David knew what he meant. The house was big and impos-ing and dark—dark in every way, with an absence of light and an absence of heart, of good. The woods around it were the same, as though they were part of the house.
David let Xander pull him back into the clearing, and sat beside him.
“When the pull starts, we’ll go,” Xander said.
David looked up into the opening of the canopy, where cotton balls of clouds drifted in a blue sky. Even the sky made him sad, because he wouldn’t see it anymore. He thought of all the things he would never do again: score the winning goal in a soccer championship, taste a root beer float, wrestle on the floor with Dad and Xander. And all the things he had never done and never would: drive a car, kiss a girl, have a family. He had never really thought about those things, but somewhere inside he had assumed that would be his life. Of course, he wouldn’t miss not doing them when he was dead, but he missed them now.
He said, “I think it would be better not knowing.” He gave Xander a crooked smile. “You know? Better not to know you’re going to die.”
“Stop it,” Xander said. “You’re not going to die.” He shrugged. “Someday, sure. None of us gets out alive. But not soon. You’re going to be an old man, Dae, like Jesse. You’ll think the music your grandkids listen to is trash. You’ll fart around them and cackle like a witch when they run away. You’ll tell them stories about how you met their grandmother and bungee jumped from some crazy-high bridge and—“ “And fought Hannibal’s army,” David said, grinning.
“That’s when they’ll put you away,” Xander laughed.
“I’ll say, ‘But it’s true! Ask Uncle Xander!’ ” Yeah, that’s what he wanted, times like that. He sighed, and Xander pat-ted his knee.
“Wait and see,” Xander said.
CHAPTER
thirty-nine
The bushes rustled a dozen yards away, and Jesse stumbled through. He brushed leaves out of his hair and said, “I thought I saw you guys come in here.”
He stood, just staring at them. David knew that after the way they’d left him and his dad, the boy didn’t know if they wanted him here. He patted the grass next to him.
Jesse smiled, came over, and sat. He said, “You know about this place?”
“Flying?” David said. “Yeah.”
Xander leaned forward to look past David to Jesse. “What’s it all about, anyway? Do you know?”
“Know what?”
“The currents. What are they?”
“You don’t know?” Jesse said. “Those are the—what do you call them?—the portals.”
David pulled his head back. “What?”
“Yeah, they’re currents of Time, that’s what Dad says. They come through this clearing, and I guess this close to where they come together, they’re strong enough to let people stand on them.”
“What do you mean, they come together?” Xander said.
“The currents sort of focus into portals over there.” He pointed behind them. “Back where we’re building the house. That’s why we’re putting it there, to catch them when they form. Dad thought he could build something that forced them into one place—well, twenty places, but always the same twenty places.”
“You’re catching them in the house?” David said.
“We will,” Jesse said. “Soon as it’s built. Better than climb-ing trees to get to them.”
“You did that?” Xander said.
“Dad did. Glad I won’t have to. It wasn’t so bad getting to the time openings—the portals—but coming back was a doozie. Once Dad broke his leg, falling from one.”
David couldn’t imagine. “But why do it at all?” he said. “Why not just leave them alone?”
Jesse looked at him as if he’d just said he was from Mars. “ ’Cause fixing time is what we do. It’s what our family was made to do, the way the Levites in the Bible were set aside to be priests. The whole tribe. Or family.”
“You said that before,” David said. “Or later, I guess, when you’re ninety. You told us the house was our destiny.”
The boy nodded.
“It doesn’t seem like a very good destiny,” David said, and thought Not for me . . . or Mom. He forced himself to think of something else. Into his mind came the image of the twenty antechambers, the twenty portals, and something occurred to him. He said, “All the portals don’t come together in a straight line, do they?”
“No,” Jesse said, as if they had tried and failed. “You can force them to focus in one place, give or take a few yards. Some of them come together too far off to make a line of them. Close, though.”
“So the hallway by the rooms you’re building to catch them,” David said. “It’s going to be crooked, isn’t it?”
“Like one of the currents,” Jesse confirmed, moving his hand in the air like a swimming fish.
David smiled at Xander. “A reason for everything,” he said.
Jesse nudged David. He nodded toward the clearing and said, “Do it.”
“Nah,” David said. “I don’t feel like it.”
Xander hopped up. “Come on, Dae. If there ever was a time we needed to have a little fun, it’s now. Right?”
Jesse pushed him. “Go on.”
Yeah, because you think it’ll be my last time, David thought. Then: Oh, why not? It might just be the last fun thing I get to do. He got up and followed Xander into the middle of the clearing.
“Okay,” Xander said. His voice was high, like what he might sound like if someone shrank him to the size of a grasshopper.
David laughed, and he sounded like a cartoon character.
“Remember?” Xander squeaked. He lifted his foot and felt around. He hopped up, came back down.
David out held his arms, as if for balance, and felt for a current with his foot. After about thirty seconds, he felt it: resistance, a firmer spot than the surrounding air. He lifted himself up onto it, as though ascending a giant’s staircase. He wobbled, fell, and found himself sitting on air three feet off the ground. He pulled his feet under him and stood. He angled his body and leaned. He floated, then sailed across the clearing, climbing higher.
