The Light

by D. J. MacHale

  I don't know if it was the sun or the fact that I had been going pretty much nonstop, but I started getting drowsy. I put the book down and rested on my elbows. Looking around, I saw Sydney still on the float, dragging her fingers lazily through the water. I really wished she didn't have such an attitude. I wanted to like her.

  I felt a slight wind kick up. It was so soft that it didn't even move the branches of the trees that hung over the lake. It was like the breeze had floated in just for my benefit. It was only strong enough to kick up some dandelion seeds. The spores floated through the air in a soft, dancing storm of gray that bounced and fluttered around me. I lay down on my back to watch the show. It was hypnotic. I let my mind wander to another time. Another place.

  It was called the National Felt Company and it had been around since the Civil War. The sprawling brick factory looked like a medieval fortress. I passed it twice a day on my way to school and back. In third grade we went there on a school field trip and got a tour. That's how we found "the bales."

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  Behind the factory was a warehouse they used to store leftover felt. They rolled it up and tied it together in bundles that were about the size of a bale of hay.

  The place was huge. It had to be three stories high with hundreds of the colorful bales stacked everywhere, filling the massive space. The building was ancient, and so was the door to get in. Cooper had no trouble figuring out how to get past the crack security lock (a cotter pin) and gain entry. There were no guards. Who was going to steal leftover felt? Each bale probably weighed a hundred pounds. But they were soft, which made playing on them a blast. We'd climb the mountain of bales and move them around to create slides, tunnels, and cliffs. It didn't occur to us that we were trespassing. We were only eleven and we weren't breaking anything. How could we? It was felt.

  "Let's make an igloo," Coop would say, and we'd struggle to move the bales into position. He was full of creative ideas of how to play with the giant, soft toys. "Let's pretend we're racing time to get to the top of Everest before the weather turns" was one of his games. Another was "We're in the center of the Earth and an earthquake is knocking down boulders and blocking our way out. . .," after which he'd start pushing the bales over and I'd have to duck and jump to dodge them. Where Cooper's imagination was endless, I looked at the bales of felt and saw . . . bales of felt. Cooper was more like my mom. He didn't just see what was in front of him -- he saw potential.

  "There's more to everything than what's obvious," he always said. "You just have to look for it."

  I credit Cooper with opening up my own imagination and allowing me to begin to develop my art. He also made me more daring, which didn't always work out for the better. One day while playing "Acapulco Cliff Diver," Cooper stacked up a number of bales. More than ever before. He climbed to the top, ready to leap.

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  "Don't," I called.

  "Why not?" he called back.

  "Uh, maybe because you'll kill yourself."

  "Impossible!" he declared. "Cliff divers laugh in the face of danger. Ahahaha!"

  "But you're not a--"

  Too late. He stepped off the pile and plummeted down, landing safely on his back with a huge WHOOSH as the felt compressed under his weight.

  "Your turn," Coop said, flush with the rush of having survived the stunt.

  "No way," I said quickly.

  "Okay."

  I was shocked because he didn't try to talk me into it.

  "That's it?" I declared. "No argument?"

  "Nah," he said with a shrug. "I really didn't think you'd go for it."

  That was the worst thing he could have said. Whenever he tried to talk me into doing something risky, it was to get me out of my comfort zone and take a chance. Clearly he thought it wasn't worth his effort anymore, and that ticked me off.

  "I'm climbing the cliff," I declared.

  Coop's eyes went wide. "Really? You sure?"

  My answer was to scramble to the top as quickly as possible. I crept out onto the tower Coop had built, gazing out over the warehouse. It felt like I was a mile in the air. It was exhilarating . . . and terrifying.

  "Vaya con Dios, mi amigo!" Coop called.

  I put my arms out in front of me like I had seen the cliff divers do on TV. I then held them out to the side, as if I were about to fly. I inched my toes over the edge. My heart raced. I was on top of the world. . . and decided I didn't want to be there anymore. I shifted my weight, ready to turn and slink away. Bad move. The weight shift caused the bale I was standing on to

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  move, which threw my balance off, which threw the balance of the entire stack off. . . which caused the avalanche.

  "Jump!" Cooper yelled.

  I never got the chance. I was standing on a giant Jenga game that was on its way down. The bales toppled and I toppled with them. I remember seeing nothing but a jumble of color as the bales bounced down around me. I had enough sense to cover my head with my arms. I landed on my butt, twisted, got rocked one way and then the other as the heavy bales bounced over me and knocked me around. I finally came to rest flat on my back, looking up at a bright shaft of sunlight that came through a window near the ceiling. The air was filled with felt particles. The light hit them in such a way that they looked electric, like phosphorous. It was magical. Bottom line was, I had broken my foot and Cooper had to carry me home. But at that moment I wasn't in pain. All I felt was the exhilaration of having taken a ridiculous chance, and survived.

  Cooper looked down on me with big, scared eyes.

  "Hey, you okay?" he asked.

  "No mas, senor. Por favor," I said, and laughed. My ribs ached and my foot started to throb, but I laughed.

  Cooper did too. "Excelente, mi amigo!" he exclaimed. "The first cliff diver to destroy the cliff!"

