The Alter Boys WELCOME TO ROCKLAND COUNTY! It was a road sign Allie was sure she’d never see again. The last time she had seen it, she was pushed into the Earth, and if it hadn’t been for Lief and Nick, she wouldn’t have made it out. I intuit be crazy coming back here. Well, crazy or not, here she was.
“Johnnie-O!” she called out at the top of her lungs. “I want to talk to you, Johnnie-O!”
Allie knew it wasn’t just bad luck that had brought Johnnie-O and his little team of morons to them that night. The way Allie figured it, any new arrivals in Everlost in this area would follow the main highway, and would pass this way. If Johnnie-O wasn’t here himself, chances are he had a lookout keeping an eye on this very spot, waiting for some poor unsuspecting Greensoul to rest beneath the WELCOME TO ROCKLAND COUNTY! sign.
She figured right. It took a few hours of calling, and making noise, but finally word had been relayed back to Johnnie-O, and he showed up at around noon. This time he came with a dozen kids to back him up, instead of just four. Nothing was going to scare them away this time. The cigarette was still hanging out of the corner of his mouth, smoldering away, and Allie realized that cigarette was going to be stuck there until the end of time.
“Hey-it’s that girl who tricked you!” said the kid with the purple lips, and the lump in his throat.
Johnnie-O hit him. “She didn’t trick me,” he said, and nobody contradicted him.
He assumed a kind of gunslinger posture, like this was a showdown. He looked more comical than anything else, with his huge hands.
“I thought I sent you down,” he said.
“You thought wrong.”
“So what? Did ya come back so’s I could send you down right this time?”
“I’m back with a proposition.”
Johnnie-O looked at her, his expression stony. At first Allie thought he was doing it for effect. Then she realized he didn’t know what “proposition” meant.
“I want your help,” Allie explained.
Raggedy Andy tossed his weird red hair out of his eyes and laughed. “Why would we wanna help you!”
Johnnie-O smacked him, then crossed his heavy arms and said, “Why would we wanna help you!”
“Because I can get you what you want.”
By now even more kids had arrived. Some were real little, others her age, maybe a bit older. They all had menacing scowls-even the little ones.
“We don’t want nothin’ from you!” Johnnie-O said, and his chorus of bullies grumbled their agreement. This was all posturing, Allie knew. He had to be curious-if he wasn’t, he’d already have pushed her down.
“You attack Greensouls for the crumbs in their pockets, and pre-chewed gum.”
Johnnie-O shrugged. “Yeah, so?”
“What if I told you I knew where you could get real food. Not just pocket crumbs, but whole loaves of bread.”
Johnnie-O kept his arms crossed. “And what if I sewed your lying mouth shut?”
“It’s no lie. I know a place where salamis and chickens hang from the ceiling, a place where you can eat all you want, and wash it down with root beer!”
“Root beer,” echoed one of the little kids.
Johnnie-O threw him a warning glance, and the kid looked at his toes.
“There ain’t no such place. Whadaya think I am, stupid?”
Well yes, Allie wanted to say, but that’s beside the point. Instead she said, “Have you ever heard of ‘The Haunter’?”
If the rest of the kids were any indication, they all knew about the Haunter.
There were whispers, a few kids backed away from her, and the lump in Purple-puss’s throat bobbed up and down like a fishing float. For a second Allie even thought she could see fear in Johnnie-O’s eyes, but he covered it with a wide grin that tilted the tip of his nasty little Marlboro to the sky.
“First you tell me the McGill is your friend, and now the Haunter?” His smile turned into a frown, and the cigarette tipped downward. “I’ve had enough a you-you’re going down!”
“Send her down!” the other kids started yelling. “Down! Down!”
They advanced on her. She knew she only had a split second before mob mentality took over, and then nothing she could say would save her.
“I lied!” she shouted. “I lied about the McGill to stop you from sending me down -but this time I’m telling the truth.” Johnnie-O put up his hand, and the kids hesitated, waiting for his signal.
“The Haunter captured my friends, and I can’t rescue them alone! I need somebody strong,” Allie said, looking right into Johnnie-O’s eyes. “I need somebody smart.”
Allie watched the tip of his cigarette. Would it tip up, or would it tilt down?
It wavered for the longest time, and finally it tilted upward. “You came to the right guy.”
They took Allie to the nearest town, the place Johnnie-O and his band of juvenile hoods called home. Johnnie-O made a point of crossing the main street several times, for no sensible reason.
“It’s because of the Chinese restaurants,” Raggedy Andy explained. “They’re supposed to be bad luck or something-at least that’s what Johnnie-O heard.’ And so they wove a serpentine path down the street, crossing to avoid all four Chinese restaurants in town, proving that superstition was not limited to the living.
They brought Allie to their hideout. Stupid that they called it a hideout, because they didn’t have to hide from the living, who couldn’t see them anyway.
Like Mary, Johnnie-O had found a building that had crossed over, and had made it home. His was a white clapboard church-which struck Allie as funny. This kid probably never went to a church in his life, and now he was stuck living in one.
At least there was some justice in the universe. There were about thirty kids total, all disciples of Johnnie-O, like he was running a tough-guy school. They called themselves “The Altar Boys,” because they lived in a church, but the way Allie saw it, they were also “alter” boys-that is, every single one of them had something about him slightly altered from his living self; like Johnnie-O’s hands, or Raggedy Andy’s hair.
“How come there are no girls?” Allie asked.
“Girls come by once in a while, wantin’ to join,” Johnnie-O said. “We send ‘em packing.” And then he added, “I don’t like girls much.”
Allie couldn’t help but grin. “I think you died about a year too young.”
“Yeah,” Johnnie-O admitted. “And it really ticks me off.”
Now that she was accepted by their leader, the other kids kept stealing glimpses at her, like she was some sort of exotic creature. Great, she thought, I’m playing Wendy to a delinquent Peter Pan and the Lost Boys of Juvie Hall.
She told them all about the pickle factory, and the Haunter’s air-soldiers.
“His magic ain’t no match for us,” Johnnie-O said proudly. Allie wasn’t entirely convinced, but beggars can’t be choosers.
“The hard part will be getting in. There’s a big steel door-not living-world steel, but steel that crossed over with the building. I pounded on it for hours and couldn’t make a dent.”
Johnnie-O wasn’t bothered. “That ain’t a problem. We’ll use explosives.”
“You’ve got explosives!?”
He called to a kid on the other side of the church. “Hey, Stubs, get your fat butt over here!”
The kid came running.
“A few years back,” Johnnie explained, “Stubs here was sellin’ illegal fireworks out of his garage. They caught on fire, and Stubs won himself a one-way trip to Everlost. Anyways, it turns out part of his fireworks stash came over with him.”
And then Johnnie added, “Which is more than I can say for most of his fingers.”
“Yeah,” said Raggedy Andy, laughing. “That’s how come Stubs can only count to three.”
Allie and the “Alter” Boys left at dawn, the members of the gang all carrying baseball bats, chains, and various other makeshift weapons that had somehow crossed over. They would have been terrifying in the living world, but with the threat of pain and death not applicable in Everlost, it was all pretty much for show; fashion accessories for bad boys who didn’t get where they were going.
All the while as they marched south toward the city, Purple-puss kept giving Allie dirty looks. Not too long into their journey, he broke his silence. “I don’t like this, Johnnie-O,” he said, the bulge in his neck ping-ponging up and down. “She’s not one of us, we shouldn’t oughta be trusting her.”
Johnnie-O smirked. “Heimlich here don’t trust nobody.”
“For all we know,” Heimlich said, “she could be leading us straight to the Sky Witch.”
“Shut up,” said Johnny-O, “there ain’t no such thing.”
“Sky Witch?” asked Allie.
Johnnie-O waved it off. “Just a stupid story they tell to scare little kids about some witch who lives in the skies over Manhattan.”
“She devours kids’ souls,” said another kid.
“Yeah,” said Raggedy Andy, baring his teeth and hooking his hands like claws.
“She grabs you and takes a deep breath sucking your soul right up her nose.
That’s why they also call her the ‘Queen of Snot.’”
Johnnie-O gave them a Three Stooges-like slap that got all three of them. “What, were you born stupid or did you just die that way?” He turned to Allie. “Some kids will believe anything.”
