“For all we know,” Heimlich said, “she could be leading us straight to the Sky Witch.”
“Shut up,” said Johnny-O, “there ain’t no such thing.”
“Sky Witch?” asked Allie.
Johnnie-O waved it off. “Just a stupid story they tell to scare little kids about some witch who lives in the skies over Manhattan.”
“She devours kids’ souls,” said another kid.
“Yeah,” said Raggedy Andy, baring his teeth and hooking his hands like claws.
“She grabs you and takes a deep breath sucking your soul right up her nose.
That’s why they also call her the ‘Queen of Snot.’”
Johnnie-O gave them a Three Stooges-like slap that got all three of them. “What, were you born stupid or did you just die that way?” He turned to Allie. “Some kids will believe anything.”
Allie, wisely, said nothing.
“We should make her skim,” said Raggedy Andy. “That way we’ll know whether she’s worthy.”
Johnnie-O explained that all prospective members of the Altar Boys had to take a coin and skim it on the Hudson River. If it skimmed at least twice like a stone, then you were worthy of joining the Altar Boys. You had to use a coin you crossed with, and you only got one chance because once your coin sank, it was gone for good.
Allie was confused. “But…how can you skim an Everlost coin on living-world water? It wouldn’t work – it would just fall straight through.”
“Well,” said Johnnie-O with a wink, “I’m the one who decides whether or not I saw it skim.”
The next morning, they came to the George Washington Bridge, which crossed the Hudson into the northern tip of Manhattan. There they halted. Allie looked back to see them all milling around near the on-ramp.
“We don’t do bridges,” Johnnie-O said and Allie smirked.
“Oh, are you scared?”
Johnnie-O narrowed his eyes into a glare. “If you ever tried to cross a bridge you’d know how easy it is to sink right through it, and fall into the river. But I guess you ain’t bright enough to figure that out.”
Allie was about to fire right back at him, about how she had already crossed this bridge, and maybe his name should be Johnnie-Zero, instead of Johnnie-O, because he had zero guts—but then Raggedy Andy said, “We lost more than twenty kids once trying to cross the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was awful.”
Everyone looked down sadly, realized their shoes were sinking into the road, and began to shuffle around again.
“Old news,” said Johnnie-O, clenching his fists, “but we don’t cross bridges no more.”
Allie swallowed everything she was about to say. She wondered if she, Nick, and Lief would have sunk through this bridge, if they hadn’t been wearing their road-shoes.
“Maybe she is working for the Sky Witch,” said one of the little kids. “Maybe she wants us to sink.”
The others looked at her now with frightened eyes, but the look quickly mildewed into threatening.
“Johnnie-O’s right,” Allie said, “we shouldn’t risk it.”
“We’ll take the tunnel,” Johnnie-O announced, and led the way.
Flurries were falling by the time they reached the Lincoln Tunnel four hours later. Although there was a narrow service catwalk along the side, Johnnie-O led his crew right down the middle of the road, intentionally letting oncoming traffic barrel right through them.
The Everlost version of macho, thought Allie. Although she would have much preferred the catwalk, she didn’t want to show any signs of weakness, so she walked side by side with Johnnie-O, ignoring the annoying sensation of through-traffic.
By the time they reached the Manhattan side of the tunnel, the flurries had grown into a full-fledged snowstorm, the first of the winter. A violent wind tore at the coats of the living.
Snow felt different than rain or sleet as it passed through Allie. It tickled.
As for the wind, she felt it, and it was indeed cold. But like all other weather conditions, feeling it and being affected by it were two different things. The cold did not, could not, make her shiver. And yet as unpleasant as it seemed for the living people fighting the snowstorm, Allie wished she could be one of them.
But Johnnie-O, like Mary, had no interest in the living. Allie wondered how long until she became like that.
The going was slow, because it seemed every single city block had a Chinese restaurant, and Johnnie-O was making them cross the street, or turning down side streets again and again to avoid them.
