Allie had all but forgotten Seth, the single member of the foursome she wasn’t skinjacking. “Quiet!” she said in a three-voice chorus. It took even more energy to speak with three sets of vocal chords under her command, so conversations had to be kept to a minimum. She reached into her pocket, all three men mimicking the same exact motion. While the guards came up empty-handed, the warden had his car keys in his hand. He hit a button and the Lexus in the warden’s parking space unlocked.
Seth, who took the passenger seat, mumbled to himself all the things that could go wrong as they drove out into the city, and Allie simply could not deal with the distraction. “Stop! Talking!” her three voices told him.
She hadn’t lived long enough to get her license, and on top of it, it was near impossible to drive when she had three points of view, but with the aid of the warden’s muscle memory she managed to keep the Lexus on the road, and mostly in her own lane. Soon she was able to narrow her focus, and make the warden’s eyes her primary ones, although the two guards in the backseat perfectly copied the motions of the warden’s hands on the wheel.
She drove down a frontage road, afraid to get onto the freeway. Then, when they were about ten miles out of the city, she turned onto a residential street, dead quiet at this time of night. She pulled over to the curb, turned to Seth, and struggled to say, “Get! Out! Good! Luck!”
Seth hesitated for a moment. “Right here? But-”
“Go!”
He didn’t need another invitation. “Well… Thanks. I mean.. .” And since there was nothing he could say that would be adequate, he gave her a genuine smile, then opened the door and ran, disappearing into the dark neighborhood.
Once he was gone, Allie turned off the headlights, turned off the engine, and continued to jump. Guard to guard to warden; guard to guard to warden.
There would be a manhunt. Seth would be hunted down like an animal-and with those bandages on his face he’d be easy to spot… but Allie suspected he was streetwise, and much smarter than people gave him credit for. With any luck, they’d never catch him. And if they did, she could free him again.
Why did I do this?
Why do I care?
She knew the question was important, and her answer crucial-but she couldn’t think about that right now.
One-two-three, one-two-three, guard-guard-warden. The three men were drenched in sweat but she kept them under her firm control for almost an hour, making sure she gave Seth a substantial lead. Then, when she could juggle no more, she let all three men go.
One guard began to scream, the other began to pray, and the warden pounded the steering wheel in frustration. Allie knew these three men would face the full wrath of the judicial system, and their claim of being spiritually possessed would be laughed at. Perhaps, Allie thought, I could skinjack the judge at their trials, and get them off. And it occurred to her that every event changed in the living world through skinjacking required even more skinjacking to offset the consequences.
Allie didn’t linger to watch what the men made of their experience. Now that she was back in Everlost, she felt as if her soul had been shredded. She was so weak, she could barely lift her feet and found that she was beginning to sink deeper and deeper into the living world because she couldn’t move fast enough to keep it from taking her down. She knew she would sink over her head if she didn’t do something soon, so she made her way to the nearest home, practically crawling, and skinjacked the first person she came across, just to escape from sinking. A woman, home alone, watching the home shopping network. Once Allie was inside, and had taken control, she instantly knew that the woman was drunk. Very drunk.
Between the fleshie’s blood alcohol level, and all the turmoil in her own soul, it was more than Allie could stand. She stumbled into the bathroom and retched into the toilet. She could have found a neighbor to skinjack, but she didn’t. She stayed there retching until there was nothing left to purge…
… Because now that it was over, now that she had done the deed, she knew why she had to free Seth.
Seth had no memory of the fire-but it was more than that. He also had no memory of leaving the gas station and going into the school. Somehow all the evidence pointed to him, and there were witnesses who swore they saw him start the blaze.
How was that possible?
How could a person have no memory of something their own body did?
The answer had been in front of Allie all along, but she had refused to see it until now.
Seth Fellon had been skinjacked.
There could be no denying it. So Allie heaved over the porcelain bowl, hoping she could flush away the truth.
