Gatekeepers

by Robert Liparulo

  Behind him the general was yelling, “Escaped Rebel!”

  David pictured the man pushing through the tent flaps, pistol in hand. He expected to hear a shot any second. Instead, a commotion arose from within the tent: the clamor of soldiers jumping to their feet, going for their weapons, calling out for someone to tell them what was going on.

  “Get down, men!” General Grant bellowed. “Out of my way!”

  David got his feet under him and ran for the trees. Kicking through the meadow’s tall grass, gritting his teeth against the pain of his cast banging against his ribs, he got the feeling of déjà vu: hadn’t he run for his life through this very field before?

  Yeah, last night!

  Only then Xander had been with him. And he’d had both sneakers. Now he was loping along, one shoe on and one shoe off.

  He was almost in the woods when the first shot rang out. Though he had been expecting it, the crack! of the weapon startled him. His feet did a little dance, and he tumbled over himself. Up again in no time, he plunged into the shadows of the trees. Behind him, another rifle shot cracked. He pushed deeper into the woods, then rammed his shoulder into the trunk of a big oak. He rolled around to the tree’s far side and stopped. His breathing came in ragged gulps.

  David hadn’t bothered to grab the rifle when he’d bolted away from General Grant. He raised his hand to his head and confirmed what he expected: he’d also lost his kepi. But he still wore the blue jacket, which was now applying a pressure like gravity on his body—only in a sideways direction, not down-ward. If the strength of the tug was any indication, the portal was close. He noticed the canteen. It was lifting up on its strap, vibrating slightly, pointing in the same direction the tug indicated.

  He craned his neck to peer past the tree. In the field behind the tents, soldiers were gathering around General Grant. The great man himself was pointing toward the woods, pushing at the soldiers and saying, “Get moving! Go!”

  Me too, David thought. I gotta get out of here.

  He pushed off the tree and ran. The canteen strap rotated on his neck until it floated a few inches off his stomach, directly in front of him. It acted like a compass needle, guiding him toward the portal . . . he hoped.

  Behind him a voice yelled, “There!”

  Someone fired. The musket ball tore past him, ripping through leaves, snapping branches.

  David veered left. For a few steps he ignored the jacket’s pull and the canteen’s shift to his side. Then he turned back, farther than the canteen’s bearing. It swung to his other side.

  He zigzagged this way, following the tug of antechamber items, but trying to be a difficult target.

  Another shot rang out. Bark exploded from a nearby tree.

  A hand grabbed the back of his jacket. He yelled and threw his weight into his forward motion. The canteen hit his chest, slid up and over his shoulder. Its strap tightened around the front of his neck. Nobody had grabbed him, he realized—it was the coat, tugging at him to reverse; he had passed the portal. He skidded to a stop, turned, and ran the other way. The canteen shifted sideways. The jacket urged him to plunge into a thicket of heavy bushes. He stopped, trying to understand.

  The corner of his eye caught movement toward the encampment. He turned to see a soldier twenty yards away, taking aim. He stumbled back and tumbled into the bushes. The rifle cracked.

  CHAPTER

  three

  The musket ball sailed right over him. David hit the ground hard, flat on his back in a tangle of twigs and leaves. The air whooshed out of his lungs. He tried pulling it back in, but it wouldn’t come.

  Gotta move! Get up! Go!

  Gasping for breath, he scrambled to stand. Not easy with only one good arm and the weight of the cast on the other one. He fell back again. His head smacked the ground—a rock, it was so hard. He realized the light around him was not from the sun. His eyes focused on a lamp mounted to a ceiling.

  The antechamber. He was home.

  Something struck his leg, a hard kick to it. “Xander?”

  But it was the door, closing, dragging his legs with it. He remembered the baseball bat that had broken in two between the door edge and the frame when Mom had been taken. He pulled his legs up quickly, and the door slammed.

  He rolled over and pushed himself up on one arm. Foliage fell off him.

