Nick was duly impressed—and also impressed that Mary was willing to ride a train, considering the nature of her death. As for the conductor, he was an old friend of Mary’s: a nine-year-old Afterlight who called himself Choo-Choo Charlie. In life he was obsessed with model trains, and so to him, old Penn Station, with its many ghost trains, was as good as making it to heaven.

“I can’t take you to Atlantic City,” he told them. “On account a’ there’s no dead tracks down there. I can get you halfway, though, is that okay?”

“Can you get us as far as Lakehurst?” Mary asked. “I have a friend there who can take us the rest of the way.”

Then, with Charlie in the engine, the ghost train lit out on the memory of tracks, heading for New Jersey.

They arrived in Lakehurst a few hours later, but it took the rest of the night to seek out Mary’s friend there: a Finder named Speedo. After meeting him, Nick decided he preferred a chocolate eternity to an eternity in a wet bathing suit. Nick figured Speedo must have been a pretty good Finder though, because he had himself a late-model Jaguar.

“It’s a sweet ride” he told them, as he drove them around the dead-roads of an old naval air station, showing the car off, “but it can only go on roads that don’t exist anymore—do you know how hard those are to find?” Then he threw an accusing look at Mary. “You never told me about that when you gave me the car!”

Mary smirked. “You never asked.”

Speedo told them it would take weeks to navigate a dead-road course all the way to Atlantic City, but Mary didn’t seem concerned.

“Actually,” she said, “it’s your other ‘sweet ride’ that I’m interested in.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d say that,” said Speedo, as they pulled onto a huge airfield tarmac. “But I drive.”

When Nick saw the ride they were talking about, even in his amazement he had to smile. Miss Mary Hightower didn’t travel often, but when she did, she sure knew how to travel in style!

CHAPTER 25
The Piers of Defeat

As the Sulphur Queen pulled into Atlantic City, a dense morning fog blanketed the shore, hiding the many beachfront hotels from view—but the two dead piers sliced through the fog, jutting out like two arms reaching to grasp the approaching ghost ship.

The Steeplechase Pier stood on the left, with its dozens of rides, all still whirring and spinning like a great gear work churning out time. The Steel Pier was on the right, a grand showplace of the rich and famous. Its signs still advertised in giant letters its golden days before fire burned it into the sea: “Tonight Frank Sinatra,” “Dancing till Dawn in the Marine Ballroom,” and, of course, “Come See Shiloh, the World Famous High-Diving Horse.”

The living world could no longer see the piers, of course. All the living saw were the casinos that sucked their money away like a rip tide, and the garish new Steel Pier, built near the ruins of the original—but like the old and new Penn Stations, there was no comparison. When Everlost eyes looked upon Atlantic City’s sandy shore, the two dead piers stood apart, just as the two lost towers stood apart from the skyline of New York, like grand beacons of eternity.