Watcher in the Woods

by Robert Liparulo

  Xander rolled out of the way as Dad came crashing through: “Oomph!”

  Dad saw Xander beside him and touched him. “You all right?”

  “Took you long enough,” David said.

  Dad swung around to him. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve been hearing noises in the hallway, and the phone keeps ringing.”

  “What noises?”

  “I heard creaking, and a door slammed.”

  Dad scrambled to his feet. He tossed down the blanket and said, “Xander, put the items back. Let’s go.”

  Halfway to the staircase, the phone began ringing again.

  Dad said, “David—?”

  “Got it!” David ran ahead, clomped down the stairs and into the master bedroom. Toria was sitting on the bed, an array of dolls and their clothes splayed across the bedspread. The phone on the nightstand started into its fourth ring.

  “Why didn’t you answer it?” David said.

  “I’m not supposed to.”

  David snatched up the wireless receiver and thumbed a button. “Hello?”

  “There you are. Mr. King. I need to speak to Mr. King.” The woman’s words rattled at him, fast as machine-gun fire.

  “One moment, please.” He ran into the hall and met his father coming through the secret panel in the wall. He held the phone out to him.

  “Sounds important,” David whispered.

  Dad put the phone to his face. “Hello? . . . Yes?” He continued down the hall.

  David turned to Xander. In a hushed voice he said, “It sounded like my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Moreau.”

  Xander made a face. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. It wasn’t me, it was that kid I told you about. Clayton. She sent him to the office.”

  “Boys!” Dad called. He had walked around the corner into the main upstairs hallway. Now he stepped back into view. “Come on! We gotta go!”

  “Where?” Xander said.

  Dad vanished again, his footsteps clumping away. “City hall. Toria, grab your shoes.”

  “City hall? Why?” Xander called as the brothers raced around the corner.

  Dad came out of the master bedroom, pulling their sister along by the hand. His face was tight with worry. He said, “Someone’s trying to take the house!”

  CHAPTER thirty - three

  MONDAY, 8 : 37 P . M .

  In the 4Runner, Dad explained that someone had claimed that the house was unsafe. “The town council convened an emergency meeting to consider evicting us.”

  “Just because someone said our house was unsafe?” Xander said. His voice was high in disbelief.

  “Apparently somebody is trying to convince them that you guys are in danger,” Dad said. “They got the doctor who set David’s arm telling the council about his injuries. Someone’s claiming he was hurt in the house because it’s so dilapidated.”

  “What’s that?” Toria said.

  “Rundown,” Xander answered.

  “You keep saying someone,” David said. “Who is someone?”

  Dad’s eyes caught his in the rearview mirror. “That’s what I asked. The woman on the phone said she didn’t know.”

  “Or didn’t want to tell you,” Xander said.

  David thought about the doctor’s line of questioning at the clinic. He said, “No one said it was you who hurt me?”

  Dad shook his head. “Not yet, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to. I have a feeling this is just the beginning.”

  “Or the end,” Xander said, “if the city council believes them and kicks us out. Dad, you can’t let that happen!”

  Dad said, “There’s something else I don’t get . . . why is this a city council matter? You’d think the safety of children would go to social services or even the police department.”

  Xander said, “They do things differently in small towns. Do they even have social services here?”

  “Still, calling in the city council just feels like overkill to me,” Dad said. “Like using a nuke when a penknife would do. And why wouldn’t they just come out and look for themselves?”

  In the rearview mirror David could see his father’s brows getting closer together as he thought about it.

  Dad said, “I think something bigger is going on.”

  “Bigger?” Xander said. “Like what?”

  Dad just shook his head. He said, “The mayor will probably be there. He was one of the people who interviewed me for my job.” His eyes found David in the mirror. “Dae, the woman on the phone hung up when I asked who she was. Any idea?”

  Xander spoke up. “He thinks it was his teacher.”

  “Teacher? Who?”

  “Mrs. Moreau,” David said.

  Xander said, “Dad, what if the phone call was just a way to get us out of the house?”

  That made Dad’s eyebrows actually touch. He said, “What makes you think that?”

  “We saw somebody watching our house last night.”

  “When?”

  “After the thing with the locks. I got up to go to the bathroom.”

  Dad said, “Maybe it was that Taksidian guy. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Xander threw up his hands. “It was late . . . I just thought . . .”

  “Listen, guys . . .” Dad shifted his head around to make eye contact with each of his children. His attention returned to the road before he continued: “With all that’s going on, everything is important. And somebody watching the house!” He scowled at Xander. “How could you think that wasn’t important?”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t important!”

  “But you didn’t tell me!”

  Xander’s shoulders slumped. Instead of explaining himself, he turned away to look out the window. David knew what he was thinking: with school, setting up the MCC, Dad and Xander going into another world—when was there time to even think of anything else? Maybe it was this kind of thing that the control room was meant for, a place to record things and keep everything straight. He knew Dad was right. With so much at stake, everything was important.

  “Here we go.” Dad said, braking to a hard stop.

