Everfound s-3

by Neal Shusterman

Milos had no choice but to go back to Allie.

  “Tell me what you saw,” Milos said, “and I will set you free.”

  “Deal,” Allie told him. And then she said, “This church isn’t what it appears to be.”

  “If it’s not a church, then what is it?”

  “No-it’s still a church but…” She sighed. “It would make much more sense if you saw it for yourself. Then you can honestly tell everyone you figured it out, and be the big hero.”

  “I went back along the tracks. I looked. I saw nothing.”

  “Did you go to the top of the hill?”

  “That,” said Milos, “is much more than a mile.”

  “My mistake,” said Allie. “Hard to measure distance when you’re tied to the front of a train.”

  Again, Milos backtracked alone, and when the tracks began to climb up the hill, he kept going all the way to the top, which afforded him a view of the train, and the terrain around it. There was a small living-world lake to the right of the train, and on the other side of the lake there was a deadspot, about the size of a house. Only a person with a wide view from the front of the train could have seen it as the train came down the hill. There was nothing on the deadspot-just a square made of stones, and a few stone steps that led nowhere. It was the foundation of a building.

  It was not unusual for random bits and pieces of the living world to cross into Everlost, but there was something very wrong with this picture. Foundations did not cross into Everlost… entire buildings did.

  Now he understood exactly what Allie had seen-and what it meant for all of them.

  Milos raced back to the train, the memory of a heart beating in his chest, not out of exertion, but out of excitement and out of a fear he was not yet ready to admit. When he arrived back, the others knew right away that something was wrong. Perhaps it was in his eyes, or maybe his Afterlight glow had grown paler-maybe even a little sickly green.

  Milos weaved through the groups of jump-roping, ball-playing, yo-yo-bouncing kids, and found Speedo preparing to go out on another rail-finding expedition.

  “I will need fifty of our strongest Afterlights,” Milos told him.

  “What for?” asked Speedo.

  Milos didn’t bother answering him. “Gather them and have them meet me by the church.”

  Allie knew that Milos had figured it out, because he came to the front of the train with a huge group of Afterlights-too many for her to count.

  “I told you you’d see it,” Allie said, pretending not to be anxious. “All it took was a little perspective.” Milos gave her a quick glance, but not a kind one.

  “I don’t understand,” said Speedo. “Are all these Afterlights for my expedition?”

  “There will not be another expedition,” Milos told him. “Look under the church. Tell me what you see.”

  Speedo reluctantly knelt down, getting eye-level with the railroad ties. “I see the bottom of the church… and the tracks underneath it.”

  “Exactly,” said Milos. “The church is sitting on top of the tracks.”

  “So what?” said Speedo. “It’s still in our way.”

  Again, Milos glanced at Allie giving her a chilly look, then he returned all his attention to Speedo.

  “Since when does a building cross into Everlost without a foundation?” asked Milos. Speedo could only stammer. “The answer is, it doesn’t.” Then he pointed across the lake. “The church’s foundation is over there.”

  “So… if the church crossed over there…,” said Speedo, his voice shaking, “… how did it get onto our tracks?” But by the way he asked, it was clear Speedo didn’t want to know the answer.

  “Someone moved it here,” Milos informed him. “Someone lifted it up, carried it all the way around the lake, and put it down right in our path.”

  “Milos gets a gold star!” said Allie.

  Then Milos, always one to blame the messenger, turned on her in fury. “You keep your mouth shut or I will find some duct tape and tape it closed!”

  To which Allie calmly responded, “Duct tape never crosses.” Which was true. Things that cross into Everlost are usually loved, and nobody loves duct tape. Its use is, at best, an annoyance.

  “If it moved once,” Milos said, “it can move again.”

  “You… you want us to move it back?” asked Speedo.

  Allie snickered, which only made Milos more irritated.

  “We don’t need to move it back, just off the tracks. Understand?”

  “Oh,” said Speedo as if it were a grand revelation. “I get it!”

