Whirlwind

by Liparulo, Robert

  David focused on Xander’s back, on a smudge of dirt on the Union army coat. They were heading for an opening in the wall opposite the passage. A wide staircase rose out of sight. A moan reached him. He looked up and saw a large iron cage suspended from the ceiling. Bony, bloody fingers clutched the bars. Bare feet pressed against the bars on the bottom.

  Between hands and feet, rags shifted and trembled.

  Click. The man on the rack screamed.

  David couldn’t help himself: he had to look. The tortured man’s body was vibrating like a strummed guitar string. His head rotated sideways until his cheek touched the table, then went the other direction, only to come back again. Over and over, fast. All the while, he screamed. Then the screaming turned into heavy panting. David realized the man was staring directly at him. The man squinted, as if unable to believe his eyes.

  David raised his finger to his lips, but would this man, obviously in some culture and time far removed from David’s, know the symbol to be quiet? Would he care? He stopped walking, frozen in the man’s gaze.

  The man’s face softened. His agony changed to sadness.

  Tears spilled out of his eyes.

  The fear that had filled David’s chest since seeing the torture chamber also changed, replaced by a deep ache. He wanted to help the man, but there was nothing he could do.

  David was certain that any second the torturer would turn to see what the man was looking at. Then they’d have to run—with much less advantage than they’d had before being spotted. He wished the suffering man would turn away, not just so David and Xander wouldn’t be seen, but also— mostly—because David couldn’t stand seeing all that sadness on one face. And David found he couldn’t look away either; that would be too much like not caring.

  Then the torturer leaned sideways, blocking the man’s face from view. He reached out to a handle and pulled it. Click. The screaming started again.

  David took a step and bumped into Xander, who was backing up toward him. David gave his brother a push: Go!

  But Xander stood firm. He pointed at the bottom hem of the Union coat. It was bent up, quivering like an old man’s finger, pointing back the way they had come.

  David looked into Xander’s eyes. He mouthed the words, Is it the pull?

  Xander nodded.

  David looked back at the dark passageway. Wouldn’t you know?

  Slowly, the brothers began retracing their steps toward the catacombs of jail cells.

  CHAPTER

  thirty - eight

  As he approached the passage, David expected to hear a sharp yell from the torturer. But then he and Xander were out of the chamber, engulfed by the shadows and chill of the tunnel-like passageway. Xander picked up speed, nearly running straight back away from the chamber. The screams dimmed as they distanced themselves from the suffering—physically distanced themselves anyway, David thought. His heart felt like it had remained in the chamber, aching for that poor man.

  Xander braked hard, causing David to collide into him.

  “We passed it,” Xander said. “There.” He pointed behind them at an intersecting passage. He brushed by David and darted into it. Cells opened up on either side of them. From some of them came a variety of noises: coughs, moans, crying. But as he rushed past, David didn’t see any of the prisoners, just shadows.

  Xander stopped in front of a cell.

  David peered between the bars and saw the portal, glimmering like the disturbed surface of a pond against the back wall.

  Xander grabbed at the cell door. It swung out toward them. “Let’s go,” he said, stepping in.

  David didn’t move. He was remembering the end of a conversation he’d had with Dad about torture: “Dae,” Dad had told him, “a wise man once said, ‘All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.’ That means you have to recognize it and then choose to do something to stop it.”

  “Come on!” Xander said. He was standing so close to the portal, his hair whipping around in the wind coming from it. “What are you doing?”

  David glanced down the passage. “I have to go back,” he said.

  “What?” Xander came out of the cell and reached for him.

  David backed away. “Xander, that man . . . the guy on the rack. We can’t just leave him.”

  Xander shook his head. “What are you talking about? We don’t belong here. What’s happening to him happened already, years ago, maybe centuries ago.”

  “It’s happening now.”

  “Dae, there’s nothing we can do.” He waved his hand. “The portal’s right here!” He stepped toward David, reaching again.

  David spun and ran.

  “David!” Xander’s footsteps slapped the stone floor behind him.

  “I have to,” David said, without slowing. “I can feel it.

  Maybe he’s why we’re here.” He turned the corner and saw the lighted entrance to the torture chamber far ahead.

  “David!”

  David stopped and held his hands out to keep Xander from grabbing him. He said, “Shhh! Xander, please. We know where the portal is. We’ll go right to it after . . .”

  “After what?” Xander said. “After we’re caught? Killed?

  There’s nothing you can do for that guy.”

  “I have to try. Please. The torturer is just one guy. We’ve gotten away from much worse. The Berserkers!”

  Xander’s shoulders drooped. Even his faced drooped into a deep frown.

  David said, “I’m supposed to do this. I know it. Like Jesse said.”

  “Did that knowledge come with a plan?”

