Everlost

“Get the screamer out of here!” said a slobbery voice. “Take him and chime him!”

Several kids nearby took the screamer out of his barrel, and carried him away.

All the while he never stopped screaming. Poor kid, thought Nick. That could have been me.

But it wasn’t. And itwas a great consolation to know that he had survived his time in pickle purgatory. Nick blinked, and blinked again, forcing his eyes into focus, ready to face whatever situation he would now find himself in. He was on the deck of a ship that was sprinkled with crumbs of some sort. There were crewmen around him, all of them kids, and standing in front of an ugly throne was what could only be described as a monster.

Lief did not know the top of his barrel had been pried off. He didn’t know much of anything. He heard a kid screaming, but it sounded far away. Not in his universe. Not his concern. Lief now existed without time or space. He was everything and nothing. It was wonderful. Then when someone grabbed his hair and hauled him upright, he found that the place of infinite peace he had discovered within himself did not leave him. Whether he had lost his mind, or had become “one with the universe” was a matter of opinion.

“Who are you?” a wet, distorted voice asked. “What can you do? What use will you be to me?”

Lief was still on the first question.

“His name is Lief,” said a familiar voice. He remembered the voice belonged to someone named Nick. All at once Lief’s memories came back to him. He remembered his journey from the forest, his time in front of the video game, the fact that he had been in a barrel.

Someone approached him. No, not someone, some “thing.” It had one eye the size of a grapefruit, filled with squiggly veins. The other eye was normal-size, but dangled from its socket.

“I don’t like the look of him!” the monster said. “He looks like someone made him out of clay, and forgot to finish him.”

“I think he’s forgotten what he looks like,” said a boy with an unusually small head.

The monster raised a three-fingered claw and pointed it at Lief. “I order you to remember what you look like!”

“Leave him alone!” shouted Nick.

“I order you to remember!”

Lief suspected he knew what this creature was, and he knew he should have been terrified of it, but he was not.

The creature moved closer to Lief. When it opened its mouth, a tongue lashed out that forked into three octopus tentacles. “I order you to remember what you look like, or you’re going overboard.”

Lief smiled happily. “Okay.” Then he closed his eyes, and rummaged around through his mind until he found a memory of his face. The moment he did, he could actually feel his features changing. When he opened his eyes, he knew he was himself again—or at least something close.

The creature studied him with his huge eye, and grunted. “Good enough,” he said.

Nick, still waist-deep in his barrel, watched the creature closely, ready to fight it if necessary. Then something occurred to Nick that almost crushed his newfound courage. “Are you…Are you … the McGill?”

The creature laughed, and limped across the deck over to Nick, crumbs crunching beneath his fungus-ridden feet as he walked.

“Yes, I am,” the creature said. “You’ve heard about me! Tell me what you heard.”

Nick grimaced from the creature’s awful stench. “I heard that you were the devil’s pet dog, and you chewed through your leash.”

That was the wrong thing to say. The McGill roared, and kicked Nick’s barrel so hard it shattered, spilling brine all over the deck. “Pet dog? Who said I was a dog? I’ll put them on a leash!”

“Just some kid,” Nick said, trying not to look at Lief. “If you’re not a dog, then what are you?”

The McGill poked a sharp claw against Nick’s chest. “I’m your king and commander. I own you now.”

Nick didn’t like the sound of that. “So…we’re slaves?”

“Associates,” said the boy with the unusually small head.

The McGill ordered their pockets checked for anything of value, and when nothing was found, the McGill raised his claw, and pointed to the hatch. “Take them below!” he said to a group of associates. “Find out what they can do, and make them do it.”

The McGill watched them go with one eye, and kept the other eye trained on Pinhead. Once the two new kids were gone, the McGill waved a clawed hand. “Open the next one.”

Pinhead did as he was told. The next barrel, however, was empty, as was the next, and the next. Just brine with no one inside.

“I can’t understand it,” Pinhead said. “The Haunter said there was someone in each barrel.”

“He lied,” the McGill grunted, and retired to the captain’s quarters, which were just behind his great open-air throne.

Fourteen barrels, and only three occupants. It did not sit well with the McGill.

This wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened. If he had a nickel for every time he expected to find an Afterlight and didn’t, he’d be a rich monster.

It was the thought of nickels that made the McGill turn to his safe. It was a bulky iron thing built right into the wall. Only the McGill knew the combination. It had taken him more than a year of trying until he found the right one, and now the safe was his prize possession. He turned the wheel, feeling the familiar rattle of the tumblers, then he closed his claw around the lever, and pulled it open.

Inside was a bucket filled with coins so worn it was impossible to tell their denominations, or what country they had come from. The coins had been taken from enemies or associates—and anyone who was not an associate was an enemy. It was common knowledge that money in Everlost was of no real use, but the McGill kept the coins, all the same.

“If they’re so worthless, why do you keep them in your safe?” Pinhead had once asked.

The McGill had chosen not to answer him, and Pinhead was wise enough not to ask again. The easy answer was that the McGill kept everything…but the real answer was that the coins were the most plentiful objects in Everlost, and as such were of special interest to him.

The only other item he kept in the safe was hidden beneath the bucket of coins.

It was a small slip of paper half an inch wide, and two inches long. On the tiny paper were printed the following words:

A brave man’s life is worth a thousand cowardly souls.

He would read and reread that slip of paper to remind him why he patrolled the shores and went on raids of Everlost encampments. Then he would return it to its hiding place beneath the bucket of coins. Although few knew it, there was more to the McGill than mindless looting and pillaging. That little slip of paper was a constant reminder to him that he had a larger goal.

Nick, still disoriented from his rebirth into the world of the almost-living, stumbled from the light of the deck into the dim, narrow corridors of the ship.

The McGill’s “associates” prodded him and Lief forward, while around them the rest of the McGill’s crew jeered at them as they passed. Lief waved and smiled like some returning hero, and it just made Nick mad.

“Will you stop that?” Nick demanded. “What are you so happy about?”

The jeering kids, Nick noticed, all had crooked teeth and mismatched features;

ears slightly off, noses twisted, tweaked, or flattened, like their faces were putty that the McGill had played with. Some were girls, some were boys, but in truth, it was impossible to tell the difference anymore. Nick dubbed them “Ugloids,” and wondered if they were as ugly inside as out. They all seemed somewhat dimwitted—perhaps service to the McGill had made them that way—and since none of them seemed too highly motivated, Nick took a calculated risk. He pulled out of the grip of the two Ugloids holding him, grabbed Lief’s hand, and began to run. As he suspected, the Ugloids were slow on the uptake, and by the time they took to chasing them, Nick and Lief had a nice lead down the hall.