CHAPTER 14
The Neon Nightmares

In the early 1900s, a man who had made a fortune in oil decided to build a ranch in the middle of nowhere, complete with a thirty-room mansion: a showplace of a home fit for balls and galas and all those kinds of high society events that the rich attend. It was built on the right-of-way of an old rail line, but as that line no longer existed, no one thought it was much of a problem.

For a dozen years or so, the mansion was the talk of Texas; however, lightning strikes the rich and poor alike, and on one unfortunate night, a sizable lightning bolt set the place aflame. It burned to the ground in just a few hours. Now in the living world there’s nothing but a hint of a clearing where the mansion once stood—but such a home, built with the blood, cash, and tears of a man who loved every inch of it, could not vanish from existence. The mansion crossed into Everlost in exactly the same spot where it was erected . . .

. . . which was right smack in the middle of the ghost train’s path.

* * *

When the train struck the mansion, the building did not slide off the tracks, because, unlike the little church, it was exactly where it was supposed to be—and although the building was shaken down to its foundation by the locomotive strike, it did not yield. In the end, the mansion wanted to remain where it was more than the train wanted to barrel through—and so the train derailed.

The train cars uncoupled, folding together like an accordion, riding over one another, or just flying off the tracks like model trains running over a toy car—because every child with a train set eventually creates a massive derailing as part of the fun—and like toy trains, these train cars could not be damaged by the crash. They were simply thrown every which way.

Everyone experienced the crash differently.

Jix, who hadn’t been able to decide whether to stay on the train or jump, had clung to the hand rail of the parlor car, and was sent flying by the impact. He could only hope he had enough cat in him to land on his feet.

Allie got the worst of it. She was shredded by the impact, but the shredding only lasted for an instant; then even before the engine stopped tumbling, her body was stitching itself back together. It felt like worms weaving through her insides. Meanwhile, the world spun as the engine tumbled before finally coming to rest. Allie thought the crash would loosen her bonds, but they didn’t. She was still tied to the nose of the train. She was right side up now, which meant that the engine was upside down—but even though it had settled, it was still shifting, and she was tilting slowly backward. She quickly realized what was happening; the engine was sinking tail-first into the living world. In a minute—maybe less—it would sink all the way down and she would be submerged in the earth.

In the engine cab, Speedo was thrown against the control panel and dazed as the engine launched off the tracks, and when it finally stopped tumbling, Milos was no longer in the engine cab with him—he had been ejected out of the open door upon impact.

“Ooooh, this is bad,” Speedo wailed. “It’s worse than just bad, it’s really really bad.” The door of the engine cab was now almost entirely submerged in the earth as it sunk into the living world. With no time to lose, Speedo squeezed himself through the gap at the last possible moment. The fact that he was wet, for once, was helpful, because it made it easier to slip out. Then Speedo ran off into the night, and didn’t look back.

Mary, as well as all the Interlights in the sleeping car, remained asleep through the whole thing, and the kids in the prison car had grown so uninterested in the outside world, they were barely aware of the crash. They felt the jolt as the prison car rode over the car in front of it and toppled to the side, but they had no idea what had caused it. “Earthquake?” one of the kids inside said, and since no one was quite sure, they just went on with their conversations.

Everywhere kids were scrambling to get out of the train cars before they sank. How successful they were depended on how their car had landed. There were only two cars that were not sinking—the parlor car, which had been launched clear over the engine, and had landed on the roof of the mansion, and the sleeping car, which had landed sideways across the tracks.

“What a mesh,” said Moose as he climbed out of the parlor car and surveyed the situation below, happy that the parlor car was on the mansion roof, away from the worst of it.

“Nice one, Milos,” said Jill, shouting down to wherever he might be. “Maybe next time you can just hurl us all into the Grand Canyon.”

Milos heard her, but at the moment was too preoccupied to respond. He was now beneath the sleeping car, pinned to the rails, and struggle as he might, he could not free himself. What made it worse was that none of the kids running past him were willing to lift a finger for him.

“You!” he would command. “Come over here and help me!”

But they just glanced at him and hurried off without even answering.

