Gatekeepers (20 page)

“But our grandpa's name was Hank,” Toria said.

“Hank is Henry,” she said, “like Jack is John.”

“You . . .” Xander said. “
You
wrote the message next to it?”

“Yes, I was so—” Her smile faltered. “
Was?
Toria said his name
was
Hank.”

Xander frowned with her. He said, “Our grandfather . . . he died last year.”

“Oh . . .” She turned her head away. Her shoulders rose and fell. “I suppose . . . I mean, it has been so long. I always thought of him the way he was the last time I saw him—young. I guess all along he was marching toward that date we all have to keep.”

She spoke the way Dad did sometimes. Xander had always liked it, describing things in ways he hadn't thought of before. Songwriters were masters at it, poets too.
Marching toward that date we all have to keep
—death. It made it seem less terrible. A little.

“I'm sorry,” Xander said.

“And I'm sorry for you,” she said. “I knew him for only ten years. You must have known him longer.”

“I was fourteen when he . . . kept his date,” Xander said. It wasn't quite right, but she knew his meaning. “I'm fifteen now.”

“Fifteen,” she said, shaking her head. “And you?” She looked at David.

“Twelve.”

“I'm nine,” Toria chimed.

“My goodness,” she said. “I really have missed so much.” Worry etched lines in her brow. “Your father, my son, is . . . is he all right?”

“Grandma called him Eddie,” David said to Xander, tickled.

She touched David's knee. “Not Grandma. Call me Nana.

I always wanted to be Nana.”

“Yeah,” Xander said. He was thrilled to give her good news. “Dad's really all right. Aunt Beth too. She's married, and you have another grandkid. Her name's Anne. She's thirteen.”

“She's a grouch,” Toria said.

“Toria!” Xander said.

The woman—
Nana
—smiled. “Let's see,” she said.

“Alexander, David, Victoria, Anne. All royal names. My children kept the tradition. I don't suppose your mother has such a name?”

“Everyone calls her G,” David said.

“G?”

All three of the King children said, “Definitely not a Gertrude!” and laughed.

“I see. And how is she?”

“She's . . . over there,” Xander said, waving his hand at the portal door.

“What?” Nana said. “Looking for
me
?”

“No, she was kidnapped,” David said. “Like you were.”

“From this house?” Her hand covered her mouth, and her eyes welled up. “Oh . . . oh . . . I'm sorry. My dear children.” She rose and hugged Xander's head. She turned to David and gave him a squeeze, then opened her arms to Toria, who came off the bench to be comforted.

As if to herself, Nana said, “This house, this awful house.”

CHAPTER

forty -three

W
EDNESDAY, 4:41 P.M.

David heard Dad's comfortingly familiar voice call from the hallway.

“Hello? Kids, I'm home!”

He knew his brother and sister's wide eyes matched his own.

“Dad!” he said. He scrambled out of the antechamber.

He ran to Dad at the beginning of the hall and jumped into his arms. He squeezed, as if trying to meld their bodies together.

Toria and Xander collided into Dad, their arms binding them all together.

“I missed you, Daddy,” Toria said. “I was so scared.”

“I knew you'd be fine,” Dad said. “But from what Jesse told me on the way over, you guys haven't been bored.”

Disentangling themselves, the King kids spoke all at once:

“This big man chased us . . .”

“I was putting up a camera when . . .”

“Toria went over . . . I didn't know what to do . . .”

“Hold on, hold on,” Dad said. “I want to hear it all, but I—” His words hit a brick wall.

David followed his gaze to Nana, who had stepped out of the antechamber.

Dad‘s face flashed from puzzlement to shock to joy. He backed away from this last emotion to settle on hopefulness.

“Mom?”

“Eddie,” she said. “You're not the little boy I've carried around in my head for thirty years. But I see him in there. I would recognize you anywhere.”

Dad began walking toward her. She met him halfway, opening her arms.

