“A-a-a . . .” Toria tried to speak.
Xander, kneeling by the bed, reached out to stroke Toria’s hair. He half-expected his touch to ignite another fit of screaming. Instead, Toria leaned her head back into his hand, as if wanting to feel it more firmly. She stopped trying to speak and concentrated on catching her breath. Three sharp little inhales, a single long breath out. At last, she raised a finger in David’s direction, said, “A m-m-man . . . there was . . . there was a man in my d-d-doorway.”
David stiffened, glanced over his shoulder, then hurried into the room.
Mom said, “A man, honey? What do you mean?”
Xander caught David staring at him. His eyes were wide with fear.
“I heard a n-n-oise and woke up,” Toria said. “There was a man standing in my room, at the door.”
“What did he look like?” Dad asked.
“Big. He filled it up, the doorway.”
“What did he look like,” Dad repeated. “Did you see his face?”
Toria concentrated. She made a sour expression.
“It was dark,” she said apologetically.
“That’s okay,” Dad said.
“I think . . . he was hairy. He had rags for pants.” She started to weep quietly.
Mom said, “Ed, call the police.”
“And say what, G? They’ll say she had a nightmare. Maybe she did.”
Mom looked unsure.
“Daddy,” Toria said.
He squeezed Toria tighter. He said, “It’s okay, sweetheart. We can talk about it later.”
She pushed back from him to see his face. “The man said something, Daddy.”
Xander felt the skin on his forearms and the back of his neck pull taught and tingle.
Mom said, “What did he say?”
Toria shook her head. “I didn’t understand it. It was rum-ably, like thunder.” It frightened Xander simply to hear about it. He might have screamed too. Xander gave her hair a final stroke, then moved around their parents. He tapped David as he walked by. His brother followed him out of the room.
In the hall, Xander whispered, “The big figure we saw!”
David said, “You think it was the same person?”
“It’d better be. Do you want a bunch of those things roaming around?”
“Where did he come from? We checked the whole—”
Xander stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “I think I know. Sort of. The rooms.”
David looked startled. “He’s coming from one of those . . . those . . . other worlds?”
“Where else? That has to be it.”
The implications of that swirled in David’s head. Xander could see it in his eyes.
David said, “Can anything from those worlds come through?”
“Are you thinking about the tigers?”
David’s bottom lip trembled.
Xander said, “I don’t know. So far, it seems to be that big guy we saw, the one who scared Toria tonight.”
David nodded. “The footprints.”
They both turned their attention down the hall to the base of Toria’s doorway. The floors were too clean now to pick up traces of the big man’s passing.
“What does he want?” David whispered.
Xander had no answer for him.
“What if we stirred him up?” David said.
“You mean . . . by going through?” Xander shook his head. “Mom found the footprints in the dining room before we found the doors upstairs.”
“But think about it. He never spoke before. He didn’t want to be seen.” David squeezed his eyes tight. “I never should have gone through. I just thought—”
“Gone where?” Dad said, coming up behind them.
The boys jumped. Dad’s face grew stern, his eyes flicked between his son’s faces. “Did you visit those rooms again?”
Xander bowed his head.
David said, “Yes, sir. I just wanted—”
His dad interrupted. “I thought I made it clear. Stay away from them.” He shook his head. “I should have locked it up.” His eyes found the bandage on David’s shoulder. “That happen tonight?”
David nodded. “It was an arrow. I went—”
“Tell me tomorrow.” Dad closed his eyes, then opened them slowly. He seemed tired and worried.
Probably a little more than disappointed in his boys, Xander thought. He said, “How’s Toria?”
“She’ll be okay. I’m gonna sleep in her room. She could sleep with us, but if we decide to stay in this house—”
“If?” David asked, sounding a little panicked.
Dad glared at him. “David, this is serious. But if we decide to stay—and that’s a big if—I don’t want her afraid of her own room. I almost have her convinced it was a dream.”
They all knew better. Silence fell over them. Then Xander said, “Dad, let me do it, stay in Toria’s room.”
