Fenzy (10 page)
David had forgotten Keal didn’t know. It seemed like such a long time ago when they went to the Civil War world, then went through the wrong portal to the Alps. After that, they had ended up in a torture chamber. When they finally got home, Keal had been knocked out and Phemus and Taksidian had been in the house. And then they had followed Phemus to Atlantis.
It had all started shortly after using the locker portal to get home from school during first period.
So .
. . David calcu-lated . . .
seven-forty a.m. until now. Less than five hours!
He felt five
years
older than he did when he woke up that morning.
Xander began telling Keal about it. How David had found the Civil War doctor and somehow changed history. Keal confirmed what the boys already knew: that the war ended in 1865 and cost about 600,000 lives.
“But David remembers it differently,” Xander said. “He said it ended in 1875 and over two
million
people died in it.”
When Keal scowled at him, David said, “That’s what I said right after the change. I don’t remember that anymore.”
“Like Jesse,” Keal said. “He said he could remember the old history, before he changed it, for only a little while, then it was gone.”
“Right,” Xander said.
Keal scratched his head. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get my mind around that, actually
changing
history.” He looked around at the world outside the car and sighed.
David thought he was about to say something profound and wise, but what he said was, “You guys feel like ice cream? I could really use some ice cream right about now.”
Xander grinned. “You sound more and more like Dad all the time.”
“Hey,” Keal said, “great minds think alike.”
They pulled into the drive-in diner, where the Kings had stopped for treats after the first day of school. They ordered, and while waiting for the waitress to bring their food to the car, the brothers told Keal more about the worlds they’d visited.
“Atlantis!” Keal said when they reached that part. The wait-ress rapped on the window, and he jumped. He handed David a root beer float and Xander a chocolate cone. He licked his own cone as he listened to the rest of the boys’ story.
Between sentences, they slurped and
mmmm
’ed with plea-sure. David didn’t think anything had ever tasted so good as that float. Something about world-hopping and defying death made it the perfect reward.
When they’d finished, Keal ran his tongue over his lips and said, “But you don’t think your mother’s still there?”
David said, “Taksidian said the portals pull people away.” “He said he didn’t know what world she went to,” Xander added.
“Your nana said it was like that for her,” Keal said. “She told me she sometimes woke up to find herself getting pulled into another world.”
David stared into his cup—still some ice cream left, but he suddenly didn’t want it. He said, “That must have been awful.”
Keal nodded. “She said sometimes she’d whip through three worlds in one day, and other times she’d stay in one world for a month or longer.” He looked at the brothers in turn. “Like a minnow, that’s how she put it. A minnow caught in the currents of Time.”
David leaned his head against the window and closed his eyes. A scene like a documentary on the Discovery Channel played out in his head: a little fish struggling against the rag-ing waters of a river, bashing against stones, resting for a while in a still area, then zipped away again by a gush of water.
But not water.
Time
. And not a little fish.
Mom
.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We have to find Mom. We have to get her.”
F
RIDAY
, 2:50
P. M
.
They sat in the idling car staring up Gabriel Road to their house.
“Well,” Keal said, “what do you think?”
David looked out the side windows into the woods. He half expected Phemus and maybe a few of those other Atlantian slaves to rush out of the shadows and surround the car.
“I think it’s been long enough,” Xander said. “He’s prob-ably back in Atlantis by now.”
Keal let the car roll closer, all the while swiveling his head around, looking.
When the car stopped in front of the house, David leaned between the front seats to squint through the trees at the house. “Door’s open,” he observed.
They climbed out and gathered at the front bumper.
“What now?” Xander said.
A loud
crack!
made David jump. It had come from the car. He looked to see something that looked like a bat—the ani-mal kind—clattering against the inside of the windshield. But it didn’t sound like a bat; too hard, too metallic. He realized what it was: “Taksidian’s dagger!”
“I . . . “ Keal said, staring in disbelief. “I left it on the center console.”
“Taksidian’s so mean,” Xander said, “even his
dagger
wants to kill us.”
“It’s the pull,” David said. “Wherever it came from, Time wants it back.”
The dagger flipped and spun, clattering against the glass. It dropped to the dashboard, then bounced up to strike the windshield again. The glass shattered, spiderwebbing out from where the blade came through. It started bulging out, making a sound like ice breaking over a pond.
Keal grabbed Xander and David’s arms and pulled them to the side.
The dagger’s handle broke through. It sailed over the hood and fell into the dirt, then flipped up, balancing on the tip of the blade, where it spun so fast it became a black blur. It tumbled and bounced over the ground toward the house, fast as a jackrabbit. Instead of going up the porch steps and through the door, it leaped into a porch railing—going right through it in an explosion of splinters. It crashed through the window set to the left of the door.
“Must be heading home,” Keal said.
“Where’s home?” David said.
“Wherever Taksidian comes from, probably.”
“But Taksidian’s been here a long time,” David said. “How’d he keep it for so long? I thought Time always pulled the items back to where they belong.”
“Same way he’s been able to stay, I guess,” Keal said. “He only stays around the house a little while, then leaves before Time realizes he’s here and tries to pull him back.”
“Like Jesse,” David said. “He could be in the house only a little while at a time.”
Keal nodded.
The three of them stood in silence, gazing at the destruc-tion the knife had left. David turned to gape at the hole in the windshield, which had broken into tiny squares that had somehow stayed together.
“Well,” Keal said, “if the dagger got pulled back, then it wasn’t away from the house long enough to reset the pull. That’s good to know.”
