Black Moon Rising

by D. J. MacHale

  I gave her a big, polite smile and said, “Excuse me. I came from Mr. Martin’s social studies class. He wants to know why Ainsley Murcer isn’t there.”

  The cranky old lady frowned and squinted at me as if trying to figure out who the heck I was. The tiny curls of her short gray hairdo were almost as tight and gray as her expression.

  “He was worried about her,” I added, trying to get her attention off me and onto Ainsley.

  “She went to the nurse,” the woman said. “Wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Okay, thanks,” I said, backing toward the door.

  “Wait, what’s your name—?”

  “Thank you!” I called, and bolted before she could nail me.

  The nurse. Where was the nurse’s office? I scanned the corridor and saw a series of doors to my right. I was flying by the seat of my pants. I wasn’t even sure what I’d say to Ainsley if I found her.

  Sure enough, the nurse’s office was only a few doors down from the main office. Before I could chicken out, I walked right in to see a much younger woman than the lady in green sitting behind a desk. She was on the telephone and held up one finger to ask me to wait a second.

  I took a peek further into the office and saw that several yards beyond the desk, somebody was sitting in a cubicle with the curtain drawn. Was it Ainsley?

  The nurse hung up the phone and gave me a sweet smile.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  “Mr. Martin sent me. He wanted to know how Ainsley was doing.”

  I kept stealing glances toward the drawn curtain, hoping to see if it was her or not.

  “She’s fine,” the nurse said. “She called her mother to come pick her up.”

  “Who is that?” came a voice from behind the curtain.

  It was Ainsley.

  “Mr. Martin sent someone to see how you’re doing,” the nurse called to her.

  Ainsley pulled the curtain back a few inches and peeked out at me.

  “I want to talk to him,” she said.

  My heart leapt. I hadn’t expected this to be so easy.

  The nurse gave me an uncertain look. I wasn’t sure if it was because she didn’t know who I was, or because she wasn’t supposed to let boys visit girls in her domain.

  “Are you feeling better?” the nurse asked.

  “Not really. But I want the company.”

  The nurse shrugged and motioned for me to go in.

  “Keep the curtain open,” she warned, but with a wink and a smile.

  “No problem,” I said.

  What did she think we were going to do? Make out?

  I rounded the desk and walked the ten yards down the corridor to Ainsley’s cubicle. I gently pushed the curtain aside and looked in to see her sitting on a cot, leaning against the wall and gazing absentmindedly out the window.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  I had known Ainsley Murcer only a short time, but it was long enough to know she was not the type to be daydreaming and looking out the window during all-important school hours.

  I glanced back to the nurse to find her watching me. When our eyes met, she turned away quickly as if she didn’t want me to think she was being nosy, even though she was totally being nosy.

  “You sick?” I asked Ainsley as I stepped into the cubicle.

  Ainsley chuckled as if I had asked a stupid question.

  “Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know. I just want to go home.”

  I sat down in a folding chair across from her. This was going to be tricky. I wanted her to tell me what was going on, but I didn’t want to push so hard that she would think I suspected her of anything. My experience with the Boggin had taught me to be careful about who to trust.

  “You saw it, didn’t you?” she asked.

  “Saw what?” I asked innocently, though I knew exactly what she was talking about.

  She didn’t answer the question. She knew that I knew.

  “I’ve been thinking,” she said dreamily. “About all the things that have been happening. The falling window, the fire in the cafeteria, the bleachers collapsing—everything.”

  “What about ’em?”

  “I’ve been blaming Nate because I saw him in all those places. But the only reason I saw him was because I was there too. Maybe none of it was Nate’s fault.”

  “Are you saying it was you?” I asked tentatively.

  Ainsley finally looked at me. She had tears in her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice cracking. “I don’t think so. But it can’t all be coincidence.”

  “But it’s not like you knocked out the window or spilled the acid. How could you have done any of that?”

  Ainsley wiped away her tears.

  “This is going to sound crazy,” she said.

  “Go for it. I’m good with crazy.”

  “Every time something happened, I was like, I don’t know, emotional. I was upset. Or angry. Or excited. Like today. I saw Nate headed for Kayla and my heart started pounding. I wanted to jump out of that chair and tackle him. Instead, I just…”

  She couldn’t finish the thought.

  “Instead you used your emotions to fling a garbage can at him?” I asked.

  “Yes! I mean, I don’t know. I told you it was crazy.”

  She looked back out the window and her expression changed instantly. She sat bolt upright, her eyes fixed on something outside.

  I looked out the window and saw it.

  A big white dog—or was it a wolf?—stood on the grass about ten yards away.

  The sight was so out of place it made me catch my breath. The animal was snowy white, with a narrow, diamond-shaped black blaze between its eyes. There wasn’t an owner in sight, and since classes were going on, no kids were around to see it.

  The animal stood at attention, its gaze focused directly on Ainsley.

  I looked back and forth between the two as if witnessing a staring contest.

  Ainsley couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  “Tell me that’s your dog,” I said.

  She didn’t answer, or break her stare.

