Gatekeepers

by Robert Liparulo

  Still . . . should he approach the creepy dude? That would put his back to the bushes—and whatever was in them.

  Behind him, he heard the car door open.

  “Sam!” Lance said. “Sam, get back here, man! Get out of there!”

  That decided it. He took a step back. The ground here was spongy with soft soil and decomposing leaves. He began to tumble, caught himself, and shuffled in reverse.

  The car door slammed shut. The trees erupted in flames—that’s what Sam thought for a few seconds, until a blue light pushed away the red and he realized Lance had turned on the police flashers. The red light swung around again. Blue. Red. Blue. They flashed against the trees but didn’t reach the figure in the mist. To Sam’s eyes, they made everything worse, making shadows jump up and fall back. He couldn’t tell what was real movement, from which he had to protect himself, and what was merely the dance of light and shadow. He swung his gun between the bushes and the figure and backed away, backed away.

  His own shadow became blacker and sharper on the ground as he neared the car. When his heels touched the dirt road, he spun and ran for the passenger door. He hopped in, panting. He scanned the woods through the windshield. He thought the figure was gone, but it was hard to tell, between the darkness way back there and all the lights doing their thing.

  “What’s going on?” Lance said. He sounded panicked.

  Sam looked over at him. The door window behind Lance’s frightened face was broken: a dozen cracks fanned out from a small hole in the glass. “What happened?”

  “I think someone shot at me! They hit the light!”

  “Get us out of here,” Sam said. “Come on, start the car!”

  Lance cranked on the key. The engine roared. He slammed the shifter into gear, and the cruiser reversed away from the woods.

  Sam watched through the windshield, half expecting some-thing to chase them. He held his pistol up, ready. “Did you call it in?” he asked.

  “No, I—” Lance grabbed for the radio.

  Sam clutched Lance’s hand. “Forget it,” he said. “Just go, go.”

  “But—”

  “What are we going to say?” Sam said. “That we got scared away?”

  “Someone shot at me!”

  “That’s not a bullet,” Sam said. “See the way the glass is crushed around the hole? I’ve seen it a hundred times. It was a rock.”

  “Then why are we taking off ?” Lance turned the car toward the side of the road and put it in drive.

  Sam realized Lance had not seen the figure or heard the growling. He said, “Because I don’t know what’s going on here, but it ain’t no good.” He shook his head. “It ain’t no good.”

  “What about the kids?”

  “If they’re the ones throwing rocks, they don’t deserve our protection,” Sam said. “If they’re inside, they’re safe.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure enough. Go, will ya?”

  Lance accelerated, kicking gravel up into the wheel wells, sounding like angry rattlesnakes. He swept the car around and got it pointed away from the house.

  Sam turned in his seat to watch the blackness through the rear window. Lance braked, casting red light on the road behind them and the trees on both sides.

  Then the car rounded a bend, and Sam relaxed. He closed his eyes and sighed. He said, “I never did like that house.”

  CHAPTER

  fourteen

  WEDNESDAY, 1.05 A.M.

  Keal watched the police car vanish around a curve. He crunched across the forest floor and stopped next to a bush.

  “For Pete’s sake, Jesse,” he said. “I should never have let you talk me into taking you out of the nursing home. You didn’t say anything about throwing rocks at cops.”

  The bushes laughed, a thin coughing sound. Hiding behind them, the old man said, “I haven’t seen people move that fast since someone passed gas in an elevator.”

  “It’s not funny,” Keal said, but he laughed a little in spite of himself. He shook his head. “It’s one thing for me to fly you across the country because you think the folks in this house are in danger. It’s something completely different to attack police officers. I’m just saying, you better know what you’re doing.”

  “Oh, pooh,” Jesse said from behind the bushes. “Wasn’t us who scared them away. It was the house, this place. We just helped it out a bit. Now, don’t just stand there. I got a stick jabbing me in the back.”

  Keal made his way around the foliage. The shadows here were even darker than the rest of the woods. He couldn’t make out anything.

