“Then I’ll seal you back in that barrel.”
The Haunter held up his hand, and various loose objects began to fly around the room, striking the McGill.
“Stop that, or your next stop is the center of the Earth!” the McGill roared.
“Your skill at moving objects does not impress me, nor does it bother me. I bested you before, and if you fight me, I’ll do it again -and this time I’ll show no mercy.” Slowly the flying objects fell to the ground. “Good. Now you will answer my questions.”
The Haunter looked at him with hatred so strong it could have warped time. “What do you want to know?”
“Don’t believe a word he says!” Allie blurted out.
The McGill ignored her. “Tell me about this girl and her friends. Tell me what she knows.”
The Haunter laughed. “Her? She knows nothing! I offered to teach her, but she refused.”
“I didn’t need him!” Allie countered. “I was taught by someone else.”
“There is no one else who teaches the things I teach,” the Haunter said, arrogantly. “You knew nothing when you came to me, you know nothing now.”
“I know how to get inside people!” Allie told him. “I know how to skinjack.” She tried to sound strong and sure of herself, but her voice came out crackly and weak.
“It’s true,” said the McGill. “I saw her do it.”
The Haunter climbed out of the barrel and approached her, leaving a trail of salty brine where his moccasins fell. “It’s possible,” he said. “She does have an undeveloped skill to move objects, so it’s possible that she may also have the skill to skinjack.”
The McGill came closer to the two of them. “What I want to know is this: Can the skill be taught? Can she teach it to me?”
The Haunter didn’t bat an eye. “No, she cannot.”
The McGill pointed a crooked, sharp-nailed, furry finger at the Haunter. “Then you teach me how to skinjack.”
The Haunter shook his head. “It can’t be taught. Either you have the skill, or you don’t. You’ve been in Everlost long enough to know what your skills are. If you have not possessed the living by now, then you never will.”
Allie could feel the McGill’s anger like the heat of a furnace. “I see.” Like the heat at the center of the Earth.
“He’s lying!” Allie shouted. “He just wants to win you over, and get you to trust him, so he can betray you the moment you’re not looking! I’m the one who’s been helping you all this time. Who are you going to believe, him or me?”
The McGill looked at both of them, the Haunter on his left, Allie on his right.
“Who are you going to believe?” Allie asked again.
The McGill regarded Allie for a moment more, then turned to Piledriver, and the other crewmen present. “Seal him back in the barrel, then throw him overboard.”
“What?” the Haunter shouted.
“There is only room for ONE monster in Everlost,” the McGill growled.
The Haunter raised his hands, and objects began to fly once more-but although he had powerful magic, he was small and outnumbered. No shower of objects could save him from being shoved back in the barrel. “You will suffer,” the Haunter shouted. “I will find a way to make you suffer!” But soon all that came out were angry gurgles from within the barrel. Piledriver put the lid back on and hammered the nails back into place. Then he and Pinhead grabbed the barrel, and heaved it over the side. It disappeared beneath the waves without as much as a splash, sinking to the sea floor, and beyond. Thus, the Haunter met his destiny.
Once he was gone, Allie felt relief wash through her like a cleansing rain.
“There,” she said. “Now that that’s over with, you need to get on with step seven. No-don’t speak. You can start now. Seventy-two hours. I know you can do it.”
And the McGill didn’t speak. Instead he reached out and a crewman handed the McGill a paintbrush dripping with black paint.
“What are you doing?” Allie asked.
“What I should have done the moment you came on board.”
Then he painted the number 0001 on her blouse, and said:
“Chime her.”
The McGill had not felt his temper rage this powerfully for a very long time. He had forgotten how good it felt.
Anger!
Let it fill him. Let it rage like a dance of flames. Anger at her for her lies, anger at himself for allowing his feelings to cloud his judgment. Anger enough to cauterize any vulnerability, burning closed the wound she had left in his twisted heart by her deception. This girl had played him for a fool, but that was over.
With the addition of Allie to the chiming chamber, his collection was now complete. He went down below to watch. The crew had untangled them, and now they all swung free again. He watched as they turned Allie upside down, so that the 0001 on her shirt read 1000.
A brave man’s life is worth a thousand cowardly souls.
From the first time he read that fortune years ago, he knew what it meant. He could have his life back, in exchange for a thousand Afterlights. Souls were the currency with which he could buy back his life. Imagine it! Flesh and bone, blood and breath. For a short while, he had thought skinjacking would be better, but that option had never really existed, had it? No, there was only one way to return to the world of the living. This bargain: his life for a thousand souls.
Whether the bargain was with deity or demon, it didn’t matter to the McGill. All that mattered were the terms. Well, he had satisfied the terms. He had a thousand souls for payment. Now all he needed was a location to make the exchange.
So he returned to his throne room, and went straight to the spittoon. He reached in, pulled out a cookie, and smashed it against the arm of the throne, extracting the piece of paper. He held the fortune with anticipation for a moment, before gazing upon its words. The instant he saw the message, he knew what it meant, and for the first time in many years, the McGill was afraid… because the fortune said:
Your victory waits at the Piers of Defeat.
Ignoring all the warnings in his mind that told him it was a bad idea, the mighty McGill set the Sulphur Queen on a course toward Atlantic City.
PART FOUR A Thousand Souls Everlost CHAPTER 24
Nick’s Journey Over a treacherous bridge, and across the entire breadth of Brooklyn, Nick marched from Rockaway Point to Manhattan. He had no way of knowing that even as he crossed that first bridge, Allie was being chimed by the McGill.
His mission was clear, but by no means simple: Get help. More specifically, get help from Mary. That was the hard part, because Allie had already told him how Mary had refused to put her children at risk before. As much as it hurt Nick that Mary chose to leave him in a barrel, he admired the selflessness it implied. Her motto wasn’t “Leave no child behind,” it was “Put no child in danger.” It made getting help from her tricky.
Nick encountered no Afterlights on his trek toward Mary’s domain. Certainly there were many dead-spots on the way, and perhaps there were Afterlights hiding here and there, but he wasn’t looking for them. He was single- minded.
He marched down the center of Flatbush Avenue, cars and pedestrians passing through him. Unlike Allie he had no skill for connecting with the living world, and he found that the more he ignored that world, the more it slipped into shadow. The living world was as insubstantial to him as beams of light from a movie projector, and the living themselves were like the movie on the screen; only important if he chose to watch. He could see how Mary had come to see Everlost as the real world. The true world. It would be easy to trick himself into believing the same thing-but did he want to do that?
For a moment he chose to focus on the “movie” of the living; a child and mother crossing the street to catch a bus; an old woman taking her time, and a cabbie who honked at her, only to get a rap on the hood from her cane.