  “It doesn’t have a collar,” I said. “It could be a wild—”

  Ainsley jumped to her feet and hurried out of the cubicle.

  “Uh…whoa. W-w-wait!” I stammered, and followed her.

  She walked quickly past the nurse, headed for the door.

  “Your mother’s not here yet,” the nurse called.

  Ainsley ignored her and sped out the door.

  “Guess she’s feeling better,” I said to the nurse with a helpless shrug, and followed Ainsley out.

  “I’ll write a pass!” the nurse called.

  Too late. We were gone.

  Ainsley hurried down the long corridor, away from the school’s main entrance.

  “Where are you going?” I called.

  Ainsley’s answer was to pick up the pace. There was no way I was going to let her out of my sight, so I kept up. She went straight for a fire exit halfway down the corridor, and blasted outside.

  I followed her to see…

  …the dog standing there, waiting, as if it knew Ainsley would be coming out that way.

  The beast was big. Scary big. It had to be over a hundred twenty pounds. Its thick white coat glowed in the early-morning sunlight, making the black blaze between its eyes look even more dark and menacing.

  “Is it a dog or a wolf?” I asked.

  The dog—that’s what I’ll call it, because I really hoped it wasn’t a wolf—turned and trotted off.

  “Stay here, Marcus,” Ainsley said.

  “Why?” I asked. “Where are you going?”

  Her answer was to take off after the dog.

  I let her go for a few seconds, then followed.

  The animal trotted along steadily, keeping about ten yards ahead. It never looked back to see if we were following, but it didn’t try to lose us either. It moved with confidence, as if it knew exactly where i
t was going. It always cracks me up when animals do that, like they have an important meeting to get to or something.

  But this time I wasn’t laughing. Whatever mission the big dog was on, it couldn’t be good.

  It rounded the corner of the brick building and kept going. Coppell Middle School was built on the edge of deep, thick woods. We followed the dog across a huge parking lot, snaking between parked cars until we hit a wide stretch of grass that bordered the asphalt and separated the school property from the woods.

  The white dog kept moving. It trotted across the grass, shot between two trees, and was gone.

  “You sure you want to follow it in there?” I asked Ainsley.

  I might as well not have been there. She totally ignored me and entered the woods, her attention laser-locked on the dog.

  This had gotten seriously weird. I looked back over the sea of cars to the school building. The school had doors. Lots of them. The woods didn’t. If I had to get out of there in a hurry, there would be no escaping back into the Library. Whatever waited in there, I’d have to deal with it. I told Theo I’d be careful. I lied. Something strange was going on, and strange had become my business. So I blew past the first row of trees and entered the dark pine forest.

  It was like stepping into dusk as the temperature instantly dropped twenty degrees. The ground was covered by a vast carpet of dry pine needles that had fallen from the dozens of trees that stood everywhere. Going by their size, the trees had to be hundreds of years old. Way older than the school. They stretched to the sky, where their branches grew together to create a thick canopy that blocked out most of the sunlight. And warmth.

  The sudden drop in temperature wasn’t the only thing that sent chills up my spine.

  The white dog-wolf padded silently ahead, weaving between the trees, headed deeper into the woods. Its white fur stood out against the dark foliage, making it look like a fleeting ghost. Stranger still, the normally buttoned-up and in-control Ainsley Murcer had fallen under its spell.

  I, on the other hand, was under no such spell and was getting nervous. There were still no answers as to why Ainsley may have caused all those accidents. If she was telling the truth, she had no idea what was happening and had no control over whatever power might have caused the damage. That only made me more nervous. We were in the middle of the woods. I didn’t want to be caught out there alone if those powers decided to show up again and things started flying around.

  The woods became dense as we left the pines and entered a stretch filled with thick bushes and white birch trees. The dog skirted the trees easily, but they slowed Ainsley and me down as we picked our way through. I kept hoping she’d look at me and snap out of it, but her attention was locked on the dog.

  As we broke out from a thick stand of bushes, I saw movement in the air. It was a bird. I caught only a quick glimpse as it flew from one tree into the branches of another, but I saw enough to know that it was pure white. And big. At first I thought it was a seagull, but I was pretty sure we weren’t anywhere near the ocean. I stared at the spot in the tree where it had disappeared, but there was nothing more to see, so I kept moving…as another bird swooped by from behind, nearly grazing my head before sailing up toward the overhead canopy of leaves.

  I got a better look at this one. It was as big as the other bird, and also pure white. It looked like a crow. Or a raven. I’m not sure which is which. But I’d never heard of a white raven. It sure sounded like one, though. It let out a quick caw before disappearing into the same tree the first one had flown into. I couldn’t say why the birds gave me the creeps, but something about them wasn’t right. I glanced up and around at the other trees that surrounded us, waiting for another bird to buzz by.

  Ainsley, on the other hand, had zero interest in the birds. She never stopped moving and was now twenty yards ahead of me. I had to run to catch up, jumping over fallen trees and moss-covered rocks.