  Jesse wheezed in a breath, and Keal moved faster. He was supposed to take care of the old guy. Didn’t matter if it were back at Mother of Mercy Nursing Home or here, Jesse was his responsibility.

  He said, “You okay?”

  “Nothing I’m not used to,” Jesse said. “These old lungs don’t work the way they did once.” His laugh sounded like sobs. “Nothing does. Owww! You stepped on me.”

  “Sorry,” Keal said. “Can’t see.”

  He knelt down, running his hands over Jesse’s scrawny body. He cupped his hand under Jesse’s head. When he lifted it up, a stray beam of moonlight caught the old guy’s face. He was smiling.

  “Now, that was fun,” Jesse said.

  “I wasn’t laughing, man,” Keal said. “That cop pointed his gun at me. I was sure I was a goner. And he was heading right for you.”

  Jesse growled.

  Even watching the old man make the sound, it put goose bumps on Keal’s arms and the back of his neck. “That’s just freaky,” he said.

  “It worked,” Jesse said. “Did you see that guy hightail it for his car?”

  “I’ll give you that one. You all right?”

  “Just tired,” Jesse said. “Not used to being up so long. I feel like . . .” His lids drooped. “Like I could just . . .” His eyes closed, his mouth fell open, and he snorted in some air.

  “Yeah, funny . . .” Keal leaned closer. “Jesse?”

  Jesse’s eyes sprang open. He smiled. “I ain’t that tired . . . or old. You going to get me off this cold ground or what?”

  Keal got his arms under Jesse and lifted him. It was like picking up a scarecrow, the man was so light.

  Jesse said, “I gotta admit, I wasn’t expecting the gun.”

  “They’re cops, Jesse. What did you expect?”

  He felt the old man shrug.

  Jesse said, “Smooth move, putting out the light, my friend. And with only two throws. You missed your calling. You should have been a pitcher.”

  It was Keal’s turn to shrug. “Spent some time in the minors. I’ll tell you about it someday.” He crunched over the ground cover, carrying Jesse toward the front of the house. He stopped.

  In the distance, mist was billowing up between the trees, glowing in the moonlight. In front of the slowly stirring cloud stood a man, silhouetted against the mist. His shoulders rose and fell as though he were breathing heavily.

  “Jesse?” Keal whispered.

  Jesse caught his stare and followed it. He let out a deep sigh.

  “Who is it?” Keal said quietly.

  “One of them,” the old man said. “I knew it had started again.”

  “What started, and who . . . ?” Before Jesse could answer, Keal called out, “Hey! What do you want?”

  The dark figure backed into the mist and disappeared.

  Keal waited, but the man did not reappear. He heard no sounds from the woods besides the wind and an occasional squeak from the weather vane.

  “A watcher,” Jesse said.

  “Watcher? What’s he watching?”

  “Us. The house. Everything that happens here.”

  Keal didn’t move.

  Jesse said, “Never mind him, Keal. If he was going to do anything, he’d have done it. He’s only someone else’s eyes.”

  “Who someone else?” Keal moved his attention from the mist to Jesse’s face. He was surprised to see not even
a hint of concern in the old man’s features; only sadness.

  “Could be anyone,” Jesse said. “This place, what it does, has always attracted . . . outsiders, people who don’t belong, who want to use it for their own wicked intentions.”

  Keal could not find the words for all the questions zipping through his brain.

  “What’d you think,” Jesse said, “that a house like I told you about could possibly exist and not draw the likes of him and whoever he answers to?”

  Keal looked for the man again. Nothing but trees.

  “Let’s get on with it,” Jesse said.

  Unsure, Keal carried Jesse to the porch steps and lowered him. He glanced around, stopping on the windows flanking the doors. He said, “Lights on inside. Someone must be home.”

  “Well, I should hope so,” Jesse said. “I came to see them, not this place.”

  “Those cops’ll be back, you know. With an army.”

