Everlost s-1

by Neal Shusterman

  Nothing was worse than that limp, lonely feeling that he had no power over his own fate – and yet here he was again, strung up like a side of beef, just waiting for someone else to help him.

  So many of the kids chimed beside him had grown to accept this. Lief, with his weird post-traumatic bliss, was a constant reminder to Nick that he, too, might someday just leave his will behind, and grow as passive as a plant, waiting for time to do whatever time does to Afterlights. The thought frightened him—it made him anxious, and that anxiety spurred him on to action.

  “I’m finding a way out of here,” he announced to any of the other chimed kids who cared to listen.

  “Ah, shut up,” said the high-strung kid. “Nobody wants to hear it.”

  A few others echoed their halfhearted agreement.

  “You new chimers just complain, complain, complain,” said some kid from deep in the middle of the chiming chamber—perhaps a kid who had been there for many years, and had lost anything resembling hope.

  “I’m not complaining,” Nick announced, and he realized that, for once, he wasn’t. “I’m doing something about it.” Then he began to bend at the waist and swing his arms, making himself move like a pendulum.

  Lief smiled at him. “Looks like fun,” he said, and he joined Nick, until they were both swinging together, bounding off of all the other kids around them—kids who were not at all pleased to be jostled out of their semi-vegetative state.

  Grumbles of “Stop it!” and “Leave us alone,” began to echo around the chamber, but Nick would not be deterred.

  He couldn’t quite swing to the door, and even if he could, it was locked from the outside, so that was out of the question, and there were so many kids, he couldn’t build up the momentum to swing free, like a true pendulum. In the end, he wound up accidentally locking elbows with Lief as he swung past him, and they spun around each other, like an upside-down square dance. Their ropes tangled, and they ended up pressed to one another like dance partners.

  The high-strung kid laughed. “Serves you right!” he said. “Now you’ll be stuck like that!”

  Their ropes were hopelessly tangled, and now they were even farther from the ground than when they started.

  Farther from the ground…

  A stray thought sparked through Nick’s mind so sharply and suddenly, it burst out of his chocolate-covered mouth before he understood what he meant.

  “Macrame,” he said.

  “Huh?” said Lief.

  One day long ago, when Nick was home from school, too sick to do much of anything else, his grandmother gave him some twine, and showed him how to weave it together into fancy patterns. It was called macrame. He had made a hanging-plant holder that was probably still holding a big old spider plant in his living room.

  “Lief! ” he said. “Twist around me some more.” And without waiting for Lief to respond, Nick grabbed him and made Lief twist around him again and again until the torque of their tangled ropes made them spin backward, like a rubber band that was wound too tight. But before they could spin too far, Nick said, “Just follow me—do what I do.”

  Nick reached out and grabbed another kid.

  “Hey!” complained the kid.

  Nick ignored him and twisted the kid’s position so that high above their upside-down feet, their ropes tangled. Lief did the same to a kid next to him.

  By now there were mumbles of kids around them taking notice. This wasn’t just your run-of-the-mill swinging—this had purpose and design. This was something new.

  “What are you doing down there?” demanded the high-strung kid.

  “Everybody!” Nick shouted. “Grab the people around you and start crossing your ropes. Get as tangled as you can!”

  “Why?” the high-strung kid said.

  Nick tried to think of something the high-strung kid would understand. As he was wearing a Boy Scout uniform, Nick figured he knew just the thing. “Ever make a lanyard at Boy Scout camp?” Nick asked. “You know—those plastic strings you weave together to make whistle chains, and stuff?

  “Yeah…”

  “You start with tons and tons of string, right? But when it’s done it’s really short, once all the strings are woven together.”

  “Yeah…” said the kid, beginning to get it.

  “And if we keep tangling and tying up our ropes like a lanyard, we’ll get higher and higher off the ground—and maybe if we’re high enough, we could reach that grate up there and—”

  “—get out!” said the kid, finishing Nick’s thought.

