Timescape (23 page)

Then he heard it: the slamming of a car door—faint in the distance.

The dull hum of an engine, revving, revving.

Music—that quick-rhythm weird stuff from Taksidian's car.

No, no!

He ran. Before reaching the woods, he saw the black Mercedes on the road. It crested the hill over which he had parked. Its hulking body rose up and slammed down, it had taken the hill so fast. Then it disappeared.

He heard it sliding to a stop. The top of its roof reappeared, barely visible on the other side of the hill. A cloud of yellow dust caught up with it and engulfed it. When it cleared, Taksidian was standing on the road, gazing at him.

He stumbled down farther and stopped. “Taksidian!” he yelled.

The man's head and shoulders lowered below the level of the hill, as though he had crouched down.

“Taksidian!”

A dozen seconds later, the car door slammed again, and the roof glided out of view. A wall of dust rose in its place.

Mr. King tore down the hill.

How'd you do it?
he thought.
How did you return to the car without my seeing you?

He had to have known he was being followed. No other way.

How long before Taksidian reached his house? Ten minutes. Less—a lot less if he hauled. And he was hauling!

Running, in the trees now, he pulled the mobile phone out of his pocket. He flipped it open with his thumb. His foot snagged on a tree root, and he fell. He flipped and slipped, crashed into a tree. The phone was not in his hand. He scampered back up. There: banked up on a rock.

Don't be broken! Don't be!

He picked it up. It appeared to be fine. Except for the words flashing on the screen:
No service
.

No!

He pushed Xander's speed-dial number anyway. When he held the phone to his ear, it was as silent as a dead man.

He ran. Under branches, over crevasses, through thickets of leaves, twigs, thorns. He crashed out of the trees and tumbled into the weeds. He scrambled up, stumbled onto the road. The phone was still out of range. He took off for the hill and the Bug.

Taksidian had a couple minutes' head start on him. But he only needed to get to where his phone worked. Then he could call, tell Xander and David to get away from the house before Taksidian arrived.

He ran to the hill, down to the Bug.

He stopped so fast, his feet slid out from under him. The two tires on the driver's side of the car were flat. Long, ragged gouges in their sidewalls showed where Taksidian had slashed them.

Mr. King got to his feet. Checked the phone: no service.

He pulled open the VW's door, climbed in, and started the engine.

I don't care about the tires,
he thought.
If it'll roll with them flat, it'll have to be good enough.

But he wasn't sure it
would
roll. He put the car in gear, popped the clutch, and punched the gas. The engine roared. The car lurched forward, bounding up and down as though he'd driven over boulders.

He cranked the wheel, and the Bug's front end swung around in the road.

Go! Go! Go!
he cheered it on, though the desperation cramping his mind was anything but cheery.

The shredded tires thumped, throwing him up, sideways, around, each time.
Thump . . . thump . . . thump.

The feeling of driving over boulders never changed. He bounced in his seat. The steering wheel jerked one way, then the other, but somehow he kept the car moving in a somewhat straight direction. He thought that if his course were drawn on a piece of paper, it would look like the scrabblings of a shaky-handed old man.

But he was moving . . . and building speed:
thump-thump-thump- thump-thump.

Every fifteen or twenty
thumps
, he squinted at the phone. No bars, no service.

Come on! Come on!

He shifted, pressed his foot harder against the gas pedal.

The bug slid around on the dirt road as though on ice.

Mr. King's head hit the ceiling. His shoulder slammed against the door. Still, he willed the car to go faster.

I'm coming, boys
, he thought, praying that somehow his words would reach his sons.
Hide . . . fight . . . do whatever you have to do! I'm coming!

CHAPTER
fifty

THURSDAY, 6:14 P.M.

“Take a picture,” David said.