Dad shook his head. “No, I . . .”
“Then you can stay with Mom. I want to, really.” He shrugged. “Least I can do.”
“What about me?” David asked.
Xander said, “You can help with something else.”
“I mean, I don’t want to be alone. In our room. In the dark.” Xander gave him a little push. “What happened to Mr. Tough Guy?”
“He’s going to sleep in Toria’s room too,” David said. “Double protection.”
Xander said, “For you or her?”
“Ha ha.”
Dad said, “Xander, are you sure?”
“I can do it.”
“Me too,” said David.
“Okay,” Dad said. “Just till we figure out what we’re gonna do.” He nodded over their shoulders, toward their bedroom.
“Go get your stuff. I’ll tell the girls what’s going on.” He turned around, then back to his boys and raised his eyebrows at them.
“And remember, those rooms upstairs are off-limits.”
They nodded like twin bobbleheads.
CHAPTER
thirty - six
SUNDAY, 2:57 A.M.
David had talked Toria into letting him sleep with her in her bed. Xander knew it had nothing to do with providing better protection for her, as David had said. He just hated sleeping on the floor.
Xander didn’t mind it. He had his pillow and his blankets. The area rug beside Toria’s bed took the edge off the wood floor’s hardness and chilliness. He lay there now, considering the pattern of shadows the trees in the moonlight cast on Toria’s ceiling. So different from the ones in his and David’s room. For one thing, they were much less distinct, washed out by Toria’s night-light.
Again, he thought about The Shining, how the house had made Jack Nicholson go crazy. What if it could happen to a whole family? What if none of this was real and they were all going crazy? Seeing things, hearing things, experiencing things. With Toria seeing the man—claiming to see the man —it was like each member of the family was slowly getting pulled in.
Xander didn’t like this train of thought. It was his exhaustion talking. He made his mind think of something else.
David and Toria had fallen asleep quickly. The rhythm of their breathing was not quite in sync with each other. Toria’s was a little faster and a lot quieter. Together, they sounded like distant waves breaking against a beach. Xander listened, thinking of that beach. His eyelids grew heavy. He rolled over to his left side. He adjusted his shoulder, trying to find a comfortable position. Across the room, illuminated by the Princess Fiona light, Wuzzy stared at him.
Stupid bear.
His eyes closed and he was back on the beach. He could almost feel wet sand squishing between his toes.
In the next second, he pushed himself up, fully awake.
The alarm in his head had been so loud he was surprised it hadn’t woken David and Toria. But there they were, shoulder to shoulder, the blankets over their chests rising and falling, almost in unison.
Wuzzy, he thought.
He stepped quietly to t
he bear and picked it up. Then, to the open doorway. He leaned through and peered down the hall.
Dad was there, at the junction of the two hallways. Sitting on boxes, leaning back against the wall. He was fewer than fifteen feet from the master bedroom door. Mom was probably asleep inside. Twenty feet down the other hall was the false wall, beyond which the big man presumably dwelt. Dad clutched an aluminum bat in both hands. The business end rested against his shoulder. He spotted Xander and nodded.
“Bathroom,” Xander whispered. He wasn’t sure Dad heard him way down there, but his father nodded as though he had. Holding the bear, Xander walked to the bathroom, turned on the light, shut and locked the door.
At the small of Wuzzy’s back was a panel of controls at the small of his back. The On/Off switch was in the On position. Xander had suspected it would be, since it seemed to capture everything the family said. Toria would play back the funniest, most embarrassing, or most irritating sound bites. The bear stored half a dozen snippets at a time. Each could be up to several minutes long, Xander thought. He did know it was sound-activated and would fill its memory chips in sequence: first, memory chip number one, then two, and so on. After number six, it returned to memory chip number one. It would replace what was on that chip with a new sound. A pressure-sensitive switch in Wuzzy’s right paw caused it to play back the most recent recordings. That’s how Toria had driven him crazy on the trip from Pasadena to Pinedale. Now, Xander changed Wuzzy’s setting from Record to Playback.
