"I don't try to guess at things that haven't happened yet."
But that was a lie. Nick couldn't deny that he had fantasies about their destined meeting. In one fantasy, he would defeat her--but he would show such mercy that Mary would break down in his arms, admit she was wrong about everything--and that admission would heal him, sending every last ounce of chocolate into remission. Then, hand in hand, they would hold their coins and step into the light.
In another version, Mary would win the battle, but be so moved by Nick's valor, and by his passion for freeing the souls she had trapped, that she would finally listen to reason, and allow Afterlights to choose their destinies for themselves. Then together they would lead Everlost into a new age.
All his fantasies ended with him and Mary together one
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way or another. This was something he couldn't share with anyone, for how could they trust a leader who was in love with the enemy?
The hundreds of kids who were now under Nick's leadership certainly didn't love Mary. While some of her many writings had dribbled down to the South, fear and awe of the Sky Witch and her magic was much more compelling than the written word. It was their fear of her that made it easier for them to align with the Chocolate Ogre, who, in their eyes, was certainly frightening, but not terrifying. It was a case of the monster you know being better than the monster you don't know. The problem was, their fear of Mary was quick to turn soldiers into army deserters. In a world where ecto-ripping and skinjacking were possible, there was no way to make these kids believe that Mary Hightower had no such powers.
"I only know of two ecto-rippers," Nick tried to point out to a fearful group of enlistees. "There's one called 'the Haunter,' who's inside a barrel at the center of the earth, and then there's Zin, who's one of us. As for skinjackers, I've only ever met one. Her name is Allie, and she's on our side too."
It was the first time Nick had said Allie's name aloud for quite a while. It made him long to see her--to know what had become of her. And as if to answer that longing, one of the kids they had picked up in North Carolina said, "Yeah--Allie the Outcast hates the Sky Witch--she told us so herself."
Nick turned so fast, chocolate flung into the kid's eye. "What do you mean she told you? You saw her? Where?"
"A couple of months ago, in Greensboro," he said. "She
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came with this other kid who didn't talk much. I liked her, but the other kid scared us a little."
Nick couldn't contain his excitement. "Tell me everything!" he said. "How was she--how did she look? What was she even doing there?"
Nick sent for the dozen or so kids they picked up in Greensboro, and, pleased to be on the Chocolate Ogre's good side, they were thrilled to give all the information they could. They told Nick all about Allie--how she had become a finder; how she and a boy that Nick could only assume was Mikey McGill rode into town on a horse covered with saddlebags that were packed with crossed items.
"They had good stuff," the Greensboro kids told him, "not junk like most other finders have--and they traded fair. We asked her to show us some skinjacking, but she wouldn't do it."
Then everyone flinched at a loud popping sound, followed by another, then another. Nick already knew that sound. It was Johnnie-O cracking his knuckles. It was always a sign that he was either very anxious, or very excited.
"Y' know ..." said Johnnie-O, "if we find Allie, we'll have a ripper and a skinjacker. With a combination like that, there's a whole lot of things we could do."
But Nick was already miles ahead of him.
"Where was she headed?" Nick asked the Greensboro kids. He didn't expect much of an answer--after all, finders rarely gave away their trade routes. But the boy said quite simply:
"Memphis."
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* * *
"How well do you know the rail system west of here?" Nick asked Charlie. He thought Charlie would balk at the question, but Choo-choo Charlie was a tried and true conductor, and seemed ready for a new challenge. By now Charlie had gotten himself enough paper to copy the rail map he had been scratching into the engine bulkhead, and mapping the Everwild rails had become a personal mission for him.
"I know what cities should have a lot of tracks that have crossed over--but there's no way to know till we get there. D'ya mean we're not going to Birmingham?"
"Change of plans," Nick told him. "We're going to Memphis."
"I hear that's where Everlost ends," Charlie pointed out. "The Mississippi River, I mean."
"Well, I guess we'll find out, won't we?"
Then, just before Nick left the engine cab, Charlie pointed to his cheek and said, a little awkwardly, "Uh ... you got a little spot there."
Nick sighed. "That wasn't even funny the first time, Charlie."
"No," Charlie said, "I mean the other side of your face."
Nick reached up and touched his good cheek. His finger came away with a tiny spot of chocolate. He wiped it between his thumb and forefinger until it was smudged away. "Just get us to Memphis."
Nick knew that time was running out for him.
There was no way he could deny it now. It wasn't just the spot on his cheek--little eruptions had begun to pop up
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all over Nick's body, rising like pimples, oozing chocolate through the fabric of his clothes when they popped. Those tiny brown patches were everywhere, and were beginning to connect like raindrops on concrete, spreading like a relentless rash, to his back, his scalp, and places he didn't even want to think about. His chocolate hand was weak and getting weaker, the fingers almost fusing together. His left eye was always clouded, and losing more and more sight each day. His shirt, which used to look like a white shirt covered with brown stains, was now more brown than white, and the original color of his tie had long since been forgotten. Even his dark pants, which had always hidden the stains, could no longer resist the umber onslaught, and his shoes looked like two piles of brown candle-drippings giving rise to the rest of his body.
