The Black (22 page)

Maggie screamed and cowered behind me. I held my hand up, not that it would have protected us from that sword. "Whoa, whoa, stop! We did what you wanted!"

"How did you find us?" the guy bellowed, holding the sword up high, ready to strike. "What brought you to that vision?"

"I told you, it was a mistake!"

"Liar!" he shouted. The guy was out of his mind. I guess he didn't like being told what to do by the whispering dude who held him back from vaporizing us.

He added, "I know you are in league with Damon!"

There it was. Damon. When we landed on that city street it was no mistake. We were in the exact right spot and now we were in a very
bad
spot. The guy held the sword up high.

His arm trembled. He was fired up, ready to swing and end it all right there. I'd been in situations where some macho guy had lost control and just started throwing punches. I had to get him thinking again. It didn't matter about what, so long as he got his brain back in gear.

"Who are you?" I asked. "Why are you wearing masks? Are you hiding? Why couldn't we leave that vision? Are you guys all part of the same vision? How does that work?"

He hesitated. It was working. He lowered his sword and yanked off his mask to reveal a fairly normal-looking guy, with a mop of curly black hair, thick features, and a sharp nose. His skin was ruddy red, like he'd been in the sun too long. Or maybe his blood pressure was making him red-faced. Do spirits have a blood pressure? He stared right through me with cold eyes. He wanted to end Maggie and me right then and there, but I had to hope the orders from the boss back in the garage kept him from doing it.

"Ree has given you a gift," he said through clenched teeth. "I would not have done the same. I believe you were sent by Damon. If not, then so be it. This will end here."

Ree? That was his boss's name?

He stepped closer to me and put the tip of the sword blade against my chin. I didn't even dare to swallow.

He added, "But if you are a scout for Damon, I have no doubt you will ignore this warning and we will meet again. When that time comes, Ree will not have the same compassion."

He turned his head and looked past me to his gang.

As soon as he turned, Maggie gasped. She saw the same thing I did.

The side of his head was covered by a tangle of black hair but there was no mistake. Pulling off his mask had revealed his left ear. Or where his left ear used to be. There was nothing there but a scarred
circle of flesh. The guy who
wanted to end my existence was Adeipho, Damon's nemesis. Knowing what he did to Damon, I was surprised that he held himself back from destroying us. This was a sadistic killer.

"Chicken Coop!" yelled Bernie as he peeked around a hedge into my yard. "What's going on? You throwing a Halloween party?"

Adeipho lowered his sword and backed away, but he kept his eyes on me.

"Tell Damon I would like nothing more than to meet and finish him. Again."

I said. "If you hate this guy so much, why don't you just find him and have it out?"

"If only I could," he replied. "Perhaps in another life."

"Another life? How many more lives are there?"

He ignored the question and got back on his bike. All four spirits fired up their engines, the roar destroying the peace of the neighborhood. Adeipho pulled his mask back down and hit the throttle. The spirit posse took off from my yard and roared down the street, the rumble of their engines fading quickly as they left my vision.

"Friends of yours, Coop?" Bernie asked, confused.

"Nah, they were selling Girl Scout cookies."

Bernie gave me a puzzled look, then smiled. "I'm glad you're here, Cooper. Things were getting a little dull."

He tipped his hat and continued on down the street, whistling his tune. As I watched him go, I noticed a Watcher across the street.

"Hey!" I shouted. "You! Why do you let them get away with that? What is it you do, anyway?"

His answer was to disappear.

"Those guys are starting to tick me off," I muttered. Maggie was sitting on the grass, hugging herself. Shaking with fear.

"It was him," she said. "Did you see? His ear was gone."

"Yeah, I would have given it back to him but that would have proven we were exactly who he thought we were. And grossed me out."

"I don't understand anything that just happened," she said, her voice breaking. "Whose vision were we in? Why weren't we able to leave?"

"Here's one for you, how was Adeipho able to enter my vision? I definitely didn't want him here, so why wasn't he blocked?"

"And that man in the garage," she added. "He wasn't an ancient warrior."

"I don't think any of them were. Then again, how could you tell when they were all wearing costumes?"

Maggie dropped her head and cried. I was never good with figuring out what to do when girls cried because it
was usually for some random reason that I had no clue how
to deal with. But in this case, she had some pretty good reasons. I knelt down next to her but didn't say anything.

Mostly because I didn't know what to say. After a long minute she looked up at me. Seeing her big sad eyes tore my heart out. This girl had been through a lot, and here I was putting her through even more.

"Thanks for helping me," I said softly. "But you should go home now. This isn't your problem."

"Maybe I want it to be my problem," she said.

"Uh . . . why?"

She sniffed and said, "Something is going to happen. I've felt it for a while. There have been
more Watchers than
usual but spirits haven't been moving on. It's like things
have come to a standstill. Not being able to move out of visions is even more proof. I have to believe it has something
to do with Damon. Or Adeipho. Or both of them. They seem to have power over the Watchers. That could be part of the problem we're feeling."

"Yeah, and who do you root for? One's a killer and the other one is, well, a killer. And I'm trying to help one of them. Does that make me a bad guy?"

"I don't know, but it puts you in the middle of it."

"Yeah, tell me about it."

"Cooper, I want to be there with you."

"What? Why?"

Tears filled her eyes again. "Because I don't want to be alone anymore."

The girl was an emotional wreck. I wanted to hug her and tell her it was all going to be okay but I had no idea if that was true.

