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His dangling comrades also complained each time Nick tried to climb his own rope, to get to the grate high up above. Through that grate he could see the sky, and he knew if he could get out on the open deck, he’d figure out a way to escape. Unfortunately, the ropes had all been greased, and he never got more than ten feet up his rope before falling down again and swinging into the kids around him, setting off a chain reaction of whining, which in turn reminded the screamer to start screaming, and everyone blamed Nick.
So aside from the occasional fight, and group sing-along, there was nothing to do but wait until the McGill found a use for them. Nick had this fantasy that Mary would come with a hundred of her kids to rescue him. He never dreamed that his rescuer would be Allie.
“Oh my God!”
Allie stood there on the sulphur-dusted floor of the chiming chamber, still unable to believe what she saw. She tried to count how many of them there were, but there were simply too many to count. There were numbers scrawled on their chests, and some of those numbers were up in the high hundreds.
“Are you here to free us?” girl 342 asked.
Since Allie didn’t know if a rescue of this many Afterlights would ever be possible, Allie didn’t answer her. Instead she asked, “I’m looking for two boys.
They wouldn’t have been here long. One is named Nick, the other Lief.”
Then a voice from high above called down to her.
“They’re on the other side.” It was an older boy in a Boy Scout uniform, with rust-colored hair sticking straight down like an upside-down flame. His was the shortest rope; he hung about fifteen feet above the floor, making him the highest one, and the one with the best view of the chamber. “All they do is talk talk talk,” he said. “Tell them to shut up, it’s annoying.”
Allie pushed her way forward into the mass of “chimed” kids. They swung like pendulums as she pushed through them, all of them grumbling and griping at having been disturbed. She tried to be gentle, but the forest of dangling spirits clearly did not appreciate her intrusion.
“Shut up, you idiots,” the high-chimed Boy Scout said. Allie wondered if being strung the highest made the kid the automatic leader of the group, or did it merely make him high-strung?
“I said shut up!” he yelled more loudly. “Keep making noise, and you’ll set off the screamer.”
And next to Allie, the screamer, once more reminded of his job, began to wail in Allies ear. Reflexively Allie clapped her hand over his mouth. “That,” she said, “is totally uncalled for. Don’t do that again. Ever.” The screamer looked at her with worried eyes. “Are we clear on this subject?” said Allie. The screamer nodded, and she removed her hand.
“Can I scream a little?” he asked.
“No,” said Allie. “Your screaming days are over.”
“Darn.” And he was quiet thereafter.
“Hey,” someone called out. “She shut down the screamer!” The chamber rang out with upside-down applause.
“Allie, is that you?” It was Nick. She pushed her way past a few more danglers, and found both of them. Nick hung about five feet from the ground, his head at about eye level. Lief hung about a foot higher.
“How did you get here?” Nick asked. “I thought for sure the Haunter put you in a barrel, too!”
“I got away before he could,” Allie explained.
“And you just left us there?!”
Allie sighed. They had no idea what she had gone through to get here, and now was not the time to tell them. She looked at Lief, who smiled and gave her an upside-down wave with his dangling arms. “Hi.”
Lief’s calm acceptance of his plight just made Allie feel all the more miserable. “This is horrible! How could the McGill do this!?”
“He’s a monster,” Nick reminded her. “It’s what monsters do.”
“Are you going to hang here with us?” Lief asked, happily. “There’s room next to me!”
“Ignore him,” Nick told Allie. “He’s completely lost it.” Nick squirmed, and bent his knees until his hands could get a grip on his ankles. “Can you cut us down?”
Then the kid up top called down to them. “If you free them, the McGill will throw all three of you overboard. He may get so mad, he’ll throw us all overboard.”
Allie knew he was right. The McGill was both mean-spirited and unpredictable—and besides, if she cut them down, where would they go? Even if they got out of the hold, they were still trapped on the ship.
“I can’t free you now,” she told them, “but I will soon. Hang tight.” She grimaced at her poor choice of words.
“So you’re just going to leave us here?” Nick said.
