Everlost (20 page)

“I … I don't know …,” Allie answered.

“Oh. Okay.” The boy didn't seem disappointed. He just seemed resigned.

“Careful,” said a girl hanging next to him. “He's a biter.”

The pajama-boy smiled, showing a set of razor sharp, sharklike teeth, like the picture on his pajamas. “It's in a sea predator's nature,” he said.

Only now did the truth begin to dawn on her as she took in the larger scene around her. The hanging lumps
were Afterlights. Every single one of them. There had to be hundreds of kids, all hanging upside down.

The act of chiming was invented by the McGill and he was proud to claim responsibility for the idea. Since it was impossible to hurt someone in Everlost, and since the McGill so wanted to inflict distress, he came up with a whole new form of torture, functional in several different ways: first, because it provided an efficient way of storing those Afterlights he had no immediate use for, and second, because he created a hopeless sense of abject boredom in his victims.

Simply stated, the act of chiming was to hang someone upside down from their ankles by a long chain, or rope. It didn't actually hurt the spirit being chimed, but it was a pretty dull way to spend one's days, and if boredom was the closest thing to suffering that the McGill could inflict, he would have to live with that. In any case it was entertaining for him, because he would often go down to the hold and begin swinging people. They would collide into one another, grunting and oofing as they bumped, like human wind chimes, and hence it became known as “being chimed.”

When Nick was first chimed, he wasn't sure whether it was better or worse than being in the pickle barrel. The rotten-egg smell was certainly worse than the garlic and dill of the pickle brine, but then, at least here, he did not feel so alone. Lief, who had reached a state of nirvana in his barrel, took it in stride, smiling all the while, and Nick eventually decided being alone would be better than hanging upside down next to a happy camper—but then, it was better than being next to the screamer, or that kid who was trying to turn himself into a shark.

As soon as the Ugloids had finished stringing them up, they painted numbers on their chests in black. For reasons Nick could not figure out, he was number 966, and Lief was number 266, although the kid had drawn the two backward.

“Your hair looks funny,” Lief said, as soon as the Ugloids had left. “It stands straight up.”

“No,” said Nick, intensely irritated, “it's hanging straight down.”

Lief just gave him an upside-down shrug. “Up is down in China and you're part-Chinese.”

“Japanese, dweeb!” Nick reached out and slugged him on the shoulder, but that just started them both swinging into the others who were around them.

“Hey watch it,” some kid said. “It's bad enough when the McGill comes down here to swing us. We don't need a couple of idiots making us chime, too.”

His dangling comrades also complained each time Nick tried to climb his own rope, to get to the grate high up above. Through that grate he could see the sky, and he knew if he could get out on the open deck, he'd figure out a way to escape. Unfortunately, the ropes had all been greased, and he never got more than ten feet up his rope before falling down again and swinging into the kids around him, setting off a chain reaction of whining, which in turn reminded the screamer to start screaming, and everyone blamed Nick.

So aside from the occasional fight, and group sing-along, there was nothing to do but wait until the McGill found a use for them. Nick had this fantasy that Mary would come with a hundred of her kids to rescue him. He never dreamed that his rescuer would be Allie.

***

“Oh my God!”

Allie stood there on the sulphur-dusted floor of the chiming chamber, still unable to believe what she saw. She tried to count how many of them there were, but there were simply too many to count. There were numbers scrawled on their chests, and some of those numbers were up in the high hundreds.

“Are you here to free us?” girl 342 asked.

Since Allie didn't know if a rescue of this many Afterlights would ever be possible, Allie didn't answer her. Instead she asked, “I'm looking for two boys. They wouldn't have been here long. One is named Nick, the other Lief.”

Then a voice from high above called down to her.

“They're on the other side.” It was an older boy in a Boy Scout uniform, with rust-colored hair sticking straight down like an upside-down flame. His was the shortest rope; he hung about fifteen feet above the floor, making him the highest one, and the one with the best view of the chamber. “All they do is talk talk talk,” he said. “Tell them to shut up, it's annoying.”

