One look, and all the Afterlights scattered in terror, abandoning their mission, but that didn’t do a thing for the living children still trapped in the playground—and no matter how hard Clarence hit that lock, it wouldn’t break. So instead he used the crowbar to pry the gate from its hinges. . . .
“What’s wrong with you?”
The sky-crane control booth had flown open and Moose was faced with a furious construction foreman.
“I . . . I . . .”
“Why haven’t you dropped them?”
Moose quickly realized that it was Milos, but he was no more relieved. “Maybe we shouldn’t do it, Milosh. I mean, itch jusht a bunsh of little kidsh.”
“We need all ages, you idiot! Mary would expect no less.” And when Moose made no move toward the control panel, Milos said, “Either you do it, or I will.”
“Okay,” said Moose. “Then you do it.”
Milos glared at him. Then, without the slightest hesitation, he reached out, pushed the button, and released the entire load.
Mikey, still in beastly form, frightened the last of the Afterlights away, then turned to see Clarence pry the gate off its hinges, just as the girders above them began a thirty-story drop. A flood of living children escaped from the playground as the girders fell, and just then Mikey heard a voice behind him.
“Mikey, is that you?”
It was Allie! The sound of her voice chased the beast back to the depths of Mikey’s mind in an instant and he became himself once more. She ran toward him, but before they could embrace, a crash exploded in the living world violent enough to feel in Everlost.
No matter how strong the climbing starship was, it could not hold off a crushing onslaught of tempered steel. The load of falling girders didn’t just destroy the jungle gym, it shattered it. Fragments of plastic exploded in all directions, and even the ground beneath it fractured from the weight. The principal and teachers, who were the last out of the gate, were hit by plastic and asphalt shrapnel, and although those wounds were painful, they were not deadly—and their larger bodies shielded the escaping children.
The playground was destroyed but the children were saved.
Then as Allie and Mikey looked to the spot where the climbing starship had been, they saw something amazing. The space-age jungle gym was gone from the living world, but in Everlost a strange swirl of ectoplasmic smoke, almost alive with purpose and design, began to condense and change color resolving from green to shades of blue and gray. It took shape as if the cosmos itself had breathed into a huge invisible mold the exact size and shape as the jungle gym. For a moment it shimmered like a mirage, and then became solid. The entire playground, lost to the living world, was now a part of Everlost.
“Wow” was all that Mikey could say. In all his years in Everlost he had seen many things but had never witnessed a place cross into Everlost. Finally he turned to Allie, ready for that long-overdue reunion, but Allie’s eyes were still locked on the jungle gym, because she saw something he had not yet seen. Not all the children were saved . . . because crawling out of the newly crossed jungle gym was a little boy who Allie recognized. It was the blond boy Milos had skinjacked. Milos must have put him to sleep so soundly that when Milos left his body, the boy remained unconscious within the starship tunnels and was still there when the steel came crashing down.
“There’s always one,” said a man’s voice Allie didn’t recognize. “No matter how many you save, there’s always one.” There, standing just a few yards away from Mikey, Allie saw a man who seemed half in Everlost and half out—but before she could process what she saw, something else stole her attention. A brand-new tunnel now opened before the boy, much different from the climbing tunnels he had just crawled out of . . . and the light at the end of this tunnel was blinding.
That’s when Milos barged furiously past her. “I will not leave this place empty-handed!” He ran, determined to tackle the boy out of the tunnel, and trap him in Everlost—but out of nowhere a brown blur launched itself at Milos, knocking him to the ground before he could get to the boy.
“This ends here,” said Nick with such fury that his chocolate ran as dark as tar. “Let the boy go!” Even as he said it, the blond boy’s eyes lit up and a smile filled his face. He reached a hand toward the tunnel, it drew him in, and the tunnel vanished. Whatever his destination, he got there without any further interference.
Everyone was speechless. The only sounds now were from the living world; the creak of settling steel, the cries of all the kids who survived, the soothing voices of adults trying to comfort them, and the distant sound of approaching sirens.
Milos, now smeared with tar-dark chocolate, pulled himself away from Nick and looked hatefully at everyone around him. In his mind he was the only one wronged here. He was the only victim. Even Moose had betrayed him, and was still up in the sky crane bawling his eyes out like a baby, just because Milos dropped the load of steel. Well, at least he still had Squirrel, who now came up beside him. Then he saw Clarence, and froze.
“Oh my God, oh my God!” said Squirrel with a terrified warble in his voice. “Do you know what that is?”
“I know.” Milos had heard the scar wraith legend, but he had never believed it was real. He figured it was the Everlost version of a fairy tale, a story meant to frighten little children into obedience. Yet here before them was the real thing. Then he realized who had brought it. He turned to Mikey with the kind of disgust usually reserved for the times he was a monster.
“You brought a scar wraith?”
“A what?” said the wraith. “What did you just call me?”