Then, like thunder after the lightning strike, the invaders arrived—and they were so excited by this turn of events that their war cry degraded into random whoops and shouts of triumph. They had strange makeshift weapons. A skeletal umbrella at the end of a spear gun. A boomerang attached to long strips of flypaper—all items meant for snagging and catching Afterlights—and their bright war paint brought terror to all of Mary’s kids.

“Get their coins!” one of them screamed. “Get their coins and send them downtown!” Little did they know that these Afterlights had already surrendered their coins to Mary. Not even the ones who slept had coins, because those never appeared until after one awoke in Everlost. If coins were what these invaders wanted, they would come up empty-handed, and be very, very angry about it.

Allie heard the battle, but couldn’t see it. The engine had tilted straight up as the back end sank into the earth, so now her only view was of the stars and the moon.

“Someone out there had better untie me!” she yelled. She did not want to spend eternity like this. Going down to the center of the earth was bad enough. She would not go down tied to a stupid train!

Sure enough, someone climbed up to her—but it wasn’t one of the invaders. It was Jix, his nose and fledgling whiskers twitching.

“So are you going to free me this time?” she asked. “Or are you just here to chat?”

He immediately began to pull at the bonds that held her there, but they were too tight to undo. He paused, but only for a moment. “You’re a skinjacker,” Jix said. “So skinjack. That’s how you can get out of this.”

“There aren’t any living people here,” Allie reminded him. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“I don’t mean people.”

It took her a moment, but Allie finally got it. Still it made no difference. “Oh, so do you think a longhorn or an antelope will come bounding out of the bush on cue, and stand where I can skinjack it?”

“I see your point,” said Jix, and then he leaped from the engine, leaving Allie to struggle with her bonds on her own. Around her the shouts of the invaders and the cries of Mary’s kids filled the night. Allie could see them now when she turned her head. It was horrible. Kids wrapped in flypaper and dragged off by the marauders; kids tangled in nets sinking into the ground. And then she saw the caboose. It lay on its side, and around it a mob of Mary’s kids struggled to keep it above ground, but their efforts were failing. If nothing else, Allie would have the satisfaction of knowing that Mary was going down too.

In a few moments Allie could see the dry brush around her, which meant that the train had sunk all the way down and was only a foot or so above the earth.

Just then, in the living world, something came bursting out of the chaparral. A coyote ran toward Allie and stopped only a few inches from her . . . as if on cue. Allie couldn’t believe her luck, but it wasn’t luck at all. Jix peeled out of the coyote. He had furjacked it and brought it right to her!

“Hurry! Before it runs away,” Jix said. The coyote, perhaps confused at having been possessed by a human spirit, howled and took off—but Allie bent her hand up from her bonds, reaching toward it, and her fingertips touched the creature’s leg as it passed.

There came a familiar rush and sudden dizziness. She felt the unmistakable heaviness of flesh, and—

—run run run, food food food, scratch scratch scratch—

Suddenly she was no longer tied to the train—she was no longer in Everlost at all! Her spirit had been drawn into the body of the coyote!

It felt—run—strange. Perhaps Jix enjoyed being in something nonhuman, but Allie knew she could never—food food—be a furjacker. The smells, the strange taste in her elongated mouth, and the feel of fleas on mangy fur—scratch scratch—were all just nasty—not to mention the maddening lack of opposable thumbs.

The living world around her was—howl—peaceful and still. Only the simple sound of chirping crickets—howl at the moon! Do it do it!—filled the chilly night air. How strange—sniff sniff—that so much madness could be going on in this exact spot in Everlost, but to a living creature it was all invisible.

There was something—run run—very wrong, however. She could tell within an instant of furjacking the coyote. It wasn’t just that she didn’t like it—somehow her spirit was at odds with the animal. As if she were—pant, pant—somehow allergic. Could that be possible?

She wanted to—run!—stay, to make sure that Mary had sunk, but the coyote’s instincts grated so coarsely against her own—sniff-scratch-sniff—she couldn’t think clearly. The smells were so—sniff sniff—powerful it confused her thoughts. Why was she here? Who was she? She found herself darting back and forth, turning in circles, disgusted by her own dog breath. Her ability to—run-howl-run—think clearly had been—food-food—smashed by the scents and sounds assaulting the—sniff-listen-sniff—coyote’s senses, then a rabbit—chase!—scurried through—chase!—the underbrush—go!—and she found herself—food!—racing after it—catch!—in pursuit—chase!—unable to control herself—food!—and she knew—catch!—that she—food!—was in serious—eat!—serious—eat!—trouble. . . .

