Movement caught David’s eye. Ahead of them and off to the left, more soldiers plowed into the woods. They had obviously come from the front of the camp and were moving to cut the boys off—or get them in a crossfire with the soldiers behind them.
“Xander!”
“I see them!”
Then David spotted it: the portal. It was ahead of them on the right. Its edges were indistinct, but it appeared to be less door-shaped than he was used to; this one was more like an elongated egg. Its rippling presence—like heated air—distorted the trees and bushes behind it. As he watched, it wavered and moved, appearing to slip farther to the right and rise.
“I see it,” David said.
“Where?”
“To your right,” David said. “You’re going to pass it!”
“No,” Xander said. “The coat—”
Shots rang out from the new soldiers. So close now. Another shot came from behind. Setting up the crossfire.
David veered out of Xander’s path. He ran straight for the portal.
“David!” Xander said behind him. “Wait!”
David turned. “Come on! It’s right here!”
Xander’s coat fluttered and tugged—pointing close to the portal, but not right at it. If the portal was at the twelve o’clock position on a watch face, the coat wanted to go to eleven o’clock. The soldiers were at six o’clock and nine o’clock— converging on the brothers, who David supposed were directly in the center.
Xander pointed. “The coat says that way.”
“Look—!” David turned. The portal had shifted again.
“The portal’s moving. The coat’s just not keeping up with it.
Come on!” He ran for the portal and heard Xander fall in behind him.
More yells from the soldiers. More gunfire.
David reached the shimmering oval, squeezed his eyes shut, and leaped.
As a foul smelling breeze blew out of the portal, instantly turning David’s stomach, Xander yelled, “Nooooo—!”
CHAPTER
thirty - five
David came down hard on the floor and rolled into a wall. Xander tumbled behind him.
That smell—! David thought, gagging in his throat and in his mind. He opened his eyes: a gray stone wall—similar to the chamber Taksidian’s pantry had sent him into. But this one was stained and filthy with muck. And here the darkness wasn’t complete; faint light flickered, making shadows jitter around on the wall.
He rolled over. Xander was lying on the floor, pushed up on one arm. His shocked eyes moved between two items that chilled David’s blood as surely as the Atlantic Ocean had done: High up on one wall a wide, rusty pair of shackles dangled from chains. On the floor below, another pair rested on coils of metal links. The shackles were hinged open, like twin serpents frozen in midbite.
The brothers were in a room about ten feet square, with stone walls on three sides. The fourth side was open, except for a grid of thick, flat lengths of metal that formed the bars of a prison cell. In the dark cloud of despair that was seeping into his consciousness, David felt a tinge of hope: the cell door was open.
A couple of matches’ worth of flames sputtered atop a torch leaning out from a wall beyond the bars.
“This isn’t the antechamber,” David said.
Xander’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. He squinted at the shackles and bars, as though he suspected someone of pulling an elaborate joke on them.
David pushed closer to his brother. He held his nose, said, “What is that smell?” It was like a litterbox that hadn’t been changed—ever. Mingled with that was something else, something worse. David remembered a few years before when the family had spent a weekend with friends in San Diego. They’d come home to find that the refrigerator motor had gone out, spoiling hamburger and milk and leftover chili. This smelled like that had, the stench of decay.
Xander scurried up and crouched in front of David. He grabbed David’s arm. “The portal in the house didn’t bring us here. I don’t know how to get home,” he whispered. Panic made his voice high, his words fast.
“Can’t—” David said. His eyes scanned over the Union army coat. “Won’t the coat show us the way?”
Xander pulled the front of it away from his chest, let it fall back. “It’s not doing anything now. What if the items don’t work when they’re not in the world they belong to?”
“But—” David’s mouth had suddenly dried up. “We have to get home. Xander, we have to!”
Xander nodded. “We’ll . . . we’ll figure something out.”
They stood, and Xander walked to the bars.
Just then, a siren wailed—no, no, David thought. Not a siren! It was a person screaming, a long wrenching howl of agony.
Xander grabbed a bar, as if to steady himself.
The scream stretched longer than a single breath, with barely a pause for the guy to pull in another. It echoed against the walls and was joined by more voices. They moaned and cried, the way a barking dog can set off a chain of baying and yapping neighborhood pets.
David slowly squatted. He wanted to shrink within himself and disappear.
Xander stepped backward away from the bars. He bumped into David, pulled him up by the arm, then shuffled him into a corner of the cell where the shadows were darkest. He said, “I’m officially creeped out.”
“Let’s . . . not move,” David whispered. He thought if he ran into the screamer or whatever was making him scream, he’d faint on the spot and wake up screaming himself.
