Gatekeepers (10 page)

Jesse winked at him and said, “This house has old bones too.”

David smiled. He hoped that was
all
it was.

Jesse went on. “Right now, I have no recollection of smallpox during the last forty years. I have no memory of Jeffrey Lewis's death. But I have what I wrote.” He picked up the page, shook it, and set it down again. “I used a computer to research smallpox. I learned about Marguerite. In her autobiography, she details her childhood in the French village of Ivry-la-Bataille. I have an excerpt here.“

“Oh, come on,” Xander said. He stood abruptly. “What's the point?”

“Xander,” David said, pleading.

“You want someone to read to you, Dae, I'll go get Grimms' fairy tales. It'll mean as much.” He pointed toward the ceiling. “Mom is—” His lips clamped shut. He shifted his gaze to Jesse.

The old man cocked his head, waited for Xander to continue. When he didn't, Jesse said, “You might want to stay for this, Xander. Ms. Rousseau writes about your brother.”

CHAPTER

twenty-one

W
EDNESDAY,1:50 A.M.

Xander blinked at Jesse. “She wrote about David in her autobiography?”

“Published in 1988,” Jesse said.

“I wasn't even born yet,” David said.

Xander appeared uncertain. Slowly he sat and scooted the chair forward.

Jesse consulted the paper. “Marguerite tells how her town was destroyed when the German army came through. Her father was a Resistance fighter and died there. Her mother was also killed.”

David looked at the lady in the picture. She could have been the woman he'd seen fall in front of the tank. His heart ached for her.

Jesse said, “Her uncle raised her. He told her how she had almost died as well during the attack. Here's what she wrote.” He squinted at the page, a shaky finger moving over lines of text.
“The tank was bearing down on me. My uncle was too far away to help. He said that a boy no older than eleven or twelve darted out into the street and scooped me up. This child risked being shot by the Resistance fighters on one side and the Germans on the other. When he grabbed me, the tank was but a meter away. I sometimes think what that boy must have felt at that moment: the heat from the tank blasting his skin; bullets flying around him, sparking off the tank; the smoke of burning buildings and ignited gunpowder stinging his nostrils, burning his lungs. And yet he saved me. My uncle claimed to have never seen this boy before or since. This is very strange, considering Ivry's small community.”

Jesse glanced up.

David blinked. His chest was tight, remembering.

Jesse said, “I think you'll like this next part.
I have often wondered about this child's bravery, and how he seemed to come out of nowhere and then return to nowhere after saving my life. I have come to this conclusion: he was an angel.”

David's breath caught in his lungs, and he grinned. He swung around to see Xander's stunned face. He said, “An
angel
.” He turned to Toria. “Did you hear that?”

She said, “You? That was you? Wow!”

Looking at her, David felt as though he had grown two inches taller, with broader shoulders—if not for real, then at least in his sister's eyes. He remembered the shrapnel that had hit his calf, how badly it had stung. He thought of how scared he had been, so close to puking from fear. He could almost feel the flames he had run through to get to the portal that took him home, and how the fire had burned his shirt collar. All of these things seemed to fall away from him now, like heavy rocks he had been carrying. He had saved someone who had gone on to save millions. All that meant, to himself and to the world, was too enormous for his mind to grasp.

Jesse said, “That's how I knew
when
the world had changed. A long time ago, I took to recording my dream-memories in a journal. Sometimes these memories would leave me so suddenly, I had to stop writing in midsentence. I used to read that journal every now and then. It kept me from forgetting what it was all about.”

“What
what
was all about?” Xander said.

“This house.”

“Can you . . .” David said. “Can you help us?”

Xander stood and grabbed David's arm. “We have to talk.”

David smiled apologetically. He followed Xander into the foyer.

“What are you thinking?” Xander whispered.

“You mean, after everything you heard, you're still not ready to trust him?”

