Timescape

by Robert Liparulo

  “Better get something for those,” Dad said. “Who knows what kind of diseases those creatures have.”

  “Let’s rest first,” Keal said, closing his eyes.

  Dad sat on the other side of David, nudging him. “Scoot over, fatty.”

  “Hey,” David said, thankful to be saying something that didn’t have anything to do with life and death. “You always tell me I could use more meat on my bones. I—” He stopped. “Did you just hear something? Like a scream?”

  Dad scowled at him, listening. “No, I . . .” He turned. “The portal’s still open.” A gusty sound was coming from it. “It always shuts. When the last item comes through, it always closes.”

  “Keal,” Xander said. “Where’s the tam-o’-shanter? The cap you had?”

  Keal cracked an eye. “What?” He looked at his hands, seeming surprised to find them empty.

  Frowning, Dad stood. He reached for the door.

  “No, I meant in the hall,” David said “I thought I heard—”

  There it was again: muffled by the door and the windy sound of the open portal—a high, terrified scream.

  Dad spun, eyes wide. “Toria!”

  Xander reached up for the handle, turning and rising.

  Dad took a step for the hallway door.

  Behind him, a shadow darkened the portal. Spear-man leaped through.

  CHAPTER

  seven

  WEDNESDAY, 6:50 P.M.

  David cried out.

  The creature—Spear-man—landed on Dad’s back and clung to it. The tam-o’-shanter fell from the creature’s hand. Before it hit the floor, the portal door slammed shut.

  Dad staggered forward just as Xander got the hallway door open. Dad rushed through, turned, and rammed the creature into a wall. Spear-man held on, scratching at Dad’s face and neck.

  Keal grabbed the gun, opened the cylinder, and dropped in the bullet he’d found. He stepped into the hallway and tried to get a bead on the creature.

  David and Xander darted out of the antechamber. They dodged past Dad, the thing on his back, and Keal’s swinging, gun-packing arm.

  Cold air blew against David’s arms, the back of his neck. He looked behind him. “Xander,” he said, “the door.”

  Another antechamber door, a few feet from them, was open. Light and rainy wind poured from it. The family’s aluminum ladder lay on the floor, across the doorway.

  “Get away from it,” Xander said. He pulled his brother toward the fighting men.

  The pistol stopped swaying and locked on the creature’s head.

  Dad reached out and closed his fingers around the gun barrel. “Not him,” he said through clenched teeth. “Him!” He pointed down the hall.

  At the landing, Nana clung to the wall. Her legs were stretched out into the hall, shaking six inches above the floor. Toria had her arms wrapped around one leg. She turned a wet face toward them.

  “Help!”

  Beyond Toria and Nana, standing on the landing, was Taksidian.

  The lights flickered, turning the scene on and off.

  “Keal,” Dad said, “I got this guy.” As if to make his point, he heaved back against the wall again, crushing the creature. “Get that one!”

  Keal shifted his aim to Taksidian. “Back off!” he yelled. “Get out of here! Now!”

  Instead, Taksidian lowered his gaze and kicked at Nana’s hand.

  Keal fired. A small explosion erupted from the wall a hand’s breadth from Taksidian’s face. The lights flicked off. When they sprang on a second later, Taksidian was gone.

  Nana sailed toward them, skimming over the runner that traversed the length of the hall. Toria came with her. Then, when they’d closed half the distance between them, Toria lost her grip and spun away.

  “Grab her!” Dad yelled. “Grab my mother!”

  Keal dropped the pistol and rushed forward. He dropped down on Nana, encircling his massive arms around her waist. Both of them continued moving toward the open door—not so quickly, though.

  “That’s why the portal’s open,” Xander said. “It wants her.” He moved past Dad, who was holding the creature’s hand to keep it from clawing his face and leaning his head away from the snapping mouth.

  Xander threw himself down. Nana crashed into him. Her legs went over him, and he grabbed them. The three of them—Xander, Nana, and Keal—slid, much more slowly now, toward the antechamber.

  “Dad,” David said, “what do we do?”

