The Black

by D. J. MacHale

  "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."

  Marsh sprang off the floor. With his arms out in front of him, he launched himself over a stack of chairs and got out from under the falling windows the instant before they hit the floor. The glass exploded into a shower of sharp projectiles. Marsh got pelted, but he was okay. I looked around quickly to see if anything else was about to tumble on him, but the room had lost its energy.

  Gravedigger was gone. Winston was gone. The ropes hung lifelessly.

  Damon had completed his demonstration. He had done exactly what he wanted to do. He proved that he could hurt Marsh, and scare me.

  Maggie ran to Marsh. I thought she was going to see if he was okay, but that was ridiculous. There was nothing she could do. At least that's what I thought. She knelt down in front of him and stared at the floor. The ripple of color appeared around her head, just as I'd seen back in Marsh's kitchen. Maggie's eyes were closed, her concentration intense.

  "Hold my hand," she commanded.

  I knelt next to her and grabbed her hand, hoping to provide any small bit of psychic energy. I heard the faint crackling of glass and looked up, afraid that something else might be flying in to hurt Marsh.

  "It's okay," Maggie assured me.

  I looked to the floor to see thousands of shimmering bits of shattered glass spread across the floor between us and Marsh.

  Marsh must have heard the crackling sound too because he slowly looked up. His eyes were huge and his breathing hard. He glanced around the old gym, looking for signs of danger. Or for Gravedigger.

  "Concentrate," Maggie commanded.

  "On what?"

  "On Marsh."

  I focused on my friend. What was he thinking? Did he have any idea why this craziness was swirling around him?

  I heard more crackling and looked to see that the glass on the floor was moving. Like thousands of tiny ants, the shimmering bits shifted and jumped. As she had in Marsh's kitchen, Maggie saw an opportunity and went for it. I realized what she was doing so I closed my eyes and visualized the triple swirl design of my sister's tattoo.

  It's me, Ralph, I thought, willing my thoughts to reach him. I'm here for you. I'm right here.

  I heard the faint crackling sound of the glass pieces moving over one another but didn't dare open my eyes. I kept the vision of the tattoo in my head while repeating over and over, "It's me, Ralph. It's me."

  "Look," Maggie said.

  I opened my eyes to see that the tiny pieces of glass had formed the triple swirl.

  "Amazing," I said in awe.

  Marsh saw it too and stared with wide eyes. Where I saw a miracle, he saw the impossible. He backed away as if the symbol was about to go nuclear. He scrambled to his feet, nearly tripped over a desk, and sprinted out of the gym.

  "Hopefully that'll send him to Sydney," I said.

  "And then what?"

  "I don't know."

  "Damon scares me," Maggie said. "Maybe you should do what he wants."

  "Can't."

  "Why not?"

  "Because he killed me. That kind of pisses me off."

  "Is that it? You want to get even?"

  "Yeah, I do."

  "Even if that means he'll keep haunting your friend?"

  I was about to answer quickly, but the reality of the situation hit me hard. Of course I didn't want Damon haunting Marsh, but at what price? Giving in and helping the guy who murdered me?

  "Death shouldn't be this complicated," I said with frustration.

  Maggie shrugged. "So, what are you going to do?"

  "I wish I knew," was all I could answer.

  9

  I had to take control.

  Up until then, each time I had moved through the Black or the Light it was with another spirit. They had called the shots and I went along for the ride, whether I wanted to or not. It was time to start getting around on my own.

  "You can go wherever you want," Maggie explained. "And you can enter anybody's vision, so long as they allow it. Close your eyes and think of the spirit, or a place you want to be."

  "Just like that?" I asked.

  She shrugged as if it were the simplest thing possible. I closed my eyes, got a mental image of where I wanted to be, took Maggie's hand, and stepped through the colorful fog that appeared before us.

  When we stepped out, I saw that Gramps was sitting in the wicker rocker on his porch, right where I had left him.

  "Hey! Where you been?" he called.

  Maggie let go of my hand and ran toward her own house, acting as frightened as when I had first met her.

  "Hey, where are you going?"

  She didn't answer. Or stop.

  "He doesn't bite!" I called.

  Maggie sprinted past the fence and directly into her house, slamming the door behind her.

  "Bye," I said, though she couldn't have heard it. "Thanks."

  I climbed up the stairs onto the porch, expecting Gramps to make some wisecrack about her running away, but he stared straight ahead, acting like it didn't happen.

  "That was strange," I said.

  Gramps shrugged.

  "You don't know anything about her?" I asked.

  He gave a quick, uncomfortable look to Maggie's house. "I know you should avoid her," he answered.

  "What? Why?"

  "Everybody's here for different reasons, Coop, but they're all working on the same thing. They're trying to better themselves so they can move on. I suggest you worry more about yourself and not get your head turned by some pretty thing who has a bundle of her own problems."

  "She was trying to help me."

  "Was she? Or was she helping herself?"

  "Who cares? Maybe we're helping each other."

  "Maybe. What did she do for you?"

  I told Gramps about Damon. About his quest for a weapon that was still in the Light and how he needed Marsh and me to find it for him. I told him about Damon's ability to create visions and the black sword that could end a spirit's existence. And finally, I told him how Damon had threatened to kill Marsh if I didn't help him and how I believed he was serious because he had already killed someone. Me.

  Gramps listened to my story w
ithout interrupting or asking for details. When I was done, I expected him to say something clever, or make fun of me or tell me it all sounded like some big joke. Instead, he stared off into the distance, looking troubled.

  "A spirit from the Black caused your death," he said softly, shaking his head. "Now I've heard it all."

  "Help me out here, Gramps. What am I supposed to do?"

  He scratched his head, frowning. "As outlandish as your story sounds, some of it is all too familiar."

  "Familiar? It's normal to be murdered by a centuries-old psychopath?"

  "No," he replied. "But like I said, the spirits here are all looking for a way to move on. We don't all come from the same time or place. Doesn't matter if your time in the Light was spent in ancient China or Dickens's London or puttin' on a Cheesehead and rooting for the Packers, we're all in the same boat."

  "That's why we can understand one another's languages?" I asked.

  "I s'pose. I don't know all the mechanics. But I do know that as much as everybody here is all about trying to punch their ticket out, we're still the same people we were in life. If you were a foul ball in the Light, you're still one here. If you were an honest Joe, you will be here too. That's the whole point. We're all trying to make up for whatever wrongs we did in life, which is why some are here longer than others. And why some spirits aren't above using others to get what they want, like this Damon character."

  "Yeah, tell me about it," I said with a snicker. "But this is more than just some dirtball trying to make up for being a creep in life. He can mess with the living. I'm proof of that. The guy killed me. Does that happen a lot?"

  "No. At least not that I know of. That's why you can't have anything more to do with him."

  "Fine by me, but it's not like I have a choice."

  "You always have a choice," Gramps said, dead seriously. "That's what the Black is all about."

  "Then what about Marsh?"

  "Forget him," Gramps answered coldly.

  That didn't sound like Gramps. I didn't know how to react. "You can't mean that," I finally said.