“This is ridiculous,” Allie said. “Chow mein does not carry the plague.” The next time, she refused to cross the street, and walked right in front of Wan Foo’s Mandarin Emporium.
“Wow, she’s brave,” said one of the little kids, and so Johnnie-O was forced to do the same, just to prove he was just as brave as Allie.
When they finally reached the Haunter’s place, Allie could tell something was wrong. The steel door that had been so securely sealed now hung wide open and was slightly bent.
Johnnie-O looked to Allie as if she could explain, but she only shrugged.
Maybe, she thought, Nick and Lief fought their way out.
Johnnie-O, for all his swagger and big-fisted boisterousness, wasn’t about to be the first one in, so Allie took the lead and cautiously stepped inside.
The scene inside was not at all what Allie expected. There was no longer food hanging from the ceiling. Instead, half-gnawed carcasses of roast chickens and pieces of meat lay strewn about the floor.
“My God,” said Allie.
“You said it,” said Johnnie-O. “I haven’t seen so much food in fifty years!”
Unable to control himself, he raced forward and the Altar Boys followed, grabbing the carcasses and meat off the floor and shoving them into their mouths. There was no need to fight because there was enough for everybody.
“No!” yelled Allie. “The Haunter! He could be anywhere!”
But they weren’t listening.
Allie braced for the moment the Haunter’s hollow minions would descend on them, slapping them into barrels, but as she looked around she realized the barrels were all gone. All, that is, but one single barrel that sat in the center of the mess.
Allie noticed shredded bits of black cloth mixed in among the scraps of food—and then something else caught her eye. It was a turkey—a big one—a twenty-five pounder, maybe. It was a bird the Haunter had probably ecto-ripped into Everlost right off someone’s Thanksgiving dinner table. One thing though…the turkey had a bite out of it. A huge jagged bite. It was as if a dinosaur had sunk its teeth into it and ripped it apart—you could still see the teeth marks.
What, thought Allie, could leave an awful bite mark like that?
Suddenly her attention was drawn to the single barrel in the center of the room.
Someone was inside it, pounding and screaming. She couldn’t make out the words but she recognized the voice. Just hearing it chilled her far more than the blizzard ever could.
“Johnnie-O! Over here!” she called.
With a chicken in each of his fists and grease dripping down his chin, Johnnie-O looked a bit more comical and less menacing than usual. Reluctantly he handed his chickens to Heimlich with a look that said, You eat them, you ‘re dead.
He came over to the barrel, and both he and Allie knelt down, putting their ears close to the wood.
“Who’s out there?” the voice inside said. “Let me out, let me out and I shall give you whatever you want!”
It was the Haunter.
Johnnie-O looked to Allie for direction. She had, after all, led them to the biggest feast of their afterlives, so she was now held in some sort of reverence.
“Let me out!”yelled the Haunter. “I demand you let me out!”
Allie spoke loudly enough to be heard through the wood and brine. “What happened here? Who did this to you?”
“Let me out!” screeched the Haunter. “Let me out and I shall rip food from the finest restauran
ts in the living world and lay it at your feet.”
But Allie ignored him. “Where are the other barrels?”
“They were taken.”
“By whom?” Allie demanded.
“By the McGill.”
Johnnie-O gasped, and his mouth dropped open in astonishment. His cigarette would have fallen out if it could. “The McGill?!”
“His ship’s in the bay, out past the Statue of Liberty,” the Haunter said. “Let me out and I will help you fight him.”
Allie considered it, but then she looked around. The strips of black cloth were squirming on the ground like snakes. Frantically they danced about, and Allie realized what the Haunter was doing. Even from within the barrel, the Haunter was trying to bring his air-warriors together to capture them. They tried to reassemble themselves, but it was useless. The McGill had shredded them far too well for even the Haunter to put them back together again.
Allie looked at the barrel and tried to find some compassion for this creature inside, who had so mercilessly imprisoned her friends. In the end she found her compassion did not reach that far.