Xander rolled his eyes. “He said some people have a gift to know when history changes. Okay, I'll buy that. This house proves that anything's possible. That doesn't mean he's a good guy.”

“Xander,
please
.”

His brother looked around, thinking. His eyes settled on the upstairs hallway. He whispered, “What would Dad do?”

“He'd say yes to help,” David said. “If it meant getting Mom back faster, he'd say yes. You know he would.”

Xander nodded. “All right. Let's see where this leads.” He pointed at David. “But don't tell them about Mom. Not yet.”

“But—” David started, not sure how they were supposed to get help without saying what they needed help doing.

Xander's stern expression made it clear the point was nonnegotiable.

He gave in. “Deal.”

They went into the dining room. Toria's head rested on her arms, which were crossed on the table. Her hair covered her face and spilled over the edge like a waterfall. Her back rose and fell gently.

“She's out,” Keal whispered. “This one might be faking.”

He gestured toward Jesse.

The old man was slumped in his chair, his chin on his chest, snoring.

“Faking?” Xander said.

“Yeah, he likes to tease.”

David knelt beside the wheelchair to examine Jesse's face. The old man's lids were closed, eyes moving behind them, the way they do when you dream. His mouth was slightly open, and his bottom lip vibrated with every drawn-in breath.

“Jesse?” David whispered. He looked at Xander. “He's
sleeping
.”

“Figures,” Xander said.

“But we were gonna . . .” David wasn't sure what it was exactly they were going to do. “
Tell
him . . . ask for his help.” It sounded lame, not at all the Obi-Wan Kenobi moment his gut told him it was.

He frowned. The pressure to rescue Mom before something happened—to her, to them, to the house—felt like juggling dynamite. He wanted so badly for someone to step in and lend a hand, to snatch the explosives out of the air and give his arms a rest.

“Do
you
know what's going on?” Xander asked Keal.

“With the house? Him and the house? Some.”

“What about him and the house?” David said.

“He
built
it,” Keal said, as though they should have known. “His father and brother and him.”

David swung his head toward Xander. Both of their mouths hung open, both of their brows furrowed tight.

“He should have said that in the first place,” Xander said.

“He'd have gotten around to it,” Keal said. “This man's head is like a library—especially when it comes to this house. But you can only read one book at a time.”

“When did they build it?” David said.

Keal tightened his face, trying to remember. “I think . . . 1932, '33? He was a teenager. About your age, Xander.”

“He must know
everything
about the house,” Xander said. “All of its secrets.”

“I don't know about that,” Keal said. “The way he talks, it's like . . . like the house has a life of its own. Your mom and dad know a lot about you, but not everything. And the older you get, the more things you take on that are your own: experiences, dreams, fears. Seems to me this house is like that.”

David didn't want to hear that. They needed for the man who built the house to know all about it, to tell everything they needed to know to beat it.

A hint of disappointment must have shown on his face.

Keal said, “But between the building and the living in it, he's gotta know something, don't you think?”

“How long was he here?” Xander said.

“I think something like . . . forty-five, fifty years.”

“
In this house?
” David couldn't even imagine being here that long. He studied Jesse's sleeping face. The adventures he must have had.

The house groaned again, and David knew immediately it wasn't simply “old bones.” The sound grew louder and deeper, like the start-up of an engine big enough to power a city. Sharp sounds seemed to signal the splintering of wood, the cracking of glass, but he saw nothing like those things.

Jesse startled awake. His eyes darted around. His hair was buffeting around his head. It snapped out and froze, pointing past his face at the foyer. It unfroze and billowed, as if in a strong breeze. His shirt collar started to flap.

David was kneeling beside Jesse's wheelchair, and he didn't feel a thing. He raised his hand and moved it in front of Jesse. Nothing. He touched his own hair: flat on his head as it should have been. Xander's too: shaggy and uncombed, but not moving.

Jesse said, “I have to leave.”

“What? No!” David said.

Jesse's hair went limp.