  “Xander?” he said again, wheezing out the word.

  The room was empty. He lowered himself back down, resting his face against the wood planks. He put most of his weight onto the right side of his body, feeling his broken arm throb between his chest and the floor. He closed his eyes and breathed.

  Wind hissed into the room, causing the twigs and leaves to flutter, then fly into the air. He watched them zip into the crack under the door. The largest twigs got stuck, and leaves piled up behind them. The twigs cracked and splintered. As they did, they disappeared, along with the leaves, all of it heading back where it had come from—heading back to when it had come from.

  David stood and stared at the portal door. He didn’t expect it to open. He didn’t expect anything. His eyes simply needed a place to rest while he came out of a mild daze, as if awaking from a deep sleep. Having brushed that close to death, his emotions should have been raging. Instead, he felt numb. It was as though his mind had said Enough already! and flipped a switch. He was thankful for the break.

  Slowly, he began to move again. He pulled the canteen’s strap over his head and set it on the bench. He dropped his shoulder, allowing the jacket to slide off, and slipped his good arm out of the sleeve. He opened the door and walked into the hallway. He hoped Xander, Dad, and Toria, his nine-year-old sister, had fared better at getting rid of the cops than he had at rescuing Mom.

  But when he emerged from the secret doorway on the second floor, he found Xander and Toria hiding in the short hall, peer-ing around the corner toward the grand staircase. Voices drifted up from the foyer.

  “I told you,” Dad was saying, “you can’t search my house. Your warrant or whatever this is limits you to serving eviction papers, not enforcing them.”

  “We’re not evicting you, sir,” a voice said. “We’re taking you in for assaulting a police officer.”

  “Assault? I didn’t touch you until you bumped into my hand, trying to come into my house without my permission or the authority to do so. Wait, wait, wait . . . my kids are in the house. You can’t take me. It will leave them alone.”

  “Then call them down,” another voice said. “We’ll take them with us.”

  “Kids, stay where you are!” Dad called.

  Xander held up his hand and gave David a quiet, “Shhh.” Then he looked past David, hope and worry on his face. “Where is she?” he whispered. “Tell me you found her, Dae.”

  David shook his head. “General Grant recognized me. I had to run, like you did. I didn’t even get to the tent you told me about. But, Xander . . .” He gripped his brother’s arm. “I saw the message she left.”

  Love for his mother and disappointment at not finding her welled up from his chest. It dried his mouth and wetted his eyes. So, the emotional numbness had been only temporary, he thought. It was like getting punched in the arm so hard you couldn’t feel it for a while.

  Xander’s sadness showed in his eyes, but he nodded and smiled. Trying to be the big brother, the brave one, David thought.

  Toria whispered, “Who are you talking about? Mom? What message?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Xander said. “Now shhh.” He looked at David and nodded his head toward the voices. “They’ve been going at it like that for a while. Dad read the court papers, something about the house being unfit to live in.”

  “I agree,” David said.

  Xander scowled at him. “They weren’t supposed to get us out of the house, just serve the papers.”

  “So why don’t they just go away, then?”

  “Dad asked how much Taksidian paid them to get us out of the house, and that really ticked them off. Now t
hey want to take him to jail.”

  Taksidian’s deep voice rolled like thunder up the stairs. “Officers,” he said, “Mr. King is correct. You can’t take him and leave the children here alone.”

  Why would Taksidian be pleading their case?

  But that wasn’t what the man had in mind. The next thing he said was, “Why don’t I go get them for you?”

  Toria took a step back. Her hand clasped David’s.

  “Hey,” Dad said loudly. “He can’t—”

  “Sir!” a cop said. “We’re handling this. Bill, take Mr. King out to the car.”

  “No! You can’t do this!” Dad yelled.

  There was a lot of banging going on down there. David imagined his dad, hands cuffed behind him, getting pulled backward out the door while he kicked out at the cops, at Taksidian. His heels would be striking the floor, hitting the door frame.