“Leave him in there!” she said loudly enough for him to hear. “Let him stew in his own juices.”
“NO!” the Haunter screamed within the barrel, and around the room bones and bird carcasses began to fly like meteors, randomly tossed about by the Haunter’s rage.
Allie didn’t care. She turned to Johnnie-O. “Can you and the Altar Boys come with me?” she said. “I won’t be able to fight the McGill alone.”
But Johnnie-O backed away. “We got what we cane for,” he said. “Ain’t nothing anyone can say, living, dead, or otherwise that would get me to fight the McGill. You’re on your own.”
And then, almost as an apology, he reached down and grabbed a leg from the turkey that had been bitten by the McGill. He ripped the leg free and held it out to her, almost like a peace offering.
“Here, take it,” Johnnie-O said. “You deserve to eat too.”
And so she did. She dug her teeth into the turkey and relished its flavor—the first flavor she had tasted in all her months here. It was like being in heaven.
Yet as good as it was, it couldn’t outweigh the hell she knew she would soon have to face once she tracked down the McGill.
She turned to leave, but before she could, Johnnie-O called to her. “You never told us your name,” he said, then tilted his Marlboro up with a grin. “I gots to know it if we’re gonna tell stories about how you went off to fight the McGill and all.”
Allie found herself oddly flattered. Johnnie-O had decided she was worth being turned into a legend.
“My name is…” and for a moment she couldn’t remember. But the moment passed.
“Allie,” she said.
Johnnie-O nodded. “Allie the Outcast,” he said. Allie had to admit she liked it.
“That’s right.”
“Good luck,” Johnnie-O said…”Hope you don’t get eaten or anything.”
Allie left and headed toward Battery Park—the tip of Manhattan, where she was sure to see the McGill’s ship, if it was still there. She was terrified, and yet at the same time, she felt ennobled. Fighting to free her friends had felt like a desperate mission for a lone girl, but now she was Allie the Outcast, on her way to battle the McGill. Kids would tell her story, whatever that story might be. This was no longer just a mission; it was a quest. And she was ready.
PART THREE
The McGill
CHAPTER 15
The Brimstone Ship
On February 7, 1963, a ship called the Marine Sulphur Queen left the world of the living. A few days after setting sail from Beaumont, Texas, the ship vanished off the coast of Florida without as much as a single radio message. All they found was an oil slick, a few life jackets, and the persistent smell of brimstone—the awful odor associated with rotten eggs, and, coincidentally, the smell also associated with hell.
There was, of course, a perfectly logical and nondemonic explanation for the smell. The Sulphur Queen was an old World War II tanker that was now being used to transport liquid sulphur—also known as brimstone. However the eerie smell, combined with the fact that the ship mysteriously vanished in the Bermuda Triangle, naturally led people to consider a dark, supernatural end to the unlucky brimstone barge.
In truth, the death of the Sulphur Queen was extremely bizarre, but not exactly supernatural. Stated simply, the Sulphur Queen was overcome by a very large ocean fart.
On that fateful February day, a massive ball of natural gas, two hundred feet wide, burst up from beneath the ocean floor, and when the bubble surfaced, the entire ship dropped into it in less than a second. The bubble burst, water rushed in, covering the ship, and it was gone. The Sulphur Queen was very literally swallowed by the sea.
There were the expected few moments of utter panic and mortal terror as the crew of the tragically submerged vessel made their final journey down that path of light, to wherever they were going. Then, less than a minute later, the ship itself got to where it was going—namely the bottom of the sea.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
Because what no one knew was that the old vessel was the last of its kind. It was the final ship built by a failing shipyard, which closed down the day the Sulphur Queen first launched out of dry dock. The workers, knowing an era was coming to an end, built the ship with as much care as a team of shipbuilders could muster. Their love of this ship was welded into every rivet. Such an ignoble death to this well-loved vessel could not be suffered lightly by the fabric of eternity. And so, when the waters surging about in the methane-heavy air finally settled, a ghost of the Queen remained, permanently afloat in the half-world of Everlost.