Allie pushed her way forward into the mass of “chimed” kids. They swung like pendulums as she pushed through them, all of them grumbling and griping at having been disturbed. She tried to be gentle, but the forest of dangling spirits clearly did not appreciate her intrusion.

“Shut up, you idiots,” the high-chimed Boy Scout said. Allie wondered if being strung the highest made the kid the automatic leader of the group, or did it merely make him high-strung?

“I said shut up!” he yelled more loudly. “Keep making noise, and you'll set off the screamer.”

And next to Allie, the screamer, once more reminded of his job, began to wail in Allie's ear. Reflexively Allie clapped her hand over his mouth. “That,” she said, “is totally uncalled for. Don't do that again. Ever.” The screamer looked at her with worried eyes. “Are we clear on this subject?” said Allie. The screamer nodded, and she removed her hand.

“Can I scream a little?” he asked.

“No,” said Allie. “Your screaming days are over.”

“Darn.” And he was quiet thereafter.

“Hey,” someone called out. “She shut down the screamer!” The chamber rang out with upside-down applause.

“Allie, is that you?” It was Nick. She pushed her way past a few more danglers, and found both of them. Nick hung about five feet from the ground, his head at about eye level. Lief hung about a foot higher.

“How did you get here?” Nick asked. “I thought for sure the Haunter put you in a barrel, too!”

“I got away before he could,” Allie explained.

“And you just left us there?!”

Allie sighed. They had no idea what she had gone through to get here, and now was not the time to tell them. She looked at Lief, who smiled and gave her an upside-down wave with his dangling arms. “Hi.”

Lief's calm acceptance of his plight just made Allie feel all the more miserable. “This is horrible! How could the McGill do this!?”

“He's a monster,” Nick reminded her. “It's what monsters do.”

“Are you going to hang here with us?” Lief asked, happily. “There's room next to me!”

“Ignore him,” Nick told Allie. “He's completely lost it.” Nick squirmed, and bent his knees until his hands could get a grip on his ankles. “Can you cut us down?”

Then the kid up top called down to them. “If you free them, the McGill will throw all three of you overboard. He may get so mad, he'll throw us
all
overboard.”

Allie knew he was right. The McGill was both mean-spirited and unpredictable—and besides, if she cut them down, where would they go? Even if they got out of the hold, they were still trapped on the ship.

“I can't free you now,” she told them, “but I will soon. Hang tight.” She grimaced at her poor choice of words.

“So you're just going to leave us here?” Nick said.

“Don't be a stranger!” Lief said, merrily.

“I'll be back soon. I promise.”

“You promise? You also promised the visit to the Haunter wouldn't be dangerous,” Nick reminded her. “And look how that turned out.”

Allie made no excuses because he was right. This was all her fault. Allie rarely apologized for anything, but when she said “I'm sorry,” this time, it carried the weight of all the apologies she had never given when she was alive. Then she hugged them awkwardly, setting them both slightly swinging, and left before her emotions could get the better of her.

T
he
Sulphur Queen
hugged the shore of the East Coast, stopping now and again to send out a landing party in a lifeboat to see if any of the McGill's Greensoul traps had snagged any new Afterlights. They were simple devices really; camouflaged nets tied to Everlost trees. A Greensoul would see a candy bar, or a bucket of popcorn, or whatever else the McGill was able to use as bait, but the second the kid grabbed it, the trap sprung, and there the kid was caught until the McGill's crew came to cut him down. Easy as catching a rabbit.

The McGill was pleased with the current state of his world. Things were coming together nicely. He had to believe that finding this girl Allie was no coincidence. Forces in the universe were conspiring in his favor. Whether they were forces of light or forces of darkness … well, that was yet to be determined.

The morning after Allie's unexpected arrival, the McGill went down to her quarters, and found her there, reading one of those blasted books by Mary Queen of Snots.

When he entered, Allie casually glanced at him from her bed, then returned her attention to the book. “Mary's books are
sooo
annoying,” she told the McGill. “You can't tell the truth from the lies. Someday I'll set her straight.”

