Daniel nodded and pointed to a tree on the far side of the pit’s edge. “See that split oak? Train your eyes on that and then follow it down all the way to the bottom. I used it as a landmark. The cave’s almost directly underneath.”
“Something’s moving around down there,” said Rohan. “It’s muffled beneath the dirt and rock, but I definitely hear it.”
“You sure you aren’t just eavesdropping on a family of moles?” asked Mollie.
“I hear voices,” he answered. “Whispers. I can’t make out what they’re saying.”
Theo gave Daniel a look. “Can he really hear that?” he asked softly.
“Don’t underestimate him,” said Daniel. “If Rohan says someone’s down there, then someone’s down there.”
“So Mollie and I will go first and check it out,” said Eric. “Rohan, you keep a watch; the rest of you wait here.”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” came a little voice out of nowhere. Rose.
“And you,” said Eric, turning to Theo. “Are you up for this?”
“I’m not along for the scintillating conversation,” answered Theo. “I’ll do my part.”
Eric nodded. Then he and Mollie began floating down to the quarry floor. As they went, snippets of their conversation echoed back to Daniel and the others.
“What the heck’s scinti-whatever mean?” Eric was saying.
“Just drop it,” answered Mollie.
The two flew slowly, doing cautious circles around the quarry’s perimeter. The last time they’d come here to fight the Shroud, the whole place had been overgrown with years of underbrush, even a few small trees. Now at least the area was freshly cleared. There was no place for anyone to hide. Or so they thought.
Rohan, of course, spotted them first. The shadows that were too long, that were moving on their own. They snaked across the quarry floor and up the walls until they began pooling together in Mollie and Eric’s path. If Rohan hadn’t shouted a warning, the two of them would’ve been caught surprised. As it was, they had only a few seconds to pull up before flying into a pocket of darkness that had assembled in front of them.
Mollie and Eric sped away from the sudden ambush, but another group of wriggling, menacing Shades had formed on the opposite wall. And another, and another. Every shadow in that pit was now moving of its own accord. Groups of them were peeling away from the walls now, fluttering about the quarry like a flock of panicked birds. Eric and Mollie were in the middle of it all.
“Get out of there!” Daniel shouted. They weren’t prepared for this: there had to be hundreds of them down there. Hundreds.
“No! Leave them alone,” shouted Theo, pushing his way past Daniel. “Stop! I command all of you to stop!”
Theo’s voice echoed across the empty quarry and the shadows heard him. In an instant they stopped swirling about Eric and Mollie, but they didn’t retreat either. Daniel’s friends were boxed in by Shades, but at least they’d broken off their attack.
Theo looked over his shoulder back at Daniel and chuckled. “Looks like I’ve still got the touch!”
Daniel joined Theo at the quarry’s edge. A couple of the Shades had drifted off from the main pack and were hesitantly approaching, but they appeared submissive, even docile, in the presence of their new master.
“Easy, boys,” said Theo as two of them got a bit too close for comfort. “That’s far enough. Now, I guess, take us to your master.”
In answer came the sound of wind rustling through dried leaves. It might have been their voices, but there was no way they could make it out. Even Rohan shook his head in confusion.
“Too many at once,” he said.
“Theo, on second thought this might not be a good idea,” said Daniel. He’d expected a handful of these creatures to deal with, not an army.
But Theo waved him off. He was too busy getting into the part.
“This isn’t decision by committee!” he shouted down at the Shades. “I said I wanted something done and I want it done now!” Theo turned and winked at Daniel. “That’s my dad’s corporate-speak.”
It seemed to be working. One by one, the Shades drifted away. The two nearest to Theo turned and flew down to the base of the quarry and began to dig up the earth directly below Daniel’s split oak tree. The rest of the creatures formed a semicircle around the Supers, urging them down the sloping trail that led to the quarry floor. They weren’t being attacked, but the Shades weren’t ready to let them run free either.
