Pinhead was waiting for the crew to return, but no one had. Vari suspected no one would.

Vari looked out to the Steel Pier to the right and the Steeplechase Pier to the left. He supposed he could make a home for himself on these piers – but then he spotted a huge jewel-covered chair sitting on a platform on the open deck of the Sulphur Queen. The chair was both beautiful and ugly. Vari found himself drawn to it.

“What is that?”

“The McGill’s throne,” Pinhead answered. Vari got closer. It was, in its own strange and horrible way, very impressive. Vari climbed into it and sat down. He was so small, he practically disappeared into it, and yet it made him feel big. It made him feel larger than life. Larger than death. Larger than anything.

Pinhead looked at him for a long time, as if preparing to snap a picture with his eyes. “You never told me your name,” Pinhead said.

“My name is Va—” but he cut himself short. Mary had left him. Which meant he no longer had to be her obedient servant. He could be anyone he wanted—anything he wanted.

Vari leaned back in the throne and stretched out his hands, caressing the jewels on the armrests. “I am the McGill,” Vari said. “Hear my name and tremble.”

Pinhead gave him a great slanted mudslide of a smile. “Very good, sir,” he said.

Then, with an understanding that required no words, Pinhead went to the bridge, started the engine, and manned the tiller. Together they headed east out of Atlantic City and across the ocean in search of a new crew. And a violin.

CHAPTER 28 Skinjacker

This jogger girl was a pain. At first Allie thought it was going to be okay, but as soon as the girl realized what was happening to her, she started fighting back. She was much harder to control than the ferry pilot had been.

“Can’t you just take it easy?” Allie yelled to her, in her mind. “It’s not like I’m going to hurt you. I just need to borrow you a little.”

—Steal me, you mean.—

“Stealing,” said Allie, “means that I’m not giving it back.”

—No, stealing is taking something that doesn’t belong to you without permission, and you don’t have my permission!—

Their body limped and jerked along the Atlantic City boardwalk as the two willful spirits fought for dominance. Allie really didn’t have the time or patience for this.

“We could do this the easy way,” said Allie, “or we could do this the hard way.”

But, like Allie, this girl was a fighter. “All right then, you asked for it!”

Allie forced her eyes closed, and concentrated all her will on the task of usurping… possessing… controlling. Allie imagined her spirit like a hammer pounding, pounding, pounding until the jogger girl was no more than a tremor in the tips of her fingers.

When she opened her eyes, her body was no longer jerking around. It was Allie’s to use as she pleased – and although she didn’t particularly like the idea of being a skinjacker, it was a means to an end. Allie had to admit that being in this girl’s body was tempting. She was attractive, and in good shape, even if she was a few years older. It would be easy to stay here, and make this body home. Were Allie a different kind of person, she might have done it, but Allie’s strength of will also gave her plenty of resistence to temptation. This girl was merely a vessel to transport her home, nothing more. The jogger girl was wrong—Allie was not stealing her body, she wasn’t even borrowing it—she was renting it—because the girl would get paid for her trouble. Her payment would be the absolute knowledge that there was more to the universe than living eyes could see.

Allie found a set of keys in her pocket, and the key chain said “Porsche.”

“Where’s your car?” Allie asked the girl, but she was still being uncooperative, responding in a whole slew of foul thoughts. “Fine,” said Allie. “I’ll find it myself.” Allie began searching one hotel parking structure after another, hitting the alarm button every few seconds. It took a while, but finally she heard the car alarm going off.

The biggest problem now was that Allie did not know how to drive.

Had she lived, she most certainly would have had her learner’s permit by now, but things being what they were, when she started the Porsche, it was the first time she had ever turned a key in a car ignition. It was also a stick shift, and although Allie knew something about gears and the working of a clutch, she had no practical experience. Just pulling out of the parking lot became a nerve-racking experience of sudden starts, stops, and loudly grinding gears.

—My car! My car!—cried the jogger girl from deep inside.—What are you doing to my car!—

Allie ignored her, determined to tool around side streets until she got a hang of it.

Driving, however, was not as easy as she thought, and “getting a hang of it,” was going to take much longer than Allie realized. It was past noon now, and Allie felt no closer to being capable of driving the Porsche than when she started. Allie supposed she could ditch the car, and find other transportation—a bus maybe, but then, all the buses from Atlantic City went to New York or Philly. None went down to Cape May.

