Everfound (Skinjacker 3)

Johnnie squeezed his oversized hands into fists, wishing there was something he could bust, but having spent many years trying to break things, he knew more than anyone that Everlost stuff didn’t break, unless breakage was its purpose.

“Dinah won’t you blow your horn!”

“Dammit, will you shut your hole or I swear I’m gonna pound you into next Tuesday and then throw you out the stinkin’ window where you and your song can drown and sink down to the center of the earth for all I care, so you better shut your hole right now!”

Charlie looked at him for a moment, eyes wide, considering it. Then he said: “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah!”

Johnnie groaned.

“Someone’s in the kitchen I know-oh-oh-oh!”

Unable to take it anymore, Johnnie grabbed Charlie and dragged him down to the starboard promenade, where the windows had a dramatic view of the clouds, and the shimmering Atlantic Ocean below.

“I’ll do it!” Johnnie-O screamed, but Charlie just kept on singing. Maybe that’s what Charlie wanted, or maybe he was just so far gone, he didn’t even hear Johnnie anymore. Johnnie had seen spirits go like that. He had seen souls who were so ready to leave and complete their journey, that they had fallen into an endless loop, happy to pass the time, however long it took, until the tunnel opened before them. If that were the case, Charlie would be at home at the center of the earth, waiting for time to end.

But Johnnie-O, tough guy that he was, couldn’t do that to him. He couldn’t give Charlie a coin either. He knew he should, because Charlie was clearly no longer afraid . . . but then if he did, and Charlie went down the tunnel and into the light, Johnnie would truly be alone.

So he put Charlie down, and they sat in the lavishly decorated starboard promenade, and waited for happenstance to take them where it would.

Then, the day after he almost threw Charlie out of the window, Johnnie saw something in the distance that wasn’t ocean. He shook Charlie in excitement.

“Look!” he said. “Look! It’s China!”

Johnnie-O wasn’t an expert in geography. He knew, however, that China was called “the Far East,” and he assumed that their eastward journey would take them there. What he called China was actually the coast of Spain.

Once they reached the coastline, Johnnie contented himself with watching the view, listening to the faint sounds of the living below, and searching for deadspots on the ground. Then, the next day, to Johnnie’s dismay, the sun rose to reveal that they were out over water once more.

“Oh, great,” said Johnnie. “Where are we now?”

“Strummin’ on the old banjo!” sang Charlie.

Johnnie-O suspected this was going to be a very long eternity.

CHAPTER 8

Half-lost

The old man was horrible to behold in both worlds. Half of his face had been ruined by fire. His left eye was dead and unseeing, and his left ear was deaf as a post. His left hand only had the memory of fingers, for it had fallen victim to the flames as well. Occasionally those nonexistent fingers itched. The doctors said it was a very common sensation for those who have lost a part of themselves.

He had long ago given up any attempts to disguise the scarring, or to hide it from the judgmental eyes of strangers—and everyone was a stranger now. Those who saw him always averted their eyes. Charitable people looked away in pity; others looked away in disgust—but in the end no one wanted to look upon him.

Who he had been in the first half of his life meant nothing anymore. The living world was unforgiving of old scars. Sure, there had been great sympathy at first, but sympathy has a short shelf life. The same people who once called him a hero now turned the other way when they saw him in the street—never knowing that this was the celebrated firefighter who had lost the left half of his life in a tenement inferno, while saving half a dozen people. All they saw was a ruined man in tattered rags, panhandling on highway exit ramps.

From the day his bandages came off, Clarence knew that something profound had happened to him—more profound, even, than the burns still raw on his face.

“I see things,” Clarence would tell people. “I see impossible things with my dead eye.”

If he had stayed quiet about the things he saw, he would have held on to his life, and adapted, as other burn victims do—but Clarence was not the kind of man who kept quiet.

“The things I see,” he would tell anyone who would listen, “are terrible, but wonderful, too.”

He would tell of the twin towers, still standing in New York, “touching the sky, just as sure as I’m standing here.”

He would tell of the many ghosts he saw going about their business. “They’re all children! They’re dead and yet somehow they’re not.”

He would tell of the fears that kept him awake at night. “My dead ear can hear them sometimes—and some of them are up to no good. They’ll kill you soon as look at you.” And he talked about how his left eye could still see fingers on his left hand—and those fingers could actually touch all the things that no one else could see!

They gave him medication for a while, convincing Clarence that he was very, very sick—that his brain was damaged by the fire. The medication numbed his senses, and made it hard to get inside his own head—but none of that medicine made his visions go away. That’s how he knew the problem was not him, it was the rest of the world.