Nick knew it was his own memory that was poisoning him--or lack of memory. He had forgotten so much of who he had been in the living world, there was barely anything left of him. His family, his friends, they were all gone from his mind. All he knew for sure was that he had been eating a chocolate bar when he died, and it had smeared on his face. Soon his only memory would be the chocolate, and then what? What would happen when there was nothing else left of him?
He didn't want to think about it. He didn't have time to think about it. All that mattered was the task at hand--and only part of that task was building a fighting force. The rest of his plan he kept to himself, because if he told the others what madness he had in mind, he'd have a whole lot more deserters.
Before they left Chattanooga, Zin presented Nick with
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the flag she had made, and Nick told Charlie to fly it from the front of the train, for everyone to see. The design was a series of silver stars, in the pattern of the Big Dipper, sewn on a rich brown fabric.
"My papa always said the Big Dipper was there to catch falling stars," Zin said. "Kinda like the way you're here to catch falling souls."
Nick was all choked up, and it wasn't just the chocolate. "You have no idea what this means to me, Zin."
"Does that mean I get to be a lieutenant?"
"Not yet," Nick told her. "But soon. Very soon."
Nick would have hugged her if he thought he could do it without covering her in stains.
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CHAPTER 22 Cram That Sucker
Zin was a good soldier, and proud of it. Being a ripper didn't leave a person with much self-respect, so Zin squeezed all the self-respect she could out of her military service. The Chocolate Ogre was now her general, and she would do her job to the best of her ability. A good soldier follows orders. A good soldier doesn't ask questions. But she couldn't help but wonder about some of the requests the Chocolate Ogre made of her. Particularly the secret ones he called "special projects."<
br />
The first request involved an all-day sucker. The kind as big as your face, all colorful and sticky, that gets stuck in your teeth when you bite it, and makes your molars hurt. This sucker had crossed over with a little kid who had probably been working on it since the day he crossed over. The thing was half-eaten, and would stay half-eaten no matter how much the kid licked it.
The Ogre took Zin and the sucker-boy to a candy shop-- not an Everlost one, but a living-world shop, where fleshies went about their business buying and selling sweets.
"I want you to rip him a new sucker," the Ogre ordered.
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Zin couldn't see why, as this sucker wasn't going anywhere, but she followed orders.
"Yes, sir. A' course, sir."
There was a stand that held suckers like a little metal tree. Zin reached into the living world, and ripped the kid a brand new sucker that was bigger and better than the one he started with. Then she proceeded to rip the old sucker from the boy's hand--something only she could accomplish--and replaced it with the new one. The boy acted like a kid in a candy shop, which, in fact, he was.
But then things started to get weird.
After the boy ran off hopping and skipping with his new sucker, the Ogre pointed to the old one in Zin's hand and said, "Now that he's got a better one, I want you to put this one back."
Zin was confused. "What do you mean 'put it back'?"
"I mean exactly what I said. Rip a hole, and put the sucker back into the living world."
The suggestion just made Zin mad. What, was he stupid? Ripping stuff out was one thing, but putting something back? Whenever Zin ripped, she always kind of felt like a midwife, helping someone give birth. To her, the living world was truly that--a living thing, that could feel everything that happened to it. You don't put back stuff that gets born. "Sir, you can't take sumpin' that crossed into Everlost and shove it back into the living world--that ain't the way it's done."
And then the Ogre asked, "Have you ever tried?"
Zin was about to explain to him just how ripping worked, but her words caught in her throat, because she
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realized that she never had tried. The idea of putting something back had never occurred to her. Why should it? It was all about taking.
"No, I ain't never tried that," said Zin. "But what if puttin' sumpin' back is one of them weird scientifical things that blows up the world?"
"If you blow up the world," the Ogre said, "you can blame it on me."
Which was good enough for Zin. He was, after all, her superior officer. If and when she got to the pearly gates, she could always claim she was following orders.
"Well, all right, then."
She steeled herself, then held the sucker in her ripping hand, and tried to shove it through, into the living world.
It was not an easy thing. Just opening a hole into the living world was different now that her intentions were different. It was like picking a lock. Then when the portal finally began to open, the living world resisted.
"It won't work, sir," Zin insisted. "I think the livin' world's got all the stuff it can stand, and don't want no more."
"Keep trying."
Zin gritted her teeth and doubled her efforts. As she tried to force that sucker through, she felt a powerful battle of wills between her and the living world. The question was, did the world want to keep the sucker out more than Zin wanted to put it in?
To Zin's surprise, she won the battle: The living world relented, and took the sucker back. When Zin was done, it sat on a counter in the candy shop, its bright colors faded and slightly out of focus, just like everything else in the living
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world. Zin pulled her hand back, and shivered.
"You did it!"
"Yeah," said Zin, pleased, yet troubled by this newly discovered power. "I felt like I done something wrong, though ..."
"It's only wrong if you use it for the wrong things," the Ogre said.