  “I don’t wanna get tangled,” whined some kid far off.

  “Shut up!” said the high-strung Boy Scout. “I think it might work. Everybody do what he says. Start tangling yourselves!”

  All it took was an order from their leader for every single kid to start tangling. It was a strange dance of kids weaving in and out of one another, grabbing hands, pulling, swinging, stitching their ropes together, and with each stitch made, the collection of hanging kids rose farther off the ground.

  It took more than an hour, and when it was done, and there was not an inch of give left in their ropes, they had risen at least twenty feet. The result was hardly a lanyard, or even a macrame plant holder. Their ropes were a tangled mess, and the kids themselves were all tied up inside it like flies caught in the web of a large, psychotic spider. From where Nick hung, he could see the opening above them, so much closer now, only about ten feet away. If he were free from that blasted rope, he could climb up the tangle, and get out. If only there were rats to chew through these ropes.

  He looked around him. None of the kids who had been near him before were near him now—he was faced with an entire new set of neighbors. In fact everyone was chatting; those who remembered their names were introducing themselves. This was more life than any of these kids had shown for years. Even the screamer, who had pouted ever since Allie forbid him to scream, was happily talking away. Still, while the tangle brought some much needed variety to their dangling existence, it hadn’t freed anyone. Nick had to think—there had to be more he could do. And then, among all the chatty voices he heard one kid ask:

  “What time is it?”

  Through the interwoven ropes, he saw the kid in pajamas who everyone called Hammerhead. An idea came to him, and it amazed Nick that no one in the chiming chamber had thought of this before, being so deep and docile in their upside-down ruts. But then, Nick himself hadn’t really been thinking outside the box until today, had he? There “wasn’t much slack left in Nick’s rope, but he pulled his way through the clog of kids, and got them to shift positions, enabling him to inch forward until finally he was just a few feet away from Hammerhead, who smiled at him, showing his pointy teeth. “This is more fun than a feeding frenzy!”

  “Uh… right. Hey, how’d you like to help me out?”

  “Sure. What do you want me to do?” It took Hammerhead less than five minutes to gnaw through Nick’s rope.

  “There’s a problem in the chiming chamber,” a nervous crewman told the McGill.

  The McGill sat forward in his throne. “What kind of problem?”

  “Well… sir… they all seem to have gotten…tangled.”

  “So untangle them.”

  “Well…it’s not as easy as it sounds.”

  Frustrated, the McGill came out on deck, and went over to the grate above the chiming chamber. He pulled it open, and looked down into the depths to see the situation for himself. His captives weren’t just tangled, they were talking.

  They sounded…happy. This was entirely unacceptable.

  “Do we have something vile to pour on them?”

  “I’ll go check,” said the crewman, and he ran off.

  The McGill looked down at the tangled mob of kids again. “They look very uncomfortable,” he said. Certainly they were talking now, but in time, they’d grow tired of this new situation, and realize how much more unpleasant this tangle was than simply hanging upside down.

  “Pour someth
ing on them, then let them be,” the McGill told the crewman when he returned. “They’ll be miserable again soon enough.”

  As he walked off, for an instant the McGill thought he caught a whiff of chocolate somewhere on the open deck, but decided it must have just been his imagination.

  CHAPTER 22

  Member of the Cabinet

  Nick had made it out, but there was nowhere on the Sulphur Queen for him to go.

  Everywhere, at every staircase, every gangway, every hatchway was some Ugloid cleaning. True, the ship was full of dark corners in which to hide, but dark corners were useless to him, because he couldn’t douse his Afterlight glow. A corner was no longer dark once he was in it. He didn’t have a plan yet for getting off the ship, but maybe if he could find Allie they could work together.

  By now she must know the ship better than he did. The problem was, he had no idea where she was, and he wasn’t in any position to go traipsing around the ship looking for her. In the end, he retreated back into the bowels of the ship.

