Watcher in the Woods

by Robert Liparulo

  David watched Xander meet Dad’s gaze.

  “More than I can trust you,” his brother said.

  CHAPTER three

  SUNDAY, 7 : 55 A . M.

  “Why are you being so mean to Dad?” David asked.

  Xander didn’t look away from the items hanging from hooks in the antechamber they stood in. Dad and Toria had left to find notepads and pens to catalog the rooms. “What do you mean?”

  David mimicked his brother: “ ‘More than I can trust you.’ ”

  “It’s true,” Xander said.

  “Dad made a mistake, that’s all.”

  “His mistake got Mom kidnapped. Don’t you understand? We may never see her again.”

  “We will,” David said quietly. His heart felt like a cannonball in his chest. He surveyed the things in the room. “Doesn’t look like any big deal,” he said.

  There was a leather jacket, a beret, a sheathed knife, a belt of rifle cartridges. On the bench lay a rolled-up paper and a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

  “Hard to tell,” Xander said. He elbowed David’s arm. “You should know that, going over the way you did.”

  Xander was right. You couldn’t judge a world’s safeness by the items in the antechamber. After Xander’s trip to the Colosseum, David had wanted to try it. They had chosen a room with clothes and tools that had seemed even more harmless than the ones here. And David had stepped smack into the middle of three hungry tigers and a tribe of fierce hunters.

  He lifted the leather jacket off its hook. It was heavy, old, and wrinkled. He slipped it on.

  Xander smiled and said, “ ‘No man left behind.’ That’s from Black Hawk Down.”

  “No woman left behind,” David amended. He snatched the beret off the hook in front of him. It was big on his head, but he left it propped there, tilted down over one eyebrow. He said, “Xander, you know Dad feels the same way. He won’t leave without Mom.”

  Xander didn’t respond.

  David said, “He loves Mom.”

  “He should have thought of that before bringing us here.”

  “He didn’t think it would happen so fast. He thought he could protect us.”

  “He was wrong.”

  “He said when he lived here as a kid, the weird stuff didn’t start happening for months. He thought he had time to make it safe, to figure it out.”

  The muscles in his brother’s face seemed to tighten. David didn’t like to see him looking so stern, so angry.

  “He loves Mom,” David repeated, whispering.

  Xander sat on the bench. “Look,” he said. “I know he does, and I know he didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But it did—because of him. He loves us, too, and that’s why he might try to get us out of here, thinking it’s best. But it won’t be, not without Mom.”

  David picked up the pack of cigarettes. He said, “This is open. And there are cigarettes missing. Weird.”

  “Why is that weird?”

  David turned the pack over in his hands. The cigarettes inside felt like bones underneath a thin layer of skin. “It makes me wonder whose they were. What does he think happened to his pack of smokes?”

  Xander shrugged, clearly not interested.

  “And look,” David said, holding the package up. “What language is that?”

  “Flor belmonte . . . extra-vergé,” Xander read. He shrugged again. “Italian?”

  David examined the pack, then slipped it into the jacket pocket. He looked at the door leading to the world where the jacket, beret, and cigarettes belonged. Had he picked up enough of them to unlock the door? Hadn’t they determined that it took only three items from the antechamber to open the portal door? He looked sideways at Xander, who was reaching for the roll of paper.

  Giving in to curiosity, knowing he shouldn’t, David gripped the door handle and turned it. The door flew open as though pushed from the other side. A whoosh of warm air swept in.

  “Hey!” Xander said. David sensed him stepping up behind him. He felt a tug as Xander’s hand grabbed the collar of the leather jacket. “David! ”

  “I’m just looking,” David said. But really there was nothing to see. Sometimes what lay beyond the doorway was fairly clear, as when they were able to see the jungle floor before David stepped through. But before Xander found himself in the Colosseum, they had seen the world on the other side as indistinct shapes. It was like that now, like peering through a steamed-up shower door.

  A blurry object flashed past, causing David to jump. “Whoa!”