—Please— said the jogger girl, much calmer now.—I’ve heard your thoughts and I know where you want to go. Let me have control of my arms and legs so I can drive—

Distracted, Allie ran a red light, and slammed on the brakes, coming to a stop right in the middle of the intersection. Angry horns blared, and cars swerved around her.

—Please— said the jogger girl again.—Before you get us both killed—

Since Allie had no desire to experience death again, she relented, and backed off—not entirely, but enough to let the girl control her arms and legs, so she could drive. To Allie’s relief the girl didn’t fight. She simply pulled the car out of the intersection, and headed back to the main road that would take them out of Atlantic City.

Allie relaxed, like the captain of a ship letting the first mate navigate. “Thank you,” she told the jogger girl. The jogger girl said nothing.

All was fine until they reached the bridge that connected Atlantic City with the mainland. Halfway across the bridge, the first mate mutinied. The jogger girl launched a sudden mental offensive that caught Allie completely off guard.

—Steal my body, will you? Invade my space? I DON’T THINK SO!—Then the jogger girl began to push—but she wasn’t pushing down, she was pushing out! Allie felt herself being hurled out of the girl’s body like a bad buffet lunch. She couldn’t feel a heartbeat anymore, or air moving in and out of her lungs. She was disconnected, and losing her grip.

Allie fought back, hoping it wasn’t too late, trying to dig her spirit in like a grappling hook, refusing to be cast off. She pulled herself back inside, and as they fought for control, the car began to swerve wildly on the bridge.

They sideswiped a car to the left, bounced off of it, and headed for the guard rail above the bay.

Do you see what you did? screamed the jogger girl.

“What I did?”

They smashed into the guard rail, and Allie had a horrifying moment of deja vu.

The sound of crashing glass and metal. She was flying forward, she hit the windshield, and in an instant the windshield was behind her…

…and yet this wasn’t the same as her fatal crash, for when she looked back she saw the jogger girl still in the driver’s seat, behind an inflated air bag. The girl got out of the car, frightened, bruised, but very much alive.

Only then did Allie realize what had happened. The crash had thrown Allie clear out of the girl’s body. Now Allie was a spirit again, and on the hood of the Porsche, sinking right through it.

Desperately she tried to find something to grab on to, but everything here was living world—there was nothing she could grasp. She felt the heat of the engine inside her as her body passed through it, and in a second she plunged through the car, which hung out over the edge of the bridge, and then she was falling through the air.

“Oh no! Oh no!”

She didn’t even feel the difference as the air became water—only the light around her changed. She was falling just as fast, and the dimming blue light of the bay became the charcoal darkness of the earth as she hit bottom. She could feel the mud of the bay inside her, and then solid bedrock. The density of the Earth slowed her, but not enough. Not enough. She was going down, and nothing could stop it now.

Stone in her heart, stone in her gut. Soon it would get hot. Soon it would be magma, and still she would fall until years from now she would find herself trapped in the center of gravity waiting for the end of the world. Allie was doomed.

Then she felt something grab her arm. What was that? She couldn’t see a thing in the solid stone darkness, but a voice, faint and muffled said, “Hold on to me, and don’t let go.”

And then she heard, of all things, the whinny of a horse.

CHAPTER 29 The Great Beyond

At Mary’s insistence they had returned to Atlantic City to search for Vari, but he was nowhere to be found. In the end, Mary had to accept that something horrible had befallen him. Either he had slipped off the pier, or he had been captured by the McGill’s returning crew, and taken out to sea aboard the Sulphur Queen, which was also gone.

She could have gone after the ship, but it wasn’t even on the horizon anymore, and there was no telling in what direction it had gone. As it had been when Nick and Lief were captured by the Haunter, Mary had to put her children ahead of her own desires. She had a thousand refugee Afterlights aboard the airship, and her first responsibility was to them. Van was lost, and it weighed heavily on her, for, it had been her fault and her fault alone.

With mournful resignation, she ordered Speedo to take the Hindenburg aloft, and the ship of refugees resumed its journey north. Once they were airborne, Mary took to the stateroom she had claimed for herself, closed the door, lay down on the bed, and cried. Then she did something she hadn’t allowed herself to do for many years. She closed her eyes and slept.

Nick, however, did not sleep. He was emotionally exhausted, and should have, at the very least, taken some time to rest, but there was too much on his mind.

