Watcher in the Woods (21 page)

“Yeah, that's what I heard. Your daddy broke your arm. That's what everyone's saying. Huh, Joe?”

“Twisted it until it just snapped like a twig,” Joe confirmed. “Heard you cried like a girl.”

Stay down
, David told himself.
He wants me to fight. Then he could
say I started it
.

Clayton said, “The whole town is so convinced your dad's banging you around, I can pound you to a pulp and no one'll believe that I did it.”

“I fell out of a tree,” David said quietly.

Clayton laughed. “Oh, is that the best you and your old man could come up with? Fell out of a tree?” He stepped closer, reached down, and grabbed a fistful of David's shirt.

David swung his good arm up, knocking Clayton's hand away.

Clayton looked surprised by David's boldness. He said, “That'll cost you another broken arm, dude.” He circled around to David's left side, obviously looking for an easier angle of attack.

Outside, a car horn honked. Joe looked through the windows at the back of the room. “Clay, I think it's his old man.”

Clayton crouched. “Get down! Get down! Did he see you?”

“I don't think so. He's out in the parking lot . . .”

The horn sounded again.

“Honking,” Joe said.

“No kidding? Go look.”

Joe waddled in a crouch to the windows. He peered over the sill. “He's just sitting—”

David lurched forward. Clayton grabbed for him. David swung his arm and smashed his cast into Clayton's mouth. The boy yelled and flew backward. David pushed himself up and darted for the door. Clayton was wailing behind him.

David didn't look back. He pulled open the door and ran into the hallway. He turned right, toward the main entrance, and beat his feet against the tile floor, wanting only to put distance between himself and Clayton. He realized too late that he'd made a mistake. He was heading toward the cafeteria, not the front entrance. He stopped to turn around and saw Clayton and Joe emerge from the classroom. Blood coated Clayton's lip and chin.

The boy saw him, spat on the floor, and smiled. He started toward David.

David ran for the cafeteria door and hit the bar that opened it. He would have been better off slamming into a brick wall. He banged his cast on the door—
again!
—and bounced off. The doors were locked.

Man, they shut down early around here
, he thought.

He scrambled to his feet. Clayton and Joe were ambling slowly toward him, knowing he was cornered, savoring his fear. The only other exit David knew about was on the far end of the hallway, past the boys who wanted to pound him to a pulp. He was near the short leg of hallway that had been his introduction to the building's interior—the first he had seen of the school when he had portaled from the linen closet to the locker.

The locker, number 119. It was right there, not fifty feet away. He could probably reach it before Clayton and Joe got to where they could see him go into it. Did he dare?

He thought about Clayton—madder than ever, bloody lip and all.

It wasn't a difficult decision.

He darted into the short hallway, directly toward the center locker, the locker that was the way out of this mess.

From around the corner, Clayton called, “That's a dead end, King David! You're stupid, just like your dad.”

As he approached the locker, David's eyes focused on the latch.
Please, please, please
, he thought.
Don't be locked
. He saw that there was no lock on it yet, and his heart was thankful for the break. His sneakers squeaked to a stop in front of it. He had the latch lifted and the door opened before the momentum of his body had slowed. It was empty.

“Ollie, ollie oxen free,” Clayton called.

Quickly he looked in their direction. They hadn't come around the corner yet. David climbed in and pulled the door closed behind him.

CHAPTER forty - one

TUESDAY, 3 : 21 P . M .

David felt the sides of the locker move away from his shoulders. Instead of metal and pencil shavings, he smelled wood and fresh laundry. Instead of a thin steel floor under his feet, which buckled a little when he shifted his weight, he was standing on solid floorboards. Even the quality of the darkness had changed, reflecting the difference between the light that came through the locker vents and the dimmer illumination of his home's upstairs hallway as it seeped through the crack under the door. He opened the door and stepped into the hallway, pulling in a deep breath. As he released it, he released the tension of knowing he was about to get pounded. He smiled at the thought of Clayton and Joe coming around the corner and not finding him.

The possibility of their having witnessed his vanishing inside locker 119 brought a tinge of concern back to his stomach. But compared to the beating Clayton had promised, it was a concern he could live with. He would not be able to avoid Clayton forever, but at least this gave him time to figure out what to do about the school bully.

He shut the linen closet door and glanced around. Home. He had never been there alone before. It was a little creepy, the silence, the stillness. The only light came from the sun, filtered through the trees outside and the bedroom windows. It gave the house an unlived-in, museumlike feel.

He bit his bottom lip. Dad was waiting for him at school—honking for him to come out. He did not know about the portal from school to home. After Mom had been taken and Dad had come clean about having lived in the house before and knowing its secrets—though apparently not
this
one—he and Xander should have told him about the linen closet. David wasn't sure why they hadn't, except that it seemed everything had been moving a thousand miles a minute since Mom's kidnapping. They just hadn't had time.

He felt a pang of guilt, knowing there were other reasons as well: David and Xander
liked
knowing something about the house Dad didn't, and what if they wanted to
use
the portal sometime? They didn't want Dad restricting them or jumping all over them. And that they had kept it a secret this long would make telling Dad about it that much harder.

There was no way Xander would say anything, no way he would even suspect that David had used the portal now. He and Dad would just keep waiting for him. When he didn't come out, they would probably search the school. All the while, Toria would be waiting at her elementary school. Dad would be worried sick.

David would have to go back through and meet Dad at the school. Of course, he'd need to wait until he was sure Clayton and Joe had given up looking for him. That would give him time to think of an excuse for being late.

A murmuring reached his ears. It had the rhythm and alternating tones of human conversation. He wondered if someone had left a radio on. Dad liked to listen to what he called “talking heads” in the mornings.

