Whirlwind

by Robert Liparulo

  “Dae?” Xander said softly.

  “Hmmm?”

  “I was thinking,” Xander said. “What if Taksidian’s not human?”

  David’s eyes snapped open. “What?”

  “What if he’s like . . . I don’t know, a demon?”

  “Knock it off,” David said.

  “I mean, he’s mean enough. He’s creepy looking. He’s got that statue made out of body parts.”

  David raised his head. “Are you trying to scare me?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Well, stop saying,” David said. He flopped his face into his pillow. He waited for Xander to speak again, then he was dreaming: he was running down the third-floor hallway, chased by Taksidian . . . only the hallway never ended, and Taksidian’s face was a ghoulish demon’s.

  CHAPTER

  twenty - one

  FRIDAY, 5:18 A .M.

  After the nightmare, David had no dreams at all. Just sleep. Rest. Respite from the craziness of his life, from using muscles and joints that were battered and sore. Peace.

  Too soon: a nudge, someone shaking his shoulder.

  “David?” The voice was deep, rumbly. “I’m going back to see Jesse. Want to come?”

  “Keal?” David asked. Déjà vu, he thought. Déjà vu in a dream. How weird.

  “Hey,” Keal said. More nudges. “Want to see Jesse?”

  In his half-awake state, David heard the words, but didn’t make all the connections. “Jesse?” he said. “Back at the house?”

  “At the hospital,” Keal said. He shook David. “Wake up if you want to go.”

  “Young Jesse?”

  “Old Jesse!” Xander said from his bed. He propped himself up on his elbow and addressed Keal. “Dae’s still dreaming.

  I want to go.”

  “Get your clothes on,” Keal said.

  “Wait,” David said. He threw back his blankets. Groaning, he sat up and hooked his legs over the side of the bed. “I want to see Jesse too.” He rubbed his face, scratched the top of his head. “Oh, man, was I out.”

  “You know we’re talking about Old Jesse, right?” Xander said, rolling out of bed.

  “Old Jesse, yeah.” David stood, steadying himself on Keal’s shoulder, then stumbled toward the dresser. “I like Old Jesse,” he said, trying to wake himself up by talking, having to think.

  “I like Young Jesse too. He’s probably a kid I would hang out with, if I, you know, lived back then. I think I’d like Jesse at any age.”

  “Maybe you’ll get a chance to find out,” Xander said, tugging on his jeans. “Maybe we’ll meet thirty-year-old Jesse and middle-aged Jesse.”

  Keal stood and walked to the door. “This conversation is just too weird for me, boys,” he said. “I’ll see you downstairs. If you hurry, you can see your father and Toria before they head to the airport.”

  David had showered the evening before, after escaping from the chamber. Even so, he took another one now. He figured he’d stumble through the day half asleep if he didn’t. It was like some exhaustion fairy was keeping track of his lack of sleep, stress, and physical exertion. Ran from Berserkers? Let’s put this rock right here on your head. Didn’t get a full eight hours’ sleep? Rocks for both shoulders. Worried about Mom? Two rocks here and three rocks there . . .

  He was surprised how many of those rocks fell away under the cold spray of the shower. Even more when he lathered up with a bar of perky-smelling soap. By the time he cranked the water off and stepped out, he was feeling pretty close to normal. He wondered how big the pile of stones would be by the end of the day, and what terrible thing he’d have to endure for each one.

  That’s no way to think, he told himself. It’s going to be a great day!

  He stared at the face in the mirror and said out loud, “Yeah, sure it will.”

  When he went downstairs, everyone was around the dining table, bowls of cereal before them.

  “Hey, Dae,” Dad said. “Froot Loops or Shredded Wheat?”

  David plopped down in a chair beside Xander. “Is that your way of asking how I feel?” He grabbed a box at random and dumped its contents into a bowl. Turned out to be Life, which he liked. He wished his luck at choosing portals was as good.

  “We should be out of the hospital by seven, plenty of time to get them to school,” Keal told Dad, apparently continuing a discussion that had started before David arrived.

  Dad checked his watch and looked surprised. He scooped a spoonful of colorful cereal into his mouth, pushed his chair back, and stood. He said, “Toria, we gotta go. Our flight leaves at seven thirty, and it takes almost an hour to get to Redding.

  Xander and David, Keal’s in charge.”

  Munching, Keal gave Dad a thumbs-up.

  Dad picked up his bowl. “Keal,” he said, “would you mind swinging by to see my mom?”

  “No prob—” Keal started, before the milky pieces of Honeycomb began spilling out of his mouth. He caught one in his spoon.

  “Just let her know why the phones aren’t working, fill her in on what’s going on,” Dad said. “Tell her I’ll stop by tonight with Toria.” He went around the table toward the kitchen, then stopped. “Oh . . . and watch for tails, maybe drive around a bit first.”

