The Ever After

Chapter Thirty: The Black Shucks

THEY COULD SEE THE TRAIN CLEARLY NOW-A LONG black snake curling its way toward them. It seemed to go on endlessly.

May, Pumpkin, Beatrice, and Captain Fabbio watched it, willing it to go faster, looking back over their shoulders every few seconds, frantic. Both the Black Shucks and the giant mouse were getting closer and closer.

The crack of a whip sent a sickening dread into May's heart. Behind the dogs, the shape of the Bogey became clear, riding on his sled, his top hat secure despite the wind.

Oh, please. Please please please, May thought. Please.

"The train's not going to make it in time," Beatrice said, saying what they all, in the past few seconds, had begun to realize. "We can't outrun them."

"Right." May turned to them, pushing the fear way down into her gut and trying to pull out courage instead. "We need to look for weapons. Anything you can find. We're going to have to fight them."

They ran around the station looking for things they could break apart to use as clubs. Fabbio pulled out his dagger. Beatrice held a length of pipe dug from the sand. May reached into her pocket and clutched the quartz rock. They all looked at one another, and May could see in everyone's eyes that they all knew weapons wouldn't help them. And there was no place to go.

"I don't have a weapon," Pumpkin said.

May's lip began to tremble. Pumpkin stared at her hopefully with his fingers tugging at his wrinkled lips, trusting and innocent and helpless.

"That's okay," she said, trying to sound brave. "You just stay behind me. If something happens, something bad, I want you to close your eyes and wait till it's over." May felt like that was all she could offer him.

Tears began to fall from Pumpkin's eyes. And that made them fall from May's too.

She reached out and hugged him. Everybody hugged one another one last time.

For a moment May remembered her picture, the one of her in the woods, dressed as a warrior with Somber Kitty at her side. You are that girl, the Undertaker had said.

May tried.

"Everyone get ready," she said, cocking her arm back behind her shoulder.

They readied their weapons and waited for the Bogey and his dogs to arrive.

Somber Kitty could smell tears on the air. He could see the shape of May clearly now, and the others she was with- though she hadn't yet seen him with her inferior human eyes. The smell of fear-of May's fear-was also in the air, and Somber Kitty, confused, looked in the direction that May and the others were looking, toward the black specks that were growing larger on the horizon. Suddenly Somber Kitty's nose twitched madly. His skin began to tremble on his bones. The specks weren't specks anymore. They were dogs.

Somber Kitty stopped in his tracks. A low growl began deep in his belly, and he stayed frozen, torn, distraught.

With the very last of his strength, he ran.