Everlost (Skinjacker 1)

Right now, the McGill’s ship was in between them and Staten Island, invisible to the ferry’s pilot. With any luck, the ferry would pass right though it, delivering Allie to her destination.

All around her, living folk spoke of meals and sales, inconsiderate husbands and unsatisfied wives. Small talk now seemed so small from her perspective, she wondered how people could engage in it altogether. Such pettiness filled the lives of the living. She could begin to see why Mary would have nothing to do with it.

Mary. Almost reflexively, she turned to look back at the city. Through the falling snow, the buildings of the city were just a faded shadow, but the Twin Towers of Mary’s domain were bright and bold, as if painted on the skyline, standing in proud defiance of everything Allie once thought she knew about the nature of the world. Someday, thought Allie, I will write a book too. It wouldn’t be a book of rules and etiquette, but one of experience, because each day in Everlost brought a fresh experience. How Mary could think she knew so much, without ever leaving the comfort of her tower, was one of the greatest mysteries of Everlost.

But now there were other things to deal with, like the ghost ship looming closer before her. In her excitement Allie tried to lean against the ferry’s rail, only to lean right through it. She spun her arms, trying to catch her balance, and nearly fell off the ferry into the bay. She saved herself by letting her knees buckle, and falling backward, but that didn’t turn out to be a good thing either. Her rear hit the deck, and passed through it. She reached out her hands, but they went straight through the wood and the steel beneath that. She could feel the warmer air of the lower deck on her fingertips and felt herself sinking even farther.

As she tried to right herself, her body kept falling, and she dropped right through a row of benches on the lower deck, not as much as ruffling the pages of a man’s newspaper as she fell through him. She didn’t stop there. The force of her fall left her embedded in the floor of that deck. Frantically she tried to pull herself up, but again, only succeeded in sinking farther.

She fell through the lower passenger deck, right into the auto deck, where cars sat, their engines off as they crossed the bay. Even the steel of cars didn’t stop her, and now she began to panic.

“Help!” she screamed, “Somebody help me!”

But of course there was no one to hear her cries, and she cursed herself for not thinking to make herself a pair of road-shoes before attempting this crossing.

She fell through the floor of the auto deck into the engine room. Gears grinded, pistons pounded, echoing all around her, and as she tried to stand up, her feet passed through the hull of the boat.

She could feel the icy bay water around her ankles, and then her shins, and she knew that if she didn’t think of something fast, she would sink straight through the bottom of this boat and, as Mary wrote, “that would be that.”

“Help me!” she screamed again, if not to anyone in the living world, then to some force in the heavens as invisible to her as she was invisible to the living.

There was a man in the engine room with her. Unkempt gray hair, two-day beard stubble; his blue uniform told her he was part of the ferry crew—one of the ferry’s pilots on break. He quietly sipped coffee, raising and lowering his eyebrows as if in some silent conversation with himself.

Allie was up to her waist now, her legs dangling through the bottom of the boat, into the water. That’s when something occurred to her.

The preppie girl at the pizza place!

When Allie had “surfed” that girl, she had felt like a kite lifted off the ground by the girl’s thoughts. What if Allie could do that again—this time with the old man?

It was a long shot, but she had to try. Slogging her way through the steel of the ship’s hull took everything she was worth. The hull was thick enough to slow her descent, but also so thick that pulling herself through it took a huge effort of will. In the end, she had to resort to kicking; her feet in the water below and moving her hands through the air, as if she were swimming. She was down to her belly button by the time she got near the man, who sat in his chair, oblivious to her. She could feel the cold water of the bay passing through her middle, filling the spot where her stomach had once been.

Just a few more moments and I’ll be gone, she thought.

And so with a last bit of strength she leaned forward, toward the man in the chair, and touched him. She felt a rush of blood, the pumping of a heart, and she became a kite lifted into the air. Allie could no longer feel the cold of the water, and — —i’ll never win i have to win i have no chance i have every chance numbers numbers which numbers lucky numbers four twenty-five birthday seven twelve fourteen ages of the grandkids thirty-nine years we’ve been married eighteen million and if i win that lottery i’ll never go to staten island again — Allie couldn’t feel her feet, she couldn’t feel her hands, she couldn’t feel anything, and all she could hear were his thoughts. It was as if her body had suddenly ceased to exist and she was just pure spirit, cocooned within another person’s being. She opened her eyes, not realizing she had even closed them, and now what she saw seemed very different from what she’d seen before. There had been a green coffee mug on the table, but now looking at it, she couldn’t tell whether it was green or red. Her eyes jerked toward a red light above the engine involuntarily, only the light wasn’t red anymore, just pale white. Now she finally realized what was going on.

I am seeing through his eyes, and he’s color-blind.

She watched the coffee cup come up to her lips and then back down again. She could almost taste the coffee.

— win gotta win numbers all in the numbers — His lottery thoughts assaulted her mind and he didn’t even know she was there.

The next time he brought the coffee cup to his lips she could swear she actually tasted the brew, and then in a few more moments she began to feel something spectacular: she felt hot. Hot from the coffee, hot from the heat of the engine.

She could feel fingertips touching the handle of the mug, the pressure against skin, the tag of the shirt at the back of the neck. There was a numbness about it, true — as if her entire body had been shot with novocaine —but there was no doubting that she was feeling with the nerves of living flesh once again. Itwas all so startling, she forgot for a moment why she was there.

—numbers numbers lucky numbers, the man’s thoughts droned on, i have as good a chance as any ten times the chance if I buy ten tickets — And then it hit her that she had spent at least a minute here, while the ferry was still moving. She may have already missed her chance to intercept the McGill’s ship! She could leap out of him now, but the fear of sinking through the bottom of the hull was so great in her that she didn’t dare. If only the pilot would go to the upper decks instead of just sitting here, he would carry her with him.

—numbers, lucky numbers what if I add them all together and divide by 7?— Her frustration kept on building. “Stop thinking about the stupid lottery and get up!”

And suddenly the man put down his coffee cup and stood.

Was it coincidence? Allie didn’t know for sure.

The man remained standing for a moment, then slowly settled back down in his chair, slightly bewildered.

If her thoughts had made him get up, maybe she could do it again. Allie filled herself with the same frustration and determination. “Stand up!” she insisted.

Again the man stood.