  David shook his head. “I’ll . . . think of something . . .”

  They stared at each other as seconds passed.

  Finally Xander said, “This is stupid, maybe the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.” He paused, probably hoping David would agree and change his mind. When he didn’t, Xander said, “The first sign of danger, we run straight to the portal. Right?”

  “The torturer’s not going to just stand there,” David said.

  “Okay . . . okay . . .” Xander was thinking. “If it looks like we’re in over our heads, like he’s going to get us or something, then we run. Even if we haven’t helped that guy. Deal?”

  “Deal,” David said. He liked that Xander had said we. He turned and walked toward the light.

  Xander fell in beside him. “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” he muttered quietly.

  David swallowed. Neither could he.

  The screaming grew louder with each step. At the chamber, David stepped in without pausing—if he hesitated, he knew he might not go through with it.

  The torturer was leaning over the man on the rack. His hand was on the handle again.

  “Stop it!” David yelled, walking toward him. “Stop it, now!”

  “What are you doing?” Xander said behind him. “That’s your plan?”

  The torturer turned toward him. A momentary expression of surprise turned into amusement when he saw the child addressing him. Like David, he wore no shirt. He had on billowy black pants, cinched at the ankles, and sandals. Muscles rippled over his arms, shoulders, chest, and stomach. Long blond hair was pulled tightly over his scalp and bound into a ponytail. Blue eyes sparkled, and he flashed a charming smile at David.

  In David’s time, the guy would be modeling jeans or challenging Brad Pitt for the title of Heartthrob King. He was definitely not the hunchbacked, one-eyed ogre that the movies depicted, but David understood why modern people would think of torturers that way. Shouldn’t evil things look evil? But he knew that wasn’t the way things worked. If it were, Hitler could not have risen to power, because people would have seen right off how awful he was, and little kids wouldn’t get into cars with strangers.

  “Let him go!” David yelled. “Nobody deserves that! He’s a person!”

  The torturer stepped toward him. He opened his arms as if to say, Now, what’s all this about? What he did say was, “Sind Sie gekommen
zu spielen, kleiner Junge?”

  David knew that his own words were as foreign to the man as the man’s were to him. But he believed the torturer understood exactly what was on his mind. “How can you do this?”

  David said. “It’s not right!”

  As the man drew closer, David angled toward the back wall, trying to circle around the guy. He would not let the man come too close; someone like this probably knew a thousand ways to kill him with a touch.

  The torturer shot a glance at Xander, directly behind David. The man reached behind his back. When his hand reappeared, it held a small dagger.

  “David,” Xander said. “That’s it, man. Let’s get out of here.”

  The man glared at David, obviously trying to figure out what they were up to. David wondered if the man thought he was dealing with a crazy kid and might get hurt. And crazy was exactly the way to describe his actions, he knew. If Xander wanted to put him on the rack, he couldn’t blame him.

  Xander shot around the table to stand beside him.

  As if realizing the boys had put themselves in a position in which escape meant having to pass him again, the torturer grinned.

  “Smooth move, Einstein,” Xander said. “Now what?”

  David turned to the wall behind him. Tools and devices— most of them for uses he thankfully didn’t know—hung from pegs. He pulled down an axe. It was short with a triangular blade that appeared sinisterly sharp. He whipped it around.

  The torturer’s eyes opened wide. He darted toward the table, probably thinking he’d lean over it and jab David with the dagger.

  David hefted the axe over his head, and the torturer stopped. He narrowed his eyes at the axe, then lowered them to David’s face. David had a feeling the man was imagining all the terrible things he’d do to him once he had him subdued, chained, screaming like his other victims.

  David slammed the axe down on the ropes holding the rack victim’s wrists. The man’s arms seemed to unstretch. He gasped.

  The torturer leaped forward, thrusting the dagger across the table. David jumped back.

  Xander bumped past David, a big sword in both hands. He swung it at the torturer, who reeled away from the gleaming blade. “Go, David, run!” he said.

  David shifted and brought the axe down on the ropes tied to the victim’s legs. The injured man rolled off the table, thumping to the floor. He rose onto his hands and knees, crumpled, and rose again.

  The torturer spat out a string of guttural words, fuming now that his “work” had been interrupted, his victim set free.

  Xander shoved his shoulder into David. “If you don’t move right now, I’m going to knock you out and carry you out of here!”

  David cast a final glance at the man on the floor. He wanted to help him up, take him with them, but he knew that wasn’t meant to be. Every second that passed, every thing they did to help the man, made the torturer angrier. If they pushed him too far, his fury would push away caution, driving him to attack harder. If he slipped past Xander’s sword . . .