“This is the last place we should be,” Xander said. “If we’re stuck in this world—”
“Don’t say that!”
Xander snapped up his hand, gesturing for David to calm down, be cool. “We’re here now,” Xander continued, “maybe just for a little bit . . . maybe longer. Either way, there’s gotta be a better place to wait it out than this.”
David lowered his gaze. He said, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Going in the wrong portal.” David’s voice was trembling.
“I just thought . . . I mean, I really thought that was it.”
Xander shook his head. “It’s not your fault. We’ve never seen two portals before. And those soldiers . . . Man! I would have done the same thing.”
“No, you wouldn’t have.” But he appreciated his brother saying it.
“Besides,” Xander said, “think about what we’re learning.
We always wondered how Mom went in one door and out another, right? And Nana said she moved around from world to world. But until now, we’d only gone over from the house and right back to it.”
David thought about it. “We still don’t know how people find the other portals. We just stumbled on it.”
“Who says they don’t? Or maybe it’s easy to figure out once you know what to look for.” Xander stopped to listen. The screaming had faded away, leaving only the crying and muttering of a dozen different voices. He squeezed David’s shoulder. “I have a feeling knowing about the other portals is going to help us find Mom.”
“Sure,” David said. “If we ever get back home.”
Xander’s expression matched the dread David felt. Still, he expected his brother to say something like, Of course we will!—if not for David’s sake, then for his own. But Xander just cocked his head toward the cell door and whispered, “Come on.”
CHAPTER
thirty - six
The passage ran in both directions. Cells lined one side of the corridor, a wall lined the other. Torches spaced twenty or thirty feet apart did little to dispel the dismal darkness. Black shadows clung to corners, the backs of cells, the ceiling, like creatures waiting for the unsuspecting to pass too closely.
Xander grabbed the torch outside their cell and slipped it up through rings mounted to the wall. He swished the fire one direction, then the other. Both ways looked the same to David. The glow of the other torches became dots as they stretched farther away.
“Ri
ght or left?” Xander said.
“What are we looking for?”
“A way out.”
The scream rose up again, seeming to roll at them from the passage to the right like a gusty wind. Without a word, the brothers started walking the other direction. At each cell, Xander held the torch close to the bars. The first half dozen were either empty or contained piles of rags that may or may not have been prisoners. The boys addressed each pile with a “Hey” or “Hello?” but the rags didn’t reply.
In the seventh cell, a boy of about thirteen cowered in a corner. Rags covered his body; a mop of dirty, shaggy hair exploded from his head. Big eyes blinked at the torch’s flame.
“He’s just a kid,” Xander said.
“Do you speak English?” David asked.
Blink. Blink.
David ached for him. He grabbed the cell door and yanked on it: Clang!
“Yow!” Xander said, nudging David. “Shhh.”
David pulled again: Clang! Clang!
The boy blinked.
A voice called from the direction of the scream: “wer ist, dass oben fungierend?”
About thirty yards away, the outline of an opening in the wall became apparent as a torch approached from within that perpendicular passage.
“Ich sagte, wem Mühe verursacht?” Much closer.
“Now you’ve done it,” Xander whispered. He took off, hurrying away from the voice and light.
David stayed right behind him, watching over his shoulder as the opening became brighter. Light spilled out of it, catching the bars on the other side.
Xander vanished into another passage on his right. Apparently, hallways were connected to this passage all along the wall.
David glanced back and froze. A figure stood right there, not far from the cell in which they had entered this world. The torch in his hand blazed bonfire bright. David could only hope that the silhouetted man was looking the other way, or that the glare of his fire made seeing beyond its reach impossible.
He darted into the connecting hallway.
Xander was moving away, the torch tracking his progression and silhouetting his body, the way the bigger torch had done the other man. The light stopped moving.
“David, come on,” Xander whispered.
David glanced around the corner. The man was near now.
He was standing in front of the boy’s cell. David thought the kid must be the only prisoner in this section. How else would the guy know to go right to him? He hoped that meant there weren’t many kids—or many people no matter their age— locked up like this.
The man yelled into the cell. “Berühren Sie die Tür wieder, Kind, und ich komme für Sie zunächst! ” He slammed his palm into the bars—clang!—and turned to return the way he had come.
The boy began to weep.
“David!”
He ran to catch up.
They found other passages lined with cells, and more prisoners, all adults. Most shied away from David and Xander, covering their faces or scurrying into corners. Some began crying; others yelled out, causing the boys to hurry away and dart into the first intersecting passage they came to. Before long, David had no idea where they were in relation to where they’d begun or in which direction they were heading.
