Xander squeezed Wuzzy's paw. The bear whispered, “Bathroom,” in Xander's voice. Dad may not have heard, but Wuzzy had. Xander hoped he hadn't recorded over what he was looking for. He gave the paw two quick squeezesâthe first returned the playback head to the beginning of the current memory chip (“bathroom”); the second brought it to the previous memory chip.
His own voice again: “Good night, guys.” It was louder than he had expected. He scrambled to turn on the water. It helped mask the rest of the recording:
David answering, “Night.”
Toria sweetly saying, “Good night, Xander. Thanks for watching over me.”
David again: “I am too.”
Toria: “Thank you, David.”
Xander heard the rustle of bedding, the squeak of a spring in Toria's mattress, a bangâand he remembered bringing his head down against the night table as he settled in. Hearing it made his head hurt again, and he felt the bump on the back of his head.
Two more quick squeezes of Wuzzy's paw: Xander, David, and Toria talking.
Two more: Mom and Dad saying good-night.
Again: Dad explaining that Xander and David would sleep in Toria's room.
Xander was becoming concerned that Wuzzy had already erased the recording he was most interested in. Or . . . he remembered what had happened when David took the camcorder over: nothing but static. He hoped for something better now.
Again: His sister screaming. Pounding footsteps. Xander saying, “Toria, it's me! Xander!”
Again: Toria saying, “Who is it?” Sounding sleepy. He scrunched his brow in concentration. He held Wuzzy close to his ear. There was a creaking soundâthe bedspringâfollowed by another. Xander thought it was a floorboard. Toria started to call again: “Whoâ”
A deep, rumbling voice said: “
Sas ehei na erthete na paiksei.
”
Xander's stomach tightened into a knot. Toria started screaming. Xander quickly flipped the Off button.
Xander set the bear on the counter and took a step away from it. Wuzzy appeared as sweet and innocent as a little girl in a Sunday dress, but the deep-throated voice it had recorded and shared was sinister. He did not know how he knew it, he just knew.
Toria had not been dreaming. The family was not going crazy. Their problem was different. It was much, much worse.
SUNDAY, 3:25 A.M.
Now that Xander knew Wuzzy had recorded Toria's encounter with the man, Dad had to hear it. Before, when he didn't know if the bear had captured any important sounds at all, he didn't want to get Dad's hopes up or give him another reason to suspect his son was paranoid.
Xander approached him, bear in hand.
“What is it, Son?” Dad whispered. He shifted on the box. The bat gleamed in the hallway lights. It made Xander feel better, how solid it appeared, how firmly his father gripped it.
Xander said, “We're not going crazy.”
His dad offered a thin smile. “I know.”
“I mean, I had kind of thought, you know . . . with the last family disappearing . . .”
“Mass hysteria?” his father asked. “You thought we were all going crazy together?”
Xander felt his face flush. It sounded ridiculous coming out of his father. “Well, I was starting to think the house was like . . . I don't know . . . like, driving us crazy, I guess.”
He shook his head. “Stupid, I know.”
Dad slipped off the box. He touched Xander on the arm. “Not stupid. Say the house really is able to do all these weird thingsâdrop intruders in our midst, even send you back to fight a gladiator. If it could do all that, then simply driving a whole family crazy doesn't seem like such a big deal, does it? What's more impossible: a house that makes you
think
crazy things, or a house that really
does
crazy things?
Xander nodded. “Either way, it's way off the charts, right?”
One of Dad's eyebrows curved up. “Way off,” he agreed. “What's with the bear?”
Xander gave Wuzzy a little shake. He said, “Evidence we're not crazy.” He turned it on and squeezed the paw. Toria's voice came through. “Who is it?”
Creak
.
Creeeak.
“Whoâ?” Then the booming voice: “
Sas ehei na erthete na paiksei
.”
As soon as the last syllable came out of Wuzzy, something overhead banged. Maybe a slamming door. Or a body hitting the floor up there. The ceiling joists creaked. Footsteps.
Wuzzy screamed in Toria's voice.