The groaning and cracking faded until the house was silent again.

“What was that?” Toria said. She blinked sleepily.

The old man said, “The house is talking to us.”

“What's it saying?” David said.

Jesse looked down at him. He put his hand on David's arm, which David had draped over a wheel of the chair. His eyes were intense, fire blue, like Mom's and Xander's.

Jesse said, “It's hungry.”

CHAPTER

twenty -two

W
ENDNESDAY, 2:07 A.M.

Oh, come on!
That was the last thing David wanted to hear:
It's hungry
.

Jesse laughed, an airy wheeze. He patted David's arm. “Don't look so scared, son. It's not just an ordinary house, but I can tell you that you're more than an ordinary boy. You and Xander—your family—you're
meant
to be here.”

David shook his head. “I don't understand.”

“This house, those rooms upstairs,” Jesse said. “It's what we do. It's in our blood. Our society has grown away from it, but there was a time when whole families, generation after generation, knew what part they played on life's stage. Hunter, leader, blacksmith . . . we're all gifted to do some-thing very specific. Not everyone finds out what that is, but it's true. In some cases, like ours, it's in our lineage, it's what this
family
is supposed to do.”

“What?” David said. “What are we supposed to do?”

Jesse leaned closer. “We're
gatekeepers
, David. The way gate-keepers of old allowed into the city only those people meant to be there . . . so we do here.”

“We do
what
?” David said.

“We make sure only those events that are
supposed
to hap-pen get through.”

“To where?” David said.

“To the future.”

David looked to Xander, but his brother looked as baffled as David felt.

The house groaned mournfully.

Jesse's hair fluttered. “I have to leave,” he said again.

“But . . .” David gripped the old man's shoulder. It felt like nothing but bone under the jacket.

“I'll be back tomorrow,” Jesse said. “I promise.”

“I was hoping . . .” David said. “I was hoping you'd stay. I mean, in the house with us. Sleep here. We have room.”

“I wish I could,” Jesse said. “But I've been into those other worlds so many times, they think I'm theirs.”

“Theirs?” David said.

“The worlds'. Time's.” Jesse scanned the ceiling. He said, “I can feel the pull. I can feel it wanting to drag me back into the stream, the stream of Time. That wind blowing my hair? That's it, grabbing at me. If I stay in the house too long, it'll just—”

He snapped his fingers, inches from David's nose, making him flinch.

“
Snatch
me away, just like that.”

“But we need your help,” David said.

Jesse put his hand on David's head and brushed his hair back. “And you have it,” he said. “I'll be here as much as I can, for as long as you want me. But when I feel the pull, I'll have to go away for a while. Not long: few hours, few days—I don't know. That's the way it has to be.”

David frowned. “Okay . . . I guess.”

Somewhere in the house a door slammed. All of them jumped, and Toria let out a quick scream.

Jesse took his eyes off the foyer entrance to address the children. “Keal and I are going to a motel in town.” He frowned. “If you want, if you'll feel safer, I can get a room for you there too. At least until your parents return.”

“We can't,” Xander said. “We can't leave the house. Not now.”

Jesse appeared disappointed. “Well,” he said, “I think it's acting up because I'm here. You'll be okay.” He smiled, pushing up the edges of his mustache.

If he says “I think” now,
David thought,
I'm outta here. Motel, here I come.

But Jesse said no more. He nodded at Keal, and the big man stood.

David and Xander watched through the windows on either side of the front door. Jesse sat on the edge of the porch while Keal carried the wheelchair through the woods to the road.

“His hair's doing it again,” David said. It was billowing around his head the way it had done in the dining room. It snapped back toward the house, then forward, as though catching in the ebb and flow of a tide.

“Look beside him,” Xander said.

Within Jesse's reach was an elm leaf. It was big and dry and papery looking in the porch's light. On his other side was a clump of pine needles. Neither the leaf nor the needles so much as fluttered.