House of Dark Shadows

by Robert Liparulo

  Directly in front of him, a man climbed through the brambles and stepped into the clearing. Xander braked and fell back onto his butt.

  It was Dad. He had leaves in his hair. One sleeve of his sweatshirt was pushed up over his elbow, the other down around his wrist. Sweat had soaked through in the shape of his sternum.

  “Xander,” Dad said. He sounded excited. Then Xander realized it was a casual greeting, and the excited part was the tricky air making his voice higher than normal.

  His father reached him and held out a hand to help him up.

  As Xander rose, he said, “What are you doin’ here?”

  David ran up and stood by his brother’s side.

  “Out looking for you,” Dad said. “I’ve got to run some errands, and I’d like you boys to stay in the house.”

  Xander realized Dad had not commented on the clearing at all, let alone the strangeness of the air and the way it affected their voices. “How did you come from over there?” he asked his father, pointing. It was the opposite direction from the house.

  Dad looked over his shoulder as if just catching that. He said, “I heard you guys, but you know how sounds are around here. Must have gotten lost.”

  “Must have gotten really lost,” David said. He reached up and pulled a leafy twig out of Dad’s hair.

  Dad smiled. “Are these crazy woods, or what?”

  Xander said, “Were you out this way earlier today?”

  “The other day I was. Found this clearing.” He looked around in wonder, shook his head.

  “What do you think this place is?” David said.

  “More weirdness, Dae. But pretty lightweight stuff, compared. You know?” He winked.

  Xander knew what he meant. Still, it bothered him to find yet another oddity on their property. It was like all the anomalies of the world had congregated on this one spot. Or—more likely—one truly weird abnormality happened here and smaller drops of strangeness splattered out from it. He pictured a dollop of paint falling from God’s palette, striking the earth where the house now stood. Its splatter made things like this clearing and who knew what else?

  As Dad passed them, he gave David a healthy shove. The kid fell and tumbled—farther than he should have, laughing all the way.

  CHAPTER

  thirty - two

  SATURDAY, 11:55 P.M.

  When Xander returned from a late-night bathroom run, David was not in his bed. The covers were folded back, exposing only sheets and a pillow. Had he been there when Xander got up? Yeah, he thought. He remembered hearing David’s rhythmic breathing. It was only a little after eleven, but the day spent outside had worn them out. The boys had crashed around ten. Xander had watched the shadows on the ceiling, falling in and out of light sleep until he realized he had to visit the bathroom. Maybe David had felt the same need, and finding the bathroom occupied, went to one of the others.

  “David,” he whispered, in case the boy was hiding. No answer. Xander crawled in bed, pulled the cover over his shoulder, closed his eyes. They snapped open again. He threw back his blankets and jumped up.

  “David?” he said, louder. “Oh no!”

  He ran from the room and down the hall. Past the foyer. Past their parents’ bedroom to where the hallway bent and went toward the back of the house. By the illumination of the night-light, he saw the false wall was angled into the hallway, leaving a gap of several feet.

  “David!”

  He ran through, scraping his injured arm on the edge. He felt the pain, but did not allow it to distract him. The second door, the one with the metal skin, was also open. He slammed into the doorjamb, rolled off and through, and started up the stairs. A flashlight clicked on, blinding him.

  “David?”

  “What took you so long?” He was sitting on the landing.

  “What are you doing?” Xander’s concern had instantly turned to anger.

  “I promised I wouldn’t go into the rooms without you.”

  “Then what are you doing?” Xander repeated.

  “Waiting for you. I can come here any time I want. See?”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I want to know what it’s like. Just once.”

  “David, there is no way—”

  “Just once, Xander. You can help me, or not.”

  “You promised.”

  “I’m not breaking it, but I’ll take it back if you don’t help.” Xander’s heart felt squeezed to the size of a raisin. David was honest, but that did not always translate into being good.

  “Scoot over,” Xander said. He sat beside his brother. While David played the light over the stairs, the open door below and, occasionally, down the hotel-like corridor, Xander told him about fighting the gladiator. He did not spare any detail. The bodies. The sword crashing down on the shield. The soldiers who attacked when he had begged them for help. The close calls, when he’d thought he was dead. David listened without making a sound. When Xander finished, they sat quietly. David had stilled his hand; the light shined on his sneakers.

  After a few minutes, Xander felt his brother’s hand on his shoulder. David said, “I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  “You see why I don’t want you to do it?”

  At first, David didn’t reply. Then he whispered, “I have to. If I don’t, I’ll always wonder. My whole life.”

  “If you do, your whole life may not be very long.” Xander had to admit this was consistent with David’s personality. He had dirt biked and scuba dived, hit a black diamond slope on only their fourth trip to Mammoth Mountain, and had even flown in an ultralight with a friend’s father. Xander was into adventure as well, but never with David’s degree of enthusiasm—Dad called it “reckless abandon.” David could ramble on for hours about the things he wanted to do when he became old enough: pilot a jet; bungee from some bridge on the Zimbabwe-Zambia border; and streetluge, which was like putting wheels on your back and flying down the longest, scariest road you could find. Once, when the dinnertime conversation turned to how each of them wanted to die, Xander had said “In my sleep.” Yeah, that sounded like a decent way to go.