There were things that simply weren’t sitting right, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to relax until he figured them out.

High up in the girders of the airship, Nick sat on a catwalk, in front of the bucket of coins that Mary had left in his care.

Lief found him up there, and sat across from him.

“They’re mine, you know,” Lief said. “I found them.”

“I thought you didn’t care about things like that anymore,”

“I don’t,” said Lief, “I’m just saying.”

Nick pulled out one of the coins. It was so worn there was no way of telling what kind of coin it was, what country it had come from, or what year it was made. They were all like that—even the one he had found in his pocket way back when—the one he had used to make a wish in Mary’s fountain. Funny how both the McGill and Mary had a collection of these coins.

As he held the coin, cool in his palm, Nick could have sworn it felt a little different. It felt almost…electrified…like a fuse completing a circuit.

That’s when an understanding began to come to Nick—an understanding that Nick instinctively knew was the tip of something very big and very important. He took the coin from his palm, and held it between thumb and forefinger.

“Did you know,” Nick told Lief, “that they used to put coins on dead people’s eyes?”

“Why?” asked Lief. “To keep their eyelids from opening and making people scream?”

“No – it was this old superstition. People used to think that the dead had to pay their way into the afterlife. The ancient Greeks even believed there was this ferryman you had to pay to take you across the river of death.”

Lief shrugged, unimpressed. “I don’t remember any ferry.”

Neither did Nick. But then, maybe people saw what they expected to see. Maybe the ancient Greeks saw a river instead of a tunnel. Maybe they saw a ferry instead of a light.

“I have an idea,” Nick said. “Give me your hand.”

Lief held out his hand. “Are you going to do a magic trick? Are you going to make the coin disappear?”

“I don’t know,” said Nick. “Maybe.” He put the coin in Lief’s palm, then folded Lief’s fingers around it until the coin was firmly in his closed fist. “How does it feel?”

“It’s warm,” said Lief. “It’s really warm.”

Nick waited and watched. A moment passed, then another, and then Lief suddenly looked up and gasped. Nick followed his gaze, but saw nothing—just the girders and hydrogen bladders of the airship.

“What is it? What do you see?”

Whatever it was, Lief was too enthralled to answer. Then, when Nick looked at Lief’s eyes, he saw something reflected in his pupils. It was a spot of bright light, growing larger and brighter.

Lief’s expression of wonder mellowed into a joyous smile, and he said, “… I remember now!”

“Lief?!”

“No,” said Lief. “My real name is Travis.”

Then, in the blink of an eye, and in a rainbow twinkling of light, Travis, also known as Lief of the Dead Forest, finally got where he was going.

Mary called the coins worthless, but Nick now knew the truth. He also knew that Mary wasn’t stupid. She must have known the coins’ true value—their true purpose—and it troubled Nick that she would hide something so important.

Lief was gone. Gone forever to some great beyond. The air where Lief had been just a second before now shimmered with color, but in a moment the shimmering faded.

Nick no longer had his own coin—he had hurled it into Mary’s wishing well, just as every single kid in her care had done. It was a requirement of admission. But now Nick had an entire bucket of them in front of him.

He reached in and pulled out another coin, placing it in his own palm, feeling that odd current again. The coin was still cold in his hand though, and Nick instinctively knew that while Lief had been ready for his final journey, Nick wasn’t. Nick still had work to do here in Everlost, and he had a sneaking suspicion he knew what that work would be.

Hammerhead was happily, if somewhat unsuccessfully, gnawing at a girder when he saw Nick approaching. “What time is it?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Noon maybe. Hey, Hammerhead, could you do something for me?”

“Sure. What?”

“Could you hold this for a few seconds?” And he put a coin into Hammerhead’s hand. “Tell me, is it warm, or is it cold?”

“Wow,” said Hammerhead. “It’s hot!”

“Good,” said Nick. “Would you like to see a magic trick?”

It was late in the afternoon when Mary awoke. When she looked out of her cabin window, she saw the asphalt of the airfield tarmac. They had returned to Lakehurst. Speedo had told her he didn’t feel comfortable landing the airship anywhere else. It was hard enough to get him to land on the Steel Pier. She supposed convincing him to take them all the way back to Manhattan was out of the question.