Xander turned it off. His heart pounded like a lowrider's bass speaker:
Ba-boomp! Ba-boomp! Ba-boomp! Ba-boomp!
He stared at the ceiling. No more sounds. He lowered his eyes to his Dad's face. There was fear there.
Fear
. When your dad was frightened, there was something to be frightened about.
“What wasâ” Xander started.
“Shhh.” Dad held up one hand. With the other, he kept his grip on the bat. His eyes roamed the ceiling, but he wasn't
looking
. He was
listening
. He cocked his head, held still.
No other sounds came from up there.
Dad brought his head down to stare at the false wall. It appeared to be completely shut. Xander could not tell where it ended and the real wall began. Dad had piled boxes in front of it chest-high. Still, Xander would not have bet on their ability to keep something from coming through.
Dad watched the wall for a long time.
“Dad?” Xander whispered finally.
Slowly, Dad turned his gaze away. He snapped his head back like a pitcher trying to catch a steal, before settling his eyes on Xander. He wasn't smiling.
Xander said, “What was that?”
Dad shook his head. He said, “That was the last straw. We're out of here in the morning.”
Xander felt a mixture of relief and regret. Of course, he didn't want anything to happen to his family. But he knew he would never experience anything like this again.
Dad turned and picked up a box. “Now, give me a hand.” He carried the box to the false wall and added it to the others.
Xander found a safe place for Wuzzy, then started hefting boxes.
SUNDAY, 4:38 A.M.
Xander was back on the floor next to Toria's bed. The night's excitement had kept him going, but now his mind and body ached for a week of sleep. His eyes felt like they were made out of hot steel, his muscles nothing more than Silly Putty. He rolled onto his stomach and eased his cheek into the relaxing softness of his pillow. His head was full of images that would love nothing better than to keep him awake or give him nightmares: his gladiatorial fight, the big man roaming their house, even all the things he'd left in Pasadena. He forced himself to once again hear the surf in his brother's and sister's breathing. He was on that beach, kicking at the water, smelling the salt, feeling the breeze . . . when the screaming started again.
He grabbed the edge of the mattress and pulled himself up. Groggy, not yet with full vision, he reached for Toria. He said, “What is it?” He felt Toria rise into a sitting position. He made out her face in the glow of the night-lightâmore puzzled than scared.
Beside her, David moaned, rolled over. He propped himself up on his elbows. “What's going on?” he said.
It hit Xander an instant before Toria said it.
“Mom!”
He spun and rose. He cracked his shoulder on the door frame, then crashed into the hallway wall opposite Toria's bedroom. He sprinted toward his parents' bedroom, trying to make sense of what he saw. Dad's aluminum bat lay on the floor. Boxes were scattered everywhere. His parents' door was open. No, not openâripped from its hinges, on the hallway floor.
Xander crashed over a box. He fell on the unhinged door, got up, and grabbed the door frame of his parents' room. Only then did he realize the screaming was not coming from the room. Rather, around the corner. He spun, catching a glimpse of David beating it toward him. Xander paused long enough to hold up his hand. “No, David, stay here.”
Toria came out of her room and ran toward her brothers.
Xander yelled, “David, stay with Toria. I mean it.” He turned and scooped up the bat. He rounded the corner. The wall was wide open. Heavy footsteps climbed the stairs beyond, nearly lost under the sound of his mother's screams. So intent was Xander on reaching her, he nearly tripped over a pair of legs sticking out of the guest bedroom. He jumped over them, slid to a stop, crawled back. The bat clacked against the wood floor.
It was Dad. On his back. Not moving. Xander released the bat. He moved up his father's body, hand over hand. His palm pressed against his father's chest, his eyes reached his father's face, scanning for signs of life. He felt it: a heartbeat under his hand.
“Dad?” he whispered. He pushed his other hand under his father's head to lift it. It was warm and wet and sticky. He pulled his hand back, covered in blood.
“Dad!”
His father groaned. Xander heard fast footsteps.
David grabbed the door frame and almost swung through. He stopped himself, yelled, “Dad!”
Xander said, “He's alive. Momâ”
But David was already gone. He jumped over Dad's legs and pattered away, bare feet slapping on the floor.