CHAPTER 22
A Balance of Power
I t had taken two weeks of endless tweaking and tinkering until Mikey McGill finally picked the lock on the cage he was trapped in. Then, once he was free, he immediately set off on the railroad tracks, following Nick’s prints. If nothing else, Nick was single-minded; each footprint was spaced exactly the same distance apart. Nick had marched like a machine, slow and steady, but he had a two-week lead on Mikey now.
When Mikey reached Little Rock, he ventured into the city, hoping to find Afterlights he could convince to join him. His ability to become a monster was impressive enough to get their attention, and if he played it right, they would respect him instead of fear him. Fear was easy, but it had gotten tiresome. He would much rather have Afterlights who joined him because they wanted to, not just because they were afraid not to.
Mikey found no Afterlights in Little Rock, or anywhere else west of the Mississippi, for that matter. He pondered this as he rested on a sizable deadspot in a hotel lobby. He didn’t even want to guess how the deadspot had gotten there. In the living world, a TV played a twenty-four-hour news network. Someone was being interviewed about a car wreck. Mikey didn’t pay much attention until he heard “It’s bad, it’s bad. I’d never seen so many cars piled up!”
Mikey’s eyes snapped to the TV. There was something familiar about that voice. The focus was blurry, like everything else in the living world, but he could make out two middle-aged men being interviewed.
The second man said, “Yeah, I never shaw shush a bad crash.”
Mikey stood and stared at the TV, trying to tell himself he hadn’t heard it, that it was a trick of his own twisted mind. He had heard enough of the report to know that this had happened in San Antonio, Texas. The driver of an eighteen-wheeler claimed to have fallen asleep at the wheel. A witness in one of the cars, however, claimed that she saw the driver jackknife the truck on purpose.
Mikey tried to dismiss it. The two voices couldn’t belong to Moose and Squirrel. These were deeper, older… but Mikey had heard their skinjacking voices before. The vocal chords change with each fleshie, but the way a person speaks does not.
… And the driver turned the wheel intentionally. Mikey knew that Moose and Squirrel had been on the ghost train. Could they be causing greater and greater mischief for their own amusement? Was Allie still captive on that train?
If Moose and Squirrel were creating disasters, Mikey figured there would be other occurrences, other awful events that seemed random, but were not. The problem was, Mikey couldn’t access the information. He couldn’t turn the page of a living world newspaper, or read the blur beneath the headline.
What Mikey needed was someone who could be in both Everlost and the living world at the same time. What he needed was a scar wraith.
Clarence did not die when he was shot that day at the crumbling farmhouse. Had the bullet pierced his heart, or even nicked an artery, his story would have ended. He would have faced the tunnel and the light-and in that light, maybe he would have found some of the answers as to why his life had been so unfair.
But the officer who shot him hadn’t been aiming for the heart. He had aimed merely to disarm him. The bullet had imbedded itself in Clarence’s shoulder, fracturing his collarbone, leaving Clarence with a whole host of internal issues-but none of them life-threatening
.
And while it was true that the living world had mostly forgotten his heroism, good deeds have a nasty habit of coming back when one least expects them to.
When it came to light that this crazy old man was once a firefighter who saved many lives, the officer who fired the bullet felt a bit of responsibility. It was nothing quite so fervent as guilt-after all, he had fired in self-defense-but the man felt enough responsibility, and had enough compassion, to downplay the shotgun attack, bringing the charges down to trespassing and resisting arrest.
He was sentenced to six months in prison, but his sentence would be thrown out if Clarence agreed to commit himself to a hospital… the kind of hospital where they put people who talk to dead kids and see things that no longer exist.
So Clarence agreed. On that day he gave up his quest to show the world what he knew about Everlost… and that was the day that Clarence began down that long, slow road, toward his death-and a sorry death it would be, meaningless and hopeless, a funeral attended by no one except for those who were required to fill out paperwork.
