Jill didn’t know why she enjoyed reaping. All she knew was that there was an exhilaration in doing something so horribly wrong, and yet being rewarded for it. She would never admit that she had mixed feelings about it. She was good at it, and when her conscience tried to rear its ugly head, she would smack it back down, reminding herself that her only worth was in what she could do.
And then along came this feline freak, who cut through all of it every time he opened his lousy mouth, and made her see herself in a new light. Jix called her a huntress-and said that there was nothing wrong with it, nothing evil. All she had to do was leave the path she was on, and find a better, nobler path for her tendencies. No one had ever suggested that there could be anything remotely redeeming about her. Did he really believe it?
Jill cornered Jix in a saddle room where half the saddles were crumbling to dust and the other half had crossed into Everlost. It was just one of many hidden chambers in the old Alamo tunnels.
“What were you thinking?” she demanded, pushing him against the wall. “You want to stay here with these nut jobs?”
Although Jill thought she caught him by surprise, Jix had actually seen her coming. He could have dodged her, but he let her rough him up. She needed to get it out of her system, and besides it was the first physical contact they’d had.
“If we left, they would have Mary,” he told her.
“Why do you care about Mary?”
Jix pulled away from her, spun her around, and put her in a firm, yet tender headlock. “There are things you don’t know about me,” he told her.
Jill struggled, but he knew it was only for show. She could have gotten out of his grip if she had wanted to.
“What? That you’re on a mission from the jaguar gods?”
“Close,” said Jix, “because His Excellency does think of himself as a god.”
“His Excellency? I thought you were alone.”
“I never actually said that. You just assumed.” Now the struggle was for real and so he let her go.
“I gave up my coin to save you! You owe me the truth.”
“Very well,” Jix said. “But not now. There are too many others who can hear us.” And sure enough, a few Neons passed by the saddle room, taking note of them.
Jill nodded her reluctant acceptance. “I really hate you, you know that?” Then she stormed away.
In truth there were several reasons for Jix to stay. Bringing Mary to the king was just one of them. But there was also something about this jukebox which caught in his mind. Only a fool would worship a ridiculous machine-and while the Neons weren’t the smartest, they had been able to avoid detection and resist being conquered by His Excellency. Did the jukebox have something to do with that? Was their devotion to this machine based on something real?
Jix knew there were signs in Everlost. Signs that truly pointed to something beyond all of this. The most obvious ones were the coins: objects which were from neither the living world nor from Everlost, and had the ability to transport a soul to the next world, whatever that might be.
And then there were the fortune cookies-which they knew about even on the Yucatan peninsula, although they were harder to come across there. Everyone knew how in Everlost, all fortunes were true. Each one provided actual guidance, speaking to every Afterlight individually.
There was one time Jix had been sent to scout out a band of Afterlights that had been gathering newcomers in Mexico City with hopes of raising an Everlost Aztec Empire at Tenochtitlan. Thanks to Jix’s help, His Excellency conquered them. Jix was rewarded with one of the king’s own personal fortune cookies. Not just an ordinary one, but one coated in white chocolate-and those were supposed to contain the most powerful fortunes in all of Everlost.
Jix’s fortune had read, “You will free them.”
When His Excellency had asked what it said, Jix told him “The jaguar gods smile on you.” It was the only time Jix had ever lied to the king. That fortune was always at the back of Jix’s mind and he often wondered who it was he was meant to free.
When it came to the jukebox, it also said exactly what needed to be said-so in that sense, it was not all that different from the fortune cookies.
CHAPTER 17
And Then Along Came Mary…
A few days later, Mary’s coffin mysteriously disappeared from the root cellar, where all the other Interlights were being kept, and appeared in the middle of the common room. No one knew who had carried it there. Avalon, too proud to admit things were going on behind behind his back, made it seem as if he meant for it to happen.
“You may look at my property,” he told everyone, “but you may not touch it.”