If they were lucky, the train would still be there waiting for them. If not, they would have to walk, following the dead tracks all the way home. At worst it would take them a few days to get there. Then she could begin the task of processing this large group of children, and integrating them into her society.

In one fell swoop, the population of her little community had quadrupled – but as she had told them, there was more than enough room. She would convert more floors into living space. She would work with Finders to furnish them in comfort. And in the meantime she would give each of these children her personal attention, helping them, one by one, to find their perfect niche. It was a monumental, yet noble task—and with Nick’s help she’d be able to do it.

When she left her cabin, she was surprised to find the hallways and salons of the airship empty. There were no voices coming from the higher reaches of the ship either. Nick must have already roused them and gotten them off the ship. He was very efficient, and it was good of him to let her sleep, although it wasn’t exactly her plan to sleep the entire day.

She descended the gangway expecting to find kids clustered around, but there were none. There was only one figure out there. Someone sitting on the ground a hundred yards away.

As she approached she could see that it was Nick. He sat cross-legged, staring at the Hindenburg. She realized he “was waiting there for her. Beside him sat the bucket of coins.

Only now did Mary begin to get worried.

“This is a pretty big dead-spot,” Nick said.

“The entire tarmac,” Mary answered. “The death of the Hindenburg was a large-scale event. The ground here will remember it forever.” She waited for Nick to say something more, but he didn’t.

“So,” Mary said, “where is everyone?”

“Gone,” said Nick.

“Gone,” echoed Mary, still not sure she had heard him correctly. “Gone where, exactly?”

Nick stood up. “Don’t know. Not my business.”

Mary looked into the bucket at his feet. To her horror the bucket was empty. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing—what he was telling her.

“All of them?” She looked around the tarmac hoping for a sign that this wasn’t true, but there was not a soul in sight.

“What can I say?” said Nick. “They were all ready to go.”

For the first time in her memory, Mary was speechless. This was a betrayal of such magnitude there were no words to express it. It was as awful, and as evil as anything Mikey had done in all his years as a monster. It was worse!

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Mary knew she was screaming, but she didn’t care. How dare he! How dare he do this to her!

“I know exactly what I’ve done,” said Nick with all the calm in his voice that Mary had lost. “I let them go to where they should have gone in the first place.”

“How dare you presume to know where they should have gone. They were here, which means this is where they were meant to be!”

“I don’t believe that!”

“Who cares what you believe!” It was as if she was looking at a different boy.

She had taken him into her confidence—she had trusted him. They were going to be a team, benevolently leading the Afterlights of Everlost forever and ever. This wasn’t supposed to happen!

Then Nick’s expression changed, and for the first time his calm took a turn toward anger, and accusation.

“How long have you known?” Nick demanded.

Mary refused to answer him.

“Did you know about the coins from the beginning? How long have you been robbing them from the children who come to you for help?”

She found she couldn’t face the accusation, and couldn’t meet his eye. “Not from the beginning,” she grumbled. “And I’m not a thief—they throw their coins into the fountain by choice. They can take them out any time they want—but no one does—and do you know why? Because they don’t want to.”

“No! They don’t take back their coins because it’s your fountain, and they wouldn’t dream of going against Miss Mary. But if they knew the truth about what those coins did—what they were really for—they’d take them in a second!”

“My children are happy!” insisted Mary.

“They’re lost! And you’re no better than your brother!”

Before Mary even knew what she was doing, she brought back her hand and slapped him across the face with the full force of her fury. For a moment she wanted to take it back, and tell him that she was sorry, but then she realized she wasn’t sorry at all. She wanted to slap him again and again and again until she slapped some sense into him. What had she done to deserve this treachery? She had cared about him—more than that, she had loved him. She loved him still, and now she hated the fact that she loved him.

Nick recovered from the slap, then picked up the bucket and tilted it toward her. “Strange,” he said, “but there were exactly enough coins in there for every Afterlight.”

“So what!” said Mary. “A thousand Afterlights, a thousand coins. Nothing strange about that.”

“Look again.”

Mary looked into the bucket to see that it wasn’t entirely empty. Two coins remained.

“Two coins,” said Nick. “Two of us.”

“Coincidence!” insisted Mary. She would not be swayed by it. This was not the universe trying to tell her something. This was not the hand of God reaching out to them. Mary didn’t need a bucket to tell her what God’s purpose for her was.

