end.”
There. She had said it out loud for the first time, and she found there was magic in saying it, for now that it was out in the open, it made it more real.
Then, to Mary’s amazement, The Pet said, “I knew it!”
It caught Mary by surprise… but then she realized that she shouldn’t be surprised at all-for hadn’t the living world trained them for its own eventual demise? Didn’t the living world speak of Armageddon and grand cataclysms in everything from sermons to the silver screen? Now her skinjackers focused on her with such intensity that Mary actually felt her own afterglow begin to burn brighter.
“You have been chosen to be the shining heralds of a new world.”
They didn’t bat an eye at this, either, for didn’t every soul long to believe that he or she was singled out for a special divine purpose?
“You will be asked to do things that frighten you-things that will test your resolve-but I know you have the courage to do all the things you are called to do.”
They began to puff up with pride, for didn’t every soul long to believe that they had courage to face the most difficult of tests?
Mary’s afterglow now pulsated with searing purpose, and she realized something remarkable! Mary always believed that her ability to gather and galvanize others was the result of refined charm and grace, but it was more than that: It was a power, every bit as potent as her brother’s! While Mikey had the mystical power to repel anyone, Mary had a mystical ability to attract!
Now that she truly understood it, she was able to focus the scorching radiance of her soul and reach out with it. Tendrils of silver light now touched the afterglows of her skinjackers, bonding with them, gripping them, making their energy just an extension of her own, thereby turning their doubts into conviction. She didn’t persuade them, she didn’t force them. She didn’t need to. Why would they need persuasion when they suddenly found their own beliefs were secretly replaced by Mary’s?
“We’ll do what we have to do, right, everyone?” said Sparkles, and everyone agreed.
Mary smiled at them, and they soaked in her joy as if her beaming smile were the life-giving rays of the sun. Mary knew there would be no stopping her now. The western pull to her mysterious destination was stronger than ever, and she knew they would reach it soon. It seemed to Mary that every blow levied against her served only to further her cause. Jill’s betrayal hadn’t crippled Mary-instead it forced her hand, making her reveal her full plan to her skinjackers-leaving them bound to her spirit, and to her cause. And with Allie out there as an ever-present danger, rather than demoralizing Mary, it simply made her speed up her timetable. Thanks to Allie things would be moving much more quickly now.
Everything was aligning to lay a golden path before Mary now-a path she was ready to take, without looking back. The living world’s end would be swift. Although she wasn’t quite sure how, she knew there were many, many ways to bring about sudden, sweeping destruction. It was winter now; the living would have to enjoy their frostbitten fields and bone-chilling winds… because their world would never see the spring.
“Gather the others,” she told them. “We leave now, and we don’t rest until we reach our destination.”
“What’s our destination?” SoSo asked.
“Anywhere I say it is,” Mary told him, and all of them agreed to follow, none of them knowing that any choice they had in the matter was snuffed the moment they were touched by Mary’s beautiful tentacles of light.
CHAPTER 42
Sense and Sensibility and Skinjackers
W olf River Convalescent Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, overlooked Wolf River Lagoon, Mud Island, and the Missisippi River beyond, but the patients in the long-term maintenance ward had no interest in the view. They had no interest in anything at all.
The nursing staff knew better than to remove the offerings of loved ones unless they became a fire hazard. Mylar balloons, potted plants, and all sorts of bright decorations filled the many rooms of the ward, as if it were a perpetual party… but nothing could mask the oppressive silence of the place.
Allie Johnson hadn’t begun her convalescence here-but when the family moved to Memphis, they had Allie brought here, so they could still be close to her. The thought of abandoning her in the New Jersey facility was unthinkable. They had last come to visit on Christmas-the busiest day of the year, when relatives came out of the woodwork to sit in the lonely rooms, making them a little less lonely for a while.
On Christmas Day, just as on other special occasions, Allie’s family lavished love upon her comatose body in every way they could. Her older sister trimmed and painted her nails, both fingers and toes, while playing Allie’s favorite music. Her mother brushed the tangles out of her hair and gave her a haircut. Her father did the hard work of massaging her knotty muscles, softening them for the day they might be used once more. According to the doctors there was no brain damage-no reason why she shouldn’t wake up. Except that she hadn’t for four years.
Then her mother sat down and read yet another chapter from Jane Austin’s Sense and Sensibility. She believed it was Allie’s favorite book, but that was entirely untrue. Allie just thought the guy who starred in the movie had been cute. Then, after the reading was over, the melancholy began to set in as it always did, until it became too potent, and they decided it was time to leave. Her mother gave Allie a gentle kiss on her forehead, affixed a Christmas card to a bare spot on a wall already full of greeting cards, then promised to return on Valentine’s Day.
As evening fell, families poured out the front door, no more comforted than when they came but at least feeling they had done the right thing. The ghost of Christmas present soon became the ghost of Christmas past, and silence descended in each room once more, punctuated only by the beeps and whirs of the machines that monitored and pumped and infused and labored to keep dozens of people existing in this strange state of living death.
“I’m not afraid of dying,” Allie told Clarence, as they stood in front of the hospital, in the middle of the day, more than two weeks after her parents’ Christmas visit. “For more than three years I thought I already was dead. I just want to know how bad off I am.”
“Sounds like you’re a little afraid of living.”
“The only thing that scares me,” said Allie, a little bit brusquely, “is a world ruled by Mary.” Then she skinjacked a passerby.
“I’ll be back soon,” Allie said.
“If you’re not, I’ll understand.”
“I said I’ll be back!”
Then she turned and strode into the hospital.
Five minutes later she was in the body of one of the long-term care nurses, moving through the ward to room 509, which, according to hospital records, was where Allie’s body lay in repose. “Repose”-that’s what they called it here. A nice word for a terrible state. She waited until the other nurse on duty was occupied, then she took a deep breath… then another… then a third, as if she were about to go underwater. Then, still skinjacking the nurse, she stepped into the room.
Furniture was minimal. The greeting cards on the wall added a nice touch, but some of them had fallen, and now lay haphazardly on the ground, making it clear that decorations were not a high priority for the staff. Well, why should they be? There was no need for comfortable amenities here. The two soft chairs and the hotel-grade painting on the wall weren’t there for the patient, they were there for visitors, to make them feel comfortable. None of it mattered to the living dead.
Allie forced herself to look at the figure in the bed before she lost her nerve. The sight took her breath away, as she knew it would.
It was bad, but not that bad.
It was shocking, but not all that shocking.
The girl in the bed was remarkably close to her memory of herself. Still, it was chilling. It was like seeing a ghost before you actually believed in them.
