“Jesse,” David said, hefting the wall light. “You were going to tell us about this?”
“Right,” Jesse said. “Like I said, usually we catch them. Sometimes they get away or we never know they came through. One started coming regular. He’d go into town, steal stuff. Killed some people too. Dad went after him, ended up going over to his time, some ancient civilization. Dad realized there were a lot of superstitions back then, some things that scared the bejeepers out of people. So he made a little statue of some deity they were really afraid of. He put it in the area where that guy was coming through, and he stopped coming.”
“So they’re like talismans,” Xander said. “Magic symbols that keep evil away.”
“But it’s not magic,” Jesse said. He smiled. “We’re just using their own superstitions against them. We’ve done it for eight people-groups now. Works every time, so far. We’re going to put them in the hallway, where the holes are.”
David stood. He handed the wall light to Jesse. “So, you figure out what scares them, what their superstitions are, and make a light.”
“Yep.” Jesse got up. “Want to see the house?”
“Yes!” Xander said.
“But we can’t,” David said. “We have to get back. I think we’re already late.”
“Dae,” Xander said, “if Dad and Keal knew how much we could learn here . . .”
“I don’t think it’s our choice,” David said. He pointed at the hammer hooked to Xander’s pocket. The handle was pointing straight back, quivering in the direction they had come.
Xander grabbed it before it could fly away.
“If we try to stay, we might lose the items,” David said. “Or they’ll drag us back kicking and screaming.”
He pulled the corner of blueprint out of his pocket and held it up. It bent over his thumbnail and fluttered, as though in a strong wind. It confirmed the hammer’s directive.
“Hey,” Jesse said, pointing at the paper. “Where’d you get that?”
“It was in the antechamber,” David said. “In the small room with the hole that brought us here.”
Jesse smiled and shook his head. “Dad looked all over for it. That corner got stuck on a board when he grabbed the blueprints a couple weeks ago. When he moved the board to get it, it blew away.”
“This is the blueprint for our house?” David said.
“Mine now, yours later.”
“Much later,” Xander said. “Next time we come, you can show us the house.”
“You’ll be back?” Jesse said, like a kid heading to Disneyland.
David understood; he’d felt it when he first met old Jesse: the chance to share a secret with someone who cared, someone who really got it.
Jesse extended his hand to Xander. “Until then, great-great-nephew.”
Xander shook his hand.
Jesse held out his hand to David, who glanced at it and then up to the boy’s face. He didn’t see some kid he’d just met; he saw Jesse, the Jesse he knew and loved and had cried for that very morning. Fourteen or ninety-something—he was still Jesse. David brushed aside Jesse’s hand, stepped in, and hugged him. He squeezed him tightly, then took a step back.
Jesse offered him an awkward smile, and David felt his face flush. He said, “I’m . . . just glad you sent us to find you.”
Xander tossed the hammer. When he went after it, stooping low to grab it, David realized he hadn’t tossed it; it had flown out of his hand. Xander crashed into the wall of bushes and disappeared.
“Gotta go,” David said. “Take care of yourself.”
“I guess I do,” Jesse said.
David ran after Xander.
CHAPTER
forty - one
THURSDAY, 8:30 A.M .
David lay sprawled on the antechamber floor. Xander sat next to him, breathing heavily.
The portal door slammed shut.
Keal leaned over David, casting a shadow over him like an angry god. “You’re five minutes late,” he said, his voice rumbling. He was holding the planer and saw.
“That was incredible,” David said.
“Guess who we met?” Xander said.
“How would I know? The guy who built the Taj Mahal? What’s his name, Shah Jahan?”
“How do you even know that?” David said.
Xander said, “Try the guy who built this house.”
“The guy who—” Keal gaped at them. “You saw Jesse?”
“At fourteen,” David said. “But he looked twelve.”
“Fourteen?” Keal said. “Years old?”
Xander nodded. “He was pretty cool.”
“Hip,” David corrected.
“Right, hip. Just like now.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Keal said. “Are you guys punking me? You’re kidding, right?”
“Keal,” David said, “that’s what he meant when he said, ‘Come see me.’ He didn’t mean at the hospital. He meant back then. He remembered that we did go see him when he was a kid.”
“Maybe if we didn’t go,” Xander said, “it would have changed things. He wanted to make sure we did what he knew we had to do.”
“Did you save his life or something?” Keal said.
“No, but he may have saved ours,” David said.
“What, just now?” Judging by the rising tone of his voice, Keal was growing more confused by the second.
David laughed. “He told us how to keep Phemus out of the house.”
“What? Really? How?” Keal dropped down onto the bench.
“Scare him,” Xander said.
“Oh,” Keal said. “Yeah, why didn’t I think of that? I got a Casper the Ghost mask in the car.”
“Really,” David said. “We need to find out what superstitions he believes and make a wall light.”
“What, like the ones in the hallway?”
“Exactly,” David said. “Jesse was making one when we met him just now.”
“Jesse made them?”
“At least some of them,” Xander said. He spun around to face Keal directly. “We need to go back. There’s so much he can teach us. They were building the house, but we didn’t have time to see it. Can you imagine all they must know, Jesse, his dad, and his brother?”