She reached in, picked up a coin and prepared to throw it as far from her sight as possible…But then Nick said – ” – Is it warm or is it cold?”

Mary felt the coin in her hand. “It’s cold,” she told him. “Cold as death.”

Nick sighed. “Mine’s cold, too. So I guess neither of us are going anywhere for a while. And then he added, “All these years here, and you’re still not ready.”

“I’ll never be ready!” said Mary. “I’ll never leave Everlost, because this world is the eternal one, and it’s my job to find lost souls to fill it. It’s my job to find them and take care of them. Why can’t you understand that?”

“I do understand it,” Nick said. “And maybe you’re right—maybe that is your job…But now I think I have a job, too. And my job is to help those same lost souls get where they’re going.”

Mary looked at the ugly coin in her hand. What was so wonderful about the end of the tunnel? How did anyone know if that bright light was a light of love, or of flames?

If there was one thing Mary knew it was the simple rule that every mother tells her child: If you’re lost, stay put. Don’t walk away, don’t wander off, don’t talk to strangers, and just because you see a light, it doesn’t give you permission to cross the street. Lost children stay put! How could Nick not see the sense in that?

At the sound of a car engine, Mary looked up to see Speedo drive up in the Jaguar she had given him. At least he was smart enough not to hurl himself down a dark tunnel.

“The train’s waiting,” Speedo said.

Nick turned to Mary. “I’m going back to the Twin Towers,” he said. “And I’m going to tell all those kids what I know.”

“They won’t listen to you!” Mary told him.

“I think they will.”

There was certainty in Nick’s voice, and Mary knew why. It was because he was right, and they both knew it. As much as Mary wanted to believe otherwise, she knew her children would take their coins back. They would not be able to resist the temptation. That’s why the temptation had to be taken away.

“Why don’t you come with me,” Nick said. “We can do it together.”

But Mary already knew what she had to do. Remove the temptation. And so without even dignifying Nick with a response, she turned and ran back toward the giant zeppelin alone.

“Mary! Wait!”

She didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. She climbed into the piloting gondola of the airship. If Speedo could pilot this thing, then so could she—and she would get back to her children before Nick did. He would never get the chance to poison their minds, because she would get there first, and save them all.

CHAPTER 30 Leaving Everlost

Although Allie had no way of knowing it while she was encased in the jogger girl’s body, Mikey McGill had never let her out of his sight. After what she had done to him, he wasn’t letting her go, and even though she was hiding inside a living girl, eventually she would have to come out, and he’d have her! Vengeance drove him at first, but after a few hours, the feeling began to fade. The truth was, he admired Allie. She had been a worthy opponent. She had successfully outsmarted him, playing him for a fool—and he was a fool, wasn’t he? How could he despise her for being more clever than him?

Although Mikey had no skill at skinjacking, he did have another useful skill. He could rise from the depths. It was a skill he had never seen in anyone else. He only hoped it was powerful enough to do the job this time.

Shiloh the Famous Diving Horse had no problem leaping into the bay and following Allie as she fell—after all, diving from a frighteningly high place was exactly what it was trained to do. Like Allie, the horse and its rider passed through the air, through the water, and found themselves plunging through the darkness of the Earth. The horse, not expecting this, began a panicked gallop through the stone. Locking his legs around the horse, Mikey spread his arms out wide, fishing with his fingertips for a sign of Allie, until he finally found her, grabbed her, and pulled her onto the horse with him. Then he dug his heels in, and the horse worked harder against the stone. Mikey tried to imagine them all filled with hydrogen, like the airship. Lighter than air, and most definitely lighter than stone. His powerful will battled the will of gravity, and soon they stopped sinking and began to rise.

The forward momentum of the ghost horse trying to gallop through stone was greater than their upward momentum, but that was fine. Even if they were only moving up inch by inch, they’d get to the surface eventually.

At last they surfaced in a New Jersey wood. It was dusk now, and they were a few miles inland from where they had begun.

The second they were on the surface, Allie leaped off the horse, fully prepared to run if she had to. As far as she was concerned, Mikey McGill was not to be trusted—even if he did just rescue her.

“I should have let you sink,” Mikey said.

“Why didn’t you?”

Mikey didn’t answer. Instead he said, “Where were you trying to go? Maybe I can help you get there.”

She hesitated, expecting to see some sort of deceit in him, but found none. “If you must know, I’m going home.”