  “I don’t know, Dae.” He rammed the creature against the wall. “It wants her.” For a moment, he stopped struggling with the creature. Spear-man nipped at Dad’s head, then bit his back. Dad hissed, gritted his teeth. “Wait,” he said. “It wants someone.”

  “Who?” Then David got it. “The creature. Give the portal him. Will that work?”

  Dad staggered toward the antechamber door. “Worth a try.”

  The creature glared over Dad’s shoulder at the light coming through the door. David thought he saw the anger in his eyes change to fear. Spear-man began writhing furiously. He pounded on Dad’s arm and head. He wanted off, but now it was Dad holding him on.

  David backed away, past the open door.

  The creature squirmed and fought. Dad lost his grip, and the man fell to the floor. Immediately he began kicking at the floor, trying to propel himself away, but Dad grabbed his ankles and pulled him toward the door.

  “The ladder, Dae,” Dad said. “Hurry.”

  Nana, Xander, and Keal were inching closer, seconds from running into the creature’s flailing hands.

  David dropped to his knees. He pulled on the rungs. The ladder glided over the floor . . . then it hit the wall at the end of the hallway. It still blocked the opening. Dad was too close for David to flip it down or swing it away from the doorway. He pushed it the other direction. When the end of the ladder reached him, he gripped it and pushed, shoving it past the doorway. Leaning into the light, the cold, wet wind stung his face.

  “Got it!” he yelled. “Go, go, do it!”

  Dad swung around, heaving the man’s legs into the antechamber. The creature screeched in terror, spun, and clawed at the floor. He zipped into the room as though he were on a waterslide.

  “David, back away!” Dad yelled.

  Too late: the creature’s bony fingers wrapped around David’s ankle. David’s legs, hips, body followed his foot. His shoulder smacked against the opposite jamb. Then he was coasting on the icy floor, bathed in light.

  “Daaaad!” he screamed. He felt the wind grab him, cold and powerful.

  Dad lunged for him. His hands came down on David’s. No, no, they didn’t! They came down on the floor where David’s hands had been a half second before. David was moving too fast.

  Dad scrambled to catch up, reaching, reaching. His eyes were white orbs with blue dots at their center; his pupils were pinpricks in the bright light. His mouth was moving, but David could hear nothing but the howl of the wind.

  He went through, splashing down into water so cold he thought his heart would stop. But of course it didn’t. It pounded hard and fast, pumping blood up to his panicked brain. He squinted against light shining in his eyes, just as bright and blinding as it had appeared from the other side.

  The portal shimmered above him. It showed him a ghostly image of Dad, rising from the antechamber floor, diving for the portal. The door slammed, as fast and silent as a flying arrow.

  The portal dissolved into water droplets and swirled away.

  CHAPTER

  eight

  WEDNESDAY, 6:56 P.M.

  Xander felt the pull on his grandmother stop. Her body went limp. Cautiously, he released her legs. When she didn’t try to sail over him, he slid out from under her.

  “Is it over?” Keal said.

  “I think so.” Xander was relieved to see Nana’s back rising and falling. It was only then that he admitted to himself that a small part of him feared that she had died. He crawled to her head and laid his hand against her ha
ir. He whispered, “Nana, are you all right?”

  She turned her face to him. Her eyes were wet and bloodshot. Since he’d last seen her an hour before, she seemed to have aged years. She blinked at him.

  “Yes, dear,” she said. “Nothing I haven’t been through before, in one way or another.” She smiled.

  Xander shook his head.

  She looked back at Keal, kneeling beside her. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Next time we dance,” he said, “it’s my turn to lead.”

  Nana rose, shifted, and sat cross-legged. She spotted Toria, standing frozen in the hallway, both hands covering her mouth.

  Nana spread her arms wide. “And you,” she said. “My hero.”

  Toria dropped her hands, revealing an ear-to-ear grin. She came running.

  Xander hiked himself up and went to the antechamber. “She’s okay, Dad,” he said. “The pull stopped. What’d you do?”

