The thought struck him that it might actually
be
the life of him if he didn’t figure it out.
“So,” he said, “what do you think? Dad taking off ?”
“Good idea,” Xander said. He was silent awhile, then said, “
If
that guy can figure out Phemus’s language. I have my doubts.”
David rolled onto his side and folded the pillow under his head. “You think we can keep Phemus out—with just a
lamp
?” Xander ran a hand over his face and groaned. “I don’t know, Dae. Stranger things have happened in this house. Besides, symbols and things like that scare people. They always have.
Vampires hate crosses.”
“Vampires aren’t real,” David said.
“Okay,” Xander said. He turned on his side to face his brother. “The Vikings carved dragon heads onto the prows of their ships. Historians say they scared the tar out of people.”
“That’s because of the Vikings,” David said. “Not the dragon’s head. We should know that better than anyone.” Only that morning, he and Xander had barely survived an attack of Viking Berserkers.
“Of course it’s what the symbol
stands for
, not the symbol itself,” Xander said. “Say you’re a villager in eleventh-century England. You’ve seen Viking raiders ransack villages and slaughter innocent people.”
David nodded.
“You’re out traveling,” Xander continued, “and come up to the big wooden gates of a town. But there’s a huge symbol painted on them: a Viking dragon. What do you do?”
“Run away like my butt’s on fire,” David said.
“Exactly,” Xander said. “You were scared by a symbol. The symbol
becomes
what’s behind it.”
“At least we’re more sophisticated now,” David said.
“Don’t be so sure. Think about it. Remember the first portal you went through, to that jungle with the tigers?”
“And warriors,” David added. His stomach lurched the way it had when he was on the shaky rope bridge over a deep gorge. Warriors on one side, tigers on the other. He shivered and closed his eyes.
“What if,” Xander said, “the first thing you saw when you went over was a skull-and-crossbones? You know, the symbol for danger. It was slathered on a tree in what looked like blood. Real bones piled under it—or a whole skeleton!”
“Yeah,” David said, getting it. “I would have turned around and dived right back through the portal before it disappeared.
Straight back to the antechamber.” The idea that wall lights could actually scare people away suddenly made more sense.
Silence filled the room. The house creaked around them.
Just the house creaking
, David thought. He turned onto his stomach and lay there watching his brother roll one way and then the other. His eyelids grew heavy, and he let them close.
“Dae?” Xander said softly.
“Hmmm?”
“I was thinking,” Xander said. “What if Taksidian’s not human?”
David’s eyes snapped open. “What?”
“What if he’s like . . . I don’t know, a demon?”
“Knock it off,” David said.
“I mean, he’s
mean
enough. He’s creepy looking. He’s got that statue made out of body parts.”
David raised his head. “Are you
trying
to scare me?”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well, stop saying,” David said. He flopped his face into his pillow. He waited for Xander to speak again, then he was dreaming: he was running down the third-floor hallway, chased by Taksidian . . . only the hallway never ended, and Taksidian’s face was a ghoulish demon’s.
FRIDAY, 5:18 A .M.
After the nightmare, David had no dreams at all. Just sleep. Rest. Respite from the craziness of his life, from using muscles and joints that were battered and sore. Peace.
Too soon: a nudge, someone shaking his shoulder.
“David?” The voice was deep, rumbly. “I’m going back to see Jesse. Want to come?”
“Keal?” David asked. Déjà vu, he thought. Déjà vu in a dream. How weird.
“Hey,” Keal said. More nudges. “Want to see Jesse?”
In his half-awake state, David heard the words, but didn’t make all the connections. “Jesse?” he said. “Back at the house?”
“At the hospital,” Keal said. He shook David. “Wake up if you want to go.”
“Young Jesse?”
“Old Jesse!” Xander said from his bed. He propped himself up on his elbow and addressed Keal. “Dae’s still dreaming.
I want to go.”
“Get your clothes on,” Keal said.
“Wait,” David said. He threw back his blankets. Groaning, he sat up and hooked his legs over the side of the bed. “I want to see Jesse too.” He rubbed his face, scratched the top of his head. “Oh, man, was I out.”
“You know we’re talking about Old Jesse, right?” Xander said, rolling out of bed.
“Old Jesse, yeah.” David stood, steadying himself on Keal’s shoulder, then stumbled toward the dresser. “I like Old Jesse,” he said, trying to wake himself up by talking, having to think.
“I like Young Jesse too. He’s probably a kid I would hang out with, if I, you know, lived back then. I think I’d like Jesse at any age.”
“Maybe you’ll get a chance to find out,” Xander said, tugging on his jeans. “Maybe we’ll meet thirty-year-old Jesse and middle-aged Jesse.”
Keal stood and walked to the door. “This conversation is just too weird for me, boys,” he said. “I’ll see you downstairs. If you hurry, you can see your father and Toria before they head to the airport.”
David had showered the evening before, after escaping from the chamber. Even so, he took another one now. He figured he’d stumble through the day half asleep if he didn’t. It was like some exhaustion fairy was keeping track of his lack of sleep, stress, and physical exertion.
Ran from Berserkers? Let’s put this rock right here on your head. Didn’t get a full eight hours’ sleep? Rocks for both shoulders. Worried about Mom? Two rocks here and three rocks there . . .
He was surprised how many of those rocks fell away under the cold spray of the shower. Even more when he lathered up with a bar of perky-smelling soap. By the time he cranked the water off and stepped out, he was feeling pretty close to normal. He wondered how big the pile of stones would be by the end of the day, and what terrible thing he’d have to endure for each one.
That’s no way to think
, he told himself.
It’s going to be a great day!
He stared at the face in the mirror and said out loud, “Yeah, sure it will.”
