The Light

by D. J. MacHale

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  weren't finished. Still, this one wasn't coming close to ringing any bells.

  Something felt off. There were plenty of details in the sketch, just not in the face. That was the exact opposite of the way I usually worked. I liked to draw the features first, then frame them with the contours of his face. Why had I done this one backward? I'm not sure why, but I sat down to finish the job.

  I was reaching for one of the charcoal pencils when I was suddenly tickled by another puff of air. The pencil rolled a few inches away from my fingers. My hand hung there.

  A second later, a dark shadow leaped at me. I jumped sideways in surprise and looked to see . . .

  . . . Winston, my cat, standing on the worktable across from me. Though it took a second for me to register that it was her, there was no mistake. Winston was a uniquely colored tortoiseshell tabby. That alone wasn't proof, but the cat had on Winston's purple collar and I.D. tag. I saw her name engraved in white letters. It was definitely Winston. What the heck was she doing there? How did she get into the school?

  "Winny?" I called tentatively. "C'mere."

  Cats don't normally do what you tell them, but Winston was more like a dog. When you asked her to come, her tail would go up with a happy flip and she'd prance over to get a scratch on the head. I expected her to run to me and jump onto my lap. She didn't. With a short meow Winston jumped off the table and ran for the door.

  "Hey!" I shouted. "Winny!" I got up and chased after her. The surprise of seeing her made me forget about the moving charcoal pencil. All I could think to do was catch her and get her home. Winston trotted out of the art room and along the corridor just fast enough to stay ahead of me. She must have gotten out of the yard and somehow

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  wandered over to the school. Our house was only a few hundred yards away. It wasn't impossible . . . unless you figured in the whole coincidence of it. Then again, I didn't know what she normally did during the day. For all I knew, she hung around at school all the time and was just as surprised to see me as I was to see her.

  "Winston!" I shouted. "C'mere! Stop! Sit!" No amount of yelling got through. Every few feet she'd glance back to see if I was still following . . . like it was a game. Whenever she hit an intersection of corridors, she'd sit down with her tail wrapped around her paws. I'd approach her slowly while softly whispering, "Stay there . . . that's good . . . don't move . . . good kitty . . ." But as I was about to grab her, she'd bounce back to her feet and scamper off. Brat. It was making me nuts.

  The school was one of those old-fashioned brick structures that probably started out as one building, but as it grew and new wings were added, it became a sprawling mass of interconnected modules. I had gotten lost in the labyrinth more than once. Apparently that wasn't a problem for Winston. She seemed to know exactly where she was going. How odd was that? My cat knew her way around my school better than I did.

  She led me deep into the wing that housed the athletic department. The place was an odd mix of the old and the new. The gym was new, but the locker rooms were crusty old. The weight room was modern, but the pool looked like something my grandfather used to swim in.

  The door to the boys' locker room was slightly open and Winston scampered for it.

  "No!" I shouted. I was afraid she'd find a locker to hide in and I'd never get her. Of course, she didn't listen and shot inside.

  There was an outside exit door across the corridor from

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  the locker room door. I was about ten yards away when I felt a rush of air. Instantly the locker room door closed and the door to the outside blew open. I stopped short. Doors didn't do that on their own. My logical mind raced for answers. I guess it was possible that Winston had somehow nudged the locker room door closed and maybe the gust of wind had kicked open the door to outside. But gusts of wind happened outside of buildings.

  The exit called to me. I really wanted to get the hell out of there, but I had to find my cat. So I turned away from the outside door and entered the locker room.

  The place was dark and musty smelling. Nothing new there. It was always dark and musty smelling.

  "Winston?" I called out.

  I saw my cat trot straight past a line of lockers, headed for the showers. That was good. If she went in there, she'd be trapped. I didn't hurry after her. I didn't want her changing her little kitty mind and hiding somewhere else. A few seconds later she skittered around the tile wall and disappeared into the large shower room.

  "Gotcha," I said to myself.

  I had to be cagey. Cats were fast. If she felt trapped, she could easily turn back and shoot past me. I had to hope that she'd stop in the dead end of the showers and end this dumb game of cat and mouse where ironically, I was the cat. I walked slowly toward the entrance to the showers.

  "Winny!" I called in a friendly, singsong voice. "Time to go home."

  Before stepping into the shower room, I heard a sound come from inside. It was the soft but unmistakable creaking sound of a door opening. That was impossible. There were no doors in the shower. I entered the dark space and waited for my eyes to adjust. Once I could make out detail, I looked

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  around the floor of the shower. Winston wasn't there. How could that be?

  When my eyes adjusted further, I saw the answer. There was another door in the shower room. When it was closed, you might not even realize it was a door. I had no idea it was there, and I'd taken more than one shower in there. It was covered with the same tiles as the rest of the shower and looked like part of the wall. But it was definitely a door because it was now open. It had swung out a few inches, plenty of room for a naughty cat to squeeze through. I hoped it was a janitor's closet or a storage area for towels . . . a perfect kitty trap. I walked to the door on alert in case Winston suddenly shot out. When I reached the opening, I knelt down and put my hand near the floor.