Allie, wisely, said nothing.
“We should make her skim,” said Raggedy Andy. “That way we’ll know whether she’s worthy.”
Johnnie-O explained that all prospective members of the Altar Boys had to take a coin and skim it on the Hudson River. If it skimmed at least twice like a stone, then you were worthy of joining the Altar Boys. You had to use a coin you crossed with, and you only got one chance because once your coin sank, it was gone for good.
Allie was confused. “But…how can you skim an Everlost coin on living-world water? It wouldn’t work – it would just fall straight through.”
“Well,” said Johnnie-O with a wink, “I’m the one who decides whether or not I saw it skim.”
The next morning, they came to the George Washington Bridge, which crossed the Hudson into the northern tip of Manhattan. There they halted. Allie looked back to see them all milling around near the on-ramp.
“We don’t do bridges,” Johnnie-O said and Allie smirked.
“Oh, are you scared?”
Johnnie-O narrowed his eyes into a glare. “If you ever tried to cross a bridge you’d know how easy it is to sink right through it, and fall into the river. But I guess you ain’t bright enough to figure that out.”
Allie was about to fire right back at him, about how she had already crossed this bridge, and maybe his name should be Johnnie-Zero, instead of Johnnie-O, because he had zero guts-but then Raggedy Andy said, “We lost more than twenty kids once trying to cross the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was awful.”
Everyone looked down sadly, realized their shoes were sinking into the road, and began to shuffle around again.
“Old news,” said Johnnie-O, clenching his fists, “but we don’t cross bridges no more.”
Allie swallowed everything she was about to say. She wondered if she, Nick, and Lief would have sunk through this bridge, if they hadn’t been wearing their road-shoes.
“Maybe she is working for the Sky Witch,” said one of the little kids. “Maybe she wants us to sink.”
The others looked at her now with frightened eyes, but the look quickly mildewed into threatening.
“Johnnie-O’s right,” Allie said, “we shouldn’t risk it.”
“We’ll take the tunnel,” Johnnie-O announced, and led the way.
Flurries were falling by the time they reached the Lincoln Tunnel four hours later. Although there was a narrow service catwalk along the side, Johnnie-O led his crew right down the middle of the road, intentionally letting oncoming traffic barrel right through them.
The Everlost version of macho, thought Allie. Although she would have much preferred the catwalk, she didn’t want to show any signs of weakness, so she walked side by side with Johnnie-O, ignoring the annoying sensation of through-traffic.
By the time they reached the Manhattan side of the tunnel, the flurries had grown into a full-fledged snowstorm, the first of the winter. A violent wind tore at the coats of the living.
Snow felt different than rain or sleet as it passed through Allie. It tickled.
As for the wind, she felt it, and it was indeed cold. But like all other weather conditions, feeling it and being affected by it were two different things. The cold did not, could not, make her shiver. And yet as unpleasant as it seemed for the living people fighting the snowstorm, Allie wished she could be one of them.
But Johnnie-O, like Mary, had no interest in the living. Allie wondered how long until she became like that.
The going was slow, because it seemed every single city block had a Chinese restaurant, and Johnnie-O was making them cross the street, or turning down side streets again and again to avoid them.
“This is ridiculous,” Allie said. “Chow mein does not carry the plague.” The next time, she refused to cross the street, and walked right in front of Wan Foo’s Mandarin Emporium.
“Wow, she’s brave,” said one of the little kids, and so Johnnie-O was forced to do the same, just to prove he was just as brave as Allie.
When they finally reached the Haunter’s place, Allie could tell something was wrong. The steel door that had been so securely sealed now hung wide open and was slightly bent.
Johnnie-O looked to Allie as if she could explain, but she only shrugged.
Maybe, she thought, Nick and Lief fought their way out.
Johnnie-O, for all his swagger and big-fisted boisterousness, wasn’t about to be the first one in, so Allie took the lead and cautiously stepped inside.
The scene inside was not at all what Allie expected. There was no longer food hanging from the ceiling. Instead, half-gnawed carcasses of roast chickens and pieces of meat lay strewn about the floor.
“My God,” said Allie.
“You said it,” said Johnnie-O. “I haven’t seen so much food in fifty years!”
Unable to control himself, he raced forward and the Altar Boys followed, grabbing the carcasses and meat off the floor and shoving them into their mouths. There was no need to fight because there was enough for everybody.
“No!” yelled Allie. “The Haunter! He could be anywhere!”
But they weren’t listening.
Allie braced for the moment the Haunter’s hollow minions would descend on them, slapping them into barrels, but as she looked around she realized the barrels were all gone. All, that is, but one single barrel that sat in the center of the mess.
Allie noticed shredded bits of black cloth mixed in among the scraps of food-and then something else caught her eye. It was a turkey- a big one-a twenty-five pounder, maybe. It was a bird the Haunter had probably ecto-ripped into Everlost right off someone’s Thanksgiving dinner table. One thing though…the turkey had a bite out of it. A huge jagged bite. It was as if a dinosaur had sunk its teeth into it and ripped it apart-you could still see the teeth marks.
What, thought Allie, could leave an awful bite mark like that?
Suddenly her attention was drawn to the single barrel in the center of the room.
Someone was inside it, pounding and screaming. She couldn’t make out the words but she recognized the voice. Just hearing it chilled her far more than the blizzard ever could.
“Johnnie-O! Over here!” she called.
With a chicken in each of his fists and grease dripping down his chin, Johnnie-O looked a bit more comical and less menacing than usual. Reluctantly he handed his chickens to Heimlich with a look that said, You eat them, you ‘re dead.
He came over to the barrel, and both he and Allie knelt down, putting their ears close to the wood.
“Who’s out there?” the voice inside said. “Let me out, let me out and I shall give you whatever you want!”
It was the Haunter.
Johnnie-O looked to Allie for direction. She had, after all, led them to the biggest feast of their afterlives, so she was now held in some sort of reverence.
“Let me out!”yelled the Haunter. “I demand you let me out!”
Allie spoke loudly enough to be heard through the wood and brine. “What happened here? Who did this to you?”
“Let me out!” screeched the Haunter. “Let me out and I shall rip food from the finest restaurants in the living world and lay it at your feet.”
But Allie ignored him. “Where are the other barrels?”
“They were taken.”
“By whom?” Allie demanded.
“By the McGill.”
Johnnie-O gasped, and his mouth dropped open in astonishment. His cigarette would have fallen out if it could. “The McGill?!”
“His ship’s in the bay, out past the Statue of Liberty,” the Haunter said. “Let me out and I will help you fight him.”
Allie considered it, but then she looked around. The strips of black cloth were squirming on the ground like snakes. Frantically they danced about, and Allie realized what the Haunter was doing. Even from within the barrel, the Haunter was trying to bring his air-warriors together to capture them. They tried to reassemble themselves, but it was useless. The McGill had shredded them far too well for even the Haunter to put them back together again.
Allie looked at the barrel and tried to find some compassion for this creature inside, who had so mercilessly imprisoned her friends. In the end she found her compassion did not reach that far.
“Leave him in there!” she said loudly enough for him to hear. “Let him stew in his own juices.”
“NO!” the Haunter screamed within the barrel, and around the room bones and bird carcasses began to fly like meteors, randomly tossed about by the Haunter’s rage.
Allie didn’t care. She turned to Johnnie-O. “Can you and the Altar Boys come with me?” she said. “I won’t be able to fight the McGill alone.”
But Johnnie-O backed away. “We got what we cane for,” he said. “Ain’t nothing anyone can say, living, dead, or otherwise that would get me to fight the McGill. You’re on your own.”
And then, almost as an apology, he reached down and grabbed a leg from the turkey that had been bitten by the McGill. He ripped the leg free and held it out to her, almost like a peace offering.
“Here, take it,” Johnme-O said. “You deserve to eat too.”
And so she did. She dug her teeth into the turkey and relished its flavor-the first flavor she had tasted in all her months here. It was like being in heaven.
Yet as good as it was, it couldn’t outweigh the hell she knew she would soon have to face once she tracked down the McGill.
She turned to leave, but before she could, Johnnie-O called to her. “You never told us your name,” he said, then tilted his Marlboro up with a grin. “I gots to know it if we’re gonna tell stories about how you went off to fight the McGill and all.”
