The Black (37 page)

"I'm sorry, Coop. Life doesn't always go the way you think it should."

"And that's exactly what Damon wanted me to learn," I said.

"Damon? Is that old spirit still bothering you?"

"He said I was naive. Looks like he was right."

"So, what does that mean?" Gramps asked.

"It means I'm going to take care of number one, just like my gramps taught me."

I turned and walked away. Gramps stood and followed. "Cooper! What are you going to do?"

"What I think is right, and the hell with everybody else!"

"Coop!" he shouted. "Don't leave. Let's talk and—"

I didn't hear the end of his sentence. I had already left his vision and arrived in the Light. I wanted to see if Marsh was okay. I hoped to find him sleeping at the lake house, safe and sound.

He wasn't.

I found myself in the backseat of a sheriff's cruiser, flying along a dark country road. It was night. We were moving fast. Behind the wheel was a guy I recognized. Sheriff Vrtiak. Sitting next to me in the backseat was Marsh. Separating the front seat from the back was a cage.

Got it. Sort of. What the hell was going on? Was Marsh under arrest?

"Ralph, can you hear me?" I asked.

Marsh didn't react. At least he didn't react to me. He was reacting plenty to the situation. He looked scared.

Sheriff Vrtiak spun the wheel hard and made a fishtailing turn off the road onto another. He gunned the engine and charged into the night.

"Where are you going?" Marsh asked Vrtiak nervously.

"He warned you, didn't he?" the sheriff said. "But you just kept looking. Kept poking around."

This wasn't right. The guy in front looked like Vrtiak but sure didn't sound like him.

"Sheriff, stop the car," Marsh said.

Vrtiak yanked off his sunglasses and threw them onto the seat. The guy was crying, and I soon found out why. Appearing in the passenger seat next to him was a spectral hound. It was huge, with its head nearly touching the ceiling. Rotted fur and flesh hung from a skeletal head. Its tongue hung from its mouth covered with spots of putrid flesh. Dark juices dripped from the blackened tongue as it leaned toward Vrtiak . . . and spoke.

"Faster," it growled.

"I don't want to do this," Vrtiak whimpered as he cowered from the horror.

"Do what?" Marsh screamed. "Sheriff, slow down!" Marsh couldn't see the dog. He had no idea that Vrtiak was being haunted and manipulated.

The sheriff sped up and took a curve way too fast. The car skidded and nearly flew off the road. But Vrtiak somehow kept control and got back onto the pavement.

There could be only one explanation.

"Damon!" I shouted. "Stop the car!"

The grotesque hound whipped a look at me, stared me down with hollow eyes . . . and smiled.

"Do what he says, all right?" the sheriff said to Marsh, pleading. "If you don't, he'll just keep coming. And the more people who know, the more will be in danger."

"Sheriff!" I screamed. "It's okay. You can stop. This isn't real. It's an illusion."

Vrtiak couldn't hear me either. I had no power over the situation. I could only go along for the insane ride.

I yelled at the dog, "You think this is going to get me to help you? You hurt my friend and I swear you'll wish you never met me."

In response the gruesome dog lifted its muzzle and let out a hellish howl.

Vrtiak whimpered. All I'd done was scare the guy behind the wheel even more, and he had Marsh's life in his hands. The car veered into the opposite lane as headlights appeared in front of us. Vrtiak jerked the car back into our lane.

"Who told you that, Sheriff?" Marsh asked. "Who is he?"

"Give him what he wants," the sheriff whined. "Let him take the road wherever he wants to."

The car was getting closer. I wanted to jump through the bars and grab the wheel but I knew it would be useless. "What road?" Marsh asked.

"You know," Vrtiak said.

The dog lunged at Vrtiak, snapping his jaws.
Vrtiak's
response was to steer into the opposite lane—directly in front of the oncoming car. The car blew its horn and Vrtiak snapped us back into the right lane.

"What road?" Marsh demanded.

I knew.

At the same time Vrtiak reached up to the rearview mirror and turned it so Marsh could see his reflection.

Vrtiak had changed. Instead of the face of the frightened sheriff, he had transformed into the ghostly character from Marsh's graphic novel: Gravedigger. Marsh pressed himself back into the seat. This was an illusion he could see. Damon knew exactly how to get into my friend's head.

"The Morpheus Road," Gravedigger said in a low, guttural growl.

Vrtiak, or whatever he was, jerked the wheel and sent us flying directly into the path of the oncoming car. A horn blared but the car kept coming. Vrtiak used both hands to spin the wheel to the right and made a sharp turn away from the oncoming car. The headlights flashed past, missing us by a hair. But we weren't out of danger. Vrtiak had turned so violently that we careened off the road and charged into the woods.

I leaned into Marsh and for whatever good it would do I screamed, "Get down!"

I can't say for sure that he heard me, but he covered his head just as Vrtiak hit the brakes and sent him crashing into the grill between the front and back seats.

Vrtiak screamed as the car flew out of control, bumping over rocks and slashing through bushes. He maintained control long enough to avoid a few trees, but we weren't slowing down. It was then that the hound reappeared in the front seat, but not to intimidate Vrtiak. The dog was looking straight at me.

"You see?" the dog growled. "Bad things happen."

The dog howled again, or was it a laugh? A second later it vanished. I felt a rude bump as if the
front left tire had hit something that launched us into the air. The car flipped up onto its side, skidded for a few more yards, and then slammed into something with a jolt before coming to a stop . . . on its side.

I had been thrown out of the car and landed a few yards away, disoriented but generally fine. It's good to be a ghost. I ran back to the wreck to check on Marsh. I was already planning on how I would go to the Thistledown Fire Department and somehow convince somebody to send an ambulance. But first I had to see if Marsh was okay.

