Frenzy

by Robert Liparulo

  Okay, he thought, watching the antechamber light play against the floor and carpeted runner. Come on out, you butt-ugly ogre. Bring it on!

  CHAPTER

  thirty - three

  FRIDAY, 7:35 P.M.

  Nothing happened. No butt-ugly ogre. No action at all, just the light—broken by moving shadows—slicing out from under the antechamber door. Then, as Keal watched, it went out. The portal door inside must have closed. He walked slowly to the antechamber and listened at the door. More nothing. Raising the hammer over his head, he pulled it open: empty.

  The items inside didn’t offer any clues to who had been there or why: a white medical smock, a stethoscope, other doctor-related items. He shut the door and began pacing the hallway.

  What if this sort of thing was part of Taksidian’s plan? Psychological warfare. Make your opponents jumpy and paranoid. It caused them to lose sleep and expend energy on false alarms. This maybe-something’s-coming-maybe-not incident he had just experienced was not the first of its kind he’d heard about or witnessed: stomping around on the third floor while the kids were trying to sleep . . . someone in the linen closet, rattling the handle . . . using Mom’s voice, recorded on Wuzzy, to lure Toria to the third floor. No wonder the family was always exhausted and nervous. They’d been terrorized—both by real threats and fake ones.

  Realizing this only reinforced Keal’s admiration for the Kings. These guys are tough, he thought. I can learn at least as much from them as they can from me.

  He returned to the second floor, listening for any noises coming from the antechambers. Then he roamed the house, checking doors and windows. He ventured into the basement. The little room in which David had been stuck was firmly boarded up, no signs of any attempts to break through.

  He was climbing the basement stairs when he heard footsteps: stomping on the front porch. He stopped to listen. The door’s handle rattled and its hinges squeaked as it opened.

  Tension tightened his muscles as Keal prepared to bolt up the remaining stairs.

  “Anyone home?” Ed King called. “Keal! Xander! David!”

  Keal relaxed.

  Toria called, “Guys! We got news!”

  “Down here!” Keal said. He ascended to the first floor and stepped into the hallway between the foyer and kitchen. Dad—Keal had heard Ed called that so many times, that was how he was starting to think of the man as well—was examining the broken window. Keal moved toward him.

  Toria was halfway up the grand staircase. She smiled at him and opened her mouth to say something, but he held his fingers over his lips.

  “Shhh.” He whispered, “The boys are sleeping.”

  Toria’s face reflected her disappointment. “But we have news,” she said.

  Keal cast a suspicious eye on her. “Good news?”

  Grinning, she said, “We know where Phemus comes from.”

  “Uh . . .” Keal said, scrunching his face, “Atlantis?”

  Toria’s face dropped. “Huh? How do you know?”

  “Your brothers,” Keal said. “They went there.”

  Dad grabbed his arm. “What? To Atlantis? How? When? Wait, wait.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just tell me, they’re all right?”

  “They’re fine,” Keal said.

  “Does that have anything to do with Atlantis?” Dad said, pointing at the window.

  “Sort of,” Keal answered. “It’s a long story.”

  “Okay,” Dad said. “I want to hear everything.” He stooped to pick up two flat boxes off the floor, next to the satchel he had used to take Wuzzy to UCLA. “Picked up some pizza,” he said. “How about telling us over dinner?” He headed for the dining room.

  “We better eat slowly,” Keal said, following the glorious aroma of baked dough, hot cheese, pepperoni, and grease.

  Toria remained disappointed that Xander and David had been to Atlantis and had found out firsthand what she and Dad had learned from a computer program.

  Hoping to cheer her up, Keal said, “Hey, I got something you can play with.”

  She brightened. “What?”

  “Hold on.” He went into the kitchen and returned with the phones he’d purchased at Walmart. He handed her one. “It has games,” he said. “I made sure.”

  “Does it have a camera?” she said.

  “You bet.”

  She left her plate of crusts—“pizza bones,” she called them—and sat in the corner to fiddle with the phone.

  Keal set another phone on the table and slid it over to Dad on the other side. “Charged and ready to go.”