It was hard for him not to smile. She disliked Mary, just as he did. This was a good sign.

The McGill tossed his head in a calculated gesture of disdain. His greasy hair whipped around, and flung some slime against the wall. “You will teach me how to skinjack now.”

She turned a page in her book, ignoring him. “I don't follow orders.”

The McGill paused, not sure whether to spit worms at her, or treat her with uncharacteristic patience. He chose patience. “You will teach me how to skinjack now …
please”

Allie put down the book and sat up. “Well, as long as you used the magic word, sure, why not.”

She did not appear disgusted in the least when she looked at him. This was troublesome. Everybody, even his own crew, found him utterly repulsive. His power to repel was a matter of pride. He made a mental note that he would have to come up with new and inventive ways to disgust her.

What the McGill didn't realize was that Allie
was
disgusted, but she was extremely good at keeping her emotions to herself when she wanted to. Allie had decided that the McGill already had enough power over her; she wasn't willing to give him the satisfaction of nausea.

“The art of skinjacking,” Allie began; “lesson number one.”

“I'm listening.”

Allie hesitated. She had truly painted herself into a corner here, because if there was ever a spirit that should not know how to skinjack, it was the McGill. She barely knew how to do it herself, having only tried it once with the ferry pilot—but the McGill didn't know that. As far as he knew, she was an expert. As long as she acted like an expert, she could get away with just about anything.

“Possessing the living is a very complicated thing,” she said with authority. “First we must find … uh … a Vortex of Spirit.”

“A Vortex of Spirit,” repeated the McGill. “I don't know what that is.”

Neither did Allie, but that really didn't matter.

“Do you mean a place that's already haunted?” the McGill asked.

“Yes, that's it.”

“A place that's haunted without explanation?”

“Exactly!”

The McGill stroked his swollen chin as he thought. “I know a place like that. A house in Long Island. We went there in search of Afterlights to capture. We didn't find a single one, but the walls of the house kept telling us to get out.”

“Okay,” said Allie. “Then that's where our lessons will begin.”

The McGill nodded. “I will call for you when we arrive.”

Once he was gone, Allie let her revulsion out, shivering and squirming, and then she returned to her bed, disgusting herself further with Mary Hightower's volume of misinformation. She
hoped that couched between Mary's useless tips there might be a clue to defeating the McGill—the trick was finding it.

The McGill, being an arrogant creature, believed he could see through anyone who was lying. It was that arrogance that kept him from seeing how completely Allie was tricking him. He strolled along the deck, pleased with this new wrinkle in his existence. Around him, his crew did their busywork on deck. There was little point to all the cleaning, the swabbing, and the polishing the crew did. What was rusty now would always be rusty. What was covered in sulphur dust would stay that way, no matter how much the crew tried to wipe it away. The best they could do was to clear away the cookie crumbs the McGill often left behind. Still, the McGill insisted that his ship be like a real ship, his crew like a real crew, and cleaning is what crews did. It was always the same crew members cleaning the same things, and at the same time of day. Routine. It's what made a ghost ship a ghost ship. Allie, however, was a break from the routine.

He proudly strolled past his crewmen, flicking little black bugs at them, or spitting on their shoes—just to remind them who was boss. Then he returned to the bridge and ordered the ship turned around, heading back toward Long Island and the haunted house he had told Allie about. Then he sat in his throne, reaching toward a tarnished brass spittoon that sat next to it. The bowl was originally used for spitting tobacco, phlegm, and other vile things, but it served a different function here. The McGill dug his claw in, and pulled out a fortune cookie—one of many that filled the copper pot.

Mary Hightower was not a fan of fortune cookies, and told her readers so. Just thinking about it made the McGill laugh. What Mary didn't tell her readers is that fortune cookies were plentiful in Everlost—not quite as plentiful as those faceless coins, but far more useful. For once, Mary had done him a service. If others stayed away from the cookies, it meant there were more for him!