Timescape

by Robert Liparulo

  Jesse’s eyes were closed, his lips parted.

  “Jesse?”

  David would have thought Jesse had died, if it weren’t for the bellows in the clear cylinder. It slowly expanded, contracted, expanded. David looked at Keal, who nodded.

  “Come . . .” Jesse wheezed. His eyes remained close. “See . . . me.”

  “We will, Jesse. We’ll come together.”

  “I think,” Keal whispered, “the two things are separate. He said ‘stay.’ Stay with your brother. And then, another thing: come see him.”

  “But I’m here,” David said. “Does he mean come again?

  Keep coming?”

  Keal shrugged.

  “Can we? Can we come back?”

  “If we don’t get caught.” Keal hung the clipboard on a hook attached to the foot of the bed. “We have to go.”

  David returned his attention to Jesse. The man was still. It was almost as though he’d never been awake at all, never spoken or looked at David.

  “Jesse?” David bent his fingers around his hand, down low, by the thumb. He gave it a little squeeze. “I’ll stay with Xander,” he said, though he wasn’t sure what that meant. “And I’ll come back. I’ll come see you. I will.”

  CHAPTER

  thirty

  THURSDAY, 6:22 A.M.

  “Where’s Dae?” Xander said, walking into the kitchen.

  Dad looked up from the stove, where he was flipping French toast. The smell made Xander realize how hungry he was. Dad said, “He and Keal went to see Jesse.”

  “Now? Why?” Xander opened the refrigerator and grabbed a carton of orange juice.

  “Keal thought this early they could get in and out without being seen.” Dad held up a spatula with a fat, golden slice. “Want some?”

  “Sure.” He poured three glasses. Toria should be down soon. He said, “I want to see Jesse.”

  Dad said, “You just don’t want to go to school.”

  “You got that right,” Xander said. “You know, if I stayed home, I could help Keal get the walls back up and—”

  “Don’t start.” Dad pushed a paper plate with a stack of toast across the island counter. He used the spatula to point at a bottle of syrup. “You know we can’t risk people snooping into why any of us aren’t doing what’s expected. School, job, anything.”

  Xander snatched up the plate and headed toward the foyer. He said, “Is David going to miss?”

  “They should be back any minute,” Dad said. “Where are you going?”

  “To get ready for school,” Xander said. On the way up the stairs, Xander balanced the plate on the glass, folded a piece of toast, and bit it in half. He stopped at the top. He could hear the shower through the bathroom door. So much for brushing his teeth, fixing his hair, scrubbing his face.

  He thought about waiting in the chair that was wedged under the linen closet door handle, the one Keal had used to play sleep police. He had to admit that Keal had been right: Xander felt much better than he had last night. Once he finally got to sleep, it was deep and dreamless. He was still anxious about getting to all the things they had to do, but he felt less panicked about doing them all at once.

  One step at a time, he thought. As long as we keep stepping. No stopping. Keep moving. Hang in there, Mom, we’re coming. We are.

  He couldn’t believe they had to go to school. He understood the logic of keeping up appearances, especially if it took a long time to find Mom—and it was starting to feel like it would take awhile. But it’s not the way he would have handled it. If he were Dad, he’d quit his job. He’d sell the Pathfinder and everything else they had to get enough cash for food and whatever they needed to make the house secure—to fortify it, as Dad had said. He’d register the kids for home-schooling. Then he’d spend every waking minute finding Mom. Was anything else more important?

  If he were Dad, he’d do a lot of things differently. Then again, if he were Dad, they wouldn’t be in this mess.

  This sucks, he thought. Just like being forced to go to bed last night sucked. Maybe he should get a T-shirt with those two words on it. David had told him he felt like the family slogan was Nothing we can do. But that wasn’t true. There were a lot of things they could do, if only they were allowed to do them. Not being able to do them—because of sleep or school or because this or that was too dangerous—fell firmly under his slogan: This sucks.