  Milos lined up the Afterlights on one side of the church. Then, on Milos’s command, they began to lift and release, lift and release, over and over until the church began to rock back and forth. Even with fifty Afterlights, the church was so heavy, it took forever until they were able to build any sort of momentum.

  Up above, the steeple wavered like a metronome, cutting a wider and wider arc across the sky. By now all the rest of Mary’s children had come out to see what was going on. Moose and Squirrel watched like it was prime-time TV, Jill crossed her arms and feigned complete disinterest, and Jix observed stoically, without revealing how he felt about it either way.

  The anticipation of all those assembled built as the church rocked on the tracks, until finally the building reached the edge of its balance, slid off the tracks, and tumbled over on its side, landing unbroken on the ground beside the train. Without a deadspot to rest on, the church began to slowly sink into the living world.

  The Afterlights all cheered, giving Milos all the credit for clever thinking-although he knew it wasn’t his cleverness that had solved their predicament. It was Allie’s.

  “Load up the train,” Milos commanded. “And stoke the engine.”

  “What about me?” asked Allie. “Will you take me down from here now, like you promised?” Milos looked at her, thought for a moment, then said to Moose and Squirrel, “All right. Untie her from the train.”

  Allie relaxed, fully ready for freedom until Milos said, “Take her down, then tie her back to the train again. This time, upside down.”

  “What?”

  Milos climbed up to her, getting right in her face. “All this time you knew, and you left us like sitting geese.”

  “Sitting ducks,” Allie corrected, and then wished she hadn’t.

  “Did you think that whoever put the church here would attack the rest of us and set you free?”

  Allie didn’t answer him… because that’s exactly what she thought.

  “I am sorry,” said Milos, “but you are far too useful as a scarecrow for me to put you anywhere else.” Then he turned to the others. “I want everyone who sees us coming to know that we are not to be trifled with. I want everyone seeing this train to fear it-to fear us. I want them terrified.”

  “Them?” asked Speedo. “Them, who?”

  “It took fifty of us just to knock over that church,” said Milos. “How many do you think it took to move it all the way around the lake?”

  Speedo said nothing, clearly not wanting to consider the answer.

  Allie struggled against Moose and Squirrel but it was no use. “Do you think that tying me up like that will scare them? Whoever they are, they’re not scared of us, and they don’t want us trespassing.”

  Milos responded by turning to the crowd and announcing in his loudest, most commanding voice: “I hereby claim this territory in the name of Mary Hightower!” and the crowd cheered even more loudly than before. “Now they are the ones trespassing,” Milos told Allie. “Whoever they are.”

  With Allie tied back onto the grille upside down, the train continued forward… while beside it, the church lost its battle with gravity and, like a foundering ship, sank into the quicksand of the living world.

  PART TWO

  The Wraith and the Warriors

  High Altitude Musical Interlude #1 with Johnnie and Charlie

  T here is no wind in Everlost. At least none that occurs naturally. No nor’e
asters heralding winter, no gentle summer zephyrs. Even Everlost trees that rustle in the wind are only going through the motions, moving with the memory of a breeze long gone.

  That is not to say that Everlost has no atmosphere; it does. The air of Everlost is a direct result of the living, and is a blend of many things. The first breath of a baby and the last breath of a life well-lived. The charged air of anticipation that fills a stadium before the start of a game, and the electrified air of excitement when a band takes the concert stage-these all cross into Everlost. Every passage of gas that someone laughed at, every sigh offered up to a glorious sunset are here… but so are the screams of victims and the sobs of those who mourn.

  Not every breath, but every breath taken and expelled with purpose, be it good or bad, are not forgotten by the universe. These things all blend and make up the air that Afterlights occasionally choose to breathe; air rich with emotions and with memories not entirely lost.