“David, wait.” Xander clutched the bat. He rose, turning away from his father. At the opening in the wall, he looked back, and braked hard. Toria had just come around the corner. He pointed at Dad and told her, “Take care of him. Stay here!” He went through the next threshold and started up the stairs.
David was at the top, hitting the landing. He turned and pushed up the breaker that powered the corridor's lights.
“Mom!” he yelled and darted into the corridor.
“David, wait!” Xander yelled, almost at the top. He turned into the corridor in time to see the big man rotating around to face David, who was running all-out toward him.
Judging by his proportions in the hall, the man was not merely big, he was
massive
. He was almost naked, wearing only a tattered pelt like a diaper. He was simultaneously fat and muscularâArnold Schwarzenegger going to pot. Broad shoulders, barrel chest, Buddha's belly. It was a body hewn and honed by strenuous and long-lasting labor, but insufficiently nourished by whatever the man could find. His flesh was covered in scars that both furrowed the skin and left ridges of discolored tissue. Dark smudges of dirt obscured even more flesh. And everywhere, sweat glistened. A long beard, seemingly made of rusty wire, burst from his face, hiding his mouth. From the tops of his sideburns, his head was bald as a rock. Fierce, dark eyes looked out from holes under a thick and bony brow.
Their mother was bent over his left shoulder. Her feet kicked in front; Xander could see her arms flailing behind the man.
As David plunged unheedingly toward the man, Xander bellowed, “Noâ!”
The man's cantaloupe-size fist shot forward. It hit David's head with a
crack!
David's momentum propelled his legs forward as his head flew back. His arms flung out and he went straight down. He landed on the carpeted runner with a sickening thud.
“David!” Xander yelled, almost to him. “Mom! Mom!”
Her screaming stopped long enough to yell Xander's name. Her feet kicked and kicked. Her hand kept rising and falling against the man's shoulder and back. Her efforts appeared to make no difference.
The man watched Xander approach. His face was impassive. Xander's eyes dropped to his brother, lying unmoving.
Be alive, be alive
, was all he could think.
He was mentally dusting off the steps required to administer CPRâcompliments of the American Red Cross and Mom's insistence that her children know the process. Could he revive David before the man stepped in to finish him off or before he carried their mother away? Didn't matter. Xander had seen the battering ram that had clobbered his brother, and he would not leave him to die on the floor.
His heart danced when David's arm rose shakily off the carpet. It reached up like a drowning man's grasp for the surface, then bent at the elbow. David's fingers found his face. He groaned.
Xander hurtled past his brother. He came down four feet from the brute. Without hesitation, he hiked the bat over his shoulder, stepped in, and swung it into the side of the man's head.
The head snapped sideways, catching Mom's hip. She began screaming again. A bright red mark sprang up like a racing stripe across the man's temple and ear. He showed Xander his teeth. Not pretty. The man's leg-sized arm shot forward. His hand grasped for Xander's head. Xander stepped back and brought the bat down on the man's hand. The man hissed and pulled his fist to his chest. His eyes widened and seemed to sparkle with fury.
If looks could kill
, Xander thought,
we'd both be dead
.
“Let her go!” Xander screamed. He stepped in, feinted another swing, then reversed out of reach. “I said, let her go!
Now!” When the man didn't move, Xander swung the bat into his side.
The man grunted and heaved forward.
Xander made a grab for Mom's leg.
The brute was faster than he looked. He seized Xander by the neck with his injured hand. His fingers were like cables, cinching Xander's throat. Xander gagged, dropped the bat. The man seemed unable to squeeze harder, though his straining face reflected his desire to do so. Xander believed his neck would have already been crushed like a straw had it not been for the strike to the man's hand he had gotten in.
The man, appearing frustrated now, tossed Xander aside. Xander's head hit one of the wall lights. He crumbled to the floor. The heavy lamp lost its grip on the wall and fell on Xander's head. Everything faded. The hallway shrank in Xander's vision. Ahh . . . he was finally going to get the rest he needed.
And why not?
he thought. He knew there was a reason, but it kept slipping away.