  Forget waiting, he thought, turning away from the chair. He carried his breakfast past Mom and Dad’s bedroom and stopped at the junction of the two hallways on the second floor. The walls at the end of the short hall lay on the floor.

  Plaster dust, wood, wiring were scattered all over them. Fixing them would take more than simply pushing them back into place. They would need new wiring, studs, wallboard. A lot of work. See? So much to do.

  He squatted to set his plate and glass on the floor. He pushed the second half of the French toast into his mouth, then took a drink. Behind him, the shower turned off. He could hear Dad banging around in the kitchen.

  Xander made up his mind.

  He rose and looked over his shoulder at the empty main hallway. Then he walked over the fallen walls as quietly as possible. At the base of the stairs leading to the hallway of doors, he didn’t pause. He went up two steps at a time.

  CHAPTER

  thirty - one

  THURSDAY, 6:50 A.M.

  On the ride home from the hospital, David thought about Jesse and how what Taksidian had done to him could have happened to any of them. So when he walked through the front door to see his father coming out of the kitchen, he ran to him and squeezed him tightly. He pushed his face into Dad’s chest, feeling the solidness of it, so unlike Jesse’s almost-not-there condition. He turned his head, pressed his ear to Dad’s shirt, and listened to his heart. Dad hugged him back, holding him like he was never going to let go.

  “Dae,” Dad said. “Are you all right? Is Jesse—?”

  “He’s alive,” Keal said behind David. “He spoke to David.”

  “He did? He’s that well?”

  “Not really,” Keal said. “He didn’t say much, and it took a lot out of him. I’m not sure he had that much to give. I read his chart.”

  “And . . . ?” Dad said.

  Keal didn’t answer. David suspected he shook his head to indicate not good.

  Dad’s arms tightened. “I’m sorry, Dae. But he spoke. That’s a good sign. What’d he say?”

  David released his hold and took a step back. “He said Xander and I should stay together.”

  Dad looked puzzled. “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” David said. “Maybe he knows something . . . about the future.” He shook his head. “Maybe he thinks something’s going to try to separate us.”

  “Or he knows you need each other,” Keal said. “Stay together, like the buddy system.”

  “Yeah,” Dad said. “We talked about that, remember?”

  “And he said to come see him,” David said.

  “In the hospital?” Dad said. “He wants us to visit?”

  David shrugged. “I guess. He wasn’t making a lot of sense.”

  “What else did he say?”

  “That’s it.” David looked around his father to the kitchen. “Where’s Xander?”

  “In the bathroom, I think.”

  “No, he’s not,” Toria said, coming down the stairs. She rounded the newel. “I was just in there.”

  “Xander!” David called.

  Dad gripped his shoulder. “You hungry?”

  “Not really,” David said, starting for the stairs.

  “I am!” Toria said.

  As David passed her, he gave her a short hug.

  “What was that for?” she said.

  He climbed up the stairs, smiling over the railing. “Just because.”

  At the top, he turned toward Xander’s and his bedroom. He pulled Xander’s mobile phone out of his back pocket wanting to give it to him before he forgot. He called
his brother’s name.

  His brain caught up with something he had glimpsed, and he stopped. In the other direction, on the floor at the end of the hallway: a glass and a paper plate.

  “Xander?” He walked to the items and squatted. The glass was half-full of OJ and the plate held a piece of French toast. He set the phone on the floor beside them and stepped into the MC. Empty. “Hey, Xander!”

  Back in the hall, he eyed the fallen walls. Footprints were in the dust, but they could have been from last night, when all of them had gone upstairs. Still . . . that catchphrase of Han Solo’s came to mind: I got a bad feeling about this. Xander had used it when they’d first found the house.

  Should’ve trusted the feeling then, David thought. Should trust it now.

  “Dad!” he called. He could hear Dad, Keal, and Toria talking in the kitchen. “Dad!” He walked over the walls and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. “Xander, you up there?”

  Just a look, he told himself, going up. The lights were on in the crooked, third-floor hallway. “Xander, are you—”

  “Here!” Xander’s voice came at him from one of the antechambers.