"I don't know if what I'm doing is right," I said. "I mean, Damon said he'd give me my life back. That's not exactly . . . usual. I don't want you to suffer for that."

"But I don't want my life back."

"You don't want to go to the Blood, either."

"I want to move on. It doesn't matter which way. My vision is a very lonely place."

I hadn't thought about it before, but unlike the other visions in the Black I'd seen, Maggie's was the only one that didn't have a lot of other people in it. No wonder she kept bouncing around between different people's visions. I had no idea what had happened with her parents and I didn't care. All I saw was a girl who was trying to help
me out in spite of how badly she was hurting. We'd only known each other for a short time but I liked Maggie and didn't want to see her so tortured.

"I have an idea," I said. I stood up and pulled her to her feet. "Let's go on an adventure."

"Another one?"

"I mean a good one. Our visions are supposed to be all about our lives the way we remember them, right? Maybe it's time to remember some good things."

"Shouldn't we be worrying about Damon and Adeipho?"

I took her hand and said, "If time means nothing, let's worry about it another time."

You'd think I'd want to kick back and rest after all that had happened. Just the opposite. I was as full of energy as if I had just woken up after a good night's sleep. It was one of the very cool perks of being a spirit and I wanted to take advantage of it.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"To a better place," was my answer.

I closed my eyes and imagined a spot that had some great memories for me. The whirl of color appeared before us. We walked through it and came out the other side in the exact place I had imagined.

"Awesome," I said with a gasp, a little surprised that it had actually worked.

We found ourselves in my vision of the
Playland
amusement park near Stony Brook. Maggie's eyes lit up when she saw that we were on a busy midway surrounded by rides, games, and music.

"Where are we?" she asked, sounding a little overwhelmed.

"It's called
Playland, so . . . let's play."

For the first time since I'd met her, Maggie gave me a beautiful, happy smile. In that one moment, her worries were forgotten . . . which is exactly why we were there.

"What should we do?" she asked, all giddy.

"Monster Mouse," I answered without a second thought. We took off running and went on all of my favorite rides. The Monster Mouse roller coaster, the Screaming Eagle
coaster, Round-Up, Tilt-A-Whirl, Scrambler . . . basically, every ride in the park. There were no lines, which was good and creepy at the same time but it made sense because the
only people enjoying the park were spirits who had been there before. Or were visiting the vision of spirits they knew. I tried not to think about how everybody there was dead. I wanted to focus on enjoying the beautiful day. The sky was blue and sunny. The air was warm. We didn't have to pay for any of the rides. Or the games. Or the cotton candy. It was perfect.

And the best was still to come.

After jumping off the bumper cars, I said, "I'll bet you've never seen a park like this before."

Maggie laughed. "I'll take that bet."

"I'm talking about in the Light," I said.

"So am I."

Maggie gave me a mischievous smile and held out her hand. I didn't know what to expect but if she trusted me, I had to trust her. I took it and we both stepped through another colorful fog . . .

To find ourselves back in
Playland. The same
Playland, in another time. Maggie's time.
Playland
was built in the early 1900s and from the look of the place, we weren't far removed from opening day. If
Maggie was happy before, she had skipped right into ecstatic now.

"This is how I remember it!" she exclaimed.

She pulled me forward to our first stop, which was a powerful carousel called the Derby Chase. It was like a merry-go-round on steroids. It spun so fast I had to hold on tight and lean hard for fear of being flung off.

"This is
freakin' awesome!" I yelled to her. "I had no idea they had thrill rides in the old days!"

"Fun wasn't invented last week," she replied.

Seeing the park as it was so long ago was almost as fun as riding the rides. I knew that a lot of the attractions from my time were old, but I didn't know they'd been around
since the park opened. There was the Whip and Ye Old Mill and the best ride in the park . . . The Dragon Coaster. It was a classic wooden roller coaster that was every bit as exciting as the newer rides. That was only half the fun. We also went on plenty of rides that were long gone by the time my era came around. There was a fun house with a three-story wooden slide, and a huge polished disk built into the floor that you had to try and stay on as long as you could as it spun . . . before you were flung off into bumpers. There was also a spooky walk-through castle called the Magic Carpet where things jumped out at you when you stepped on a floor trigger. It ended with a bumpy ride down a steep conveyor belt slide. It was awesome. The park layout was the exact same as the present, with a wide garden of flowers and grass running through the midway. Most of the games were the same too. There isn't much you can do to improve on a booth where you
have to knock down bottles with a baseball or toss rubber hoops onto bottle necks.

The biggest difference was the people. Men walked around in straw hats and wore ties and shiny shoes as if a day at the amusement park was something you had to dress up for. The women all wore dresses with long sleeves. There wasn't a single pair of sneakers or jeans in the park. The music that played over the speaker system in my time was classic rock. I don't know what you'd call the music they played in Maggie's time, but it sounded like something you'd hear in the circus. It didn't come through speakers, either. A band with guys in striped jackets performed live in the center of the midway.

"Put this on," Maggie said.

It was a yellow straw hat with a red and blue striped band.

"No way. I'll look like a dork!" I protested.

Maggie chuckled. "I don't know what a dork is, but
everybody here must be one because all the men are wearing them."

I saw what she meant. I was the only guy not wearing a hat. She didn't wait for me to change my mind and popped it onto my head. She then grabbed a bow tie off of a teddy bear that was sitting in a booth, waiting to be won. It didn't exactly go with my dark shirt, but that didn't stop her. She giggled as she tied it around my neck.