“How about leaving Everlost? Is it possible to live again?”
Meadow spoke up, blunt, and unsympathetic. “Your body is in a grave, or worse, it’s in ashes. I don’t think you want it back.”
“Yeah, but there are other ways to be alive…,” said a kid quietly from the corner. When Allie turned to him, he looked away.
“What do you mean, other ways?” asked Allie.
When he didn’t answer, Meadow spoke up. “He doesn’t know what he means.”
“But you do.”
Meadow crossed her arms. “There are…talents…that some people have, and some people don’t. They’re not nice talents—and they will bring you a world of bad karma. Mary calls them ‘The Criminal Arts.’”
By now everyone had begun to gravitate around Allie and Meadow. By the looks on their faces, some kids seemed to know what she was talking about, but most seemed clueless.
“What kind of talents?” asked Allie. “How would I know if I have them?”
“You’d be luckier not to know.”
“Excuse me,” said a voice from the back. Everyone turned to see Vari standing there. There was no way to know how much he had heard. Meadow instantly put distance between herself and Allie, going back to the game she had been playing.
The rest of the kids moved away from Allie as well, as if she was poison.
“Good news,” Vari said. “Miss Mary just traded with a Finder for a bucket of fried chicken. She says everyone can have a single bite.”
The rush to the elevators nearly swept Allie off her feet. As much as Allie wanted a bite of that chicken as well, she resisted. The fact wasn’t lost on Vari, who patiently waited for the last elevator with her.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Were you a vegetarian when you were alive?”
Allie couldn’t tell whether he was being sarcastic or sincere.
In her book, You’re Dead—So Now What?, Mary Hightower offers the following warning for the restless soul: “Wanderlust is a dangerous thing. In Everlost there’s safety in staying put. Afterlights who are cursed with a desire to travel don’t last for long. They either succumb to Gravity Fatigue, or they are captured by feral packs of unsavory children. The few that escape these fates become Finders, but the existence of a Finder is full of peril. Better to seek a safe haven, and stay there. And if you haven’t found a safe haven, by all means, come see me.”
CHAPTER 10
An Elevator Down
Allie was alone in an elevator the following morning, when a human skeleton got in on the ninety-eighth floor.
Allie gasped at the sight of him.
“Get over it,” the skeleton-boy said as the elevator doors closed.
Allie quickly realized who it was. He wasn’t a skeleton at all. He simply had white makeup all over his face, with black around the eyes, and wore a cheap Halloween skeleton costume. His Afterlight glow merely added to the overall effect.
“Sorry,” said Allie. “You just caught me off guard.”
There were two kids here who had the supreme misfortune of crossing on Halloween: this kid, and another with green face-paint and fake peeling skin.
Everyone called them Skully and Molder.
“So,” said Skully, after the elevator doors had closed. “I hear you’ve been asking about the Criminal Arts.”
“Yeah,” said Allie, “but asking is useless if nobody answers.”
“I can tell you stuff, but you can’t tell anyone you heard it from me.”
The elevator door opened. “Your floor?” asked Skully.
Allie had been going down to the arcade to try to wrestle Lief away from his Pac-Man game, but that could wait. She didn’t get out, and the elevator door closed again.
“Tell me what you know. I promise I won’t tell anyone you told me.”
Skully hit the button for the lobby, and the elevator began its long fall.
“There’s this place a couple of miles away from here. A building that crossed a long time ago. A pickle factory, I think. There’s this kid who lives there. They call him ‘The Haunter.’ He teaches people how to do things.”
“How to do what, exactly?”
“Paranorming, ecto-ripping, skinjacking—you name it.”
“I don’t know what those things are.”
Skully sighed impatiently. “He can show you how to move things in the living world, make yourself heard to the living—and maybe even seen. They even say he can reach into the living world, and pull things out of it. He can actually make things cross into Everlost.”
“And he can teach this?”
“That’s what I hear.”
“Have you ever met him?” Allie asked.
The kid backed away a little. “I know kids who went there. But they didn’t come back.”
Allie just shrugged it off. “Maybe after visiting the Haunter, they found something better than this. Maybe they didn’t come back because they didn’t want to.”
“Maybe,” said Skully. “If you want, I’ll get you the address.”
Allie was going to ask him more, but the doors whooshed open, he stepped out, and a gaggle of little kids swept in from the lobby, on their way to higher places.
Nick. Nicky. Nicholas.
It had taken him hours to remember his name, and now that he had captured it, he wasn’t letting go. His name was Nick. Nick something-or-other. It was a Japanese last name, because his father was Japanese. His mother was Caucasian, although he couldn’t quite remember the details of either of their faces, but that was a battle for another time. Right now, holding on to his first name took all his attention.
Nick. Nicky. Nicholas.
He would remember his last name, too. He would. He had to. Even if he had to track down his own grave and read it there, he would know his last name again.
He would keep them both, and no one would call him Hershey, or Cadbury, or Ghirardelli, or anything other than Nick, Nicky, Nicholas.
He took scraps of paper from his room, and wrote it over and over again, shoving a tiny slip into each of his pockets, in every drawer, under his mattress, and even under the cushions of the sofa that Lief slept on. Lief wouldn’t care—he hadn’t been back to the room for days, anyway.