  Keal gave him another thumbs-up.

  Dad nodded at David and Xander. “See you this evening, guys.”

  They said their good-byes and went back to their breakfasts.

  Toria lifted her bowl to her lips and slurped down the remaining milk. She smiled at her brothers, milk mustache becoming a goatee. “Have fun at school, boys,” she said, standing and turning away.

  “Have fun getting frisked,” Xander said.

  She turned around. “What?”

  “Oh, I forgot you haven’t flown in a while,” Xander said. “Things have changed. They frisk everyone now. It can get a little rough.”

  “They do not!”

  Xander pretended to be ashamed for startling her. He said, “You’re right, they probably won’t be too rough on you, being a little kid and all.”

  Frowning, she turned and went into the kitchen.

  “That was mean,” David whispered.

  Keal snapped a spoon of milk at Xander. It splattered over his face. David laughed.

  “Hey!” Xander said, rubbing milk out of his eye. He snatched his own spoon from the bowl, but Keal was already jogging out of the room, an evil laugh rumbling out of him.

  CHAPTER

  twenty - two

  FRIDAY, 6:31 A.M.

  Following Keal’s “Why mess with success?” strategy, they got into the hospital the same way they had the day before: Keal went in first, then opened a side door for David and Xander.

  The boys waited in the mustard-colored stairwell, listening to water rush through the exposed pipes, while Keal reconned the second floor.

  “Think Jesse will be able to talk?” Xander asked when the brothers were alone. He shifted from foot to foot, looking nervous.

  “He did yesterday,” David said. “A little.”

  A few minutes later, Keal cracked open the door. “We’re on,” he said.

  Jesse hadn’t moved. The right side of his bed was still cluttered with machines, monitors, and wires. The same chrome tree held what were probably different, but similar looking, bags of liquid, each trailing a tube that ran into his arm. And there was that see-through cylinder, inside which a bellows expanded and contracted in time with Jesse’s lungs.

  Jesse appeared pretty much the same, as well: a wisp of a man barely making a bulge in the blankets. His arms, resting at his sides, almost vanished against the bright white sheets. Blue veins mottled his cheeks, forehead, and balding scalp. Silver hair fanned out around his head like a halo.

  The three of them stood at the foot of the bed, taking it all in. Keal lifted a clipboard off a hook at the foot of the bed and started reading it.

  Xander made a slight moaning sound. David followed his gaze; he had spotted Jesse’s hand, the stub o
f his missing finger bandaged over. Xander’s gaze shifted to the bellows, then up to the machine that beeped along with Jesse’s heart. His skin had paled to a shade only slightly less white than Jesse’s.

  David had planned on letting Xander talk to Jesse first, but clearly his brother wasn’t ready. David slipped in front of him and approached Jesse on the uncluttered side of the bed. The old man’s skin reminded him of tracing paper, thin and brittle.

  He touched the bandaged hand, then slipped his fingers around it—down low, near Jesse’s thumb. The last thing he wanted to do was cause him pain.

  He moved his attention to the thin blanket covering Jesse’s chest. He saw no movement there, no rise and fall. A spark of panic shot from his brain to his heart. The monitor was beeping, beeping; the bellows gasped—but maybe they were wrong.

  Could they be wrong?

  Then he saw it: the slightest movement over Jesse’s stomach. He felt himself relax. He closed his eyes.

  You’re an old woman, he told himself. Take it easy. Be tough for Jesse.

  He took in Jesse’s face. The same twin tubes went into his nostrils, almost lost in his mustache. Silver stubble roamed the creases of his cheeks and chin like fake snow on a model railroad. His eyelids vibrated as the eyes under them moved back and forth.

  “He’s dreaming,” David said, smiling at Keal and Xander.

  “No, he’s not,” whispered Xander.

  When David looked back, Jesse’s eyes were open. His blue irises were turned toward him. They were vivid and alive, his eyes. Sparkling. So similar to Young Jesse’s, it was as though they were immune to time and age and all the things they had witnessed, both awful and awesome. Jesse’s mustache trembled, and he managed a thin smile.

  “Hi,” David said. “How do you feel?”

  Jesse nodded. “Better.”

  “Keal and Xander are here with me.”

  Jesse shifted his gaze to them. His mouth parted, and he sighed. A whitish-pink tongue poked out and slid over his lips. He said, “Glad you . . . could make it.”

  “We saw you,” David said. “We found the antechamber you wanted us to find, the one that led back to the house being built. You were there.”

  Jesse smiled and nodded. He said, “Just a kid.”

  “Yeah,” David said. “You were fourteen, but I recognized you. Haven’t changed that much.”

  Jesse tried to laugh, but wound up coughing, a thin, airy hack.