  David had said, “I want to hang glide into a cliff when I’m ninety.” OK, that was cool, Xander had admitted to himself.

  Then David had added, in all seriousness, “Or get eaten by a shark.” He did not have a death wish. He would be the first to say he wanted to live a long, long time, so he could do all the things he dreamed about doing. It was more like, for David, life was most exciting when you could lose it. Xander didn’t think David had actually figured that out yet. But it was true.

  Now that Xander thought about it, he had been an idiot to think he could keep David out of those rooms. His little brother got scared like everyone did. He was just very adept at pushing his fear aside when doing so led to some grand new adventure.

  “Look,” Xander said, “if I go along with it, I pick which room.”

  “Not something stupid, like the one with the beach towel.”

  “That one sounds like a lot of fun to me.”

  David just looked at him.

  Xander said, “Okay, but nothing with a weapon. Okay? A weapon seems like a bad sign.”

  “Well, if the only rooms that look cool are the ones with weapons . . .”

  “No,” Xander said. “No weapons, no matter what.” When David didn’t respond, he added, “Otherwise, I’ll drag your butt to Dad right now. He’ll brick up that wall down there, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll kick and scream till we move.”

  “All right, already. No weapons.”

  Before his brother’s agreement had registered in Xander’s mind, David was standing, stepping toward the corridor. He flipped the metal breaker, turning on the lights.

  Xander stepped up behind him. “Do you know which room?” “Antechamber.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what Dad called these rooms: antechambers.”

  “Whatever. Do you know which one?”

  David s
hook his head. Xander stepped past David and opened the first door.

  “That’s the beach towel room,” David complained.

  “Uh . . . no it’s not.” Hanging from the hooks were an astronaut’s helmet, a metallic space suit, something that looked like a pistol, but may have been a welding torch. There were a few other items consistent with an outer-space adventure.

  “Whoa,” David said, looking past Xander.

  Xander quickly said, “There’s a gun. That’s a weapon.”

  “That’s not a weapon!”

  “I said, not this one.” Xander slammed the door.

  He opened it again, peered in. He clicked it shut, once more. He said, “You know, I think you’re right. That was the beach towel room.”

  “Duh. Those beach things with the flip-flops were the first things we saw. Remember?”

  Xander nodded. “Well . . . it changed.”

  David scrunched his nose, hitched up his top lip. “Would Dad do that?”

  “Why would he? And . . .” Xander thought about it. “It’s not like someone just switched the stuff around, and I don’t remember seeing astronaut stuff. I know we checked every room.”

  David nodded in agreement. “Somebody put brand-new stuff in there.”

  Simultaneously, they gazed up the corridor at the other doors. About ten minutes later, they had rechecked every room. About half of the themes were ones they had seen the previous night, though both brothers thought they were in different rooms. The other themes were altogether new.

  “Who’s doing it, you think?” David asked.

  Xander was squinting at the doors. “I don’t know, but . . .”

  They went to every room again, verifying that none of the themes had changed since their last inspection. None had.

  “Maybe they all change at a specific time,” Xander suggested. “Or when no one’s around.”

  They were silent for a while. At last, David clapped his hands together. He strolled up the center of the carpeted runner. “Let’s see. Which one . . . had . . .” Thinking, thinking. “The police badge and uniform?”

  “No weapons,” Xander reminded him.

  “That one didn’t have . . . oh, the pistol.”

  “You’d probably wind up smack in the middle of a bank robbery.”

  Xander caught the spark in David’s eye before he turned away.

  “David . . .”

  “I know. How about that one with the rope and carabiners?” Xander tossed his hands up. “You don’t know how to mountain climb! These places don’t suddenly give you new skills. They just drop you in.”

  David opened a door. He turned a smile on Xander, then stepped through.

  “What?” Xander said, rushing to catch the door before it shut. Khaki-colored safari hat. Compass. A vest with many pockets and loops and straps. A canteen on a utility belt. A machete. On the bench were knee-high leather boots.

  “A jungle?” Xander said.

  David grinned and nodded.

  Xander said, “A machete. That’s a weapon.”

  “It’s a tool. I’ll probably have to cut my way out of some bushes, that’s all.”

  Xander didn’t like it, but a deal was a deal. He pulled the utility belt off its hook and held it out to David.

  The boy hesitated. When he reached for it, his hand trembled.

  Xander’s eyebrows went up. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” His voice was high, like it had been in the clearing.

  His tongue clicked dryly in his mouth.

  Xander thought of Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws, when he was preparing to go in the shark cage. He was so afraid he couldn’t spit into his diving mask to keep it from fogging up. Now there was a David personality for you: scared, but willing to do it anyway.

  David cinched the belt around his waist. Xander handed him the machete. He unsheathed it and gave it the once-over.

  He clipped it to the belt. Xander set the helmet on his brother’s head. It was too big and made him look five years old.

  “Dad’s gonna kill me,” Xander said.

  David reached for the second door’s handle.

