Clarence was in Memphis the day the Union Avenue Bridge came crashing down.
With his right, living eye, he saw the explosions, and the collapsing bridge… but with his left eye he saw the ghost bridge now standing in its place, and the spirit train that rode across it, heading west.
Indeed, things were brewing in the half-dead world, and the only way to find out how bad the brew had become was to capture a spirit or two. If he could do that, maybe he could prove they existed. Maybe a special camera could photograph them. Anything to prove to the world that he was sane and they were blind.
He took up residence in an abandoned farmhouse that looked one storm short of surrender, a few miles west of the Mississippi. To Clarence’s dead eye, however, that farmhouse looked as fresh and fine as the day it was built. There he came up with a plan.
He built himself a trap made of brass bed frames that no longer existed, from homes that were washed away in a flood. To anyone watching, he knew he must have looked mad-dragging invisible bed frames, with invisible fingers, but how he appeared to the world was of no consequence now.
Then, using that same dead hand, he hinged the bed frames with powerful springs, so when the trap was sprung it would snap closed, trapping the evil spirit inside.
For bait he used a glazed ham that would have been someone’s Christmas dinner, had the delivery truck not hit a tree. The truck didn’t cross into the ghost-place, but some of the meals it carried did.
For weeks he waited in the farmhouse, watching his trap out in the fallow field between the house and the highway. He knew something was coming before it even arrived, because he smelled it. It was not an aroma from the living world, because his sense of smell was lost in the fire. It came from the ghost-place, pungent and strong. Clarence had to smile. He had forgotten how much he liked the scent of chocolate.
CHAPTER 9
Assaulting Gravity
T he earth is roughly eight thousand miles in diameter. Its center is four thousand miles down. While the living world is not solid enough to hold a stationary Afterlight on its surface, neither is it soft enough to make a downward journey quick. Still, sinking slowly, over a period of many, many years is no one’s idea of fun.
Mikey McGill had been to the center of the earth, which, to an Afterlight, is no more hellish than waiting for one’s father to come home for supper… if supper wasn’t coming for a few billion years.
What had struck Mikey as the most annoying part of it was how everyone but he had developed a deep sense of contentment and peace. They had adapted to their situation, and had all come to love the waiting. Ask any soul who has sunk to the center, and they’ll tell you that, at least for now, there is no place they’d rather be.
Mikey, however, never got with the program. He never felt “one with the earth.” He never experienced the joy of Nirvana. The thought of patiently waiting until the end of time-or at least the end of the planet-was as unappealing to him as, oh, say, waiting for his father to come home for supper, which Mikey had actually found extremely hellish in life, because he never had any patience for anything.
There were those among the Centered Ones who believed that their very presence at the core is what allowed the planet to be a green, living thing, rather than just a rock hurtling through space-and that they were not lost to the living world, but a crucial part of the life cycle. Whether they were right or wrong didn’t matter to Mikey. He just didn’t want to be there. So he had decided to climb out.
Since strength in Everlost is determined by the power of one’s will, and since Mikey McGill was the most willful spirit ever to sink to the center of the earth, he was able to climb back to the surface. He didn’t just defy gravity, he assaulted it, and in so doing, became the only soul ever to return from the center. Of course when he emerged, he had transformed into the most heinous of monsters. He called himself the McGill, and struck fear into the hearts of Afterlights everywhere. Being the One True Monster of Everlost suited him for a while-but as much as his sister, Megan (better known as Mary Hightower), loved order and permanence, Mikey loved chaos and change. He couldn’t stay the McGill forever-and although he now possessed the remarkable skill of tweaking himself into whatever form of monster he desired, he found, for the most part, he preferred the form he started with: a boy with slightly unruly auburn hair, who, according to Allie the Outcast, was somewhat decent-looking.
