The McGill grabbed Allie’s arm, and although she tried to shake him off, he held tight. “You will come with me, and you will do exactly as I say.” Then he brought her up on deck.
Allie had lived in South Jersey before her fateful car crash -Cape May to be exact, the state’s southernmost tip. Yet even though it was only an hour from Atlantic City, Allie had never been. Her parents despised the crowds and general vulgarity, and so they avoided Atlantic City as if they were making a political statement.
Still, Allie knew where she was the moment she came onto the deck of the Sulphur Queen. She had to hide her excitement or the McGill might be suspicious. Her plan had worked! Or at least it had worked so far. There was a long way to go – a dozen things that could go wrong-but there was one thing she knew she could count on: the McGill’s arrogance, and his blind faith in her false fortune.
Perhaps that would give the Twin Pier Marauders the edge they needed to defeat him again. My enemy’s enemy is my friend, thought Allie. No matter how savage the Marauders were, if they brought down the McGill, they would be good friends to have.
The McGill led her to the gangway. The ramp sloped down sharply from the Sulphur Queen’s deck to the boardwalk surface of the Steel Pier. “You first,” he said, and prodded her along. So she was the bait. “Go!” he demanded, and so Allie stepped down the gangway and onto the vast boardwalk of the pier.
“Keep walking,” the McGill said. He waited with his crew just off the gangway-perhaps ready to make a quick escape if the situation called for it.
Allie strode forward, past shops and signs: Schmidt’s Beer, Planter’s Peanuts, Saltwater Taffy, Chicken in a Basket. They were all empty. If any food had crossed over when the pier had burned down, that food was long gone.
At first the only sounds were seagulls and eerie calliope music coming from the Steeplechase Pier. The utter soullessness of the place reminded her of the feeling she got when she had walked the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. Then she spun at the sudden clatter of hoofbeats on wood, and saw the strangest thing. Toward the end of the pier, a horse leapt from a platform that had to be fifty feet high, into a tank of water with a great splash. Then the horse climbed a ramp out of the tank and wended its way up the ramp toward the high dive again. This diving horse was part of the pier’s memory, and was the only animal Allie had seen that had crossed into Everlost. She felt an intense pity for the creature and its peculiar eternity.
“Ignore it!” said the McGill. “It does what it does. Keep walking.”
Allie kept walking forward, but saw no one. The Marauders must have known they were there, but they were keeping quiet.
“Hello!” she called out, but no one answered. “Anyone here?”
Then to her right she heard the long slow creak of a rusty hinge. She turned to see the dark gaping entrance of some grand ballroom, but a sign taken from one of the steeplechase rides hung crookedly over the entrance. The sign read THE HELL HOLE. This, she realized, was the den of the Marauders. Out of the darkness stepped a boy, his face stretched into a pit bull snarl. He wore a black T-shirt that said “Megadeth,” and held a baseball bat with metal spikes sticking out all over it.
“Get off my pier!” he growled.
Then the McGill stepped forward. “I am the McGill and I am calling you out!” he turned and shouted to the entire pier. “Come out from hiding, you cowards! Come out and fight… or flee.”
Allie knew what would happen next. The kids who were hiding in the woodwork everywhere, dozens upon dozens of them, would come out. They had to have powers if they had defeated the McGill before-they’d have even more powers now. They would surround the McGill and his crew. The McGill wouldn’t stand a chance.
But that’s not how it happened.
The lone marauder with the pit bull snarl stood there posturing for a few more seconds. Then he dropped his spiked bat, turned tail, and ran like a frightened puppy as fast as his legs could carry him toward the shore, disappearing into Atlantic City. Fight or flee, the McGill had said. The boy had made his choice.
The McGill began to laugh loudly for the whole pier to hear, but still no delinquents came from secret hiding places. “The Mighty Marauders! Hah!”
The crew checked every inch of both piers, and even the barnacle encrusted pilings beneath. The dead piers were truly dead. The Marauders were gone, and Allie’s hope plunged with the same horrible heaviness of Shiloh, the diving horse.
It is virtually impossible to read all of Mary Hightower’s books, because she has simply “written so many, and since they were all scribed by hand, copies are hard to come by the farther one gets from her publishing room. Neither the McGill nor Allie had read Mary’s book entitled Feral Children Past and Present.
If they had, they would have come across this choice nugget in chapter three:
“Well known for their savagery are the Twin Pier Marauders, who ruled Atlantic City for many years, until they vanished. Although reports are sketchy, more than one Finder has come to me with a story of how the Marauders were lured off their piers and into living world casinos by the seductive ca-ching of the slot machines. Once there, the Marauders were hypnotized by the spinning oranges, plums, and cherries, and sank into the quicksand carpet never to return-which proves beyond a doubt that gambling is very, very bad for you.”
CHAPTER 26
Oh, the Humanity The McGill’s glorious moment had come, and he was ready for it. He had been preparing for this day for more than twenty years. With no one to challenge his dominion, he began to unload his cargo of Afterlights, and soon the pier had filled with all the kids the McGill had collected, blinking in the light of the hazy morning, with hands tied behind their backs. The fighting instinct had left so many of them, they simply waited for whatever doom the McGill had in store for them.
The McGill took in the sight of his thousand souls, pleased with himself beyond measure, and, clutching his two most valuable fortunes in his hand, he readied himself to complete the bargain.
He looked up into the gray fog shrouding the sky, and called out to the heavens for a sign of whoever it was that had set this bargain before him.
“I’m here!” cried out the McGill, but the sky did not answer. He waved his fortunes in the air. “The life of one brave man is worth a thousand cowardly souls! I have the thousand souls-and I’ve brought them here, just as the fortunes instructed.”
No answer. Just hoofbeats, a whinny, and a splash. It was as if the pier itself was mocking him. He yelled even louder. “I’ve lived up to my end of the bargain-now return my life to me! Free me from Everlost, and give me back my life.”
The McGill waited. The crew waited, the thousand souls waited. Even the off-key calliope music from the Steeplechase Pier sounded muted and hushed by the gravity of the moment.
And then another sound began to pierce through the music. It was a faint hum, like a distant chorus of moaning angels, growing louder and louder until it could be felt as much as heard.
Then something materialized out of the fog. Something huge.
“Oh my God!” said Allie. “What is that!”
It was so massive, it didn’t just assault the eye, but the mind as well, until it blocked everything else out.
“I’m here,” cried the McGill in absolute joy. “I’m heeeeeeeere!” And he spread his arms wide, opening his entire soul to receive his reward as it descended in glory from the heavens.
Not everything that meets an untimely end crosses into Everlost. Like the atmospheric conditions that lead to a tornado, conditions must be right for crossing. The love of the living, and the occasional sunspot both play a part-but perhaps the most consistent factor is the persistence of memory. There are certain things and places that the living will never-can never forget. These are the things and. places that are destined to cross over.
In Everlost, Pompeii is a pristine city, and the great library of Alexandria still houses the wisdom of the ancient world.
In Everlost the Challenger is still on a Florida launchpad, forever hopeful of a successful blastoff, and the Columbia is on the end of the runway, basking in the moment of a perfect landing.
The same is true of the world’s largest airship.