Allie found herself oddly flattered. Johnnie-O had decided she was worth being turned into a legend.
“My name is…” and for a moment she couldn’t remember. But the moment passed.
“Allie,” she said.
Johnnie-O nodded. “Allie the Outcast,” he said. Allie had to admit she liked it.
“That’s right.”
“Good luck,” Johnnie-O said…”Hope you don’t get eaten or anything.”
Allie left and headed toward Battery Park- the tip of Manhattan, where she was sure to see the McGill’s ship, if it was still there. She was terrified, and yet at the same time, she felt ennobled. Fighting to free her friends had felt like a desperate mission for a lone girl, but now she was Allie the Outcast, on her way to battle the McGill. Kids would tell her story, whatever that story might be. This was no longer just a mission; it was a quest. And she was ready.
PART THREE The McGill Everlost CHAPTER 15
The Brimstone Ship On February 7, 1963, a ship called the Marine Sulphur Queen left the world of the living. A few days after setting sail from Beaumont, Texas, the ship vanished off the coast of Florida without as much as a single radio message. All they found was an oil slick, a few life jackets, and the persistent smell of brimstone-the awful odor associated with rotten eggs, and, coincidentally, the smell also associated with hell.
There was, of course, a perfectly logical and nondemonic explanation for the smell. The Sulphur Queen was an old World War II tanker that was now being used to transport liquid sulphur-also known as brimstone. However the eerie smell, combined with the fact that the ship mysteriously vanished in the Bermuda Triangle, naturally led people to consider a dark, supernatural end to the unlucky brimstone barge.
In truth, the death of the Sulphur Queen was extremely bizarre, but not exactly supernatural. Stated simply, the Sulphur Queen was overcome by a very large ocean fart.
On that fateful February day, a massive ball of natural gas, two hundred feet wide, burst up from beneath the ocean floor, and when the bubble surfaced, the entire ship dropped into it in less than a second. The bubble burst, water rushed in, covering the ship, and it was gone. The Sulphur Queen was very literally swallowed by the sea.
There were the expected few moments of utter panic and mortal terror as the crew of the tragically submerged vessel made their final journey down that path of light, to wherever they were going. Then, less than a minute later, the ship itself got to where it was going-namely the bottom of the sea.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
Because what no one knew was that the old vessel was the last of its kind. It was the final ship built by a failing shipyard, which closed down the day the Sulphur Queen first launched out of dry dock. The workers, knowing an era was coming to an end, built the ship with as much care as a team of shipbuilders could muster. Their love of this ship was welded into every rivet. Such an ignoble death to this well-loved vessel could not be suffered lightly by the fabric of eternity. And so, when the waters surging about in the methane-heavy air finally settled, a ghost of the Queen remained, permanently afloat in the half-world of Everlost.
Since no soul had crossed over with it, the ghost of the Sulphur Queen drifted for years; no crew, no passengers. It drifted, that is, until the McGill found it, and turned it into the greatest pirate ship ever to sail the waters of eternity-and, except for one nasty run-in with the Flying Dutchman, its supremacy on the seas had never been challenged.
Since the evil smell of brimstone still surrounded the vessel, the McGill found it useful for inspiring fear, because the McGill knew that when it came to being a monster, image was everything. One only needed to sniff the brimstone to be convinced that the Sulphur Queen was a ship from hell, rather than a ship from Texas.
The McGill had remodeled the tanker into as proper a pirate ship as possible. It wasn’t too hard to make it menacing, for the ship was already rusted and rancid when it crossed into Everlost. That, the smell, and the McGill’s fearsome reputation were ail it took to make the Sulphur Queen the floating terror of Everlost.
On the open deck, the McGill had fashioned himself a throne made from pieces of this and that: pipes torn from the ship, fancy portrait frames, curtains from old buildings that had crossed over. The throne was studded with jewels that were glued on with old bubble gum. It was, in short, a monstrosity-just like the McGill himself-and it suited him just fine.
The McGill’s most recent adventure had been a raid in New York. He had long heard rumors of the Haunter, and his mystical little dojo where he taught kids to haunt, with weird discipline, like it was some sort of martial art. The McGill had no patience for legends that didn’t involve him. As far as he was concerned, such legends were competition, and needed to be silenced.
The Haunter was silenced well. Oh, he had put up a fight, levitating, and summoning up wraiths in black robes that walked like human beings-as if any of this could impress the McGill. He had learned early on that one’s physical strength in Everlost had nothing to do with muscle mass. It had all to do with the strength of one’s will-and the McGill was surely the most willful creature that ever lived. After he had shredded the wraith-warriors with his claws, the McGill took on the Haunter himself. The little Neanderthal had put up a fight – but in the end he was no match for the McGill.
“If you ever get out of there,” he had shouted at the barrel where the Haunter had been sealed, “you had better NEVER cross my path again. Or I’ll find something worse for you.”
He wasn’t sure if the Haunter had even heard him, because he never stopped cursing from within the barrel.
The McGill had dined royally on the spread of food that this Haunter had somehow pulled from the living world. He feasted for hours, and threw his scraps to his associates, who were happy to have them. That’s what he called his crew:
“associates.”
Now, still full from the feast, they had returned to the ship with a dozen barrels, leaving behind only the one that contained the Haunter.
“So what do we do with them?” asked Pinhead, as the McGill sat in his throne, looking at the barrels now arranged haphazardly on the deck. Pinhead was the McGill’s chief associate. Somewhere along the line, Pinhead had forgotten the correct proportion of a human head to its body, and so the size of his head had receded like an apple left on a windowsill. The difference was not so profound that he looked like a complete freak. It was subtle. When you looked at Pinhead, you knew something was wrong, but you weren’t quite sure what it was.
“Sir? The barrels-what should we do with them?”
“I heard you,” the McGill snapped.
He rose from his throne, and loped in his awful crooked stride toward the barrels.
“According to the Haunter, there’s someone inside every single one of them,”
Pinhead told him, with a certain excitement in his voice. In life, Pinhead must have been the kind of kid who would rip through a cereal box to get to the prize at the bottom.
“We’ll see,” the McGill snapped.
“And I’ll bet these kids have been pickling for so long,” Pinhead said, “that they’ll worship whoever sets them free.”
This gave the McGill pause for thought. He stroked his chin, a bulbous thing as rough and unshapely as a potato. It was an interesting idea. Others feared him, but never was he the subject of worship and complete adoration. “You think so?”
“Only one way to find out.” And then Pinhead added, “If they’re ingrates, we’ll put ‘em back in the barrels and dump them into the sea.”
“All right, then,” said the McGill, and he gestured to his associates lurking in the shadows. “Open them up.”
Although not even the Haunter knew this, Afterlights were very much like wine when sealed in a barrel. The longer a wine is left to age, the better it gets…unless of course something goes wrong, and it turns to vinegar.
Neither Nick nor Lief had turned to vinegar, however. Both had adapted in his own unique way to their situation. While Lief became like a baby in a womb, and lost any sense of time and space, Nick did the opposite. He was aware of every passing moment, never forgot exactly where he was-and didn’t even forget WHO he was, so those stupid little pieces of paper he had written his name on weren’t an entire waste of time.
Nick found he could pass the time by taking an inventory of everything he remembered from his life, and his afterlife. Even though some key memories had already been lost, he was still close enough to his earthly existence to remember quite a lot. He tried to list alphabetically every single song he knew, and sang each one. He cataloged every movie he remembered ever seeing, and tried to watch them in his head. With nothing to reflect on but himself, he came to realize that he had spent far too much time complaining and worrying. If he ever managed to get out of that barrel, he knew he’d be a different person, because nothing-not even sinking into the Earth-could be worse than this. And so, both Nick and Lief had been profoundly changed by their pickling experience: Lief had found a bizarre state of spiritual bliss, and Nick became strong and fearless.
Nick felt the commotion of his barrel being removed from the Haunter’s lair. He had no idea where he was being hauled off to, but the very fact that there was activity around him was a hopeful sign. Counting out the seconds in his mind, he waited for something momentous to happen.
