Neal Shusterman - Everwild

Nick remembered reading about a sort of spirit that becomes attached to the living. An incubus it was called. He had never met or even heard of a spirit like that in Everlost- but this corsage-it was a floral incubus, refusing to leave its beloved host behind.

Refusing, that is, until Nick reached out, and plucked it right off the woman's arm-an easy thing to do, as it was part of Everlost.

Doris knew something had changed the moment it happened, but she couldn't tell what. She wheeled around the porch searching every corner. Surely she had lost something, but what could it be? That's how it was with so many things these days. Half-finished thoughts, forgetting even what she'd forgotten. It was no picnic getting old. She looked to her right wrist, rubbing it, scratching it, wishing the uncanny feeling of loss would just go away.

Meanwhile, in Everlost, Nick went to fetch Zin.

"This corsage crossed into Everlost," he told her. "I think it happened a very long time ago."

"So?" said Zin. "What about it?"

"I'd like you to put it back into the living world."

Zin had been practicing the art of "cramming," as the Ogre had called it, but she sensed that this was a little bit different. She couldn't say why.

She turned the corsage in her hand, put it on her own wrist for a moment, inhaled its rich fragrance-and then it finally struck her why this was different than any of the other things she had crammed back into the living world.

"These flowers are alive…"

She thought she caught a hint of a smile on the clear side of the Ogre's face. "So they are," he said. "Or as alive as anything can be in Everlost. Now I'm ordering you to put that corsage back into the living world."

She instinctively knew that dealing with something "alive" would be a whole new level of cramming.

"I don't know if I can do that, sir." She didn't always remember to call him "sir," but she did whenever she was basically telling him "no."

"You won't know until you try," he told her, because the Ogre never took no for an answer.

They returned to the porch where Nick had seen the woman, but she was no longer there, because the living are rarely so convenient as to remain where you found them. Nick, however, wouldn't rest until he had tracked her down. Although the living appeared blurry to those in Everlost, a woman in a wheelchair wouldn't be too difficult to spot.

Doris was not at home because she had called her teenage grandson, and asked him to come take her for a walk. She was feeling unsettled. Not quite panicked, but very unsettled.

"Something's missing," she told him.

"I'm sure you'll find it," he said, not for an instant believing that anything was missing at all. Doris's children and grandchildren all thought she was far more senile than she really was, treating everything she said as if it were coming from someplace hopelessly foggy. It annoyed her no end, and they took her crankiness as further evidence of dementia.

Her grandson rolled her through the streets of the town, and when they came to a corner, she chanced to look up at the street signs.

They were at the corner of Severance and Blithe. Although she had passed this intersection a thousand times since the accident, the spot was only painful when she paused to think about it, which she rarely did anymore. But today she felt a strange need to pay her respects, and so she had her grandson pause at the corner before crossing.

It was as she sat there, tallying the cost of a single tragic moment, that she felt a strange gripping sensation on her right wrist. She looked down to see that a yellow rose corsage had been slipped onto her hand. Not any corsage, but the corsage. She knew nothing of Everlost, or of Zin, who had just successfully crammed it into the living world, and had slipped it onto her hand-but Doris didn't need to know. There was no question in her mind that this was the same corsage. In a sudden moment of intuition, Doris came to realize that the corsage had always been with her, then was briefly taken away, only to be presented back to her fully and completely. All these years it had been unable to live, but unable to die. Now it would do both.

Her grandson didn't notice its appearance-his attention had drifted to two girls his own age farther down the street. He only noticed the corsage once the girls had turned the corner.

"Where did that come from?" he asked once he saw it.

"Billy gave it to me," Doris said honestly. "He gave it to me the night of the prom."

Her grandson glanced momentarily at the trash can on the corner beside them. "Of course he did, Grandma," and he left it at that, making a mental note to keep her wheelchair a little farther away from trash cans.

By nightfall the corsage had begun to wilt, but that was fine. Doris knew it was the way of all things, and each falling petal was a gentle reminder that soon-maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe next year-her time would come too. The tunnel would open for her, and she would make her journey into the light with a mind as crystal clear as the star-filled evening.

Nick could tell there was something wrong in Nashville.

A city this big should have had Afterlights, but there was not a single one to be found. They did find an abandoned Afterlight den-a crossed factory, filled with evidence of Afterlight activity, but not one soul remained.

"Maybe they all found their coins, and got where they were going," Johnnie-O suggested.

"Or maybe they were captured by Mary," Charlie said.

"Or maybe sumpin' worse," said Zin-and by Kudzu's reaction, everyone suspected she might be right. The dog wasn't exactly a bloodhound, but his senses were more acute than human ones-and the second he and Zin got close to the factory, Kudzu began to back off and howl. He wouldn't get near the place.

There was definitely a strange feeling in the air-the residue of some bitter circumstance. It called for a visit from the Sniffer.

The Sniffer was a kid they picked up in Chattanooga, whose sense of smell was so good, he could smell things that didn't actually have an odor. Like the scent of someone thinking too hard (smells like a burning lampshade) or the aroma of confusion (smells like rotisserie chicken). One might think he'd have a monumentally distorted nose, and yet he didn't. It was a dainty little upturned thing.

"It's not the size of your nose that matters," the Sniffer often said, "it's how deep your nasal cavity goes," and this kid was nasal cavity all the way down to his toes. In fact, when he sneezed, he could splatter an entire room in ectomucus-which was like living mucus, except that it never dried.

They brought him to the factory and, just like Kudzu, he wouldn't even go through the door-but at least he was able to tell them why.

"I smell misery," he said. "The place reeks of it." Then he pointed southwest, roughly in the direction of Memphis. "That's the direction the misery went."

"Just our luck," said Zin, still trying to calm down Kudzu, who had gone from howling to whimpering.

"Whatever it was," Nick said, "let's hope we don't run into it on the way."

And whatever it was, it was apparently strong enough to scare the Sniffer off. He deserted Nick's army, having no desire to follow the misery to Memphis.

Zin just wanted to leave Nashville. Kudzu's reaction spooked her, and the sooner they were on their way, the better. The Ogre, however, had his own agenda. They lingered in the city. He said it was because they were still looking for stray Afterlights, but that was a lie. They stayed because the Ogre had another secret task for Zin. This was the big one, and looking back, Zin realized this was the task he had been leading up to all along.

They were back at the train, and Zin couldn't find Kudzu. It wasn't unusual for him to explore on his own, but maybe she was smelling a bit of something now too. Something a little skunky. Something that reeked of bad intentions.