Timescape (10 page)

“What?” David said. He knew there was something more, something Keal wasn't saying.

“Nothing.” Keal looked down at his plate.

Dad reached across the table and touched his arm. “Keal, if there's something else . . . I think we need to know everything.”

“He . . .” Keal said. “He took one of Jesse's fingers.”

Toria gasped and covered her mouth.

“His
finger
?” David said. “Jesse's finger?” The image in his head wasn't of a missing finger, it was of a finger being cut off. The snap of the bone, the . . . Like Toria, he covered his mouth, but in his case it was to help him keep his sandwich down.

Keal nodded. “It's bad enough that Taksidian stabbed him.

There's something . . . I don't know . . . more gruesome about taking the man's finger.”

“I thought there was something wrong with his hand when I lifted it,” Xander said. “But then I saw the blood and figured that was it, just a lot of blood.”

They looked at each other, all of them apparently at a loss for words. When David felt that he had his stomach under control, he said, “Why would he do that?”

Keal frowned. “When murderers do it, it's called taking a trophy. It reminds them of their deed.”

“That's
sick
,” Toria said.

“It goes beyond murder,” Keal agreed. “It indicates a sort of bloodlust, something the killer does, not out of some perceived need but because he likes it.”

“We can't stay,” Dad pronounced. “Not with someone like that after us.”

“We're not leaving,” Xander said. “You promised, and you just said it again, not five minutes ago.”

“Xander—”

“No! You said until we find Mom!”

Dad sighed. “That was when we had only the portals and the people who came out of them to worry about. It's different now.”

“No!” Xander said again. “I knew this would happen. I knew you'd changed your mind! Just like Grandpa Hank did!”

“I don't want to leave, Xander,” Dad said, “but surely you can see that it's too dangerous to stay. I just—” He shook his head. He looked like horses were pulling him in different directions.

David was glad it was a decision
he
didn't have to make: run from a cold-blooded madman and leave Mom, or stay and hope they could keep Taksidian from killing them.

Keal cleared his throat. He touched a napkin to his lips. He said, “I know it isn't my place to say anything, but . . .” He looked Dad square in the eyes, his face conveying sympathy, even shared pain. “You
can't
leave,” he said. “You can't. Not without your wife.” He took a deep breath. “And not after seeing the future.”

Dad started to protest, and Keal patted the air between them in a calming gesture. “I know, I know. But maybe we
can
find Mrs. King and fight off Taksidian at the same time.”

“And save the world,” Xander said.

Keal looked at him. Something passed between them that bent their lips into smiles. Keal let out a short laugh. “Sounds crazy, doesn't it?”

He swung his smile toward David, and David couldn't help but smile back.

“What's crazy is smiling about it,” David said.

“Absolutely,” Keal said, showing all his teeth. He lowered and raised his head in an exaggerated nod. “My mama used to say, when you don't know whether to laugh or cry, laugh. I don't know why it is we're here, in this impossible situation, but I do believe we can make
anything
better.” He turned back to Dad. “If we try.”

Xander slapped David on the back. He said, “That's your cue, Dae.”

David smiled and said, “Let's do it.”

CHAPTER
twenty

WEDNESDAY, 9:33 P.M.

David knew his father's heart. If there were any way they could stay, they would. Dad looked at Keal a long time, then at each of them in turn. He stopped on Xander and said, “All right. We stay. But we're going to have to fortify this place.”

Xander said, “Locks everywhere. Cameras. An alarm system. Whatever it takes.”

“And a plan to get the job done,” Keal said. He held up his index finger. “We have to keep Taksidian at bay. Maybe we can find out something about him that'll help.” A second finger went up. “We have to find your mother.” Finger number three: “We have to do something about the future.”