  Xander started around the corner. David pulled his hand out of Toria’s and reached for him. His fingers brushed his brother’s shirt, then got a grip on his waistband.

  Jerked to a stop, Xander snapped his head around. He was what Mom would have called fightin’ mad.

  David shook his head. “You’ll just make it worse.”

  “They’re taking Dad.”

  “But you heard him. He wants us to stay here. They’ll just take you too. Then where will we be?”

  Xander looked from David to Toria. Something in her expression softened his. He flipped a stray strand of hair off her face with his finger and said, “It’ll be okay, Toria. Don’t worry.”

  She lowered her head. “First Mom, now Dad.”

  Below, Taksidian said, “Just give me five minutes.”

  “Can’t let you do that, Mr. Taksidian,” the remaining cop said. “It’s not your house, sir.”

  David expected the man to say Not yet . . . but what he did say was worse.

  “But, Officer Benson,” Taksidian said, “there’s no place they can hide where I can’t find them.”

  Xander looked over his shoulder at David, his eyes wide.

  Outside, Dad was still yelling. David heard their names, but the words were being snatched away by the breeze and the trees and the distance as the cop pulled their father away from the house.

  Taksidian wasn’t finished. He said, “In the interest of the children’s welfare, officer, I can make it worth your while.”

  “Step outside, sir,” Officer Benson said.

  David thought the cop sounded angry. Maybe after Dad’s accusation of the cops taking money to help Taksidian, this new attempt at a bribe had—finally—grated on the cop’s sense of duty.

  Slow footsteps echoed downstairs, moving from the foyer to the hollow-sounding planks of the front porch.

  “Alexander King, David King, Victoria King,” the cop hollered, obviously reading their names. “Last chance to come now.” He waited. “We’ll return with a court order to remove you by force, if necessary. It’s for your own safety.”

  Silence. Then: “We’ll send a car back to wait outside tonight. If you change your minds, go out to the officers. They’ll take care of you.”

  His footsteps took him to the porch. The door closed.

  CHAPTER

  four

  TUESDAY,7.33 P.M

  “Now what?” David said.

  Above them, something creaked. Their eyes lifted to the ceiling.

  “I’m scared,” Toria said.

  “Just the house settling,” Xander said.

  His eyes found David’s: Xander didn’t believe it, and nei-ther did David.

  “What if they do come back to take us out by force?”

  David said. “They might board the house up or change the locks.”

  “I think that’ll take some time.” Xander licked his lips. “Probably easier now that they arrested Dad. But they can’t do anything tonight, no way. I’m more worried about—” He stopped, his eyes dropping to Toria.

  “What?” she said. “What are you more worried about?”

  “Nothing.” He peered around the corner, then walked into the second floor’s main hallway and to the top of the stairs.

  Toria and David followed him. The foyer was empty, the door was closed.

  David thought about how wind always blew into the antechamber after they’d returned from one of the worlds. It pulled everything that belonged to that world back through the door. Something like that had just happened in the foyer. The cops and Taksidian had blown in and taken Dad. But Dad belonged here. It wasn’t right that they could just take him. The house felt emptier without him—not just one person emptier, but like it had been abandoned for centuries, an ancient tomb.

  David felt Toria’s hand grab his again. He saw that she also clasped Xander’s hand. She looked up at him. “Can you guys sleep in my room tonight? Please?”

  David nodded.

  Xander said, “Good idea. David, let’s go get our stuff. Toria, go clear your floor to make room for us.”

  They walked hand in hand to Toria’s door and released her into her room. Then the boys approached the chair that David had jammed under the linen closet door handle to keep Clayton from coming back through. It was a solid piece of furniture, with spindles that rose from the rear of the seat and ended in a heavy top rail.

  David leaned his ear to the door. “I don’t hear anything,” he whispered.

  “How long ago did you send him back?”

  “Right before I ran to find you,” David said.

