Frenzy

by Robert Liparulo

  Phemus ducked his head to fit through the opening, and stepped on top of the door.

  Keal groaned and fought to get free, but he was pinned under Phemus’s massive weight.

  “Keal!” David and Xander yelled at the same time.

  Phemus noticed their stares and looked down at Keal. Stepping forward on the door—pushing a gasp of pain from Keal—the big man stooped, reaching for Keal’s head.

  David snatched up a stud and thrust it into Phemus’s neck. Phemus reared up, and David rammed the stud into his stomach. The big man grabbed the wood and shook it. David held on, stumbling around like a bull rider.

  Xander grabbed Keal’s arm and began pulling. Keal put a hand on the top edge of the door and pushed, inching his way out.

  Lightning bolts shot into David’s shoulder from his broken arm, but he refused to release his grip. He had to keep Phemus busy for as long as it took to free Keal. The stud slipped over his hands, pushing splinters into his flesh. Phemus swung the stud, slamming David into the wall.

  “Hurry!” he yelled.

  Xander dropped to the floor. He hooked his hands into Keal’s armpit, planted a foot on the top of the door, and pulled. Keal slid farther out until only his legs remained pinned.

  Phemus jerked David back and forth on the end of the stud. Then he yanked it toward himself, and David stumbled forward. He had no choice: he let go just before coming close enough for Phemus to grab him.

  Phemus hoisted the stud and jabbed it down at Keal. Keal twisted sideways, and the stud smashed into the floor. It broke through the hardwood, penetrating it like a pick shattering through ice. Phemus raised it for another strike.

  Xander pulled. Keal thrashed, and shot out from under the door. Xander rose and fell back, pulling Keal along the floor with him.

  David helped them up, and together they ran around the corner into the main hallway without looking back.

  “Outside!” Keal yelled.

  They hit the stairs leading to the foyer, and David leaped down, touching every fourth step.

  “Haven’t we done this already?” Xander said, moving past David in a near-freefall down the stairs.

  “He’s going to keep coming,” David said, arching around the door that Xander swung open.

  “Let him try,” Keal said. He pushed the brothers down the porch steps. “Get to the car! The car!”

  At Keal’s rented Charger, David looked back. Phemus was coming down the porch stairs. David jumped into the backseat as Keal dropped down behind the wheel.

  “Aaah!” Keal yelled. He reached behind him, and his hand came back holding the dagger. He dropped it into a cubby in the center console and cranked the engine.

  Phemus was running now, clomping through the trees toward them. Keal didn’t bother turning the car around. He looked through the rear window and peeled away in reverse.

  “Pull a Jim Rockford,” Xander said.

  “What’s that?” Keal said.

  “From The Rockford Files. Slam on your brakes and crank the wheel. You can turn the car around without slowing down.”

  Keal threw him a quick glance. “I’m not Jim Rockford.”

  At the first bend in the road, he stopped.

  The three of them stared through the windshield at the dust cloud the car had made. Slowly it settled, revealing Phemus trotting toward them. He was still a good distance away.

  “What was that back there?” Xander said. “Stopping to put up the door. Come on.”

  “I didn’t want him in the house,” Keal said. “When we go back, he could be hiding somewhere.”

  “Till Time sucks him back,” David said.

  Keal looked at him in the mirror and smiled. “Forgot about that,” he said. He turned the wheel, put the car in drive, and drove around the bend. When David looked, Phemus was still coming.

  CHAPTER

  twenty - one

  FRIDAY, 2:02 P.M.

  They drove through town and out the other side. Keal followed the winding road past the turnoff to Taksidian’s Pinedale house, then turned around. Cruising slowly back into town, he stopped at a gas station, where they all used the bathroom, and Keal bought a bagful of first aid supplies.

  Back in the car, he looked at his watch. “Think Phemus is back in his own time now?”

