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.
On Everlost coins, Mary Hightower’s books have only this to say: “They do not sparkle, they do not shine, and they contain no precious metals. These so-called ‘coins’ are nothing more than useless, leaden slugs, and are best discarded along with one’s pocket lint, or better yet, tossed into a fountain for luck.”