Back in Everlost, the Neon Nightmares, as they called themselves, were beginning to realize that this train, which had seemed like such a ripe target, was not going to yield a single coin. Their last hope was the prison car. One of the invaders tugged open the door to find a bizarre twist of faces, legs, and arms all pushed together like sardines. The invader just stared, not sure what to do. “Give me your coins,” he yelled.

“We don’t got any,” said one of the faces in the mass of packed kids. “Could you close the door, please?”

Now the invader was truly confused.

“But . . . but . . . you’re sinking! Don’t you want us to drag you out so you can beg for mercy?”

“Not really,” said another face.

“We’re quite comfortable, actually,” said another. “Please close the door.”

He had never seen Afterlights reach that state of perfect, imperturbable patience before. It annoyed him, so he did to them the only thing he could do to annoy them back. He refused to close the door.

Jix knew that what he did now was crucial; he needed to be quick and decisive. He could escape, and take news of all this to His Excellency, but that would be surrendering the prize. The Eastern Witch could not be allowed to sink to the center of the earth.

Most of the Neons were busy going after kids climbing out of train cars, and the ones that tried to go after Jix took one look at his strange coloring—even stranger than their bright war paint—and they backed off. He hurried toward the mansion, where the parlor car still sat on its roof, and called out to Jill.

“I need the combination!” he shouted.

Jill looked down at him, surprised, maybe even pleased to see him still aboveground. “Forget Mary!” she said. “She’s done for—climb up here with us!”

“The combination!” he insisted. “Hurry.”

Jill sighed. “Thirty-two–nineteen–twenty-eight—but you’re wasting your time!”

He ran off toward the caboose, repeating the numbers in his head.

The caboose lay on its side, already halfway into the earth but the door at the very back of the caboose—the one with the combination lock—was still aboveground. The kids that had been trying to keep the caboose from sinking had either been pulled away by the Neons, or had scattered to save themselves. Using his own afterglow to light the numbers, he spun the lock left, then right, then left again. He tugged. Nothing happened. For a moment he thought that Jill had lied to him, but then on the second tug, the lock came loose. He pried open the sideways door and threw himself inside.

To his surprise, there were already Afterlights in there—about a half dozen of them. They must have climbed in through the skylight, but the skylight was now underground.

“Have you come to join us?” one of them asked.

Mary was still asleep in her unbroken glass coffin—she must have been tossed about by the crash, but these kids had put her back in, smoothing out her hair, keeping her the very image of peace.

“We don’t have very long,” Jix said. “We have to get her out.”

But the kids didn’t move. “Out?” one of them said. “But the maniacs will get her if we take her out.”

“We’re going down with her!” said another, gently rubbing a hand across the glass of the casket. “Then when she wakes up, she’ll tell us what to do.”

Jix roared with such frustration he surprised himself by the force of it. It got their attention. “Do you think she’ll reward you for letting her sink? She’ll hate you! She’ll punish you! Better to be in the arms of the enemy than in the bowels of the earth! Now move!”

They didn’t need a second invitation. They grabbed Mary’s coffin, and, like pallbearers, moved her clumsily toward the door, which was quickly beginning to submerge.

Halfway out the door, the casket got stuck.

“Push!” said Jix, and, already up to his knees in the ground, he put all of his energy into pushing the coffin through, until finally it dislodged from the door and slid out into the night. Jix was right behind it, getting out at the last second.

Then, when he looked back, he saw there was still another boy in there. Jix locked eyes with him. The earth was up to his neck, and the doorway was now only a sliver above the ground. The boy was trapped. Still, Jix reached for him, and grabbed his hand, holding it tight, pulling—but someone wedged that deeply in the living world could not be pulled out, even by a strong Afterlight.

“Save her,” the boy said, before his head sunk under. Even after the boy was completely underground, Jix held on to his hand. It was pulling Jix down too—he was in up to his elbow . . . but then the sinking boy squeezed Jix’s hand to wish him a silent good-bye, and then let go. Jix pulled his hand out of the ground and when he looked up, the caboose was completely gone.

