Xander shook his head.
“What was that? What happened to my pajamas?” He was slowly reascending the stairs.
Xander looked at his palms, as if for clues. “They were just pulled out of my hands.”
“So somebody was in the locked room.”
Xander thought about it. Somehow, the way the pajamas vanished didn’t feel like someone yanking them away. “There was kind of a breeze when it happened.”
“Yeah, anything moving that fast is gonna make its own wind.”
“Not like that. I mean right before they disappeared.”
“So, what now?”
Xander smiled. “We keep looking.” He started down the corridor.
“Well,” David said, coming up behind him, “if you want any more clothes, use your boxers.” He chuckled at that.
“Funny.”
Both of them kept their eyes on each door they passed.
The first one, then the second. They reached another wall lamp, this one completely different from the last. It appeared to be half of a large, ornate goblet. Lead or pewter, maybe.
There was a flat base; a stem that resembled a vine-entwined column; and a chalice inlaid with colored glass pieces, cut like gems. Light not only poured from its open top, up the wall to the ceiling, but also gleamed through the colored glass. He saw now that each fixture was different, but he could not tell at this distance what each one resembled.
The next room they entered was much like the first two: bench, shelf, locked second door. The theme of the items had something to do with war. There was a smooth, round helmet; binoculars—black, not white as the ones in the Alpine room were; and a gun belt with bullets and a holster, but no gun. On the bench was a hand grenade.
Xander nudged David. “Don’t touch that, either.”
They went from room to room, finding the same arrangement of bench, shelf, hooks, and locked door. The items within reflected a wide range of activities, from mountain climbing to boating to something to do with hunting. Several times Xan-der and David were at a loss for what the items meant. They reached the end of the long hall and the final door.
“I counted twenty,” Xander said.
David nodded. “I lost count at twelve.”
Xander noted that the wall at the end of the hallway was not mirrored but decorated to match the side walls. The landing at the other end, where they had started, seemed far away.
To make their investigation complete, they stepped through the last door. Hanging from the hooks were the props from a costume play: a round shield, battered and bent; a simple helmet, equally scarred; a scabbard with a sword’s hilt extending from it; a net, made of steel links; and what appeared to be an animal pelt. Xan-der tried the interior door, knowing what he would find: it was locked. When he turned away, his heart leaped into his throat. David was holding the scabbard, pulling the sword from it.
“David! Don’t touch it!”
His face was beaming. “Why not? This is cool!”
Xander grabbed his brother’s hands, preventing him from pulling the short sword all the way out. “It might be a trick,” he said. He listened for any sounds that might reach him from the hall. No doors clicking open. No footsteps.
David watched him listen without saying a word. They stood like that—both boys in only boxers, sword and scabbard held between them—for a long time. It did not escape Xander how strange it was that he was more worried about the props than about their intrusion into the rooms. Rooms were rooms. A man’s tools, his weapons, were part of who he was, part of what he did. To Xander, his camera said more about him than his bedroom. He did not know in what way, but he suspected the items in these rooms were more important than the rooms themselves. Because of that, if there was a trap, he believed the spring, the trigger, would be among them.
With a stillness, a quiet, he began to relax. He released his brother’s hands.
David, spooked now, did not move. He said, “What is it?”
Xander smiled. He nodded toward the sword. “Let’s see it.” It came out of the scabbard with a metallic shiiing! David held it up. The blade was two feet long, thick, tapering to a fine point. It was dinged and scratched with rust and— “Is that blood?” David asked, staring.
“Stage blood,” Xander said with more certainty than he felt.
David rotated his wrist, circumscribing a figure eight in the air with the tip.
Xander cautiously plucked the helmet off the hook. He hefted it in his hands. He said, “This thing’s heavy.” It felt gritty under his fingers, as though it was rusting or had been lying in dirt. He checked inside, then fitted it over his head.
David laughed. “Gluteus Maximus, I salute thee!”