David crept down the hall to the banister that overlooked the foyer. He leaned over the railing but could no longer hear the voices. Something creaked, and he realized it was overhead—from the third-floor hallway. His heart began to race as he thought of the big, bare footprints they had found in the house and the man who had taken Mom. Had he returned? Or was it someone else?

He detected the murmuring again: a deep rumbling of spoken words, followed by more words in a slightly higher tone.
Two
people!

The footprints they had found had all been similar. They had assumed that someone—as in
one
person—had been in the house. But David was hearing
two
voices! He crept farther down the hall past the master bedroom door on his left. For just a moment he was terribly sure that he had misjudged where the creak and the voices had come from. After all, how could you tell in a house that played with sounds the way children played with marbles?

He was frozen in front of the master bedroom's open door, sure that if he turned to look, two people would be looking back at him. Then a man said something in a sharp tone. It was not as near as the bedroom, and David felt relief. He turned his head and saw no one in the room. He continued to the end of the hallway. Here, a second hallway branched toward the back of the house. The secret panel at the end was hinged open. He tiptoed toward it. The door to what was now the MCC came up on the right. But the voices were clearer now—and definitely coming from upstairs.

David reached the secret panel and leaned through the opening.

A rumbling voice drifted to him from the upstairs hallway. He furrowed his brow in concentration. He did not understand the words he was hearing.

As though reading his thoughts, a different voice said, “In English. If I ever need your help outside this house, in this time, you will need to speak the language of the day.”

As deep as this English-speaking voice was, the other man's was deeper. It rumbled like boulders in an avalanche, but much slower. It said, “Not . . . easy.”

“I know. We'll work on it. I have another mission for you.”

David heard the rustling of paper.

“This man . . . see, here? Must not reach his destination.”

The boulder-voice said, “Want . . . kill?”

“Of course. Do what you do best.”

Boulder-man grunted.

“You'll find him here . . . in this world. Look for the—”

Trying to hear, David stepped through the secret panel. His cast thunked against the door. He froze in place and held his breath. Silence. The men upstairs had stopped talking. Then came the sudden sound of footsteps—two sets of them, moving fast, growing louder.

David spun around, already moving out of the hidden panel's threshold. His cast hit the door again, louder this time. He didn't care. He shoved his shoulder into it. It flew open and crashed into the hallway wall. He was at the junction of the upstairs hallways when he heard a clattering of shoes on the stairs behind him. A more muffled pounding made him think of the barefoot giant who had taken Mom. A man with shoes, a man without: David had no desire to meet either one.

He moved as fast as he could, past the master bedroom, the landing, Toria's room, the bathroom. Three doors lay ahead: his and Xander's room, the spare bedroom, and the linen closet. He had to reach the linen closet before his pursuers rounded the corner. He gritted his teeth and willed his feet to move faster. He reached the closet door, opened it, and stopped.

At the far end of the hallway, Taksidian came racing around the corner. He saw David and paused. The only sounds were David's panicked breathing and the footsteps of the barefoot man hurrying to catch up.

Taksidian said, “
Boy!
”

David scrambled into the closet and slammed the door. He felt the air change around him, the walls press in.

Come on, come on!
he thought.

When light appeared before him, forming itself into the vents of the locker door, he pushed it open to step through.

It was only at this moment that he even considered the possibility of Clayton still looking for him in the short hallway.

Who cares?
he thought.
Clayton or Taksidian? No contest.

Still, it would be a disaster if Clayton found out about—

Hands grabbed his shirt and yanked him out of the locker.

CHAPTER forty - two

TUESDAY, 3 : 34 P . M .

“What are you doing?” Xander said. Gripping David's shirt, he gave him a shake. “What were you doing in there?”

David looked back at the open locker and said, “Taksidian's right behind me. He saw me go into the closet.”

Xander's jaw tightened. “What? Why did you go through?”

“Clayton—”

“Never mind!” Xander said. He shoved David aside and reached for the locker door.

“Wait!” David said. “Does it work if the door's left open? What if he can't follow me here if we don't shut it?”

Xander flashed an expression at David that was part confusion, part frustration. He backed away from the locker. “And what if he just appears in the locker?” He snapped his fingers. “Okay, okay, I have an idea. Wait here.” He ran out of the short hallway and around the corner.

“Xander!” David yelled. “Xander!”

“Wait there a sec!” He sounded pretty far away. “If Taksidian shows up—
run
!”

David backed away from the locker. He kept his eyes on its dark interior. Did something move in there? He squinted. Nah, just shadows. He heard footsteps, and his stomach cramped. Could sounds come through before a person did?

Then Xander came jogging around the corner. Reaching the locker, he said, “Okay,” and slammed the door closed.

“Xander, no!” David said.

“I got it, I got it.” Xander slipped a combination lock through the hole in the latch. He smiled at David. “See?”

Bang!

Something slammed against the locker door from the other side.

Xander jumped, and David screamed.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

David started to run, but Xander grabbed his arm to stop him. Xander whispered, “It's locked. He can't get through.”

“He could break the lock,” David said.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Xander pressed his lips together. He stepped close to the locker and held his hand up to it, but didn't actually touch it. He said, “Leave us alone.”

The banging stopped. Xander looked at David. David shrugged.

A voice came through the door. It was deep and echoey from the smooth metal walls inside. “Leave the house, and I'll let you be.”

The words chilled David's skin. He stepped forward and said, “We want our mother back.”

Silence. Then: “I don't have her.”

David said, “Did you take her?”

More silence . . . longer. David was about to repeat his question when Taksidian said, “You should know by now, nothing about that house is as simple as that.”

Xander slammed his fist against the locker door. “Did you take her or not?”