  Another figure passed by on the other side of the threshold. This one was more distinct—dark hair framing a white face, dark clothes.

  “People,” Xander said.

  “Doing what?”

  More and more figures went past, moving right to left. A child went by, everything about him clear as tap water. David saw fear in the boy’s eyes as he turned to look back over his shoulder. And yet, the person whose hand he was holding was blurry and indistinct.

  “It’s like we’re seeing it through a camera lens,” Xander said. “And somebody is playing with the focus.”

  The sound coming through was no better. Most of it was a garbled murmur. Now and then words came through. The syllables were sharp, but David didn’t understand the language. A low boom sounded like the beating of a drum.

  “A parade?” David wondered out loud.

  “Shut the door,” Xander said. “Wait for Dad.”

  More faces—in and out of focus.

  “Hold on,” David said. “I want to see more. Maybe I can figure out what they’re doing.”

  “Don’t move,” Xander said, releasing David’s collar.

  David glanced back to watch Xander step into the hallway. “Dad!” his brother called.

  Dust and smoke drifted into the little room. It smelled like fireworks on the Fourth of July. The angle of the view through the doorway seemed to be getting higher. David could see more people, mostly their heads now, not their bodies. He remembered Xander telling him that he had watched the jungle moving past the doorway before he jumped in to rescue David from the tigers. Whatever these portals were, they were not locked in one place. They moved, as though with a breeze or caught in an ocean current.

  A face came into focus and immediately blurred. David’s heart jumped into his throat. The glimpse had been enough.

  “Mom,” he whispered. Then he shouted it: “Mom! Xander! I saw Mom!” He leaned his shoulder into the door frame, hoping for another glimpse.

  Xander raced up to him. “Where? David, where?”

  “She went past! Xander, it was her!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure! I’m sure!”

  Xander went back into the hallway and yelled, “Dad! Dad!” His voice was shrill, panicky. His eyes were wide. He was shifting his gaze down the hall, back to David, down the hall again. David realized Xander was as clueless about what to do as he was.

  He watched the throng of people in the other world start to thin out. The perspective of the doorway rose higher and farther away. He could no longer see the spot where he thought his mother was.

  “Xander, I . . . she . . .” He turned his head.

  Xander was looking at him, reading him perfectly. “No!”

  “Wait for me!” David said and stepped through the portal.

  CHAPTER four

  And so he found himself staring over the crumbling wall at an approaching tank.

  Click-click-click-click-click.

  Its turret rotated toward him. When the big barrel was pointed directly at him—all he could see of it was a black hole—it stopped. Fire and smoke erupted from it.

  David dropped to the floor, knowing the wall would be like wet paper to the incoming shell. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  Here lies a boy named David King, he thought, the image of his headstone filling his mind. Food for worms because he did a stupid thing.

  He heard the whine of the shell as it cut through the air over his head. The
explosion was farther away than he expected. The floor shook and dropped down a foot. Plaster and rock rained over him.

  He cracked open an eye. The shell had gone through the bedroom’s crumbled exterior and interior walls, sailing right through into the attic beyond. Two feet lower and he’d be as gone as the section of roof above his head, through which he could see the blue sky beyond.

  The hum of the tank’s turret started again. It was turning its cannon away from him! He brushed the debris off his face and shoulders, then took off the beret and slapped at his hair, kicking up thick plumes of white powder. He draped the beret back over his head and lifted his eyes over the top of a shattered wall. Men were crouched behind rubble and smoldering vehicles, shooting at the tank and the soldiers following it. Beyond this scattering of ragtag combatants, a bullet-pocked door cracked open and a woman peered out. She was not his mother, but he could see people crowded in the room behind her. This must be where the fleeing villagers had wound up. Maybe his mother was among them.

  The tank boomed out a shell. David watched it flash into one of the cars the resistance fighters were hiding behind. It exploded. He saw bodies fly but quickly told himself that they were just parts of the car. The explosion rattled the façade of the building nearest it: a section of it, from ground to roof and ten feet wide, crumbled and fell, exposing the joists of the second floor and attic rafters. He caught a glimpse of an upper-floor bedroom similar to the one he was in, before smoke and dust obscured it.

