“Let sleeping dogs lie,” Dad had said.
It bothered Xander that in the short time since their move, the number of secrets in their family had skyrocketed.
“What are you going to tell Mom?” David asked, seeming to know Xander's thoughts. This was one of the topics he and Dad had discussed while he let the hot shower strip centuries-old dirt off his body. When he'd come to bed after that, David had already been asleep.
He looked at the gauze and tape Dad had applied. “Just an accident while investigating the house.”
David sat up in bed. “You're going to flat-out
lie
?”
Xander pulled on a T-shirt. His movements made his arm throb. “It's not really lying. We
were
investigating the house, and it
was
an accident.” He registered David's expression and sighed. “I know, I know. If it's not a lie, it's darn close. Dad said sometimes lies told to keep people safe are okay.”
“Hmm. Do you think Dad has lied to us?”
Xander pulled a pair of socks from his drawer and picked up his sneakers. He'd put them on outside, on the front porch steps. He wanted to spend more time outside today. He shook his head. “I think Dad's as straight as they come.”
David smiled.
As he left the room, Xander thought,
What's one more lie?
SATURDAY, 11:30 A.M.
After breakfast, Xander decided he needed fresh air and sunshine. He and David set off to explore their property.
Every few minutes Xander found himself looking back through the trees at the house. He kept expecting to see something not right: an angle or addition that wasn't true; or, as before, a whole chunk of house just up and gone. If the house played tricks, it wasn't doing it today. The irregular
squeak-squeak
of the weathervane on top of the tower continually reminded him of its looming presence.
They'd been out awhile, and his hunger told him it was close to lunchtime. Some time ago David had wandered off toward the back while Xander explored the dense forest on one side of the house. Bushes and trees had gone unpruned for decades. Even at midday the area was cloaked in shadow. Enough sunlight seeped through to render flashlights unnecessary, but no one would mistake Xander's trek through the bush for a cheery walk in the park. Most interesting to him were the fallen trees. They lay here and there in various stages of decomposition. Rolling them over, when they were small enough or decayed enough, revealed swarming worlds of beetles and centipedes, spiders and worms. He always tried to find the stump of a fallen tree. Sometimes it was nearby. Other times he'd have to walk around to find it, usually up an embankment. He'd make up stories about how the trees fell: lightning, beavers, some dudes fooling around with an ax. Probably most had simply died and fallen over. But that was boring.
He had his camera out now and was filming a black beetle crawl over one of Toria's dolls in macro-lens mode when he heard David calling him. He kept the camera rolling and brought the camera up to capture his brother's progress through the woods.
David moved toward him, stepping into and out of shafts of light, into and out of view. Then he veered away, still calling.
Xander considered letting him wander completely out of sight and out of earshot. That would make a funny short film, if a bit abstract. Deciding against being mean today, he yelled, “Over here!”
“Come see something,” David said, leaping over bushes and deadfalls to reach him.
“What is it?” Xander asked.
David puzzled at the overturned log and Toria's Barbie. Ants were swarming over her face, through her hair. “What are you doing?” he asked.
Xander smiled. “The doll represents Average Manâor Woman. The bugs are all the little problems that plague him. See?”
“I think I liked it better when you were making movies about skateboarders wiping out.”
“I am now
le artiste
,” Xander said, trying to sound as French as François Truffaut. He raised his fingers to the sky, in a flourish, thinking he looked flamboyant and artsy. He was enjoying the dual distractions of the outdoors and his cinematic aspirations. His brother thought about that. He said, “Whatever. Come see what I found.”
“Is it cool?”
“It's weird.”
Xander paused. He wasn't so sure he could take any more weirdness.
“Not like last night,” David assured him. “Kind of . . . just
weird
. It won't make you think you're crazy or anything.” Then: “I don't think it will.”
“Lead the way,” Xander said.
They pushed deeper into the woods, behind the house. At times, the bushes and brambles, trees and branches were so thick they had to walk around as surely as they would a mountain. Xander watched the house recede, becoming less distinct through all the foliage. After a time, he could see it no more. The shadows were even darker here. It made Xander think of the Hansel and Gretel woods, how they got lost in them. More accurately, it resembled the woods in every werewolf movie he'd ever seen.
“How much farther?” he asked.
“Just up here.”
“How'd you get this far away from the house?” David had ventured at least three times the distance Xander had.
“I thought I heard something.”
“Like what?”
“Footsteps. You know, breaking branches and crunching.”
“Footsteps? Out here?”
“And then laughing.”
Xander stopped. “David, with everything we've gone through, you followed footsteps and laughter into the creepiest woods we've ever seen?”
David shrugged. “I didn't think anything would happen outside the house. It wasn't spooky laughter. More like . . .” He thought about it. “A kid on a playground.”
“You haven't seen enough movies. Children are a vital part of ghost stories. They lure you in, then
wham
!” He punched his fist into his palm.
David shook his head. He turned and kept going. Xander hesitated, then followed.
“See there?” David said.
Through the trees ahead, sunlight broke through. It wasn't a mere shaft but a radiant glow covering a wide area. A clearing. Xander thought if David had found a stone altar, he was going back to the motel, with or without everybody else.
But when he stepped out of what had become an impossibly dense forest, he was both fascinated and puzzled. Fascinated because out of untamed wilderness was a meadow half the size of a football field. The ground was mostly flat and covered in a thick, green grass. No rocks, bushes, or trees marred its parklike perfection. It was shaped like an egg, its boundaries well-defined by the dark, imposing forest that completely surrounded it. Overhead, the canopy of the treetops leaned way in, forming a natural dome. At the center, an opening revealed blue sky, white clouds.