  Not the chiming chamber, but one of the treasure holds. It was the best place to hide, for no one dared to come down and disturb the McGill’s possessions. He would hide here until the night hours, when the crew was down below, engaged in games, or brawls, or whatever. Those were the hours when he could more easily sneak around the ship. Then he would search for Allie. But for now, he found himself a large oak cabinet. He slipped inside, pulled the doors tightly closed and waited.

  ***

  The dragon’s hoard in the central treasure hold was a treacherous mountain of mismatched booty. Allie, who had been here several times hunting for books worth reading and other things to pass the time, knew she had seen an old-fashioned typewriter, she just wasn’t sure ‘where. The stuff in the chamber was a mixture of pure junk and treasure. The McGill did not discriminate; if an object crossed over, and he could get his hot little hands on it, it came onboard, and got dumped here. Jewels sat side by side with empty beer bottles.

  The McGill was currently in his “war room,” planning a landing party to a Greensoul trap in Rockaway Point. As he was occupied, this gave Allie time to search. Climbing between the old filing cabinets and car tires, coat racks, and bed frames was no easy chore, and with no light but her own glow to guide her through the debris, it was rough going. She nearly got pinned beneath an airplane propeller, and flattened by an iron lung, but finally she found the typewriter beneath an old table. It was made of black dull metal. The keys were faded from many years of use before it had crossed over. A little emblem on its face said “Smith-Corona.”

  Her grandmother had an old-fashioned typewriter like this one—she still used it.

  “Words aren’t words unless you pound them out,” she used to say. Allie found a slip of paper among the mess, and figured out how to load it into the machine.

  Typing, Allie discovered, was a lot like key-boarding, with none of the speed and five times the effort. She shuddered to think of people spending day after day plunging their fingers against the little circular keys, which sank down a whole inch before flinging up an iron arm to smack the ribbon and leave a single letter imprinted on the page. She was thankful she had only a short phrase to type, but even so, she made enough mistakes to slow her down. The little typing arms kept getting stuck together like too many people trying to fit through a door. It took her four attempts before she had typed her message perfectly, then she put the typewriter back where she found it, and went looking for scissors.

  In the end she had to settle for the tiny scissors on a Swiss Army knife she had found on the floor. When she was done, she slipped the little piece of paper into her pocket. She was about to put down the Swiss Army knife when she heard the voice behind her.

  “Admiring my treasure?”

  She spun so fast, the Swiss Army knife flew from her hand and embedded itself in the McGill’s dangling eye. He pulled it out and dropped it to the floor. The wound healed instantaneously, as did all wounds in Everlost.

  “Careful,” he said. “You’ll put out an eye with that thing.”

  Allie gave him a weak little chuckle.

  “If you’re trying to steal something, I wouldn’t if I were you,” he said.

  “Anything you steal I will make you eat. It might not hurt but you’ll feel it sitting heavy in your stomach forever.”

  “I’m not stealing,” Allie told him. “I’m just exploring.”

  The McGill turned to look toward the door leading to the chiming chamber. “I’m surprised you’re not visiting your friends.’ “I don’t need to visit them,” she said. “You’ll free them soon enough.”

  “Are you so sure of that? How do you know I’ll keep my word?”

  “I don’t. But what choice do I have but to trust you?”

  The McGill pulled his lips back in a smile, and reached a hand toward her. She grimaced, not wanting to feel his dry bloated touch, but instead her cheek was met by something soft. She looked down to see that his right hand was no longer covered in peeling scales, but instead in soft, mink-like fur. The fingertips still had sharpened yellow nails, but the hand itself was soft.

  “As I said, I’ve been working on giving myself a soft touch.”

  Allie still pulled away. “Don’t change yourself for me.”

  “I’ll change myself anyway I like.”

  “It’s still monstrous.”

  “Good. That’s how I like it.”

  The McGill looked around proudly at his treasure trove. “There are girls’ clothes in here. You could find something nicer to wear.”

  “I can’t take off what I’m wearing. It’s what I died in.”