Movement in the corner of his vision caused him to look. Xander was flying beside him. They smiled at each other.
“Follow the leader?” Xander said.
“Sure.”
Xander banked away and rose. David pursued him. They swirled and looped, zipping one way and then the other. They slowed, then went so fast David had to squint and blink to see through the rushing air. They glided by Jesse, and David gestured to him. “Come on!” he said.
Jesse waved, said, “This is your time. Have fun.”
David followed Xander toward the opening in the canopy. He zoomed up and up. Xander started to fall, and David felt it himself: the air resistance growing thin, disappearing. He plunged down, felt the resistance again, and arced up, tracing the path Xander had made.
Xander made a complete lap around the edge of the clear-ing, then cut straight toward the middle. He banked and went back toward the edge.
David heard something and looked to see Jesse running into the clearing, waving his hands.
“Xander!” the boy yelled. “Stop!”
David crashed into Xander in midair. Together, tumbling, they continued toward the trees at the edge of the clearing. Directly ahead of them, a portal shimmered. It was set between two trees and hovering twenty feet in the air. They were heading right for it.
“Stop!” David yelled.
“I can’t!” Xander said.
Below, Jesse yelled, “Jump off! Jump off!”
Jump? David thought. How do you do that?
“Xander,” David said, “what do we—“
They went through the portal.
CHAPTER
forty
SATURDAY, 11:50 A M
Ed King leaned against the doorjamb of the false wall closest to the rest of the house. His arm muscles ached from ham-mering and lifting, and he rubbed them. He kept one ear attuned to
noises up on the third floor, expecting the boys to return any moment. He hoped he wasn’t being foolish letting them go over alone, but they’d come through like champs so far, despite a dozen or so close calls. And Xander was right: the only way to do everything required to rescue their mother and make the house secure was to split up and do multiple tasks at once.
If he had his way, the most dangerous thing in their lives would be teaching Xander to drive. But life didn’t let him order from a menu, and sometimes you just had to eat what it served.
In the hall, Keal grumbled. He was going through hardware bags on the floor. “I thought I got all the locks we need.” He stood and stretched his back. “Wouldn’t you know?”
Keal’s plan involved putting locks on both sides of the two doors. That way, the family could lock themselves on either side of them, in case they were attacked from the main part of the house or from the direction of the third-floor staircase—or both at the same time. Ed checked and found no latch or lock on the backside of the door closest to the main house.
“The missing hardware is between the walls,” he said. “We may never use it anyway.”
Keal pinched an inch of air. “We’re this close,” he said. “Let’s get it done. I’ll be right back.” He pulled car keys out of his pocket and disappeared around the corner, toward the front door.
“Daddy,” Toria said, looking up from the small diary she occasionally wrote in. “When are the boys coming back?”
“Should be soon. Why?”
“Xander said he was going to show me how to look through the portals for Mom.”
“He did?” Ed said, squatting down beside her.
She nodded. “He said you wanted all of us to do it together.”
“I meant all of us staying near each other when we do it, because it’s dangerous.” He rubbed her head. “I didn’t mean that you’d do it.”
“But I want to. I can do it.”
“I know you can,” he said. “It’s just that—“ “I’m too little?” she said. “You were younger than me when you did it, when Nana got taken. You were seven, you said so. I’m two years older than that.”
He nodded. “But—“ He was going to say he knew more now than he did then, but her anxiousness pushed her to cut him off again.
“Don’t say”—she made her voice deep and scrunched her face, exaggerating her dad’s way of talking—“It’s guys’ work, sweetie. Too dangerous for young ladies.” Then back to herself: “Mom wouldn’t like that.”
He laughed. “You’re right, she wouldn’t.” He sighed. If they really were going to stay together while they looked, Toria would be exposed to portals no matter how protective he was.
He and Gee had always taken a knowledge-is-power approach to raising their kids. And one good scare—one good safe scare, with him at her side—would probably be all Toria needed to stay well away from the portals from then on.
“Look,” he said, “I’m going up there to wait for your broth-ers. Come with me, and I’ll show you a few things.”
She brightened. “Really?”
“Really.” He stood and gave her a hand up.
She ran past him, through the false-wall doorways, and pounded up the stairs toward the third-floor hallway.
“Whoa, whoa!” he said, and ran after her.
CHAPTER
forty-one
They landed on spongy soil and tumbled, all arms and legs and cocking heads. David’s broken arm and bitten leg flared in pain at the same time. They slid to a stop with Xander lying on top of David crossways.
David pushed at his brother. “Xander, I can’t breathe.”
Xander rolled off and plopped on his back next to David. “What just happened?” he groaned.
David squeezed the elbow of his broken arm, trying to pinch the pain off before it shot up into his brain. It wasn’t working. “Owww,” he said. “Why did you go right into the portal?”
“I didn’t have any choice,” Xander said. “We must have gotten caught in its currents. They pulled us in.”