  “Wait!” Xander said. “Don’t open that door. I’ll be right back.”

  “What?” David said.

  “Just wait, don’t move.” Xander hurried out of the room.

  Even with reining in his speed on the stairs and tiptoeing past the master bedroom, he reached his and Dae’s room and was back in the antechamber upstairs in no more than a minute. He held his camcorder up to David. “Here, take this.”

  “I don’t want that!” David protested. “What if I need my hands? What if I lose it?”

  Xander let the camera drop to the end of its long leather strap. He slipped it over David’s head so it hung around his neck.

  “I’ll turn it on now,” he said, flipping the power switch and pushing the record button. “If you think about it, point it at something. If you don’t, we’ll still have proof you went somewhere. You might not want to burp or do anything too embarrassing, though.”

  “Like scream?” David asked. He opened the inner door.

  The antechamber instantly became more humid. A botanical fragrance wafted in. Beyond the threshold, fat, green leaves swayed in a breeze. Trees rose out of sight, hairy-looking vines looped down, almost touching the moss-covered earth.

  “You sure about this?” Xander asked.

  David nodded. He tightened the helmet strap under his chin. Xander said, “How long was I gone last night?”

  David shrugged. “Twenty minutes?”

  “So, it’s probably all in real time. A minute over there is a minute here. If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’m gonna get Dad and come after you.”

  David nodded. He stepped through.

  The door pulled out of Xander’s grip and slammed shut.

  CHAPTER

  thirty - three

  David watched the door waver and fade away. The moist heat drew sweat from his face and neck. The plants seemed to quiver, but whether from wind or some kind of ground tremor, David didn’t know. The cushy grasses and moss prevented him from feeling much else under his feet. A bird cawed in the distance. It was a sound like an alarm that set David’s nerves on edge. He was already thinking about how he would get back. If the door had vanished, where would he find the portal to home? He did want to experience this world, but he would have felt a lot better knowing where the exit was. He trusted that somehow—either with Xander’s help or as Dad had said, through some signal from the items he held—the portal would reveal itself.

  He stepped to the fern where the door had shimmered and ceased to be. He was moving the leaves around when a centipede—as long as his arm and as thick as a hotdog— scuttled up the frond toward his hand. Its front half rose up, as if to look David in the eyes. Its many legs wiggled and waved. Huge pincers, coming off its head, clamped and opened, clamped and opened. Unsure if the thing could leap or how fast it could move if it decided David looked like a tasty treat, he reversed another few steps. His heel crunched on something. A brown and yellow beetle, as big as an egg, oozed yellow guts from its shattered shell. Three others, bigger, moved quickly toward David, perhaps intent on avenging their friend. He gingerly danced away on tiptoes.

  Should have put on the boots, he thought. He backed into something that moved easily under David’s touch: a long, fat snake, hanging from a branch. David yelled, then laughed at himself: it was only a vine. He sighed, then spotted a real snake, slithering down the vine in his direction. Having already yelled, he bit his tongue and backed away.

  His heart was a ferret, caged within his chest, panicky to get out. It seemed to jump and twirl and bang against his breastbone and his ribs. Its frantic beats made little room for the expansion of his lungs, and he found breathing to be difficult.

  Well away from the snake and centipede and beetles, he stopped. He scanned the area, saw no immediate threats. He closed his eyes and forced himself to take a long, deep breath. He lifte
d Xander’s camera off his stomach, where it had been bouncing at the end of its strap. He made sure the Record light was on, then held it to his face. He zoomed in on the vine and snake, panned to the plant where the centipede had been. He didn’t see it now, in the camera’s little LCD screen.

  Nearby, something roared. It was a big animal, a wild cat. David lowered the camera. It roared again, and he wondered if it had caught his scent and was crooning its excitement about finding an exotic meal.

  As if in answer, a second animal roared, in the opposite direction, but seeming just as near. The next roar came from a third beast—between the first two, but farther off. That ferret in his chest had found his throat and was pushing up into it.

  David shook his head. Considering Xander’s experience, it was just like that house to drop him into big-cat territory. From the roars, he figured he was in their favorite feeding zone and it was dinnertime. For all he knew, the portal issued a frequency only tigers could hear—the big-cat equivalent of a dinner bell. He had thought tiger, but he didn’t know their roars from any of the other big cats. At one time or another, he had heard them all at the San Diego Zoo, but he wasn’t nerd enough about animals to distinguish the difference. He thought he had read somewhere—or maybe it was from the singing animals in The Jungle Book—that the only big cats in jungle settings were leopards, panthers, and tigers. The roars were throaty and loud. Had to be tigers.

  Whatever they were, he didn’t want to hang around to find out. He unsheathed the machete. Its weight felt good in his hand. He admired its gleaming edge.

  One of the beasts roared again. Almost immediately, it received an answering call. Both seemed closer, and David realized how awfully true his statement to Xander had been: the machete was a tool, not a weapon.

  He held still, willing it or the hat or the utility belt to show him the way to the portal. He felt nothing, no tug, no weightiness in one direction or another. Maybe he had to move, get closer to the portal before the items started drawing him toward it.