The Black (11 page)

The powder was moving. It was subtle at first, as if a faint breeze was brushing it around, but even a faint breeze would have made no sense to Marsh. The windows were
closed. The heater fan wasn't on. He was seeing something impossible.

The breeze grew stronger, blowing the fine powder across the counter. Most of it spread out across the white tiles but some of it remained where it had spilled. The more powder that blew away, the more was revealed of the pattern that Maggie was creating.

It was the triple swirl. Sydney's tattoo.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Marsh jumped. I did too. I might be a ghost but I could still be surprised. Somebody was at the front door. Maggie kept concentrating, working to complete the triple swirl. Marsh looked terrified, which made no sense. How could he be more scared about somebody at the door than by an impossible phenomenon happening in his kitchen?

Ding-dong.

The doorbell. Marsh took one last glance at the chocolate pattern, then ran back for the sink. From underneath he pulled out a small fire extinguisher. What was up with that? There wasn't any fire. He held the metal cylinder in one hand as if to use it as a weapon. Why was he so frightened about somebody at the door? He ran out of the kitchen and I was about to follow him when another swirling cloud of color appeared on the far side of the island from us.

"Maggie?" I called.

From out of the cloud came a shadow…
a big shadow. It moved from the cloud of color and pushed across the counter like an oncoming storm that totally messed up the message Maggie had painstakingly created.

And it didn't stop. The dark shadow hit me, hard, knocking me off my feet and onto my back.

When I landed, I looked up to see I was staring directly into Damon's angry eyes.

8

"Is that your response?" he barked, spraying spit into my eyes. "Do you truly believe you can protect him from me?"

I was pinned on my back with Damon's knee on my chest. He may not have been much of a fighter, but he was heavy. And strong.

"He's my friend," was all I could say.

"He is beyond your help," he spat through his sharp teeth. He jumped off me and bounced to his feet while brushing himself off.

I tentatively stood up and looked around to see that he had knocked me out of the Light and straight back to his
vision in the Black. We were on a rocky ledge, high above the village where I had first met
him. Below us was the square with the statue and the fountain.
Far
below us.

"While you struggle to move dust, I have the power to alter the course of human lives," he snarled. "No pathetic
warning from you can prevent me from doing whatever I wish in the Light."

"Then what do you need
me
for?"

He glared at me through coal black eyes. I can't say for sure what crazy looks like, but I'd guess this guy came close.

"Do not challenge me," he said, pointing his finger at my head.

I forced a cocky smile and said, "If you think you can scare me, you aren't as smart as you think you are."

As he stared at me, his upper body started to shudder. At first I thought he was about to erupt with anger, but quickly realized he was actually stifling a laugh.

"Then, let's see," he said, and launched himself at me.

It happened so fast, I had no time to react. With two quick steps he hit me square in the chest, wrapped his arms around me, and drove us both toward the edge. I tried to dig my heels in but it was too late. We both went over.

I screamed.

His black eyes were locked on mine as we plummeted to the ground.

"I know exactly what frightens you," he said above the howl of rushing wind.

He laughed, I think. I couldn't be sure because I was out of my mind. I twisted away from him and looked down to
see the ground rushing closer. I may have been dead but I didn't want to know what it would feel like to fall twenty stories and land on
jagged rocks. All I could do was close my eyes and brace for impact.

A moment later I landed. It was rude, but not the violent, bone-jarring slam I expected. I hit solid ground and
lay there, wondering what had happened. I wasn't in pain. I wasn't even outside. I opened my eyes to see I was staring at a man-made floor. I had been transported from the ancient village of Damon's Black to a modern building.

"It's good to be a ghost," I said to myself.

Lifting my chin, I came face-to-face with a cat. A regular old cat. It sat with its tail curled around its paws, staring at me. Or through me. The thing didn't budge so I wasn't sure if it knew I was there. Once my brain stopped jangling, I focused and realized it wasn't just any old cat. It was Marsh's.

"Winston?" I called out tentatively. The cat didn't react.

"Winny?" came a guy's voice. "C'mere."

I spun to see Marsh walking slowly toward me. Or toward the cat. I was back in the Light. After a quick glance around I realized I had fallen into a hallway at Davis Gregory,
our school. Damon was gone. Somewhere between here and there, he had bailed.

It was summer vacation so the school was empty and dark.

I watched as Marshall continued to try and catch up, and Winston kept evading him.

"Stay there…
that's good…
don't move…
good
kitty," Marsh cajoled, walking slowly, trying not to scare the cat off.

"Ralph! Do you see me?" I shouted, jumping to my feet.

Why was he at school during summer vacation? Alone? With his cat? How much time had passed since the
Ovaltine
incident? Just as important, why was I there? What was it
that Damon said?
"I know exactly what frightens you."
That couldn't be good.

Winston jumped to her feet and scampered off.

Marsh ran after her. I hurried right along with him. "Ralph, dude, listen. Try to hear me. You're in Trouble Town. You gotta get help."

Of course, he didn't hear a thing. I was a ghost. A useless
freakin' ghost.

Winston ran for the door leading to the guys' locker room. What was that cat doing at school? It didn't make sense. There was nothing right about this.

"Ralph! C'mon, man!" I screamed. It was a waste of energy. I never felt more helpless in my life. Or in my death.