Xander pulled the metal net off its hook. It too was heavy, even heavier than the helmet. About the length of the sword, it was formed into a tube, open at both ends, but wider on one side than the other. Leather straps were attached to the wide end. He understood what it was. He stuck his arm into the tube up to his shoulder. His hand popped out the other end, where a metal band crossed over his palm. He tugged on the straps and cinched the ends together like a belt under his opposite arm.
“Whoa!” David said.
Xander flexed out his chest, held up his arm. “Chain mail,” he said. His arm almost immediately felt the strain of the chain’s weight. He lowered his hand, resting it on the locked door handle. “I know what all this—” The handle rotated under his palm. He fell to the floor as the door clicked open.
David screamed and dropped the scabbard. He squared himself to the door. He held the sword in both hands, extending his arms before him.
Xander scrambled up. He stood next to David. Light, sunlight, streamed through the three-inch opening. Nothing on the other side interrupted the flow of light. No shadows cast by beast or man as they prepared to push through. A sound, not dissimilar to the wind in the trees, reached their ears. Beyond it was a muted rumble, like a distant surf.
“Xander?” David said.
That spurred Xander to move. He approached the door. He cocked his head to see through. Only light. He reached out, touched the edge of the door, and pulled it open.
David sucked in a sharp breath. Beyond the threshold was nothing that could be part of the house. It was a vast landscape of sand. An unfelt wind whipped the grains into spinning dervishes that danced for a few seconds before settling again. New torrents sprang up in different spots. Nearby, rocks broke the surface of the dunes. They huddled low as if avoiding the sting of flying sand.
The heat of a midday sun radiated over the boys. Impossible, Xander thought. It must be about one o’clock in the morning. Here, anyway . . . certainly not in there. Sand blew in. Xander felt it hit his legs and then his stomach and chest. It was drifting in, obscuring more and more of the hardwood floor. He stepped closer, put his hand on the door frame. He stretched his leg past the threshold.
“Xander, don’t!” David yelled.
“I’m just seeing,” he said over his shoulder.
He pushed his bare foot into the hot sand. It sank in a half inch. This was no hallucination, though he didn’t really think it was, with David seeing it too. Xander released the door frame and took another step. He was completely out of the little room now.
“Xander!” David screamed again.
Xander looked back, grinning at the wonder of it all.
The door slammed shut.
CHAPTER
twenty - five
SATURDAY, 1:11 A.M.
David couldn’t believe it.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no . . .
He tossed the sword aside and leaped for the door. Both hands on the handle. It turned. He tugged at it and it opened— six inches, no more. Something seemed to be tugging back, and he lost an inch of opening. Every muscle strained to pull the door open.
“Xander! Xander!”
He raised his foot and pressed it into the wall beside the door.
Pulled . . . pulled.
Quickly, he moved one hand from the knob to the edge of the door, wrapping his fingers around to the other side. Then he moved his other hand. He felt the heat of the sun, the tickling of the sand on his fingers and his ankle.
Where was Xander? Wouldn’t he be calling? Wouldn’t he push from the other side?
Grunting and straining with everything he had, he lost another inch of opening. Four inches. His knuckles were close to the edge of the doorframe. His hands were white, the blood squeezed out of them. If he eased up now, if he took a breath, the door would slam shut, taking eight of his fingers with it.
The door closed farther.
Noooo!
Now the muscles in his legs, his arms, even his stomach, were burning in pain. The door pulled in farther. His vision blurred as tears filled his eyes. With a scream of anguish, he snapped his fingers out from the narrowing crack. The door slammed with a solid bang! Despite his muscles feeling stretched like taffy, he seized the door handle. It would not turn.
“Uh . . . uh . . .” His sounds were cries and calls and groans all at once. He tugged, but the door held firm. He dropped to the floor, held his lips to the gap. “Xander! Can you hear me?”
In the little room, individual grains of sand began rolling across the hardwood floor toward the gap. More and more sand disappeared under the door. Believing it signaled some kind of finality, David slammed his hand down on the sand. He felt it grating against his skin. It slid out and flew out beneath the door.