There were few things more humiliating to Milos than being pinned beneath a train car, and having no one—not even the ones he called his friends—willing to help him. He knew that they were out there; he had heard Jill call to him, as usual pointing out his shortcomings as a leader. Until this journey he had always considered himself quite a good leader. Why, then, was he such a failure here? He knew the answer. It was Mary. Even asleep, she was larger than life, dwarfing him, and as much as Milos loved her, he resented that he would never have the same commanding presence. Still he had to believe that there was something missing in her that only he could complete, and that together they would be greater than the sum of their parts. Now his greatest anguish was not knowing whether or not she had been saved from sinking.

He could see only the smallest glimpses of the battle, but he could hear everything. The shouts of the invaders were so confident, and the cries of Mary’s children were so desperate, he knew they were losing. Then, when he heard Jill shout out the “secret” combination to the caboose, he was glad she actually knew it. He had no idea who was going after Mary, or if they would be able to get her out, but at least now he had hope.

Finally one of the invading Afterlights came up to him. Milos spat his best ecto-loogy at him, not caring what the kid would do in retaliation. The one good thing about being pinned between the train and the tracks was that they couldn’t push him down into the living world while he was trapped there.

“Give me your coin or else!” said the kid.

“Idi k chertu!” Milos said. It gave Milos a little bit of satisfaction to be able to curse him out in a way he could not understand.

The kid kicked him in frustration. “How come you’re all so useless!?” he yelled. “How come none of you got no coins? We gotta feed him coins or he won’t tell us nothing—don’t you get it?”

Milos looked at the face-painted boy like he was the one talking a foreign language. “Feed who?” Milos asked, but the kid just ran off to take his frustration out on someone who could fight back.

The sounds of battle diminished. All the other train cars had sunk. Then, with a dread that crushed him almost as fully as the train, he began to realize that if Mary had been pulled from the caboose in time and they managed to keep her above the surface, when she awoke she would never forgive him for this.

Moose, Squirrel, and Jill had the best view of the battle. The roof of the mansion was a fortress for them; they could look down from their shingled battlements and see exactly how bad the situation was. There seemed to be only about a hundred attackers, but they were so aggressive, and so well-organized, that Mary’s kids didn’t stand a chance. Some were captured, some never got out of their trains before they sank. But most of them simply scattered, running from the disaster as fast as their legs could carry them.

The Neons tried to get up to the mansion roof, but the doors and windows were all locked—and although one resourceful Neon managed to climb up the drainpipe, Moose hurled him right off and into the living world, where he sank as if hurled into pudding. After that, no one dared to climb to the top of the mansion again.

They watched as the Neons lay all the sleeping Interlights on the tracks to count them.

“Milosh is down there shomewhere,” Moose told Jill. “I can’t shee him, but I heard him.”

Squirrel wrung his hands like an old woman. “What do we do? What do we do?”

“We save our own hides,” Jill said. “That’s what we do.”

Unfortunately, Jill had trouble taking her own advice.

Jix found that his own exotic look had given him an advantage. Instead of being corralled with the other prisoners, he was brought directly to the Neon’s leader. The kid was no older than fourteen, and beneath the streaks of war paint, he had bad skin with a whole host of whiteheads that yearned to pop, but never would. His greasy black hair looked like it had been cut by his mother, and his braces were caked with whatever he was eating when he died. Could be Oreos. All in all, he was definitely the kind of kid that got picked on while he was alive—but now, he got to be the bully.

Jix stood before him with beefy Neon guards holding him on either side, all of them shuffling their feet to keep from sinking into the living world.

“What are you?” Zit-kid asked.

“I am a son of the jaguar gods,” Jix announced, trying to be intimidating. “And you have angered them.”

Zit-kid was not concerned. He looked to the glass coffin that several of his Neon Nightmares now carried.

“Who’s the girl in the glass box?” he demanded.

Jix considered how he might respond, and one of the kids holding Jix smacked him. “Avalon asked you a question! Answer it!”

Jix growled, but held his temper. “She’s the one with the answers,” Jix told Avalon.

“What answers?”

“The answers to all of your questions. She is the all-knowing Eastern Witch.”

