Milos ran up to the engine cab, where Speedo looked at him, wide-eyed and frozen like a rabbit before the radial. “What do we do?” warbled Speedo as Milos climbed in.

Milos looked toward the mansion, still a quarter mile ahead of them. “We ram it!” Milos said.

“Ram it? But . . .”

. . . OOGAH—OOGAH—OOGAH-CHA-KA! OOGAH—OOGAH—OOGAH-CHA-KA!

“I said RAM IT!”

Milos didn’t wait for Speedo. He grabbed the control stick and pushed it all the way forward.

The couplers shuddered, the wheels moaned, and the train began to move, picking up speed, with the first of the invaders just fifty yards away.

“I don’t like this!” Speedo complained, bracing himself against the bulkhead. “I don’t like this at all!”

But Milos knew what he was doing. The mansion, just like the church, was resting on the tracks. The attackers had put it there—which meant that the train could knock it off of the tracks and barrel right on past, escaping the mob. All it took was enough momentum.

Jix, who still hung out of the door of the parlor car, was nearly thrown off by the sudden momentum, and Allie, who, as always, had the best view of the rapidly approaching mansion, screamed, calling Milos every foul name devised in the English language, but her voice was drowned out by the roar of the engine as they accelerated toward the mansion. She had no idea what would happen to her once she hit. The impact couldn’t hurt or kill her, but what if the crash tore her soul to bits, and every bit, still alive and kicking, sunk down to the center of the earth? Whatever was coming, she knew it wouldn’t be pleasant. She shut her eyes, and gritted her teeth as she, and the train, connected with the building at sixty miles per hour.

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 . . .