  “Xander? Where are you?”

  Xander stepped out of a room at the far end of the hall. “Come here,” he said. “Quick.” He disappeared again.

  “Wait!” David said. “What are you doing?” He looked down the stairs. He could no longer hear the conversation from the kitchen. “Dad!” he called as loudly as his lungs could push the word out.

  “David!” Xander was back in the hall. “Will you just come here for a second? Look at this?”

  Reluctantly, David started for him. Xander ducked into the room.

  When David reached the open antechamber, Xander was putting on a hat. No, not a hat, David realized. A helmet.

  “What are you doing?” David said.

  “This is it,” Xander said. “The place Jesse was trying to tell us about.”

  David looked at the items still hanging from the hooks, a pair of tattered leather lace-up slippers on the bench. “How do you figure?”

  Xander pointed to the helmet. It was a battered thing that looked like it had been pieced together from scraps of metal. “What does this look like?”

  “A helmet,” David said. “The last time you put one on, you went to the Roman Colosseum. You almost got yourself killed.”

  “David!” Xander said, exasperated. He snatched off the helmet and held it upside down. At the front, the two metal pieces were bent up, as though they had caught a fierce blow and didn’t quite break off. Xander used his finger to trace the arc of the helmet, then the two squarish metal plates. “Jesse’s drawing,” he said. “The thing you said looked like buck teeth.”

  David squinted at it. “I don’t know,” he said slowly.

  “And look.” Xander pointed to the corner of the room, where a weapon rested on the bench, its handle propped up into the corner. “An ax! I told you the symbol was an ax. And this . . .” He resettled the helmet over his head and pulled a leather pouch off a hook. He shook a couple medallions out into his palm. He turned one over and held it up to David. “What does that look like?”

  “A house,” David said. It was engraved into the medallion.

  “All three of the symbols Jesse left for us,” Xander said.

  “This has to be it.”

  David wasn’t so sure. He said, “But the helmet . . . Xander, why didn’t he draw a helmet and not just a curve with two squares?”

  “He was injured,” Xander said. “He drew only what would help us distinguish this helmet from any other. I’ve never seen anything like it before, have you?”

  David shook his head. “So, what? You’re just going over?”

  “If we leave now, the world might be gone when we get back. It was important enough for Jesse to use his own . . .” He frowned. “To use his own blood to get the message to us.”

  “Wait here,” David said. “I’ll go get Dad.”

  “He’ll say, ‘Let’s do it after school,’ ” Xander said. He tied the pouch to his belt. Then he leaned past David and picked up the ax. “It could be now or never. I say now.”

  “This isn’t right, and you know it!” David leaned into the hallway. “Dad! Dad! Toria! Keal!”

  A chilly wind blew over him, carrying bits of hay or grass.

  Xander had opened the door. He was standing in front of the portal, one hand on the edge of the door, the other holding the ax. His hair coming out from under the helmet fluttered in the breeze. On the other side, the wind must have been more severe; David could hear it howling.

  “Xander, wait!” David yelled. “You don’t know what’s over there!”

  Xander looked over his shoulder. “Jesse’s not going to send us someplace dangerous, Dae.”

  He would have if he thought it would help us find Mom, David thought. But that would make Xander even more determined. Instead he said, “An ax and a helmet? Come on!”

  He wanted to reach for Xander, grab his waistband, and tug him back away from the portal. But his brother was bigger and stronger. He could easily shake David loose. Or worse: pull him through with him. The thought struck him hard.

  He said, “I talked to Jesse. He said we should stay together. Xander, maybe this is what he meant.”

  Xander smiled. “Then come on.”

  “No, not like this,” David pleaded. “Let’s get Dad, then I’ll go with you. Please.”

  “Now or never, Dae.”

  “Dad!” David yelled again into the hallway.

  “Go get him,” Xander said.

  David felt relief washed over him. And with Xander’s next words, it was gone, chased away by sickening fear.

