Whirlwind (6 page)
He stopped and said, “David, I’m ready to knock the cubes out on your side of the wall. Ready?”
“Ready to get out of here.”
“Get in the corner closest to me,” Keal instructed. “The stone will fly back away from you.” He heard crunching from within, pictured the bones David was walking over.
Man!
“Ready,” David said.
Keal beat the wall down, chunk by chunk, stone by stone.
He heard the pieces striking a wall inside and only then realized how tight the space was in there. He grunted and yelled, taking his anger out on the blasted wall.
“Okay . . . okay!” David yelled.
Keal realized the boy had been calling out for some time.
He dropped the sledgehammer and leaned over, propping his arms on his knees. He panted and watched sweat drop from his face to the floor.
David appeared in the opening, Toria’s light gliding over him. Gray dust coated his hair, face, and clothes.
“Tell me that’s wall dust!” Toria said. “And not
people
dust.”
David brushed it off his cheek, coughed, and patted his chest, kicking up another plume. He said, “A little of both, I think.”
“Let’s get you out of there,” Keal said, reaching out for him.
As David stepped over the wall, he lost his balance and fell back into the chamber. On his way, he grabbed at the side of the opening, dislodging a stone, which dislodged the one above it. The block above that one gave way as well, then an entire column of blocks came down, one at a time, faster and faster.
“Look out!” Keal said, pushing Toria with his arm. “David, get back!”
“I’m—” David started. Any words that followed reached Keal’s ears sounding like a howling wind.
Toria’s light caught David in the act of lifting himself off the chamber floor . . . or still falling onto it. He seemed to be hovering above it, his arms rotating for balance, one foot kicking in the air. His T-shirt fluttered and rippled, as though wind were billowing under it. Beyond his chest, David’s face was white and wide-eyed. His mouth moved, a silent scream for help. The blackness around him moved in, seeming to flow over him like liquid—
Or a hand
, Keal thought. He could almost see thick, black fingers slipping around David.
Then he was gone.
Toria’s light played on the far wall and floor of the empty chamber. She cried out her brother’s name.
THURSDAY, 7:05 P.M.
David crashed down on a hard surface. The light was dim, seeping into the area he occupied only from around a narrow door on his right. But he could make out shelves above him. They were lined with cans, plastic-wrapped loaves of bread, a bag of chips.
Taksidian’s pantry!
he realized.
I came back.
Still moving, either from the teleportation itself or from his own jostling around as he tried to get his balance, he spun on his tailbone. His foot hit the center of the bifold door. It slid open. Sunlight streamed in. He blinked, squinted . . . and gasped in terror.
Taksidian was staring at him. Standing in the kitchen, he was bent over a big black trash bag, tying a knot in the top. His face was turned toward the pantry, and he seemed as startled to see David as David was to see him.
The man said, “Boy!” and sprang for him. His arms reached, his hands stretched out. His nails appeared impossibly long, impossibly sharp.
David grabbed the edge of the door and pulled it closed— or he would have if his foot wasn’t still positioned dead center with the door, keeping it from popping shut. He pulled his foot back.
Taksidian’s fingers circled around the edge of the door.
David felt the door slipping away from his grasp. He tightened his grip and pulled. Before Taksidian could get his other hand on the edge and yank with the power of both arms, David did the first thing that came to his mind. He shifted his legs under him, rose to his knees, and sank his teeth into Taksidian’s fingers.
The man howled. David opened his mouth, and the fingers flashed away through the opening. He yanked at the door, closing it.
A warm, scentless breath came up from the floor, down from above, circling around from the sides of the pantry, washing over him. Darkness came with it. The floor under his knees vaporized. For an instant, he felt as though he’d been dropped off a cliff. Then solid ground formed under him. Not so solid, actually: it was the gravelly bones of the chamber. They crunched beneath him.
“David!” Toria yelled.
The flashlight beam shined in his face.
“What just happened?” Keal said.
David sprang up and reached for the man. “Get me outta here!” he said. “Don’t let me fall back!”
Keal grabbed him and began hoisting him through the opening.
Wind swirled behind David, whipping through the hair on the back of his head, fluttering his shirt. He glanced back and saw what he had only imagined earlier: a vampire, its face and hands ghostly white drifting out of the darkness toward him.
But it wasn’t a vampire— “Taksidian!” David screamed, scrambling to get his legs over the wall, clawing at Keal’s shoulders to pull himself out.
Hands clasped over his ankles, yanking him back a few inches.
“Hey!” Keal yelled. Squeezing David tighter, he threw himself backward.
David felt like the rope in a tug-o’-war. Then his feet slipped through Taksidian’s grip, and he flew through the opening. He felt long, bony fingers on his calves, squirming over them, trying to sink into them. David pulled his legs up, felt the fingers slide over his ankles and heels, snag the top of his sneaker, and slip away. He fell on top of Keal, who landed hard on his back.
Keal tossed him aside. David rolled, looking back to see Taksidian half out of the opening, his body bent over the remaining wall. He was still reaching, clawing for David. The man snapped his twisted face toward Keal. Taksidian’s eyes flashed wide, then narrowed into a squinty glare. He looked between David and Keal, as though figuring out whether he could still get David, determined to do it regardless of anything else.
Keal leapt up, the sledgehammer miraculously in his hands. He hoisted it back.