David sat up and looked around at a forest. At first he thought they had passed through the portal without it taking them anywhere, and they had crashed to the ground outside the clearing. Then he noticed that these trees were different from those trees. No pines and oaks here, but trees with thick, twisted trunks and fronds the size of beach towels. The plants were massive and dense. Fuzzy vines hung and looped from the trees. He and Xander were in a tropical jungle, which got him thinking of the first time he’d gone over: warriors with bows and arrows and spears—and tigers.
Xander rolled onto his stomach and rose to his knees. “Where are we?”
“A jungle,” David whispered. “Tell me the antechamber items are pulling.”
Xander reached back to his rear pocket. “Uh-oh.”
“What?” David said. “Don’t say uh-oh.”
Xander looked around. “I lost the planer.” He reached around to the other side and relaxed. His hand came back with the hammer. He bounced it up and down in his hand. “Nothing yet.”
David stood, hugging his arm to his chest. “What do we do?”
“Wait here?” Xander suggested, rising.
A man’s voice boomed at them: “Over here!”
Both boys ducked. “Who’s that?” David said.
“He’s speaking English,” Xander said. “Maybe it’s a search party.”
“Not for us. We just got here. Probably drug runners or wild animal poachers. If they find us, we’re dead.”
“You don’t know that,” Xander said.
Someone whistled, and the sound of people moving through the jungle grew louder.
“Do you want to hang around and find out?” David said, barely audible.
“Come on.” Staying low, Xander ran, moving away from the voice.
Twenty feet in, another voice cried out: “Ready! Ready!”
“We’re surrounded,” Xander said.
Through big billowing plants and the shadows they made, David saw rays of sunlight. He pointed and headed for them. They reached an area where the foliage became nothing more than fat green plants growing low to the ground—a glade. David squatted beside a tree, and Xander knelt beside him. Across the glade, the heavy forest started again.
“We should—“
“Shhh!” Xander said.
Off to the left, on the other side of the glade, a man stepped into the sunlight. He was dressed in camouflage army fatigues, with a utility belt of pouches and gear strapped around his waist. He carried a machine gun—an M-16 like the miniature version with which David used to arm his G.I. Joes. The guy was big and bald and looked like he ate nails for breakfast. Behind him, in the darkness of the forest, the silhouettes of more men moved around.
“Oh, crumb,” Xander said. “I bet we’re in Viet Nam.”
“That guy looks like a U.S. soldier,” David said.
“I don’t think it matters,” Xander said. “Those guys are in the jungle, and people are trying to kill them. They’ll shoot at anything.”
“I’d rather take my chances with them,” David said, scan-ning behind them, “than whatever we might run into on our own. Come on.” He stood and stepped away from the trees.
“David!” Xander said, quiet but firm. David felt him grab at his shirt. Then Xander rose up next to him.
David raised his arms and was about to yell, when the soldier started shooting—screaming and shooting, as though he were insane.
David yelled and covered his head with his arms.
The soldier threw down his M-16, stooped, and came up with a weapon that made the back of David’s neck tingle in fear. It was a massive Gatlin gun. A belt of bullets hung from it like the tail of a dragon. The soldier continued screaming and let loose with the Gatlin.
The jungle disintegrated. The weapon was so fierce, firing so many bullets so fast, it cut trees in half and sent leaves and branches flying into the air.
The soldier aimed left of the boys and b
egan panning toward them. The ripping chaos that tore apart the forest like a hori-zontal tornado approached them. Covering their heads, David and Xander ran the other direction through the low plants.
Behind David, Xander yelled, “Stop! Stop! We’re Americans!”—over and over.
Other soldiers sprang from the trees to join the first. They started firing as well. One of their weapons made a sound like a cherry bomb in a metal trash can—THUMP!—and the forest behind the boys erupted in a fiery explosion.
A wave of heat washed over David. He realized he’d never make it to the trees on the far side of the glade. Even if he did, trees were no protection against the soldiers’ onslaught. He stopped and tossed up his arms. He closed his eyes and opened his mouth to beg for mercy, but all that came out was a long, anguished wail: “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
He heard a similar sound coming from Xander and real-ized his brother had frozen in place beside him.
He opened one eye. The soldiers were simply standing and staring. Their guns were lowered, but behind David, the for-est continued to disintegrate with the sound of thousands of firecrackers. David was completely baffled. The destruction must have come from somewhere else, not the soldiers. And if so, why were they just standing there?
Then a booming voice came roaring across the glade: “Cut! Cut! Cut!”
From this new spot in the glade, he could now see an open-ing in the forest that wasn’t part of the glade. Within this opening were a dozen or more people—and two cameras. Big movie-type cameras.
The firecrackers behind David stopped.
The booming voice said, “Who are those kids? What’s going on here?”
A half dozen people came running from the opening, through the glade, toward David and Xander.
David lowered his arms. He said, “Xander, what’s going on?”
When his brother didn’t answer, he turned to see him gap-ing at the soldiers.
“Xander?”
“That’s . . . that’s . . .”
One of the soldiers stepped forward and threw up his hand at them. He yelled, “Watt’r you dune dare? You ruin da take!”
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