By the time Daniel and the other walkers made it to the bottom, the Shades had finished with their hole, exposing a half-buried cave entrance beneath. Eric and Mollie were waiting for them on the floor, nervously eying the Shades that stood nearby, observing—or more likely guarding—the two kids.
The Supers stood at the bottom of the Old Quarry, surrounded by an army of Shades, and prepared to enter Herman Plunkett’s Shroud-Cave. Surrounded by a hundred Shades, Daniel thought again that maybe his plan wasn’t so sound, but they had no other choice but to follow it through. These Shades were obeying Theo, but only up to a point. They hadn’t relaxed their guard, and though Theo was ordering them around like a pack of whipped dogs, to Daniel’s eyes they looked more like hounds straining against their leashes. He was afraid what would happen if they broke free.
This time Daniel went first. He flicked on his flashlight and peered into the freshly dug hole. Several feet down he spotted the giant stone door that marked Herman’s Shroud-Cave. It was split down the middle, one half of it missing. A moist breeze blew out of the darkness beyond. Daniel remembered that breeze. He remembered the smell of these caves, the chalky air, and what it felt like to be held prisoner in the darkness, bound and helpless. With an effort he willed himself to relax. He took a deep, calming breath and pushed that terrifying memory away. They had a purpose to focus on, and he needed to stay calm.
The hole in the door was just big enough to squeeze through. A grown man probably wouldn’t have been able to manage it. Once upon a time this door had rolled on hinges, but that mechanism had been destroyed in the cave-in. The tunnel was wider on the other side, and two people could comfortably stand side by side, but Daniel was still startled when Mollie appeared next to him. He’d expected Eric to take the lead, but Mollie must have beaten him to it.
“Just like old times,” she said. They’d been the ones to first discover this cave together, although the memory didn’t exactly inspire confidence. They’d barely escaped with their lives.
Eric came through next, followed by Rohan.
“Theo’s barking orders out there, and those Shades seem less and less happy about it,” said Rohan. “He’s getting a little too into his role.”
“Then we’d better hurry,” said Daniel, and they began creeping along into the darkness.
They’d traveled only a few yards when Daniel heard movement, a kind of shifting sound, and his first thought was that the tunnel might be unstable after the cave-in. But then he realized that the sound was actually coming from shapes that were moving alongside them. Shades were tracking them, escorting them farther into the darkness. They were pulling him and Mollie along but seemed to be slowing Eric and Rohan down. The Shades were keeping them a safe distance apart from each other.
Whispers as soft as rustling sheets echoed around them as they went.
“They’re saying my name,” Mollie said, her eyes wide.
“Don’t be silly,” said Daniel, although he too thought he heard someone calling to him. But he wouldn’t admit it. Their minds were just playing tricks on them.
They were nearly to the first chamber, the wide cave where Herman Plunkett had held Daniel captive, when Mollie cried out. She was pointing at the dark and saying something, but she was speaking so fast that her words were little more than buzzing to Daniel’s ears.
“Slow down! Mollie, what’s wrong?” Daniel shone his light at the Shades, but they continued to float harmlessly by. They kept pace with them, but there was nothing new or threatening that he could see.
> Mollie was crying. Daniel wanted to reach out and reassure her that everything was okay, but he dared not risk touching her. Even a gentle pat on the shoulder could leave her powerless.
“Mollie?” he asked.
“One of them … got close,” she said as she struggled to pull herself together. “Oh, Daniel! It showed me its face! I saw its face!”
Daniel aimed his flashlight’s beam directly at the nearest Shade. Nothing but indistinct blackness.
“Mollie, I don’t see anything.”
“I did! The Shade … it was the one saying my name. It was Michael!”
Michael. Michael had been Mollie’s best friend before the Shroud had stolen his memories. Daniel had spoken to him. He was a sad case, a little lost perhaps but physically fine. Daniel even shared gym class with him, and he’d seen him that very day and he’d been perfectly normal. Michael wasn’t a Shade.
“Look, Mollie …”
“Don’t say it!” Mollie wiped her nose. “Don’t you dare say that I’m imagining things, because I saw Michael! Somehow … he’s one of them. He’s out there!”