Xander squeezed Wuzzy’s paw. The bear whispered, “Bathroom,” in Xander’s voice. Dad may not have heard, but Wuzzy had. Xander hoped he hadn’t recorded over what he was looking for. He gave the paw two quick squeezes—the first returned the playback head to the beginning of the current memory chip (“bathroom”); the second brought it to the previous memory chip.
His own voice again: “Good night, guys.” It was louder than he had expected. He scrambled to turn on the water. It helped mask the rest of the recording:
David answering, “Night.”
Toria sweetly saying, “Good night, Xander. Thanks for watching over me.”
David again: “I am too.”
Toria: “Thank you, David.”
Xander heard the rustle of bedding, the squeak of a spring in Toria’s mattress, a bang—and he remembered bringing his head down against the night table as he settled in. Hearing it made his head hurt again, and he felt the bump on the back of his head.
Two more quick squeezes of Wuzzy’s paw: Xander, David, and Toria talking.
Two more: Mom and Dad saying good-night.
Again: Dad explaining that Xander and David would sleep in Toria’s room.
Xander was becoming concerned that Wuzzy had already erased the recording he was most interested in. Or . . . he remembered what had happened when David took the camcorder over: nothing but static. He hoped for something better now.
Again: His sister screaming. Pounding footsteps. Xander saying, “Toria, it’s me! Xander!”
Again: Toria saying, “Who is it?” Sounding sleepy. He scrunched his brow in concentration. He held Wuzzy close to his ear. There was a creaking sound—the bedspring—followed by another. Xander thought it was a floorboard. Toria started to call again: “Who—”
A deep, rumbling voice said: “Sas ehei na erthete na paiksei. ”
Xander’s stomach tightened into a knot. Toria started screaming. Xander quickly flipped the Off button.
Xander set the bear on the counter and took a step away from it. Wuzzy appeared as sweet and innocent as a little girl in a Sunday dress, but the deep-throated voice it had recorded and shared was sinister. He did not know how he knew it, he just knew.
Toria had not been dreaming. The family was not going crazy. Their problem was different. It was much, much worse.
CHAPTER
thirty - seven
SUNDAY, 3:25 A.M.
Now that Xander knew Wuzzy had recorded Toria’s encounter with the man, Dad had to hear it. Before, when he didn’t know if the bear had captured any important sounds at all, he didn’t want to get Dad’s hopes up or give him another reason to suspect his son was paranoid.
Xander approached him, bear in hand.
“What is it, Son?” Dad whispered. He shifted on the box. The bat gleamed in the hallway lights. It made Xander feel better, how solid it appeared, how firmly his father gripped it.
Xander said, “We’re not going crazy.”
His dad offered a thin smile. “I know.”
“I mean, I had kind of thought, you know . . . with the last family disappearing . . .”
“Mass hysteria?” his father asked. “You thought we were all going crazy together?”
Xander felt his face flush. It sounded ridiculous coming out of his father. “Well, I was starting to think the house was like . . . I don’t know . . . like, driving us crazy, I guess.”
He shook his head. “Stupid, I know.”
Dad slipped off the box. He touched Xander on the arm. “Not stupid. Say the house really is able to do all these weird things—drop intruders in our midst, even send you back to fight a gladiator. If it could do all that, then simply driving a whole family crazy doesn’t seem like such a big deal, does it? What’s more impossible: a house that makes you think crazy things, or a house that really does crazy things?
Xander nodded. “Either way, it’s way off the charts, right?”
One of Dad’s eyebrows curved up. “Way off,” he agreed. “What’s with the bear?”
Xander gave Wuzzy a little shake. He said, “Evidence we’re not crazy.” He turned it on and squeezed the paw. Toria’s voice came through. “Who is it?” Creak. Creeeak. “Who—?” Then the booming voice: “Sas ehei na erthete na paiksei.”
