I stopped too. I had to catch my breath.
“Hey!” I shouted, huffing. “Wait up!”
She didn’t move. Had she heard me? Slowly, she turned and looked my way.
Yes!
“We gotta talk!” I called out.
Ainsley gave me a sweet smile, a little wave, then turned and disappeared into the woods.
No!
I was about to take off after her again when I sensed something odd. I didn’t understand what it was at first, mostly because it made no sense. I simply felt…movement. There was nothing specific—it just seemed as though things were shifting all around me. There was a faint rustling that I couldn’t place. My fear was that Tomac’s voodoo doll still worked and the white ravens were on their way back. But I wasn’t dizzy and I didn’t hear any screeching birds.
It took a solid ten seconds before I realized what it was.
The grass was growing.
Fast. And all over the place. Thousands of dark green blades were shooting up at an impossible rate. It was like watching a time-lapse video. I stood frozen, mesmerized by the sight, until I felt a tickling at my ankles.
Hundreds of long blades were wrapping themselves around my feet and quickly tightening. They were coming after me! I tried to move, but the grass gripped me even tighter, keeping me from lifting my feet. My panic grew as adrenaline kicked in, and I pulled one foot up with more force. This time the grass ripped out from the dirt. It may have been hexed, but it was still just grass. It took some strength, but I managed to lift one knee and tear hundreds of blades of grass from the ground. I dropped that foot and did the same with the other. It was a struggle, but I was able to free that one too. But each time I put a foot back down, the grass attacked it again.
I wanted to jump back onto the road, where it was safe, but if I did that I’d never make it across the rapidly growing jungle to get to Ainsley. So I plowed forward, headed for the trees. Each time one of my feet hit the ground, grass lashed around my ankle to try and hold me down. But I was fast. The grabby green tendrils barely had time to reach out and grasp me before my foot was up and out of the way again.
Then the grass changed tactics. It stopped grabbing at my feet. Instead, the blades grew together in front of me to try and trip me. My toe caught on one tightrope-like line, and I stumbled. I cried out in fear. If I fell, the grass would envelop me like a green mummy and pin me to the ground, where I’d never be able to break free. Or worse, I’d suffocate. That image flashed through my head and helped me fight to keep my balance as I staggered forward, pumping my knees and tearing out huge chunks of haunted turf.
Finally, I made it to the edge of the trees and jumped off the lunatic lawn. My feet were safely on dirt, so I turned back to see the grass retreating. Shrinking. De-growing. It took all of ten seconds for the grass to return to its normal length and once again look like a neatly trimmed lawn. The only sign of what had happened were several patches of dirt where I had torn up chunks of sod.
This was no Boggin-like illusion. The witches could control nature. That grass had grown to try and get me. If the Black Moon Circle could do something as dramatic as that, it made me wonder what horrors the coven might be capable of if its plan was carried out and the witches’ powers intensified through Ainsley.
She may have been ahead of me and out of sight, but I knew exactly where she was going. I caught my breath and hurried through the trees, headed for the ring of bushes that surrounded the coven’s clearing. It killed me to have to go back there, but I didn’t know what else to do. I dodged through the grove of tall trees, my feet pounding the ground carpeted with the fallen leaves of autumn and brown pine needles.
Ainsley was nowhere to be seen.
“Ainsley!” I shouted. “Please stop!”
The answer I got wasn’t a good one.
All around me, the ground shuddered. It wasn’t intense like an earthquake; it was more like the forest floor was coming alive. I heard a crackling sound that grew steadily louder. There was no way to know where it was coming from because it sounded like it was coming from everywhere.
I turned on the speed, desperate to catch up with Ainsley before running into any more attack plants.
I finally saw her through the trees, not too far ahead.
“Ainsley!” I shouted.
My victory was a short one. There was a giant whoosh as all around me the forest floor exploded. Thousands upon thousands of fallen leaves flew up into the air and swirled around. I was caught in a tornado of leaves and pine needles that created a near blackout. I couldn’t see anything but streaks of brown, yellow, and red. They whipped at my face and hands so violently that I had to cover my head for fear of getting poked in the eyes. The pine needles stung my hands like, well, like needles. I tried to keep moving forward but the assault was too strong. I fell to my knees and curled into a ball with my arms over my head to protect myself from the onslaught. The debris crunched and crackled as it flew into my hoodie and down my neck. The howl of the demonic wind powering the attack was almost as loud as the crackling of the leaves that whipped everywhere. When I inhaled, I got a throatful of debris that made me gag and cough. I was in the middle of a forest, but claustrophobia was setting in…and panic. I couldn’t breathe.
I put one hand on the ground and tried crawling forward. At least I think it was forward—I was totally confused. My hope was to get to a tree and use it to shield me from the barrage. After a few agonizing seconds, I hit something solid and rough. It had to be the bark of a tree. I pressed my face against it and pulled my hoodie over my head. That combination gave me a little protection and allowed me to take a couple of short, shallow breaths. It wasn’t much, but it gave me a few seconds to calm down and plan my next move.