  "C'mon, Winny! Let's go. Who wants a treat?"

  Winston didn't take the bait. She was a cat, not a moron. I was going to have to go in after her. I got down on my knees and crawled toward the door, thinking it would be smart to be ready to grab her in case she bolted. I got to the door, reached out, and carefully pulled it open wider. I kept low. No way that cat was getting around me.

  Turned out I didn't have to worry. What lay beyond that door wasn't a closet. I was staring into what I can best describe as another world.

  And Winston was long gone.

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  Chapter 6

  I had stepped back through time.

  At least that's what it seemed like. What lay beyond the hidden shower door was an old, abandoned gymnasium. The place looked like it hadn't seen action for decades. It wasn't much bigger than the size of the basketball court. It was old-school (literally) with an indoor track that circled above. Dusty shafts of light came in through cloudy windows near the high ceiling. Wooden retractable bleachers were closed against the wall. The basketball backboards were white instead of glass. The thick climbing ropes were still hanging, but the bottoms were looped up and tied to the safety railing of the track above.

  It wasn't a gym anymore. It was a big storage closet full of somebody else's history. I saw a bunch of ancient gym equipment like antique parallel bars and an old-school pommel horse. There were twisted piles of old wooden classroom

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  desks and chairs that rose like elaborate sculptures toward the high ceiling. Leaning against one wall was a stack of huge glass windows in peeling wooden frames that I'm guessing were taken from one of the school buildings during a renovation. There looked to be a dozen of them, each twenty feet high and four feet across. There were also tons of cardboard boxes full of who-knew-what stacked everywhere.

  My first thought was, Whoa, cool. My second thought was, No way I'm going to find my cat in this mess.

  "Winny!" I called out. "C'mon!" I made a kissing sound. Cats love that. Usually. Not this time. I decided to make my way to the far side and walk back to try and coa
x Winston toward the shower. Walking across the gym floor was like moving through a maze. There was so much stuff piled up that I was afraid to bump into something and start an avalanche of junk.

  "Winston! C'mon, let's go!" I shouted, hoping she'd sense my anger and run out from wherever she was hiding. Yeah, right.

  I moved past the tall stack of windows, scanning the floor, hoping to see a little black shadow dart by. This wasn't like Winston. She always came when I called her. I thought maybe she was freaked by this strange place and was hiding somewhere in fear. But what did I know? I wasn't a kitty psychiatrist.

  When I reached the far wall, I stopped and listened in case she was on the move. I didn't hear a thing. Literally. Something felt off. It was the sound.

  Or the lack of sound.

  The place had gone deadly silent ... like my house the night before. The creaks and groans of the old gym were gone. I stood there, afraid to move, wishing I could hear something. Anything. Finally, I did, and it didn't make me feel any better. It was a dripping sound. Hollow, wet ker plunks echoed

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  through the big gymnasium. It was steady. Incessant. Impossible. Just like the night before.

  The sound was coming from my left. I turned slowly toward it.

  There was no leaking faucet. What I saw was something far worse. Splattered across the yellowed wall not five feet from me was a spray of something wet and red. It looked exactly like the explosion of blood that had erupted from the golden glass ball I had destroyed in my room. Only there was a lot more blood. It ran down the wall and dripped into a red pool that was slowly growing on the gym floor. I watched in stunned wonder as the thick red liquid drooled from what looked like a gaping, vicious wound.

  Cat or no cat, I didn't want to be there anymore. I turned and started running back through the gym but didn't get far.

  Someone was blocking my way.

  He stood between me and the door to the shower. Between me and escape. He was on the far side of the gym, still as a statue, his hollow eyes focused on me. I stood perfectly still, not believing what I was seeing. It was impossible. It had to be a dream, but that was just as impossible because I wasn't asleep.

  Standing alone, silently staring at me, was Gravedigger. My creation. In the flesh. On his shoulder was his gleaming silver pick, his bony white fingers wrapped around the handle. His black hat was pulled down low over empty eyes, but I knew he was watching me.

  The sight jolted me. I didn't stop to think or analyze how impossible it was that a character from my imagination had suddenly appeared in front of me. All I knew was what my gut told me, and at that moment it was screaming that the guy was trouble. I jumped to my right and slammed into a pile of chairs. I stumbled and fell to the floor as the tower of chairs came crashing down on top of me. I had

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  to throw my arms up to keep from getting hammered. The chairs hit the floor around me, one after the other, bouncing and twisting every which way.

  I heard a snapping sound, like the crack of a whip. I looked up to see that the climbing ropes had come to life. They pulled away from the rail and were slashing through the air like angry snakes. I watched, transfixed, until one caught the top edge of the stack of tall windows. The rope went taut . . . and pulled over the entire stack. I was in the wrong place. The heavy pile of glass windows toppled directly toward me. If I didn't get out of there, I'd be shredded. I scrambled away on my knees and slammed into a chair. One of the legs jabbed into my side. Pain shot through my rib cage. I didn't care. I had to get out from under the falling glass. The windows loomed over my head, arcing toward the floor. In seconds I would be hamburger. I pushed off the floor, shifting balance to my legs. I coiled and sprang forward with my arms outstretched like a superhero taking off. I sailed over a pile of chairs and landed on an empty spot of basketball court on the far side. My hands hit, and I tucked my chin to my chest and rolled forward. It wasn't graceful. I twisted sideways and slammed into another stack of chairs, toppling them down on top of me. It hurt like hell, but at least I was out from under the falling windows.