Just as his love for Allie had saved him, however, it now threatened to doom him… because in those days and weeks after the collapse of the Union Avenue Bridge, while Allie was taken hostage on a train headed west, Mikey was, once again, on his way to the center of the earth. This time, someone else was sinking with him; an Afterlight once known as Nick, but now more accurately called the Chocolate Ogre.
It had been a calculated risk on Mikey’s part to try to travel beneath the Mississippi river, instead of facing the impassable wind-but he had to go after Allie. He had to rescue her, and this seemed the only way to do it.
The plan was to sink into the living world, move through the bedrock beneath the riverbed, then come up on the other side. He had managed something similar a few years back, diving into the earth on horseback, to rescue Allie from sinking.
This new challenge, however, had proven to be very different. Back when he saved Allie from the depths, he had more of the monster in him-a proud, arrogant fury that made it easier to assault gravity. But Mikey was not the monster he was. His time with Allie had left him far too human. Certainly he could tweak himself up a pair of spatula claws for hands, making it easier to move through the stone of the living world, but he had to face the fact that rising from the depths required more than that. It took willpower and a fury that raged hotter than the bowels of the earth. Mikey McGill certainly had willpower, but his love for Allie had taken the edge off of his fury.
And then there was the added burden of Nick. In the end Nick had become exactly what Mary said he would become. The small brown smudge on his mouth, left there from candy he was eating the moment he died, grew like a fungus until nothing was left of him but that chocolate.
He would have dissolved into nothing, had it not been for Mikey, whose skill at soul-tweaking extended beyond just the changing of his own form. Mikey took buckets of bittersweet spiritual fudge, and with more patience than he knew he had, Mikey had shaped it back into humanoid form.
But Nick was not the same.
He had only the faintest memory of who and what he was. He was like a small child, entirely dependent on Mikey, with no will of his own. He had truly become a Chocolate Ogre.
Still, knowing the risks, Mikey took them both down, letting them sink into the living world.
“I’m scared,” the Ogre had said with a gurgling cocoa-rich voice.
Mikey had sworn to him that it would all be okay, and the Ogre had trusted him. It had taken only a few minutes in the ground, and away from daylight, for Mikey to realize that the task might be beyond him.
“Move your arms!” Mikey had commanded as they sank deeper and deeper. “Kick your legs like you’re swimming.”
“What’s swimming?” the Ogre responded. The spirit that had once been Nick was now a dim-witted thing with no survival skills. And so they struggled, moving ever downward as Mikey tried in vain to move them up.
That’s how it was for weeks. Mikey strained against gravity with the Chocolate Ogre clinging to him, a helpless weight around his neck. Mikey had no idea how deep they had gone, or even if they had moved far enough West to have passed under the Mississippi River, which now flowed somewhere far above them.
“It’s dark!” the Ogre would say every once in a while, each time like it was the first time he had noticed it.
“Dark is good,” Mikey would tell him. “If the rock around us starts to glow, and get molten, then we’re really in trouble.”
Molten magma would mean they were leaving the earth’s crust, and entering the mantle. The heat wouldn’t burn them, but they would sink faster, leaving
them no hope of returning to the surface. They would sink until there was no direction but up, and they’d join all the others who were probably still singing a trillion bottles of beer on the wall, which Mikey had started when he was first down there, and calculated would go on for thirty-two thousand years.
But they weren’t there yet.
As long as the stone of the living world around them was dark and relatively cool, they couldn’t be more than a mile or two down, so there was still hope.
“Maybe we should just give up,” the Ogre said to him in the midst of their endless struggle. “Maybe we should give up, and let what happens happen. Let the earth take us where it wants us to go. Is that a good idea?”
“No!” The suggestion infuriated Mikey. He wanted to tear the chocolate creature limb from limb for saying it-and he discovered that the anger gave him strength. Striking back at the Ogre would not help them-but taking that anger and channeling it into upward momentum-that would make a difference.