Nick had counted 61,259 seconds from the time his barrel had first begun to move until the top was pried off. The tops were pried off of three barrels simultaneously. Nick stood up right away, ready to thank his rescuer. Having had nothing but darkness and pickle brine in his eyes for many weeks, he couldn’t really see much of anything at first. There were other kids around him. To his left was an open barrel with someone still submerged beneath the surface. To his right standing up in another barrel was a kid Nick did not recognize, who began screaming and never stopped. Nick stood there in amazement, wondering how his lungs could hold out-he sounded like a human air-raid siren. Then he realized that since the kid didn’t actually have lungs anymore, being a spirit and all, he never had to stop for breath. He could just scream until the universe ended, which might have actually been his plan. This kid had clearly turned to vinegar in his barrel.
“Get the screamer out of here!” said a slobbery voice. “Take him and chime him!”
Several kids nearby took the screamer out of his barrel, and carried him away.
All the while he never stopped screaming. Poor kid, thought Nick. That could have been me.
But it wasn’t. And itwas a great consolation to know that he had survived his time in pickle purgatory. Nick blinked, and blinked again, forcing his eyes into focus, ready to face whatever situation he would now find himself in. He was on the deck of a ship that was sprinkled with crumbs of some sort. There were crewmen around him, all of them kids, and standing in front of an ugly throne was what could only be described as a monster.
Lief did not know the top of his barrel had been pried off. He didn’t know much of anything. He heard a kid screaming, but it sounded far away. Not in his universe. Not his concern. Lief now existed without time or space. He was everything and nothing. It was wonderful. Then when someone grabbed his hair and hauled him upright, he found that the place of infinite peace he had discovered within himself did not leave him. Whether he had lost his mind, or had become “one with the universe” was a matter of opinion.
“Who are you?” a wet, distorted voice asked. “What can you do? What use will you be to me?”
Lief was still on the first question.
“His name is Lief,” said a familiar voice. He remembered the voice belonged to someone named Nick. All at once Lief’s memories came back to him. He remembered his journey from the forest, his time in front of the video game, the fact that he had been in a barrel.
Someone approached him. No, not someone, some “thing.” It had one eye the size of a grapefruit, filled with squiggly veins. The other eye was normal-size, but dangled from its socket.
“I don’t like the look of him!” the monster said. “He looks like someone made him out of clay, and forgot to finish him.”
“I think he’s forgotten what he looks like,” said a boy with an unusually small head.
The monster raised a three-fingered claw and pointed it at Lief. “I order you to remember what you look like!”
“Leave him alone!” shouted Nick.
“I order you to remember!”
Lief suspected he knew what this creature was, and he knew he should have been terrified of it, but he was not.
The creature moved closer to Lief. When it opened its mouth, a tongue lashed out that forked into three octopus tentacles. “I order you to remember what you look like, or you’re going overboard.”
Lief smiled happily. “Okay.” Then he closed his eyes, and rummaged around through his mind until he found a memory of his face. The moment he did, he could actually feel his features changing. When he opened his eyes, he knew he was himself again-or at least something close.
The creature studied him with his huge eye, and grunted. “Good enough,” he said.
Nick, still waist-deep in his barrel, watched the creature closely, ready to fight it if necessary. Then something occurred to Nick that almost crushed his newfound courage. “Are you…Are you… the McGill?”
The creature laughed, and limped across the deck over to Nick, crumbs crunching beneath his fungus-ridden feet as he walked.
“Yes, I am,” the creature said. “You’ve heard about me! Tell me what you heard.”
Nick grimaced from the creature’s awful stench. “I heard that you were the devil’s pet dog, and you chewed through your leash.”
That was the wrong thing to say. The McGill roared, and kicked Nick’s barrel so hard it shattered, spilling brine all over the deck. “Pet dog? Who said I was a dog? I’ll put them on a leash!”
“Just some kid,” Nick said, trying not to look at Lief. “If you’re not a dog, then what are you?”
The McGill poked a sharp claw against Nick’s chest. “I’m your king and commander. I own you now.”
Nick didn’t like the sound of that. “So…we’re slaves?”
“Associates,” said the boy with the unusually small head.
The McGill ordered their pockets checked for anything of value, and when nothing was found, the McGill raised his claw, and pointed to the hatch. “Take them below!” he said to a group of associates. “Find out what they can do, and make them do it.”
The McGill watched them go with one eye, and kept the other eye trained on Pinhead. Once the two new kids were gone, the McGill waved a clawed hand. “Open the next one.”
Pinhead did as he was told. The next barrel, however, was empty, as was the next, and the next. Just brine with no one inside.
“I can’t understand it,” Pinhead said. “The Haunter said there was someone in each barrel.”
“He lied,” the McGill grunted, and retired to the captain’s quarters, which were just behind his great open-air throne.
Fourteen barrels, and only three occupants. It did not sit well with the McGill.
This wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened. If he had a nickel for every time he expected to find an Afterlight and didn’t, he’d be a rich monster.
It was the thought of nickels that made the McGill turn to his safe. It was a bulky iron thing built right into the wall. Only the McGill knew the combination. It had taken him more than a year of trying until he found the right one, and now the safe was his prize possession. He turned the wheel, feeling the familiar rattle of the tumblers, then he closed his claw around the lever, and pulled it open.
Inside was a bucket filled with coins so worn it was impossible to tell their denominations, or what country they had come from. The coins had been taken from enemies or associates-and anyone who was not an associate was an enemy. It was common knowledge that money in Everlost was of no real use, but the McGill kept the coins, all the same.
“If they’re so worthless, why do you keep them in your safe?” Pinhead had once asked.
The McGill had chosen not to answer him, and Pinhead was wise enough not to ask again. The easy answer was that the McGill kept everything…but the real answer was that the coins were the most plentiful objects in Everlost, and as such were of special interest to him.
The only other item he kept in the safe was hidden beneath the bucket of coins.
It was a small slip of paper half an inch wide, and two inches long. On the tiny paper were printed the following words:
A brave man’s life is worth a thousand cowardly souls.
He would read and reread that slip of paper to remind him why he patrolled the shores and went on raids of Everlost encampments. Then he would return it to its hiding place beneath the bucket of coins. Although few knew it, there was more to the McGill than mindless looting and pillaging. That little slip of paper was a constant reminder to him that he had a larger goal.
Nick, still disoriented from his rebirth into the world of the almost-living, stumbled from the light of the deck into the dim, narrow corridors of the ship.
The McGill’s “associates” prodded him and Lief forward, while around them the rest of the McGill’s crew jeered at them as they passed. Lief waved and smiled like some returning hero, and it just made Nick mad.
“Will you stop that?” Nick demanded. “What are you so happy about?”
The jeering kids, Nick noticed, all had crooked teeth and mismatched features; ears slightly off, noses twisted, tweaked, or flattened, like their faces were putty that the McGill had played with. Some were girls, some were boys, but in truth, it was impossible to tell the difference anymore. Nick dubbed them “Ugloids,” and wondered if they were as ugly inside as out. They all seemed somewhat dimwitted-perhaps service to the McGill had made them that way-and since none of them seemed too highly motivated, Nick took a calculated risk. He pulled out of the grip of the two Ugloids holding him, grabbed Lief’s hand, and began to run. As he suspected, the Ugloids were slow on the uptake, and by the time they took to chasing them, Nick and Lief had a nice lead down the hall.
“Where are we going?” asked Lief.
“We’ll know when we get there.” The truth was, Nick had no idea. Courage and spontaneity were new to him. It hadn’t occurred to him until after he had run from the Ugloids that perhaps he had confused courage with stupidity. He should have had a plan for escape-after all this was a ship, and there were a limited number of places they could go. But now he was committed, so he kept on running, turning down corridors and climbing through hatches hoping he wouldn’t take a wrong turn, which, of course, he eventually did.
With the Ugloids gaining on them, Nick pushed open a hatch, and found that it opened onto one of the ship’s holds-a cavernous space thirty-feet deep, forty-feet long, and smelling horribly of rotten eggs. There was a steep iron stairway winding down into it, but he had come through the hatch with such speed that he and Lief missed the stairway completely, flipped over the railing and dropped into the depths of the hold.
