“I didn’t drive anyone crazy.”

“Well,” said Pinhead, “all I know is that if I were a living, breathing person, I wouldn’t want something like the McGill living inside of me.”

“Why should you care? If he skinjacks someone and leaves Everlost, you get to be captain.”

“I’m not the captain type,” he said, and he offered her a slanted mudslide of a grin. “Don’t have the head for it.”

Allie went back to her cabin and lay down, running what Pinhead had said about the Steel and Steeplechase Piers over and over again in her mind, until an idea came to her: a way to defeat the McGill, or at least a way to distract him enough for her and her friends to escape. The plan was simple, and it was dangerous, but it was the best hope she had.

All she needed was a small slip of paper … and a typewriter.

***

Although the McGill liked no one, he was beginning to suspect that if he ever did like someone, it might be Allie. This troubled him, because he knew she would abandon him and escape with her friends if she could. The McGill, however, believed in the power of blackmail. As long as he had her friends dangling like carrots before her, she would do what he wanted. He knew he would never trust her, because, for the McGill, trust had been left behind with the human condition. The McGill trusted no one but himself, and even then, he was often suspicious of his own motives. He wondered, for instance, if he believed Allies twelve-steps-to-possession only because he wanted it so badly. Or worse, did he believe her only because he had begun to like her?

Since he couldn’t trust himself, he decided he needed verification of Allie’s honesty, and so, once Allie was below deck, he called up an oversize kid known as Piledriver. Piledriver’s claim to fame was that he had died in a living-room wrestling mishap, while costumed as his favorite professional wrestler. The McGill often brought him along on shore raids to inspire fear in Greensouls who had not yet realized that pain and joint dislocation were no longer an issue. Today, however, the McGill had a different mission for Piledriver.

“Take two crewmen and a lifeboat,” the McGill told him, after he explained the nature of the mission. “Leave in the middle of the night, when the rest of the crew is below. Don’t tell anyone, and once you find what you’re looking for, meet us at Rockaway Point. I’ll hold the Sulphur Queen there until you return.”

Piledriver dutifully left, pleased to be given such an important task.

The McGill reclined in his throne, picking at the jewels on the armrests. If Piledriver did the job right, they would soon know if Allie was telling the truth.

In her book Everything Mary Says Is Wrong, Volume 2, Allie the Outcast has this to say about the nature of eternity: “Mary may have invented the term ‘Afterlights,’ but that doesn’t mean she really understands what it means to be one. Maybe there’s a reason why we’re here, and maybe there’s not. Maybe it’s an accident, and maybe it’s part of some big-ass plan that we’re too dumb to figure out. All I know is that our light doesn’t fade. That’s got to mean something. Finding answers to questions like that is what we ought to be doing, instead of getting lost in endless ruts.”