“Let’s go, D!”
I tuck Nuru inside my jacket, then turn and run into the woods with Nyla. We can hear Keem yelling, “Over here! Follow me, you stupid hunk of rock!” But when we turn to look, the stone beast is no longer following Keem. It’s lumbering after us!
Nyla grabs my sleeve and yanks me into the dense forest, but the creature only thins itself out, dropping excess stones and picking up dead branches to use as limbs. It’s moving faster and faster, weaving through the trees, breaking apart and reassembling itself instead of going around the big trees like us. Heavy paving stones whiz past us as the beast hurls parts of itself in order to knock us down.
I turn to see how quickly it’s gaining on us and trip over a fallen branch. Nyla screams at me to get up, then grabs the collar of my coat and hauls me up off the ground. For the first time, I realize just how strong she is.
“Come on—this way. Let’s see how it handles stairs.”
But just as we start to dash up the stairs that lead out of the ravine, the stone beast makes a giant leap and knocks us both into the gully. When I finally stop rolling downhill and manage to look up, my heart jumps into my throat.
The stone beast has got Nyla pinned to a tree. She is struggling to break free, but its fist of stone is pressing her into the trunk several feet off the ground. With its other hand, it reaches down and grabs something dark and thin off the forest floor.
“No!” I cry, but the beast ignores me and thrusts a spiked iron fence rail at Nyla. Already pinned to the tree, there’s little she can do to avoid the spear. But with no eyes to see with, the creature’s aim is off and the first jab enters the tree—not Nyla.
“STOP! Don’t—you’ll hurt her!” I yell.
The beast ignores me, plucks the fence rail out of the tree, and thrusts it at Nyla once more. This time the spike pierces her shoulder and lodges in the tree. Nyla screams in pain.
I frantically search inside my coat and pull out the bird. She shimmers in my trembling hand. “Look—look what I’ve got! I have it—I have it right here. And I’ll give it to you.” My voice cracks as a sob inches up my throat. “Just don’t hurt her—don’t hurt my friend.”
Nuru burns in my hand like a flame, and I hold my arm high like a torch in the gathering dark. The beast turns toward me, its free hand reaching for the bird.
“NO! You have to let her go first. Put her down and then I’ll give you the bird.”
The beast rocks back on its heels, unsure what to do. Then the vicious hissing returns, and the beast pulls the spike out of Nyla’s shoulder. She drops to the ground, moaning in pain.
Now the beast turns to me, but before I can figure out how to give it the bird, I feel a burning sensation in my hand. Suddenly Nuru is so hot I’m forced to unfurl my fingers. She hovers in the sky like a brilliant star just a few inches above my raised arm. I have to shield my eyes from the bright light, but I can still hear her say, “I’m sorry, D. It is as I feared. Your heart is no longer free. Forgive me.”
Before I can say anything, Nuru rises up into the sky and then flies straight at me. I close my eyes and turn away but still feel the impact as Nuru slams into my body.
“Ooomph!” I feel like someone has just knocked all the air out of me. I sink to my knees, struggling to breathe. Then a warm, tingly sensation spreads all over my body. It’s like being wrapped in a blanket of light. Red sparks dance around me like fireflies in summertime. What has Nuru done?
“Bring the boy to us!”
Nyla hears the hissing voices and drags herself over to me. She grabs my hand and says, “Go, D—run!”
I squeeze her fingers, letting some of this new warmth enter into her as well. “I can’t run anymore,” I say, but it doesn’t sound like my usual voice. It sounds like Nuru.
“Don’t give up,” Nyla whispers through her tears.
“I have to,” I say, though I want nothing more than to stay and help Nyla the way she helped me. I peel Nyla’s fingers away and try not to watch as she clutches her wound and curls into a ball. Nyla’s sobs follow me as I walk away, the spiked fence rail poking into my back as the stone beast prods me forward.
I hear Nyla moaning behind me, and then, with all the strength she can muster, Nyla screams, “KEEM!”