“Mom,” he said. They embraced, and Dad buried his face in her shoulder. He was big, compared to her. His arms seemed to engulf her.

David imagined that the last time they'd hugged, their physi-cal proportions had been reversed, the difference in sizes even more pronounced. She would not have changed much, but Dad had been seven.

The kids smiled at one another. Toria teared up. Xander's rising and falling chest said he, too, was on the brink of losing it. David was doing a pretty good job of holding it in.

Finally Dad lifted his head and backed away a step. He sniffed and ran his palm over his face. He grinned at the kids. His eyes scanned his mother's face, studying every feature. He said, “I've missed you so much.”

Her hand caressed his cheek, then she slipped her fingers into his hair, brushing it back—exactly the way he did with his children.

David marveled at this: the little things from your parents you keep with you your whole life. He wondered what manner-isms he had picked up from Mom and Dad. And that they, in turn, had picked up from
their
parents. How far back could it go, these traits?

He looked at Xander. He and his brother had the same-shaped eyes. Xander's were blue, like their mother's. David's were hazel—brownish green, sometimes appearing one color, then the other—like Dad's and, he knew now, like his nana's.

Xander leaned close to him. He whispered, “But it
wasn't
Mom who left the note. We
didn't
find her.”

David nodded sadly. “Back to square one,” he said.

They approached Dad and Nana at the center of the hall.

“Guys,” Dad said. “I'm going to take your grandmother downstairs. Get her something to drink.” He raised his eye-brows at her. “Something to eat?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I might need to lie down somewhere, though. I'm a bit . . . no, a
lot
exhausted. I feel so drained. Too much emotion.”

Toria hopped up. “She can use my bed!” She walked up to the older woman and took her hand. “I'll get it ready for you, Nana.”

Nana smiled at Xander and David. “I want to hear all about you two. We have so much to catch up on, don't we?”

They nodded.

“And we'll have plenty of time to do it, I'm sure.”

David gave her a hug. Xander did the same.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for finding me, for bringing me
home
.”

Dad escorted her down the hallway toward the landing. Toria strolled on her other side, holding her hand.

Nana looked around at the crooked hallway, at the wall sconces and old-fashioned decorations. “It hasn't changed at all,” she said. She spotted something on the wall, sending her fingers to her lips.

David moved farther into the hallway to see that she was looking at four parallel furrows in the wallpaper. He and Xander had discovered them when they'd first found the hallway.

She started weeping again, and David realized what they were: her scratch marks, put there when she was kidnapped.

They heard a sound behind them and looked back to see Keal appear on the landing with Jesse's wheelchair. He looked surprised to see another person up there with them, but he simply nodded and disappeared back down the stairs. A moment later he reappeared with Jesse and eased him into the chair.

“Jesse, Keal,” Dad said. “This is my mother.”

Jesse's eyes went wide. His jaw dropped open. “Kimberly?” he said.

Her head tilted. “Have we met?”

“I'm Henry's uncle, ma'am,” Jesse said.

She stared at him. Slowly, she released Toria's hand and touched his. “It's been a long time, Jesse.”

CHAPTER

forty -four

W
EDNESDAY,5:00 P.M.

Keal, David, and Xander stood around Jesse's wheelchair in the third-floor hallway. The light from the strange lamps hanging on the walls flickered, flamelike. To David, it made the curving corridor appear to pulse, as if it were feeling the beating of a distant heart.

“Nana's the one who left the message on the tent,” he said, hanging his head. “Not Mom.”

“I see,” Jesse said. “I'm sorry, son. We'll keep looking.” He touched David's arm. “Look on the bright side.”

“Dad's got
his
mom back?” David said.

“Well, that too . . . but I was thinking about your mother. Since your grandmother survived for so long, there's no reason to think your mom couldn't do the same.”

“For thirty years?” David said. He couldn't even imagine that many years, let alone that many years looking for Mom. He'd be forty-two in thirty years.