  He collapsed, laughing.

  It was a good day.

  I still remember the sight of the billions of felt particles dancing in the air.

  It was the dandelion spores.

  That's what sent me back to that warehouse. I lay on my back on the towel near the lake, watching them float over me. I had to laugh. It was a good memory.

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  That is, until I was hit with a blast of cold water. I jumped up fast to see Sydney holding an empty bucket.

  "What was that for?" I screamed, sputtering and wiping my eyes.

  "You were creeping me out, lying there laughing like that," she said. "I thought you were having a freak seizure."

  "That's idiotic," I shot back. Not only had she ruined my perfect dream, she'd nearly drowned me.

  "Idiotic? Me?" She reached down and picked up my Batman book, The Dark Knight Returns. "You're lying here reading comic books and laughing like a lunatic and I'm the idiot?"

  "It's a graphic novel," I corrected indignantly. I tried to grab it back, but she held it away.

  "Seriously? Batman?" she asked. "Isn't that for kids? Pow! Bam! Crunch!"

  "If you looked closer, you'd see it's a much edgier, multi-faceted version of the legend of the Bat than the comedic version you're referring to."

  Sydney lowered the book and looked me square in the eye. "I'd laugh if I thought you were kidding." She unceremoniously dropped the book onto the towel and headed for the house, clutching her four-pound SAT study guide.

  I'm sure there were times when I'd felt more foolish, but I couldn't remember any. People always made fun of me for keeping one foot in the fantasy world of sci-fi and super-heroes. Cooper loved to give me a hard time about it. But Sydney was the first person who actually made me feel stupid. I don't know if it was because of what she said, or the way she looked at me like I was somehow developmentally stunted, but it made me wonder if maybe she was right.

  I stood on the grass, not sure what to do next. Should I pick up the book and continue reading? Or throw it in the lake? As I stood there, I became aware of more dandelion

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  spores flying around me. I felt the same soft breeze that d
idn't touch the trees or any of the bushes near the house. It was like I was in the center of my own personal, benign tornado. There were more spores than before. They blew all around me, got caught in my hair, and tickled my nose. It was like an attack of dandelion locust. I lifted my hands to let them tickle the hair on my arms. I wondered where they could be coming from. There must have been a field of dandelions upwind from the house.

  The breeze stopped. Just like that, as if a fan had been turned off. It was the first clue I had that whatever was happening wasn't normal. The second clue came quickly. Instead of drifting off randomly, the spores seemed to hang in the air. They hovered for an instant, then fell together to the ground. It was about as unnatural as an act of nature could be. My eyes drifted down to where they fell. At my feet was the dark blue beach towel I had been lying on. Most of the dandelion spores had fallen on it. Looking down, I caught my breath.

  The spores had formed a pattern on the towel. It was nothing I recognized, but it was definitely not random. Some fell in small, tight groups, forming a pattern that looked like a twisted rectangle. Other patterns appeared. Some snaked through others in shapes that meant nothing to me other than the fact that they were definite shapes. I didn't know what any of the patterns signified, but I knew what they meant.

  Whatever it was that had happened to me back at home, whether it was in my head or something more sinister, it was there.

  My demons had followed me to the lake.

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  Chapter 13

  After what I had seen on that towel, it was clear that whatever was happening, it wasn't about a specific place. My house wasn't haunted. I guess that was one silver lining, though maybe it would have been better if my house was haunted. You can always get away from a place. You can't get away from your head.

  I had to be imagining things. What else could I think? It was a grim possibility but a logical one. The only thing that gave me hope that I wasn't a total lunatic was that I couldn't come up with any reason why I had suddenly gone out of my mind. As far as I knew, those things don't happen without warning. Or reason. I hadn't had an accident. I hadn't banged my head. I hadn't had a traumatic emotional experience that would have sent me into bozoville. Sure, I was ticked about Coop messing up the summer, but that's not the kind of thing that lands you in an asylum.

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  I thought back to when it began. What was the first bizarre thing that happened? Was it the banging on the walls at my house? The absence of all sound? The message in Ovaltine? When had it begun?

  I remembered.

  The blood.

  I had smashed that curious golden ball out of anger and splattered blood all over my bedroom wall. . . that magically disappeared. That was it. That was the first. As far as I could remember, nothing traumatic had happened before that incident that would have made my brain suddenly snap. I had an argument with Dad. He said I needed to get out more and make friends. Had that been enough to push me off the deep end? Not likely. I was upset, but c'mon. Crazy?

  Was the illusion of the blood the result... or the cause? Did I unearth some deep-rooted fear or phobia that was buried in my subconscious, lying in wait until I gave it an excuse to spring out? That golden orb had belonged to my mom and I destroyed it. Was it a guilt thing? Or by breaking that glass ball had I triggered something more sinister? Something that had nothing to do with me. Was there really something supernatural going on? Was I being haunted? Could I possibly come up with any more questions?