  Dad scowled at it. Keal knew he wasn’t happy about his boys’ putting themselves in more danger.

  “What possessed them to follow Phemus?” he asked.

  “They love their mom,” Keal said.

  “And I love my wife. But I’m not putting my head on a chopping block.” He dropped a pizza bone on his plate and pushed it away.

  Keal selected another piece—just one more—and bit off the tip.

  “Atlantis,” Dad said, “and the Civil War, the Alps, and some torture chamber?”

  Keal nodded. “And that brush with the cannibals, but they didn’t actually go there.”

  Dad rubbed his eyebrows. “I can’t even keep it all in my head.”

  “Imagine how they feel. That’s why I think they’ll sleep till morning, if we let them.”

  “Of course,” Dad said. “And how did you wind up with Taksidian’s dagger?”

  Keal told him about following the boys through the antechamber, but winding up not in Atlantis but a prehistoric cave. Then how he returned by grabbing hold of Taksidian’s feet, and the fight that came afterward. He continued talking until he’d said it all.

  Dad shook his head. “It never ends,” he said. “Everything seems to be happening faster, getting more dangerous . . . if that’s even possible.”

  Keal grabbed his arm. “It is possible. But you know something? We’re learning, getting smarter. We can do this. We can beat Taksidian—and this house.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Dad said, not sounding very sure. He watched Toria play with the phone. “I hope you’re right.”

  CHAPTER

  thirty - four

  SATURDAY, 8:47 A.M.

  David rolled over in bed and realized he had to go to the bathroom. He pushed the bedcovers off and blinked against the sunlight.

  Sunlight? Still ?

  He turned to see the clock on the nightstand. Almost nine. What time did it get dark? It felt like he’d slept longer than that. Xander snorted in air and whistled it out. He had kicked off his covers and sheet, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  David closed his eyes again and felt himself drifting back under. He forced himself to sit and swing his legs over the edge of the bed. He didn’t want the call of the bathroom to wake him in the middle of the night. That would be worse.

  He stood, got a shot of pain from his leg, and sat down again. He’d forgotten about that. He rose again, careful to make his left leg carry most of his weight. He stretched. Felt pretty good, actually. Refreshed. Amazing what a couple hours of shut-eye could do. He’d feel like a new kid by morning.

  He picked Xander’s blanket off the floor and spread it out over him. Xander snorted again, scratched his armpit, and rolled over.

  David stumbled for the door. He kicked a soccer trophy and stepped on a Matchbox car. He opened the door to the smell of bacon. Keal must have made bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches for dinner. He rubbed his stomach. He was hungry, but he didn’t want to eat now. Sleep first, eat later.

  As he crossed the hall to the bathroom, Toria walked out of her room, heading for the grand staircase. “Hey,” he said.

  She stopped, then ran to him, giving him a big hug.

  “When’d you get home?” he said.

  “Last night, silly.”

  “Last night?”

  “Want breakfast?” she said, stepping back from him. “I made bacon and eggs.�
��

  “Breakfast? What time is it?”

  “Eight thirty, something like that.”

  “At night? Friday night?”

  “Saturday morning.” She laughed. “Boy, you’re out of it. Keal said you went to bed at six yesterday. You slept all evening and right through the night.”

  He rubbed his face. “Oh, man . . .” He felt her little fist strike his stomach. “Ow, hey!”

  “Keal told us you and Xander went to Atlantis! I wanted to surprise you that Phemus is from there.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “Wuzzy,” she said, obviously proud of her teddy bear. “Dad’s friend listened to Phemus’s voice on Wuzzy’s recorder. He put it in a computer, and the computer said it was last spoken in Atlantis. Bet you don’t know what he said.”

  “Who, Dad’s friend?”

  “Phemus!”

  “What? What he said to you the night he . . .” He didn’t want to say the night he took Mom. It would bring Toria down. “The night he woke you up?”

  Trying to make her voice deep, she said, “Have you come to play?”

  “That’s what he said? Have you come to play?”