She meant it. Whatever else was going on, Mollie wasn’t prone to hysterics—she believed what she’d seen. Daniel nodded slowly. Whether she was mistaken or not, there was nothing they could do about it now. The Shades were gathering around them, urging them on, deeper into the cave. Behind them, Eric and Rohan were calling ahead, asking why they’d stopped. Obviously, they hadn’t seen anything either.
The tunnel opened into the Shroud-Cave itself. An eerie green glow shone through the opening, causing real shadows to dance among the slithering Shades. This large chamber was left over from the prehistoric people who’d made these caves their home—the large wall of cave paintings was proof of that. But Herman Plunkett had colonized it, adding his own pictures to the ancient mural. The cave paintings were a history of a people who’d been seduced and then destroyed by the power of the Witch Fire meteor—a hunk of the same comet that had passed by Noble’s Green when Herman had been just a little orphan child. Herman’s contribution to this ages-old mural was to record his own history with a photo of every child he’d ever robbed. Picture by picture, it was a wall of shame and terror.
Now, as Daniel entered the room for the second time in his life, he saw a new addition to the mural wall. Tied up in a web of what looked like solid darkness—Shade stuff—hung Herman Plunkett. He was bound up like a fly, dangling helpless in a web of shadow that stretched the length of the large chamber’s ceiling. Herman’s beady eyes squinted against the glare of the pulsing green pendant around his neck as he tried to focus on Daniel and his friends.
He spoke, his voice croaky and broken, like someone desperately in need of a drink of water. “Help me,” he said.
Herman wasn’t the Shades’ master. He was their prisoner.
“Daniel, what … what is that?” Mollie whispered, but Daniel didn’t have the words to answer. After all, what they’d found deep inside the Shroud-Cave was an entirely new kind of horror.
And somewhere in Daniel’s head another voice was saying his name. It was the memory of a dream. Or a nightmare …
“Daniel, what are you doing?” asked Mollie. “Daniel, stop!”
But Daniel didn’t stop. He couldn’t. He wasn’t even sure why he was moving, why he was walking toward that web. It had something to do with the voice, with that nagging itch in the back of his brain.
The voice was talking to him. Telling him to take something out of his pocket, something he’d been carrying for a long, long time.
Out of curiosity, he looked down. There in his palm was a small ring of black rock. The emerald light of the cave caught the polished stone and danced along its edges like firelight. It was beautiful.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Black Ring
Herman Plunkett was alive, but that looked to be small comfort for him. His normally thin face was almost skeletal now, and his eyes burned feverishly inside their sunken sockets. The rest of his body was bound up tight and dangled in the middle of a web of the Shades’ making. Even without the benefit of flashlights Daniel would have been able to see here in the cave, because of the sickly glow that spilled out of the meteorite pendant dangling from Herman’s neck. The Shroud pendant was split down the middle, and from that crack oozed forth the grainy light and something else—Shades. The shadows were drifting in and out of the stone, flitting about here and there along the web, testing and strengthening parts of their trap. They were intent on keeping the Shroud, and his stone, around for a long, long time.
“And so … we meet again, my dear Mr. Holmes,” said Plunkett, a tired half smile forming on his cracked lips.
Plunkett’s words seemed even weaker now compared to the other voice Daniel was listening to. The Shroud was in his head.
“Bring me the ring, Daniel. Bring it to me.”
“What the …? No way!” said Eric as he and Rohan stumbled into the chamber. Behind them, Daniel could hear, Theo was still back in the tunnel, barking orders at Shades. Daniel found himself getting annoyed. Why couldn’t everyone just shut up and let the Shroud talk?
As he started forward again, Mollie appeared in front of him. She put her body between him and Herman, blocking his line of sight.
“Daniel!” she said. “What’s wrong with you? Why do you have that ring?”
“I … I’ve had it all along,” he said. “I’ve been carrying it around in my pocket. Funny I couldn’t remember until now.”
“Use it,” said the Shroud in his head. “All you have to do is touch her. Take her speed and free me!”