  Jesse shook his head. “Not if they’re anything like the ones I knew back when. They didn’t want anything to do with the house.”

  “Let’s hope they still don’t,” Keal said, nervously scanning the woods on both sides. “Still, why do you think they were here?”

  “Never can tell,” Jesse said. “Always something interesting happening ’round here.”

  “I guess so,” Keal said. “I should get the car.”

  They had pulled it behind some bushes around the bend.

  “That can wait.” Jesse opened his eyes. “We got business to attend to.” He raised his eyebrows. “I can use my chair, though.”

  Keal started to walk off. He stopped. He couldn’t keep his eyes from darting around. “Why don’t I take you with me?”

  “Because then you’ll have to carry me and the chair.” Jesse waved him away. “Go, go. The worst that will happen is someone will watch me sitting here growing older.”

  “I wish I felt as confident as you sound.”

  “Keal,” Jesse said with a sigh. “You could have been back with the chair by now.”

  “Okay, okay. Wait here.”

  “What else am I going to do?”

  Keal trotted into the woods. He came back with Jesse’s wheelchair, folded up flat. He sprung it open, scooped Jesse off the steps, and eased him into the chair.

  Jesse leaned his head back to take in the imposing facade before him. “I thought I was done with you,” he whispered to the house.

  CHAPTER

  fifteen

  743 BC

  TIYARI MOUNTAINS, NEAR NINEVEH, ASSYBLAN EMPIRE

  Raindrops struck Dagan’s face, as biting as lions’ teeth. He blinked against the onslaught, determined to reach the cave above him before one of the lightning bolts that cracked through the black sky blasted him off the mountain. He paused in his ascent, lowering his head to breathe without water rushing into his throat. The narrow ledge he had been traversing before spotting the shelter lay twenty meters below. Currents of rain sluiced over it, becoming drops again as the water flowed over the edge into a bottomless ravine. In the space of a thousand heartbeats, the ledge had become impassible.

  At least the other boys wouldn’t be able to get ahead of him. Not while the storm-god Adad was so angry. Perhaps one of them would try; certainly, the stakes were high enough to make them consider an attempt.

  The academy to which they belonged instructed its pupils in the arts of death: stealth, infiltration, and murder. The best of them would graduate into the most elite rank of the great Assyrian war machine, that of Assassin. Every year the academy sent all of its students sixteen years of age on a grueling, five-day trek from Nineveh to Autiyara, equipped with only the clothes on their backs and a blade. The first one to arrive continued his studies. The runner-up became his lifelong servant, sharpening his weapons, cleaning his clothes. The others were consigned to the regular army as front-men, fodder for their enemies’ spears.

  As he had been since his recruitment into the academy on his eighth birth-day, Dagan was the best in his class, and he was ahead of the others now. But Amshi, his dearest friend since the two had endured the initiation rites together eight years before, was not far behind. Always a close second, Amshi was Dagan’s only real competition in this latest challenge. The thought of becoming Amshi’s servant—of not becoming an assassin himself—made Dagan sick, as though a serpent had made a home in his guts.

  But that isn’t going to happen, he thought. Not by the war-god Nergal would Dagan allow himself to lose.

  He turned his face up into the pounding rain. Beyond the cliff to which he clung, gray clouds roiled, expelled from Adad’s mouth like poisonous vomit. Lightning flashed down, momentarily blinding the boy. He pushed himself higher toward the cave, making sure each rock he grabbed was secure. If he fell, his blade would never taste human blood, and that was unacceptable. How could he spend eternity in Irkalla saddled with that kind of shame?

  At the lip of the cave, the wind whispered his name. He stopped, listened.

  “ . . . Dagan . . .”

  A million raindrops crashed into the stone cliff, roaring like a crowd wel-coming home a triumphant army. Dagan strained to hear . . . he was sure he had heard . . .

  “ . . . Dagan . . .”

  From his perch just outside, he peered into the darkness of the cave, then at the empty air around him. That’s when he saw Amshi down on the ledge, squinting through the rain at him. The boy, Dagan’s age but much younger looking, gestured back the way they had come, probably to a more accessible shelter.