Xander pulled out his phone, stepped back from the wall, and snapped a shot. The flash made each piece of paper appear to jump out at David: photographs of the Kings coming out of the house, David sitting in class, Dad climbing into the Pathfinder, Toria opening the oven—seemingly taken from outside the kitchen window; diagrams of each floor of the house, including the third. In each of the antechambers, Taksidian had scribbled words in a language David didn't know. He didn't even recognize the letters.

Xander snapped another picture.

The photo that jumped out at David was of Dad pumping gas into the Pathfinder. The heads of David, Xander, and Toria were blurry shadows behind the windows. It was the same gas station where they had watched Taksidian talk to the mechanic earlier today.

A memory hit David's brain like a blast of liquid nitrogen, freezing it. He grabbed Xander's arm.

“He knows!” David said. “Taksidian knows we're here. He knows we followed him.”

“David, no! He can't. How do you—”

“The stops he made on the way to his house! The grocery store, the fast-food place, the gas station. Xander, they're the exact places I said he would go when you wanted to follow him. In the exact same order. Remember, I said, ‘a hundred nothing things at a hundred nothing places.' ”

“But how—”

“Who cares
how
? He knew all along. He was playing with us. He was showing us he knew. I
thought
something was weird, but I didn't get it!” He made a fist and wanted to punch himself.

Xander looked down at the phone. He tapped a button.

“What are you doing?” David said. “We have to get out of here! Now!”

“Calling Dad,” Xander said. “He'd have called us if—”

Music came out of the tiny speaker. Xander glared at the phone. His forehead wrinkled like an old man's. “What—?”

“That's the music Taksidian was listening to in his car,” David said.

Xander turned on the speaker function. The weird chanting filled the room, then stopped.

“It's called an infinity transmitter,” Taksidian said, his voice deep and gravelly. “It allows me to turn on the microphone of any phone for which I have the number. No ringing, just an open connection. So I can listen to everything said within earshot of your phone. Shouldn't bring phones to school, you know.” He laughed a hearty laugh that echoed.

Xander snapped the phone shut, but the booming laughter continued.

An engine growled outside, rising in volume. David ran to the window. Taksidian's Mercedes bounced out of the rutted drive into the front yard. It slid to a stop.

“He's here!” David said.

“Let's go!” Xander ran into the hallway, turned into the living room.

Now David did grab his brother's shirt. He pointed. “The sliding glass door!”

They ran to it, tugged, tugged. Xander flipped a small lever on the handle. It still didn't budge.

“It's barred,” David said. He had his hands on a metal rod that ran from the rear of the door to the frame. “It must be locked too. Or welded.”

They spun around.

Across the living room, the front door's dead bolt rattled.

“Go!” Xander said. He shoved David toward another short hallway on the opposite side of the living room from Taksidian's office.

“No,” David said. “The window!” He ran toward the bedroom. The bolt snapped open, and David realized he didn't have time. Taksidian would grab his legs as he slithered out. He knew panic was jumbling his thoughts, making him confused, but there was no reining them in now.

He spun around. Xander, thinking David was half out the window by now, darted into a room and slammed the door.

David shot to the nearest door in sight: a narrow pantry off the kitchen. He yanked open the door, stepped inside, and pulled it shut.

The darkness was complete, as though a shroud had dropped over him. Wind swirled up from the floor. He felt the walls closing in on him. The floor under him shifted.

He knew this feeling! The linen closet portal did this. But . . . but . . .
here
? How?

Wait!

He grabbed for the door handle. It was gone.

His fingers slid along cold, wet rock.

CHAPTER
fifty - one

THURSDAY, 6:18 P.M.

Xander pressed his back to the door. He squeezed his eyes tight. His lungs pumped in air, pushed it out. His heart was a fist pounding into his throat.

Please, Lord, let David get away. Let him be outside and running away right now.

Something banged against a side wall.
The front door
, he thought.

He opened his eyes. No light at all. He considered where he was in the house. To the right of the front door, if you were looking at the house. He was in the room with the bricked-up window.

He reached behind him, felt the door handle. A button in the center. He depressed it. A simple lock, but something.