  They were on Pinedale’s main street in front of the city hall. The front doors were open and people were coming out, descending the stairs, talking to one another. They all seemed to notice Dad at the same time. David thought they were trying not to look guilty of something.

  Dad opened the door and hopped out. He beelined it for an older man who was halfway down the concrete steps.

  Xander unsnapped his seat belt and swiveled around to face Toria and David. “That’s the mayor. His picture was on the wall in one of my classes.”

  David said, “His picture? Weird.”

  “Welcome to Pinedale.” Xander opened his door and scrambled out.

  David and Toria did the same. They all came together on the steps around Dad and the mayor. The other people who had come out of the building were watching from safe distances in both directions of the street.

  Dad was saying, “ . . . this isn’t right, and you know it.”

  The mayor said, “Now, Ed, our only concern is for the children.”

  The way he spoke made David think of a glazed doughnut, all soft and sugary.

  The mayor glanced at each of the King kids in turn. He paused on David, taking in, David was sure, his black eye, bruised cheek, and broken arm. Turning back to Dad, he said, “When we get reports like this, of course we have to investigate.”

  “Reports like what?” Dad snapped.

  “Well . . . uh . . .” His hand rose to indicate David.

  Dad continued: “I think investigation is the right word here. But it sounds to me like you’ve already investigated—or have no intention of ever investigating.”

  “Ed, we know that house. It’s been rundown for years.”

  “So?” Dad’s volume rose a notch. “That doesn’t automatically make it unsafe. Are you questioning my judgment when it comes to keeping my family safe? I can’t believe all these
people are going along with this.” Dad looked around at the men and women who were watching from the sidewalk.

  Suddenly he froze, and David saw the muscles in his jaw tighten, his eyes narrow. He looked over his shoulder to follow his father’s gaze. David’s heart jumped into his throat.

  Across the street, in an alleyway between two stores, stood a man. Though the figure was partially hidden by shadows, the light from a streetlamp crossed over his face, revealing Taksidian. As David watched, the man took a step back and vanished in the darkness.

  “Oh, I see,” Dad said. “Tell me, Steve, did your report happen to come from Mr. Taksidian?”

  The mayor swallowed, his eyes darting to the people standing around. He said, “It was . . . uh . . . anonymous. But I’ll have you know, Mr. Taksidian means a lot to this town. He is considering relocating several of his businesses to Pinedale. What that means to us, economically, at a time when businesses have been closing, people moving away—”

  Dad held up his palm. “I get it,” he said. His hand became a pointing finger aimed directly at the mayor’s nose. “Let me tell you. Whatever you do, make sure you can support it in a court of law, because that’s where you’re going to end up.”

  For just a moment the mayor’s eyes focused on Dad’s finger. He actually looked frightened—though David thought something like I’ll hunt you down like a dog would have worked better.

  The mayor composed himself and said, “Mr. King, is that a threat?”

  Dad’s finger didn’t waver. David was awfully glad it wasn’t pointed at him.

  “I’m just telling you, Steve, don’t mess with me, my family, or my house.” Dad turned and descended a few steps toward the car.

  The mayor cleared his throat and said, “Speaking of your family, Ed, where is the missus? We heard another report that—”

  Dad spun around, and his index finger came up again. “Don’t mess with us. I mean it,” he warned. “Come on, kids.”

  He climbed into the SUV and slammed the door.

  David ran around and was the last one in. The car pulled forward before he had his door shut. As they drove past, David looked hard into the alley where Taksidian had stood, but the man was gone, leaving only darkness.

  CHAPTER thirty - four

  MONDAY, 11 : 57 P . M .

  That night, the day’s events kept replaying in David’s head. He was exhausted, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever again get a good night’s rest. Even being in his own bed didn’t help. If you can’t turn off your thoughts, he said to himself, who cares how soft your pillow is?

  Xander’s whispered voice reached him from out of the darkness: “You awake?”

  “Yeah,” he whispered back. He looked over toward Xander’s bed. The moonlight coming through the windows was enough to show his brother sitting up. He looked at the clock on the nightstand. “Almost the witching hour,” he said.

  “No such thing,” Xander told him.

  “I’m not sure about anything anymore,” David said. “What’s real, what’s not . . . this house has confused everything.”

  When Xander didn’t say anything, David realized he had been hoping his brother would laugh at his words, say they were crazy. He wanted somebody to tell him the world was essentially the same as he thought it was before coming to Pinedale, but it wasn’t. Their mom was gone, and they lived in a house that messed with time and space. The past was supposed to be the past—unreachable, unchangeable. Here, however, things that belonged in history books were as easy to get to as the bathroom.

  See? he thought. Thinking again. Why can’t I let it all go, at least until morning?

  Xander said, “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Join the club. I can’t turn it off.”

  “No, listen.” Xander shifted from his bed to David’s. “They’re trying to take our house or kick us out or something.”

  “I know,” David said. “It’s that Taksidian guy.”

  “It doesn’t even matter who’s behind it. If they kick us out, who knows what will happen? They’ll probably chain the doors, board up all the windows. Maybe even tear the whole place down.”