The locker room door was open slightly and Winston ran in. Marsh wasn't far behind. I was set to follow them both inside, when somebody grabbed my hand, stopping me.

I think I yelped in surprise as I turned to see that the person who grabbed me…
was Maggie.

"Hold my hand," she commanded.

She closed her eyes and concentrated, the same way she had in Marsh's kitchen. I felt a tingle, as if a slight electric current was moving through us both. Before I could question what was happening, the door to the locker room closed and the door next to it, a door that led outside, blew open.

Marsh stopped. He was almost as shocked as I was. Almost.

"Was that you?" I asked Maggie.

She nodded. Marsh hesitated, looking at the door as if he were debating about whether or not to go outside.

"Get outta here, Ralph!" I shouted. "Go home."

He didn't listen. He didn't hear. He turned away from his chance to escape and followed the cat inside the locker room.

"How did you do that?" I asked Maggie.

"You have a connection with Marsh," she explained. "That helped."

I wanted to know everything about what she had done, but there wasn't time.

"Something bad is gonna happen," I said. "I know it. Can we warn him?"

Maggie shrugged. There was nothing else to do but
follow Marsh and hope that I was wrong. We ran into the locker room but Marsh wasn't there.

"Ralph?" I called. No answer, of course. I looked to Maggie and shrugged.

Maggie wasn't looking at me. She was focused on something behind me, and whatever it was, wasn't good. Her eyes went wide as she backed away.

"Who is that?" she asked, her voice cracking with fear.

I whipped around quickly to see something that probably would have scared me to death…
if I wasn't already dead.

Standing inside the locker room door was a tall character dressed all in black with a wide-brimmed black hat and a skeletal face.

Gravedigger.

"No way," was all I managed to say.

Gravedigger was a graphic novel character that Marsh had created. It was a skeletal horror-story demon that had somehow jumped out of his
imagination and was now standing in front of us. For real. His face was pasty white with skin that barely covered the contours of his skull. His eyes were sunken sockets. On his shoulder was a gleaming silver pick, like you use to dig out rocks. The character was about as frightening as anything I'd ever seen drawn on paper, and here he was standing in the locker room in the flesh, or whatever it was that apparitions were made of.

Gravedigger floated forward, his feet a few inches off the floor. As he moved past us, his head slowly turned in our direction and he broke into a wide, hideous grin.

"What is that?" Maggie asked with a nervous hitch in her voice.

"It's a character Marsh created," I said, barely whispering. "It isn't real. At least I don't think it is."

Gravedigger floated past the rows of lockers and continued on into the large shower room.

"It looked pretty real to me," Maggie countered. "But it must be a spirit because it saw us."

I grabbed Maggie's hand and we ran through the locker room after Gravedigger. We jumped into the shower room to
see that a door was open on the far side. I'd taken hundreds
of showers there and had no idea a door existed, but it was the
least
weird thing I'd seen so I didn't stop to question. I
pulled Maggie through the tiled shower, through the door, and into a large room that was just as surprising and impossible to me as the secret door was.

It was a long-abandoned gym. Desks were piled everywhere, along with outdated gymnastics apparatus and dusty cardboard boxes. I would have been fascinated by the discovery if not for the drama that was playing out there.

Marsh was on the far side of the gym, facing back toward the shower. Toward Gravedigger. The dark specter was directly in front of us, blocking Marsh's path back to the shower.

Marsh looked frozen with fear, his eyes like headlights. "He sees it," I said. "He sees Gravedigger."

"That's impossible. The living can't see spirits."

"It's not a spirit," I said. "It's gotta be something Damon conjured to scare Marsh."

"Why?"

"To prove that he can."

I couldn't imagine what was going through Marsh's head. Coming face-to-face with a creation from your imagination had to be mind-numbing.

"Try to tell him!" I screamed at Maggie.

"Tell him what?" she asked, backing away from me. I had scared her again.

"Tell him it's just an illusion."

"I can't," she whimpered.

It was too late anyway. Marsh wanted no part of Gravedigger. The vision blocked his escape route so he tried to jump over a pile of furniture. He didn't make it and knocked over a tall stack of chairs that tumbled down all around him.

I went for Gravedigger. His back was to me and I drove into him from behind, trying to tackle him. But the instant I hit him, he disappeared. Or maybe he was never there.

"Cooper!" Maggie called, pointing up to the ceiling.

Four thick climbing ropes that hung from the ceiling had suddenly come alive. Like angry snakes they snapped and whipped through the air until one of them caught the top edge of a stack of tall window frames that was leaning against the
overhead running track. The rope tightened, pulling the windows over.

I looked at the floor to see that Marsh was directly under the path of the falling windows. He was on his back, staring up at the looming danger, not moving. Either he was in shock or his mind wouldn't accept what was happening.

"Ralph!" I screamed. "Get out of there!"

I ran to the heavy stack of windows and tried to push them back. Waste of time. I moved right through the solid glass panes. I was a spirit. Worse than that, it meant the windows weren't an illusion.

"Help him!" I screamed to Maggie.

There was nothing she could do. The stack of windows had reached center and was on the way down…
directly over Marsh. I focused on my friend, willing him to snap out of it and move.

He didn't.

The windows were picking up speed.

In desperation I got down on my knees, leaned in close to him, and whispered. "Move."