There was a small African-American boy who walked around with a big ceramic piggy bank as if it was his only friend in the world. Everyone called him Little Richard. One day Jix caught him staring at Mary, as if she might open her eyes. Impossible, of course, considering she still had several more months of hibernation before her.
“Wurlitzer meant for her to come here,” said Little Richard. “It’s like that ‘Let It Be’ song. You know, ‘In times of trouble, and all that.’”
“Did Wurlitzer ever play that?” Jix asked him.
“No,” said Little Richard. Then he said with absolute confidence, “But he will when she wakes up.” Clearly he was part of whatever conspiracy had moved her here.
The Neons, fancying themselves a military unit in everything they did, set up a twenty-four-hour watch over Mary’s coffin, in case someone moved her again, or as some Neons secretly believed, she teleported herself to a different location.
By now, both Jix and Jill had come to understand the nature of the Neons’ constant battle-readiness, and why everyone there was macho to the extreme-even the girls.
“This place oughta be called the Abyss of Abysmal Aggression,” Jill told Jix, after getting into an all-out brawl with another girl.
It was Jix who figured it out. “The vortex above us is filled with the adrenalina of all the men who died here, I think. Down here, we still feel its effects. It can turn anyone into a warrior.”
“So how come it doesn’t affect you?” Jill asked.
Jix smiled and puffed out his bare chest. “It doesn’t get more macho than this.”
Jill scowled at him. “You’re an idiot.”
In truth, Jix did feel the effect of the vortex. There was a powerful urge to fight, and to challenge Avalon. But he was also disciplined and knew how to control those impulses. He had to have that much discipline to control the impulses of the cats he furjacked.
By now both Jix and Jill had come to see that the Neons’ various activities were, like so many Afterlights, repetitive day after day until they had become like rituals. The group of kids who played poker, then fought; the girl who read the same book cover-to-cover every day, then fought; the gym-rats who bench-pressed a barbell that would be far too heavy for them to lift in the living world, then fought. Only scouts and lookouts left the cramped labyrinth to search the city for Afterlights with coins, and to protect their hideout from nonexistent attackers. The Neons lived their deaths as if they were an army under siege.
While Jill wanted nothing to do with the Neons, Jix smoothly inserted himself into their routines, just as he had done on the train, making sure that each Neon knew him, and was comfortable with him. Comfortable enough to answer innocent questions that they wouldn’t even remember he had asked.
“How long has Avalon been high priest?”
“Since Wurlitzer played ‘See You Later, Alligator’ to the last one.”
“How did Wurlitzer even get down here?”
“Probably the Crocket Street tunnel-it leads to the old Grenet house.”
“Has it ever played on its own, without someone asking a question?”
“No-why would it?”
There was one girl rumored to have been here so long, she had no memory of being anywhere else. Her name was Dionne, and she spent much of her time polishing a Bowie knife-per
haps the original one. He saved the more important questions for her.
“How many songs does Wurlitzer play?” Jix asked. “Thirty? Forty?”
Dionne shook her head. “There are more songs in there than you can imagine,” she told him. “And sometimes it’ll play songs some of us have never heard before.”
Her answer confirmed what Jix had suspected; that this machine was not a simple mechanical device. It was something much, much more. Wurlitzer held the memory of every song that anyone has ever loved.
Then he asked the big question: “Has Wurlitzer ever been wrong?”
Dionne paused her knife-polishing and took a moment before answering.
“Once,” she said. “But if you ask me, it was Avalon’s mistake, not Wurlitzer’s.” Then Dionne leaned closer and whispered, “A few years ago, Avalon asked Wurlitzer for a mission, and Wurlitzer played two songs in a row when only one coin had been dropped in. The first song was ‘The Chapel of Love’ and the second was ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo.’ Avalon’s usually pretty good at figuring out what it all means, and he seemed pretty sure about this one too. He made us trek all the way out to this little town called Love, Oklahoma, looking for a chapel that had crossed over-and sure enough, we found one. Then he said we had to lift it up, and move it over to some railroad tracks that had also crossed over. We went home, and nothing ever came of it. Crazy, right?”