The fall would have killed them, had they been alive, but things being what they were, it was merely a nuisance. They crashed loudly into furniture and picture frames and statues, and when they managed to get their bearings, they found themselves in the middle of the McGill’s grand treasure trove. It looked more like a dragon’s hoard than anything else. Shiny things like chandeliers, thrown together with chests of drawers, and automobile axles – like several moving trucks had just dumped the contents of a city-wide garage sale here, and left.
Mary would know what to do with all of that, Nick thought. She would organize it, distribute it, put it to good use. Clearly the McGill had no purpose beyond hoarding it-as evidenced by the fact that everything was painted with the words PROPERTY OF THE MCGILL. His purpose was greed, nothing more. Nick could imagine the McGill capturing Finders and taking everything they had. Maybe he even forced the Finders to work for him, collecting items that had crossed over, just so the McGill could store them here.
By the time Nick and Lief had made their way through the treasure trove to the nearest hatch, Pinhead was there, with plenty of associates to back him up.
“Hi,” said Lief, all sunshine and joy, “did you miss us?”
Pinhead took Lief’s weirdness as sarcasm, and tossed Lief aside. Then he grabbed Nick and pushed him against the wall. “The McGill wants to know how you can be useful to him.”
“We’re nobody’s slaves,” Nick said.
Pinhead nodded. “I knew you’d be too defiant to be of any use.”
“Does that mean I can go back into my barrel now?” asked Lief. Pinhead ignored him.
“Chime them!” Pinhead ordered. “Chime them along with all the other useless ones.” Then the crew came forward, grabbing them, forcing them through the hatch and down a narrow dim hallway toward another hatch labeled CHIMING CHAMBUR with sloppy childlike paint strokes. Nick struggled against them, but it was no use – and although his first instinct was to try to talk his way out of this, he wasn’t going to give Pinhead the satisfaction of seeing him plead.
Pinhead pulled open the hatch. “Have fun,” Pinhead said with a nasty snicker.
Nick suspected there was no fun to be had at all.
“There is only one rule for swimming in Everlost,” writes Mary Hightower.
“Don’t. Large bodies of water are very dangerous for us Afterlights – for if the land is like quicksand, then water is like air. If you happen to fall into a lake, river, or ocean, you’ll find the water about as buoyant as clouds to someone falling through the sky. You’ll hit the bottom with such speed, you’ll find yourself embedded twenty feet into the sea floor before slowing down to regular sinking velocity, and that will be that.
“Ghost ships are the only exception to this rule. Like the Everlost buildings that remain on land long after leaving the ‘living world,’ ghost ships still do what theywere built to do; that is, float- and nothing, not tidal wave, nor hurricane, nor torpedo could ever sink them. Just don’t get thrown off of one.”
CHAPTER 16 A Dangerous Crossing Allie knew the risks of traveling on water before she climbed aboard the Staten Island Ferry, but seeing the McGill’s ghost ship right there in the bay made her realize she had to take a chance. If she didn’t, there was no telling where that ship would go next, and no telling if she’d ever find it again.
She had raced from the old pickle factory to Battery Park, and from there she could see, just as the Haunter had said, the McGill’s ship. She knew it was a ghost ship because it left no wake behind it as it powered forward. She knew it was the McGill’s, because painted in sloppy black letters beneath the words “Sulphur Queen,” were the words PROPERTY OF THE MCGILL. The only way to reach it, though, was on another vessel. The Staten Island Ferry seemed the best candidate for the job.
Allie made her way to the ferry landing, and pushed through the bustle of people piling on and off the boat, ignoring the thoughts that shot like bullets through her mind each time someone passed through her. All their thoughts were about the wind and the snow, which made no difference to her. She didn’t let herself slow down, because she could already tell the ferry deck was as treacherous for her as the surface of a bridge. It was like walking on tissue paper; every footfall left her ankle-deep in the floor, and she had to step quickly to keep from sinking too far into the deck.
The toot of a horn, and the ferry pulled away from the dock, bound for Staten Island. The way Allie figured it, the bay was large, but not all that large.
Living-world boats would often have to adjust their courses to avoid collision.
Right now, the McGill’s ship was in between them and Staten Island, invisible to the ferry’s pilot. With any luck, the ferry would pass right though it, delivering Allie to her destination.
All around her, living folk spoke of meals and sales, inconsiderate husbands and unsatisfied wives. Small talk now seemed so small from her perspective, she wondered how people could engage in it altogether. Such pettiness filled the lives of the living. She could begin to see why Mary would have nothing to do with it.
Mary. Almost reflexively, she turned to look back at the city. Through the falling snow, the buildings of the city were just a faded shadow, but the Twin Towers of Mary’s domain were bright and bold, as if painted on the skyline, standing in proud defiance of everything Allie once thought she knew about the nature of the world. Someday, thought Allie, I will write a book too. It wouldn’t be a book of rules and etiquette, but one of experience, because each day in Everlost brought a fresh experience. How Mary could think she knew so much, without ever leaving the comfort of her tower, was one of the greatest mysteries of Everlost.
But now there were other things to deal with, like the ghost ship looming closer before her. In her excitement Allie tried to lean against the ferry’s rail, only to lean right through it. She spun her arms, trying to catch her balance, and nearly fell off the ferry into the bay. She saved herself by letting her knees buckle, and falling backward, but that didn’t turn out to be a good thing either. Her rear hit the deck, and passed through it. She reached out her hands, but they went straight through the wood and the steel beneath that. She could feel the warmer air of the lower deck on her fingertips and felt herself sinking even farther.
As she tried to right herself, her body kept falling, and she dropped right through a row of benches on the lower deck, not as much as ruffling the pages of a man’s newspaper as she fell through him. She didn’t stop there. The force of her fall left her embedded in the floor of that deck. Frantically she tried to pull herself up, but again, only succeeded in sinking farther.
She fell through the lower passenger deck, right into the auto deck, where cars sat, their engines off as they crossed the bay. Even the steel of cars didn’t stop her, and now she began to panic.
“Help!” she screamed, “Somebody help me!”
But of course there was no one to hear her cries, and she cursed herself for not thinking to make herself a pair of road-shoes before attempting this crossing.
She fell through the floor of the auto deck into the engine room. Gears grinded, pistons pounded, echoing all around her, and as she tried to stand up, her feet passed through the hull of the boat.
She could feel the icy bay water around her ankles, and then her shins, and she knew that if she didn’t think of something fast, she would sink straight through the bottom of this boat and, as Mary wrote, “that would be that.”
“Help me!” she screamed again, if not to anyone in the living world, then to some force in the heavens as invisible to her as she was invisible to the living.
There was a man in the engine room with her. Unkempt gray hair, two-day beard stubble; his blue uniform told her he was part of the ferry crew-one of the ferry’s pilots on break. He quietly sipped coffee, raising and lowering his eyebrows as if in some silent conversation with himself.
Allie was up to her waist now, her legs dangling through the bottom of the boat, into the water. That’s when something occurred to her.
The preppie girl at the pizza place!
When Allie had “surfed” that girl, she had felt like a kite lifted off the ground by the girl’s thoughts. What if Allie could do that again-this time with the old man?
It was a long shot, but she had to try. Slogging her way through the steel of the ship’s hull took everything she was worth. The hull was thick enough to slow her descent, but also so thick that pulling herself through it took a huge effort of will. In the end, she had to resort to kicking; her feet in the water below and moving her hands through the air, as if she were swimming. She was down to her belly button by the time she got near the man, who sat in his chair, oblivious to her. She could feel the cold water of the bay passing through her middle, filling the spot where her stomach had once been.
Just a few more moments and I’ll be gone, she thought.
And so with a last bit of strength she leaned forward, toward the man in the chair, and touched him. She felt a rush of blood, the pumping of a heart, and she became a kite lifted into the air. Allie could no longer feel the cold of the water, and – -i’ll never win i have to win i have no chance i have every chance numbers numbers which numbers lucky numbers four twenty-five birthday seven twelve fourteen ages of the grandkids thirty-nine years we’ve been married eighteen million and if i win that lottery i’ll never go to staten island again – Allie couldn’t feel her feet, she couldn’t feel her hands, she couldn’t feel anything, and all she could hear were his thoughts. It was as if her body had suddenly ceased to exist and she was just pure spirit, cocooned within another person’s being. She opened her eyes, not realizing she had even closed them, and now what she saw seemed very different from what she’d seen before. There had been a green coffee mug on the table, but now looking at it, she couldn’t tell whether it was green or red. Her eyes jerked toward a red light above the engine involuntarily, only the light wasn’t red anymore, just pale white. Now she finally realized what was going on.