“Not today, Xander,” Keal said. He looked at his watch. “School. No ifs, ands, or buts.”
“But,” Xander said.
“If,” David said.
“And,” Xander finished.
“I’m glad you guys are feeling better.” Keal stood and opened the hallway door. “Let’s go.”
David groaned. “Isn’t school almost over?”
“Barely started,” Keal said. “It’s only eight thirty.”
David groaned again. “It feels like late afternoon. It was dark at the hospital. I got the sense it was early evening in the Viking world. And Jesse offered us his lunch. These portals mess with your mind.”
“Your biorhythms,” Keal said. “Your body clock. Extreme jet lag.”
“Whatever you call it,” David said, “I don’t like it.”
“Plus everything else,” Xander said. “What we do in the worlds: run, fight, get scared to death every two minutes. Then every time I go through a portal, I feel like I did an hour of exercise. How about a nap, just a short one?”
“Nope,” Keal said.
The wind blew in from under the door. It scrubbed the boys of dirt and leaves that belonged back in young Jesse’s time.
“Whoa,” Xander said. He swiveled on the floor and slid into the portal door, cracking his hip hard enough for David to hear it. He pushed away. Dropping onto his back, he planted his feet on the door and pushed. He spun sideways and flew into the door again.
David hopped up and grabbed one of Xander’s ankles. Keal grabbed the other. They pulled his legs away from the door and backed toward the hallway. David could feel the pull on his brother. His pants were riding high now, as though they were going to rip apart and sail over his head.
“What do you have?” David said.<
br />
“I don’t know!”
One of Xander’s front pockets pulled out, poking from his jeans like a dog’s ear. The candy Jesse had tossed him popped out, skidded across the floor, and jammed into the crack under the door. It crunched and broke and disappeared.
David and Keal dropped his legs.
“See?” David said.
Xander got up, tugging down on his pants. He shifted uncomfortably and grimaced at David. “Time just gave me a wedgie.”
CHAPTER
forty - two
THURSDAY, 11:55 A.M
David sat in the cafeteria, staring down at his hot-lunch tray. The wedge of pizza was crusty, burned, and cold. He thought the goop in a paper cup was rice pudding. The salad looked okay, but he couldn’t eat it. He was hungry, but the image of the berserker chowing down on that guy and the memory of that rancid breath in his face kept popping up every few minutes. He’d been doing a pretty good job of keeping his mind on meeting young Jesse and suppressing everything else: Jesse in the hospital, the destroyed future and the creatures from that time, the Titanic . . . Mom! But that berserker—man, that haunted him.
Between physical exhaustion and too many memories and emotions to manage, he wasn’t worth anything today. He had made it to school in time for his second-period class, algebra, and then to Ancient Civilizations (was his taking that a cosmic joke or what?), but he couldn’t remember one word the teachers had said. He had walked through the halls like a zombie.
He hoped it was the fatigue and stress making him this way. It had crossed his mind that next to everything he did at home and in the worlds, ordinary life was just plain boring. Then he reminded himself that living in a constant state of fear, having more than one brush with death a day, and his mother being kidnapped were not exciting. Adrenaline inducing? Yes. But fun? Not by a long shot.
All he wanted was Mom back.
Give us Mom back, he thought, and I’ll study hard, never miss a class, become an accountant or some other ho-hum guy, and never, ever complain about being bored. Promise.
“David!”
He snapped his head up. “Huh?”
Ben, Marcus, and Anthony laughed.
“See?” Ben said. “He wasn’t sleeping.”
“You yelled in his ear,” Marcus countered. “Were you sleeping, David?”
Anthony said, “ ’Cause we’ve been talking to you for like ten minutes, and you didn’t even nod your head.”
“I think he groaned once,” Ben said.
“I’m telling you,” Marcus said, “that was a snore.”
“Anthony said you wear girls’ panties,” Ben said.
They all laughed.
“Pink ones,” Anthony said, snorting, “with pictures of Barbie dolls on them!”
“That’s when we knew you were out,” Marcus said.
“Not sleeping,” Ben said. “Just out. The lights were on, but nobody was home.”
“No, sleeping,” Marcus said. “Right?” He pointed at the pizza. “Are you going to eat that?”
David handed it to him. “Sorry, guys,” he said. “I’m just tired, and . . .” He wanted to offer something to explain. “And my uncle’s in the hospital.”
Ben said, “Oh, man.”
“Is he all right?” Marcus said.
Anthony slapped Marcus’s shoulder. “He’s in the hos-pi-tal! What do you think?”
“I meant, is he going to be all right? David knew what I meant.”
“Are you close?” Anthony asked David.
“He lives in Chicago,” David said. Not a lie, exactly.
“No . . . close. Are you like friends, buddies?”
David smiled. “Yeah, I like him. A lot.”
“What’s he in for?” Ben said.
“That sounds like he’s in prison,” Marcus said.
“He got mugged,” David said. There it is: a lie. See what happens when you open your mouth? “They beat him up pretty badly.”
“Is he going to make it?” Anthony asked.