  Keeping low, he pushed away from the wall, then ran out of the bedroom and down a narrow flight of wooden stairs. They emptied into what used to be a pub. Most of the front wall was gone, pounded to dust. So were half the bar, tables, and chairs. A corner of the upstairs bed, the one that was burning, poked through the ceiling. Swatches of fiery bedding fell through. The heavier pieces plunged down like meteorites; lighter ones floated gently down like leaves from a flaming tree. Already the wood floor had ignited in a dozen spots. Smoke churned against the ceiling, filled the space with gray fog.

  David coughed and coughed again. His throat was raw from the heat and smoke. His eyes stung. His lungs demanded fresh air. He dropped to his hands and knees and scampered across the floor, giving the flames a wide berth. He jumped over the rubble at the front of the building. Twisted rebar caught his foot, and he crashed down. He fell on top of jagged chunks of concrete and flipped over, landing in the street. By the time he caught his breath and blinked away the smoke and tears, three rifles were trained on him.

  He threw up his hands. “Don’t shoot me, please.”

  The faces behind the rifles twisted in confusion.

  “Qui êtes-vous? Identifiez-vous! ” one of the men shouted.

  Oh, crap. David shook his head.

  One man turned to the others, “C’est seulement un enfant.”

  Enfant! David recognized the word from French class. It meant child.

  “Yes, yes!” he said, nodding his head vigorously. “Oui . . .enfant, enfant. ”

  The tank belched out another round. The three men hunched down. David bowed his head, covering it with his arms. The explosion was a good fifty yards away. Still, debris zinged past David like buckshot. Something hit him in the calf. He grabbed it in pain, sure that he would find his flesh ripped open. It felt intact, so he opened one eye and looked. His jeans were not torn. No blood.

  The fighters had forgotten him. Two of them were firing their rifles from around the back of a wrecked truck. The other had stepped onto the twisted bumper to get the barrel of a machine gun high enough to shoot over their own barricade.

  David scrambled up. He limped down the block and across the street toward the door he had seen the woman open. Gunfire popped behind him. Divots of plaster ripped from the building on his right. Bullets sparked off the cobblestone on his left. He slammed into the red painted door. The thumb lever of the handle would not depress. He pounded on the door. Thinking of nothing else to say, he cried, “Enfant, enfant!”

  The door opened an inch. An eye inspected him. Then it swung wide, and he was pulled inside. The air was stuffy and hot. There was an awful odor, which David knew must be sweat, but the first thing that came to his mind was fear. The room was crowded with women, children, and old men. Several people asked him questions he didn’t understand. He shook his head and nodded, all the while moving to take in every face.

  Then he saw the back of her head, the familiar color of her hair—golden yellow, like turning leaves. But this woman wore a dress. His mother had been taken in her nightgown. Of course, she would have found other clothes by now. He stepped around an old man whose shaking hands wanted to touch him, around two children not much younger than himself. Their cheeks were wet with tears. One of them was glassy-eyed, his face slack with shock. The other spoke to David urgently, repeating a line over and over. David frowned at him and shook his head.

  His mother was huddled in a group of women.

  “Mom!” David yelled. He supposed the word was similar to the one these other children would use. Many heads turned his way, all offering blank or hopeful stares.

  His mother noticed the gazes the other women were giving him. She turned. As she did, she spoke rapidly to someone he could not see. His heart sank. She was speaking in French.

  Her resemblance to his mother was undeniable, and his heart skipped for a moment as he let himself think that he had been right. But he wasn’t.

  The woman responded to the disappointment on his face with sadness of her own. Softly she said, “Avec qui êtes-vous, fils? Est-ce que je peux vous aider?”