Mikey kept his eyes on Milos and smiled. “The killings stop now,” Mikey told him, crossing his arms. “Surrender, or be extinguished.”
“Run, run!” said Squirrel. “We gotta skinjack and run!”
But Milos stood his ground. He thought about Mary, and how she could stand in the face of anything, how she would never retreat. If he were ever to be an equal in her eyes, he would have to learn that kind of courage, that kind of commitment. Maybe then, he would earn the kind of respect she commanded. Maybe then, he would feel worthy of her. “We will leave here, and you won’t stop us,” Milos said, forcing himself to look fearlessly into the scar wraith’s Everlost eye. “I don’t care what evil you threaten us with!”
“Evil?” said the wraith. “What do you mean ‘evil’? I just saved all those children!”
“You condemned them!” Milos screamed. “Condemned them to live! I offered them salvation. I am the one Mary chose to see her vision through. Me. And I will not let any of you stop that vision.”
“What is wrong with you?” the scar wraith snapped. “Are you the one who caused all this?” Then he advanced on Milos.
“Clarence, wait!” said Mikey, but Clarence was too worked up to listen.
It would be easy to say that what Milos did next was out of selfishness and cowardice—but at the moment, he wasn’t thinking of himself. Instead, he was thinking about Mary and her children. If he were touched by the scar wraith and extinguished, who would lead them? Moose and Squirrel? They couldn’t lead themselves out of an open grave. Without Milos, it would be over. Mary’s dream would die and when she awoke she would be alone, with nothing. He couldn’t allow that to happen.
And so when the scar wraith approached him, he took a diagonal step backward putting himself behind Squirrel like a king retreating behind a pawn.
“Don’t you hide from me!” said the scar wraith. “Face me like a man, if that’s what you are!” Then he reached out to push Squirrel out of the way.
“Clarence, no!” screamed Mikey, but it was too late. Clarence grasped firmly on to Squirrel’s shoulder to push him aside.
Squirrel was not the finest spirit around, but consoled himself with knowing he wasn’t the worst one either. His existence had always been one of ignoble embarrassment. He had crossed into Everlost when he had fallen from a tree while trying to peek inside the window of a girl who would have nothing to do with him. As a skinjacker, his simple pleasures were not all that different, peering into people’s lives for his own amusement. He was not an enlightened spirit and was less concerned with good and bad, right and wrong, than he was concerned with just making it through the day in one piece. That, and having a good laugh. Lately, however, there wasn’t much laughter and he had been trying to convince Moose it was time for both of them to bail. After today, they might have done it too.
But today, Squirrel was touched by a scar wraith.
The power of belief is a very real thing in Everlost. The way one looks, physical strength, is all determined by what an Afterlight believes—and no one can truly control what they believe. We can lie to ourselves, saying we believe one thing, and sometimes we convince others it’s true, with the hope that by convincing others, we can convince ourselves. Wars are often waged not because of what we believe, but because of the things we want others to believe.
Squirrel was not sure of any of his beliefs. He was not so deep that he pondered such things. But when Clarence reached for him with a hand that was clearly a part of Everlost, attached to a body that clearly was not, Squirrel, in the furthest recesses of his soul, believed that the touch of a scar wraith would extinguish him forever and ever.
So that’s exactly what it did.
To those watching, it was undramatic and instantaneous. Clarence grasped on to Squirrel’s shoulder, Squirrel uttered the tiniest little squeal . . . and then he was gone.
No tunnel.
No shimmer of rainbow light.
One moment he was there, and the next he wasn’t. He simply dissolved into nothingness. Extinguished.
Clarence was thrown off balance by Squirrel’s unexpected vanishing act, and Milos, forgetting his resolve to stand against the scar wraith, turned and ran in terror, skinjacking the first fleshie to cross his path.
Clarence didn’t bother with Milos. He was more concerned with the spirit who had disappeared at his touch.
“Where’d he go?” Clarence asked. “Is this another ghostie trick?”
Mikey shook his head, not wanting to believe it. There was a stirring in his soul now, building toward pain—the kind of pain the living felt. “No trick, Clarence.”
“So, where did he go?”
“Nowhere,” Mikey sadly told him. “He went nowhere.”
CHAPTER 28
The Tears of Eternity
The very fabric of the universe mourns the extinguishing of a soul—both in Everlost and the living world. If Squirrel had still been there to see it, he would have been proud, maybe even a bit embarrassed, to see the tribute paid to his memory by all of creation.
In Nevada, an unprecedented thunderstorm formed where none should have been, pouring forth a deluge of water, salty as tears, on the parched earth below.
In Africa, a seven-point-five earthquake rumbled like a heaving sob through the vast Serengeti, a place where no fault line existed before.
In Brazil, a furious tornado cut a path from one edge of the nation to the other, with not a single storm cloud anywhere in the sky.