The howling wind suddenly stopped. I felt the gentle flutter of leaves as they fell all around me. The engine that was driving them into the air had been shut off. I took a chance and stole a peek out from my hoodie to see I was surrounded by a storm of falling leaves. It took only a few seconds for them all to land and return the woods to normal.
Normal?
The tree I was leaning against vibrated. It was subtle at first but quickly grew more intense. I pulled away and scrambled back on my hands. There was a crack. A loud one. The huge oak tree seemed to shiver. It swayed. There was another crack, and the tree began to fall as if a lumberjack had been chopping away at its base. And yes, it fell toward me. There were a few more violent cracks as the ancient tree tore apart near its base…and toppled.
I had the smarts to keep looking up at it to try to judge exactly where it would fall. I didn’t want to commit to diving one way and landing right in its path. At first it seemed like it was moving in slow motion, but it picked up speed as it got closer to the ground. I felt sure it was aiming for me. I waited until the last possible second and then rolled to my right. The mighty tree barely missed me and hit the ground with such a violent thud that I bounced into the air.
I pulled myself to my feet, dazed and more than a little disoriented. After having been through this forest a couple of times, I thought I’d know exactly how to get back to the coven’s circle, but the storm of leaves had twisted me around so bad, I was totally lost.
Crack.
The trees weren’t done with me. The huge pine I was standing next to was also about to come down. I backed away quickly, only to hear another crack coming from another tree. There were so many trees so close together that I couldn’t tell where the sounds were coming from. Any one of the trees could topple. Or all of them could. It was like standing in a minefield. All I could do was pick a direction and run.
Boom!
A massive pine crashed down directly in my path. I put on the brakes and barely missed being crushed. It was so close that I felt the rush of air as the tree fell. I switched direction only to see another heavy pine swaying and toppling. That sent me in a third direction. I had no idea where I was headed. The only thing that mattered was the few feet in front of me a
nd whether or not a skull-crushing tree would land there.
Another tree fell, followed by a smaller one. There was no way to know which tree would be next. In that moment, I didn’t care about Ainsley or the Black Moon Circle or the Library or anything other than getting out of the forest alive.
I leapt over a man-made stone wall that had probably been there since the coven first arrived from Salem, and was faced with a towering pine tree that stood higher than any of the others. I didn’t have to hear the cracking to know it was falling my way. I stood with my legs apart, waiting until the last possible second to decide which way to run. The tree picked up speed. It was headed right for me. It took every bit of willpower I had to wait until the last moment. When the tree reached a forty-five-degree angle, I jumped to my left…
…and came face to face with Ainsley.
“What are you doing, Marcus?” she asked calmly.
Boom!
The tree crashed down behind me, shaking the ground. I must have jumped two feet into the air.
Ainsley had no reaction. She looked at me with a curious expression, as if my being there made no sense to her. Or as if she hadn’t noticed the forest was crashing down around us.
“What am I doing?” I yelled. “What are you doing?”
I kept looking over my shoulder in case more trees were about to topple.
“You’re all sweaty,” Ainsley said innocently. “Have you been running?”
“Are you serious?” I exclaimed. “I’ve been chasing you and dodging falling trees and—”
The look on Ainsley’s face told me that she had no idea what I was talking about.
“What are you doing out here, Ainsley?” I asked.
Ainsley got a faraway look in her eyes, as if she had to give the question some serious thought. She frowned and started to speak, but stopped when she couldn’t find the words. Her eyes took on a new focus as she looked around at our surroundings with dismay, as if seeing them for the first time.
“I…I don’t really know,” she said, sounding confused.
For that one brief moment, I felt as though I was getting through to her and maybe the spell could be broken.
“It’s okay,” I said reassuringly. “Everything’s cool. Let’s go back to the school and we can—”
I heard the birds before I saw them.
A pack of white ravens swooped down and swept over our heads, cawing incessantly. Ainsley saw them too and flinched. This was no voodoo doll hex aimed at me alone. The birds were real. They flew as one, sailing over the tall stretch of brambles only a few yards from us. It was if they had flown that way to draw our attention.
“Oh man,” I muttered.
We were standing next to the coven’s circle.
A section of bushes quivered and seemed to melt away. The thick foliage separated to create an opening that led into the circle.
Standing inside the ring of foliage, between the opening in the brush and the pile of boulders that hid the entrance to the witch’s hollow, was Tomac.
This time she wasn’t alone.
A group of men and women stood behind her, staring at us. Some looked to be as old as my parents; others were gray-haired and at least a generation older than that. There were even a couple of kids who looked no older than Ainsley and me. They wore normal, modern clothes and appeared to be no different from people you might see at the grocery store or the movies. But there was nothing normal about this group.
It was the Black Moon Circle.
“Hello, Ainsley,” Tomac said pleasantly. “We’ve been waiting for you.”
“We gotta go,” I said to Ainsley, and took her hand to pull her away.
Ainsley yanked her hand back while staring directly at the witch. Whatever small crack I had created to get through to the rational part of her brain had closed up tight.
The witch was back in control.
