House of Dark Shadows (23 page)

“You should have listened,” Xander said. His words were as cold as the glare he cast on his father.

Dad nodded. “Deep inside, I knew that someday I would come back and look for her, my mother. If there was no finding her, then I would at least discover what had happened and make sure it never happened again. When my dad— Grandpa—died last year, I felt released from the promise I'd made him. I couldn't stop thinking about this house.”

Xander practically screamed. “So you bring us into it, your family? How stupid is that? Why would you do that?”

Dad gazed at Xander for a long time. At last he said, “I
am
sorry. I thought I could control it. Keep you guys away from the rooms. Keep
them
—” He looked up at the ceiling as if seeing “them.” “Keep them out of the house. As I said, when I had lived here before, it was a long time before we realized there was something weird about the house. I thought I would have time to secure everything. I thought even if you kids found the false wall, you couldn't get up the stairs. I thought finding my mother was something I could do on my own, without anyone finding out.” David squirted ointment onto the top of Xander's head. He said, “Did you know about the rooms before your mother was taken?” Xander, David, and Toria had been told their paternal grandmother, Grandpa Hank's wife, had died in a car accident many years before. They had not talked about her much.

Dad said, “We discovered them right before she was taken. When we started hearing noises at night and finding footprints on the floors—around then is when I think my father found the rooms.”

“So your mother gets taken and the rest of you up and
leave
?” Xander said accusingly.

“I didn't want to, Xander. I cried and begged to stay. And, for years afterward, to come back. I hated my father for a long time. I was an adult before I fully realized why he had given up.”

Xander's face was pinched. He said, “Oh, sure. Gotta get on with your life. Can't grieve forever.”

“It wasn't like that. He feared for all of our lives. And for his sanity. He came very close to losing it: he'd lost his wife, and the things he experienced in those . . .”

Xander stood abruptly. His chair flipped over backward. His head and shoulder knocked into David's arms. The gauze and tape David had been holding flew out of his hands. Xander said, “Well,
we're
not leaving! Do you understand? We're not going anywhere. I don't care what excuses Grandpa had, he never should have left his wife, your mother! I'm not leaving
my
mother here!” Tears erupted from his eyes, instantly wetting his cheeks. “You can talk all you want about saving the rest of the family, about getting away from this house before it makes you go crazy . . . But we're not leaving without her. We're
not
!” He bolted toward the dining room entrance. He shoved David so hard the boy fell, plopping down hard.

Dad stood. “Xander!” he called. “That's not what I'm saying! I—”

Xander went through the front door and slammed it on his father's words.

Xander had no idea how long he paced the woods in front of the house. Through the trees, the sky had lightened to steel gray, then caught a bit of the approaching sun's orange fire.

He dropped onto the front porch steps. Behind Xander, the door opened and closed. His father sat beside him, too close.

When he put his arm across his back to drape his hand over his shoulder, Xander pulled away.

“I'm not saying we have to leave,” Dad said.

“Not yet, you aren't.”

“Not at all, Xander. Not until we have your mother back. I've made some mistakes, some horrible mistakes. I endangered all of you. Your mother, my wife, has suffered,
is
suffering, because of my . . .
stupidity
. I just hope—”

The way his voice broke, the wet sounds he made, made Xander look. His father was trying to be tough, resolute. His grief was getting in his way. At that moment, it was impossible to hate the man. As terrible as his actions had been, he was right; he was still Xander's father. The grief in his face was as clear as the grief in Xander's heart. His father had not wished this on them.

Dad swallowed hard. “I hope you can forgive me, and that you'll help me set this right.”

“Set it right?” Xander squinted at him.

He nodded. “Help me
work
this house. Work those rooms. Figure it all out. Get her back. Xander,
get her back
!”

Despite it all, the pain, the loss, the anger, Xander found himself smiling. There was nothing okay about any of this, but Dad's words sounded so good. They were exactly what he wanted to hear. Several sentences formed in his mouth, but he bit them back. Finally, he said, “Now you're talking.” He brought his hand up around his father's back and hugged him. Dad showed him an expression of utter relief. It said,
Thank
you for not making me lose my son on the same morning I lost my wife
.

Behind Xander, the door opened again. Two pairs of feet. Toria came down a step and sat next to Dad. She leaned her head into his side. David brushed against Xander, stopped halfway down the stairs. He leaned back against the railing. Xander knew it did his brother and sister good to see him and Dad friends again.

Xander smiled at David. He said, “We're going to rescue Mom.”

All of the emotions Xander was feeling crossed over David's face: sadness and worry, doubt and fear, and, finally, hope and determination. David's eyes scanned the front of the house, as if seeing it differently. Then, he took in Toria and Dad before his attention settled on Xander.

David nodded. He said, “Let's do it.”

NOT
THE END . . .

WITH SPECIAL THANKS TO . .

LUKE and NICHOLAS FALLENTINE, special readers who helped set the tone;

THE FICTION TEAM AT NELSON, whose vision and expertise make my stories worth telling;

JOEL GOT LER and JOSH SCHECHT ER, for their encouragement and guidance;

MAE GANNON and ANTHONY LIPARU LO, for keeping me grounded and encouraging me to fly;

JODI, MELANIE, MATT , ANTHONY, and ISABELLA . . .
always
.

available now

BOOK TWO OF
DREAM HOUSE KINGS

Excerpt from
Watcher in the Woods

CHAPTER

one

At twelve years old, David King was too young to die. At least
he
thought so.