I look back and see a flash of red in the trees. This time it’s not a cardinal—it’s Keem’s red hoodie. I almost choke with relief when I see Keem break out of the woods and sprint toward Nyla. He’s strong—he’ll get her out of here and make sure she’s OK.
The sharp spike digs into my back again, and I stumble on toward my own fate.
12.
I trudge up East Drive hoping that a passing jogger or car will spot me and call the police. But tonight the park seems as if it has been abandoned by the living. Even the animals in the park zoo are silent. The biggest full moon I have ever seen stares down at me like an unblinking eye.
The stone beast forces me to march through the gap between two hills called Battle Pass. That’s where American soldiers tried to stop the enemy’s advance by blocking the road with a massive oak tree. It was a pretty good strategy except that the British secretly circled around them at night and trapped the patriots. We eventually won the war, but we lost that first Battle of Long Island. It’s all on a plaque attached to a big rock—I’ve read it a hundred times. The boulder’s embedded in the steep hill on the west side of the road. That must be the portal Nuru told me about because that’s not where I’m heading now.
As darkness descends, it becomes clear that our destination is the other boulder—a smaller white rock set a few feet back from the road on the east side. It too has a plaque on its front, and as we approach, the hissing voices say, “Bring him in.”
Nothing should surprise me at this point, but I’m still amazed when the engraved bronze plaque swings open like a door. A blast of stale, earthy air blows over me, and I’m immediately reminded of the basement at Mrs. Martin’s house. I barely have a moment to wonder if she’s missing me before the spike prods me forward again. I crawl into the small opening but can’t force myself to descend the stairs that lead down into total darkness.
Suddenly the stone beast sways and starts to crumble. I nearly tumble down the stairs as several heavy paving stones roll past me. To steady myself, I grab hold of the tangled roots that cover the stairway’s earthen walls like hair. Within a few noisy seconds, the stone beast is reduced to a pile of rubble that nearly covers the white boulder. I hear a sharp click and realize the plaque-door has just closed. I sigh and blink back fresh tears. No one will find me now.
Don’t worry, D. I am with you.
I press myself into the dirt wall and try to see through the darkness. “Who’s there?”
Can you not feel me? Look inside your heart, D. You are not alone.
I unzip my coat, pull out my collar, and peer inside my shirt. A soft red glow is coming from within my chest. “Nuru?”
You must listen for my commands, D. The nether beings will play on your fear, but they will not harm you. Have faith in me, and I will keep you safe.
I think of the stone beast thrusting that spike into Nyla and wonder what will stop the nether beings from doing the same to me. But I can’t afford to doubt Nuru now. “OK,” I say. “I trust you.”
You must communicate with me using your mind instead of your voice.
How can I talk without using my voice? I just nod instead and take a deep breath before cautiously inching down the stairs. There are no lights, but somehow the glow within my chest pushes back the darkness enough for me to see my way forward. After a few more steps, I hear eerie laughter coming from below. I freeze, but Nuru urges me on.
We cannot retreat. They are celebrating my capture, but theirs is a false victory. The nether beings can no longer take human form. They can only manipulate surface materials.
I open my mouth to respond, but then remember I have to communicate with my thoughts. I form a question in my mind. Surface materials?
&
nbsp; Things that can be found above ground—inanimate objects.
“Like that trap and chain!” I exclaim, then clamp my hand over my mouth. Sorry, I say without sound. It’s going to be hard learning to speak with my mind.
The stone beast was also propelled by their malice. While I was their captive, they were able to maintain their human form. But now—to you—they will seem monstrous. Remember, D—they are only shadows that fear the light you have within. Be brave!
I press myself against the damp wall and try to breathe deeply to slow my racing heart. I can hear voices coming from below. Several men are arguing angrily—but they’re not men, they’re the dead—and Nuru called them “monsters”! Above ground, their collective voices sounded like a hissing snake, but now that I am underground, the nether beings sound like regular human beings.
“Where is he?”
“Drag him in here! Who’s he to keep us waiting like this?”