“ Si,” Jix agreed, “ loco.” But Jix knew it wasn’t loco at all. The only reason Milos rammed the train into the mansion was because of that church. If that church hadn’t been on the tracks, Milos would never have been led to think the mansion could be knocked off the tracks, too. If it hadn’t been for the church, they would simply have sealed up the train when they saw the Neons coming, like a turtle pulling into its shell-which means Jill and Jix and Mary would not have been here now…
… which meant they were here because of Wurlitzer. Jix felt a phantom shiver run through his entire spirit. Wurlitzer didn’t just advise the Neons on matters of the present; it also anticipated the future-which meant it was truly a force to be reckoned with. Was it friend or foe? Jix wondered. Or was it fickle and unpredictable in its intentions?
When Jix crossed into Everlost, he had taken on the beliefs of his Mayan ancestors-for in this mystical world, a rich tapestry of magical beings suddenly seemed to make sense to him. Mayan gods were often mischievous, reveling in human folly, and there were dozens of them. It would have been less complicated if it came down to Wurlitzer being either the voice of God or the devil-but for Jix, there could be many other alternatives.
Or maybe it was just a talisman, a powerful luck-object. If it were like the coins and the cookies, then it was a messenger of comfort-a lifeline, thrown out to those caught in this middle realm. He wanted to believe that, but the only way to know for sure would be to ask it a question. The machine, however, was always guarded. And besides, Jix had no coin.
Jix discovered that, while Wurlitzer was fed every coin the Neons stole, there was one “emergency coin” inside Little Richard’s piggy bank. One problem, however: The piggy bank was the old-fashioned kind-it didn’t have a rubber plug on the bottom, it was solid all the way around. The only way to get the coin out was to smash the bank.. . but in Everlost, things didn’t break unless it was the object’s purpose to break. One might argue that a piggy bank’s purpose was to eventually be shattered, but the universe would argue back that such a thing could not happen until the bank was full. In such arguments the universe always won. Thus, the piggy bank was about as secure as Fort Knox.
Little Richard spent much of his days holding the piggy bank upside down and shaking it to make the coin come out of the tiny slot. He had been at it for several years.
“It will come out when it wants to,” Jix told him. But that didn’t stop him from shaking the bank.
Jill, who was listening, looked at Jix doubtfully. “You talk like the coin has a mind of its own.”
“Not a mind,” Jix said. “But a purpose. Nothing exists without a purpose.”
Jill smirked. “Did the jaguar gods tell you that?”
Jix knew it was meant as an insult, but he chose not to take it as one. “No,” he answered. “My mother did.”
Jill was not impressed. In fact, she was never impressed by anything. Ever. This fact impressed Jix a great deal. At least once a day, Jill would get in Jix’s face, insisting that they leave. “We’re skinjackers, we need to skinjack,” Jill said to him one day. “Even if you don’t, I do!”
They had been there about a week, by Jix’s reckoning, although the days did blend together-especially when they couldn’t see daylight.
“You would leave Mary?” he asked Jill.
Jill looked over to the glass coffin. It sat like a centerpiece in the common room, like a diamond in the middle of its setting. While Wurlitzer was covered with a quilt, Mary’s glory remained unhidden. More and more Neons had begun to revere the beautiful girl in the green satin gown. They knew nothing of her, had read none of her writings on the nature of Everlost. She arrived here without the thunderstorm of legend that usually preceded her arrival. Yet still, these Afterlights were drawn to her.
Jill considered Mary for a moment more, then said, “I don’t owe her anything, and right now she’s useless to me.”
Jix smiled. “Self-interest suits you, verdad? But sometimes a predator needs to look further than the eyes can see.”
