The Ever After

Chapter Twenty-Eight: Nothingness

"HELLO?" MAY WAS CROUCHING AT THE BOTTOM of a dark pit, her arms wrapped around herself, shivering. "Is anyone there?"

"May?" Pumpkin's voice echoed back to her.

"Pumpkin! I thought they'd taken you! Where are you?"

"I don't know. I'm in some kind of pit."

"Me too!"

Another voice rose out in the darkness. "Hey, are you two all right?"

"Beatrice!" Fabbio called. "You okay?"

"I think so."

"I'm okay," May called. Everyone voiced agreement. But May knew none of them were okay. John the Jibber was gone. And there was no one who knew how to help them. They were caught.

May rubbed at her elbows and knees where they'd been scraped a few moments before, when she'd been dropped into the pit.

Then she began feeling along the walls. And then, with a gasp, she felt her shoulders. Her knapsack was gone. It must have been torn off in the struggle.

Suddenly a blue glow illuminated the area, and May looked toward a giant Holo-Vision screen mounted in the wall.

"You all have this HV?" Fabbio called. Again everyone voiced agreement.

The blue screen dissolved into a scene of a specter-the same one who had been in the movie at the Spectroplex-with a knife in his chest. He smiled at the camera, seeming to smile directly at May.

"Hello, and welcome to the uppermost dungeons of the Eternal Edifice. On behalf of the great Bo Cleevil, we would like to extend our regrets that your stay is under such unfortunate circumstances."

"What circumstances? What's going to happen to us?" May asked as if the man could hear her, but he went on talking.

"Because you are being detained for questioning, you may at this time enjoy a few extra minutes or hours of the afterlife before you are destroyed completely. To prepare for your execution, you may like to empty your pockets of all valuables at this time. You may also wish to say a silent good-bye to all of those that you have ever loved. Remember to remain in your pit patiently until the ghouls come to get you. Though of course"-the man chuckled softly-"you have little choice."

He turned serious again, his big dark eyes focused on the camera. "Remember, execution is, quite literally, nothing to be scared of. Once you have vanished from existence completely, you won't know the difference."

He gave a chilling smile. "Have a pleasant stay!" Suddenly the HV blinked off and the pit was enveloped in pitch-blackness once again.

"Ohhhh," Pumpkin moaned.

"We've got to get out of here," Beatrice moaned.

"No worry, Beatrice, I will find a way." The grunts of Captain Fabbio leaping and jumping and trying to climb carried into May's pit. But May had gone numb. She crouched down against the wall and hugged herself tight, staring toward the darkness of the ceiling. At any moment the boulder covering the pit would be pushed aside, and she would be dragged out. She would never see her cat, or her mom, or her woods, or anyone again.

"Pumpkin," she finally called. "I'm so sorry. You'd be back in Belle Morte if it weren't for me."

There was a long silence, and then, "I really didn't have anything else to do."

"Hush, you two," Beatrice called. "You sound like you're giving up! We just have to think."

May was thinking a lot. She was thinking of how she had thought once that if she could go somewhere else, she could be someone else. But she had come here, clear across the universe, and her life had not amounted to much of anything. She was thinking how much she had let everyone down.