“Stop that,” he told them. “You’re not out of breath, you just think you are, so stop it.”

“Lief, please, this is important,” Allie said. “We need you to tell us about the ‘others’ you were talking about before.”

There was no sense trying to hide it now, so he told them what he knew. “They come through my forest every once in a while. Other kids on their way places. They never stay long—and none have come through here for years.”

“Where do they go?”

“Anywhere. They’re always running. They’re always running from the McGill.”

“The what?”

“The McGill.”

“Is that a grown-up?”

Lief shook his head. “No grown-ups here. Only kids. Kids and monsters.”

“Monsters!” said Nick. “That’s great. That’s wonderful. I’m so glad I asked.”

But Allie wasn’t shaken. “There are no such things as monsters,” she told Lief.

He looked to Allie, then to Nick, then back to Allie again.

“There are here.”

On the absence of adults in Everlost, Mary Hightower writes: “To date no grown-up has ever been documented to cross into Everlost. The reason is quite obvious when you stop to think about it. You see, adults, being the way they are, never get lost on the way to the light no matter how hard they get bumped, simply because adults always think they know exactly where they’re going, even if they don’t, and so they all wind up going somewhere. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself this: Have you ever seen a grown-up get into a car so they could go ‘nowhere in particular’?”

On the presence of monsters, Mary Hightower is curiously silent.

CHAPTER 4
A Coin on its Edge

Night had fallen over the woods, and the three dead kids sat on the highest platform of the tree house bathed in an unnaturally bright moonlight that truly made them look like ghosts. It took a while for Nick and Allie to realize that the moon wasn’t out that night.

“Great,” said Nick, not thinking it was great at all. “Just what I always wanted—to be a glow-in-the-dark ghost.”

“Don’t call us ghosts,” Allie said.

Nick simply didn’t have the patience for Allie’s issues with word choice. “Face it, that’s what we are.”

“ ‘Ghost’ implies a whole lot of things that I am NOT. Do I look like Casper to you?”

“Fine,” said Nick. “We’re not ghosts, we’re Undefined Spectral Doohickies. USDs. Are you happy now?”

“Well that’s just stupid.”

“We’re Afterlights,” said Lief. They both turned to him. “The others who pass through—that’s what they call us, on account of how we glow in the dark—in the day time, too, if you look close enough.”

“Afterlights,” repeated Allie. “See, I told you we weren’t ghosts.”

Allie and Lief began to talk about monsters again, and, as far as Nick was concerned, this was a conversation he would just as well stay out of. Instead, Nick decided to hold his breath, to see if it were true that oxygen was no longer a requirement. Still, he listened.