Clarence knew that would be his fate, but what did he care? He had failed, and he had to accept that. He had captured two evil spirits, he had plied them for information, and even with all of that, it had brought him no closer to proving to the world the things he knew.
Well, it didn’t matter! Why should he care about the world anyway? There, at Hollow Oak Hospital, his own personal world was safe and sterile. His pillows were fluffed regularly, he had a somewhat warm bed. The best part of it was that there were no ghost children.
At least not until the day one paid him a visit.
Clarence yelled out loud when he saw Mikey standing in his bedroom. Fortunately, random shouts were more the norm than the exception here, so no one thought much of it.
“Why are you back?” Clarence asked. “Haven’t you done enough damage?”
“We need to talk,” Mikey said, “but I can’t stay here, this floor is too thin.”
Clarence could see Mikey struggling to keep from sinking through it. It made Clarence laugh, but Mikey ignored him.
“Meet me on solid ground,” Mikey said. “Out in the garden.” And then he walked through a wall and was gone. Clarence had half a mind to make him wait an hour or two, but he was too curious about what this troublesome spirit had to say.
Tracking down Clarence in the living world had not been easy for Mikey. He had gotten so accustomed to traveling with Allie, he had forgotten how disconnected Everlost was from that world. Without her, the living world, as close as it was, was a universe away. Mikey could turn himself into any monster he could imagine, but he couldn’t change the path of a single speck of drifting dust in the living world. He could walk through walls, but he couldn’t lean on one. He could raise his Everlost voice, sounding like the voice of God or the devil, but couldn’t ask a single question to the living. He felt powerless, and it was a feeling he despised.
In all his years in Everlost, his inability to interact with the living world hadn’t mattered. Although both worlds coexisted, it was easy for him to ignore that other place, and tune it out the way the living tuned out the tick of a clock, or the flicker of a lightbulb. To Mikey the living world had been little more than an annoyance.
But things were changing.
For as long as anyone could remember the two worlds had coexisted, and aside from the occasional haunting, or random skinjacking, the living were not troubled by the world they could not see.
Mary had changed that, however. She used skinjackers to blow up a bridge, and that bold act set in motion a clockwork too intricate for anyone to see. Anyone, that is, but Clarence, who could see both worlds at once. It was that connection to the living world that Mikey needed… but Mikey had other things in mind for Clarence as well.
“I need your help.”
“Oh, really?” said Clarence. “And why should I help you?”
They were out in the garden now, a spot that even in December was frequented by patients. The staff had hung some ornaments from the bare-limbed cherry trees, but all it did was draw attention to how bare the branches were. There was an attendant on duty in the garden to make sure that none of the patients did anything problematic. Apparently talking to oneself did not count as a problem.
“You should help me, because I can prove to people that you’re not crazy,” Mikey said. “I can’t prove it to everyone. But maybe to a few people. The people who really matter to you.”
“Nobody matters to me anymore.” But Clarence was not convincing. So Mikey waited until Clarence said, “My son, maybe. But he doesn’t even know I’m alive, so maybe it’s better if-”
“I know someone who can make your son believe from the inside out-but I need your help to find her.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in a ‘psychiatric facility.’ I might be here voluntarily, but if I leave, those charges they dropped will come right back.”
To which Mikey said, “Only if they find you.”
Clarence thought about it. “You know, I’m beginning to like you. And that scares me.” A breeze blew in the living world, knocking loose one of the sparsely spaced ornaments. It fell to the ground and shattered with a dainty tinkle. The attendant went to clean it up.
“So this friend of yours-is she an incubus, or a succubus, or a poltergeist, or a ghoul?”
“None of those things. She’s just a girl.”
“And you’re in love with her.”
That caught Mikey by surprise. “How did you know that?”
“We talked about it, remember? And besides, that glow you’ve got-when you talk about her, it turns a little bit purple.”
