Then Milos, always one to blame the messenger, turned on her in fury. “You keep your mouth shut or I will find some duct tape and tape it closed!”
To which Allie calmly responded, “Duct tape never crosses.” Which was true. Things that cross into Everlost are usually loved, and nobody loves duct tape. Its use is, at best, an annoyance.
“If it moved once,” Milos said, “it can move again.”
“You . . . you want us to move it back?” asked Speedo.
Allie snickered, which only made Milos more irritated.
“We don’t need to move it back, just off the tracks. Understand?”
“Oh,” said Speedo as if it were a grand revelation. “I get it!”
Milos lined up the Afterlights on one side of the church. Then, on Milos’s command, they began to lift and release, lift and release, over and over until the church began to rock back and forth. Even with fifty Afterlights, the church was so heavy, it took forever until they were able to build any sort of momentum.
Up above, the steeple wavered like a metronome, cutting a wider and wider arc across the sky. By now all the rest of Mary’s children had come out to see what was going on. Moose and Squirrel watched like it was prime-time TV, Jill crossed her arms and feigned complete disinterest, and Jix observed stoically, without revealing how he felt about it either way.
The anticipation of all those assembled built as the church rocked on the tracks, until finally the building reached the edge of its balance, slid off the tracks, and tumbled over on its side, landing unbroken on the ground beside the train. Without a deadspot to rest on, the church began to slowly sink into the living world.
The Afterlights all cheered, giving Milos all the credit for clever thinking—although he knew it wasn’t his cleverness that had solved their predicament. It was Allie’s.
“Load up the train,” Milos commanded. “And stoke the engine.”
“What about me?” asked Allie. “Will you take me down from here now, like you promised?” Milos looked at her, thought for a moment, then said to Moose and Squirrel, “All right. Untie her from the train.”
Allie relaxed, fully ready for freedom until Milos said, “Take her down, then tie her back to the train again. This time, upside down.”
“What?”
Milos climbed up to her, getting right in her face. “All this time you knew, and you left us like sitting geese.”
“Sitting ducks,” Allie corrected, and then wished she hadn’t.
“Did you think that whoever put the church here would attack the rest of us and set you free?”
Allie didn’t answer him . . . because that’s exactly what she thought.
“I am sorry,” said Milos, “but you are far too useful as a scarecrow for me to put you anywhere else.” Then he turned to the others. “I want everyone who sees us coming to know that we are not to be trifled with. I want everyone seeing this train to fear it—to fear us. I want them terrified.”
“Them?” asked Speedo. “Them, who?”
“It took fifty of us just to knock over that church,” said Milos. “How many do you think it took to move it all the way around the lake?”
Speedo said nothing, clearly not wanting to consider the answer.
Allie struggled against Moose and Squirrel but it was no use. “Do you think that tying me up like that will scare them? Whoever they are, they’re not scared of us, and they don’t want us trespassing.”
Milos responded by turning to the crowd and announcing in his loudest, most commanding voice: “I hereby claim this territory in the name of Mary Hightower!” and the crowd cheered even more loudly than before. “Now they are the ones trespassing,” Milos told Allie. “Whoever they are.”
With Allie tied back onto the grille upside down, the train continued forward . . . while beside it, the church lost its battle with gravity and, like a foundering ship, sank into the quicksand of the living world.
PART TWO
The Wraith and the Warriors
High Altitude Musical Interlude #1 with Johnnie and Charlie
There is no wind in Everlost. At least none that occurs naturally. No nor’easters heralding winter, no gentle summer zephyrs. Even Everlost trees that rustle in the wind are only going through the motions, moving with the memory of a breeze long gone.