Nick, Nicky, Nicholas. Maybe even Nic-o.
He was interrupted by Allie pounding on the door. He knew it was Allie, because she was the only one who ever pounded. Mary’s knock was gentle and refined.
Allie knocked like she wanted the door to fall down.
“I’m busy!” Nick said. “Go away.”
But she just kept on pounding, so he had to let her in.
When Allie stepped in, she looked around, as if something was wrong. “Nick, what are you doing in here?”
Nick turned around to look at his room, and for the first time he saw what he had done. There were little scraps of paper everywhere—not just in and under things, but all over the room. It looked like the place was covered in a dusting of snow. He hadn’t just used the paper in the drawers, he had torn out all the pages of all the books on the shelves. Mary’s books. He had torn them to shreds and had written “Nick” on every little shred, both front and back.
Only now did he notice it was daylight. Hadn’t he started this at dusk? Had he been doing this all night? Nick was speechless. He had no idea how this had happened. It was as if he were in a trance, broken only by Allies arrival. The weird thing about it was that a part of him wanted to throw her out, and get back to his work. His important work. Nick, Nicky, Nicholas.
Just like the kids playing kickball, or the kids watching The Love Boat every day until the end of time, he had found his “niche,” and hadn’t even realized it.
He looked at Allie, pleadingly, opening his mouth, but unable to say anything.
He felt a certain shame about it that he couldn’t explain.
“It’s all right,” Allie said. “We’re getting out of here.”
“What?”
“You heard me—we’re leav
ing.”
Nick resisted. Leave here? Leave Mary? “No! I don’t want to leave.”
Allie stared at him like he was a mental case. Maybe he was. “What do you want to do? Stay here writing your name forever?”
“I told Mary I wouldn’t leave.” But then, thought Nick, that was before she so thoroughly rejected his sorry butt.
Allie scowled, and Nick thought she might start ranting about what a terrible person Mary was, and blah blah blah—but she didn’t. Instead she said: “If you really want to impress Mary…if you really want to be useful to her, then you need to learn a skill.”
“What are you talking about?”
“How would you like to be able to talk to the living—or better yet, how would you like to reach into the living world and actually pull things out of it?”
Nick shook his head. “But that’s Ecto-ripping! Mary hates it!”
“She only hates it because no one here can do it—and just because Mary calls them ‘The Criminal Arts,’ doesn’t mean they really are. They’re only criminal if you use them in criminal ways. Think about it, Nick. If you come with me and learn all there is to know, you can come back with food and toys for all her little kids. You can bring her a dozen roses that will never wilt or fade. You can actually mean something to her.”
Nick found this irresistibly tempting. The more he considered it, the harder it was to refuse. “Who’s gonna teach us that?”
“I know a kid who knows a kid,” said Allie.
Nick looked at his room, covered in little bits of paper. If an eternity of that was the alternative, maybe it was time he trusted Allie, and took a leap of faith.
“Tell me more.”
“C’mon,” said Allie. “We’ll talk on the way to the arcade.”
***
One down, one to go. Allie found Lief exactly where she expected to: practically glued to the Pac-Man machine.
“Lief?”
“Leave me alone, I’ve got to beat this level.”
“Lief, this game is so old, living people don’t even play it anymore. ‘Retro’ is one thing, but this is prehistoric!”
“Stop bothering me!”
Nick leaned his back against the side of the game, with his arms crossed. “He’s found his niche,” Nick said. “Like I almost did.”
“It’s not a niche,” said Allie, “it’s a rut. Mary might think it’s a good thing, but it’s not.” Allie knew now that in the same way water always seeks its lowest point, so do the souls of Everlost – carving a rut that becomes a ditch, that becomes a canyon—and the deeper it gets, the harder it is to escape from. Allie knew it, just as she knew that Lief, if left alone, would play this game until the end of time.
“This is wrong, Lief!”
“Just go.”
She went to the back of the machine to pull the plug, only to find out that it wasn’t even plugged in, and she cursed the fact that the normal laws of science didn’t apply in Everlost. Machines worked not because they had a power source, but because in some strange way, they remembered working.
Allie thought for a moment, then said, “We’re going to a place that has even better games!”
“Don’t lie to him,” said Nick—but she had already caught Lief’s attention. He was looking at her instead of at the machine. His eyes were glassy, and his expression vague, like he was surfacing from a deep, deep sleep.
“Better games?”
“Listen,” said Allie, “you saved my life before we got here. Now it’s my turn to save yours. Don’t lose your soul to a Pac-Man machine.”
On the screen, his Pac-Man was caught by one of the fuzzy creatures, and died.
Game over. But, like everything else in Mary’s world, it wasn’t over, because it started again. No quarter needed. Lief turned to gaze longingly at the game, but Allie touched his cheek, and turned his head to face her again.
“Nick and I are going to learn about haunting. I want you to come with us.
Please.”
She could see the moment he pulled himself out of the quicksand of his own mind.
“I didn’t save your life,” he said. “Too late for that. But I did save you from a fate worse than death.”