  “So, what, a half hour?” Xander said. “If he was going to come back tonight, he’d have done it already. He must have gone back to the locker and left. Maybe he’ll wake up tomorrow thinking it was a dream.”

  “Fat chance.” David reached for the chair, but Xander stopped him.

  His brother glanced back toward Toria’s room, then gestured for David to follow him into their room. As soon as they were both inside, he said, “You didn’t see Mom?”

  David shook his head. “They shot at me again. Xander, they almost got me this time.”

  “Like they didn’t before?”

  “How are we supposed to get her, when they keep trying to kill us?”

  “We gotta find a way. Maybe we’re missing something.” He moved to his bed and gathered up his pillow and blanket.

  David went to his bed. He picked up his pillow and, with one gimp arm, struggled to get the blanket as well.

  “Here,” Xander said. He tugged off the blanket.

  “Thanks. Xander, what you said before, about something worrying you more than the cops coming back . . . ?”

  Xander turned, the bedding pressed to his chest with his arms. It made him look like a little kid. “Taksidian,” he said. “That guy’s not done with us.”

  “You mean tonight?” David closed his eyes. When were they going to get a break? He was exhausted, and he didn’t like that being scared was becoming a normal feeling for him.

  “I don’t know,” Xander said. “But I don’t think I’m going to get much sleep.” He walked into the hall.

  At the door, David spotted Xander’s mobile phone on the dresser. “Hey,” he said, picking it up. “Does Dad have his cell?”

  “Usually does.”

  David flipped the phone open and thumbed a speed-dial number. He listened to the rings on the other end and walked closer to Xander.

  “Xan—” Dad’s voice said.

  Thumps and scratching noises came through to David’s ear, then another voice said, “This is Officer Benson. Is this Alexander?”

  In the background Dad yelled, “Xander, stay there!

  Don’t—”

  David flipped the phone closed. “Oops,” he said. “I think the cop just took the phone from Dad.”

  Xander shrugged. “They would have taken it anyway, at the station. So much for that.” He turned away.

  “Wait,” David said. He pushed the phone into his back pocket. He wanted it close, in case Dad called. He eased the chair away from the linen closet and opened
the door enough to peer in. He said, “I should go through.”

  “Why?”

  “Make sure everything’s okay.”

  “That kid knows about the portal,” Xander said. “That’s not okay.”

  “We gotta know we can use it, if we have to. You know, before we have to.”

  “What do you think he did, lock it? If he did, and you went through, how would you get back?”

  “Taksidian did,” David reminded him. “He was in the locker, then went back, without the locker door opening and closing. Must be a way.”

  “You don’t know it,” Xander said.

  “I can try to figure it out,” David said. “If I don’t come back in twenty minutes or so, come get me.”

  Xander scrunched his face. “Go through?”

  “No, come to the school and get me out. I don’t know,” David said. “It may be our only way out, if . . .” He didn’t even want to say it. “If Taksidian comes back.”

  Xander eyed the door up and down as though sizing up an opponent. “All right,” he said, dropping the bedding on the floor. “Just there and back. Make sure there’s nothing weird.”

  David opened the door further. He frowned at the interior: shelves of towels and sheets, only enough room to stand in front of them. What if Clayton had done some-thing to the locker, something more than locking it? He pictured a fire in it, himself materializing in the flames and unable to get out.

  “If you don’t want to . . .” Xander said.

  David swallowed, feeling the spit slide down his tightened throat. He stepped in and pulled the door closed behind him.

  In the darkness, the walls closed in. The floor flexed, buck-ling under his weight. Metal popped. A scream reached his ears. Had he done that? No . . . not him. Maybe the screech of metal.

  The front wall pushed in on him. He cracked his head on the back metal. Something had happened to the locker. It was crushed, somehow smaller. If it got any smaller, he’d . . . he’d implode, just be crushed with the locker. He elbowed his cast into the side wall and shoved his good arm forward. His hand touched cloth, softness under it.

  That scream again—human—followed by sobs, a wretched weeping. Someone sniffed.