Everfound (Skinjacker 3)

They found Nick right about the time Allie and Milos battled on the thirtieth floor. When they saw Nick, and the many Afterlights waiting in the playground, Clarence was hesitant. He had never seen so many “ghosties,” in one place. Mikey, however, went straight to Nick, who looked at him, bewildered.

“Mikey?” The change in Nick’s face was almost immediate. The unnatural roundness of his head took on a more defined shape.

“Have you found Allie?” Mikey asked, never realizing that her spirit had just shot past them, and into the office building a block away.

“Allie!” Nick said with intense joy. “That’s her name.” Now eyebrows formed, and lids that blinked over brown eyes.

“Of course that’s her name. Have you seen her?”

Nick shook his head. “No. But I remember her now. We crossed together, didn’t we? In a forest.” And when he smiled, there were now teeth where just a hollow hole had been.

“Something’s wrong,” said Clarence, who pointed with his Everlost hand to the playground. “These children are trapped.” At first Mikey assumed their screams were the sounds of play, but they were screams of terror. Kids futilely tried to squeeze through the bars and climb over the spikes of the wrought-iron fence, while all around them the Afterlights just stood there, as if waiting for something to happen.

“Nick, what’s going on?” Mikey asked.

Nick pointed up, and for the first time, they saw the load of I-beams hanging directly over the playground. “They’re reaping souls,” Nick told them. “But I don’t think it’s right. Do you?”

Mikey didn’t need to answer him. The answer was right on his face.

Clarence, still a rescue worker at heart, sprung into action first. “I’ll help the living, you go do something about those freaking ghosties.” Then Clarence smashed the driver’s window of the nearest parked car, popped the trunk, and grabbed a crowbar in his living hand. In an instant he was racing toward the playground gate, where he pounded the bicycle lock with the crowbar over and over.

Mikey knew he had no power to help the living, and the only weapon he had against the Afterlights was fear. So digging deep into the darkest pit of his imagination he drew forth the most frightening miscreation he could dredge up and transformed himself into a foul-looking, fouler-smelling tentacled thing, the likes of which had never been seen in this or any other world. Then he threw himself into the playground roaring, turning the tips of his tentacles into tooth-filled mouths, each of which roared in a different dissonant pitch.

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.