“Patience, men, patience! He hasn’t the heart of a soldier.”
The men laugh at the suggestion that I’m a coward. They quiet down after a while, and I realize the last speaker must be their leader.
“Come in, boy, come in!”
I move toward his booming voice even though I know his welcome is insincere. When I reach the bottom of the stairs, I find myself in a large cavern. A gust of air blows past me, and suddenly three torches ignite and fill the space with orange light and wavering black shadows. The cavern is actually a junction, an open space circled by gaping black holes that must lead to other tunnels or stairways. Tangled roots hang from the ceiling, and wriggling worms burrow in and out of the damp earthen walls. Then I look closer and realize the worms aren’t moving through soil—they’re moving through the decomposing flesh of the dead!
I reach up and cover my nose with my hand, expecting to be overwhelmed by the stench of rotting flesh. But Nuru was right—the dead are like shadows, glimmering glimpses of the men they used to be. Soldiers who died in battle more than two hundred years ago shouldn’t be walking and talking—and looking—like this. Those at the back of the cavern appear to be skeletons while the ones closer to me have enough flesh on their bones to appear more like corpses. I can even see the fatal wounds that killed some of them—a bayonet gash across the abdomen, a bullet wound in the temple.
To my surprise, they aren’t wearing uniforms—just drab-colored long coats over plain shirts and pants that end at the knee. Some have stockings and shoes with buckles, others wear heavy leather boots that reach their breeches. All have long hair that’s pulled back in a ponytail. In my mind, I imagined all Revolutionary soldiers looked like George Washington in his powdered wig, but this motley crew looks anything but dignified.
There are about a dozen nether beings altogether, and they all seem determined to get as close to me as they can. I’m not sure if they really can’t touch me—Nuru said they could only move objects around—but I sure don’t want to find out! As they press forward, I creep back toward the stairs until their leader calls his men to attention. A couple of centuries haven’t diminished these soldiers’ sense of discipline, and they fall in line immediately.
The leader proudly surveys his men as they stand at attention, their eerie eyes glued to the wall instead of feasting on me. “At ease, men,” he says next, and they widen their stance and clasp their hands—what’s left of them—behind their backs. I take this opportunity to look around the room. It’s filled with items you’d expect to find in the park’s lost-and-found bin—I see a few baseball bats and tennis rackets in one corner, stacks of newspapers and tattered paperback books in another, and two umbrellas, a shovel, and several lawn chairs are arranged around a three-legged plastic table that’s propped up by a walking cane.
I jump when the leader suddenly speaks to me. “So, my boy. Where is it?”
“W-where is what?” I stammer.
“Don’t fool with me, boy. You know what we’re looking for.”
I wait to hear Nuru’s voice inside my head, but all I hear is the loud thudding of my heart. “Uh—if you mean the bird…it left. I tried to offer it to—to your rock servant thing, but it flew away before I could hand it over.”
“You’re lying,” says the captain.
“I’m not!” I take off my jacket and turn around so they can see that I’m not hiding anything. “See?”
“Take off your clothes, nigger,” snarls one of the soldiers. “Make him strip, Captain!”
“Yes!” the others shout as a chorus, swarming around me like a mob. “Strip, strip, strip!”
This time the captain makes no effort to rein his men in. I realize I have no choice but to obey and so start unbuttoning my shirt. I turn away to hide the glow in my chest, but to my relief, the light has dimmed completely. My cheeks burn, though, when I look up and see a teenage boy among the soldiers. He holds a hand over his stomach and looks away, ashamed.
When I am down to my underwear, the rowdy soldiers quiet down.
“Where is it then?”
“He’s hiding it—off with your pants, boy!” A rusty—and, luckily, dull—bayonet tip swipes at the waistband of my underwear.
“Hey!” I cry, pressing myself back into the crumbly dirt wall.
“That’s enough, Edwards. It’s clear he’s not hiding anything between his legs.” The captain gets a round of laughter at that. He stares at me for a long while and then pronounces, “It must be inside the boy.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” cries Edwards. “Cut him open!”