“Right. So the first thing I need you to do is read me some newspapers. Living-world things are too blurry to read in Everlost.”
“What are we supposed to be looking for?”
“Accidents,” Mikey said. “Accidents in Texas.”
Clarence took a long time to consider it, scratching his beard stubble. Then he held out his Everlost hand to Mikey. “It’s a deal. Let’s shake on it.”
Mikey instantly backed away. This was a scar wraith. He had to remember that. If the legend was true, he could be extinguished by a single touch.
Clarence still held out his hand, waiting. “A gentleman’s agreement requires a handshake. Didn’t your mother teach you manners?”
Mikey considered telling him the truth, but instead he said, “I’m unclean! Yeah-I’m an unclean spirit. And out of respect for you, I shouldn’t touch you.”
Clarence looked at him, but didn’t drop his arm just yet. “How does a spirit become ‘unclean’?”
Once the lie had been launched, Mikey found it hard to change its trajectory. “It’s not my fault-I had a curse put on me by… uh.. . by a graveyard ghoul. That’s why I walk the earth.”
“Graveyard ghoul, huh?” Finally Clarence put his hand down. “In that case, we’ll skip the handshake. Because, you know what they say. ..”
“Yeah,” said Mikey. “Yes, I know what they say. Boy, do I know what they say!”
As it turned out, they didn’t need newspapers. Over the next few days Clarence scoured the Internet from the computer in Hollow Oaks’s recreation room. What Clarence found confirmed Mikey’s suspicions. San Antonio, Texas, had become a center of bad luck. Not just the car pileup, but a school fire and a bleacher collapse, and a freak electrocution. Although Moose and Squirrel never appeared again in any of the news clips, the circumstances were all similar. There was always a suspect or two, who had been seen by reliable witnesses-once even caught on surveillance video-and yet each suspect claimed to have no memory of what happened.
There was no question in Mikey’s mind that this was where the ghost train went-which meant Allie was there too. More than anything, Mikey wanted to find Allie, but he also knew he had to stop these random crimes against the living.
Mikey had no particular love of the living world, but he did not despise it the way his sister
did. He tried to tell himself that Mary wasn’t the one behind all these terrible things-but he had to accept the truth: Milos, Moose, and Squirrel were now working for her. Alone, they had been just a nuisance, but in the hands of someone like his sister-someone with vision-they were incredibly dangerous, and could manipulate the living world in ways too frightening to imagine. Yes, they were Mary’s weapons, whether she was standing there with them or not.
So how does one fight against weapons that powerful? By having one’s weapon: a weapon could wipe out the very existence of Mary’s skinjackers. Clarence would be Mikey’s weapon-his “balance of power.”
Of course Mikey couldn’t tell Clarence that. If he knew, he’d be gone in a heartbeat. That’s why Mikey had to lie about why they couldn’t shake hands. It wasn’t the worst of lies, Mikey figured. In fact it was bound to help everyone. And besides, Mikey had turned over so many new leaves, the ground before him was practically carpeted green. He could afford to turn one back. He could afford one simple white lie.
Only much later would he realize that he was very wrong. Not only couldn’t he afford it, but there weren’t enough coins in all of Everlost to pay the cost.
CHAPTER 23
Uptown Boy
W hile Allie was freeing the innocent, and Mikey was preparing his ultimate weapon, the Neon Nightmares were hunkering down in their lair, lying low.
With the threat of the Chocolate Ogre somewhere in the city above, the Neons had set their security alert on red. All lookouts were given orders to sink themselves if spotted, rather than lead the monster back to the Alamo again. They had been lucky the first time, but would not escape detection a second time.
After the first few days in lockdown, Jill went through a sort of skinjacking withdrawal, aggravated by the adrenaline rush infused into them all by the vortex above. It was like being wired on caffeine twenty-four hours a day, and since sleeplessness was the normal state of Afterlights, it only made things worse. In the Alamo basement, everyone was an insomnoid.
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