Whirlwind

by Robert Liparulo

  Dad had collected them—even the cordless home phone— wrapped them in a towel, and put them in a box in the sunroom, where they hardly ever went.

  “It’s not really bugging,” Xander said. “I saw it in a movie last year. It’s called an infinity transmitter. It lets someone dial any number and listen through the mouthpiece. The phone doesn’t ring. It just opens a connection.”

  “Sounds like bugging to me,” David said.

  Xander shrugged. “Except there’s no bug.”

  “We have too much going on not to have phones,” Keal said. “We need communication.”

  Dad set his bowl down, thinking. “We’ll pick up some prepaid mobile phones with new numbers tomorrow. He could have got our old numbers anywhere. Mine’s on our checks.

  Xander’s is on his school records.” He crossed his arms.

  “What I want to know is, how are we going to keep this place safe?”

  “I’ll have the walls back up tomorrow,” Keal said. “Extra fortified.”

  “I don’t think the walls matter,” David said. “Sorry, but I was there when Phemus knocked them down. I don’t think he broke a sweat.”

  “We have to make something that’ll scare him away,” Xander said, “like Jesse said. Young Jesse.”

  On one of their trips through a portal, the boys had found themselves in 1931, where they’d met Jesse at age fourteen. He had told him how to keep time travelers out of the house.

  “You mean the wall lights?” Keal asked.

  “They’re carved to resemble whatever superstition scares the people you’re trying to keep out. As long as they have a strong enough fear of something, it works,” Xander explained.

  Dad said, “Maybe something about going through time makes them especially susceptible to being scared. I jump at my own shadow when I go over.”

  “One problem,” David said. “What scares Phemus?”

  The guy was huge, maybe seven feet tall and muscular. It was hard to imagine anything frightening him.

  “We have to know where he comes from,” Dad said. “What civilization, what era.” He pointed. “Toss me that, will you, honey?”

  Toria looked beside her at several lunch-size bags of chips. She whipped one his way.

  “Me too,” David said.

  Toria shook her head and handed him one.

  Dad popped a chip into his mouth and said, “So, what do we know about Phemus?”

  “He’s ugly,” Toria said.

  “He wears animal pelts,” David mumbled through a mouthful of Fritos.

  Xander lifted himself to sit on the island. He said, “He has lots of scars.”

  Dad nodded. “If only . . .” His eyes grew big. “Wait here.”

  He darted around the island and disappeared out the kitchen door. His feet pounded up the stairs.

  Toria looked around the room. Xander shrugged.

  Keal grinned and said, “Toria . . . sweetheart . . . ?”

  She hurled a chip bag across the kitchen to him.

  Still chowing, David said, “So where do you find big, ugly, pelt-wearing guys who get hurt a lot?”

  “Professional wrestling,” Xander said.

  Dad clopped back down the stairs. When he entered, he was holding one hand behind his back. He said, “What’s the best way to know where a guy comes from?”

  “Ask him,” David said.

  “A birth certificate,” Keal said.

  Dad rolled his eyes. “Besides that.”

  They all looked blank.

  “Language,” Dad said. He pulled Toria’s toy bear, Wuzzy, from behind his back and plopped it on the island.

  CHAPTER

  nineteen

  THURSDAY, 9:18 P. M.

  On the night Phemus took Mom, he’d spoken to Toria. Her teddy bear, which contained a built-in recorder, had saved his words.

  Now Dad adjusted Wuzzy on the counter. He said, “Every race, every civilization, every nationality possesses its own unique language or a unique dialect of a more common language. I’ve heard that some linguists can tell where a person grew up just by how he speaks.”

  “Professor Higgins!” Toria said. “My Fair Lady. You know it, Xander.”

  “Hey,” Xander said defensively. “You’re the one who likes musicals.”

  “Henry Higgins said he could tell where someone is from just by hearing them talk.”

  “And be accurate within six miles,” Dad agreed. “That’s real. Some guys are even better, and their scope of known languages and dialects covers the whole world.”

  “Yeah,” Xander said, “but does it cover all of history too?”

  Dad pointed at him. “Some people specialize in ancient languages. It’s called philology.”

  Keal looked into his chip bag and shook it. “You know any philologists?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Dad said. “An old college buddy of mine. He teaches at UCLA.” He patted Wuzzy on the head and rushed out of the room. He turned into the library, where most of his office things were still in boxes, and called out, “I have his number here somewhere.”

  Toria crinkled her brow. “Wuzzy’s going to help us find out what scares Phemus?”

  “That’s what Dad thinks,” Xander said, sounding skeptical.

  Toria smiled over at Wuzzy, like a proud parent.