  “You can wear something over it.”

  Then the McGill spotted a big oak cabinet. “I think there might be something in here,” and with both hands he grabbed the handles and pulled it open wide.

  Nick had heard the whole conversation between Allie and the McGill, and through it all he counted the seconds until the McGill would leave. When he heard the McGill mention the cabinet, his heart sank. It was just his luck wasn’t it? If the McGill opened the cabinet and saw him, he’d probably hurl the entire thing over the side with Nick still in it. Nick pulled his knees to his chest, tried desperately to hide behind a wedding dress that was hanging there, and closed his eyes.

  The cabinet creaked open, and Allie, who was standing a few feet back, saw Nick immediately. She gasped. She couldn’t help it. The McGill, however, standing right in front of the cabinet, had a view of the wedding dress, and not the boy behind it. The McGill turned to Allie, obviously thinking her gasp was about the gown.

  Allie forced her eyes away from Nick, so the McGill couldn’t follow her gaze.

  The tip of Nick’s shoe was sticking out from under the dress, so Allie approached it, and fluffed the petticoat out a bit, pretending to admire the lacy fabric. It hid the tip of the shoe from view. Thankfully the dress was thick enough to hide Nick’s glow, and the cabinet had a strong camphor stench of mothballs, which overpowered any hint of chocolate in the air.

  “I won’t be a monster’s bride,” Allie said, then she grabbed the doors of the cabinet and forced them closed, nearly catching the McGill’s hand in the process. The McGill glared at her. “Who said I’d ask you?” Then he stormed away.

  Allie waited until she was sure he was gone, then waited twice that long again before she returned to the cabinet and pulled it open.

  “What are you doing in here! Do you know how dangerous it is? If they find out you escaped—”

  “They won’t find out. There are hundreds of kids in there—it’s not like they count us all the time.”

  “If you’re caught, you’re history.”

  “So I won’t get caught.”

  Allie looked around. “Did Lief come with you? Is he hiding somewhere else?”

  Nick shook his head. “He’s still in there with the others.” Then he smiled.

  “It’s a mess in there, I got them all tangled up.”

&nb
sp; “How is hiding in here any better than hanging in there?”

  “I’m not staying in this cabinet. As soon as I can, I’m getting off this ship, and I’m bringing back help.”

  “And exactly how are you going to do that?”

  “That’s the part I haven’t figured out yet.”

  “I’m the one with the plan,” said Allie. “Escaping now will just screw things up!”

  “We’ve been waiting on your ‘plan’ for weeks.”

  Weeks, thought Allie. Has it been weeks? “The best plans take time,” she told him.

  Nick took a moment to look her over, then said, “I think you like it with the McGill. You’ve got some kind of power over him, don’t you? I don’t know what it is, but you do, and you like it.”

  Allie wanted to just grab him and shake him. It was an insulting suggestion. It was preposterous. It was true.

  “I have a scheme to get us all out of here, if you just wait.”

  “I’m not waiting anymore. And anyway, two schemes are better than one.”

  Allie clenched her fists and growled, sounding more like the McGill than she cared to admit. “Even if you get off the ship, who do you think is going to help you?”

  “Mary,” Nick said.

  Allie laughed at that, and realized how loud her voice had gotten. She looked around to make sure they were still alone, then brought her voice down to an intense whisper. “She didn’t help us before, and she won’t help us now.”

  “I can convince her to. I know I can.”

  “You ‘re an idiot!”

  “We’ll see who’s the idiot!”

  As frustrating as this was, Allie did not want to stand around and argue. Every moment they spoke was another moment they were in danger of being caught.

  “I can steal a lifeboat,” Nick said.

  “Once they realize it’s gone, it won’t take long to figure out who took it. The McGill will punish Lief, and probably me, too.”

  “We can cut Lief down—all three of us can go!”

  Allie thought about it, but shook her head. “The McGill thinks I’m teaching him how to possess people. The second he realizes I’m gone, he’ll come after me.”