Gatekeepers (11 page)

“It's only him,” Xander said, “feeling the wind.”

David said, “The way his hair is blowing one way and then the opposite, it's like the house is breathing.”

“Great,” Xander said. “Like it's not creepy enough. Now it talks and breathes.”

“And it's hungry,” Toria said from her perch on the stairs.

David made sure the door's dead bolt was locked. He said, “What do you think about what he said, our being gate-keepers?”

“I think he's crazy,” Xander said. “
I'm
not supposed to be here. We're going to find Mom and get out of here. As soon as I'm old enough, I'm heading back to L.A. to make movies. Maybe I'll make one about this house. That'll be all the gate-keeping
I'll
do.” He looked up toward the second floor. “We gotta go get Mom.”

“
Now?
”

“She's waiting for us, Dae.”

“I can't, Xander,” David said. He was whining, and he didn't care. “I'm beat. Let's start again in the morning.”

His brother glared at him. “It's not fair,” he said. “We
found
her. She was
right there
. I thought all we had to do was get you in there to show her the way home.”

“They chased me away,” David said.

“I know, I know.” Xander slapped his hand on the ball atop the post at the base of the banister. “Then everything happened to keep us from getting back to her! It would have been better if we'd never seen her message.”

“No, I'm glad about it,” David said. “It's nice to know she's safe, and she knows we're looking . . . More than looking; we're
close
. I don't know how these worlds work. She went in one, came out and back in another, and now she's in an even different one.

But, Xander, she's going to do everything she can to stay in the Civil War world until we get to her. I know it.”

Xander nodded, looking at their sister sitting on the stairs.

Toria's eyes were closed. Her head rested in her hands, and it kept drooping to one side, then snapping back up.

“Okay,” Xander said. “Tomorrow, for sure.”

“For sure,” David agreed, already starting to doze off.

CHAPTER

twenty -three

W
EDNESDAY 2:42 A.M.

David and his sister lay shoulder to shoulder in Toria's bed. Xander was on the floor beside it. All three stared at the ceiling. The paint had peeled in spots, and a few water stains marred its surface. David was sure there was more damage to the ceiling than he could see by the dim glow of Toria's Fiona nightlight. But it didn't matter. What had them all unable to sleep, on edge and frazzled, was the clomping around up there. Footsteps pounded, objects clattered. For the umpteenth time, David lifted his head to make sure the chair was still wedged under the handle of the closed bedroom door.

He rolled onto his side to see Xander and whispered, “We could move into our bedroom.”

“Do you really want to go into the hallway?” Xander said.

David didn't answer. After a while he said, “Good thing we didn't go up there to look for the Civil War stuff.”

“I've been thinking,” Xander said. “What if it's Mom making that noise?”

David listened to the heavy thumps. “That's not Mom,” he said. “It's the big man, the one who took her.”

“Phemus,” Xander said.

“What?”

“There was a poster at school. It shows Odysseus being captured by a Cyclops. The Cyclops is huge and muscular, but a little flabby too. He's naked, except for these animal pelts around his waist. And he's bald.”

“Sounds exactly like the big man,” David said, amazed. “Does the Cyclops have a beard?”

“Naw, that part's different.”

“Plus, the big man has two eyes,” David pointed out. “He's not a Cyclops. What's Phay-mus?”

“Phemus,” Xander corrected. “The Cyclops's name is Polyphemus. I call him Phemus for short. That's the guy who took Mom.”

“Phemus,” David said, feeling it on his tongue.

It sounded like something was being dragged through the third-floor hallway.

“I'd like to know what's going on,” Xander said.

“You're not thinking about going up there?” David got a cold chill just thinking about it.

“Are you kidding?”

“I don't want anything to do with that hallway when what-ever's making those noises is there. Phemus or whoever. I'd rather never know what's going on and live, than find out and die.”

“No,
really
?” Xander said.

David rolled away.

Toria's eyes were closed, her mouth slightly parted.

He settled onto his back. A minute later he whispered, “Good night, Xander.”

“'Night, Dae.”

David's eyes felt heavy in his head, grainy as though sand had gotten in. Every time he blinked, it took more and more effort to open his lids again. Toria's slow, deep breathing lulled him closer to sleep. The noises from the third floor faded—in real-ity or only in his own ears, he didn't know, and didn't give it much thought.

His eyes closed and stayed that way.

CHAPTER

twenty -four

W
EDNESDAY,9:48 A.M.

His mother woke him. Her hand gently shook his shoulder.

His eyes fluttered open. There she was, leaning over him.

The morning light radiated behind her.

“Mom?” With consciousness came excitement: She was here! She had found her way home!

“David?” she whispered.

“Mom!” He sat up, throwing his arms around her.
I missed you! I love you! Are you all right?
But none of these things came out.

He just wanted to hold her, squeeze her, feel her in his arms.

“David.” She pushed him away.

His eyes found her face, longing to see it.

He blinked. The corners of his mouth dropped, as did his heart.

Toria sat in front of him, her face contorted by concern. She said, “Are you all right?”

“I—” Unwilling to let his mother go, he looked around the room. Daylight through the window made everything clear—and it was clear his mother was not there.

“You're crying,” Toria said. She brushed her fingers over his cheek.

“I thought . . .” He blinked, wiped his eyes.

“I know. You thought I was Mom,” Toria said. “You were dreaming.”

He tried to smile but couldn't.

His sister's face brightened.

“What?” he said.

“I want to go,” she said.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He shook his head. “Until Dad sorts things out with the police, we can't leave the house. They might grab us and not let us back in.”

“No,” she said. “I mean, I want to go get her. I want to go over.”

He glared at her. “Who? You? You said last night you didn't want to go through a portal.”

“I changed my mind. For Mom. You said they chased you out.”