The room hummed. Either a fan was on or there was some serious ventilation in the place.

He had to find a weapon. Scissors, a piece of wood, anything. He raised his hand to the wall, searching for the light switch.

What is that smell?
he thought. Sour, rotten.

His fingers found the switch. He flipped it up.

The walls were painted black; the ceilings and wooden floor, bright red. Hanging on the wall where the window used to be was a costume consisting of a woven shirt and a skirt made of strips of leather, each tipped with a metal triangle. Over the shirt's sleeves were mounted iron armguards, scarred by the blades they'd parried. A short, black leather sheath clung to the wall near the top of the skirt. The knife or dagger belonging to the sheath was missing. Rips and cuts disfigured the shirt; maroon stains bordered and spread out from each rent.

The other walls contained similar artifacts: a sword, a shield, spears, a bow and arrows, a tattered banner, beads, jewelry, metal and wooden face masks. Small lights set into the ceiling shone on the items, museumlike.

Despite the abundance of weaponry, Xander felt no joy, no relief. Only terror. For his eyes had settled on an object in the center of the room. It was lighted from all sides, as fine statues are. Rising from a short pedestal, the sculpture was somewhat circular, like a pillar. But it was rough, with parts jutting out.

Parts
, Xander thought.
Body parts!

Arms, legs, ears, fingers—all cobbled together to create a monstrous monument to death. The stench; the unmistakable decay that had laid claim to various limbs; the evidence of tissue, muscle, bone within each visible stub: Xander knew without doubt that this was no fabrication; each piece had once belonged to a living human.

Beside the horrific pillar was a stainless steel table on wheels, like the ones on medical shows. A scalpel, paintbrush, and bottles rested on it. And something else.

Not wanting to know, needing to know, he stepped closer. Before he realized it, he was leaning over the object on the table.

It was a finger. White as Carrara marble. The flesh had shriveled, leaving what amounted to bones and knuckles encased in wrinkled skin. The fingernail gleamed.

Xander knew it was Jesse's.

The door behind him banged open.

Xander spun. He reversed away from the figure stepping in: Taksidian, a smile on his face, a knife in his hand.

Xander's heels hit the pedestal.

He toppled backward into the pillar.

CHAPTER
fifty - two

Darkness. David might as well have been blind.

He felt the walls around him. They were cold and wet. And he could touch them on all sides. Not much larger than a casket standing on end. Gravel crunched under his sneakered feet. It shifted easily, making it difficult to stand.

The air was humid. He smelled nothing but his own sweat.

Where am I? How could Taksidian's house have a portal? This isn't possible! This isn't happening!

He struck the wall in front of him. His fist cracked into it with a thud. No give. No echo of sound on the other side.

He patted the walls. He didn't find a door handle or hinges or cracks. He reached up. There seemed to be no top. A foot over his head, a stone or brick protruded a few inches from the surrounding surface. He pushed it, pulled it, tried to make it wiggle. It was solid.

His fingertips touched a loose item on top of the protruding stone. He picked it up and shook it. He knew the rattling it made. It was a box of wooden matches.

Yes!

He gently pushed the inner tray out from its cardboard sleeve. He withdrew a stick, identified the match tip, and struck it against the sleeve's side. It sparked. He tried again. The matched flared, settled into a flame.

The walls were as he had imagined: gray squares—blocks, probably—ten inches to a side. They appeared to be resting against one another with no mortar between them. They glistened with moisture, but he couldn't see where the water was coming from. Scratches ran vertically in the center of each wall, from head height to chest.

The flame touched his thumb and fingertip. He dropped the match and licked his burned skin. He lit another.

He looked up to the protruding stone. It was nothing more, just a workman's error, it seemed. High above, the ceiling appeared to be a single slab of granite. Dangling from it by something he couldn't see was a lantern.

Another
yes
!

He stretched, tiptoed, but his fingers were still a hand's length from the bottom of the lantern. He shook out the match before it could bite again. Struck another.