  Xander looked back at David, who shook his head no. “We’ve been able to stay in the worlds thirty, forty minutes,” Xander said.

  “Longer,” David said, “when we went from world to world without returning to the house first.”

  Keal snapped his head toward him. “You did that?”

  David had forgotten Keal didn’t know. It seemed like such a long time ago when they went to the Civil War world, then went through the wrong portal to the Alps. After that, they had ended up in a torture chamber. When they finally got home, Keal had been knocked out and Phemus and Taksidian had been in the house. And then they had followed Phemus to Atlantis.

  It had all started shortly after using the locker portal to get home from school during first period. So . . . David calculated . . . seven-forty a.m. until now. Less than five hours! He felt five years older than he did when he woke up that morning.

  Xander began telling Keal about it. How David had found the Civil War doctor and somehow changed history. Keal confirmed what the boys already knew: that the war ended in 1865 and cost about 600,000 lives.

  “But David remembers it differently,” Xander said. “He said it ended in 1875 and over two million people died in it.”

  When Keal scowled at him, David said, “That’s what I said right after the change. I don’t remember that anymore.”

  “Like Jesse,” Keal said. “He said he could remember the old history, before he changed it, for only a little while, then it was gone.”

  “Right,” Xander said.

  Keal scratched his head. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get my mind around that, actually changing history.” He looked around at the world outside the car and sighed.

  David thought he was about to say something profound and wise, but what he said was, “You guys feel like ice cream? I could really use some ice cream right about now.”

  Xander grinned. “You sound more and more like Dad all the time.”

  “Hey,” Keal said, “great minds think alike.”

  They pulled into the drive-in diner, where the Kings had stopped for treats after the first day of school. They ordered, and while waiting for the waitress to bring their food to the car, the brothers told Keal more about the worlds they’d visited.

  “Atlantis!” Keal said when they reached that part. The waitress rapped on the window, and he jumped. He handed David a root beer float and Xander a chocolate cone. He licked his own cone as he listened to the rest of the boys’ story.

  Between sentences, they slurped and mmm’ed with pleasure. David didn’t think anything had ever tasted so good as that float. Something about world-hopping and defying death made it the perfect reward.

  When they’d finished, Keal ran his tongue over his lips and said, “But you don’t think your mother’s still there?”

  David said, “Taksidian said the portals pull people away.”

  “He said he didn’t know what world she went to,” Xander added.

  “Your nana said it was like that for her,” Keal said. “She told me she sometimes woke up to find herself getting pulled into another world.”

  David stared into his cup—still some ice cream left, but he suddenly didn’t want it. He said, “That must have been awful.”

  Keal nodded. “She said sometimes she’d whip through three worlds in one day, and other times she’d stay in one world for a month or longer.” He looked at the brothers in turn. “Like a minnow, that’s how she put it. A minnow caught in the currents of Time.”

  David leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes. A scene like a documentary on the Discovery Channel played out in his head: a little fish struggling against the raging waters of a river, bashing against st
ones, resting for a while in a still area, then zipped away again by a gush of water.

  But not water. Time. And not a little fish. Mom.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “We have to find Mom. We have to get her.”

  CHAPTER

  twenty - two

  FRIDAY, 2:50 P.M.

  They sat in the idling car staring up Gabriel Road to their house.

  “Well,” Keal said, “what do you think?”

  David looked out the side windows into the woods. He half expected Phemus and maybe a few of those other Atlantian slaves to rush out of the shadows and surround the car.

  “I think it’s been long enough,” Xander said. “He’s probably back in Atlantis by now.”

  Keal let the car roll closer, all the while swiveling his head around, looking.

  When the car stopped in front of the house, David leaned between the front seats to squint through the trees at the house. “Door’s open,” he observed.

  They climbed out and gathered at the front bumper.

  “What now?” Xander said.