  “Mr. Peterson said the Atlantians liked war and they played mean games that made the kids ready to fight. He said it wasn’t a place you’d ever want to go to play.”

  David thought about the kids beating on each other, going for blood. They were the same kids who’d cornered him and tried to kill him. “Yeah,” he said, “that’s the way it is. I gotta go to the bathroom.”

  “Wait, wait!” She ran back to her room.

  David went into the bathroom. He was shutting the door when she returned.

  “David!”

  “What?”

  She held up a mobile phone and took his picture. She looked at the screen and laughed.

  “What was that for?”

  “Your hair!”

  He shut the door on her giggles.

  David sat down on Xander’s bed. He gave his brother a push. Xander groaned and rolled over, and continued snoring. David shook him.

  “Whatta you want?” Xander mumbled.

  “It’s time to get up,” he said. “It’s morning.”

  Xander popped his head up. “It is?”

  “Nine o’clock. Want to see if Dad’ll let us look for Mom?”

  “You want to look through the portals?” Xander blinked at him. “After what happened yesterday?”

  “Like you said, that’s why we’re here.” David shifted. “But Young Jesse’s world too. I want to go if we find it.”

  Xander nodded. “We promised him.” He dropped his head back onto his pillow and groaned again. “Okay, okay,” he said. He sprang up and hopped to the floor. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER

  thirty - five

  SATURDAY, 10:01 A.M.

  In the third-floor hallway, David opened an antechamber door, peered in, and shut it again. He went to the next door. Xander was doing the same thing on the other side of the hall.

  “That was pretty good,” Xander said. “The way you convinced Dad not to take you right to the hospital.”

  “We don’t need more trouble,” David said.

  “Yeah, but letting him poke your arm? Didn’t that hurt?”

  “Like he rammed a hot poker into it.”

  “You didn’t even flinch.” Xander grinned, admiration all over his face. “Just wish you could have convinced him to let us open the portal doors to look for Mom. I knew he wouldn’t let us.”

  “Can’t blame him, not after what happened yesterday. At least he said we can look for Jesse’s world.” David cracked open a door, saw that it didn’t contain the tools that built their house, and closed it.

  “But we can’t look through the portals for Mom?” Xander said. “That’s nuts. How are we supposed to find her?” He opened a door and closed it.

  “He didn’t say we couldn’t ever,” David said. “He just wants to be here with us.”

  He didn’t add that he thought having Dad with them was a good idea. When Xander got it in his head to be mad at Dad, it didn’t matter if Dad was as wise as King Solomon or as cool as Robert Downey Jr., Xander was going to be mad . . . until he wasn’t. Then you could tell him something about Dad that would stick.

  Dad had been pretty angry himself. All through breakfast, David and Xander endured a lecture about obedience and safety. At the end, though, Dad had hugged them and said he didn’t know what he’d do if he’d lost one of his boys. As he broke from their embrace and hustled toward the kitchen, David had seen him wipe away a tear.

  Another door for each of them: open and close, on to the next one.

  “You know,” Xander said, “there are kids my age who don’t give a squirt what their parents say. They do what they want, when they want.”

  “Those are the kids that end up in jail, Xander.” David looked into an antechamber whose items appeared to have something to do with sharks. Yeah, I’m going there, he thought. When they throw my corpse in. He shut the door. “Or in the gutter with heroin needles in their arms. Or stabbed in some bar fight. Or—”

  “All right, already!” Xander said. “I hear you.”

  “Or marrying an emu named Daisy and having little bird-children who wind up in a bucket of KFC.”

  Xander looked around a door at him. “What?”

  “Just checking.”

  Xander grinned. “An emu named Daisy?”

  David shrugged. “A cute emu.”

  An hour later, David headed downstairs to snag something to eat for himself and Xander. Neither boy had eaten much with Dad’s lecture pounding in their ears.

  Dad and Keal were working on the walls at the bottom of the third-floor stairs. Dad was steadying one of the doors while Keal drilled screws into a hinge that ran from the top of the door to the bottom. The door itself looked like it belonged on a bank vault.

  “A tank’s not getting through that thing,” David observed.

