Everlost

Allie runs to Battery Park, where she sees the McGill’s ship. She boards the Staten Island Ferry with the living, careful not to sink into the deck. The ferry leaves the dock and heads to Staten Island. When Allie leans over the rail, she has nothing solid to hold on to and falls through the ferry itself, landing in the engine room, where she sees one of the pilots on break. She skinjacks him and wills him to go to the deck, where she sees that the McGill’s ship is too far away for her to board. Allie skinjacks the pilot again and uses him to steer the ferry toward the other boat. She leaves the pilot’s body, and when the Sulphur Queen crosses paths with the ferry, Allie grabs onto its anchor and climbs aboard.

A group of pirates grabs Allie and takes her to the McGill as he sits on his throne. She sees how grotesque he is but is equally fearful and fascinated by him. She tries to make a deal with him, but he refuses and tells Pinhead to throw her overboard. Allie quickly explains how she used the ferry to get on his ship, and the McGill is impressed with her ability to skinjack. He orders Pinhead to put Allie in the guest quarters.

Allie sneaks out of her room and searches the boat for Nick and Lief. She finds the McGill’s treasure and is disgusted that he would treat these objects with such disrespect. In another hold, she finds hundreds of Afterlights hanging upside down by chains and ropes, forming a human chime. She finds Nick and Lief and tells them that she can’t rescue them without raising suspicion. She promises to return soon and apologizes to Nick for taking him to the Haunter and putting them in this situation. Allie hugs her friends and leaves.

The Sulphur Queen sails along the East Coast, the crew occasionally checking Greensoul traps as they travel. The next morning, the McGill visits Allie in her room and finds her reading Mary’s books. They both dislike Mary and know that she intentionally misinforms the Afterlights. The McGill orders Allie to teach him how to skinjack. Allie agrees and in a ploy gain enough time to figure out how to save her friends she invents a series of tasks that the McGill must complete to learn skinjacking, telling him that the first step is to find a Spirit of Vortex. They travel to a haunted house on Long Island, where a young deaf couple lives. Allie tells the McGill to stand on a dead-spot by a window, face the ocean, and watch the sunrise. It’s only noon, so the pair stands there until the following dawn. The sky is overcast, so the McGill demands that Allie possess the young woman. Allie does and writes “Beware the McGill” on the wall to prove that she succeeded. Allie and the McGill return to the house until he sees the sunrise, and they move to the next invented “step” in the process.

Allie says the next step is to observe a single living person for 24 hours, so the McGill watches an inmate in jail. For the third step, she requires the McGill to commit a selfless act, which Allie knows will be difficult for him. Allie stands on the ship’s deck, searching for the shoreline. The McGill comes to her and asks if she’s all right, concerned that she will jump into the water. The McGill then describes what it feels like to sink to the center of the Earth, a journey that took him 20 years to complete. Those who reach the center have nothing to do but wait for the world’s end. He said he wasn’t patient enough to wait that long, so he imagined himself as a monster and climbed out, a monumental journey that took him another 50 years to complete. This story shocks Allie, who asks why he is telling her these things. He says it’s in return for help with skinjacking. Having achieved his selfless act, the McGill is ready for step four.

From reading about the warnings against fortune cookies in Mary’s books, Allie knows there must be something deeply significant about fortune cookies, and when she asks Pinhead, he tells her that all fortune cookies cross over to Everlost and that all fortunes are true. Allie searches for the McGill’s stash of fortune cookies and finds them in a spittoon. She opens a fortune cookie, and the fortune says, “Selfish ambition leaves friends in a pickle” (218). She opens two more, but the fortunes are unclear to her. The fourth tells her to turn around; when she does, the McGill is behind her.

The McGill holds his temper in check because he needs Allie. He demands that Allie explain herself, so she tells him she was reading about fortune cookies and wanted to see if what she learned was true but got carried away. The McGill pulls another fortune cookie from the spittoon to see their fortune. The fortune reads, “Forgiveness keeps destiny on track” (221), so the McGill forgives Allie and tells her to leave. Before she goes, Allie craftily tells the McGill that forgiveness is the fifth step.

