Timescape (11 page)

David smiled. “He can debrief you then.”

She gave him another quick squeeze and Toria a longer one. She and Dad left, and David locked the door behind them. He turned to see Keal pointing at him.

“Bed,” Keal said. He swung his finger to Toria. “You too.”

CHAPTER
twenty - three

WEDNESDAY, 10:52 P.M.

David rolled over, scrunching the pillow into a ball under his head. Moonlight coming in the window caught the edges of Xander's dark figure. He was sitting up in bed.

“Go to sleep,” David groaned.

Instead, Xander swung his legs off the bed. “This sucks.”

“You heard what Keal said. You need to sleep.”

Xander made a rude noise with his lips. “He doesn't know me.”

“Sounds like he knows a lot,” David said. He lifted his head, propped an arm under it. “I've been thinking.”

“Uh-oh.”

“What do you think of Keal?” David asked.

“He's cool.”

“He's more than that,” David said. “He's strong. He was an Army Ranger, so he knows weapons, combat, strategy, tactics.”

“He's a
nurse
now,” Xander said, as though that somehow made Keal less of a tough guy.

David didn't think so. He said, “Right. Look at what's happened to us. We've been beat up, cut up, pounded on, bashed.”

“So?”

“So, he's exactly what we need. He has all the skills we can use, from fighting to getting patched up. Don't you think that's strange?”

“Strange how?” Xander swung his legs around to sit on the edge of his bed.

“Dad always says coincidence is baloney.”

“What are you saying?” Xander asked. “That
God
sent Keal to us?”

“
Exactly
the guy we need right now?” David said. “If that's not God, what is?”

Xander didn't say anything.

David continued. “Remember that verse Mom used to quote when things got tough? Not
this
kind of tough, but like when she backed into that car and the guy pretended he had whiplash and said he was going to sue? She always said, ‘If God is for you, who can be against you?' ”

“Uh, let's see: Taksidian? Phemus? This house?”

“It doesn't mean people aren't going to
try
to get you,” David said. “It means they won't win.”

“They're doing a pretty good job,” said Xander.

“But they haven't won. Somehow we've always gotten away. We're still in the house. We still have a chance. Now, of all the people in the world, Keal shows up.”

“Hey,” Xander said, a little too enthusiastically, “maybe he's an angel. Like
you
!”

“I'm not saying that. But it can't be a coincidence that who we needed is who showed up.”

“We needed someone to rescue Mom and get us out of this place,” Xander said.

“Maybe that's what's happening. He's helping us do that.”

“I meant like
that
.” Xander snapped his fingers. “Oh, never mind. If God is for us, why did Mom get kidnapped in the first place?”

David had thought about that and hadn't come up with an answer. So he said something else he had heard. “Sometimes bad things happen to good people.”

Xander's silhouette threw up its arms. “Oh, well . . . which is it, then: is God for us, or is He allowing bad things to happen to good people?”

“I don't know,” David said. “Mom said sometimes things that look bad are really good. We just can't see it when we're in the middle of it.” He expected Xander to cut that down with a snide comment too. When he didn't, David said, “Well, I think someone up there is helping us.”

“I hope you're right,” Xander whispered. They were silent for a while. Then Xander said, “We never finished putting up the camera.”

“You want to do that now?” David said. “
Up there
?”

Xander thought about it. “Maybe not that, but something.”

“Remember how we used to talk at night? I liked that.”

“We talked about this house, before we moved in. I thought it was haunted.”

“Guess you were right,” David said. “Not by ghosts, though. What was it Jesse said, something about Time haunting this place?”

Xander's dark form nodded. He said, “We thought this room was spooky.” He laughed. “Little did we know, huh?”

“It's still kinda spooky,” David said. “I keep thinking something else is going to happen, and I don't have any idea where it'll come from. Look at the linen closet, the way it's a different kind of portal—to our school, of all places. And it's down here on the second floor, right outside our bedroom door. Just goes to show, weird stuff can happen anywhere in this house.”

Okay, he'd just scared himself. He suddenly had the feeling something was watching them from a dark corner of the room. He rolled onto his back, lifted his head, and looked into the shadows by the closet. He scanned around to the corner where the room opened up to the octagon-shaped area in the house's tower. It was in front of that area's center window that Dad had been waiting to scare them when they first moved in. David had almost peed his pants.

Xander said, “You know, as much as we've learned about this house, there's so much more we don't know.”

David sat up and scooted back to lean against the head-board: all the better to keep his eye on the entire room. He said, “Like what?”

“Like
why
,” Xander said. “Why is it here?”

“Jesse built it.”

“I mean, why does it do what it does? What are the portals all about? And that's just for starters. What's Taksidian doing with them? Why was Mom taken?”

White light flared up against Xander, revealing him sitting there in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. David's breath stopped in his throat. Then Xander swiveled his head toward the window, and David realized that the light was shining through.

Xander stood and leaned over the nightstand. He pushed aside the thin sheers that covered the window and said, “Dad's home.” The light went off, and he sat again. “I'm glad Nana's out. It's better for her.”

“Maybe we should all go,” David said. He lifted a glass of water off the nightstand and downed half of it.

“We can't risk leaving the house empty,” Xander said.

“You know that. Taksidian might do something that keeps us out for good. Then we'd never find Mom.”

They heard the door open, then shut, downstairs. It was more of a shudder that came up through the floor than a sound.

David finished the water and set it down. He said, “You really think we can find out something about him, about Taksidian? Something that'll help?”

“That's it,” Xander said. “I can look him up on the Internet.”

“We're not connected yet,” David reminded him. Their Mac hadn't come with a modem. They had a broadband modem, but they hadn't ordered the service yet. A lot of things had fallen through the cracks after Mom got taken.

“The school is,” Xander said.