Taksidian jerked sideways. The hammer struck the blocks beside him, kicking up sparks and dust. Keal pulled the hammer back. As he swung it, Taksidian pushed off the wall, back into the chamber. The hammer cracked against the wall. A block disappeared into the blackness beyond. Keal hefted the hammer back again and waited. He reversed a step.
“Come out of there!” he yelled. “Hands first! Show me your hands.”
Nothing. Not a sound. No movement.
Keal waited. Finally, he said, “David . . . ?”
“I got it,” David said. He rose and took the flashlight from Toria. Shining it into the opening, he stepped closer.
“Careful,” Keal said.
One more step, then up on his tiptoes. He raised the light, moved the beam around through the opening. “He’s gone,”
David said.
“Maybe,” Keal said. “Maybe not.”
David moved closer. “I can see the back wall and the floor.”
“Okay, come here.” Keal held the sledgehammer out to him. “Trade with me.”
The hammer was heavier than it looked, and it looked heavy. David pushed it up over his head, as though it were a barbell. “Okay.”
Keal leaned into the opening, aimed the light at the ground nearest them.
“What?” Toria said.
“Nothing. He’s gone.”
David dropped the hammer. It clattered to the floor, and he fell onto his hands and knees beside it. He spat on the floor. Spat again. He felt Keal’s hand on his back.
“David?” Keal said.
Holding his head low, he raised an index finger:
Give me a minute
. He could taste Taksidian’s blood on his tongue. He retched, opened his mouth to puke, but nothing came up.
He spat and watched a string of drool dangle from his lip to the floor. He leaned back and sat on his heels. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, saw blood smeared with slobber, and rubbed it off on his jeans.
“I didn’t think going through a portal could make you sick,” Keal said. “Tired, but not sick.”
“I bit him,” David said.
“You what?”
“I had to,” David said. “I went back to his house. He saw me, tried to grab me. I had to bite him to get away.” David spat again. “Tasted like raw steak.
Old
steak.”
“Gross!” Toria declared.
David looked around Keal at the broken wall. He said, “He might come back.”
Toria backed away.
Keal handed the flashlight to her and scooped up the sledgehammer. He stood in front of the opening, legs apart, hammer cocked over his shoulder, and said, “Let him come.”
THURSDAY, 7:07 P.M.
The circle of light from Toria’s flashlight trembled over the edges of the ragged opening. It slipped into the chamber and wobbled against the far wall. It skimmed over Keal’s back, casting a giant shadow of their protector on the wall.
David pulled his legs out from under him and sat on the floor.
They waited like that for a few minutes. Finally, Keal glanced around the basement, which was lit by weak, yellowish bulbs mounted to ceiling trusses here and there. A labyrinth of walls divided the area into rooms. From any given spot, not much of the basement was visible.
“Anything we can use to block this thing?” he said.
David tried to remember. He’d been down here only once, when he, Xander, and Dad had inspected the basement, looking for ways someone could get into the house. Or for “squatters,” as Dad had referred to people living where they didn’t belong. David had thought it was a funny word and didn’t even want to know what someone would be doing
squatting
in their basement. Now he wished they
had
found people living down here, to explain the big bare footprints Mom had seen in the dust on the dining room floor. That would have been much better than the truth, that some bad guy was coming into their house from the past.
“I can’t remember,” he said.
Keal backed away from the opening. He set the head of the sledgehammer on the floor next to David’s knee. Its handle rose straight up.
Keal said, “Toria, wait here with your brother. I need your flashlight for a few minutes.”
She handed it to him and dropped down to her knees beside David. She put an arm around his shoulders.
Keal returned to the chamber and leaned into it again, flashing the light around.
“Don’t,” David said. He felt like a guy who’d been bitten by a lion, only to see his friend stick his head into the beast’s mouth.
Keal threw an anxious look at him and stepped away from the hole. “I’ll be right back. Holler if you hear or see anything, especially in the chamber.”
“You really didn’t have to say that,” David said.
Keal smiled and walked around a corner. “Keep talking,”he called out, “so I know you’re safe.”
“About what?” Toria said.
“Anything. I just want to hear you.”
“La la la la la,” Toria said. She smiled at David, then frowned. “What happened?” She was looking at his knuckles, bloody and bruised.
He rubbed them. “Pounding on the wall.”
“Does it hurt?”
He shook his head.
She called over her shoulder to Keal. “Shouldn’t we call Dad, let him know David’s okay?”
“Good idea,” Keal answered.
Toria crawled across the floor a short distance and returned with the house’s wireless phone. She punched the buttons and said, “We got him. David. He’s okay. Well, he almost threw up, but he’s okay now.”
David shook his head. Sealed up behind a wall. Teleporting away and back again. Taksidian! And it’s his almost barfing that Toria tells Dad about. “Let me talk to him.” He took the phone from her. “Dad?”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m good. But, Dad, listen. There’s another portal. It—”
“Wait,” Dad interrupted. “Xander tells me Taksidian’s been bugging our phones.”
David bit his lip. “I forgot,” he whispered.
“Don’t say something you don’t want him to hear.”
“I don’t want him to hear anything,” David said. He pushed the handle of the sledgehammer. It dipped almost to the floor, then righted itself. He supposed they would have to give up using phones altogether. Strange how their lives were starting to resemble a video game: as soon as you gained one advantage—say, getting Nana back—something happened that cranked up the difficulty level.
“I love you, Dae.”
“Love you, Dad.”
He disconnected and set the phone on the floor.
Toria studied his face. “Were you crying?”
“Not now,” he said. He tapped the hammer’s handle again. It dipped and came back up.