But try telling that to the people shooting at him.

He had no idea where he was. When he had stepped through the door, smoke immediately blinded him. An explosion had thrown rocks and who-knew-what into his face. It shook the floor and knocked him off his feet. Now he was on his hands and knees on a hardwood floor. Glass and splinters dug into his palms. Somewhere, all kinds of guns were firing.

Bullets zinged overhead, thunking into walls—bits of flying plaster stung his cheeks.

Okay, so he wasn't sure the bullets were meant for him. The guns seemed both near and far. But in the end, if he were hit, did it matter whether the shooters meant to get him or he'd had the dumb luck to stumble into the middle of a firefight?

He'd be just as dead.

The smoke cleared a bit. Sunlight poured in from a school-bus-sized hole in the ceiling. Not just the ceiling—David could see attic rafters and the jagged and burning edges of the roof. Way above was a blue sky, soft white clouds.

He was in a bedroom. A dresser lay on the floor. In front of him was a bed. He gripped the mattress and pushed himself up.

A wall exploded into a shower of plaster, rocks, and dust. He flew back. Air burst from his lungs, and he crumpled again to the floor. He gulped for breath, but nothing came. The stench of fire—burning wood and rock, something dank and putrid—swirled into his nostrils on the thick, gray smoke. The taste of cement coated his tongue. Finally, oxygen reached his lungs, and he pulled it in with loud gasps, like a swimmer saved from drowning. He coughed out the smoke and dust. He stood, finding his balance, clearing his head, wavering until he reached out to steady himself.

A hole in the floor appeared to be trying to eat the bed.

It was listing like a sinking ship, the far corner up in the air, the corner nearest David canted down into the hole. Flames had found the blankets and were spreading fast.

Outside, machine-gun fire erupted.

David jumped.

He stumbled toward an outside wall. It had crumbled, forming a rough, V-shaped hole from where the ceiling used to be nearly to the floor. Stumps of metal bars jutted out of the plaster every few feet.

More gunfire, another explosion. The floor shook.

Beyond the walls of the bedroom, the rumble of an engine and a rhythmic, metallic
click-click-click-click-click
tightened his stomach. He recognized the sound from a dozen war movies: a tank. It was rolling closer, getting louder.

He reached the wall and dropped to his knees. He peered out onto the dirt and cobblestone streets of a small village. Every house and building was at least partially destroyed, ravaged by bombs and bullets. The streets were littered with chunks of wall, roof tiles, even furniture that had spilled out through the ruptured buildings.

David's eyes fell on an object in the street. His panting breath froze in his throat. He slapped his palm over his mouth, either to stifle a scream or to keep himself from throwing up. It was a body, mutilated almost beyond recognition. It lay on its back, screaming up to heaven. Male or female, adult or child, David didn't know, and it didn't matter. That it was human and
damaged
was enough to crush his heart. His eyes shot away from the sight, only to spot another body. This one was not as broken, but was no less horrible. It was a young woman. She was lying on her stomach, head turned with an expression of surprised disbelief and pointing her lifeless eyes directly at David.

He spun around and sat on the floor. He pushed his knuckles into each eye socket, squeegeeing out the wetness.

He swallowed, willing his nausea to pass.

His older brother, Xander, said that he
had
puked when he first saw a dead body. That had been only two days ago—in the Colosseum. David didn't know where the portal he had stepped through had taken him. Certainly
not
to a gladiator fight in Rome.

He squinted toward the other side of the room, toward the shadowy corner where he had stepped into . . . wherever this was . . .
whenever
it was. Nothing there now. No passage home. Just a wall.

He heard rifle shots and a scream.

Click-click-click-click-click . . .
the tank was still approaching.

What had he done? He thought he could be a hero, and now he was about to get shot or blown up or . . . something that amounted to the same thing. Dead.

Dad had been right. They weren't ready. They should have made a plan.

Click-click-click-click-click.

David rose into a crouch and turned toward the crumbled wall.

I'm here now,
he thought.
I gotta know what I'm dealing with, right?
Okay then
.
I can do this.

He popped up from his hiding place to look out onto the street. Down the road to his right, the tank was coming into town over a bridge. Bullets sparked against its steel skin. Soldiers huddled behind it, keeping close as it moved forward. In turn, they would scurry out to the side, fire a rifle or machine gun, and step back quickly. Their targets were to David's left, which meant he was smack between them.

Figures.

At that moment, he'd have given anything to redo the past hour. He closed his eyes. Had it really only been an hour? An hour to go from his front porch to here?

In this house, stranger things had happened . . .

READING GROUP GUIDE

1. None of the King kids is particularly happy about leaving everyone and everything they know back in Pasadena to move to Pinedale. Have you ever had to move away from a place you loved? How did you cope?

2. Pasadena is part of a big metropolitan area. Pinedale is small and secluded. What can you do in big cities that you can't do in rural towns? How about the opposite: What can you do in rural towns that you can't do in big cities? Which do you prefer?

3. Xander loves movies—to the point that he relates a lot of what happens around him to something he's seen in the movies. Do you ever do that with movies or books or something else? Does it help you understand situations better? Why?

4. When the Kings first find the big Victorian house, Xander gets an uneasy feeling. Have you ever had a bad feeling about something that you couldn't explain? What did you do about it?

5. “Victorian” architecture became popular during and after the reign of United Kingdom's Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. “Cape Cod” homes were named after an area of Massachusetts where they were popular. Do have a favorite house style? Do you know what style house you live in?