“No!” yells the captain, extending his arm to hold back the eager mob. “You kill the boy, and you kill the life source within him.”
I nod quickly, finally understanding what Nuru meant when she called me her “host.” The captain tosses my clothes back to me, and I quickly dress myself.
“You’re more precious to us than gold, boy. What you got inside, it gives us life. See?” He steps closer to me and suddenly his bony arm grows flesh! In a matter of seconds, I see the captain as he once was. Blue eyes fill the empty sockets, and sandy hair sprouts from his no longer bare skull. He makes a fist and pounds it against his chest. “Having you here with us makes me feel like a man again!”
“But…you’re dead.”
“Ah, yes,” he says with a fake regret. Then the captain’s frown turns into a fiendish grin. “Dead—but not gone! We have learned to make the most of our…unfortunate condition.”
“But why…” I falter and then decide not to ask.
“Yes?”
“Spit it out, boy!” snaps Edwards. “We ain’t got all the time in the world to stand here jawin’ with you.”
I think about asking just what else they have to do, being dead, but decide against it. “Well, why don’t you want to return with the other souls? Why stay here…like this?”
The captain only sneers at me. “So you know about the ship, hey? Do you know it’ll be packed full of niggers? The fools want to go back to Africa! Now why would civilized men like us want to set sail with a ship full of stinking slaves?”
“I’d rather live in a hole in the ground than set foot on those savage shores,” says an older soldier.
“It ain’t our home, see?” another explains. “And how do we know what they got in store for us? Maybe they want to turn the tables and make us—free white men—into their slaves!”
The captain nods solemnly. “For all we know, your ship may be no better than a British prison hulk—floating death, that’s what they call them. I’ll keep my feet on solid ground, thank you very much!”
I never imagined ghosts could be racist. I want to ask if they’ve ever heard of Crispus Attucks or any of the other black men who died fighting in the Revolutionary War. Even though my mother taught me that it’s pointless to debate a bigot, I try to reason with the nether beings. “Don’t you want to know what peace feels like? The war is over—”
“No it ain’t! Not for us. It’ll never be over for us,” Edwards grumbles bitterly.
“We was ready to surrender but them Hessians—they just kept firing and when they got close enough…” The old soldier drags his finger across his throat.
A younger man picks up the tale. “No mercy did they show our poor boys—no mercy at all. But what can you expect from a pack of foreign mercenaries? They stormed up the hill with their pockets full of blood money.”
Finally the teenage boy speaks up. “True—but we held our ground! We didn’t turn and run like the rest of those yellow-bellied cowards. We held our ground.”
“And we hold it still,” says the captain. “Our blood is in this soil.” He leans in so close that I can count his blond eyelashes. “We’re not going anywhere.” To his men he yells, “Restrain the prisoner!”
Nuru was right—the nether beings cannot touch me, but they still manage to weave a cage out of wiry tree roots pulled from the earth. I have barely enough room to take a couple of steps in either direction. In despair, I fall back against the wall and then leap forward to brush the ants and worms off my head and shoulders. How long will I have to stay in this hellish hole? Will the nether beings let me waste away, or will they keep me alive in order to protect the precious being I carry within?
Finally Nuru speaks to me. D, get close to the ground.
I’m so relieved to hear her voice that I almost forget not to speak out loud. Why?
I need you to send a message, but you must be discreet.
How can I be discreet when all the nether beings want to be close to me? I slide down the wall and pull my knees up to my chest. OK, I’m ready.
Use your finger to tap on the ground as loudly as you can. Three beats, followed by a pause, three times. Understand?
The floor is made of dirt. How can I beat the dirt with one finger and hope to make a sound? Who could ever hear such a message? Then I remember Nuru’s signal to the dead. It was the vibration that mattered, not the sound. I brush the loose dirt away from the ground near my hand and pick a spot where the earth is packed tight and hard. Using the middle finger of my left hand, I tap out Nuru’s message and hope it reaches the right ears.
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