Moose and Squirrel went to gather the Afterlights who had hidden but had not run away. When Moose and Squirrel took a final head count, their number was forty-three.

“Forty-three?” wailed Milos from beneath the empty sleeping car. “How can there be only forty-three?”

“Most of ’em got scared off,” said Squirrel.

“Fine. Get them to push this thing off of me.”

But try as they might, forty-three Afterlights were not enough to leverage a train car off the tracks.

“That shucks,” said Moose. “Sho what do we do now?”

As Milos struggled to find a solution to his dilemma, he began to smell something. It was faint at first, barely perceptible but growing. It was sweet, and reminded Milos of childhood; something pleasant in the midst of this most unpleasant circumstance. Then all at once he realized that this particular aroma was not a good thing at all.

“Do you schmell that?” said Moose.

“It’s chocolate! It’s chocolate,” said Squirrel. “What do we do?”

By now other kids were scattering, terrified, knowing what that smell meant.

“No! No!” Milos shouted to them. “Stand your ground.”

“Easy for you to say,” shouted one of the escaping kids. “You can’t move.”

To their credit, Moose and Squirrel did not abandon Milos, although they probably both would have wet themselves, had they been alive.

The smell of chocolate quickly grew and became overpowering—intoxicating. Milos could not see anything from his angle, but Moose and Squirrel could, and what they saw made them quiver. The creature came lumbering down the tracks from the northeast, looking like some sort of swamp thing, but dripping chocolate instead of slime. Allie had told them that the Chocolate Ogre was just a boy—and that the monster legend was created by Mary to keep her children fearful, but this oozing spirit appeared every bit the monster that Mary had said it was.

The Chocolate Ogre strode forward at a steady pace along the track, the erie ploosh, ploosh, ploosh of his footsteps would have been comical if the sight of him wasn’t so terrifying. He arrived at the breeched sleeping car, and looked at Moose, then at Squirrel, perhaps for an explanation.

“We didn’t do it!” said Moose.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Squirrel, “it was like this when we got here!”

The Ogre looked at Milos, then back to Moose and Squirrel. “I’m looking for Allie. Do you know her? Do you know where I could find her?” His voice, although slobbery and thick, was not exactly the voice of a monster.

“She’s not here, she’s not here,” wailed Squirrel.

“Quiet!” yelled Milos. Even though he could barely move, he had a handle on the situation. The Ogre had never met them—he had no idea who they were! And so, Milos, using his friendliest voice, said, “We don’t know anyone by that name, but maybe we could help you find her.”

“Will you really help me?” asked the Ogre, overjoyed at the prospect.