  David sat up and scooted back against the headboard. “They can’t do that. It’s our house.”

  “Dad Googled Taksidian. He’s some rich bigwig. Owns all these companies. People like that can do anything they want.”

  “Not anything,” David said. This was another way the world was not as David had always imagined. Maybe it didn’t involve ripples in time or monsters, but it was equally scary.

  “Just about,” Xander said. “Don’t you think a man like that can take any house he wants?”

  David thought about it. With enough money and lawyers, dishonesty and meanness, of course he could. David’s chest felt tight.

  “What—” he started to say, then realized how close he was to crying. He took a deep breath and tried again. “What’s going to happen to Mom?”

  “That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” Xander said. “The MCC is cool, but Dad’s taking too long. He’s so concerned about appearances and keeping people off our backs so we have all the time in the world to find Mom . . .” He shook his head. “But we don’t have all the time in the world. We may not even have a few days.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about that, Xander.”

  “We can start looking for Mom now. Forget playing it safe. Forget debriefings and motivational seminars. We gotta just do it, Dae. We gotta find Mom.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Xander leaned closer. He squeezed David’s leg. “Come with me! Now!”

  “What, just . . . go over?”

  “Between the two of us, we can cover the same ground in half the time.”

  “Xander, I don’t know. I promised Dad I wouldn’t.“

  “Come on, David, what do we have to lose?”

  “Our lives?”

  “Think about it. The faster we go, the more worlds we see, the better chance we have to find Mom.”

  This is it, David thought. As much as he wanted to find Mom, as much as he’d gone along with setting up the control room and making plans for searching through the various worlds, somewhere inside he had hoped it would not be necessary. Maybe Mom would just show up. Or Dad would decide that he was too young.

  The first time he went over, he had almost been killed by tigers and tribesmen with spears. The second time, he had almost been killed by Nazis. Two times through, two close calls. He didn’t like those odds. They had cured him of his desire for that kind of adventure.

  He looked at the clock again. It was exactly midnight. With far less enthusiasm than usual, he said, “Let’s do it.”

  CHAPTER thirty - five

  “Why are they shooting at me?” David screamed.

  There was a crack! in the distance, and the earth beside him erupted in a mini-geyser of dirt. They had stepped into a nightmare battlefield where bodies littered the ground, the injured howled in pain, and David had become a target before drawing his third breath. Though Xander and he were near each other, it was clear the shooters wanted David. One man who had aimed a rifle at him lowered it when Xander darted into the line of fire. That did not stop others from plugging away at him.

  “Get down! Get down!” Xander said, waving his arms at David. Xander was sidestepping in circles around his brother, trying to spot and dissuade the next would-be shooter. It seemed every time he circled around one way, a shot rang out from the opposite direction, and a bullet would sail past so closely they could hear it, or it would hit the ground at their feet.

  A thick plume of smoke drifted past, hiding Xander from David’s view. David panicked. “Xander! Xander!”

  “I’m here, Dae, stay down.”

  David felt warm wetness on his cheeks and thought for sure he had been hit. He wiped at it. Only tears, and they were flowing as heavily as blood would have from a head wound. He dropped to his hands and knees and yelled again, “Why are they shooting at me?”

&nb
sp; The smoke cleared. Xander was standing ten feet away. “Your uniform!” he said. “David, your uniform.”

  David looked at the jacket he had put on in the antechamber. One side was draped over his cast. It was gray, like the kepi he wore on his head. To gain passage into this world, he had also carried a rifle. Xander had recognized it from Glory, The Patriot, and other Civil War movies: it was a Harper’s Ferry rifle, single shot and muzzle loaded. He had confirmed that it was unloaded, with the gunpowder and musket ball nowhere in the antechamber.

  “All the better,” Xander had said. “You’d end up shooting your foot off, or worse, shooting me.”

  David had forgotten all about it as soon as the first bullet zinged past his head.

  He looked up from the gray wool of his uniform to see that Xander was wearing dark blue. In his hand, he held a sword—the only other weapon in the room after David had gotten dibs on the rifle.

  “They think you’re a Confederate soldier, David!” Xander yelled. He glanced around. “We’re on the Union side of the battle.” He looked back at David and saw something that made his eyes grow even wider. “And you’ve got that rifle! Throw it away! David, throw the rifle away!”

  David heaved it off to the side.

  A shot rang out, then another. Dirt kicked up into his face. Another round passed so closely over his head he thought for sure it had taken off his kepi, if not his scalp. He reached up and felt the soft cloth of the worn hat. He spat dirt out of his mouth. “Xander!” he screamed with everything he had in him.

  “Lie down! Lie down!” Xander yelled, running to him.

  David did, and Xander lay down on top of him. Xander’s breaths were loud and quick in his ear. David couldn’t help it: his weeping became full-out crying.

  “I told you . . . I told you,” he repeated. It was all he could say, over and over.

  “Shhh,” Xander whispered into his ear. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Nearby, the ground exploded. Hurled into the air was a thousand times more dirt than the musket balls had kicked up.

  “What . . . what . . . what . . .” David screamed, pulling in a short breath between each word.