Then, all at once everything that was missing in his mind came back to him. He knew where he was. He knew what that green thing was. He had seen pictures of it as a child. And now, as he approached the very center of the deadspot—the heart of the vortex—he realized that Jix had been right all along. Clarence did have a purpose! There was a reason why he was the way he was—why he had to suffer through the ridicule of living this half-life of suffering—because what needed to be done today could be accomplished only by him: someone with an unnatural presence in both worlds. Ever since the day his flesh was seared and he was given his vision of Everlost, every thought he had, every phrase he uttered was somehow incomplete. He was incomplete, but today in this place, at this moment, completion was finally at the tips of his fingers. The playing card was missing, but it was only a placeholder—a reminder that he was the one-eyed jack between the here and the hereafter.

With his Everlost hand, he reached to his left, gripping the statue firmly. Then, with his living hand, he reached to his right, toward the bomb. He didn’t touch it, for his living hand could not touch an Everlost bomb. Instead his living hand reached right through it, as if it wasn’t there. He stretched his fingers out as far as he could, and when his fingertips reached the core of the device, an electrical charge ran from the statue of fused coins, through Clarence, and into the memory of the bomb. And in that moment of infinite possibility, the statue, Clarence, and The Gadget all did exactly what it was their purpose to do.

CHAPTER 50
Straight Up, with a Twist

In the living world, the detonation of a thermonuclear device has very predictable, very devastating, consequences. But Everlost is not the living world. Add to that detonation tens of thousands of Everlost coins, and you never know what will come pouring out of your martini shaker. All you can know for sure is that whatever the cocktail, it will be exactly what the universe requires.

At the moment of detonation, a tunnel opened, a thousand feet high and a thousand feet wide, leading to a blinding light and the Unknowable Place beyond it. Mary’s children and the warriors they battled instantly knew the tunnel was there. Those whose forms had changed, now changed back; those who had forgotten their names, now remembered. Every single one of them heard the light calling them by name, and suddenly all the things they had been asked to do in Everlost seemed unimportant when compared to this new directive. So together, and yet each on their own terms, the warriors and Mary’s children leaped into the tunnel, completing their journey, and getting where they were going without fear or regret.