  Xander said, “I’ll meet you over there. Come when you’re ready.”

  “No! Wait!” David was certain this was what Jesse had meant: not that this was the place he wanted them to go, but that they had to stay together—now. “I’ll go,” he said.

  He turned to the items left on the hooks and the bench. He could have followed Xander through without selecting his own, but if they did get separated, he’d have nothing to guide him to the portal home. He grabbed a silver bracelet and slipped it onto his wrist. It was way too big. He moved it to the other arm and pushed it snugly over the bandage Dad had wrapped around his cast. He pulled down a spool of yarn wrapped around a wooden dowel. He sat on the bench, kicked off his sneakers, and tugged on the slipperlike shoes.

  Cinching the laces tight, he glanced at Xander. “Do you smell smoke?”

  Xander sniffed. “No.” Then he did something that shook David to his bones. He waved and fell backward through the portal.

  Just as he had in David’s dream.

  CHAPTER

  thirty - two

  David belly flopped onto hard-packed earth. His cheek smacked down, and so did his broken arm—of course. Didn’t going through the portals always result in jarring the part of his body that hurt the most? The pain flared up into his shoulder like fire.

  He groaned and rolled onto his back, hugging his cast. He spat dirt out of his mouth. It was in his eyes too. He rubbed them and blinked. Above him was a ceiling made of branches, twigs, and straw. Thatch, he thought it was called. Glancing around, he saw that he was in a cottage of sorts: plank walls; a stone fireplace that appeared to have been cobbled together by a child; table, chairs, and bed frame, all made from roughhewn logs. Tools, clothes, wooden goblets were among the litter scattered around him.

  He rubbed his shoulder, then his arm. Holding his cast above him, he gave the bracelet a good look. It was designed to resemble a coiled snake. Its head was wide and flat, its eyes wicked. Two fangs jutted out of an open mouth.

  Great, he thought. Not exactly a peaceful symbol. What had his brother gotten them into?

  Beside him, Xander was pushing himself into a sitting position. He moaned and said, “Rough landing.”

  David rolled onto his side and punched Xander in the ribs, hard.

  “Oww!�
�� Xander yelped. “What was that for?”

  Not ten minutes ago, Toria had asked David that same thing, but it was because he had given her a hug. “For being stupid,” David said. “For breaking your promise to Dad that you wouldn’t sneak into the other worlds anymore. For making me come with you. For—”

  “Hey, I didn’t make you do anything.”

  “Right, Xander,” David said. He hoisted himself off the ground. “I’m going to just let you go alone. After Jesse said we should say together. You could have waited five minutes for Dad.”

  “Five minutes?” Xander said. He stooped to pick up the ax. He touched his head, and David saw the helmet had come off. Xander looked around for it. “More like eight hours. Then it could have been gone.”

  David punched him again.

  “Stop hitting me!” Xander shoved him.

  David tripped and went down on his butt. “That was for going over like you did,” he said. “Waving and falling backward. What was that?”

  Xander smiled and shrugged. “That’s the way scuba divers go into the ocean, backward off the boat. I figured, why not? We usually wipe out when we come over anyway. What’s the big deal?”

  David shook his head. “Never mind.” He turned to look out through an open door at rolling meadows and a woods in the distance. The nippy breeze he had felt coming through the portal was now coming through the cottage door. “Where are we?”

  “Don’t know,” Xander said. “Hey.” He pointed at his helmet on the ground. It was rolling toward the doorway. “And isn’t that yours?”

  The spool of yarn. David hadn’t realized he’d dropped it. It was heading for the door as well.

  “Are they heading for the portal home?” David said. “So soon?”

  Xander darted forward and snatched up the two items, which had almost met each other on their way out. He handed the spool to David.

  David watched as a length of yarn lifted and fluttered against the breeze. It pointed at the door. He said, “I thought the longer we’re here, the stronger the pull. I haven’t felt it so soon before.”

  “Maybe we’re not supposed to be here,” Xander said.