"But the world don't like it, sir."
"Did the world like you ripping when you first started?"
Zin thought back to her earliest days in Everlost. Ripping wasn't easy when she first began. The world held on to stuff like a kid holds on to toys. "No," Zin had to admit. "It was hard at first."
"But the world got used to it, right?"
"I guess ..."
"It got used to ripping, so it'll get used to ... cramming ... as well." They both looked at the half-eaten sucker on the living world counter until the candy store cashier noticed it and eyed it with disgust. He then picked it up, and dropped it into the trash.
"I want you to practice this," the Ogre told Zin. "Practice cramming every chance you get, until you can do it as quickly and as smoothly as ripping."
Then Zin asked the million dollar question. "Why?"
"Does there have to be a 'why'?" asked the Ogre. "Isn't knowing the full extent of your powers reason enough?"
But if there was one thing Zin had come to learn and respect about the Ogre, it was his strategy as a general ... and the fact that everything he did was always a single move in a much larger campaign.
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CHAPTER 23 Severance and Blithe
Doris Meltzer had led a long and productive life. At the age of eighty-three, she knew she didn't have much time left, but she was satisfied with the life she had lived.
For her entire adult life, she wore her wristwatch on her left wrist, but would always glance at her right. She would gently rub it, and convinced herself it was just a nervous habit. The truth of it lay below the threshold of her understanding. At times she touched upon the true meaning of it--at the moment of waking, or the instant before sleep set in--the two places where one's spirit comes closest to Everlost. Never close enough to actually see it, but close enough to sense its existence.
It all began the night of her high school prom. It was a momentous occasion, but not in the way anyone had expected. Her date was a boy named Billy, and she'd had a crush on him since grade school. She had dreams they might be married--and in those days marrying your high school sweetheart was more the norm than the exception.
Billy had just learned to drive and was proud to be
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doing it, taking her to the prom under the capable control of his own hands and feet, even if he was driving his father's clunky old DeSoto.
He gave her a wrist corsage of yellow roses.
It was a beautiful thing that matched her lemon chiffon dress. She wore it on her right wrist, and lifted it to her face, inhaling its rich aroma all night long. Even then she knew that, for the rest of her life, when she smelled roses, she would think of this night. She would think of Billy.
The prom was spectacular, as a prom should be. It was after they left that everything went wrong. It wasn't Billy's fault. He had obeyed all the traffic laws, but sometimes none of that matters when someone else has been drinking. Such was the case when a car full of drunken classmates ran a red light at the corner of Severance and Blithe.
Billy never felt a thing.
He was gone before the car stopped flipping. He had sailed instantly down the tunnel and into the light. There were no pit stops in Everlost for him--for at the age of eighteen, the walls of his tunnel were already too thick to allow an unexpected detour. For him, his exit from the living world went exactly as it should.
Doris, however, had a harder time of it, for although she also saw the tunnel, it wasn't her time to make the journey. She was merely an observer, watching him go. She awoke in the hospital days later with her family by her side, all of them thanking God for a million answered prayers. She was alive, and would recover.
As for the corsage, it perished in the crash along with the boy she might have married.
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Doris's spine was severed at the L-4 vertebrae, and she never walked again--but in all other aspects she lived a full and exceptionally happy life. She married, had children, and had her own antique business in a time when a wo
man's place was still considered to be the home.
She had no way of knowing that the corsage of yellow roses didn't entirely perish.
Because of what it meant to the boy who gave it to her, and because of what it meant to Doris, the corsage crossed into Everlost unscathed. Sixty-five years later, it was still as fresh and bright as the evening she wore it.
In fact, it was still right there on her wrist.
It moved with her, unknown and invisible, holding her right wrist in a gentle grasp, secretly giving her comfort when she needed it. This was the cause of that strange urge to look at her wrist, and to caress it, yet she never made the connection.
Then one day, a boy who had half turned to chocolate noticed the corsage.
He was merely passing by when he spotted it. He was out searching for Afterlights to gather, but instead he found the cluster of yellow roses and baby's breath. So vibrant, so bright--it was clearly an artifact of Everlost, and yet it clung to the arm of an old woman in a wheelchair sitting on a porch.
Nick had never seen anything like it. He had always assumed that when items crossed, they fell free from the living world, but here was a corsage that still clung to the hand of its living wearer, even though it existed only in Everlost.
Nick remembered reading about a sort of spirit that
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becomes attached to the living. An incubus it was called. He had never met or even heard of a spirit like that in Everlost-- but this corsage--it was a floral incubus, refusing to leave its beloved host behind.
Refusing, that is, until Nick reached out, and plucked it right off the woman's arm--an easy thing to do, as it was part of Everlost.
Doris knew something had changed the moment it happened, but she couldn't tell what. She wheeled around the porch searching every corner. Surely she had lost something, but what could it be? That's how it was with so many things these days. Half-finished thoughts, forgetting even what she'd forgotten. It was no picnic getting old. She looked to her right wrist, rubbing it, scratching it, wishing the uncanny feeling of loss would just go away.
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