  Then he saw that his father was wearing what looked like a bulky bulletproof vest. He was hastily cinching a series of straps around the vest and tying knots in them.

  Xander’s guts suddenly felt hollow. He scanned the small room, quickly leaned through the door, and looked up and down the hall. “Dad?” He swallowed. It felt like a marble going down. “Dad, where’s Dae?”

  Dad glanced at him. “He went over.”

  “What? Why? On purpose?”

  Dad shook his head. “It was my fault. I was trying to get that creature through the portal. It grabbed him.” He snatched another item from the hooks. It appeared to be a pair of suspenders. He draped it over his neck.

  Xander grabbed his arm. “Dad, we’ll get him. He’s been over alone before.”

  Dad turned to him. “This time it’s different. It’s not even so much that he was pulled over, against his will. It’s . . . I don’t know, how it felt. It brought back a memory, a horrible memory.”

  “Of Mom? When she was taken?”

  “Of when my mother—Nana—was taken.” Dad wiped a hand over his face. “The light. My trying to do something and not being able to. Arms reaching out to me.” His frown deepened. “His eyes, Xander. They were so scared.”

  “Dad, we can go get him together,” Xander said. “You and me, it’ll be better that way. We can—”

  “No,” Dad said. “Not this time. Listen, if I don’t come back, don’t come after me. It’ll be too late.”

  “Don’t—?” Xander shook his head. “That’s crazy. You’d better believe I’m coming. For you and David? Come on!”

  Dad nodded toward something on the bench by the door, and Xander followed it with his eyes.

  “Oh, no.”

  Dad picked it up. “Gotta go,” he said. He wrapped an arm around Xander. “I love you.” He crossed to the portal door and opened it.

  Light filled the room. Cold air blew in.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Xander said. “If you’re not back in a half hour, I’m coming after you. You hear?”

  “Don’t,” Dad said, and stepped through.

  Xander watched him hit water. He went under, then resurfaced.

  “You’d better come back!” Xander called.

  The door slammed closed. He stared at it for a long time, but he wasn’t seeing the door. He was seeing the item his father had picked up. It was a life buoy, a white ring for throwing to people in deep water. Pools had them. And ships, like the one from which this particular life buoy came—as indicated by the black-stenciled lettering on it: R.M.S. TITANIC.

  CHAPTER

  nine

  Edward King was on the deck of the ship, but he was also in the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The ship was listing, angled like one of the arms on the letter V. Its bow was underwater, its stern high in the air. He was just below the intersection of water and ship. While the life vest from the antechamber kept him on the surface, the toes of his shoes skimmed the deck.

  The tragedy of the Titanic had always fascinated him—the arrogance of the ship’s designers and owners. Not arrogance—hubris, a word not taught enough in schools. It meant excessive pride or self-confidence. In Greek mythology, it resulted from scorning the gods, and the gods in turn unleashed their powers to bring the offenders down.

  He could not think of an event in modern history that better illustrated the concept. The owners called the Titanic “unsinkable.” They had been so boastful of this belief that half the passengers refused to board the lifeboats when the crew told them to. It was only when the decks began flooding and the ship’s listing could no longer be ignored that panic had set in, starting a mad scramble.

  They were all gone now, the lifeboats. He knew most of them were less than half-full, leaving fifteen hundred people to die. He could see a good number of these people scrambling toward the stern, climbing higher and higher, hoping the ship would stop its plunge to the bottom before the water reached them.

  Mr. King knew better.

  He began swimming toward the exposed deck, twenty feet in front of him. The surface was littered with scraps of paper, clothing that hadn’t yet sunk, a child’s doll. He pushed through it all, trying to keep his mind from thinking that all the clutter paled in comparison to the number of corpses that would soon fill the ocean. Before emerging from the water, he realized he could stand. He’d kept hold of the life preserver he’d brought from the antechamber. Now he slipped an arm through it and rested it on his shoulder. He trudged out of the water, feeling the deck slipping down under his feet like a stepless escalator.

  He remembered that the stern’s propellers had risen out of the water at 2:10 in the morning—which they had already done. By 2:20, the entire ship sank below the surface . . . or rather, would sink. He had fewer than ten minutes to find David.