  “That’s the idea,” Keal said. “How’s it going up there?”

  “Haven’t found Young Jesse’s world yet.”

  Dad looked around. “Xander’s upstairs?” He sounded worried.

  “Looking for Jesse’s world,” David said. “He promised to come get us if he finds it.”

  He watched Keal for a few moments. The guy looked exhausted. He had told them he hadn’t slept last night, that he couldn’t without these doors being up. David said, “How you doing, Keal?”

  “On my second wind, Dae,” Keal said. “Thanks.” He leaned into the power driver and sank a screw into the wall. “I’ll feel better when these walls are finished.”

  “Can’t Taksidian just come through the locker-to-linen closet portal?” David said.

  Keal wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. “Not when I’m done with it. Until then, the chair’s at least something. I think we’d hear him coming through.”

  “You would, anyway,” David said. Keal had been bedding down in a sleeping bag in the second-floor hallway, not ten feet from the closet door. “I’m going to the kitchen. You guys want anything?”

  “Coke, if you have one,” Keal said. “’Preciate it.”

  “I’m fine,” Dad said.

  When David returned to the third floor, Xander was just closing a door and moving to the next. “What’d you get?” Xander said.

  “Pop-Tarts and Cokes.” David tossed his brother a packet of cinnamon Pop-Tarts and kept the strawberry for himself. He set the Cokes on a small table under a wall light that depicted a splayed-fingered hand with an eye carved into the palm.

  “Why do you think Taksidian hasn’t smashed these lights?” David said. “You’d think he would if they’re keeping him from bringing more bad guys through, ones from other worlds.”

  Xander already had one of the Pop-Tarts stuffed into his mouth. “Maybe,” he mumbled around the food, “he doesn’t know that it’s the lights keeping people out. Or he doesn’t care because he
’s using Phemus and the other slaves from Atlantis. He doesn’t need anyone else.”

  David took a bite and thought about it. “Or it’s like Jesse said. People used to come through and cause trouble. Killing people and stuff. And he doesn’t want the house getting that kind of attention . . . any attention.”

  Xander nodded. “He wants to keep them out, too.”

  David took a swig of Coke. “Think we’ll ever know all the answers? About this house, I mean?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Xander said. “We won’t be here long enough.” He finished the second Pop-Tart, downed most the Coke, burped, and said, “Let’s get to it.”

  They each went to a door, looked in, crossed to the next. Twenty minutes later, David opened and almost closed a door. The latch had not yet clicked when he realized what he’d seen, and he pulled it open again. Inside were Jesse’s items: saw, hammer, plumb bob, planer, and tool belt. The ripped corner of a blueprint lay on the bench.

  “Xander!” David yelled. “Here it is!”

  CHAPTER

  thirty - six

  Typically, going through a portal was like waking up in a wind tunnel. It was disorienting, both physically and mentally. The first thing David noticed was the pull, as though the wind grew hands, grabbed him, and yanked. Whatever he’d seen seconds before stepping through—trees, people, a room—swirled into kaleidoscopic bits and pieces. And there was always a flash of blinding light. For these reasons, David closed his eyes at the moment of going over. But that didn’t stop the feeling of being in an elevator, one that was in a plunging freefall from the highest floor and spinning and tumbling at the same time. He was sure that an X-ray would show his organs had shifted slightly out of place. The only thing that kept him from barfing every time was that it lasted only seconds; by the time the feeling in his gut reached his brain, it was over.

  Then there was the touching down in the new world, as though that wind-hand had tired of him and tossed him to the ground with no concept of “smooth landing.” On top of that, it seemed to have no regard for what he’d be facing on the other side: bullets, explosions, an angry mob . . . hungry tigers! The not-knowing messed with David’s mind the way waking in a different place every day would: if he had to do it, he’d handle whatever he faced; but he wouldn’t like it. And finally, there was the knowledge that he was leaving his home and family with no guarantee of returning. What if someone on the other side detained him? What if the antechamber items stopped showing him the way home, or—as had almost happened several times—he lost them? He’d be in the deepest cavern imaginable with a broken rope.