I am seeing through his eyes, and he’s color-blind.
She watched the coffee cup come up to her lips and then back down again. She could almost taste the coffee.
– win gotta win numbers all in the numbers – His lottery thoughts assaulted her mind and he didn’t even know she was there.
The next time he brought the coffee cup to his lips she could swear she actually tasted the brew, and then in a few more moments she began to feel something spectacular: she felt hot. Hot from the coffee, hot from the heat of the engine.
She could feel fingertips touching the handle of the mug, the pressure against skin, the tag of the shirt at the back of the neck. There was a numbness about it, true – as if her entire body had been shot with novocaine -but there was no doubting that she was feeling with the nerves of living flesh once again. Itwas all so startling, she forgot for a moment why she was there.
– numbers numbers lucky numbers, the man’s thoughts droned on, i have as good a chance as any ten times the chance if I buy ten tickets – And then it hit her that she had spent at least a minute here, while the ferry was still moving. She may have already missed her chance to intercept the McGill’s ship! She could leap out of him now, but the fear of sinking through the bottom of the hull was so great in her that she didn’t dare. If only the pilot would go to the upper decks instead of just sitting here, he would carry her with him.
– numbers, lucky numbers what if I add them all together and divide by 7?- Her frustration kept on building. “Stop thinking about the stupid lottery and get up!”
And suddenly the man put down his coffee cup and stood.
Was it coincidence? Allie didn’t know for sure.
The man remained standing for a moment, then slowly settled back down in his chair, slightly bewildered.
If her thoughts had made him get up, maybe she could do it again. Allie filled herself with the same frustration and determination. “Stand up!” she insisted.
Again the man stood.
– numbers lottery numbers why did i just stand up?- Okay, thought Allie. This was something new. It was clear that the man still had no idea she was there, and he couldn’t tell the difference between her thoughts and his own, Allie tried to take advantage of that.
“Go to the upper deck,” Allie said. “You always take your break down below, and you never enjoy the view.”
– it’s too hot down here anyway, i should go on deck-the man thought.
Allie felt the strange, numb sensation of fabric against skin as he rose and climbed the stairs. The cold of the auto level hit Allie suddenly. She couldn’t actually feel the chill, but she could feel him feeling cold, and she realized she had pushed him up here with such a strength of will, he had forgotten to take his coat.
“Next deck,” Allie whispered. He obeyed.
The first passenger deck was warm, although not as warm as the engine room. He continued climbing up to the top level, which was open to the snowy day. Now, through this man, Allie could lean against the railing without falling through it.
But when Allie scanned the waters she was shocked to see the McGill’s ship was no longer there! She could see nothing but the shore of Staten Island in the distance. She panicked for a moment, until understanding set in.
I’m seeing through his eyes, she reminded herself, and he can’t see the ghost ship.
She stepped out of him. It was easy, like slipping out of an overcoat, and the second she did, the nature of the world changed again. The McGill’s ship reappeared now that she was viewing the world through her own ghostly eyes. The McGill’s ship was off to the right, but the ferry was moving too fast. At this rate the ferry would pass in front of it, not coming any closer than a hundred yards!
Filled with a sense of fury and despair, she turned to the old ferry pilot, but he was no longer there. She found him heading toward the ferry’s bridge. She hurried after him, and stepped right back into the old man, stealthily.
Immediately the world she saw became his color-blind living world, as he opened the door to the bridge, and went in.
The ferry’s bridge was small and smelled of old varnish. Another, younger pilot was at the controls.
“Winds are killer today,” said the younger ferryman. “They oughta make these things more aerodynamic.”
“Yah,” said the old man, absently.
The younger man glanced over at him for a second. “Something wrong? “
“Nah, nah,” he said, “it’s just…nothing, I don’t know. Something weird.”
Allie knew he was sensing her. Even though she was hiding beneath the threshold of his understanding, he was feeling the hint of her presence. A plan was forming in her mind, but if he was becoming aware of her, she would have to make her move quickly, or it would be too late.
“Tell him to take his break early,” Allie demanded. “Take over the controls.”
Suddenly Allie felt the body of the old man turn, looking around as if searching for someone behind him. “What the-?”
“Something bite yah?” asked the younger pilot. “I’ll tell yah, the bugs here don’t know it’s winter. They breed down in the engine room, and crawl up here between the bulkheads.”
“Do it!” Allie insisted. “Take control of the ferry now!”
But the old man said – -no!- There was a panic in his thoughts and Allie knew she had been exposed.
– who are you? what do you want?- In her panic, she considered leaping out of him, and right into the other pilot-but she had never done a person-to-person leap before. No, it was best to stay where she was and work with the old man. She calmed herself down, and spoke to him through her thoughts.
“That doesn’t matter,” she told him, “all that matters is that you take the wheel and change course.”
“No!” He said it aloud, this time.
The other man looked at him. “No, what?”
“No… uh… it wasn’t a bug,” he said. “At least not the kind you’re talking about.”
The other guy didn’t know what to make of it, so he just turned his attention forward.
“Never mind who I am,” Allie thought. “You have to take the wheel! You have to change course!”
But he wouldn’t. That’s when Allie made a calculated move. This was a battle of wills, and although she was a stranger in his skin, her sense of touch didn’t seem as numb as it had before. Maybe…just maybe… Allie thrust a hand forward and found that the hand moved. It wasn’t her hand but the old pilots. His fingers quivered as two spirits struggled to control it, but in the end Allie won. She wasn’t just mind-surfing now, she was body-surfing, and could use this man’s body as if it were her own. She grasped the shoulder of the younger pilot and spoke, but when her voice came out it was the dry, raspy voice of a man who had smoked two packs of cigarettes a day his whole life.
“You can go below,” Allie heard herself say in the old man’s voice. “I’ll finish off this run.” The younger ferryman offered no argument. He nodded and left, happy for some break time.
Inside her thoughts, the old pilot clawed for control of his limbs again.
“Patience!” Allie told him. “Patience, it will be over soon.”
But that only made him more terrified.
Gripping on to the wheel Allie pulled to the right. Now she could not see where the McGill’s ship was, but she remembered the spot where it had been. The boat began a turn that took it off its well-run course.
All at once it occurred to Allie, I am alive again! I am flesh, blood and bone.
Is that what the kid had meant when he said there were other ways to be alive again? She knew she had discovered something major here, but she couldn’t deal with that right now.
She held the new course for a full minute. By the time that minute had passed, the body she wore was shaking with the force of the man’s spirit trying to reclaim himself, and finally she let him, because she had done what she had set out to do.
The moment she stepped out of his body, the man yelped, then quickly gained control of himself. He blotted his sweating forehead, and rather than letting the shock of what had happened fill him, he instead turned his attention to the wheel, quickly pulling it back on course toward Staten Island. She did, however, hear him praying beneath his breath, whispering a series of Hail Marys. She wanted to tell him that it was okay- that this was a one-shot deal that would never happen to him again, but with the McGill’s ship so close, she didn’t have time.
Her change of course had brought them right into the path of the oncoming ghost ship. The bow of the McGill’s huge vessel rammed right into the ferry’s starboard side, but rather than slicing it in half, it simply passed through, as if the ferry wasn’t there. Around her the details of the ferry seemed to fade into nothing, as the Everlost reality of the ghost ship cancelled it out, plowing forward – and Allie remembered what Mary had said about how hard it was to see two things occupying the same space.
The bow of the McGill’s ship hit her, catching her solidly, and she realized she could not pass through this steel! If she didn’t find something to hold on to, the McGill’s ship would push her out of the ferry, and right into the sea. She reached for anything that she could grab on to and finally the anchor hanging from a hole in the bow swept past. She grabbed it, held on to it, and was lifted out of the ferry’s airspace. In a moment the ferry was gone, chugging steadily toward Staten Island, and Allie was clinging for all she was worth to an anchor suspended above the churning water of New York bay. Silently thanking her parents for forcing her to stay in gymnastics for four years, she climbed the anchor chain, and deftly flipped onto the deck of the ghost ship.