  He looked at his watch. It was on Pinedale time: 7:00, exactly. The second hand had stopped.

  “David!” he yelled. “David!”

  The stern rose higher. People screamed. Chairs, luggage, bodies tumbled down the deck toward him. The water rose up behind him, touching his ankles, reaching his calves.

  He leaned forward, climbed.

  A light, shining on him from an empty lifeboat stanchion, sputtered and went out. Some of the bulbs clinging to an eave running the length of the deck exploded under a surge of electrical current. The rest of them flickered, then went black.

  Mr. King looked past the railing at the vast ocean, black under a moonless sky. He thought he could make out a handful of lifeboats bobbing around like giant bodies. He could only hope David was on one of them. If he had come over before the final boats had left, they would have taken him, a child, wouldn’t they?

  “David!” he called.

  A faint answer reached him: “Dad?”

  “David?”

  “Dad!”

  It was coming from the stern. He ran—as quickly as the rising deck allowed him to. He grabbed the railing to pull himself along, pull himself up.

  “David!” Mr. King stared up at the people crowded on the stern. Many were jumping or falling over the side, plunging into the water sixty feet below.

  Lord, he thought, let me reach my son. Let us find the portal home together. And if that’s not to be, let us die together.

  “Dad?”

  The small voice was close.

  “Dae? I’m here! Where are you?”

  “Here!”

  He climbed. He reached a spot where a doorway jutted out from the Titanic’s massive center. Beside it a circular vent, like a large candy cane, protruded from the deck. David clung to the upward side of the vent, hugging it. He was wet and shivering violently. His hair was plastered to his skull. His eyes were closed. They opened, took in his father, and his quivering lips bent into a smile.

  He said, “Is that . . . is that really you?” His smile faltered, breaking his dad’s heart.

  Mr. King broke from the railing, almost slid away on the deck, and grabbed the vent. He shuffled around to get his arm over David’s back. The boy’s trembling muscles reverberated
into his dad’s arm, into his body.

  “It’s me, Dae,” he said. “I’m here.”

  David hitched in a breath. He started to weep.

  Mr. King closed his eyes, wishing none of this for his boy.

  He squeezed him. “Shhhh.”

  “I . . .” David said. “I landed on the deck when I came through, but it was already underwater. I got out as fast as I could. But I’m so cold.”

  More than the temperature. Shock. Fear. “I know,” his father said.

  “There was a lifeboat,” David said. “I wanted to get on, but they wouldn’t let me. They just kept lowering it. They wouldn’t let me on.”

  “It’s okay, son. I have something better. I have items from the antechamber, Dae. They’ll lead us home.”

  David blinked at him. “Really?”

  He nodded and looked around. “We just have to get away from the ship. It’s going to break in two any minute.” And right about where we are, he thought, but didn’t say.

  “But . . . but . . .”

  “What, son?”

  “Mom,” David said. His eyes were as wide as they had been when the spearman had pulled him into this world.

  “What about her? We’ll find her. We will. But we have to get back home first.”

  “It’s why I stopped here,” David said. “Dad, look!” He pointed to the wall beside him. Scrawled in what looked like lipstick was the King family mascot: Bob.

  CHAPTER

  ten

  WEDNESDAY, 7:07 P.M.

  Toria’s arms were starting to ache from hugging Nana so tightly. She pushed her face into her grandmother’s neck, getting it wet with tears. She didn’t want to cry, but the more she tried to stop, the harder she sobbed. She hitched in ragged breaths, then let them out in wet mumblings: “I was so scared . . . I thought you were gone . . . and, and then that man showed up . . .”

  When Dad had burst into the hallway, that horrible thing on his back, she’d been too stunned to call out at first. Finally, she had, and somehow Dad made it all better, as he did so often. Now that Nana was okay, it struck her just how weird her father’s appearance was: Where had he come from, and were Keal and David and Xander with him? How had Keal gotten a gun? And what was that hideous creature on his back, and where had it come from?