  “You knew we’d meet someday,” David said. The notion that Jesse had spent a lifetime with David’s and Xander’s faces in his memory, decades before they were born, fascinated him. This world was so much more magical and incredible than he’d ever known—than most people ever imagined. He said, “You knew when you left the house that you’d come back to help us. We told you, the young you, that you would.”

  Jesse’s head moved on the pillow: yes. “Your visits,” he said slowly. “They were some of the best times I ever had. Thank you.”

  “Visits?” Xander said.

  “We go back again?” David said. “We see you again? We said we would, but I didn’t really know . . .”

  Jesse frowned. The wrinkles around his eyes came down with the corners of his mouth. “You’ve been there . . . only once? Once so far?”

  “That was yesterday,” David explained. “We haven’t had time—”

  Jesse shook his head no. “You have to get back there.

  Soon. So much you need to know.” He strained to lift his head.

  “Jesse,” David said. “Take it easy.”

  “Promise me,” he said. “Promise . . . you’ll go back. Soon.”

  “Can’t you just tell us?”

  Jesse’s face tightened in thought. He said, “I can’t. Something— Time or changes in history or old age—is keeping the details from me, but I know you must go back, I know it. Tell me you will.”

  David looked at Xander, who said, “We will.”

  David told Jesse, “I promise. As soon as we can.”

  Jesse dropped his head down. His eyes closed.

  David felt Jesse’s fingers curl around his own. He watched Jesse’s hand tremble as he tried to put strength into the squeeze.

  A pinpoint of blood appeared through the gauze where his index finger used to be.

  “Jesse . . .” David said, worried.

  The old man was eyeing him again. He said, “I haven’t dreamed a change . . . since you saved Marguerite.” The little girl David saved from a German tank. When they changed the past, Jesse sensed it as a dream, a fading memory of the way things were before the change.

  “We try not to mess with things when we go over,” David said. In truth, it was usually all they could do to take a quick look around for Mom and get out with their lives.

  Jesse closed his eyes. Just when David thought they’d stay closed, they fluttered open. “You mustn’t simply . . . do nothing.”

  “I don’t understand,” David said. “What are we supposed to do?”

  “Fix things,” Jesse said. “That’s your purpose.”

  David shook his head. “You said that before, but I don’t understand.”

  Jesse breathed in deeply, then coughed out the air. He said, “We’re all put on this earth for a reason. Most people spend half their lives trying to figure out what it is they’re supposed to do.” He breathed, two, three breaths before continuing. “How wonderful it is to find out when you’re young.”

  “But, Jesse,” Xander said, “this? The house? Going back in time?”

  Jesse smiled at Xander, and David realized Jesse knew his brother as well as he did: This is not what Xander wanted to hear. He had other plans for his life. “I can’t tell you the reason, Xander,” Jesse said. “But our family, our bloodline, was meant to fix things in the past, things that people have messed up.” He raised his head slightly, seeming to draw energy from his words. “I don’t know how far back it goes, but my father thought maybe centuries . . . even longer. Forever.”

  “The house hasn’t been around forever,” Xander said.

  “And the time ripples, the portals, haven’t always been where they are now,” Jesse said. “They drift, they move.”

  David nodded. The portals in other worlds drifted around.

  He and Xander had witnessed it. It made sense that the currents of time here, in the present, would drift around, too.

  Young Jesse had told them that his father thought that building the antechambers and the portal doors might somehow lock them in place—at least for a while. Seemed he was right.

  Jesse continued: “Our family has always been drawn to them, no matter where they are. When we don’t fix the past—”

  He dropped his head back onto the pillow and scanned the ceiling, as though looking for the words he wanted. “When we don’t . . . bad things happen.”

  “Like what?” David whispered, not sure he wanted to know.

  “Wars, diseases, sorrows,” Jesse said. “More grief than there has to be.”

  “But you left,” Xander said. “Over thirty years ago, you just up and left.”

  “I was old even then,” Jesse said. “I had a stroke. Couldn’t walk or use my left arm. Some of my motor skills eventually returned, but at the time, I could no longer do my job in the house. I had been going back into history for so long, Time kept pulling on me, trying to suck me back. I had to get away. But I contacted your grandfather and told him it was his turn.”

  “And after Nana was kidnapped,” David said, “he couldn’t take it and left.”

  “The world is darker for it, for Time not having a Gatekeeper for so long,” Jesse said. “I don’t know in what ways, but I know it’s true.” His eye shifted to David. “Who knows how many people like Marguerite he could have saved, how much pain he could have prevented?”

  David glanced at Xander, who looked as baffled as David felt. “How are we supposed to know what to fix, where to look, what to do?”

  “You’ll know.” His eyes turned away, then
found David again. “The doctor.”

  David turned to Keal. “He wants a doctor.”

  “No,” Jesse said. “The one you told me about . . . in the Civil War.”

  “Oh yeah,” David said. “There was a nurse calling for a doctor. She asked us to get him.”