  David couldn’t even think about what would happen then.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Xander retraced their steps around the table, swinging the sword back and forth, back and forth at the torturer. The man looked like a vicious dog snapping at the end of its leash.

  “Go behind me, David,” Xander said. “Hurry!”

  David did. He quick-stepped toward the passageway entrance. He resisted breaking into an all-out run, trying to let Xander sidestep in pace with him, keeping the torturer at bay.

  The torturer moved with them. Every couple of steps, he stepped forward, swung the dagger, then jumped back as Xander responded with his own jab or swing.

  David reached the passageway, reached out, and grabbed a handful of material at Xander’s back. “We’re at the passage!” he yelled. “Come on!” He tugged Xander out of the chamber.

  Xander backpedaled as David pulled. David glanced back to see the torturer following them into the gloomy tunnel. The guy wasn’t about to simply let these intruders waltz away.

  Xander swung the sword. The blade clanged and sparked against the stone walls. The torturer could do nothing but pursue them, hoping Xander would trip or drop the sword or in some way present an opening that would be his last.

  “Move, move!” Xander repeated. When they were almost at the intersecting corridor that led to the portal, he said, “I hope you’re happy. All this guy’s going to do is go back to work once we’re gone. We didn’t do anything to help!”

  David said nothing. He didn’t want to hear it. Maybe it hadn’t worked out. Maybe it was just plain stupid. But how could you not breathe when your body needed oxygen? That’s how trying to help that poor soul on the table had felt to him.

  As they approached the side passageway, Xander said, “That’s it. Go!”

  David ran until he saw the cell with the shimmering back wall. He grabbed a bar and swung himself into the cell. A cold wind blew out of the portal, chilling his skin and making him pause.

  Xander threw the sword at the torturer, stepped in, and shoved David through.

  CHAPTER

  thirty - nine

  David fell onto a floor, which broke apart under his feet. Shards of pain jabbed into his eyes. He squinted against a harsh brightness: a sun that burned fiercely overhead and all around.

  Snow . . . the whitest, most dazzling snow he had ever seen.

  He crashed through an icy crust into flakes that were nothing like the fluffy stuff he’d skied on at Mammoth Mountain. This snow had seemed to crystallize into tiny Chinese throwing stars. He flipped and rolled, and an awful fact struck him as forcefully as the bitter cold—

  I’m not stopping!

  He somersaulted and tumbled down a steep incline, breaking a trench in the crust as he went. He clutched and clawed, but everything he touched slipped through his fingers or broke off in his hands. Scrambling, squirming, he pivoted, bringing his feet into a downhill inclination, and found himself skimming over the crust of icy snow on his butt.

  Below him, at the base of the hill, the snow gave way to a narrow ledge of stone. Beyond that—nothing. A cliff. Far, far away, across an entire sky of empty air, huge mountain peaks pierced the clouds.

  He screamed and rolled onto his bare stomach. The frosty crust chafed his skin like sandpaper. He clawed and scratched.

  Ice crystals splintered under his nails and shot away like sawdust. The toes of his sneakers streaked over the surface, as effective at gripping the ice as hockey pucks.

  His descent made a sound like static in his ears. It occurred to him how silent death-by-falling would be. No explosions, no crunching metal or breaking glass. There would be wind, but certainly it would not be louder than your own pulsing heartbeat, so it didn’t count.

  A sudden, unexpected death shouldn’t be silent, he thought. It should be frantic and dramatic and noisy.

  Nothing like what happens in a fall. Maybe that’s why people screamed on the way down.

  Desperate, David pounded his cast into the snow’s surface, gritting his teeth against the stabbing pain. His cast broke through, violently ripping through the crust like a bulldozer through a wall. His descent slowed . . . slowed . . . stopped.

  Scrunching his eyes closed, he howled in pain. With his right hand he seized his left wrist and hugged it to his chest. He twisted around to see that he had stopped where the icy slope met the gray ledge of stone. Not twenty feet away, the world ended.

  Xander’s surprised shriek reached him. High up on the slope, his brother spun in circles, round and round, as he plunged down the hill.

  A flash farther up the hill caught his eye. The torturer appeared to materialize against a shimmering ripple of air and drop to the snow. He began sliding, his eyes even wider than Xander’s, which David would have thought impossible.

  David scrambled up. Pain, like molten metal, shot up his arm. He fell onto his knees, screaming out again. Every pulse of blood his racing heart sent
into his arm felt like a hammer blow.

  He forced his eyes open to see Xander struggling to get his feet under him. His brother stood, his legs taking great strides down the hill, then plunged through the air, belly flopping on the crusty surface. Arms stretched out, skimming down on his stomach, he could have been Superman learning to fly—but he wasn’t Superman and he couldn’t fly, a fact that would become horrifically evident when he went over the cliff.