David said, “The first time we went to the Civil War, I was wearing Confederate gray.” He saw that she didn't understand. “Xander and I—and Mom—were in
Union
territory. They thought I was an enemy soldier.”

“Xander too?”

He shook his head. “I guess they thought he was a Union soldier trying to run away. They don't like that much.”

“But they don't know
me
,” she said, “and I'm a little girl. What are they gonna do?”

“You don't know these worlds, Toria,” David said. “It's almost like the people over there
look
for reasons to not like you, to want to hurt you.”

“But I have to go, Dae.”

“Go where?” Xander said. He put his hand on the bed and lifted himself up to sit beside Toria.

“She wants to go over.”

“No way,” Xander said. He gave their sister a little push. He squinted at David. “Were you crying?”

Again David wiped his eyes, his face. He said, “That's . . . something else. Toria knows we can't go back, but she thinks she can.”

Xander stared into the corner of the room, thinking. He nodded.

“Xander, no,” David said.

Xander raised his eyebrows. He said, “Maybe she's right.”

“It's too dangerous.”

“
We
made it out alive.”

“Barely,” David reminded him.

“Look at her,” his brother said. “Who's going to hurt anything so cute?”

Toria grinned.

“Dad would kill us,” David said.

“Not if everything goes all right,” Xander said.

“Yes!” David grabbed Xander's arm. “In this case, even if she gets Mom and comes back without a scratch, he'd kill us. You know he would.”

CHAPTER

twenty -five

W
EDNESDAY, 10:30 A.M.

The argument continued in the kitchen.

David dropped bread into the toaster. He said, “It's never gone smoothly for us when we go over. It's always about fighting, running, survival.”

“Not all the time,” Xander said. He was scrambling eggs in a frying pan. “There was that one peaceful world. Beautiful meadows. Even the animals weren't afraid of me. Dad and I threw rocks into a river.”

“That sounds nice,” Toria said. She was opening a pack-age of bacon for Xander to fry up.

David watched the coils inside the toaster turn orange. He said, “
One
place where people weren't trying to kill us. One. And we
know
the Civil War world. It's not a peaceful meadow.”

Xander scooped the eggs onto a plate and started laying strips of bacon into the pan. The sizzling meat sounded like gale-force rain striking the windows.

The smells reminded David how hungry he was. The night before, he had choked down maybe three bites of clumpy spaghetti, which had sat in his stomach like Play-Doh.

Tongs in hand, Xander watched the bacon. He said, “Crispy or fatty?”

“Crispy,” Toria said.

David said, “I don't know about ‘fatty,' but I don't like crispy.” The toast popped up, and he transferred the slices to a plate. He put more bread in the toaster, levered them down, and began buttering the finished ones. He said, “I can't believe we're doing this.”

“Arguing?” Xander said. “Hey, you're the one who won't listen to reason.”

“I mean making breakfast,” David said. “Like it's just some normal day.”

“Maybe it is,” Xander said. “For us.”

The toast kept tearing under David's butter knife. Every stroke made the bread uglier. He turned away from it.

“Dad told me, ‘Time is God's way of preventing everything from happening at once,' ” he said. “But it
is
all happening at once: We have to rescue Mom from a world that's trying to kill us. We have to figure out how to get Dad out of jail without letting them arrest us too. We have to watch out for Taksidian and the fifty ways he's trying to capture us, murder us, or other-wise get us out of the house. We should be picking Jesse's brain for everything he knows.”

“Picking his brain?” Toria said. “
Eew
.”

“It means learning what he knows, Toria,” David said. “My point is, it's too much, all at once.”

Xander smiled at him. “Like I said, maybe that's our nor-mal . . . now that we're in this house.”

“I wish we'd never laid eyes on it,” David said.

Xander flipped the bacon. He said, “I'm not sure we ever had a choice, Dae.”

“What do you mean?” David said. “Like it's our
destiny
to be here?”

Xander shrugged. “I'm just saying. With Dad kind of making it happen, and the reason he did going back to when he was a kid. And remember, we were excited about this place . . . attracted to it, even though it was scary. Doesn't all of that feel like destiny to you?”

“What about Hollywood? You said you were going to make movies.”

“I am. This is today's destiny. Filmmaking is tomorow's.”

The second round of toast popped up behind David. He said, “I don't know what destiny feels like, but if this is it, I don't like it. I want to un-destiny this place from my life.”

“That's why Toria should go over,” Xander said.

David wanted to punch him. “Xander, it's too—”

Xander waved his hand at him. “Never mind, never mind. You know those noises last night, the ones coming from the third floor?”

“Creepy,” Toria said.

Xander began using the tongs to pull the bacon from the grease and lay the strips on folded paper towels. “David, you said you'd rather not know what was causing them than go up there and die.”

“And you said, ‘No,
really?
' ” David reminded him. He put the new toast on top of the mangled slices, then cut thin pat-ties of butter from the stick and set them on the edge of the plate. He carried his breakfast contribution into the dining room.

Toria followed with the eggs, and Xander with the bacon.

Xander said, “What if I figured out a way to know what's happening without having to go up there?”

David gave him a puzzled look. “Okaaaay . . . ?”

“A camera,” Xander said. A big grin stretched out on his face. “We put one right at the beginning of the hallway, just inside the landing.”

David followed Toria back into the kitchen. Xander was right on him, wanting David to tell him what a brilliant idea it was.

Instead, David said, “Will a camera work up there? Your video camera didn't work when I took it over into that jungle world.”

“That was through a portal,” Xander said. “Who knows why it went wacky? I've filmed all over the house. It works.”

Toria brushed past them, carrying three glasses of OJ. David picked up a stack of plates, and Xander plucked forks out of a drawer.