  Dad hurried in, flipping through the pages of a small notebook. “Here it is,” he said. “Mike Patterson. Where’s the phone?” He froze and grimaced, remembering.

  Keal crumpled his chip bag and tossed it into the trash can. He crossed his arms. “We don’t want Taksidian knowing we’re figuring this out,” he said. “He’ll try to stop us for sure.”

  Dad frowned at the notebook. “Does that infinite thing—”

  “Infinity transmitter,” Xander said.

  “Does it work if you’re on the phone, or just when the phone’s not in use?” Dad asked. “Can he listen in on telephone conversations? If it just opens up the mike, I wouldn’t think so.”

  Xander shrugged. “I don’t know.” He looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “In the movie, they used it to hear people who weren’t talking on the phone, only near it.”

  “I think it’s a risk we have to take,” Dad said. “Who knows when Phemus will attack again? The sooner we scare him away, the better.”

  “We know he has the mobile phone numbers,” Keal said. “Use the land line, just in case.”

  “Has he ever called here?” Dad asked.

  “He never called our mobile phones either,” Xander said, “but he must have known the numbers.”

  “I’m going to do it,” Dad said. He walked out of the kitchen through the butler’s pantry, which led to the sunroom.

  “He’s excited,” Toria observed.

  Xander sighed loudly. “ ’Bout time.”

  “Hey,” David said, tired of Xander’s grousing about Dad’s lack of action. “He tailed Taksidian with us. He drove a car into a brick wall to save you.” David threw up his hands.

  “And he saved your butt before, too, from that gladiator. Dad does stuff.”

  Xander put on his guilty face. “You’re right,” he said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Say we figure out what scares Phemus,” Keal said. “What next? We carve a wall light?”

  Xander nodded. “That’s what Jesse said. I think he made most of the ones upstairs.”

  “Who knows how to carve?” Keal said.

  “I can whittle,” David said.

  “Okay,” Keal said. “I crown you Chief Wall Light Maker.”

  Dad dashed into the kitchen, the clunky home phone pressed against his cheek. He said, “I appreciate this, Mike.

  Hold on, here it is.” He punched the speaker button and set the phone beside Wuzzy. He looked up at the others and touched his finger to his lips: Shhhh. He flipped a switch on Wuzzy’s back and squeezed the bear’s paw to start the playback.

  Toria’s voice came out of the bear: “Good night, Xander.


  Thanks for watching over me.”

  “Oops,” Dad said, reaching for the paw. “Wrong memory chip. Hold on, Mike.”

  Before he could change the recording, Wuzzy said with David’s voice, “I am too,” and Toria replied, “Thank you, David.”

  David felt a hollowness in his chest, as though his heart had deflated a little. He remembered that conversation. He and Xander had volunteered to sleep with Toria because she said a big man had been in her room. A nightmare, they had thought at the time. Mom was home, and all was right with the world. Mom tucked them in and said good night. And the next time they saw her, Phemus was carrying her away.

  Dad squeezed the paw a few times.

  Wuzzy played Toria saying, “Who is it?” in a sleepy voice.

  “Okay, Mike,” Dad said. “It’s coming up.”

  Creaking noises came out of Wuzzy, then:

  Toria: “Who—”

  A deep, rumbling voice: “Sas ehei na erthete na paiksei.”

  David felt sick.

  Dad grabbed the paw and waited. After a few moments, he said, “Well? Mike?”

  Silence.

  “Mike?”

  “Uh,” came a staticky voice from the phone’s puny speaker. “I recognize some diphthong patterns, but . . . could you play it again? Turn the phone speaker off and hold the handset up to the recorder.”

  Dad did, then brought the phone up to his face. He let out a heavy breath. “I see. I understand.” Then he brightened.

  “You can? You’ll do that? When?” He darted out of the room, heading for the library.

  David looked at his sister, then his brother. Their faces were as glum as he knew his was. He said, “Hard to hear that voice.”

  Xander nodded.

  Toria sniffed, wiped a tear off her cheek.

  David hopped down from the counter and went to her.

  “We’ll get Mom back,” he told her. “That’s what we’re doing now, working on it, you know.” He was speaking to himself as much as to her.

  She tried to smile. She sniffed again. A tear streaked down, and David smeared it away. Xander walked over with a paper towel.

  Dad appeared in the doorway. He glanced at them all, then his eyes stopped on Toria. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m all right,” she said.

  He went to her and ran his hand over her head, down the length of her hair. “This will work out,” he said. “I promise.”

  His eyes found David’s, then Xander’s.

  “What’d your friend say?” Xander asked.

  “Inflections and subtle tones are crucial in his work. The phone line was flattening out the words too much. He thinks if he could hear Wuzzy live and in person, he could tell us something.”