David shrugged. He looked down at the moldering rice pudding.
The guys mumbled among themselves. David didn’t listen, and he didn’t look up when they scraped their chairs back and picked up their trays. Someone tapped his arm. It was Anthony.
“Sorry about your uncle, man. So you’re probably not up for some football, huh? We throw it around at lunch.”
“Nah, not today. Thanks, though.”
David watched them take their trays to the trash, dump them, and put them on a stack. He got up and did the same. In the hall, he turned toward his locker. Fourth period. What was it? For the life of him, he couldn’t remember. Well, it was only the fourth day of classes. Even kids without David’s level of extracurricular activity didn’t memorize their schedule this quickly, right? Language arts! That was it. See? He was okay.
He went around a corner and found himself face-to-face with Clayton, the bully who’d followed him through locker 119 to the linen closet in their house. To keep him quiet, David had threatened him.
Clayton’s skin color changed before David’s eyes, as though all the blood in his head was draining out. Clayton lowered his head, spun around, and tromped off.
Wow, David thought. His threats hadn’t been that awful, had they? He’d said he would post pictures of Clayton crying like a baby on the Internet and that he’d return him to the locker, where he couldn’t escape. That one was kind of scary. Or maybe it was just that David’s family lived in a freaky home that teleported people through space—that could be enough to make Clayton keep his distance. David had started thinking of the locker portal as no big thing, at least compared to what the third-floor rooms did. But it was big. Huge. That alone made the house special . . . creepy.
“Hey,” David called. “Clayton!”
The kid walked faster. David hurried to catch up. Clayton turned into a classroom. David followed. It was empty, except for Clayton. He was standing behind the teacher’s desk.
“Stay away from me,” Clayton said.
Boy, had things changed.
“Look,” David said. “About the other day . . .”
“Forget it,” Clayton said. “There was no other day, okay? Nothing happened. Just . . . just leave me alone.”
David felt sorry for him, sort of. He had never been a bully himself, and now he understood why. He didn’t like putting this kind of fear in people. It made him feel small.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” David said. “I’m sorry.”
“Scare me?” Clayton laughed. “You? Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Then . . . what’s this about? You running from me?”
“I just don’t want anything to do with you or your freaky witch-house or your creepy friends! You’re still a little punk, don’t think you’re not.”
David nodded. He turned to leave, then stopped. He pushed the door closed and stepped closer to Clayton. “What creepy friends?”
“Just . . . all of them.”
“Clayton,” David said, “who are you talking about?”
“Get out of here,” Clayton said. “Go on, get out of here.
Let me alone.”
“Did someone threaten you? Besides me, I mean.”
“You call your little yips threats? You don’t—”
“Clayton!” David slid into the desk seat beside him.
“What are you doing?” Clayton said.
“Talking.”
“Not to me, you aren’t. If you want to stay, fine.” He started around the desk.
“Wait,” David said. “Let me tell you something.”
Clayton stopped. “What?” he said through gritted teeth.
“There’s a man,” David said. “His name is Taksidian.”
Clayton’s eyes widened. He turned his head toward the window.
Looking for something, David thought. For someone.
Clayton took a step back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know any Taks-whatever.”
“He’s a really, really bad guy,” David said. “The worst person ever. I think you know that. But, Clayton, he’s not a friend of mine. He wants our house. He’ll do anything to get it. He’s hurt my family. He’s hurt us bad.”
Clayton blinked. His hard features softened, just a little.
“He’s still hurting us. And he wants to hurt a lot of people. Not just my family.”
Clayton examined his shoes. He said, “What’s your point?”
“One: It’s not me or my family you should stay away from, it’s him. Hate us, if you want to. Never talk to me again, if it makes you feel better. But stay away from Taksidian. For your sake, stay away from him.”
Clayton rocked between his left and right feet. He said, “What’s number two?”
“Two.” David cleared his throat. “If there’s anything you can do to help us, if you know anything about him that will help us put him away, you’d be helping more than my family. You’d be helping more people than you can imagine. I’m not kidding. I know you don’t like me. You want to pound me. I get that. But would it really make you happy if I died? If my whole family died? If a lot of people died?”
Guilt, shame—something like that—touched Clayton’s face.
He gave David a one-shoulder shrug. He whispered, “I don’t want that.”
“Please,” David said. “If you can, help us.”
Clayton studied the floor tiles. His eyes flashed up to David, then lowered again. They were silent for five, ten seconds—an eternity after that conversation. The wall clock ticked, ticked.
Keeping his gaze on the floor, Clayton walked for the door. As he passed David, he said, “I’ll think about it.”
David looked down at the desk. Kids had etched words into its surface: NICHO LAS . . . ALLISON +SCOTT . . . MR.
REED STINKS. He heard the door open, then click shut.
If Clayton told anyone—his parents, cops—what David had said, would it cause trouble? He didn’t think so. Even if he told Taksidian, what more harm could Taksidian do? He hoped that if nothing else, this would make Clayton stay away from Taksidian. Just as he knew Clayton didn’t wish serious hurt on David, David didn’t want him hurt either. And hurt was what Taksidian was all about.
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