  I heard more than saw what happened behind me. The heavy stack of glass hit the floor and exploded. Bits of glass flew everywhere, filling the air with a storm of sharp, shiny fragments. I glanced back in time to see a wave of broken glass headed my way. I ducked quickly and covered my face before I got sliced. I felt the sting through my clothes as I was pelted by the glass, but I didn't dare budge. After a couple of seconds I cautiously peeked over my arm to see the carnage. The four climbing ropes were hanging straight down, swinging gently, no longer animated.

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  My adrenaline was spiked, but I forced myself to stay calm, think clearly, and figure a way to get out of there. Dust filled the air. I wanted to cough but didn't for fear of breathing in tiny bits of glass. Cautiously I peered around a fallen desk to see what Gravedigger was up to.

  He was gone. Or maybe he was moving through the junk, winding his way closer to me with his pick held high. I stood slowly and felt the sharp pain in my side where the leg of the chair had jabbed me. I didn't let it stop me. It was the least of my worries. I was almost to my feet when I heard a crackling sound. Quickly I ducked back down and covered up. If something else was going to land on my head, I wanted to be ready for it.

  Nothing was moving, yet the crackling sound continued. It seemed to be coming from below. I looked to the floor and the shattered windows. Broken glass was everywhere. Thousands of tiny, sparkling bits covered the wooden gym floor. It looked like the aftermath of a hailstorm. The crackling sound continued . . . and I felt a soft breeze on my face. I wanted to scream but held it in. From the corner of my eye, I caught movement. Next to the pile of broken frames the tiny bits of glass were moving as if being pushed around by the breeze . . . like the chocolate on my counter.

  I started to shiver. I think I was probably in shock. I wanted to run in the worst way but couldn't take my eyes off the moving glass. The tiny bits were being blown about randomly, away from a central spot. It only took a few seconds to realize what was unfolding before me.

  As more glass moved, a pattern emerged. It was the triple swirl design I had seen on my kitchen counter. That was the last straw. I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't care if I ran into the figment of my imagination or knocked over more chairs or even if I got my cat out. I didn't want to be in that haunted gym for another second, so I took off, sprinting

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  toward the door, ready to bulldoze over the dark figure if he was stupid enough to get in my way. I blew through the door into the shower room, sprinted past the lockers, and jumped out into the corridor. I should have run out of the building. The exit was right there. But I wasn't thinking-- I was reacting. I was out of my mind. I sprinted through the empty corridors all the way back to the art room. Once there I realized I didn't want to be there, either, so I put my head down and kept running. A second before I reached the door, a figure dressed in black stepped out in front of me.

  "Ahhh!" I screamed. It was too late to stop. I slammed into him, knocking him into the wall.

  "Seaver!" the guy yelled in surprise. "What are you doing?"

  Hearing the voice brought me back down. I focused on the guy. It wasn't Gravedigger. It was Frano. I bent over, leaning on my knees, gulping air.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked, seething.

  I took a few more breaths to try and calm down. When I looked at the pasty-looking art geek, the truth hit me.

  "What is your deal?" I snapped at him.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Don't do that. Don't pretend like you don't know. I'm not an idiot."

  "Don't know what?" he asked.

  "Seriously?" I shot back. "I know that was you back there. What were you thinking? It would be funny to get me down here and dress up like Gravedigger to freak me out? That's like . . . so juvenile. Those windows could have killed me! That would have been real funny, wouldn't it!"

  Frano gave me the same blank st
are he always gave. You could never tell if he was excited or asleep. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he declared with no emotion.

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  "Oh, please. Then why did you call me to come pick up my artwork? It's only one piece and it isn't even finished. You just wanted to set me up for a little prank."

  Frano frowned, which for him was a major show of emotion.

  "I didn't call you," he said flatly.

  "Yes, you did!"

  "You're saying I called you to come here and pick up some artwork?" he asked.

  "Don't go there!" I yelled. "Don't pretend like you didn't call. I can ... I can check!" I pulled out my cell phone and fought my shaking hands to scroll through the list of incoming calls. I didn't get many, so I figured it would be easy to spot Frano's. I went through the list once. Then again. There were only two numbers . . . Dad's and Cooper's.

  "It's gotta be here," I said, desperately searching through other folders on the phone.

  "Mr. Seaver, I don't know what you are up to here, or why you're even in the building, but I promise you I didn't call you to pick up any artwork. Why would I? It's all been cleared out. Every last piece."

  "Every last piece?" I repeated. "Then what's this?"

  I blew past him and charged into the art room. He followed right behind.

  "You are not supposed to be in this school," Frano whined. "Please leave before you get yourself into trouble."

  I ran for the table with the unfinished sketch of Grave-digger and declared, "Explain that!" I stared right at Frano while pointing to the sketch on the table. He looked puzzled.