“For however long it takes,” said Jesse. “But I don't think it'll take that long. You've been looking for your mom only a few days, and you found
somebody
. That's a pretty good record.” He looked around the hallway, then reached up and smoothed back his hair.

“The wind's not blowing now,” David said. “Like it did last night. That was weird.”

Jesse nodded. “I have to say, it's a bit frightening being up here, so close to the portals. If I'm up here and Time decides it wants me, I'm not sure I could do anything about it. Remind me to head back downstairs in an hour.”

“Why does it want you in the first place?” Xander said.

“There's a balance to everything in the world,” Jesse said. “Things need to be where they belong. We don't belong in the past, but if we go back there enough times, or stay long enough, history sort of . . . gets used to us. It starts to
want
us there, because by our continued presence, we made a place for ourselves. Like if you lie on a bed long enough, you get up and the mattress contains a perfect shape of your body.”

“You were in this house nearly fifty years,” Xander said. “Going through the portals all that time?”

“In and out,” Jesse agreed. “Not every day, but a few times a week. It was enough. The past wants me back. That's why I live half a continent away. Just in case its reach is farther than I've imagined.”

“Have you felt it where you live?” Xander said.

“Nope,” Jesse said. “Either it can't reach that far or it forgot about me.”

David looked around the hallway, at all the closed doors, at the wall lights with their carved figures of tigers and fighters and faces. He said, “You talk about it like it's alive.”

“In a way, it is,” Jesse said. “But in the manner in which a tree is alive. If you hack into it, sap covers the gouge and eventually heals itself. Trees adjust to circumstances, over time leaning toward the sun, for example.” He shook his head. “Not alive as a human is alive, as a human is intelligent. Time abides by certain rules, the way the ocean does. A man drowns in the ocean, and we say the ocean took him. Do we mean that it consciously sought out the man and took him away? No. Time is like that: rules, but no reason.”

He looked between David and Xander. “Now, while we're up here, while I can be here, tell me everything you know about these rooms—what you call antechambers—and the portals. Everything you've seen in every world you've visited. That will tell me the best way to help you.”

CHAPTER

forty -five

W
EDNESDAY, 5:37 P.M

David had just peered into an antechamber and shut the door when Dad stepped into the hallway.

“Nana's going to take a nap in Toria's room,” he said, smiling. “That is, if Toria lets her. Your sister's talking up a storm.” He took in the activity in the hallway—David, Xander, and even Keal moving from door to door, checking the items behind each. “What's going on?”

“Ed,” Jessie said, beckoning from his wheelchair at the far end of the hall. “When we spoke on the way home from the jail, you didn't tell me about . . . what did you call it, Xander?”

“Peaceful world,” Xander said. “You know, Dad. The place you and I went, where we sat by the river and you carved Bob into the tree.”

“The only world that's not violent,” Dad said. He patted David's back as he headed for Jesse. “Do you know it, Jesse? You want to go there?”

Jesse's eyes closed slowly. “I know it, Ed, but no. I don't ever want to see it again.”

Dad stopped. “I don't understand.”

“I know.” Jesse's eyes opened as slowly as they'd closed. “But you need to. You need to see it for what it is.”

“What it is?” Dad said, spreading his hands. “It's one of the nicest places I've ever been. Even the air has a special quality, like . . . I don't know . . . fresh, invigorating. Right, Xander?”

Xander nodded, but his face was tight, concerned. He looked through the door he had just opened, then shut it. He moved slowly to the next door, prompting David to carry on with the search as well. But David could tell that his brother's ears and eyes were still on Jesse and Dad.

“Jesse,” Dad said. He squatted down in front of the old man. “What is this about?”

“That world is not what you think it is,” Jesse said. “Something terrible happened. I believe it has to do with the man who wants your house.”

“Taksidian?”

“Yes, but when I knew him, he went by another name,” Jesse said. “I was here when he arrived. Almost immediately, he began breaking in, going through the portals. It was then that history started changing in ways I had never seen before. Terrible, horrendous ways. I don't know why he did it, but he did.”