The next time Allie sees Pinhead alone, she asks him why the McGill stays away from New Jersey. Pinhead explains that he’s staying away from Atlantic City because another crew called the Twin Pier Marauders defeated him there when the McGill tried to raid them. The Marauders cast his crew into the ocean and chained the McGill to the parachute-drop ride, where he rose and fell for four years. Then Pinhead, one of the Marauders at the time, betrayed his gang and freed the McGill. Allie returns to her cabin and thinks about what Pinhead told her and how she can use it to rescue her friends. Meanwhile, the McGill is troubled because although he cares about Allie, he questions her motives for teaching him to skinjack.

Nick resolves to take action instead of waiting for rescue. He announces to the other chimers that he will find a way out. Nick and Lief start swinging back and forth, only to end up tangled together further off the ground than before. This reminds Nick of learning macrame from his grandmother, so he weaves himself and Lief around the other Afterlights and tells them to get their ropes as tangled as possible. Nick also tells them that as they get more tangled, they’ll be able to reach the grate in the ceiling to get out. After 20 minutes, the group is 20 feet off the ground. The grate is still ten feet away from Nick, until a boy with razor-sharp teeth gnaws through Nick’s rope and frees him.

A crewman tells the McGill there’s a problem in the chiming chamber because all the Afterlights are tangled. The McGill says to untangle them and then goes to the grate and sees the Afterlights talking to one another happily. He orders a pirate to pour something nasty on them and walks away, catching a faint smell of chocolate.

Nick escapes the chiming chamber and hides in a large oak cabinet in one of the McGill’s treasure holds until the crew settles for the night. Allie goes into the same treasure hold, looking for a typewriter. She eventually finds one and types out her message, slipping the tiny piece of paper into her pocket. The McGill suddenly appears and warns her not to steal anything, but she says she’s just exploring. The McGill suggests she find something nicer to wear and points her to a large oak cabinet. He opens the doors, and Allie immediately sees Nick and gasps. The McGill thinks she’s reacting to the wedding dress in the cabinet. Allie pretends to admire the dress, covering Nick. She slams the cabinet shut, saying she’d never be a monster’s bride.

The McGill storms away, and Allie opens the cabinet and asks Nick what he’s doing. Nick says he’ll wait here until he can escape and get help. He also accuses Allie of liking McGill and having power over him. Allie doesn’t deny it. Nick says he’s going to Mary for help, and Allie laughs, saying that Mary wouldn’t help them before and won’t help them now, then suggests that he sneak onto the lifeboat that the McGill is sending ashore the next day.. She tells Nick to have Mary meet the McGill in Atlantic City, then returns to the ship’s deck and sees the McGill watching the sunset. While he is distracted, Allie goes to his throne, gets a fortune cookie, and inserts the fortune that she typed. The McGill and five pirates take the lifeboat to Rockaway Point at dawn, with Nick holding onto a mooring line and hidden underwater.

Pinhead and four crewmates burst into Allie’s room without knocking, telling her to go on deck. When she arrives, she sees the McGill sitting on his throne. He demands that she tell him the remaining steps to achieve skinjacking. She says she will tell him step eight when he has completed step seven, a 72-hour vow of silence. The McGill orders one of his pirates to bring out the pickle barrel containing the Haunter, and Allie becomes worried. The pirate opens the barrel, and the Haunter tries to intimidate the McGill without effect.

The McGill asks the Haunter if anyone can teach skinjacking, but the Haunter says that Afterlights either have the skill or they don’t. The McGill then orders his pirates to reseal the Haunter into the barrel and throw him overboard because there’s only room for one monster in Everlost. When the Haunter is gone, the McGill orders his crew to imprison Allie in the chiming chamber. With Allie’s imprisonment, the McGill has reached his goal of collecting 1,000 Afterlights and believes he can now return to the living world. He goes to his throne and gets a fortune cookie, which will tell him where to take his collection of Afterlights. The fortune reads, “Your victory waits at the Piers of Defeat” (248), so the McGill sets a course for Atlantic City.