  A loud crack! made David jump. It had come from the car. He looked to see something that looked like a bat—the animal kind—clattering against the inside of the windshield. But it didn’t sound like a bat; too hard, too metallic. He realized what it was: “Taksidian’s dagger!”

  “I . . .” Keal said, staring in disbelief. “I left it on the center console.”

  “Taksidian’s so mean,” Xander said, “even his dagger wants to kill us.”

  “It’s the pull,” David said. “Wherever it came from, Time wants it back.”

  The dagger flipped and spun, clattering against the glass. It dropped to the dashboard, then bounced up to strike the windshield again. The glass shattered, spiderwebbing out from where the blade came through. It started bulging out, making a sound like ice breaking over a pond.

  Keal grabbed Xander’s and David’s arms and pulled them to the side.

  The dagger’s handle broke through. It sailed over the hood and fell into the dirt, then flipped up, balancing on the tip of the blade, where it spun so fast it became a black blur. It tumbled and bounced over the ground toward the house, fast as a jackrabbit. Instead of going up the porch steps and through the door, it leaped into a porch railing—going right through it in an explosion of splinters. It crashed through the window to the left of the door.

  “Must be heading home,” Keal said.

  “Where’s home?” David said.

  “Wherever Taksidian comes from, probably.”

  “But Taksidian’s been here a long time,” David said. “How’d he keep it for so long? I thought Time always pulled the items back to where they belong.”

  “Same way he’s been able to stay, I guess,” Keal said. “He only stays around the house a little while, then leaves before Time realizes he’s here and tries to pull him back.”

  “Like Jesse,” David said. “He could be in the house only a little while at a time.”

  Keal nodded.

  The three of them stood in silence, gazing at the destruction the knife had left. David turned to gape at the hole in the windshield, which had broken into tiny squares that had somehow stayed together.

  “Well,” Keal said, “if the dagger got pulled back, then it wasn’t away from the house long enough to reset the pull. That’s good to know.”

  “Why?” David said.

  “Because when Phemus or Taksidian goes away, we know he won’t be back for a while. And another thing . . .” He smiled. “There’s no way Phemus is still in the house.” He marched toward the front door. “Come on.”

  Xander looked at David, then at the hole in the windshield. He said, “This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”

  CHAPTER

  twenty - three

  FRIDAY, 3:30 P.M.

  David sat sideways on the closed lid of the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. He had his arm propped up on the counter beside the sink, and Keal was carefully unwrapping the Ace bandage Dad had wrapped around the disintegrating cast the other day.

  “Ow,” he groaned.

  “Sorry,” Keal said. “You said you think you broke it again?”

  “Yeah,” David said. “When I was sliding down a hill in the Alps. I shoved it into the snow.”

  “What’d you do that for?”

  “To keep from going over a cliff.”

  Keal grimaced and nodded.

  David smiled a little. Only in this house, only after all the crazy things they’d done, could his explanation not have sounded completely insane.

  Keal poked at the arm while watching David’s expression. “I’m afraid you’re right,” he said. “You did break it again.”

  “You’re a nurse,” David said. “Can’t you fix it?”

  “I can’t reset it. Need a hospital for that. And a new cast.”

  David shook his head. “Last time we saw a doctor, he accused Dad of hurting us.”

  “Because of a broken arm?”

  “Dad thinks Taksidian got to him,” David said, feeling the heat of anger radiate in his chest. “He’d do anything to get us out of the house.”

  “David,” Keal said, pushing his finger into a hole that went straight through the cast. “What’s this?”

  “That’s from a Carthaginian soldier’s pike. He tried to impale me,” David said. “But that didn’t hurt. What hurt are all the times I hit it against trees and the ground and walls and doors.”

  “That’ll do it,” Keal said. “Fresh breaks are easy to re-break or knock out of alignment.”

  David winced at a bolt of pain that felt like wire running up the center of his arm. He fought the urge to pull his arm away. He was trembling all over, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. A tear rolled down his cheek.