  And since these moments are at peace with eternity, they do not bluster and blow. One may ask, then, without a jet stream surging in the sky, how did the Hindenburg -the largest zeppelin ever built and burst by mankind-how did such a massive airship drift across the Atlantic Ocean? The answer is quite simple; one does not need a natural wind to be blown eastward, when there’s an unnatural one.

  “I’ve been working on the railroad, all the live-long day!”

  On the day that Mary defeated Nick, and her army took over his train, Mary’s former mode of transportation, the giant airship Hindenburg, was set adrift into the sky over Memphis. There were only two Afterlights aboard: the juvenile train conductor known as Choo-choo Charlie, and Johnnie-O; two kids loyal to Nick and caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “I’ve been working on the railroad, just to pass the time away!”

  The control room of the airship was empty, sealed by a lock with no key-which meant there was no way to pilot the craft. Its engines were off, its rudder was stuck, and it would stay that way.

  “Can’t you hear the whistle blowing, rise up so early in the morn?”

  That first day, they sat across from each other with a bucket of Everlost coins between them. Both Charlie and Johnnie-O knew what the coins were for. Holding a coin would pay the passage into the next world. The tunnel would open before them; they would remember who they were in life, and then they would be gone down the tunnel, and into the light. After all these years, they would get where they were going

  … if they held a coin.

  “Can’t ya hear the captain shouting, ‘Dina blow your horn.’”

  But neither of them had taken their coins. At the time, Charlie was just plain scared, and Johnnie-O knew he wasn’t ready. Something deep inside Johnnie told him he had more to do in Everlost.

  When their journey had first begun, the unnatural wind blowing them back from the Mississippi was powerful enough to give them an eastern momentum. The Everlost air offered them no friction, no resistance, nothing to stop their drift, and so a few days after leaving Memphis, they passed the eastern seaboard and were out over the Atlantic Ocean. That ocean seemed endless. Each day Johnnie would look out of the window to see yet more ocean around them, to every horizon.

  That’s when Charlie had begun to sing. At first he’d just hum to himself, then he’d mumble the words, and soon he’d become lost in the endless verses.

  “Dinah won’t you blow…”

  For weeks Charlie had been singing the same song over and over again.

  “Dinah won’t you blow…”

  He sang it twenty-four hours a day, with that same vacant, cheerful tone.

  “Dinah won’t you blow your hor-or-orn?”

  He kept the beat with his head, endlessly banging it against the hallway bulkhead.

  “Dinah won’t you blow…”

  Johnnie-O, who had very little patience to begin with, would have pulled out his hair, were it possible for an Afterlight’s hair to come out.

  “Dinah won’t you blow…”

  Johnnie squeezed his oversized hands into fists, wishing there was something he could bust, but having spent many years trying to break things, he knew more than anyone that Everlost stuff didn’t break, unless breakage was its purpose.

  “Dinah won’t you blow your horn!”

  “Dammit, will you shut your hole or I swear I’m gonna pound you into next Tuesday and then throw you out the stinkin’ window where you and your song can drown and sink down to the center of the earth for all I care, so you better shut your hole right now!”

  Charlie looked at him for a moment, eyes wide, considering it. Then he said: “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah!”

  Johnnie groaned.

  “Someone’s in the kitchen I know-oh-oh-oh!”

  Unable to take it anymore, Johnnie grabbed Charlie and dragged him down to the starboard promenade, where the windows had a dramatic view of the clouds, and the shimmering Atlantic Ocean below.

  “I’ll do it!” Johnnie-O screamed, but Charlie just kept on singing. Maybe that’s what Charlie wanted, or maybe he was just so far gone, he didn’t even hear Johnnie anymore. Johnnie had seen spirits go like that. He had seen souls who were so ready to leave and complete their journey, that they had fallen into an endless loop, happy to pass the time, however long it took, until the tunnel opened before them. If that were the case, Charlie would be at home at the center of the earth, waiting for time to end.