“What can we do?” David said. Keal might as well have told them they had to flap their arms and fly to the moon. But then, David thought, everything he thought he'd known about the world, about what was possible and what wasn't, had pretty much gone out the window when they'd moved into the house. So far they'd teleported from a linen closet to a school locker miles away in a matter of seconds; they'd flown through the air and hovered forty feet above the ground; they'd fought gladiators and the German army; they'd traveled back in time and saved a little girl who in turn saved the world from smallpox. Keal's list of tasks
did
sound crazy, but possible, doable.

“One piece of the puzzle at a time,” Keal reminded him. “You got yourself a pretty cool command center upstairs.”

“Mission Control Center,” Toria corrected.

“The MC. Right,” said Keal. “Let's start using it,
really
using it. We'll gather everything we know about this house, the portals, Taksidian. Maybe something will pop out at us.”

“I hope it's not Phemus,” David said.

Keal pointed at him. “Phemus . . . he's another problem we gotta figure out. How do we keep him from coming into the house?”

Okay,
David thought.
Anything else? An earthquake? The ground opening up and swallowing us? The plague?

He didn't say any of that, though. Instead he told Keal, “We already tried putting locks on the doors. The house tore them off.”

Keal squinted at him, nodded. “Good to know,” he said. “Let's gather everything together and make a plan.”

“Nana,” Xander said. “She was on the other side—I guess that's what you'd call it—for thirty years. She told Toria that she moved from one world to another. She's gotta know a lot. We need to debrief her.”

“Do
what
to her?” Toria said.

“Talk to her,” Xander said. “Find out what she knows.”

“I'll bet Jesse knows more,” David said. “But he's . . .” He let a frown finish for him.

Xander seemed to remember something. He leaned over the table toward Keal. “Did you see the symbols Jesse wrote?”

“The what?”

“Hold on.” Xander hopped up, ran out of the room, and clambered up the stairs.

“Symbols?” Keal asked Dad, who shook his head.

A few moments later, Xander darted into the room. He slapped a pad of notebook paper on the table. “Okay, look,” he said. “Jesse wants us to do something. He wrote these symbols on the floor.”

“On the floor?” David said. “How—”

Xander's look made him stop.
Oh
, he thought.

They leaned in.

“What are they?” Toria asked.

“A house,” David said, pointing. “Is that an umbrella?”

“I thought maybe an ax,” Xander said.

“What's that?” Toria said, tapping her finger on the third symbol, which could have been buck teeth or, if turned upside down, two buildings on a hill.

“Antechamber items,” Dad said. “He wants us to find a portal.”

CHAPTER
twenty - one

WEDNESDAY, 9:39 P.M.

“Yeah,” Xander said. “Three items, that's what it takes to open the portal. But I don't remember seeing these things.”

Dad tilted his head. “They're always changing, the antechambers, the worlds they lead to. I don't think we've seen half of them, or even a tenth.”

David sat back. “But why a portal?”

“Guess we'll know when we find it,” Dad said.

“Do you think it has something to do with Mom?” David asked, trying not to get his hopes up.

“Everything about this house has something to do with rescuing Mom,” Dad said. “That's why we're here.”

“Wherever it leads to, it must be important,” Xander said.

“A place that will help us.”

David blew out through his lips. “That'd be a nice change.” But he knew Xander was right. Jesse—despite vowing never to return to the house, despite being ninety-something years old, despite his wheelchair—had come all the way from Chicago to help them. He would have spent his last breath trying to do that.

“Well,” Xander said. He slapped his palms on the table and stood. “What are we waiting for?”

“Now?” David said. “You want to find the portal
now
?”

“Why not?” Xander said.

“It's late. I'm beat. Do you remember the kind of day we had?”

“Hey, we'll sleep—”

“Stop!” David said. “Don't you say we'll sleep when we're dead.” He gaped at his father. “He's been saying that. He wants to just keep going till we all fall over.”

“Xander,” Dad said. “David has a point. We need—”

“We
need
to get stuff done,” Xander interrupted. “The portal, the MC, fortification, Nana—”

“Xander,” Keal said. He was calm, but his rumbling voice commanded attention.

All faces—including Xander's—turned to him.