Allie couldn’t help but think she had done the same for him.
Deep down, Nick knew that a trip to the Haunter was a betrayal of Mary, but if Allie was right, the skills he’d come back with would be worth it. Mary would forgive him; forgiveness and acceptance were part of who she was. Nick felt a sense of anticipation, like butterflies in his stomach, and he had to admit it was a good feeling. It felt almost like being alive.
Allie had gotten directions from Skully. It wasn’t too far away, but there was no safe time to leave. As Everlost was a world of insomniacs, there was always someone there to see every move they made. They decided to leave late at night, during a storm. That way, no kids would be playing outside, and no one on the higher floors would be able to see them, or their Afterlight glow through the sheets of rain when they crossed the plaza. If they timed it right, they wouldn’t be seen by the lookouts either…As their elevator descended, Nick turned to Allie. “I oughta have my head examined for agreeing to this.”
“It’ll be fun,” Allie said. “Right, Lief?”
“Yeah.” Lief didn’t sound too convinced.
While the rain didn’t even get the marble plaza wet, lightning and thunder were as real to Everlost as they were to the living. After a bright flash of lightning, they waited for the thunder crash before stepping out, and then they headed uptown, without looking back.
Had they looked back, however, they would have seen Vari peering out from the second floor, watching them as they left. Next to him stood Skully. Once Allie, Nick, and Lief were out of sight, Vari gave Skully a single cherry jelly bean.
His reward for a job well done.
“Do not speak of the Criminal Arts,” writes Mary Hightower in her pamphlet The Evils of Paranorming. “Do not speak of them, do not think of them, and most of all, do not seek to learn them. Attempting to influence the living world can only lead to misery.”
CHAPTER 11
The Haunter
Nick and Allie had not been out in the rain since they crossed into Everlost.
“Drenched to the bone” took on a “whole new meaning when the rain passed through you on its way to the ground.
“Sleet is worse,” Lief said.
The old pickle factory was just where Skully said it would be. A white brick building on Washington Street, that, at some point in its life, crossed over into Everlost. A heavy steel door was ominously ajar. Nick didn’t like the looks of it.
“Why do I get the feeling this is a really, really bad idea?”
“Because,” said Allie, “you’re a certified wimp.”
And so to prove that he wasn’t, Nick was the first to push the door open. Bad idea or not, no more complaining. He had made his decision, and he was going for it.
The instant he stepped in, the aroma snagged him. There was a rich smell in the air of roast meat and garlic, hitting him with more ferocity than the pelting storm—the aromas were so wonderful they made Nick weak at the knees.
The building had been gutted, leaving nothing but clouded windows, a concrete floor, and black girders holding up the floor above. Hanging from the ceiling was the source of the wonderful smell. Roast chickens, turkeys, and smoked fish hung from meat hooks. Entire salamis hung from strings.
“It’s true then,” said Allie in a charged whisper. “The Haunter can rip whatever he wants right out of the living world!”
“I’ll never doubt you again,” said Nick.
“Wow!” was all Lief could say.
They were so awed by the hanging feast, it took them a few moments to notice the small Afterlight sitting cross-legged in the center of the concrete floor. He looked frozen there, as if he hadn’t moved for many years. His glow had a yellow tinge to it, and shimmered faintly against the gray walls.
“I’ve been wai
ting for you,” said the Haunter.
Nick found his feet not wanting to move forward, until Allie whispered in his ear, “He probably says that to anyone who shows up.”
“He’s just a little kid!” said Lief, but Allie “shushed” him.
The three kids approached the seated figure. The light was dim, but as they got closer, they could see that even though he had died young, the Haunter was a very, very old spirit. Physically, he couldn’t be any older than six, and yet there was such a sense of age in him, he might as well have been a withered old wizard. The clothes he wore barely looked like clothes at all. They were furs, stitched together—perhaps to protect him from an ice age that had passed twenty-thousand years ago.
“Tell me why you have come,” the Haunter said in his high-pitched voice. He had only one visible tooth. Perhaps it was because most of his front baby teeth had come out shortly before he died.
“We…we heard you can teach people to haunt the living world,” Allie said.
“I teach nothing,” he said. “Either you have the skill, or you don’t.”
Then he reached into his lap, and produced a smooth stone the size of an egg.
The Haunter looked at the stone for a moment, as if it held the wisdom of the world, then in one smooth motion, he hurled it at Nick. “Catch it!” he said.
Nick held up his hands, but the stone passed right through his chest, and hit the floor behind him! This wasn’t an Everlost stone, it was an artifact of the living world!
The Haunter laughed in his very-old-little-kid voice. “Pick it up. Bring it to me,” he said.
“How am I supposed to pick that up?”
“The same way I did,” said the Haunter.
Nick went to the stone, leaned down, and reached for it. His fingers closed on it, but passed right through it, just as he knew they would. He tried again, concentrating this time. Nothing. The stone didn’t even wobble. Fine, thought Nick. He’ll point out how completely useless we are, then he’ll start teaching us.
Nick stood up and turned to the Haunter, anxious to just get on with it. “I can’t,” said Nick. “I can’t pick up the stone.”
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