When he went downstairs, everyone was around the dining table, bowls of cereal before them.
“Hey, Dae,” Dad said. “Froot Loops or Shredded Wheat?”
David plopped down in a chair beside Xander. “Is that your way of asking how I feel?” He grabbed a box at random and dumped its contents into a bowl. Turned out to be Life, which he liked. He wished his luck at choosing portals was as good.
“We should be out of the hospital by seven, plenty of time to get them to school,” Keal told Dad, apparently continuing a discussion that had started before David arrived.
Dad checked his watch and looked surprised. He scooped a spoonful of colorful cereal into his mouth, pushed his chair back, and stood. He said, “Toria, we gotta go. Our flight leaves at seven thirty, and it takes almost an hour to get to Redding.
Xander and David, Keal’s in charge.”
Munching, Keal gave Dad a thumbs-up.
Dad picked up his bowl. “Keal,” he said, “would you mind swinging by to see my mom?”
“No prob—” Keal started, before the milky pieces of Honeycomb began spilling out of his mouth. He caught one in his spoon.
“Just let her know why the phones aren’t working, fill her in on what’s going on,” Dad said. “Tell her I’ll stop by tonight with Toria.” He went around the table toward the kitchen, then stopped. “Oh . . . and watch for tails, maybe drive around a bit first.”
Keal gave him another thumbs-up.
Dad nodded at David and Xander. “See you this evening, guys.”
They said their good-byes and went back to their breakfasts.
Toria lifted her bowl to her lips and slurped down the remaining milk. She smiled at her brothers, milk mustache becoming a goatee. “Have fun at school, boys,” she said, standing and turning away.
“Have fun getting frisked,” Xander said.
She turned around. “What?”
“Oh, I forgot you haven’t flown in a while,” Xander said. “Things have changed. They frisk everyone now. It can get a little rough.”
“They do
not
!”
Xander pretended to be ashamed for startling her. He said, “You’re right, they probably won’t be too rough on you, being a little kid and all.”
Frowning, she turned and went into the kitchen.
“That was mean,” David whispered.
Keal snapped a spoon of milk at Xander. It splattered over his face. David laughed.
“Hey!” Xander said, rubbing milk out of his eye. He snatched his own spoon from the bowl, but Keal was already jogging out of the room, an evil laugh rumbling out of him.
FRIDAY, 6:31 A.M.
Following Keal’s “Why mess with success?” strategy, they got into the hospital the same way they had the day before: Keal went in first, then opened a side door for David and Xander.
The boys waited in the mustard-colored stairwell, listening to water rush through the exposed pipes, while Keal reconned the second floor.
“Think Jesse will be able to talk?” Xander asked when the brothers were alone. He shifted from foot to foot, looking nervous.
“He did yesterday,” David said. “A little.”
A few minutes later, Keal cracked open the door. “We’re on,” he said.
Jesse hadn’t moved. The right side of his bed was still cluttered with machines, monitors, and wires. The same chrome tree held what were probably different, but similar looking, bags of liquid, each trailing a tube that ran into his arm. And there was that see-through cylinder, inside which a bellows expanded and contracted in time with Jesse’s lungs.
Jesse appeared pretty much the same, as well: a wisp of a man barely making a bulge in the blankets. His arms, resting at his sides, almost vanished against the bright white sheets. Blue veins mottled his cheeks, forehead, and balding scalp. Silver hair fanned out around his head like a halo.
The three of them stood at the foot of the bed, taking it all in. Keal lifted a clipboard off a hook at the foot of the bed and started reading it.
Xander made a slight moaning sound. David followed his gaze; he had spotted Jesse’s hand, the stub of his missing finger bandaged over. Xander’s gaze shifted to the bellows, then up to the machine that beeped along with Jesse’s heart. His skin had paled to a shade only slightly less white than Jesse’s.
David had planned on letting Xander talk to Jesse first, but clearly his brother wasn’t ready. David slipped in front of him and approached Jesse on the uncluttered side of the bed. The old man’s skin reminded him of tracing paper, thin and brittle.
He touched the bandaged hand, then slipped his fingers around it—down low, near Jesse’s thumb. The last thing he wanted to do was cause him pain.
He moved his attention to the thin blanket covering Jesse’s chest. He saw no movement there, no rise and fall. A spark of panic shot from his brain to his heart. The monitor was beeping, beeping; the bellows gasped—but maybe they were wrong.
Could they be wrong?
Then he saw it: the slightest movement over Jesse’s stomach. He felt himself relax. He closed his eyes.
You’re an old woman
, he told himself.
Take it easy. Be tough for Jesse.
He took in Jesse’s face. The same twin tubes went into his nostrils, almost lost in his mustache. Silver stubble roamed the creases of his cheeks and chin like fake snow on a model railroad. His eyelids vibrated as the eyes under them moved back and forth.
“He’s dreaming,” David said, smiling at Keal and Xander.
“No, he’s not,” whispered Xander.
When David looked back, Jesse’s eyes were open. His blue irises were turned toward him. They were vivid and alive, his eyes. Sparkling. So similar to Young Jesse’s, it was as though they were immune to time and age and all the things they had witnessed, both awful and awesome. Jesse’s mustache trembled, and he managed a thin smile.
“Hi,” David said. “How do you feel?”
Jesse nodded. “Better.”
“Keal and Xander are here with me.”
Jesse shifted his gaze to them. His mouth parted, and he sighed. A whitish-pink tongue poked out and slid over his lips. He said, “Glad you . . . could make it.”
“We saw you,” David said. “We found the antechamber you wanted us to find, the one that led back to the house being built. You were there.”
Jesse smiled and nodded. He said, “Just a kid.”