“No, no.” He laid his forearm in front of the gap, wedging it between door and floor. Sand whipped around his elbow and away. It formed a drift against his arm, then sailed over; some pushed under. He lay down in front of the gap. He felt the insistent tug of the wind like a vacuum. His boxers fluttered, trying to follow the sand through the gap. The grains kept flowing past, faster and faster, until he felt and saw no more and the suction coming from the gap stopped. He flipped himself around and held his eye to the base of the door. The light beyond faded and went black.
CHAPTER
twenty - six
When Xander first looked back, David was standing in the small room. He was holding the sword out in front of him.
Panic made his eyes wide. The streaming sunlight made his skin pale. He mouthed Xander’s name—Xander recognized the movements of his mouth, but did not hear the word come out. The wind was howling out here.
Then a funny thing happened to his vision. David—in fact, the entire rectangle of the threshold and everything it framed—rippled. It wavered, as though superheated air had passed between Xander and his brother. Then the door slammed shut, silently and instantly. The frame and door rippled again . . . then simply vanished.
He was staring at endless sand. Mountains in the distance. The roaring surf sound grew louder and the mountains rushed in at him. Surprised, he covered his face with his arm and took a step back. He tripped and went down. Peering over his forearm, he witnessed the mountains become something else. First, they elongated into stone cliffs. Then, faster than a heartbeat, they formed into stadium bleachers. In another heartbeat, the bleachers were crowded with people. The roar was theirs: loud cheers, unrestrained enthusiasm.
Reposed on one elbow, he rotated his head. The stadium completely encircled him. The rocks nearest him shimmered and became a body. It was cut and bloodied. The other rocks he had seen from the small room did the same, until more than two dozen corpses were scattered around the sandy stadium floor. The sand itself took on a darker tint, as though a cloud had rolled over the sun. It was darkest around the bodies and severed limbs. Xander knew it was hued not by shadow but by blood.
The top level of the stadium was lined with ornate columns. Above them, wood poles held canvas awnings, which flapped in the wind. He recognized this place. It was the Roman Colosseum. His father had shown him pictures. But the crowd did not sit in the ruins he had seen. The highest level of the oval was unbroken. The surfaces were crisp and polished, throwing back the sun in a hundred places.
When was the Colosseum finished? He tried to remember. The Emperor Titus had ordered the inaugural games in . . . in the year 80. Not long after Jesus Christ was crucified!
Xander pushed himself onto his knees.
The tone of the crowd changed. From within the victorious rumble came a gasp of surprise.
Xander stood. He glanced around. Sure enough, the portal was gone.
Guess I was wrong about where you could end up. Not quite a football field, but close.
The crowd closest to him began an angry chant: “Sine missione! Sine missione!”
They pointed at him, raised their hands, then pointed again, as if lashing at him with whips. The chanting and whipping of hands was picked up by more and more people, sweeping the stadium in two directions, outward from the section that had started it.
“Sine missione! Sine missione!”
Xander followed its progression, as clear to him as the terminator line between night and day was to astronauts. As he rotated, his eyes fell on the only other living man in the arena. His back was turned against Xander. His arms were raised as he received an ovation of stomping feet and raised voices. Flowers and petals rained down before him. One hand held a sword, the other a shield. He started strutting back and forth, pumping his sword and shield into the air. Then he caught the change of the crowd, their shift from joy to anger. He stopped. He scanned the stands on his side of the stadium.
“Sine missione! Sine missione!”
He spun and spotted Xander. He lowered his arms. He tossed back his shoulders—the gladiatorial equivalent of a bull digging his hoof into the ground, Xander decided. The man strode toward him.
He thinks I’m an opponent he missed, Xander realized. And he looked like one: almost naked, wearing a helmet and chain mail. He held out his hands. “Wait!” he yelled. “Hold on!
This isn’t what you think! I don’t belong here!”