If Mikey let go of the Chocolate Ogre, he knew he could save himself, but the days of the selfish, self-centered McGill were gone. He wouldn’t do that to Nick. They would rise to the surface together, or not at all.
“This will not be our fate!” he screamed to the stone around him. Whether or not the earth was alive he did not know, but it seemed to have a will of its own. It wanted to draw them down into its womb, and hold them there until the world itself was no more. Perhaps that was acceptable, maybe even desirable for other souls, but not for him. He was not a Centered One. He was Mikey McGill, and he had things to do!
First of all, he had to save Allie! Without him, she would be a prisoner of Mary. Even worse, she would be at the mercy of that two-faced skinjacking slimeball Milos! Mikey could not bear to leave her in his clutches. The thought of it added to his fury, and his fury was transposed into muscle, moving them upward.
He renewed the struggle, and realized that arms and legs in this dense, gritty darkness were useless. He had the power to change, and realized there were forms more suitable for moving in dense, murky depths. He drew in his arms, and turned them into flippers. He fused his legs, and turned them into a fluke. He imagined himself a whale, but covered with sharp, toothlike ridges that could grip stone. Then he sprouted himself a dorsal fin.
“Hold on to that, and don’t let go,” he told the Chocolate Ogre, who, if nothing else, was very good at doing what he was told. Then Mikey began to force them upward through the stone of the living world, imagining all those things that made him furious-all those things that he knew he could change if he could only be back on the surface again.
He had no sense of direction now. But he knew they were moving upward because the earth around him and within him was getting colder and colder. Then after many days, he breached into the light of day, and the sun almost blinded him. It came so suddenly, he didn’t know what to do next. He had almost forgotten what it was to be a spirit in Everlost. Before he could sink again, he found deep in his thoughts an image of who he was. Mikey McGill. Mary’s brother. Allie’s soulmate. Perhaps the one boy who could make a difference in the battle for souls in Everlost.
Before he knew it, his form transformed back into that of a human, and with what little strength he had left, he reached out and grabbed the hand of the Chocolate Ogre, who was already beginning to sink back into the earth.
“We’ve got to keep moving now,” he reminded the Ogre. “If we don’t, we’ll sink again.”
“It’s bright here,” the Ogre said. “Where are we? Where are we going?”
“We’re going to rescue Allie,” he told the Ogre. “I don’t know where we are right now, but we’ll figure it out soon enough.”
Then a succulent aroma came to them, so pungent, it overcame the rich smell of chocolate.
“Do you smell that?” said the Ogre. “It smells good!”
Mikey was wary. He knew that in Everlost that which was pleasing to the senses was sometimes the tip of something much less pleasant. “Whatever it is, let’s avoid it.”
But like a dog fixed on a scent, the Ogre couldn’t resist. He determined the direction of the smell, and took off after it.
“Nick, no!”
Mikey ran after him, trying to stop him-but found that his feet were still welded into a thorn-encrusted whale fluke. He fell flat on his face, and by the time he had transformed his fluke into two human legs, the Chocolate Ogre was bounding away.
There was a honey ham, glistening, as if it had come right off a holiday table, stuck into a post that had crossed into Everlost. Like all Everlost food, it was perfectly preserved and at the peak of flavor.
“Nick, don’t touch it!”
But nothing could stop the Chocolate Ogre now.
Mikey caught up with him just as he grabbed the ham, and the instant he did, a trap sprang up around them both, locking into place. It was a cage! They were locked in a cage!
“Now look what you’ve done!” shouted Mikey, but the Ogre didn’t seem to care. He just joyfully sunk his dark teeth into the ham, leaving behind a ring of chocolate with every bite he took.
There was a shout of glee, then strange maniacal laughter coming from a farmhouse that was slowly decaying itself into Everlost. A figure left the porch, approaching them. As the figure limped closer, Mikey could see that he was alive, but not entirely.
And for the first time in a very, very long time, Mikey McGill was truly afraid.