He reached out a hand toward her.
“Daniel!” Mollie shouted. “Snap out of it before I give you a bloody nose!”
Daniel hesitated for a second, his hand outstretched. What was he supposed to do?
“Huh?” he said.
Herman’s pendant flared bright, illuminating the cave like a lightning flash. When the spots in Daniel’s vision cleared, he was back in the nightmare, caught in the throes of his wrestling match with the Shroud. The flesh of his fingers was blackening in the flame; he could smell his skin burning. The Shroud was shouting in his ear.
Then, just as quickly, Daniel was back in the cave, only he was flat on his back and staring up at the ceiling. His nose throbbed and his eyes were tearing up from the pain. Both Mollie and Eric were standing over him.
“Sorry about the nose,” said Mollie. “But I warned you.”
Daniel gently examined his nose. It smarted, and there was a tiny spot of blood on his fingers. The black ring was on the ground next to him. How did that get there?
“You were freaking us out,” said Eric. “Like a zombie boy. Mollie smacked you in the face with your own backpack.”
Daniel sat up and saw the Shades hovering in a circle around them … waiting. For what, Daniel didn’t know. It reminded him of animals gathering for a feeding.
The black ring gleamed green in the dark. Daniel pointed at it.
“How did …?” Daniel asked.
“You pulled it out of your pocket,” said Eric. “Don’t you remember?”
Daniel looked at Herman, hanging there so helpless, so weak and frail. But his eyes were powerful. They were hungry eyes, and they were focused on that ring like it was a last meal. That look scared Daniel more than all the Shades.
“Mollie, give me my backpack,” he said.
Mollie handed him his backpack, her eyes still wary.
“It’s okay,” said Daniel.
He threw the backpack over the ring and managed to scoop it up, careful not to let it touch his skin before he zipped it inside. With the ring buried in the deep folds of his backpack, he felt immediately better. The pain in his nose actually helped him clear his head, focusing on it helped to drown out the Shroud’s whispers. He dared to face Plunkett’s stare.
“What … what did you do to me?” asked Daniel.
Plunkett didn’t answer. Instead the old man shifted his
gaze to let it drift over them all. His skinny bald head used to remind Daniel of a turtle’s, but now it looked more like a snake weaving back and forth, ready to strike at any second.
“So, you’ve brought the whole gang,” said Plunkett. “The super-kids and my watery little wisp of a grandnephew, eh? Is that him I hear back there? What a joyous reunion we’ll all have. You, me, and them!” Herman cocked his head to indicate the gathering shadows.
“The ring,” said Daniel. “I’ve been carrying it all this time. The sleepwalking …”
“You’re strong, I’ll give you that,” said Plunkett. “You fought me at first, never fully giving in, but I am stronger. It was only a matter of time.
“Use it, Daniel!” he continued. “Together we can stop them! You can free me!”
“What did you do to me?” Daniel shouted, his voice echoing through the cave.
Herman finally dropped the forced smile—it looked as if he hurt too much to keep it up for long—and locked eyes with Daniel.
“I’m losing strength by the minute, Daniel,” said Herman. “They keep me alive yet weakened. But I’m not totally powerless, not yet, and I’ve always been particularly good with dreams.”
“Daniel?” said Mollie. “What the heck’s he talking about? Why were you carrying that ring in your pocket?”
“Nightmares,” said Daniel, realization slowly dawning on him. “In my nightmares I’m still fighting the Shroud.”
“Our battle never ended,” said Herman. “You only thought you’d won.”
“Daniel,” said Eric, “what’s going on?”
“He’s been in my head all this time,” said Daniel. “In my dreams. He manipulated the memories of Supers for generations, and somehow he found a way into my head. Maybe he did something to me when I was his prisoner; I don’t know. But he’s been controlling me, making me use the ring without even knowing I was doing it.…”
They were interrupted by Theo, emerging from the tunnel with Louisa. The Shades were crowding the two of them, mobbing Theo like a pack of fawning admirers. But there was something menacing in their attention too.