“What are you blathering about? More of that jaguar-god nonsense?”
“No. I’m talking about successful stalking.” He looked around, and saw that the poker kids were beginning to get louder, preparing for their daily fistfight-which included a crowd of others cheering them on. Jix took Jill to the corner farthest away, so they could not be heard. “Cats stalk with their instincts-but you and me-we stalk with our minds. The way I stalked all of you on the train.”
Jill gave him a twisted grin. “You didn’t stalk anyone-we let you stay.”
“Why?” asked Jix. Jill had no answer for him. “I’ll tell you why. Because you never saw me as a threat. And yet I was. I knew you all so well-and had earned the respect of so many of Mary’s children, I could have easily taken over the train if I wanted to.”
Jill looked a little shaken. “Was that your plan? To take over?”
“No,” he told her, then leaned in closer. “But it is now.”
***
The following day, one of the lookouts-a skinny kid they called Domino-came down from up above, announcing that he had been seen by a group of refugees from the train crash. Avalon was not pleased. “I should push you down myself!” Avalon yelled at him. Then he ordered the Neons to prepare for battle. “We beat them once,” he said, “and we’ll do it again. And this time, we’ll send every last one of them downtown!”
“But they’ve got a monster now,” said Domino.
“What do you mean, monster?”
“I don’t know what else to call it. I’ve never seen anything that strong. And here’s the weird part,” he said, looking around, almost afraid to say it, as if they wouldn’t believe him, “It’s made… of chocolate.”
Jill gasped, then pretended she hadn’t.
“It’s true!” said the lookout, and showed them the brown stains on his clothes where it had grabbed him.
“And you led it right here, didn’t you?” said Avalon in disgust.
The lookout began to stammer. “I… I… I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Imbecile!”
Up above them, in the Alamo complex, a woman screamed and an alarm began to blare. Even though living-world business meant nothing to them, today it added to the tension. The Neons were all looking to Avalon for direction, so he pulled out the one remaining coin from his pocket. “We’ll ask Wurlitzer what to do.” Everyone agreed. He strode toward the machine, tugged off the blanket, and all the Neons fell to their knees. Even Jix did, for fear of angering it, whatever it was. Jill had to be forced to her knees.
Wurlitzer’s light cast a multicolored glow around the common room, caught and refracted by the many bits of glass that made up Mary’s coffin, which sat just a few yards in front of the jukebox. It almost seemed as if her coffin was a part of Wurlitzer now: an altar before the figure of a god. Jix couldn’t help but wonder if Wurlitzer wanted it this way-that even the attention given to Mary somehow reflected back on the mystical machine.
Avalon dropped the coin in and waited for it to clink its way down to the coin box and then he asked his question. “Mighty Wurlitzer, what do we do about this chocolate monster?” He pressed a random button on the machine’s console, and Wurlitzer came to life. It pulled a record from its apparently infinite spinning rack, dropped it on the turntable, and with clicks and pops the song began to play.
“Oh, don’t it hurt, deeeeep inside…” sang a man in falsetto.
“I don’t know this one,” said Avalon.
“What does it mean?” someone asked.
“Shh! Let me listen.” Avalon put his ear to the glass as if that might help his hearing, then he squinted through the next few lines as if squinting might make him smarter. “This is a difficult one.”
But then Jill said, “Wait for the chorus…” because she did know this song. In fact, it had been one of her grandfather’s favorites.
The music built to the chorus, and Frankie Valli sang, “Silence is golden…” and there was a collective gasp from the room.
“Wurlitzer has spoken,” Jill muttered, clearly a little freaked by it.
“Quiet!” yelled Avalon, then realized his error, and whispered, “Quiet…” Avalon went to the back of the machine and turned the volume down as low as it would go. In a couple of minutes, the song ended and when it was done, silence fell and it remained. No one spoke, no one moved. From the Alamo gift shop above them, they heard a voice.
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