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“Don’t make me do that again, Miss Mary. Please don’t make me do that again.”
“It’s all right, SoSo. It’s going to be all right now.”
Mary went over to him, and Allie saw the strangest thing—Mary’s afterglow seemed to stretch out, enveloping him, making his own flickering glow grow steady and bright. In seconds he appeared comforted and relieved of his burden.
“If you had any thought of escape by skinjacking,” Mary told Allie, gesturing down to the dead man, “it won’t be possible now. There’s not a living soul around for miles, except of course for your friend here.”
Allie realized that there wasn’t all that much blood coming from Clarence’s head at all, but he was still out cold.
Now that Mary was no longer being threatened, she was calm and genteel. “You really are to be pitied, Allie. Such potential, such skill, but you’ve squandered it all—and for what? Just to settle your petty rivalry with me.”
Allie had a lot to say to her on the matter, but Mary had made sure Allie was gagged just in case she might say something that Mary didn’t want her precious children to hear.
“I do believe in rehabilitation, Allie. I believe you can be brought back from that angry place you’ve been, and see the light. So I shall give you one more chance. . . .” Then Mary moved closer to Allie, and as she did, Allie felt something strange happening to her. She felt something coil around her just as it had done to SoSo. It was a surge of Mary’s afterglow, wrapping around her like an anaconda, squeezing her, trying to merge with her own, until Allie could no longer resist it. . . .
. . . And suddenly, Allie understood!
She saw the rightness of Mary’s vision! How Mary had struggled for so long to create a perfect world—for wasn’t that the goal of every society, every culture, every spirit from the beginning of time? To build the perfect world? And not just any world, but one filled with the spirits of children untainted by a life of disappointment and compromise; souls rescued at the purest and brightest moment of human potential! Such a world wouldn’t be complete without things and places to fill it as well. After all, shouldn’t the universe be given the golden opportunity to choose which works of man deserve to remain perfectly preserved forever?
Why, the living world was merely a womb! Yes, the pains of birth are great, but oh, the reward! In the end, the womb must become barren, so that Everlost can shine as the glowing product of love’s labor. It was the perfect formula for eternity: Everlost equals the product of Mary and her children—soon to multiply exponentially!
Allie’s eyes were wide with understanding now . . . except for one thing.
Mary was wrong.
Even though Allie’s soul had been injected with Mary’s overpowering vision, as beguiling as moonlight, Allie knew that Mary’s light was false—a trick, just like the glow of the moon, which is nothing more than a dead rock reflecting the light of something far greater than itself.
The living world is not a womb, Allie would have told Mary if she could. It’s the nursery, the school, the home, and the hearth. It is the source of all possible futures. And Everlost? Everlost is no more and no less than the portraits that hang on life’s walls. This would be a bland and bare universe without Everlost, but like a portrait, its place is on the side, not in the center.
Mary’s coiling of Allie’s soul did not win Allie over. Instead, it transformed Allie’s hatred of Mary into pity . . . for Allie realized that Mary could never escape from the dark place in which she existed. There would never be a doorway of illumination for her. How could there be doorways when you’re blind to everything but the walls?
Their spirits were now so intertwined that Mary could sense exactly what Allie was feeling—and what Allie now felt coming from Mary was a virulent, deadly kind of hatred. The kind of hatred that ends worlds.
Mary pulled back, separating her light from Allie’s. Then she looked Allie dead in the eye and said, “I’ve given you one last chance to do the right and proper thing, but now I know there is nothing right or proper left inside you.” She turned to the Afterlights beside her.
“Would you be so kind as to bring the sarcophagus?”
They brought over an old-fashioned refrigerator. It was the kind with rounded edges, and a solid latching handle, like a car door, but unlike a car door, there was no way to open it from the inside. It was powder blue, a friendly color for an object that now had a very sinister purpose.
A team of Afterlights stood it upright at the very edge of the deadspot and opened it, revealing that the shelves inside had been removed.
“Consider it a protective shell,” Mary told her. “A more civilized way to send you to the center of the earth.” Then she glanced over at Clarence, who still had not stirred. “It would be cruel of me, though, to send you down without making sure you understood that it was not my intention to kill, or even hurt, your friend the scar wraith. We did need him unconscious, however. You see, he’ll be doing something very important today. Something terrible, but also something wonderful. It is my belief that the good far outweighs the bad.”
And then she called for Milos.
Shuffle. Deal three. Toss, toss, toss. Choose.
The Three of Clubs.
Shuffle. Deal three. Toss, toss, toss. Choose.
The Nine of Diamonds.
Shuffle. Deal three. Toss, toss, toss. Choose.
The deck is missing the Jack of Spades.
He knew not because he counted the deck, but because it was the only card that never came up when he played Three Card Monte. It disturbed him that something could cross into Everlost incomplete. What disturbed him more, however, was that the missing Jack of Spades was a one-eyed jack. There were only two of them in a deck; the Jack of Spades and the Jack of Hearts. Although it terrified him for reasons he had entirely forgotten, the whole purpose of his game was to find them. Fear overtook him every time he chose one of the three cards to flip. Terror overwhelmed him when that card turned out to be the Jack of Hearts, with that evil eye peeking out sideways at him. And then such intense relief when he shuffled it back into the deck, only to start looking for it once again.