Since no soul had crossed over with it, the ghost of the Sulphur Queen drifted for years; no crew, no passengers. It drifted, that is, until the McGill found it, and turned it into the greatest pirate ship ever to sail the waters of eternity—and, except for one nasty run—in with the Flying Dutchman, its supremacy on the seas had never been challenged.
Since the evil smell of brimstone still surrounded the vessel, the McGill found it useful for inspiring fear, because the McGill knew that when it came to being a monster, image was everything. One only needed to sniff the brimstone to be convinced that the Sulphur Queen was a ship from hell, rather than a ship from Texas.
The McGill had remodeled the tanker into as proper a pirate ship as possible. It wasn’t too hard to make it menacing, for the ship was already rusted and rancid when it crossed into Everlost. That, the smell, and the McGill’s fearsome reputation were ail it took to make the Sulphur Queen the floating terror of Everlost.
On the open deck, the McGill had fashioned himself a throne made from pieces of this and that: pipes torn from the ship, fancy portrait frames, curtains from old buildings that had crossed over. The throne was studded with jewels that were glued on with old bubble gum. It was, in short, a monstrosity—just like the McGill himself—and it suited him just fine.
The McGill’s most recent adventure had been a raid in New York. He had long heard rumors of the Haunter, and his mystical little dojo where he taught kids to haunt, with weird discipline, like it was some sort of martial art. The McGill had no patience for legends that didn’t involve him. As far as he was concerned, such legends were competition, and needed to be silenced.
The Haunter was silenced well. Oh, he had put up a fight, levitating, and summoning up wraiths in black robes that walked like human beings—as if any of this could impress the McGill. He had learned early on that one’s physical strength in Everlost had nothing to do with muscle mass. It had all to do with the strength of one’s will—and the McGill was surely the most willful creature that ever lived. After he had shredded the wraith-warriors with his claws, the McGill took on the Haunter himself. The little Neanderthal had put up a fight – but in the end he was no match for the McGill.
“If you ever get out of there,” he had shouted at the barrel where the Haunter had be
en sealed, “you had better NEVER cross my path again. Or I’ll find something worse for you.”
He wasn’t sure if the Haunter had even heard him, because he never stopped cursing from within the barrel.
The McGill had dined royally on the spread of food that this Haunter had somehow pulled from the living world. He feasted for hours, and threw his scraps to his associates, who were happy to have them. That’s what he called his crew: “associates.”
Now, still full from the feast, they had returned to the ship with a dozen barrels, leaving behind only the one that contained the Haunter.
“So what do we do with them?” asked Pinhead, as the McGill sat in his throne, looking at the barrels now arranged haphazardly on the deck. Pinhead was the McGill’s chief associate. Somewhere along the line, Pinhead had forgotten the correct proportion of a human head to its body, and so the size of his head had receded like an apple left on a windowsill. The difference was not so profound that he looked like a complete freak. It was subtle. When you looked at Pinhead, you knew something was wrong, but you weren’t quite sure what it was.
“Sir? The barrels—what should we do with them?”
“I heard you,” the McGill snapped.
He rose from his throne, and loped in his awful crooked stride toward the barrels.
“According to the Haunter, there’s someone inside every single one of them,” Pinhead told him, with a certain excitement in his voice. In life, Pinhead must have been the kind of kid who would rip through a cereal box to get to the prize at the bottom.
“We’ll see,” the McGill snapped.
“And I’ll bet these kids have been pickling for so long,” Pinhead said, “that they’ll worship whoever sets them free.”
This gave the McGill pause for thought. He stroked his chin, a bulbous thing as rough and unshapely as a potato. It was an interesting idea. Others feared him, but never was he the subject of worship and complete adoration. “You think so?”
“Only one way to find out.” And then Pinhead added, “If they’re ingrates, we’ll put ‘em back in the barrels and dump them into the sea.”
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