  The white dog was still ahead of her. Without hesitation, it scampered into a dense line of deep green leafy bushes. Up until that point it had dodged around every obstruction it came upon. This time it barreled straight into the wall of green that stretched on either side of us like a tall barricade that surrounded a fort.

  Ainsley followed right after the dog, headed straight for the thick bushes.

  “Whoa, wait!” I shouted.

  She didn’t break stride, and pushed into the bushes as if they weren’t even there. Rather than the dense growth slowing her down, the branches seemed to part, allowing her to pass through before closing around her. Was there some kind of pathway that I couldn’t see? The hairs went up on the back of my neck. It almost seemed as if Ainsley had followed the animal through some sort of entrance to…what?

  I had to know.

  I sprinted to catch up, then stopped directly in front of the wall of bushes. I took a deep breath and heard a double caw coming from behind me. Were the birds watching? And commenting?

  Get a grip, Marcus.

  I pushed my way into the bushes, struggling to keep moving forward. It was nowhere near as simple as Ainsley had made it look. I had to fight my way through dense brambles that scratched my face and arms, but I kept moving. I must have traveled through five yards of thicket before finally reaching the far side. I stepped out of the bushes…

  …and into a clearing. It was a large space ringed by a circle of huge bushes like the ones I had just come through. The foliage formed a near-perfect circle that reached at least ten feet high, all the way around. The ground inside the circle was covered in rich, dark green grass. Near the center was a pile of massive boulders that stood at least twenty feet high. The rocks were covered in moss, leaves, and vines. It wasn’t a natural scene. The rocks looked as though they had been placed there by monster construction equipment. Based on the heavy vegetation that covered the rocks, whatever had made that pile had done so a long time ago.

  None of the details about the circle meant anything compared with what I saw next to the pile of rocks. Ainsley stood with her back to me, facing the mound of boulders.

  Standing in front of her was a woman—a beautiful woman with long black hair that fell halfway down her back and was so straight it looked as though she had ironed it. She wore a long dress that looked right out of the seventeenth century. At one time it was probably white, but not anymore. The heavy material was dingy and yellowed from dirt and age. The dress had long sleeves with ragged cuffs, and it was covered by an apron that wasn’t doing much to keep things clean. The woman stood with her hands on her hips and her feet set boldly apart as she stared at Ainsley with eyes so golden they sparkled.

  She stretched her right hand out to Ainsley and said, “Welcome, child. I am overjoyed to finally have you here.”

  Ainsley stood stock-still, facing the mysterious woman.

  I stayed several yards behind Ainsley. I didn’t want to stop anything from happening. Whatever it was that was about to go down, I had to believe it would help me understand what this disruption in the story was all about.

  “We have waited a very long time for this moment,” the woman said with a warm smile.

  She seemed pleasant enough, and harmless. Then again, she was dressed in some old-fashioned costume in the middle of the woods. That was freaky at the very least.

  “I know you,” Ainsley said, as if struggling to dig up a memory. “But I don’t.”

  “You could call me your mother, but you have several mothers. And fathers. We’ve all been looking forward to this moment.”

  As the woman spoke, she walked in front of the towering pile of rocks, gently touching the moss-covered boulders. She moved smoothly, as if floating. But she wasn’t floating. The dirty hem of her dress and grungy bare feet were proof of that. But it sure added to the general weirdness of what was happening.

  “You’re not my mother,” Ainsley said, though she didn’t sound so sure about that.

  “I’m not your biological mother, but there is a little bit of all of us in you,” th
e woman replied. “You’re starting to feel that, aren’t you? Things are changing. Your body is changing. Those changes are allowing our wonderful gifts to flourish within you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ainsley said.

  That made two of us.

  “You will,” the woman replied. “You’re a bold young lady. You take control. We sensed that in you such a very long time ago. Even as a baby. It is why you were chosen. And now, once the ascent is complete, you will have tools and strength the likes of which you could never imagine.”

  The woman raised one hand, extended her arm, and slowly waved it back and forth. Above her, the branches of the trees swayed in unison with her movements. When she stopped, the swaying stopped.

  Yeah. Whoa.

  “It will be quite remarkable,” the woman said.

  “This is scaring me,” Ainsley said, her voice cracking.

  “There is nothing for you to fear,” the woman replied soothingly. “Your control will become absolute as you usher in the future. It is the beginning of a wondrous time.”

  She held her hand out, and a scarlet cardinal flew from the trees and landed in her palm. It was like something out of a Disney princess movie. A really weird Disney princess movie.

  “Raise your hand,” the woman said.

  Ainsley hesitated, then cautiously lifted one arm. The cardinal flew to her and landed on her hand, letting out a series of sharp chirps that sounded as though it was greeting Ainsley. Ainsley looked at the bird in wonder, then suddenly stiffened.

  “No,” she said, and shook the bird off her hand.

  The cardinal flew away and landed on top of a boulder behind the woman.

  “If you won’t tell me who you are,” Ainsley said, “tell me who I am.”

  The woman smiled warmly. “You are who you have always been. Until now.”