I moved through the door of the car and saw that he was dazed but moving.

"Stay put, Ralph!" I shouted. "You might have hurt something."

Yeah. Waste of breath. He seemed okay, though, because he sat up and looked around to get his bearings. The sheriff wasn't so lucky. He was jammed behind the wheel with his eyes open but he wasn't focused and he mumbled something that I could barely hear.

"Are . . . are you okay?" Marsh asked him.

Vrtiak moved his head slightly toward Marsh's voice. He might have been physically okay, but his brain had snapped. "Sheriff?" Marsh repeated.

"Won't stop," Vrtiak mumbled. "Won't. So many people. So many lives."

"I'll get help," Marsh said.

All I could do was watch as Marsh struggled to stand on the door that was now the floor. He pushed up on the opposite door that was now the ceiling, but didn't have enough leverage to open it. He had to wedge his feet into the cage, lift himself up, and use both hands to twist the handle and push the door up and open. He was out.

"Can you move?" he called down to Vrtiak.

The sheriff answered by drooling.

Marshall dug his cell phone from his pants pocket to make a call, but it was no use. The phone was dead.

"I'll go into town and send help," Marsh told the sheriff. "Don't move, all right?"

Marsh threw his legs over the side of the car and jumped down to the ground. He was a little wobbly, but okay. After a quick look around to survey the accident scene, he took off running back through the woods toward the road. I was about to follow him when I heard a growl come from behind me.

Turning quickly, I saw the ghoulish dog on all fours, hunched down, ready to spring.

"You really think that's going to scare me?" I said.

The shape of the dog transformed and grew until it locked into another image.

Damon's.

"You can end this," he said casually. "Destroy the third crucible."

"And then what?" I asked.

"Then I leave your friend alone."

"Don't you need him to find the poleax?"

Damon gave me a sly smile. "Perhaps not. Once I control
the Rift, there are others who can locate my weapon."

"You mean your soldiers that are trapped in the Black,"
I said. "You'd send them through the Rift into the Light."

"Along with you, my friend. Remember that."

"Me? Why me?"

"That was our agreement," he said innocently. "You still want your life back, do you not?"

Of course I did, but I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of saying so.

"So, what happens once you get the poleax?" I asked.

"Break the crucible," Damon said, ignoring the question. "Until then I will continue to haunt your friend. I must admit, I am enjoying this game."

"Leave him alone!"

"Excuse me," he said. "I have a phone call to make. Give my regards to your grandfather."

And he disappeared.

"Damon!" I shouted, but he was gone.

I was left alone in the desolate field with a wrecked car and an insane sheriff. Damon was going after Marsh and there was nothing I could do to stop him, except break the crucible.

"What happened?" came a friendly voice.
Maggie rounded the wreck to join me.

"Marsh is lucky to be alive," I answered. "This isn't fair. He didn't do anything wrong."

Maggie gave me a sad smile and said, "Yes, well, who said life was fair?"

If anybody had the right to feel that way, it was Maggie. She may have been coming from another place, but it was the same attitude my grandfather had. Life wasn't fair. Bad things happened and maybe there wasn't always a perfect
solution. All you could do was what seemed right . . . and I knew what that was.

"I'm worried about you, Cooper," Maggie said.

"Don't be," I said. "Go back to your vision."

"What are you going to do?"

"The only thing I
can
do." The swirling colors appeared behind me, ready to take me away from the
Light and back to the Black. "I'm going to take control."

From the moment I got slammed by that speedboat on Thistledown Lake until Marsh got flipped in the sheriff's car, I'd pretty much been a bystander. Everybody had their own plans and secrets and goals and all I could do was play catch-up and try to understand it all. That had to change. I had to stop worrying about what everybody else might do and start getting people to wonder what
I
might do. That's what I always did in life. Somehow I'd lost sight of that in the Black. I always found my way out of Trouble Town. It might have taken a little longer to figure things out this time, but I finally knew what I had to do.

"What does that mean?" Maggie asked.

"It means I'm going after the third crucible."

24

Ree and her Guardians wanted to protect the crucible. Damon wanted it smashed. If I could snatch it, I would have power over both sides and could start calling the shots myself. I liked that idea. All I had to do was figure out how to get my hands on it.

Yeah. That.

I left the Light and went directly to
Ree's
vision. My hope was that if I got into trouble with the Guardians, my friendship with Ree would prevent me from getting vaporized on the spot. A couple of seconds might mean the difference between success and oblivion. The one person I needed to avoid was Ree herself. She always knew when I was up to no good.

I landed in her vision in the exact same spot where I left it the time before. I was a few blocks away from Grand Central Terminal, on the edge of the vision that separated the Rift
from the rest of the Black. As I stepped out of the wall of color, I saw a Watcher standing on the far street corner.

"Hey!" I called out. "If things start hitting the fan, remember, I'm one of the good guys."

His answer was to disappear. Tool.

I moved quickly across the wide avenues, headed toward the train station. It was eerie to walk through a deserted New York City. It was like being in a sci-fi movie about some deadly outbreak that wiped out humanity. Only this was no movie.

After crossing Lexington Avenue I had to make a decision. How would I enter the train station? When I arrived with Ree, we came up from the subway and there were guards everywhere. I needed to figure out a way to get inside without running across any of those killer clowns. I was prepared to fight, so long as they didn't have black swords. The best thing to do was avoid them for as long as possible. My plan was to go inside and quickly drop down to the lower level. I'd been there before on different trips from Stony Brook. There was a vast space directly below the main concourse that was loaded with restaurants and
shops. My thinking was that I could conceal myself down there as I made my way to the stairs that led up to the main floor, and the information booth. It was as good a plan as any so I slipped through the outside door and immediately ran down the stairs.