  But Johnnie-O, tough guy that he was, couldn’t do that to him. He couldn’t give Charlie a coin either. He knew he should, because Charlie was clearly no longer afraid… but then if he did, and Charlie went down the tunnel and into the light, Johnnie would truly be alone.

  So he put Charlie down, and they sat in the lavishly decorated starboard promenade, and waited for happenstance to take them where it would.

  Then, the day after he almost threw Charlie out of the window, Johnnie saw something in the distance that wasn’t ocean. He shook Charlie in excitement.

  “Look!” he said. “Look! It’s China!”

  Johnnie-O wasn’t an expert in geography. He knew, however, that China was called “the Far East,” and he assumed that their eastward journey would take them there. What he called China was actually the coast of Spain.

  Once they reached the coastline, Johnnie contented himself with watching the view, listening to the faint sounds of the living below, and searching for deadspots on the ground. Then, the next day, to Johnnie’s dismay, the sun rose to reveal that they were out over water once more.

  “Oh, great,” said Johnnie. “Where are we now?”

  “Strummin’ on the old banjo!” sang Charlie.

  Johnnie-O suspected this was going to be a very long eternity.

  CHAPTER 8

  Half-lost

  T he old man was horrible to behold in both worlds. Half of his face had been ruined by fire. His left eye was dead and unseeing, and his left ear was deaf as a post. His left hand only had the memory of fingers, for it had fallen victim to the flames as well. Occasionally those nonexistent fingers itched. The doctors said it was a very common sensation for those who have lost a part of themselves.

  He had long ago given up any attempts to disguise the scarring, or to hide it from the judgmental eyes of strangers-and everyone was a stranger now. Those who saw him always averted their eyes. Charitable people looked away in pity; others looked away in disgust-but in the end no one wanted to look upon him.

  Who he had been in the first half of his life meant nothing anymore. The living world was unforgiving of old scars. Sure, there had been great sympathy at first, but sympathy has a short shelf life. The same people who once called him a hero now turned the other way when they saw him in the street-never knowing that this was the celebrated firefighter who had lost the left half of his life in a tenement inferno, while saving half a dozen people. All they saw was a ruined man in tattered rags, panhandling on highway exit ramps.

  From the day his bandages came off, Clarence knew
that something profound had happened to him-more profound, even, than the burns still raw on his face.

  “I see things,” Clarence would tell people. “I see impossible things with my dead eye.”

  If he had stayed quiet about the things he saw, he would have held on to his life, and adapted, as other burn victims do-but Clarence was not the kind of man who kept quiet.

  “The things I see,” he would tell anyone who would listen, “are terrible, but wonderful, too.”

  He would tell of the twin towers, still standing in New York, “touching the sky, just as sure as I’m standing here.”

  He would tell of the many ghosts he saw going about their business. “They’re all children! They’re dead and yet somehow they’re not.”

  He would tell of the fears that kept him awake at night. “My dead ear can hear them sometimes-and some of them are up to no good. They’ll kill you soon as look at you.” And he talked about how his left eye could still see fingers on his left hand-and those fingers could actually touch all the things that no one else could see!

  They gave him medication for a while, convincing Clarence that he was very, very sick-that his brain was damaged by the fire. The medication numbed his senses, and made it hard to get inside his own head-but none of that medicine made his visions go away. That’s how he knew the problem was not him, it was the rest of the world.

  “I see things, and I don’t care if no one believes me!” he would yell in frustration. And, of course, no one did believe him. No one wanted to hear the ravings of a lunatic-much less the ravings of a burn-scarred lunatic. They just wanted him to go away. So the world forgot he was a hero, and instead labeled him a public nuisance.

  For many years he wandered from city to city, state to state, looking for all the things he might see with his dead eye. He lived anywhere he didn’t get thrown out of, which meant he never lived anywhere for long. Mostly he lived out in the open, everywhere from city streets, to country fields, trying to make sense of his visions-hoping that one day it would all fit together and he’d know why he was cursed with this gift of vision.