“The . . . You're talking about going through the linen closet? No, Xander. We promised Dad no more sneaking around. Besides, Taksidian might expect us to do something like that. He's probably waiting for us at the school.”

“He's just a guy, Dae. He can't be everywhere at once.”

They heard Dad's footsteps in the hall. The sound faded as he entered his bedroom.

Xander stood.

“He has people working for him,” David reminded him.

“The watchers.”

“If he's all-knowing, all-seeing, he'd have gotten to us by now.” He started for the door.

“Xander, wait! Do it tomorrow.”

“Dad says we have to go to school,” Xander said. “Got to keep up appearances, you know? I don't have computer class, and I won't be able to get to a computer without people around. Now or never, Dae. Want to come?”

David crossed his arms over his chest. “No.”

Xander reached the door. “You sure?”

“I'll tell Dad.”

“No, you won't.” He turned the handle, cracked the door. A thin line of light sliced the darkness.

“Wait!” David said. He hopped up out of bed. He was halfway across the room when Xander swung open the door. David squinted against the hallway light, which Dad had left on, and stopped dead in his tracks.

Keal was sitting in the chair they had propped against the linen closet door. A magazine rested in his lap. He said, “Boys.”

Xander gaped at him. “What are you doing?”

Keal flashed a wide grin. “Making sure you get your sleep.”

Xander swung a stunned gaze at David, who said, “The sleep police.”

Xander turned back to Keal. “You gotta be kidding.”

“Good night, guys,” Keal said.

Xander shut the door. “This sucks,” he said.

CHAPTER
twenty - four

THURSDAY, 1:23 A.M.

David's bladder woke him. He considered sleeping through his need but decided he couldn't. Groggily, he flipped back his blankets and sat up. Everything ached: his broken arm, his forehead where Xander had conked him with the sextant, the top of his skull where the wall had landed when Phemus pushed it down, his cheek where Phemus had punched it, his palm where he had grabbed Phemus's obsidian blade, his shoulder where the warrior's arrow had nicked it in the jungle world, and all of his muscles . . . just because they did. If they stayed in the house much longer, he'd end up one big walking wound.

In the next bed, Xander snored in a slow, steady rhythm.

So much for all that stuff Xander said about not getting a wink of sleep, no way, no how
, David thought.

And if Xander hadn't yapped about going through the linen closet/locker portal to use the school's computers, David wouldn't have drunk the water, and he wouldn't be up now.

Thanks, Xander.

Groaning as quietly as possible, David stood. He stumbled to the door and opened it. The hall light was blazing. He shielded his eyes with his hand. Keal was still in the chair. David thought he was staring down at the magazine in his lap, then he realized the man was asleep.

David stepped into the hall. A floorboard creaked.

“Whoa! Hey!” Keal said, his head snapping up. He brought up the magazine as if it were a weapon. His eyes focused on David. “What—?”

“Potty break,” David said. He walked past Keal and into the bathroom.

Washing his hands, he looked at the boy staring out at him from the mirror. Not the self he knew and loved. This one was almost as pale as the creatures they had seen in the future world. He had dark circles under his eyes. The left side was darker and bigger than the right; it was a true black eye, not just tired. Below it, his cheek was still discolored: red, yellow, blue. The hair on one side rose straight up. He thought,
Poor kid, whoever you are.
He leaned close. Same hazel eyes. At least that part of him was unchanged.

He switched off the light and went into the hall. Keal's chin was touching his chest again.

Something clanged in the other direction. He looked. The far end of the hallway was dark. The lights in the corridor leading to the third-floor stairwell had shorted out when the walls collapsed. The ceiling down there creaked. A door banged.

David swung his head around, sure that the sound would have awakened Keal. But no, the man hadn't budged.

Wake him
, he thought.

Just a sec.

In this house, if everyone got up whenever there was a noise, no one would sleep. Ever.

He stood without moving just outside of the bathroom. The toilet was gurgling softly. He strained his ears to hear past it.

Something bumped. Definitely. Too quietly to be on this floor. Had to be upstairs.

Okay . . . so?
Last night someone or something had thumped around up there for half the night. That's why Xander had wanted to install the camera. Whatever had made the noise hadn't ventured into the main part of the house. David didn't think so, anyway. They hadn't opened the master bedroom door, where he, Xander, and Toria were bedded down. But last night two walls had separated the third floor from the second.

Tonight the walls were gone. Would the thing upstairs take that as an invitation to come down?

David shook his head. He didn't even know if it
was
a “thing.” It could be nothing more than the doors up there opening and shutting. They'd witnessed that before, when the doors ripped off the locks he and Dad had put on them.

The camera.
Xander hadn't finished mounting it, but it was there, above the doorway between the hallway and the landing.

David had seen Xander tightening the screws when Phemus and his cohorts had come up behind him. If he could get to the MC, he could take a peek at the monitor.

But the MC was so close to the stairs, the collapsed walls nearly reached its door. Did he dare get that close?

He started walking. Slowly. On his toes. He let his arm brush the wall as he moved toward the end of the hall.

He looked back at Keal. Why not wake him?

Because I'm not a baby. I'm strong and courageous. Strong and courageous. Could you say you were brave if you never acted bravely?

He took another step, then another. He was in front of Toria's open door now. Her night-light filled the room with a faint yellow glow. Her little body barely lifted the blankets off the mattress.

As he passed the banister, he glanced at the chandelier that hung over the foyer. He remembered the way it had thrown glowing diamonds on the walls when he and Xander had cast their flashlights on it. That was when they had first seen Phemus, standing at the end of hall, watching them.

His stomach clenched up. The end of the hall wasn't
completely
dark. Light from the overheads showed him the far wall. If someone were standing there now, he'd see him. But if someone were standing just around the corner . . .