She surprised a team of unlikely pirates, who grabbed her the second she was on board. They were even more unpleasantly distorted than the Altar Boys. They practically carried her to the highest deck, where something slouched on a gaudy throne.
The thing on the throne was far from human. Allie found it horrifying to look, yet harder to look away. It had sharp, three-fingered talons for hands, and skin as red as a lobster and pocked like the moon. Its mismatched eyes wandered of their own accord, and its nasty tuft of spidery hair looked like it might crawl off the creature’s head at any moment. This thing was beyond grotesque -so far beyond that Allie found her fear balanced by fascination. How could something so horrible exist?
“What are you?” she said. She thought she said it to herself but realized she had spoken aloud.
“I am the McGill,” it said. “Hear my name and tremble.”
And Allie laughed. She didn’t mean to, but that line was so goofy, she couldn’t help herself.
The McGill frowned, or at least she thought it frowned. It waved a dirty claw, and all the assembled “pirates” scrambled away like rats, except for the small-headed one standing beside her.
“I will make you suffer in ways you cannot imagine,” the McGill said, and although Allie believed it, she wasn’t going to let this beast see her fear the way she had let the Haunter see it. If there was one thing she had learned, it was that monsters only had the power that you gave them. But she also knew that monsters didn’t deal well with blatant disrespect. She had already disrespected the McGill once; she would probably not get away with it again.
“I’ve heard that you are the greatest creature in all of Everlost.” She nodded respectfully. “Now I see that it’s true.”
The McGill smiled, or at least Allie thought it smiled. It turned its dangling eye toward the misproportioned boy beside it. “What do you think, Pinhead, should I throw her overboard, or something worse?”
“Worse,” answered Pinhead. Somehow Allie knew he’d say that.
The McGill shifted in its throne, trying to make that unsightly body more comfortable, which seemed an impossibility. “But first I want to know how you snuck on board my ship.”
Allie grinned. “No one’s ever done that before, have they?”
“Actually, no,” said Pinhead, and the McGill threw him a burning gaze before turning back to Allie.
“How did you do it?” demanded the McGill.
“I’ll tell you, but only if- “
The McGill didn’t let her finish. It waved a clawed hand. “‘Only if’ nothing, I don’t make deals. Throw her overboard, I’ve lost interest in her.”
Pinhead moved to grab her, but she slipped out of his grasp.
“No,” said Allie. “Wait-I’ll tell you how I got on your ship.”
Pinhead hesitated. She thought she might get what she wanted if she played this right, but realized that she could not play at all. The McGill did not play games, and truly intended to toss her over. The best she could do was to stall with hopes of finding some way to bargain for the lives of Nick and Lief…assuming they hadn’t already been hurled overboard themselves.
“I took the Staten Island Ferry,” she said quickly, “and I slipped on board as it passed through your ship.”
Suddenly both of the McGill’s wandering eyes zeroed in on her. It gripped the edge of the throne with its claws and pushed itself up.
“That ferry changed course,” the McGill said, “almost as if it was intentional.
Did you do that?”
Allie wondered which response would keep her from being thrown overboard, yes or no. In the end she realized her answer was really the best of both worlds. “Yes and no,” she said.
The McGill took a step closer. “Explain.”
“I couldn’t make the ship turn myself, so I sort of leaped into the pilot’s body and took over for a few seconds.”
The McGill maintained its hideous stare in silence. “You expect me to believe this,” it finally said.
“Believe what you want, but I’m telling you the truth.”
The creature eyed her for a few moments more. “So then, you’re telling me that you know how to usurp, possess, and control the living? You can actually skinjack?
Allie didn’t like the sound of that. Is that what she had done? Had she possessed the pilot? Had she skinjacked him? It sounded so… criminal. “I prefer to think of it as ‘body-surfing.’”
The McGill laughed at that. “Body-surfing. Very good.” It scratched thoughtfully for a moment at the stalk of its smaller, dangling eye. “What’s your name?”
“Allie,” she answered. “Allie the Outcast.”
The McGill, not at all impressed by her title, dug a single claw into its oversized nose, pulling out a booger the size of a roach, and flicked it to the wall where it stuck. Allie grimaced.
“Take her below,” The McGill told Pinhead.
“Shall I chime her with the others?”
“No,” the McGill said. “Put her in the guest quarters.”
Pinhead nodded obediently and took Allies arm with slightly more respect than he might have a moment ago. Allie, however, sensing her bargaining position had now changed, shrugged Pinhead off.
“You took two of my friends from the Haunter.”
The McGill became very attentive. “Friends,” the monster said slowly.
“Are they here?”
“Maybe they are, and maybe they aren’t. For now you will go to your quarters.
When I want you, I’ll call for you.”
She sighed, knowing she couldn’t push it any further. “Thank you for being so… merciful,” Allie said. “But I would appreciate it if Pea-brain here would keep his hands off me.”
“That’s Pinhead,” corrected the boy. “Pea-brain works in the engine room.”
The McGill waved a hand in dismissal, Pinhead bowed to Allie in a mock gesture of courtesy, and she was led to the guest quarters with more dignity than any Afterlight had experienced on the Sulphur Queen since its crossing into Everlost.
Once the girl was gone, the McGill lumbered back to his throne and sat down.
From the little perch where the throne sat, he had a view of the ocean before him…They had crossed beneath the Verrazano Bridge, and the Sulphur Queen would soon be out in the Atlantic, on its endless journey up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
The McGill rarely allowed himself flights of fancy-he kept his existence pessimistic, always expecting the negative, and reveling when the worst didn’t come to pass-but this girl had struck a chord in him.
Skinjacking! This was a power more useful than any of the powers he already possessed. To be able to leap from one body to another at will; intruding into the living world, then finding new flesh to inhabit whenever it suited him – how-powerful that would make him! Could this girl teach him how to do that? If so, it would be worth putting all of his other plans on hold. Yes, this new associate offered some exciting possibilities.
The closest Mary Hightower comes to mentioning the McGill is in her book Caution, This Means You! Between paragraphs on the dangers of gravitational vortexes and reality television, Mary writes, “If you find a dead-spot containing something of great value, like jewelry, food that has crossed over, or any other object that seems too good to be true, chances are that it is too good to be true. Stay away from these places, or you may find yourself in a very unpleasant circumstance.” It is commonly believed that she is referring to the McGill’s Greensoul traps, which are rumored to be strategically placed up and down the East Coast. Of course, their existence has never been proven… Everlost CHAPTER 17
The Chiming Chamber Unlike Mary Hightower, the McGill did not write any books. The way he saw it, information was best hoarded, much like the objects in his treasure hold. The less information others knew, the more power he had over them. Still, the McGill secretly read every book that Mary Hightower had written. At first he found it all very amusing, because Mary’s information was wrong as often as it was right.
The more he read, however, the more he realized that Mary was not getting her facts wrong at all. She was deliberately distorting what she knew when it suited her. In this way, she was very much like the McGill, holding all the best information in. The fact that Mary did not mention the McGill in any of her writings was a constant thorn in his side. He was a legend. He was, after all, the One True Monster of Everlost, and he deserved at the very least a chapter.
Was that so much to ask? Someday, he would take on this Mary, defeat her, enslave her, and then force her to write an entire encyclopedia about him. But for now his interest was in a different girl.
Allie knew her welcome on board the Sulphur Queen would last only until the McGill got tired of her or got what it wanted. What he wanted, because Allie was reasonably certain this beast was male. Either way, her time was limited.
Besides, she didn’t have the patience to wait; she simply had to find out if Nick and Lief were here. Once in the “guest cabin,” Allie waited until the sound of Pinhead’s footsteps faded, then she quietly opened the door and snuck out.
The ship was large and the McGill’s crew was small, so she was able to slip through the hatchways and corridors unseen. On the occasions that she did encounter the McGill’s ugly young minions, they made so much noise that Allie had plenty of time to hide.
A ship has many places to stow prisoners, so she methodically explored every dark corner, ignoring the hideous rotten-egg smell, which grew as she went deeper into the bowels of the ship. Finally she found the ship’s massive holds.