Mikey nodded. “And then?”

Allie opened her mouth to answer, and found that nothing came out. Allie was a goal-oriented girl. The problem was she rarely thought beyond the goal.

What was her plan, really? She would get home, but then what? She would see if her father survived the car accident. She would spend a little time watching her family’s comings and goings. She would try to communicate with them—maybe she would even find a neighbor willing to be skinjacked, and then talk to her family, convincing them it was her by telling them things that only she could know. Allie would tell them she was all right, not to worry and not to mourn.

But then what?

It was now that Allie figured out something she should have figured out a long time ago: Home was no longer home. She had denied it, refused to think about it, pretended it didn’t matter, but she couldn’t pretend anymore. If her great victory was going home, then her victory was an empty one.

“I asked you a question,” said Mikey. “What will you do after you go home?”

Since Allie had no answer, she threw it back in his face. “That’s my business,” she said. “What about you? Are you going to make yourself into the One True Monster of Everlost again?”

Mikey gently kicked his heels into Shiloh’s side to remind the horse to keep pulling his hooves out of the ground, so they didn’t sink again. “I’m done with being a monster,” he said. Then he reached into his pocket and threw something to Allie, and she caught it. It was a coin.

“What’s this for?”

“You can use it to get you where you’re going.”

Allie looked at the coin, so similar to the one she had tossed into Mary’s fountain. Did he mean what she thought he meant? To get where she was going—it was terrifying yet enticing. Electrifying. She stared at the coin, then looked back up at Mikey. “Is that what you’re doing, then? ‘Getting where you’re going’?”

Allie thought she read some fear in his face at the suggestion. “No,” he said.

“I don’t think I’m going anywhere good. I’m in no hurry to get there.”

“Well,” said Allie, “you can probably change where you’re going, don’t you think?”

Mikey didn’t seem too convinced. “I was a pretty nasty monster,” he said.

“Were,” reminded Allie. “That was then, this is now.”

Mikey seemed to appreciate her practical, logical view of things. “So then, how long do you think it would take to make up for being a monster?”

Allie thought about the question. “I have no idea. But some people believe that all it takes is a sincere decision to change, and you’re saved.”

“Maybe,” said Mikey. “But I’d rather play it safe. I was a monster for thirty years, so I’d say I need thirty years of good deeds to wipe the slate clean.”

Allie smirked. “Is Mikey McGill even capable of good deeds?”

Mikey frowned. “Okay, then. Sixty years of halfway-decent deeds.”

“Fair enough,” said Allie. She looked at the coin in her hand. It was lukewarm.

She suspected if she held it long enough it would get her where she was going, but just because she was ready to go, it didn’t mean she had to just yet. It was a matter of choice.

What was it her fortune had said? “Linger or light. The choice is yours.”

Allie chose to put the coin in her hip pocket for now. She always had been good at saving her money.

Mikey held out his hand to her, ready to lift her up on the horse.

“Home?” he asked.

But suddenly it didn’t seem all that urgent. There were still plenty of unknowns to explore here in Everlost. She could squeeze a lot of them in between here and home. “There’s no hurry,” she told him, but Mikey wasn’t pleased.

“Taking you home,” he said, “was going to be my first halfway-decent deed.”

“I’m sure you’ll find another one.”

Mikey sighed in frustration. “This is not going to be easy. I’m good at being bad, but I’m bad at being good. I don’t know the first thing about good deeds.”

“Well,” Allie said, with a grin, “I do know a twelve-step program.” Then she grabbed Mikey’s hand, climbed on the horse with him, and they rode off together toward all things unknown.

Nick had to win this race, even if the odds were against him, and so when the ghost train dropped him off at old Penn Station, he wasted no time. It was dusk now. The train had been fast, but an airship didn’t have to worry about tracks.

His only hope was that Mary’s learning curve when it came to flying the thing had slowed her down. When she had first taken to the air, the airship was erratic, turning this way and that, unable to set a course. With any luck, she was still zigzagging across New Jersey, trying to get the hang of it.

He ran at full speed from the station all the way down to the plaza at the base of the towers. The same kids were there playing kickball, jumping rope and playing tag.

“Is Mary here?” he called out. He expected them to rush him and capture him.

What was Mary’s version of chiming? Nick had a suspicion that he was about to find out.