He touched Xander to stop him. “I think we’re going in circles.”
The screaming kicked up again—close.
Xander began walking toward the sound. David grabbed his shirt. “What are you doing?”
“Checking it out,” Xander whispered. “Maybe the only way out is up this way. These cells, all these passageways, they’re probably set in the back, away from the entrance.”
“But—” David knew his eyes were buggy with terror.
“Just a look,” Xander reassured him.
They moved toward the scream.
CHAPTER
thirty - seven
David and Xander maneuvered through the gloomy passageways, following the screams. David found himself lifting one arm, then the other—backstroking the tension away. But it wasn’t working.
As they got closer, David realized the screamer was not alone in his suffering. Someone was moaning loudly. Another cried and mumbled words David didn’t understand.
They rounded a corner and found themselves in a passageway that ended in a bright rectangle of light. Xander pressed himself against a wall and scooted closer to the doorway. David crept along behind. Slowly the room beyond came into view. It was a huge chamber, octagonal in shape, with granite-block walls. Stone supports arched up to an oval ceiling, like the rotunda at the Los Angeles City Hall, which David had seen on a fifth-grade field trip. Tall pillars outlined a smaller circle at the center of the room. On each burned a trio of heavy-duty torches; a huge fire pit, situated at the room’s dead center, added its light, casting a golden glow over the entire area.
It looked like the sort of place city councils would meet, or senators, or even celebrities and other lah-de-dah people looking for a party. What it was, however, was something much more repulsive. David recognized some of the equipment scattered around the room: an iron maiden, in which people were placed to be impaled by hundreds of spikes lining the interior; a giant spoked wheel, on which poor souls would be strapped and crushed as it rolled; and a table with a contraption on one end used for crushing legs. He’d seen all these devices on a History Channel show called Tools of Torture in the Middle Ages.
David turned away. He tried to slow his breathing, but he couldn’t do anything about his heart trying to pound its way out of his chest.
This close, the moans and cries were continuous. They were horrible to hear, worse than all of the cuts and bruises, the near-drowning and broken arm he had suffered in the other worlds—including his own. That brought to mind Taksidian, the most wicked person he had ever met. And yet, this was a world of Taksidians, of people who thought like him, people who enjoyed cruelty the way he did.
David grabbed Xander’s arm and pulled him away from the doorway, back into the dark passage.
“It’s a torture chamber!” he whispered, grinding his teeth.
“Shhh!” Xander said, checking over his shoulder. “I saw the torturer. He’s pacing around a guy on a rack—you know, one of those things that pull you in opposite directions until your bones and muscles—”
David slapped his hand over Xander’s mouth. “I know what the rack is! Xander, we’re stuck in this world, in this place? We’re going to end up on that rack, I know it. I . . . I . . . can’t even look at those things out there.”
That show on TV had given him nightmares. His father had said the only explanation for atrocities like torture was summed up in one word: evil. There was no logic to justify it, no chalking it up to misguided principles or necessity for a greater good. It was evil, plain and simple. Dad had pointed out that the use of torture chambers, such as during the Spanish Inquisition and at the Tower of London, was only one example of human evil.
History was deeply scarred by it: slavery, the Holocaust, the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur.
From the lighted room came another awful sound: click-click-click—the rack tightening! Its victim screamed in agony.
The others raised their mournful voices as well, as if encouraged or doubly agonized by their fellow sufferer.
David slammed his hands over his ears, squeezed his eyes shut. All he could think about were the human beings in there: perhaps a dad who had laughingly tossed his toddler in the air just days ago . . . a man sweating under the scorching sun to feed his family . . . the children they had been, never dreaming that such horrors awaited them.
“I can’t take it,” he said.
Xander grabbed his shoulders. “Dae, there’s a staircase on the far side of the room. Want to make a break for it? We’ll wait till the guy’s back is turned and go for it.”
David nodded, moving his head up and down in big, exaggerated motions. He heard Xander move away, and when he opened his eyes, his brother was already at the doorw
ay, peering around the corner. He signaled for David to get up next to him.
“Hold on . . . hold on . . .” Xander whispered. His torch was on the floor, where it sputtered and smoked, ready to go out. Then Xander said, “Let’s go.” He stepped out of the passageway into the room, tiptoeing fast. David followed. At the far right of the large chamber, a man was turned away from them. He appeared to be whispering into the ear of another man. This other man was lying on a table, his arms pulled above his head with ropes that were attached to a wheel. Another rope-and-wheel device bound his ankles. Sweat glistened all over his body, and he was twisting his head back and forth.
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