“I hope I’m ready,” Ainsley said to Tomac, sounding dreamy again. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”
My heart sank. Even though she was under the witch’s spell, Ainsley was still Ainsley. She was driven to succeed.
“You could never disappoint us,” Tomac said with confidence, and held her hand out. “Come.”
Ainsley stepped toward the opening in the bushes as if in a trance.
“Ainsley, don’t!” I shouted.
It was a waste of breath. She didn’t even glance back to acknowledge I was there. Nothing I could say or do would prevent her from entering the circle and joining the coven, whether she wanted to or not.
The only hope I had left of stopping the witches was to keep the dance from happening.
I took a step away, ready to turn and run for the school.
“No!” Tomac shouted, with more than a little anger.
I stopped.
I guess I could have made a break for it, but I didn’t want to risk running another deadly gauntlet of nature that the coven cooked up for me.
“You can’t do this!” I shouted at Tomac. “You can’t hurt these people because of what happened to you centuries ago!”
“To us it was yesterday,” the witch said coldly.
“But it wasn’t their fault!”
“The entire human race is at fault,” Tomac snapped.
Ainsley moved through the wide opening in the bushes, walked right up to the witch, then turned and stood next to her. Her vacant eyes told me she no longer had a mind of her own. She was completely under the control of the coven.
There was nothing I could do for her. I had to try and save my own skin, so I turned, ready to run and brave whatever the forest would throw at me.
I didn’t get far.
Standing in my way were two huge white wolves. Their bright eyes were focused on me, and their teeth were bared threateningly. Both uttered deep, menacing growls.
“You have a choice,” Tomac called out. “You can stay and experience the ceremony. It would give me great pleasure to have an agent of the Library bear witness.”
“What’s the other choice?” I asked.
“Having your throat torn out.”
The wolves crept toward me, their heads lowered, stalking.
I backed away from them, moving toward the opening in the bushes and into the circle of the coven. I didn’t dare turn around for fear the animals would spring. I backed up a few more steps and found myself inside the circle. The wolves remained outside, raised their heads, and howled. As their haunting cries tore through the forest, the bushes on either side of the opening drew closed. The tendrils reached for one another to form a green wall of thorns that stitched together and sealed off the circle, with me inside.
I had failed. Completely. There was no way I was going to stop the coven from forcing Ainsley to carry out its evil plans. The last hope I had was that Lu and Theo could somehow stop the dance from happening. I wished I had taken the book from the Library so I could find out whether they had succeeded, or failed as miserably as I had.
Somewhere high in the trees I heard the cries of the white ravens.
It sounded like laughter.
* * *
THEO MCLEAN AND ANNABELLA Lu were on their own.
Their task was to prevent the Halloween dance from happening.
When the school day ended, the children all headed for their homes, emptying the building and leaving Lu and Theo alone.
“Let’s go see where the dance is going to be held,” Theo said. “It might give us an idea of how to stop it.”
The two ran straight for the gym, where they found a group of kids in the process of transforming the space into a Halloween extravaganza. Massive black-and-orange crepe paper spiderwebs hung from the rafters; dozens of plastic jack-o’-lanterns dangled from invisible wires, their leering faces appearing to float overhead; strings of orange twinkle lights were spread near the ceiling to give the illusion of orange stars in a night sky; and tangled white cobwebs adorned the basketball hoops and the scoreboard and most everywhere else the kids could thin
k of. The decorations all played into the fun side of Halloween.
None had anything to do with the actual terror that awaited.
“This’ll be easy,” Lu said. “When the dance starts, I’ll pull the fire alarm. The fire trucks will come and evacuate the place.”
“What good will that do?” Theo said. “They’ll figure out it’s a false alarm and let everybody back in. And what if the witches do their dirty work with everybody outside? No, we have to stop the dance from happening.”
“You kids here to help?” a friendly voice called to them.
The popular social studies teacher, Mr. Martin, approached them. He was struggling to hold on to a dozen of the plastic jack-o’-lantern decorations.
“The more the merrier,” he added.
“Uh, no,” Lu said, her brain racing. “We came to say maybe the dance should be postponed.”
“Why?” Martin asked with a frown of curiosity.
Lu had no answer. She shot a desperate look to Theo, hoping he could pick up the pieces.
Theo nearly jumped with surprise. He wasn’t expecting to have to come up with something on the spot.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, tugging on his ear. “The weather’s supposed to be bad tonight. Lots of rain and lightning, real doomsday kind of stuff. It would be safer to have the dance tomorrow.”
He looked to Lu for backup.
Lu scowled at him. She wasn’t impressed.
Martin chuckled. “I wouldn’t worry about that. Everybody will be safe and dry inside. Come on, give me a hand.”
He turned to head back toward the stage.
“What about the bomb threat?” Lu blurted out.
Martin stopped as if he had hit an invisible wall. The jovial smile dropped from his face.
“What bomb threat?” he asked with true concern.
“You didn’t know?” Lu said, then looked to Theo. “Tell him.”
Theo nearly jumped again. He gave Lu a dirty look and tugged harder on his ear.