“Why?” David said.
“Because when Phemus or Taksidian goes away, we know he won’t be back for a while. And another thing . . . “ He smiled. “There’s no way Phemus is still in the house.” He marched toward the front door. “Come on.”
Xander looked at David, then at the hole in the windshield. He said, “This just keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
F
RIDAY
, 3:30
P. M
.
David sat sideways on the closed lid of the toilet in the upstairs bathroom. He had his arm propped up on the counter beside the sink, and Keal was carefully unwrapping the Ace bandage Dad had wrapped around the disintegrating cast the other day.
“Ow,” he groaned.
“Sorry,” Keal said. “You said you think you broke it again?”
“Yeah,” David said. “When I was sliding down a hill in the Alps. I shoved it into the snow.”
“What’d you do that for?”
“To keep from going over a cliff.”
Keal grimaced and nodded.
David smiled a little. Only in this house, only after all the crazy things they’ve done, could his explanation not have sounded completely insane.
Keal poked at the arm while watching David’s expression. “I’m afraid you’re right,” he said. “You did break it again.”
“You’re a nurse,” David said. “Can’t you fix it?”
“I can’t reset it. Need a hospital for that. And a new cast.”
David shook his head. “Last time we saw a doctor, he accused Dad of hurting us.”
“Because of a broken arm?”
“Dad thinks Taksidian got to him,” David said, feeling the heat of anger radiate in his chest. “He’d do anything to get us out of the house.”
“David,” Keal said, pushing his finger into a hole that went straight through the cast. “What’s this?”
“That’s from a Carthaginian soldier’s pike. He tried to impale me,” David said. “But that didn’t hurt. What hurt are all the times I hit it against trees and the ground and walls and doors.”
“That’ll do it,” Keal said. “Fresh breaks are easy to re-break or knock out of alignment.”
David winced at a bolt of pain that felt like wire running up the center of his arm. He fought the urge to pull his arm away. He was trembling all over, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. A tear rolled down his cheek.
Keal gave him a sad look. “Those painkillers I gave you should have kicked in by now.”
“Maybe I didn’t take enough,” David said.
“I can’t give you any more.”
“That’s okay,” David said. “I’ll be all right after you stop messing with it.”
And take a long, hot bath
, he thought.
Followed by,
oh, eighteen hours of sleep
.
“This doesn’t look good,” Keal said. “You have to find a way to stop banging it, whether we get it reset and recast or not.” He stopped unraveling the bandage and looked at David, a mixture of puzzlement and concern creasing his brow. His frown was deep, and all David could do was frown back. Then Keal’s face softened, and his lips bent up at the corners. Soon, he was showing David a full set of teeth.
David got it: the craziness of it all. The dozen wounds he’d suffered and how he’d suffered them. No, no—
when
and
where
he’d suffered them. The Alps during Hannibal’s march over them. A Civil War battlefield. A French village during World War II . . . the list went on and on. Before he realized it, he was smiling too. And laughing.
Keal added his booming laughter. Their voices bounced around the bathroom like music from a symphony orchestra.
“What so funny?” Xander said. He’d gone to take a shower in Mom and Dad’s bathroom, and now he stood in the door-way rubbing a towel over his hair, another towel tied around his waist.
“Nothing,” David said. “Everything.”
Xander made a face. He said, “Does this look as bad as it feels?” He turned to show them his back. A dark blue bruise ran diagonally from one shoulder blade to just above the top of the towel. The edges were red, slowly fading to yellow.
“Man!” Keal said. “Is that from Phemus?”
Xander nodded and turned around. “When he hurled the toy rifle at us in the clearing. Knocked the wind out of me.”
“And you almost fell all the way to the ground,” David said, remembering.
“I thought I was a goner,” Xander said. “I just tried not to think about—“ His eyes flashed wide, and he cried out, “
Oh!
” He was looking at David’s arm.
Keal had unwrapped all but a couple of loops of Ace bandage close to the elbow. The cast itself was almost gone, crumbled away. Plaster chunks and powder were spread out on the counter around it. David’s skin was mottled blue and white. Thread-thin tendrils of red networked through it, like the swirls of color through marble.
Xander said, “It looks like something from
Alien
. . . or
The
Exorcist
. . . or—“ “
Xander.” Keal stopped him.
David moaned. Seeing it made it worse. He bit his lip.
“What’s
that
?” Xander almost screamed. He pointed at a bump in David’s flesh midway between wrist and elbow.
“Xander,” Keal said, stern. “Go get dressed.”
“No . . . just . . . what is it?”
Keal looked at David. He gently touched the bump. David yelped. He was trembling again, the laughter forgotten.
“That’s your bone, David,” Keal said. “It’s broken, all right. And not set. We have to get you to a hospital.”
“No,” David said, shaking his head. He closed his eyes, squeezing out more tears.
“I’ll take you someplace away from Pinedale,” Keal said. “You can’t go on with your arm like this.”
“No,” David repeated. “Look at me. I have a black eye and a bruised cheek. A bump on my head, bruised ribs, an aching foot, broken skin over my knuckles. The skin on my chest and stomach . . . I don’t even know how to describe it.” He looked down at himself. His entire front was scratched and road-rashed from his slide over ice down the mountain.
“I got cuts on my shoulder and palm and probably places I don’t even know about yet. If anyone saw me, especially a doctor, they’d be stupid
not
to call the cops or social services or whoever takes kids away from abusive parents.”