Avalon, the zit-kid, was still unimpressed. “Never heard of her.” He scratched his volcanic face, smudging some of his war paint. Jix noticed that his paint was slightly different. In addition to the bright streaks, he also had a silver W on his forehead.

“We already know all the answers,” he said. “At least, we will when we have enough coins. You gotta coin?”

Jix shook his head.

“All right, then.” Avalon motioned to his comrades. “Keep the girl in the box, and send the cat-kid downtown.”

The two Neon guards began to push on Jix’s shoulders, forcing him into the earth, making it very clear what they meant by ‘downtown.’

“No!” someone shouted off to their right.

Jix turned to see Jill climbing down from the top of the mansion and she ran to them. One of the Neons tried to grab her, and she elbowed him in the nose, then made a beeline to Avalon.

“I’ve got a coin!”

“Don’t!” yelled Jix. “They won’t bargain—they’ll just take it.”

But she ignored him. “I’ll trade you. My coin for his freedom.”

“Search her,” ordered Avalon, but she didn’t give them a chance. She pulled the coin out of her pocket and held it up to Avalon. He looked at it with suspicion, then cautiously took it from her, holding it by the tips of his fingernails, then dropped it into the pocket of his T-shirt.

“All right, then,” he said. “Send them both downtown.” Then he turned and walked away.

“Push me down, and you’ll never find the other coins!” Jill said. That caught his attention.

“You’re lying.”

“Oh, yeah? I can get you another coin right now.”

He hesitated—and even Jix wondered if she were bluffing, but he decided not to interfere with Jill’s scheme. He watched and waited to see how it would play out.

“Show me,” said Avalon.

The guards plucked Jix, who was down to his knees, back to the surface, and Jill led them all toward the sleeping car, still lying sideways across the tracks.

“That car is empty,” Avalon told her. “We already got all the sleepers out, and none of them will have a coin until they wake up anyway.”

“Not in it,” said Jill. “Under it.”

They all went around to the other side of the car, to see Milos still helplessly pinned.

“Hello, Milos,” said Jill, far too pleasantly to actually be pleasant.

“Switching sides, Jill?” he said. “I am not surprised.”

“He’s got a coin,” Jill announced. Avalon looked at the train car, then at his mob.

“Check his pockets.”

“You don’t have to,” Jill said. “It’s not in a pocket. He keeps it wedged in the laces of one of his shoes.”

Milos moaned, and Avalon pointed at Jix. “You. Go check.” Jix knelt down and reached under the train for Milos’s shoes. Milos kicked and struggled, but Jix was able to get a good hold on his shoes with his sharp nails. He checked the laces of both running shoes and found the coin wedged in the right laces, just as Jill had said. He pulled it out, spared a quick glance toward Jill and held it out to Avalon, holding it in his palm.

“Hey,” said Avalon, “how come you can hold it and not get sucked into the light?”

“Because I’m a skinja—” But Jix stopped himself. Could it be that these Afterlights didn’t know about skinjacking? If they didn’t, he wasn’t about to tell them. “I guess it’s because I’m just not ready,” Jix told them, then he gave it to Avalon, who carefully put it in his shirt pocket, holding it by his fingernails, just as he did the first one.

“All right, then,” he said. “Where are the other coins?”

“Not here,” Jill told him. “But there’s a bucket that’s so full of coins you can barely carry it.”

Avalon glared at her, baring his Oreo-clogged dental work. “You think I’m an idiot? You’re making that up.”

“She’s not,” called one of the other kids that had been captured. “I saw it. The Chocolate Ogre’s army had it when we fought them. But I don’t know where it went.”

“I do,” said Jill, and she refused to say anything more.

Jix grinned like the Cheshire cat. Jill’s ploy was cunning and clever. And to think she had done this for him!

“All right, then,” said Avalon. “But you’ll have to tell me eventually.” Then he ordered the Neons to send all the other prisoners downtown. “Two coins saves you and your cat,” he told Jill. “I got no use for the others.”

Jix tried to help them, but he was held back. In the end all he could do was watch as more than twenty kids were pushed into the earth. Then the Neons left, taking their two prisoners, all the Interlights, and Mary in her glass coffin, while behind them Milos spewed Russian curses at all of Everlost.