By the stench and the yellow residue on the ground, Allie suspected the holds once carried sulphur, but now they held the spoils of the McGill’s pillaging raids. She marveled at what she saw in each of the chambers, wondering how these things had crossed over. Had someone died in this leather recliner? Was this stained-glass window so lovingly made that it crossed over when the church burned down? And what about this armoire, complete with wedding dress and tuxedo hanging inside? Did the bride and groom “get where they were going” on an ill-fated wedding night? Was their love, like Romeo and Juliet’s, not meant for the living world?
Each object held a story that no one would ever know, and the fact that the McGill treated these things with such thoughtless disrespect made Allie hate the creature even more.
She opened the door to the fourth and final hold, expecting to find more piles of the McGill’s treasure. This room was different, however.
As she peered in, her mind did not entirely comprehend what she saw. Her first impression was that of a giant hanging mobile, like something she once saw in the Museum of Modern Art. Large, lumpy objects hung from chains, all at different heights, all glowing dimly like low-wattage lightbulbs.
Then one of the objects spoke.
“What time is it?” the glowing lump said.
Allie let out a yelp, stepped back, and hit the steel bulkhead behind her. The wall rang out with a dull, hollow thud.
“What time is it?” the lump said again. It was a boy, maybe a year or two younger than her, wearing gray flannel pajamas, hanging upside down from his ankles around five feet from the ground. His pjs had a dorsal fin on the back, and a cartoon of a shark on the front.
“I… I don’t know…,” Allie answered.
“Oh. Okay.” The boy didn’t seem disappointed. He just seemed resigned.
“Careful,” said a girl hanging next to him. “He’s a biter.”
The pajama-boy smiled, showing a set of razor-sharp, sharklike teeth, like the picture on his pajamas. “It’s in a sea predator’s nature,” he said.
Only now did the truth begin to dawn on her as she took in the larger scene around her. The hanging lumps were Afterlights. Every single one of them. There had to be hundreds of kids, all hanging upside down.
The act of churning was invented by the McGill and he was proud to claim responsibility for the idea. Since it was impossible to hurt someone in Everlost, and since the McGill so wanted to inflict distress, he came up with a whole new form of torture, functional in several different ways: first, because it provided an efficient way of storing those Afterlights he had no immediate use for, and second, because he created a hopeless sense of abject boredom in his victims.
Simply stated, the act of chiming was to hang someone upside down from their ankles by a long chain, or rope. It didn’t actually hurt the spirit being chimed, but it was a pretty dull way to spend one’s days, and if boredom was the closest thing to suffering that the McGill could inflict, he would have to live with that. In any case it was entertaining for him, because he would often go down to the hold and begin swinging people. They would collide into one another, grunting and oofing as they bumped, like human wind chimes, and hence it became known as “being chimed.”
When Nick was first chimed, he wasn’t sure whether it was better or worse than being in the pickle barrel. The rotten-egg smell was certainly worse than the garlic and dill of the pickle brine, but then, at least here, he did not feel so alone. Lief, who had reached a state of nirvana in his barrel, took it in stride, smiling all the while, and Nick eventually decided being alone would be better than hanging upside down next to a happy camper-but then, it was better than being next to the screamer, or that kid who was trying to turn himself into a shark.
As soon as the Ugloids had finished stringing them up, they painted numbers on their chests in black. For reasons Nick could not figure out, he was number 966, and Lief was number 266, although the kid had drawn the two backward.
“Your hair looks funny,” Lief said, as soon as the Ugloids had left. “It stands straight up.”
“No,” said Nick, intensely irritated, “it’s hanging straight down.”
Lief just gave him an upside-down shrug. “Up is down in China and you’re part-Chinese.”
“Japanese, dweeb!” Nick reached out and slugged him on the shoulder, but that just started them both swinging into the others who were around them.
“Hey watch it,” some kid said. “It’s bad enough when the McGill comes down here to swing us. We don’t need a couple of idiots making us chime, too.”
His dangling comrades also complained each time Nick tried to climb his own rope, to get to the grate high up above. Through that grate he could see the sky, and he knew if he could get out on the open deck, he’d figure out a way to escape. Unfortunately, the ropes had all been greased, and he never got more than ten feet up his rope before falling down again and swinging into the kids around him, setting off a chain reaction of whining, which in turn reminded the screamer to start screaming, and everyone blamed Nick.
So aside from the occasional fight, and group sing-along, there was nothing to do but wait until the McGill found a use for them. Nick had this fantasy that Mary would come with a hundred of her kids to rescue him. He never dreamed that his rescuer would be Allie.
“Oh my God!”
Allie stood there on the sulphur-dusted floor of the chiming chamber, still unable to believe what she saw. She tried to count how many of them there were, but there were simply too many to count. There were numbers scrawled on their chests, and some of those numbers were up in the high hundreds.
“Are you here to free us?” girl 342 asked.
Since Allie didn’t know if a rescue of this many Afterlights would ever be possible, Allie didn’t answer her. Instead she asked, “I’m looking for two boys.
They wouldn’t have been here long. One is named Nick, the other Lief.”
Then a voice from high above called down to her.
“They’re on the other side.” It was an older boy in a Boy Scout uniform, with rust-colored hair sticking straight down like an upside-down flame. His was the shortest rope; he hung about fifteen feet above the floor, making him the highest one, and the one with the best view of the chamber. “All they do is talk talk talk,” he said. “Tell them to shut up, it’s annoying.”
Allie pushed her way forward into the mass of “chimed” kids. They swung like pendulums as she pushed through them, all of them grumbling and griping at having been disturbed. She tried to be gentle, but the forest of dangling spirits clearly did not appreciate her intrusion.
“Shut up, you idiots,” the high-chimed Boy Scout said. Allie wondered if being strung the highest made the kid the automatic leader of the group, or did it merely make him high-strung?
“I said shut up!” he yelled more loudly. “Keep making noise, and you’ll set off the screamer.”
And next to Allie, the screamer, once more reminded of his job, began to wail in Allies ear. Reflexively Allie clapped her hand over his mouth. “That,” she said, “is totally uncalled for. Don’t do that again. Ever.” The screamer looked at her with worried eyes. “Are we clear on this subject?” said Allie. The screamer nodded, and she removed her hand.
“Can I scream a little?” he asked.
“No,” said Allie. “Your screaming days are over.”
“Darn.” And he was quiet thereafter.
“Hey,” someone called out. “She shut down the screamer!” The chamber rang out with upside-down applause.
“Allie, is that you?” It was Nick. She pushed her way past a few more danglers, and found both of them. Nick hung about five feet from the ground, his head at about eye level. Lief hung about a foot higher.
“How did you get here?” Nick asked. “I thought for sure the Haunter put you in a barrel, too!”
“I got away before he could,” Allie explained.
“And you just left us there?!”
Allie sighed. They had no idea what she had gone through to get here, and now was not the time to tell them. She looked at Lief, who smiled and gave her an upside-down wave with his dangling arms. “Hi.”
Lief’s calm acceptance of his plight just made Allie feel all the more miserable. “This is horrible! How could the McGill do this!?”
“He’s a monster,” Nick reminded her. “It’s what monsters do.”
“Are you going to hang here with us?” Lief asked, happily. “There’s room next to me!”
“Ignore him,” Nick told Allie. “He’s completely lost it.” Nick squirmed, and bent his knees until his hands could get a grip on his ankles. “Can you cut us down?”
Then the kid up top called down to them. “If you free them, the McGill will throw all three of you overboard. He may get so mad, he’ll throw us all overboard.”
Allie knew he was right. The McGill was both mean-spirited and unpredictable-and besides, if she cut them down, where would they go? Even if they got out of the hold, they were still trapped on the ship.
“I can’t free you now,” she told them, “but I will soon. Hang tight.” She grimaced at her poor choice of words.
“So you’re just going to leave us here?” Nick said.
“Don’t be a stranger!” Lief said, merrily.
“I’ll be back soon. I promise.”
“You promise? You also promised the visit to the Haunter wouldn’t be dangerous,”
Nick reminded her. “And look how that turned out.”
Allie made no excuses because he was right. This was all her fault. Allie rarely apologized for anything, but when she said “I’m sorry,” this time, it carried the weight of all the apologies she had never given when she was alive. Then she hugged them awkwardly, setting them both slightly swinging, and left before her emotions could get the better of her.