  Dagan shook his head, scowled at his friend, and pulled himself into the cave. He crawled a few feet in and collapsed onto the gritty floor, panting. He was amazed at how good it felt to be out of the incessant pounding. He rose to his hands and knees and went back to the cave’s mouth. He stuck his head out, felt the rain like a swarm of insects, and saw the top of Amshi’s head. The boy was following, scaling the cliff toward the cave.

  Dagan returned to the dry darkness of the cavern. Gritting his teeth, he cursed his friend. He knew full well what Amshi was doing: he had realized the futility of trying to progress along the ledge, and since he had to stop, why not do it where he could keep an eye on Dagan, the only one who posed a threat to his reaching Autiyara first? Amshi would rest well, knowing the competition was not pressing on.

  The serpent inside Dagan coiled around his heart.

  He moved farther into the cave, found a fissure in the wall, and pressed himself into it. He listened to the storm outside, to water dripping from his hair to the stone floor, to his breathing, growing slower.

  His hair had dried by the time he heard Amshi heave himself into the cave. The boy did what Dagan had done: he crumpled to the ground and waited for his breath to return. Then he called, “Dagan?”

  Dagan heard him getting to his feet, stepping deeper into the cave.

  “Dagan? Where are you? Are you hurt? I found an overhang out of the rain, but this is much better.” He drew closer. “Dagan, where—?”

  Dagan emerged from the fissure. His arm shot up.

  Amshi jumped, caught sight of Dagan, and smiled, a wide boyish grin.Then it vanished as he saw the object Dagan held slicing through the air toward him.

  And for the first time, Dagan’s blade tasted human blood.

  The cramped darkness in which Dagan—now Taksidian—stood reminded him of that initial kill, so long ago. He thought of Amshi—not the playmate who’d laughed when their voices cracked at the onset of manhood, who’d eased the tension of a trying day on the training fields with a whispered joke—he thought of the body he’d left in the cave. It would have decayed, even the skeleton becoming powder after so many millennia.

  Taksidian squeezed the hilt of his knife. The weapon had made him the assassin he was, the man he had become. And on more than a few occasions, it had saved his life. It was his friend, more surely than Amshi ever had been. His blade had feasted many times since that first taste. Now it was hungry again.

  For the dozenth ti
me, he checked the door. The handle turned, but the door wouldn’t open. He tried to quietly shoulder his way through, but whatever held it was strong. He was about to return to the locker in the school when he heard noises beyond the door, in the hallway.

  He leaned his ear against the door. Soft footsteps. Quiet voices. Something was going on out there, in the house. He shifted his feet into a more comfortable stance and leaned back against the shelves. He would bide his time in the closet a little longer.

  He would await the opportunity for his blade to feast again . . .

  CHAPTER

  sixteen

  WEDNESDAY, 1.16 A.M.

  David led Toria into the hallway by the hand. She was half-asleep, mumbling something about going on a ride. Her free hand clutched her “nigh-night,” a threadbare baby blanket she always slept with. She stumbled and stopped, seeming ready to doze standing up.

  “Come on, Toria,” David said.

  Xander was on all fours in the hallway, peering around the corner to the foyer below.

  David realized the lights were no longer shining through the windows. “Did they leave?” he whispered. He knelt beside his brother and leaned to see the front doors and the windows beside them.

  “I don’t know. A car left, but I just heard voices out front.”

  “Where are the policemen?” Toria said. She had plopped down behind the boys and now blinked heavy lids at them.

  “I think they were the ones who left,” Xander said. “There were red and blue lights flashing through the windows, and now they’re gone.”

  “Why would they leave?” David said. “And if it’s not the cops out there, who is it?”

  Xander looked at him with raised eyebrows. “Who do you think?”

  “Taksidian?” David’s chest grew tight. It seemed that no matter how many times something frightened him, he never got used to it.