  The ache in David’s chest made him feel that his heart had turned into a plastic lump. It radiated out, transforming him into a plastic boy. He could not speak, he could not move; he didn’t know if he was breathing or blinking. He had been so sure. . . . Deep in his mind he had already embraced her, told her how much he missed her, had taken her hand and brought her home.

  A tear rolled down his cheek, and he knew his bottom lip was quivering.

  The woman’s frown deepened. “Vous êtes si triste.” She held out her arms and stepped toward him.

  He backed away, turned, and ran for the door. He was only half-aware of pushing people out of his way. He collided with the boy who had spoken to him. The boy yelled and went down. At the door, an old woman blocked his way. She shook a gnarled finger at him, scolding him with words he didn’t understand. He shook his head back and forth, back and forth, trying to rid his mind of his lost hope, his sorrow, and even his being there.

  One word formed out of it all and bounced around inside his skull like a racquetball: Stupid . . . stupid . . . stupid . . .

  He shoved his shoulder between the old woman and the door. He flipped a dead bolt, pulled the door open, and went through.

  Gunfire, screams, oily smoke. Behind him, voices rose in alarm. Several women called out to him: “Enfant!” and “Garçon!”

  He stumbled into the street. Blinking hard to clear his vision, he looked back. The old woman scowled at him, cold to his feelings, calloused by the disrespect of youth. Faces behind her expressed worry and concern. More of them joined in a chorus, calling him back to safety. The old woman held on to the door. She gave him one last scowl and slammed it shut.

  CHAPTER five

  The tank had come off the bridge. Now it was rumbling toward David on the town’s main street. Under massive splatterings of mud and grime, it was painted in a camouflage pattern. On the front, where an emblem would have been on a car, was painted a white and black cross—David recognized the symbol of the German army.

  I’m in World War II, he thought. More than half a century before I was born.

  While the tank headed directly toward him, the gunners inside and the soldiers behind were occupied by something off to the side. Machine guns and rifles spat bullets in that direction. The tank’s turret and cannon barrel slowly rotated toward the conflict. Bullets pinged against the side of the tank, kicking up tiny sparks.

&nbs
p; Over the shooting and the rumble of the tank—sounds much louder than movies made them out to be—a voice reached his ears: “Vous, là, sortez de la manière! Déplacez-la, garçon! ”

  He turned away from the tank to see a man waving at him from farther up the street. The man wore a beret like his own and held a rifle. Beside him, behind a wall of rubble, more faces peered. The man waved his free hand high in the air as if swatting at flies. “Sortez de la manière! ”

  David was standing between the oncoming German army and the French Resistance. A breeze passed him. He felt it in his arms and hair, but it had not touched his face, and he realized it was not a breeze. The jacket and beret were exerting a gentle pressure all their own. Nudging him toward the portal home, as his father said they would. They urged him to cross the street, to the side opposite from where the women and children had taken shelter. He ran.

  A scream stopped him. He looked back toward the tank. A woman had apparently run across its path, toward the shelter. She was lying in the street, trying to push herself up with her arms. As David watched, she slumped and stopped moving.

  He took a step back toward where the portal must be waiting. He could take no more of this. No more suffering, no more death. With a deep sadness, he realized what, besides death itself, they were risking in trying to rescue their mother. They would be witnesses to events that would change them forever.

  He saw the woman in the street stir and felt a spark of hope. A toddler in a white dress pushed out from under the woman’s arm. She stood and looked down at the woman, who must have been carrying her. She reached a small hand to the woman’s blouse and tugged at it. Then, confused and frightened by the loud noises, the little girl tottered away.

  Go, David thought. Then he said it out loud: “Go!”

  The tank was rumbling toward her. It was thirty feet away, closing fast.

  A French soldier shouted and ran toward her. A small barrel set into the front of the tank rattled, spitting flame. Bullets kicked up dirt at the man’s feet. He dived and rolled under a partially crushed truck. Round after round plunked into the truck’s sheet metal. The machine gun panned to the wall of rubble. It blasted the concrete into clouds of dust, keeping the fighters cowering behind.