  “So, what?” Xander said. “We send Wuzzy to him?”

  “Well . . .” Dad said, a sly smile creasing his mouth. “Wuzzy’s too valuable to entrust to the postal service, and as I said, the sooner the better. So Toria and I are taking Wuzzy to see Mike. We leave tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER

  twenty

  THURSDAY, 10:43 P. M.

  David lay in his bed, arms crossed under his head. He watched the moonlight reflected on his ceiling and the way the shadows from tree branches danced through it in the wind.

  “Xander?” he said.

  “Hmmm?” his brother answered from his bed.

  “I’ve been thinking,” David said. “Something weird happened today.”

  “No kidding!”

  “I mean, something else. In the Civil War, when I went into the hospital tent looking for Dr. Scott . . . I think I saw Nana.”

  “You think?” Xander rolled onto his side, propping his head up.

  “She was facing away from me, feeding some wounded guy.” David relived the moment in his mind and felt the chilly-footed insect scamper along his spine again. “But her hair . . . something about her . . . I’m almost positive it was her. But how could that be? We rescued her yesterday.”

  “I guess when we go back to the same place we’ve been before, we can go back earlier than the previous time.”

  David scrunched his brows together, thinking. “That’s too weird,” he said.

  “Don’t think about it too hard,” Xander said, falling back onto his pillow. “Your brain will explode.”

  They were silent for a few minutes, David trying to get his mind off the so-freaky-your-brain-will-explode aspects of time travel. Finally, he said, “What do you think of Dad taking Wuzzy to that philanthropy guy?”

  “Philology,” Xander corrected.

  “Sounds like somebody who studies people named Phil.”

  “Maybe there are Davidologists too,” Xander said. “That’d sure take an advanced degree, figuring you out.”

  On the ceiling, two leafy branches looked like tall, skinny guys with shields and swords. They were bending in toward each other, thrusting and parrying and generally trying to slaughter one another. Then they’d back off, shaking and twitching, as if each was taunting the other.

  I’ve definitely gone through too many portals, David thought. I’m seeing battles everywhere.

  In almost every world, there had been some kind of war or fighting or mortal danger. Not for the first time, he wondered why that was. Young Jesse’s world, he thought. No fighting there . . . for some reason. He suspected a pattern guided all of it, none of it was random, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure it out.

  The thought struck him that it might actually be the life of him if he didn’t figure it out.

  “So,” he said, “what do you think? Dad taking off ?”

  “Good idea,” Xander said. He was silent awhile, then said, “If that guy can figure out Phemus’s language. I have my doubts.”

  David rolled onto his side and folded the pillow under his head. “You think we can keep Phemus out—with just a lamp?” Xander ran a hand over his face and groaned. “I don’t know, Dae. Stranger things have happened in this house. Besides, symbols and things like that scare people. They always have.

  Vampires hate crosses.”

  “Vampires aren’t real,” David said.

  “Okay,” Xander said. He turned on his side to face his brother. “The Vikings carved dragon heads onto the prows of their ships. Historians say they scared the tar out of people.”

  “That’s because of the Vikings,” David said. “Not the dragon’s head. We should know that better than anyone.” Only that morning, he and Xander had barely survived an attack of Viking Berserkers.

  “Of course it’s what the symbol stands for, not the symbol itself,” Xander said. “Say you’re a villager in eleventh-century England. You’ve seen Viking raiders ransack villages and slaughter innocent people.”

  David nodded.

  “You’re out traveling,” Xander continued, “and come up to the big wooden gates of a town. But there’s a huge symbol painted on them: a Viking dragon. What do you do?”

  “Run away like my butt’s on fire,” David said.

  “Exactly,” Xander said. “You were scared by a symbol. The symbol becomes what’s behind it.”

  “At least we’re more sophisticated now,” David said.

  “Don’t be so sure. Think about it. Remember the first portal you went through, to that jungle with the tigers?”

  “And warriors,” David added. His stomach lurched the way it had when he was on the shaky rope bridge over a deep gorge. Warriors on one side, tigers on the other. He shivered and closed his eyes.

  “What if,” Xander said, “the first thing you saw when you went over was a skull-and-crossbones? You know, the symbol for danger. It was slathered on a tree in what looked like blood. Real bones piled under it—or a whole skeleton!”

  “Yeah,” David said, getting it. “I would have turned around and dived right back through the portal before it disappeared.

  Straight back to the antechamber.” The idea that wall lights could actually scare people away suddenly made more sense.

  Silenc
e filled the room. The house creaked around them.

  Just the house creaking, David thought. He turned onto his stomach and lay there watching his brother roll one way and then the other. His eyelids grew heavy, and he let them close.