  The ideas and fears and possibilities kept running around my head, but there were no solid answers. Or relief. All I knew for certain was that even if it was manufactured in my head, it was real. The only way I could deal was to stay focused on something more pressing. Cooper. That made sense. Sort of. After we found him ... I'd still be crazy. Once Coop reappeared, I'd go home and lay all my nuttiness out for Dad. We'd find a doctor or psychiatrist or witch doctor or something to help me figure out why I suddenly had gone out of my mind and then do what we could to get me back in.

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  I guess my plan to go to the lake for help wasn't a total failure. Worrying about Cooper was keeping me together while I waited for Dad to get home. What made it so tough was that I couldn't talk to anybody about it. I didn't want to lay it on the Foleys. They had enough to worry about. And when I told Sydney about what I'd been seeing, she didn't believe me. I didn't blame her. I wouldn't have believed me either. Besides, she wasn't exactly the sympathetic type. I felt very much alone . . . and that was the exact thing I had to avoid. Things happened when I was alone. I had to make sure I was always around people. It was the only way to keep my brain from spinning off into the abyss of lunacy.

  When the Foleys got back to the cabin, I told them about the grungy guy in the Davis Gregory jacket. They took it more seriously than Sydney did. Mrs. Foley did a quick check of the clothes in Cooper's room and couldn't find the jacket.

  While Mr. Foley called the police to report the possible lead, Mrs. Foley and I decided to drive around looking for the mystery man. It was a long shot, but why not? What else were we going to do? Night was coming . . . the third night Cooper would be gone. Mrs. Foley was too antsy to sit in the house, so driving around made her feel like she was doing something positive. For me, it ensured that I would be with somebody for a while and keep my own demons at bay.

  "Do you want to drive?" Mrs. Foley asked as we walked for the car.

  "I don't drive."

  She gave me a surprised look that said, "Are you kidding?"

  I shrugged. What could I say? My bike got me around just fine.

  We drove to town and methodically turned onto every

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  street we came to. I don't think either of us expected to see the guy hanging out eating an ice-cream cone or playing mini golf, but it felt good to be doing something.

  "I don't understand Cooper," Mrs. Foley said. "He was always a wild kid, but it was harmless. The things he's been getting into lately . . ." She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to.

  "I hate to say this," I said. "Does anybody think that Cooper being MIA might have something to do with the counterfeit ticket thing?"

  Mrs. Foley shot me a quick, dark look. "I don't want to believe that. The names he gave to the police were just kids. They aren't dangerous criminals."

  I nodded. I wanted to believe that the dumb ticket scam wasn't serious enough to push somebody into doing something even dumber . . . like hurting Cooper.

  "Besides," she added, "the police already checked. They know where all those characters are."

  "Yeah," I added. "All of them except for Cooper."

  Her eyes started to tear up. I wanted to hit myself on the head. It was a pretty insensitive comment.

  "Sorry," I said quickly.

  "It doesn't make sense," she said. "Cooper's life is about as normal as can be, yet he's always acting out. Then there's you."

  "Me?"

  "You're a good kid, Marsh. I mean a really good kid. You've had to deal with some life-changing problems and you've handled it so well. If anybody has an excuse to act a little crazy, it's you. But you don't."

  I wasn't sure how to tell her how wrong she was.

  "I have such respect for you," she added. "And for your father. What d'ya think? Maybe he can give me a few pointers on raising a guy."

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  Part of me wanted to say "Thanks" and let it go. But I was desperate to tell somebody the truth.

  "Things aren't always what they seem," I said.

  "What do you mean?"

  I chose my words carefully. "I think everybody's different and they're affected by things differently. Coop is who he is. I thought I would always be the same too.

  That is, until . . ."

  I couldn't finish the sentence.

  "Until what?"

  I wanted to tell her everything, to spill it all. To unload. But I couldn't make it about me. Not with Cooper still missing.

  "Well, until Mom d
ied," I said. "It made me appreciate what I've got."

  Mrs. Foley gave me a warm smile. "Like I said, you're a good kid, Marsh."

  I didn't want to talk anymore and I don't think Mrs. Foley did either.

  She was right. I had gone through something traumatic with the death of my mother, but I couldn't imagine why I would suddenly start seeing demons two years later. That didn't make sense, though I did make a mental note to bring it up with the psychiatrist . . . when I got a psychiatrist.

  We drove around for another hour and, big surprise, we never saw the guy with the red jacket. I think we probably would have continued the search for a while longer, but it was getting dark, so we gave up and went back to the lake house.

  Mrs. Foley made dinner for everyone. Her specialty. Frozen pizza. I didn't care what it was--I wasn't hungry. Sydney didn't care either because she never came down to eat. She stayed in her room doing whatever girls do when they don't want to talk to anybody. Just as well--things

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  were tense enough without adding Sydney to the mix. The three of us ate at a picnic table on the lawn between the house and the lake. Several tiki torches were burning to give us light and to roast mosquitoes. The whole conversation was about trying to avoid the one thing that was on all of our minds. Cooper.

  At one point the table started shaking. I mean, it was like an earthquake was building up. I heard a low rumble that slowly grew like some infernal engine was digging up from below. At first I thought it was another hallucination, but the soda cans chattering across the table made me realize there was more to it than that.