  Keal gave him a sad look. “Those painkillers I gave you should have kicked in by now.”

  “Maybe I didn’t take enough,” David said.

  “I can’t give you any more.”

  “That’s okay,” David said. “I’ll be all right after you stop messing with it.” And after I take a long, hot bath, he thought. Followed by, oh, eighteen hours of sleep.

  “This doesn’t look good,” Keal said. “You have to find a way to stop banging it, whether we get it reset and recast or not.” He stopped unraveling the bandage and looked at David, a mixture of puzzlement and concern creasing his brow. His frown was deep, and all David could do was frown back. Then Keal’s face softened, and his lips bent up at the corners. Soon, he was showing David a full set of teeth.

  David got it: the craziness of it all. The dozen wounds he’d suffered and how he’d suffered them. No, no—when and where he’d suffered them. The Alps during Hannibal’s march over them. A Civil War battlefield. A French village during World War II . . . the list went on and on. Before he realized it, he was smiling too. And laughing.

  Keal added his booming laughter. Their voices bounced around the bathroom like music from a symphony orchestra.

  “What’s so funny?” Xander said. He’d gone to take a shower in Mom and Dad’s bathroom, and now he stood in the doorway rubbing a towel over his hair, another towel tied around his waist.

  “Nothing,” David said. “Everything.”

  Xander made a face. He said, “Does this look as bad as it feels?” He turned to show them his back. A dark blue bruise ran diagonally from one shoulder blade to just above the top of the towel. The edges were red, slowly fading to yellow.

  “Man!” Keal said. “Is that from Phemus?”

  Xander nodded and turned around. “When he hurled the toy rifle at us in the clearing. Knocked the wind out of me.”

  “And you almost fell all the way to the ground,” David said, remembering.

  “I thought I was a goner,” Xander said. “I just tried not to think about—” His eyes flashed wide, and he cried out, “Oh! ” He was looking at David’s arm.

  Keal had unwrapped all but a couple of loops of Ace bandage close to the elb
ow. The cast itself was almost gone, crumbled away. Plaster chunks and powder were spread out on the counter around it. David’s skin was mottled blue and white. Thread-thin tendrils of red networked through it, like the swirls of color through marble.

  Xander said, “It looks like something from Alien . . . or The Exorcist . . . or—”

  “Xander.” Keal stopped him.

  David moaned. Seeing it made it worse. He bit his lip.

  “What’s that?” Xander almost screamed. He pointed at a bump in David’s flesh midway between wrist and elbow.

  “Xander,” Keal said, stern. “Go get dressed.”

  “No . . . just . . . what is it?”

  Keal looked at David. He gently touched the bump. David yelped. He was trembling again, the laughter forgotten.

  “That’s your bone, David,” Keal said. “It’s broken, all right. And not set. We have to get you to a hospital.”

  “No,” David said, shaking his head. He closed his eyes, squeezing out more tears.

  “I’ll take you someplace away from Pinedale,” Keal said. “You can’t go on with your arm like this.”

  “No,” David repeated. “Look at me. I have a black eye and a bruised cheek. A bump on my head, bruised ribs, an aching foot, broken skin over my knuckles. The skin on my chest and stomach . . . I don’t even know how to describe it.” He looked down at himself. His entire front was scratched and road-rashed from his slide over ice down the mountain.

  “I’ve got cuts on my shoulder and palm and probably places I don’t even know about yet. If anyone saw me, especially a doctor, they’d be stupid not to call the cops or social services or whoever takes kids away from abusive parents.”

  Keal just frowned at him. “Well,” he said slowly, “I could try to wrap it tightly. Can’t cut off circulation, though. Didn’t the hospital give you a sling?”

  “Yeah,” David said. “It was getting in my way. It’s in the bedroom.”

  “I’ll get it,” Xander said.

  “And rulers,” Keal said. “You got two rulers?”

  “I think Toria does.” Xander darted away.