The gladiator was thirty yards away. He showed no sign of stopping. He began waving his sword in the air, then clanged it against his shield. The crowd roared.
Xander backed away. He tripped over something. His cheek hit the dirt. A dead man stared at him from two feet away. The top of his head had taken a severe chop. It was cleaved at his eyebrows. Xander screamed unintelligibly. He got to his feet.
The gladiator was fifteen yards from him, moving in fast.
He clutched a long-stemmed rose in his teeth. A red petal fell with each of his thunderous steps.
“I said wait!” Xander pleaded.
The man spat out the stem. “Morere honeste, sceleste!” he said.
“What? No, wait!”
The gladiator was so close now, Xander could see the oily sweat that covered his body, the enumerable scars, the splattered blood from his victims, the green pulp from the stem dribbling down his chin.
“I’m just a kid!” Xander yelled. He turned and ran all-out to the curving wall of the arena. He found a wooden door the size of a garage entrance and pounded on it. “Help! Help!”
Where’s the portal? How do I get back if the portal’s not where it dropped me off?
The thrumming of the crowd rose in pitch. Xander spun to see the gladiator charging him, sword raised over his head.
Xander dropped straight down. The man brought the blade down. It thunked into the door. Xander darted out from under him. He felt a sandaled foot strike his thigh. He fell, kept moving, crawling, crawling in the dirt. He got his feet under him again. He did not look back, but stayed low and shot away. His feet lost traction, but he dug in, dug in and ran. He glanced back. He had put some ground between them. The man jogged toward him, a practiced pace that conserved energy.
Xander spotted a canopied area in the stadium. Flags and brightly breastplated soldiers surrounded several people sitting in wide, ornate chairs. One of them must be the emperor or governor or senator—somebody important. He ran for them, waving his arms frantically.
“Please! Please! I don’t belong here! Please!”
<
br /> Whoever the toga-clad man in the VIP section was, he seemed to take notice, seemed to understand him. He stood suddenly.
His white, closely trimmed beard turned into a hairy frown.
“Please!” Xander yelled.
The man turned to a soldier, barked an order.
The soldier stepped forward, raised a spear, and hurled it at Xander.
Xander turned his shoulder away just as it sailed past.
He glared at the long shaft of the spear, wobbling from the effort of piercing the ground. Another soldier threw another spear. Xander dodged, and it impaled a body lying in the dirt. He got the message: no talking to the audience.
He darted away before another soldier used him for target practice.
CHAPTER
twenty - seven
While Xander had tried to get help from the bonehead who’d had his soldiers attack him, the gladiator had closed the distance between them. When he looked away, the big man made a sharp turn to cut him off. His feet skidded out from under him, and he went down. The crowd let out a loud and sustained “booooo! ”
Xander didn’t wait to see what happened next. He sprinted the length of the arena, skirting bodies and body parts. Once again, he reached a large wooden door and pounded his fists on it. He wondered how many of the dead men on the ground around him had done the same thing. This wasn’t going to work.
He spied the gladiator jogging toward him. He couldn’t play keep-away forever. He’d seen the movie: they’d do something to make sure he was caught. Somehow—maybe with chained wild animals or legionnaires with razor-sharp blades—they’d shrink the area of combat until he had no choice but to face the gladiator.
He ran to the nearest body—a boy not much older than Xander. The wounds made Xander fall to his knees and vomit. His panic had kept his stomach from betraying him until now. Once he’d decided to defend himself, his mind became more rational. And any rational person would have puked at the sight.
The crowd cheered with delight.
Xander wiped his mouth on his bare forearm. He spat and crawled over to the dead boy. It seemed that death had not relieved him from the desire to possess a weapon; the boy’s hand held firm to the handle of a mace. Xander pried his fingers open, feeling his stomach lurch again at the stiffness of the corpse’s joints. He lifted the powerful weapon, which consisted of a stocky handle, a length of chain, and a heavy shot put-like metal ball tricked out with spikes.
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