Keal continued: “Not tonight.” He leveled a firm finger at Xander. “You're exhausted, I can tell. You have to get some sleep. We all do.” He lowered his finger and his eyes. Then he addressed Dad. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't talk to your boy like that.”

“No,” Dad said. “Go ahead.”

David nodded. Keal was in the Special Forces, a military man. What they were saying—about using the MC, going on the offensive—it was military talk. Keal was exactly what they needed.

Keal pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes, then rubbed his close-cropped hair. “Here's the deal, Xander. You've had a long, crazy day. Enough action to knock a soldier off his feet. And—”

“Keal—” Xander started.

Keal stopped him with a word: “
And
.” He focused intense eyes on Xander until he was sure the boy was listening. “And I know you guys were up late last night. Jesse and I didn't leave here until after two in the morning. You gotta be running on fumes. Don't say you aren't.”

He leaned back in the chair. “I learned something about this in officer candidate school. How much sleep soldiers need is a part of wartime strategy. Sleep deprivation happens to soldiers and whole armies. They just keep fighting on, especially if it seems either victory or defeat is imminent.”

Keal touched his fingers to his head. “What happens is this. The mind gets so exhausted, it wants to shut down. After a while, the brain gives up asking for rest. It
pretends
to kick into gear again, just to keep up with the body. But sleep deprivation impairs alertness, cognitive performance, and mood. It causes paranoia, hallucinations, faulty thinking. General Patton said, essentially, the idea is not to give up sleep for your country, but to make the other poor guy give up sleep for his.” He paused to give Xander that piercing glare again. “Xander, we need you at your best. You need to sleep. We all do.”

Xander blinked slowly, then dropped down in his chair. He said, “For how long?”

“A
good
sleep,” Keal said. “I
insist
.” He looked at Dad, who nodded.

Xander seemed to frown with his whole face. He scowled at David.

“Don't think of sleep as downtime,” Keal said. “It's part of the battle, as important as planning and action.”

“Fine,” Xander said, rising again. “Let's get it over with.”

CHAPTER
twenty - two

WEDNESDAY, 10:10 P.M.

In the foyer, David gave his grandmother a hug. He backed away and glanced at Dad, who stood in the open doorway, waiting to take her to a motel in town.

She'd gotten up shortly after Xander had stormed off to their bedroom; it was probably his angry clomping that had awakened her. Dad, Keal, and Nana had talked it out and decided she was better off out of the house.

To Nana, David said, “Are you sure you want to go?”

She touched her fingers to his face. “I'd rather not leave you, David. We have a lot of catching up to do.” She looked up toward the second floor. “It's this house that doesn't want me here. Or I should say, it wants me too badly. It'll be safer for everyone if I don't spend too much time here.”

David turned to Dad. “But I thought . . . you know, the creature . . .”

“We can't be sure that was a permanent fix,” Dad said.

“Will she be safe away from us?” David said. He looked at Toria, who was standing behind Nana, gripping a handful of their grandmother's skirt. His sister's eyes were red, and tears still glimmered on her cheeks. “You said Toria can't go because she'd be safer here.”

“And I think Nana would be as well, with all of us watching out for each other,” Dad said. “Except for the pull. It wants Nana, not Toria. Any dangers out there can't be as great as the one here. At least for Nana.”

“What about Taksidian?” David said.

“We'll make sure no one's following us. We'll slip her into the room Keal and Jesse already have, so we won't have to check in anywhere.”

“And I have my dinner,” Nana said, holding up Toria's pink
High School Musical
lunchbox. She smiled back at his sister. “Thank you, Toria.”

“Why can't Keal stay with you?” Toria said.

Nana's eyes found Keal sitting on the stairs. “I'd feel better if he were here with you. Don't worry, I'll be fine. I'll see you tomorrow.” She returned her gaze to David. “Then we'll see if I can shed any light on those worlds to help you find your mom. You'll tell Xander that for me, won't you?”