The Light (Morpheus Road, Band 1) - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

D.J. MacHale is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Pendragon series. He has written, directed and produced many television series and movies for young people that have been seen on Nickelodeon, The Disney Channel, HBO, Showtime, PBS, Discovery Kids and the broadcast networks. D.J. lives with his family in Southern California.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Prologue

I believe in ghosts.

Simple as that. I believe in ghosts.

Maybe that doesn’t come across as very dramatic. After all, lots of people believe in ghosts. You always hear stories about some guy who felt a “presence” or glimpsed a fleeting, unexplainable phenomenon. There are mediums who claim they can make contact with the great beyond and receive messages to let the living know that all is well. Or not. Then there are those people who operate on a more philosophical level … the spiritual types who believe that the energy of the human soul is so powerful, it must continue on after death to some other plane of existence. Of course, there are millions of people who love getting scared by ghost stories. They may not believe, but they sure have fun pretending.

I’m not like any of those people. At least not anymore. A little over a week ago you could have put me in the category of somebody who didn’t necessarily believe in anything supernatural, though I did like horror movies. But that was then. Before last week. A week is like … nothing. How many particular weeks can anybody really remember? A week can fly by like any other. Or it can change your life. You tend to remember those weeks.

I remember last week.

It was the week the haunting began.

Or maybe I should call it the hunting because that’s what it was. I was being hunted. And haunted. It wasn’t a good week.

My name is Marshall Seaver. People call me Marsh. I live in a small town in Connecticut called Stony Brook. It’s a suburb of New York City where moms drive oversize silver trucks to Starbucks and most kids play soccer whether they want to or not. It’s the kind of place where kids are trained from birth to compete. In everything. School, sports, friendships, clothes … you know, everything. I’m not sure what the point is other than to win bragging rights. Luckily, my parents didn’t buy into that program. They said I should set my own priorities. I liked that. Though it puts pressure on me to figure out what those priorities are.

I guess you’d call us middle class. We’ve only got one car and it’s almost as old as I am. I can’t believe it’s still running, because we drove it into the ground. My parents liked to travel. That was one of their priorities. Whenever they had two days off, we’d hit the road, headed for some national monument or backwater town that served awesome gumbo or had historical significance or maybe just sounded different. I complained a lot about how boring it was, but to be honest, I didn’t hate it. Bumping around in the back of a car wasn’t great, but the adventure of it all made it worthwhile. It’s kind of cool to see things for real instead of on TV. I miss those trips.

Other than that, my life is pretty usual. Unlike a lot of people in this town, I’ve never been inside a country club. Most of my clothes come from Target. I ride my bike to school. We don’t live in a monster-size house, but it’s plenty big enough for the three of us.

That is, when there were still three of us.

Things have changed. Not that long ago I thought I had a pretty good handle on what normal was. I was wrong. Nothing about my life is normal anymore. The events that unfolded over the last week weren’t just about me, either. Many lives were touched and not all for the better. As I look back, I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if different decisions had been made. Different paths taken. So many innocent choices added to a butterfly effect that fed the nightmare. Or created it. I guess it goes without saying that I’m still alive. Not everyone was so lucky. That’s the harsh thing about ghost stories. Somebody has to die. No death, no ghost. I survived the week and that gives me a feeling of guilt I’ll carry forever. Or at least for as long as I live. I hope that’s a good long time, but there are no guarantees because this story isn’t done.

The hunt is still on.

My story may sound like a fantasy, and maybe some of it is. But many things happened over that week that can’t be ignored or explained away as having sprung from an overly imaginative mind. People died. Lives were changed. That was no dream. After what I saw and experienced, there’s one other bit of reality I have to accept.

I believe in ghosts.

After you hear my story, I think you will too.

© 2010 D. J. MACHALE

Cooper Foley was in trouble. Again.

“What were you thinking?” I screamed at him. “Counterfeit tickets? Really?”

“Easy, Ralph,” Coop replied calmly. “I didn’t know they were bogus.”

Cooper always called me Ralph.

“Even so,” I argued. “It’s illegal to scalp real tickets.”

“No, it’s not,” he corrected. “Not if you sell them at face value.”

“Did you sell them at face value?”

He smiled. “No.”

I wanted to smack him.

Cooper and I were making the long walk to school on the last day of the year before summer vacation. He was my best friend. Okay, my only friend. My only good friend, anyway. I think the main reason we got along so well was because we were completely different. I worry. Cooper doesn’t. I think things through. Cooper doesn’t. I freeze in social situations. Cooper doesn’t. I hate playing sports. Cooper doesn’t. I worry about what people think of me. Cooper doesn’t.

I think we stayed friends because there was never any competition between us. We had plenty of fights over the years, but they always ended up in a wrestling match that lasted about eight seconds. No punches were ever thrown in anger. As we walked along on that hot June day, I was ready to plot out all the exciting adventures we’d be sharing that summer. Instead I found out that Cooper was in trouble. Again.

“What’s going to happen?” I asked.

Cooper shrugged as if he didn’t really care. “Nothing. I got spanked, that’s all. Nobody thinks I printed out a bunch of phony Yankees tickets. And for the record, I didn’t.”

“Then who did?”

He gave me a sly smile. “Can’t tell you that, Ralph. I’d have to kill you.”

Coop was changing … and not for the better. Though he was always a wild guy, he never got into serious trouble. With him it was about being a goof in class or skateboarding without a helmet. The thing was, he always made the teachers laugh and didn’t need a helmet because he never crashed. Ever. Once when we were around ten, we snuck into the private stable of some uber-rich Wall Street guy. I was so scared, I wanted to puke. In fact, I did. All over my pants. Not Coop. He hopped on the back of a prize thoroughbred and rode it, bareback, out of the stable and across the huge lawn, shouting, “Yippiekiyay!” He didn’t get in trouble, either. I, on the other hand, caught hell for ruining my pants. Cooper lived a charmed life. He never puked on his pants.

That is, until we got to high school. That’s when he started pushing things. He got into fights. Real fights. He’d skip school. His parents started coming down on him for his grades, which made it pretty tense around the Foley house. They grounded him … he snuck out. We’d go for weeks without seeing each other because he started hanging around with some older guys. They smelled like bad news, so I didn’t go anywhere near them. I’d bet anything they had something to do with the counterfeit tickets Coop was busted for selling.

None of this was like Coop. At least not the Coop I knew....