“All right, then,” said Avalon. “But you’ll have to tell me eventually.” Then he ordered the Neons to send all the other prisoners downtown. “Two coins saves you and your cat,” he told Jill. “I got no use for the others.”
Jix tried to help them, but he was held back. In the end all he could do was watch as more than twenty kids were pushed into the earth. Then the Neons left, taking their two prisoners, all the Interlights, and Mary in her glass coffin, while behind them Milos spewed Russian curses at all of Everlost.
CHAPTER 15
Memory Makes the Man
M oose and Squirrel waited a good long time after the Neon Nightmares left before dredging up the nerve to come down from the mansion roof. Around them other kids were coming out of hiding as well-but just a handful.
“Where’s Mary?” the refugees all asked. “She didn’t go down, did she? Please don’t say that she went down.”
“They got her,” Moose informed them. “The Neons got her and took her away, coffin and all.” Which made the kids as miserable as if she had sunk.
Milos, however, was relieved-but it didn’t temper his anger. “Are you two idiots going to help me or not?” Moose and Squirrel hurried to him, making all sorts of excuses, but Milos would have none of it. “You are both cowards! Now go get the kids that are left, and get this train off of me.”
Moose and Squirrel went to gather the Afterlights who had hidden but had not run away. When Moose and Squirrel took a final head count, their number was forty-three.
“Forty-three?” wailed Milos from beneath the empty sleeping car. “How can there be only forty-three?”
“Most of ’em got scared off,” said Squirrel.
“Fine. Get them to push this thing off of me.”
But try as they might, forty-three Afterlights were not enough to leverage a train car off the tracks.
“That shucks,” said Moose. “Sho what do we do now?”
As Milos struggled to find a solution to his dilemma, he began to smell something. It was faint at first, barely perceptible but growing. It was sweet, and reminded Milos of childhood; something pleasant in the midst of this most unpleasant circumstance. Then all at once he realized that this particular aroma was not a good thing at all.
“Do you schmell that?” said Moose.
“It’s chocolate! It’s chocolate,” said Squirrel. “What do we do?”
By now other kids were scattering, terrified, knowing what that smell meant.
“No! No!” Milos shouted to them. “Stand your ground.”
“Easy for you to say,” shouted one of the escaping kids. “You can’t move.”
To their credit, Moose and Squirrel did not abandon Milos, although they probably both would have wet themselves, had they been alive.
The smell of chocolate quickly grew and became overpowering-intoxicating. Milos could not see anything from his angle, but Moose and Squirrel could, and what they saw made them quiver. The creature came lumbering down the tracks from the northeast, looking like some sort of swamp thing, but dripping chocolate instead of slime. Allie had told them that the Chocolate Ogre was just a boy-and that the monster legend was created by Mary to keep her children fearful, but this oozing spirit appeared every bit the monster that Mary had said it was.
The Chocolate Ogre strode forward at a steady pace along the track, the erie ploosh, ploosh, ploosh of his footsteps would have been comical if the sight of him wasn’t so terrifying. He arrived at the breeched sleeping car, and looked at Moose, then at Squirrel, perhaps for an explanation.
“We didn’t do it!” said Moose.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Squirrel, “it was like this when we got here!”
The Ogre looked at Milos, then back to Moose and Squirrel. “I’m looking for Allie. Do you know her? Do you know where I could find her?” His voice, although slobbery and thick, was not exactly the voice of a monster.
“She’s not here, she’s not here,” wailed Squirrel.
“Quiet!” yelled Milos. Even though he could barely move, he had a handle on the situation. The Ogre had never met them-he had no idea who they were! And so, Milos, using his friendliest voice, said, “We don’t know anyone by that name, but maybe we could help you find her.”
“Will you really help me?” asked the Ogre, overjoyed at the prospect.
To Milos he sounded like a very small child, innocent and trusting. This was not the way Allie had ever described Nick-but then, she hadn’t described him as this freak of fudge either. Perhaps some of him was lost in transformation.
“Mikey said she’d be on a train,” the Ogre said.
“Mikey?” said Moose.
“Do you know him?” asked the Ogre.
“Yeah, yeah,” chimed in Squirrel. “He’s… uh… uh… he’s our best friend!”
“Really? He’s mine too!” said the Ogre.
“And a friend of Mikey’s is a friend of ours,” said Milos. Then he added, “Of course, friends do not let other friends stay stuck beneath trains, do they?”
“No,” said the Ogre. “I guess not.”
“And I’ve heard that the Chocolate Ogre is as strong as a hundred Afterlights.”
“You’ve heard that?” The Ogre was a bit confused.
“Of course!” said Milos. “Why, people have seen you lift entire buildings with your bare hands.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really-so lifting a train should be easy for you.”
Milos did not know all the physical laws of Everlost-but he knew that physical strength had nothing to do with muscles. Afterlights had no actual muscles, just the memory of them. In Everlost you are what you remember-and if memory makes the man, perhaps Milos could plant a false memory of superhuman strength within the Chocolate Ogre’s mind.
…
“I can pick up a train?” the Ogre asked.
“Sure you can! You could juggle train cars if you wanted to.”
“Hmmm. I’d need three to do that.”
Then the Chocolate Ogre knelt down, grunted like a weight lifter, and in one swift move, lifted the train car off of Milos, hoisting it high above his head.
“What should I do with it?” asked the Ogre.
“How far can you throw it?” asked Moose.
“A mile, I’ll bet,” said Squirrel.
The Ogre thought about it. “I don’t think so, but maybe to those bushes over there.” Then he let it go and sure enough, he threw it exactly as far as he believed he could. It landed in a copse of living-world tumbleweeds, scattering the Afterlights who were hiding behind it, then the sleeping car slowly began to sink into the ground.
Now that Milos was free, he took a moment to study the Ogre, looking into those murky eyes sunken into that mess of a face. This once-human creature seemed lost in a fundamental way. Well, thought Milos, finders keepers! Milos reached his arm out and shook the Ogre’s hand heartily. His whole hand was enveloped in chocolate. “My name is Milos. This is Moose and Squirrel. You are one of us now.”
“I’m… I’m…” The Ogre searched his thoughts and finally said, “I’m Nick.”
When Milos pulled back his hand, it was covered in chocolate. In a world where food was rarely seen, the sight of chocolate was tempting. He didn’t need to eat-no one in Everlost needed to eat, but that didn’t stop the craving for food-especially something as uniquely satisfying as a taste of chocolate. Milos couldn’t help himself. He