In her book Everything You Wanted to Know About Everlost, but Were Ashamed to Ask, Mary Hightower has this to say about scar wraiths:
“Scar wraiths do not exist, plain and simple. The very idea that someone could be part-way in and part-way out of Everlost is preposterous. Either you are blessed with admission into Everlost, or you are not. As for those awful legends about a scar wraith’s ability to extinguish an Everlost soul and wipe it out of existence, those legends are entirely false. Nothing can hurt an Afterlight, much less kill one. Let me say this again, in case there is any doubt. Scar wraiths do not exist. However, if you see one, please report it to an authority.”
CHAPTER 10
Wraith, Wraith, Go Away
M ikey screamed.
He had never screamed in all his years in Everlost, but this was something stranger and more horrible than anything he had ever seen: a man who existed part in and part out of Everlost. That steely gray eye, that cheek-and even one hand that almost seemed to hang in the air in front of the hazy blur of his living body-and where his Everflesh attached to his living flesh was an angry red line that sparked like a short circuit.
Mikey knew the scar wraith legend. It was second only to scary stories about himself when he was the McGill. According to the legend, just the brush of an arm, the grip of a shoulder, the caress of a cheek from a scar wraith’s hand would “kill” an Afterlight. But worse than dying, the Afterlight would extinguish. No light. No tunnel. Nothing. The touch of a scar wraith meant absolute death.
“Well, well, well, what have we got here…,” the scar wraith said, his eagle eye zipping back and forth in its socket as he examined them. His voice was both rough and almost musical, too. There was a resonance to it, like there were two sets of vocal cords, one a little higher than the other; clashing dissonant tones like an air raid siren.
“Don’t touch me!” Mikey screamed. “Nick, stay away from the bars! Don’t let him touch you!”
The scar wraith circled the cage with a heavy chain that had crossed into Everlost, and locked it in place with a padlock.
Mikey tried everything to escape. He turned his hands into lobster claws, his fingers into tiny buzz saws, he filled his arms with muscles and tried to pry the bars apart, but he couldn’t. He might have been able to push down the sides of the spring-loaded cage, but the chain and padlock now made that impossible. He thought of squeezing through the small chain-link holes of the bed frames, but he knew that wouldn’t work either. Although Mikey could reform himself into all nature of monster, all his creations were big an
d bulky. He couldn’t fashion himself into a creature slim enough to slither through the narrow bars and chain-link holes of a bed frame.
The scar wraith reached out his Everlost hand, dangling the key to the padlock, taunting him. Mikey jumped back, terrified that the wraith might touch him.
“No way out of there,” the scar wraith said. “You’re mine now, both of you. Whatever you are. You’re stuck in there until I’m done with you… and then…” The scar wraith put the key in his pocket, then limped back to the dilapidated farmhouse. He dragged a wooden rocking chair from the porch, set it down in front of the cage, and was content to just sit there and stare at Mikey and Nick for hours. Mikey watched him, just as intently as the wraith watched them.
No one knew why a scar wraith’s touch could extinguish, but Mikey had a theory. The living world had its natural laws, its life cycle, its science. Everlost also had natural rules. True, the rules of Everlost followed the beat of a rather syncopated drummer, but the natural laws of Everlost were sensible and consistent unto themselves.
… But a scar wraith flew in the face of both realities. It was perhaps the only truly unnatural thing in the entire universe. Was it any wonder, then, that its touch could destroy?
“So, are you going to tell me what’s going on?” the scar wraith finally asked, after much rocking.
“There’s a lot going on,” Mikey answered. “Be more specific.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “If you won’t talk, then you can just… you can just…” Then he grunted, and stormed back to the farmhouse.
Once the scar wraith left, the Ogre, who had been content to gnaw on the chocolate-coated ham bone said, “Can we go now?”
“No, you moron!” shouted Mikey. “We’re in a stupid cage!”
“Oh,” said the Ogre pleasantly. “Never mind.”
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