But they didn’t rush him. Instead, one of the kickball kids playing the outfield turned to him and said, “Meadow says she went away for a while, but shell be back real soon.”

Good, thought Nick, he had beaten her here—and now, when he looked west, he could see that he hadn’t beaten her by much. Between the buildings to the west, Nick could see the zeppelin in the sky across the Hudson River, still high, but dropping toward them. It couldn’t be any more than five miles away. Nick knew he didn’t have much time.

“Go get Meadow,” he told the kickball kid. “Tell her to gather everyone at the fountain.” Then the kickball kid ran off, confounding the daily pattern of his game.

Nick went over to the fountain himself, and stood on its lip, calling out to all the kids in the plaza.

“Everyone! Everyone listen to me! I have a message from Mary!”

That got their attention. Jump ropes stopped spinning, balls stopped bouncing.

Kids began to converge on the fountain.

Nick looked to the west again: The airship was there, halfway across the river.

It was still too high, but that didn’t matter—as soon as the kids saw it, the game would be over. He would lose their attention. He had to keep everyone focused on him.

Meadow began to arrive with kids from the higher floors. “Mary wants me to tell you that you no longer have to fear the McGill. She’s cut him down to size! “

A cheer from the kids.

“And,” said Nick, “I have something very exciting to tell you!” Okay, thought Nick. Here it goes… “How many of you threw your wishes into the fountain?”

Every hand went up.

“And how many of your wishes came true?”

One by one the hands went down, until not a single one of them was left.

“Well,” said Nick, “it’s time for all your wishes to come true.” And with that he jumped into the fountain, reached into the water, and started pulling up coins. “C’mon,” he said. “Everyone gets their coin back!”

At first they were reluctant… until the first girl came forward, all pigtails and big eyes. She stepped into the fountain, and Nick took a coin, pressing it into her palm. The entire crowd watched and saw with their own eyes what happened next.

The girl got where she was going.

There was a long moment of silence as it hit home for these kids exactly what this meant for each of them…and then they all began climbing into the fountain themselves, lining up, and accepting the coins from Nick. In less than a minute their excitement reached critical mass, all sense of order broke down, and it became a wild rush of kids leaping, splashing, grabbing coins and disappearing in rainbow sprays of light. Nick left the fountain, and stood back to watch.

To the west, the zeppelin was growing larger as it neared, eclipsing the setting sun, but if the kids crowding the fountain noticed, they didn’t care. By the time Mary arrived, she would be too late; they’d be gone. Perhaps not every single one of them, but most of them. All the ones who were ready. As it should be.

Nick looked up to the peaks of the Twin Towers, converging as they scraped the sky. He marveled at their majesty the way tourists had during the Towers’ twenty-nine years of life. It was a comfort to know that they would never be gone completely because they were here, a timeless part of Everlost. They were great monuments of memory, and although Mary had, for a time, turned them into her own personal orphanage, that was over now. They had a greater place in the scheme of things.

By now more than half the children were gone, and the rest were well on the way.

Meadow came up to Nick, and together they watched the joyful vanishings.

“Mary’s going to have a fit when she sees this,” Meadow said. “It’ll totally trip her out.” Then she smiled. “Good thing I won’t be here to see it.”

Then Meadow ran toward the fountain, jumped in, and a moment later she was gone.

Nick pulled his own coin from his pocket – the one he had salvaged from the empty bucket. It was still cold as cold could be, but that was all right. He realized now that while his arrival had tied him to Allie, his departure was tied to Mary. As long as she was fighting to keep children here, he would be fighting to free them.

He supposed that made them enemies. It almost made him laugh. How strange it was to be in love with your enemy.

With the zeppelin coming in for a landing, and the last of the children vanishing from the fountain, Nick put his hands in his pockets and left, strolling leisurely uptown.

Perhaps Mary was right about Everlost being an eternal world: a place where all things and places that have earned immortality remain forever in glory. If that were the case, then Everlost was like the grand museum of the universe, a heavenly and priceless gallery. As Mary once said, they were blessed to be able to see it—but a museum was to be visited, and appreciated, not to be lived in.

That was Mary’s mistake. Afterlights were merely visitors passing through.

Nick knew there were more lost souls in lost places to free. There were more fountains and more buckets of coins to be found—and although he didn’t know when he would ever get where he was going, he knew that when the time was right he would get there.

In the meantime, he had work to do.