The strangest aspect of this area could not be seen, only felt. It was as though Xander had instantly ascended to the top of a high mountain. The air was cooler and felt thinner. It rushed into his lungs with ease, giving him a mild jolt of energy. When Xander was David's age, oxygen bars were all the rage. Dad was curious and took him to one. They held masks over their mouths and noses and breathed from a canister of oxygen, like you see in hospitals. Both of them had decided the gimmick was a rip-off. However, the purchased air did somehow
taste
better than regular air and had made them morning-perky. The air in the meadow feltâ
tasted
âlike that.
“What is this?” Xander asked.
David shook his head. “Can't be natural, can it?”
At first, Xander had thought the same thing. Now he saw imperfections humans wouldn't leaveâthe ground under the grass was bumpy, wavy; the trees encroached into the area just enough to give the perimeter a slightly shabby appearance. Despite the unmistakable dome of the leafy canopy, there was no evidence any pruning had occurred. If someone had carved the clearing from the forest, it had not been tended to in a long time.
As Xander's eyes scanned upward, David said, “But that's not all.”
Xander laughed. His brother had stepped out twenty feet into the meadow. “Say that again,” he said.
“I said, that's not all.”
“Why are you talking like that?”
“Like what?”
“Your voice. It's higher pitched.” David's voice had not yet started changing. When he answered the phone, people still mistook him for their mother and sometimes even Toria.
While not dramatic, his voice was even higher now.
Xander walked toward him. “I've listened to you enough to know what you soundâ” As he spoke, the pitch of his own voice rose. Not to an unnatural level, but the way it did when he got excited or whiny about something. “Hello? Hello? Hear that?”
“I'm talking right now,” David said. He was listening to his own voice, nodding, an open-mouthed grin widening with each word.
Xander said, “Can you hear it in me?”
“Yeah!” David started howling like a wolf. His pitch rose to ear-splitting, glass-breaking levels.
“All right, all right,” Xander said, covering his ears. “Stop it.” “Now look,” David said, He ran out into the meadow, then back.
“Okay?” Xander said.
“What'd I do?”
Xander looked at him from the corner of his eye. “You . . . ran.”
“How fast?”
“All-out sprint, dude.” And then he noticed David was not out of breath. He said, “Wasn't it?”
David shook his head. “I was jogging. Now watch this.” He walked away. He ran past Xander at a pretty good clip, but nothing stunning. Then he jumped. A little too high, a little too far. It was nothing most people would probably notice. But this close, and knowing him so well, Xander knew it wasn't normal. Xander took off across the field. He didn't feel like Dash, the fast kid in
The Incredibles
. It simply felt like a good run on a good day. He leaped into the air. From his own perspective, he realized it was the best jump of his life.
Directly in front of him, a man climbed through the brambles and stepped into the clearing. Xander braked and fell back onto his butt.
It was Dad. He had leaves in his hair. One sleeve of his sweatshirt was pushed up over his elbow, the other down around his wrist. Sweat had soaked through in the shape of his sternum.
“Xander,” Dad said. He sounded excited. Then Xander realized it was a casual greeting, and the excited part was the tricky air making his voice higher than normal.
His father reached him and held out a hand to help him up.
As Xander rose, he said, “What are you doin' here?”
David ran up and stood by his brother's side.
“Out looking for you,” Dad said. “I've got to run some errands, and I'd like you boys to stay in the house.”
Xander realized Dad had not commented on the clearing at all, let alone the strangeness of the air and the way it affected their voices. “How did you come from over there?” he asked his father, pointing. It was the opposite direction from the house.
Dad looked over his shoulder as if just catching that. He said, “I heard you guys, but you know how sounds are around here. Must have gotten lost.”
“Must have gotten
really
lost,” David said. He reached up and pulled a leafy twig out of Dad's hair.
Dad smiled. “Are these crazy woods, or what?”
Xander said, “Were you out this way earlier today?”
“The other day I was. Found this clearing.” He looked around in wonder, shook his head.
“What do you think this place is?” David said.
“More weirdness, Dae. But pretty lightweight stuff, compared. You know?” He winked.
Xander knew what he meant. Still, it bothered him to find yet another oddity on their property. It was like all the anomalies of the world had congregated on this one spot. Orâmore likelyâone truly weird abnormality happened here and smaller drops of strangeness splattered out from it. He pictured a dollop of paint falling from God's palette, striking the earth where the house now stood. Its splatter made things like this clearing and who knew what else?
As Dad passed them, he gave David a healthy shove. The kid fell and tumbledâfarther than he should have, laughing all the way.
SATURDAY, 11:55 P.M.
When Xander returned from a late-night bathroom run, David was not in his bed. The covers were folded back, exposing only sheets and a pillow. Had he been there when Xander got up?
Yeah
, he thought. He remembered hearing David's rhythmic breathing. It was only a little after eleven, but the day spent outside had worn them out. The boys had crashed around ten. Xander had watched the shadows on the ceiling, falling in and out of light sleep until he realized he had to visit the bathroom. Maybe David had felt the same need, and finding the bathroom occupied, went to one of the others.
“David,” he whispered, in case the boy was hiding. No answer. Xander crawled in bed, pulled the cover over his shoulder, closed his eyes. They snapped open again. He threw back his blankets and jumped up.
“David?” he said, louder. “
Oh no
!”
He ran from the room and down the hall. Past the foyer. Past their parents' bedroom to where the hallway bent and went toward the back of the house. By the illumination of the night-light, he saw the false wall was angled into the hallway, leaving a gap of several feet.
“David!”
He ran through, scraping his injured arm on the edge. He felt the pain, but did not allow it to distract him. The second door, the one with the metal skin, was also open. He slammed into the doorjamb, rolled off and through, and started up the stairs. A flashlight clicked on, blinding him.
“David?”
“What took you so long?” He was sitting on the landing.
“What are you
doing
?” Xander's concern had instantly turned to anger.