As soon as the last syllable came out of Wuzzy, something overhead banged. Maybe a slamming door. Or a body hitting the floor up there. The ceiling joists creaked. Footsteps.
Wuzzy screamed in Toria’s voice.
Xander turned it off. His heart pounded like a lowrider’s bass speaker: Ba-boomp! Ba-boomp! Ba-boomp! Ba-boomp! He stared at the ceiling. No more sounds. He lowered his eyes to his Dad’s face. There was fear there. Fear. When your dad was frightened, there was something to be frightened about.
“What was—” Xander started.
“Shhh.” Dad held up one hand. With the other, he kept his grip on the bat. His eyes roamed the ceiling, but he wasn’t looking. He was listening. He cocked his head, held still.
No other sounds came from up there.
Dad brought his head down to stare at the false wall. It appeared to be completely shut. Xander could not tell where it ended and the real wall began. Dad had piled boxes in front of it chest-high. Still, Xander would not have bet on their ability to keep something from coming through.
Dad watched the wall for a long time.
“Dad?” Xander whispered finally.
Slowly, Dad turned his gaze away. He snapped his head back like a pitcher trying to catch a steal, before settling his eyes on Xander. He wasn’t smiling.
Xander said, “What was that?”
Dad shook his head. He said, “That was the last straw. We’re out of here in the morning.”
Xander felt a mixture of relief and regret. Of course, he didn’t want anything to happen to his family. But he knew he would never experience anything like this again.
Dad turned and picked up a box. “Now, give me a hand.” He carried the box to the false wall and added it to the others.
Xander found a safe place for Wuzzy, then started hefting boxes.
CHAPTER
thirty - eight
SUNDAY, 4:38 A.M.
Xander was back on the floor next to Toria’s bed. The night’s excitement had kept him going, but now his mind and body ached for a week of sleep. His eyes felt like they were made out of hot steel, his muscles nothing more than Silly Putty. He rolled onto his stomach and eased his cheek into the relaxing softness of his pillow. His head was full
of images that would love nothing better than to keep him awake or give him nightmares: his gladiatorial fight, the big man roaming their house, even all the things he’d left in Pasadena. He forced himself to once again hear the surf in his brother’s and sister’s breathing. He was on that beach, kicking at the water, smelling the salt, feeling the breeze . . . when the screaming started again.
He grabbed the edge of the mattress and pulled himself up. Groggy, not yet with full vision, he reached for Toria. He said, “What is it?” He felt Toria rise into a sitting position. He made out her face in the glow of the night-light—more puzzled than scared.
Beside her, David moaned, rolled over. He propped himself up on his elbows. “What’s going on?” he said.
It hit Xander an instant before Toria said it.
“Mom!”
He spun and rose. He cracked his shoulder on the door frame, then crashed into the hallway wall opposite Toria’s bedroom. He sprinted toward his parents’ bedroom, trying to make sense of what he saw. Dad’s aluminum bat lay on the floor. Boxes were scattered everywhere. His parents’ door was open. No, not open—ripped from its hinges, on the hallway floor.
Xander crashed over a box. He fell on the unhinged door, got up, and grabbed the door frame of his parents’ room. Only then did he realize the screaming was not coming from the room. Rather, around the corner. He spun, catching a glimpse of David beating it toward him. Xander paused long enough to hold up his hand. “No, David, stay here.”
Toria came out of her room and ran toward her brothers.
Xander yelled, “David, stay with Toria. I mean it.” He turned and scooped up the bat. He rounded the corner. The wall was wide open. Heavy footsteps climbed the stairs beyond, nearly lost under the sound of his mother’s screams. So intent was Xander on reaching her, he nearly tripped over a pair of legs sticking out of the guest bedroom. He jumped over them, slid to a stop, crawled back. The bat clacked against the wood floor.
It was Dad. On his back. Not moving. Xander released the bat. He moved up his father’s body, hand over hand. His palm pressed against his father’s chest, his eyes reached his father’s face, scanning for signs of life. He felt it: a heartbeat under his hand.
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