Fenzy (9 page)
David’s hands slapped at his body, but he couldn’t find the belt. “I . . . I
can’t!”
Keal flashed the dagger past him, and David felt the pres-sure against his ribs ease. Xander ripped at the material. He forced David to bend his arm and pushed one side of the shirt over it.
David rolled away, and the tunic zipped out from under him. It wadded up in the crack, compressed, and disappeared.
He threw his good arm over his eyes. “Oh, man,” he said. “When am I going to
learn
?”
The wind returned, but it wasn’t the same. This one was misty and fragrant.
David sat up, pushed away from the door, and grabbed Xander’s arm. “What does it want now?” he yelled. “I don’t have anything else!”
The mist filled the room, swirling like a dust devil.
The mist stung David’s eyes, and he squeezed them closed. It smelled clean and fresh, like soap, but it was strong and filled his nostrils and lungs. He coughed, trying to hack it out.
With a gasp, the wind vanished under the door.
David opened his eyes, wiped goop from his lids, and blinked. His eyes felt like molten balls of fire. Keal and Xander rubbed at theirs, frowning, blinking. They gazed around the room. Everything glistened—the floor, the walls, their clothes and skin.
Keal wiped his forearm and rubbed his thumb and finger-tips together. “What the—?”
David saw something on the floor that must have come in with the mist. It was flat and green. Then he recognized the fragrance and laughed. “Shampoo.”
F
RIDAY
, 1:52
P. M
.
“Well,” Xander said, “I guess it works in both directions.” He lifted his T-shirt over his face and rubbed. “Time wants everything back where it belongs, even here.”
“Except Mom,” David said. He lowered his head. After everything they’d been through, he didn’t feel any closer to getting her back.
“Maybe,” Keal said, “it’s
working
to get her back. People are different. When the pull tried to take your nana, the door opened. That means it knows the difference between living people and . . . “ He wiped his forehead. “And shampoo.”
“So?” David said.
“So, maybe it has to bring her back a certain way. You know, like through certain portals or combination of portals. But if she moves too far away from the right ones, it takes lon-ger. Look at Nana and Jesse. They both got far enough away from the house that the pull couldn’t get them, even though they were both in other times so long that history thinks they belong back there.”
David shook his head. “It took thirty years for Nana to make it back.”
“With your help,” Keal reminded him. He waited until David looked at him, then said, “So that’s what you do for your mom too. Help her find her way home.”
“We’re trying.”
“Keep trying. It seems like an impossible—”
“Shhh! Shhh!” Xander said. He was scowling at the hall-way door.
David’s stomach tightened. He strained his ears, but heard nothing.
“What did you hear, Xander?” Keal asked.
“I just thought . . . “ Xander whispered. “I said Phemus can’t come through this door because we had the item that brought us here.” He looked worriedly from Keal to David. “But he has a direct portal to the house. He could come through a
different
portal!”
“Into another antechamber?” David said, scrambling to his feet. He stared at the hall door, expecting it to burst open. “Would he do that?”
“He came after us, didn’t he?” Xander used the bench to hoist himself up. “We’re supposed to be chained up on a ship going to war. I’m sure he’s not happy that we aren’t.”
“So, did you hear something or not?” David’s pounding heart didn’t
want
to know, it
needed
to know.
“I thought . . . “ Xander shook his head. “I don’t know. A creak, maybe.”
David thought of Phemus trudging back up the hill to Taksidian’s Atlantian house, where the portal was. He said, “Could he have gotten to the portal so fast?”
“If he hurried,” Xander said. “Just barely.”
Keal stood. He slipped Taksidian’s dagger beneath his belt at the small of his back and said, “Let’s get downstairs.”
Xander leaned his ear to the door. He turned the handle and cracked it open and peered through.
David grabbed a handful of Xander’s shirt—the brave part of his brain thinking he’d yank him back if Phemus leaped up; the little boy part simply wanting contact, as though Xander were the “blankie” David used to sleep with.
Xander pulled the door wider and poked his head out to look in both directions.
“Xan—“ David said.
Xander stepped through, pulling David with him.
Keal put a reassuring hand on David’s back. They walked in a line toward the landing, where a staircase led down to the second floor. David pictured their escape route: at the bottom of the stairs were two walls, one meant to be strong and secure enough to keep trespassers from other worlds from coming into the main part of their house; the other, six feet from the first, was designed to look like the other walls in the house, to keep the third floor secret.
Trouble was, Phemus had knocked down the walls. Keal had rebuilt them, but had not yet installed the doors.
Past the two walls, on the left, was their Mission Control Center—MCC—where they had planned to record their trips to other times and try to figure out what the house was all about. Nothing in there that would help them now.
A short hallway led to a right-hand corner into the second floor’s main hall. From there, they could take the grand stair-case to the foyer and the front door.
No problem.
Then a problem did occur to him. “What if Phemus already came through? What if he’s waiting for us downstairs?”
“Shhh,” Keal said, patting him.
Will this never end
? David thought. The danger. The fear. The feeling in his gut as tight as a clutched fist. He wanted to feel normal again. He wanted Mom back . . . their life back.
Bam!
Their heads swung toward the sound behind them.
“That was a portal door,” Xander said.
A door opened. Light poured out of an antechamber, fill-ing the far end of the hallway.
“Go!” Keal said. But they continued to watch as Phemus stepped through and turned his face toward them.
Keal shoved David at the same time that Xander took off, yanking him forward. He stumbled, almost fell, found his feet, and ran. He followed Xander around the corner to the stairs.
Behind him Keal was saying, “Go, go, go, go, go . . . “ It sounded more like a chugging train engine than a command no one needed.
F
RIDAY
, 1:56
P.M
.
David, Xander, and Keal pounded down the stairs and through the doorless openings in the two walls, Phemus somewhere behind them.
David and Xander were almost to the corner that would take them to the second floor’s main hall when David real-ized Keal wasn’t behind him. He braked, yanking Xander to a stop as well.
Keal was back at the second wall, struggling to get a big rectangle of wall—the one that acted as a secret door—into place over the opening.
“Keal!” Xander said. “There’s no time.”
“Hand me a two-by-four, those nails, and a hammer!” Keal yelled.
“Keal!” Xander repeated.
David ran to a stack of long wooden studs. He handed one to Keal, who crossed it over the door and the wall on either side.
David could hear Phemus coming down the stairs.
“Nails, nails!” Keal said.
Xander grabbed a handful and a hammer. He pounded one into the end of the stud. He put in another one, and ran around to Keal’s other side.
“This is stupid,” Xander said, as he pounded in another nail.
“David,” Keal said. “Get another stud ready!”
David started to turn, and the door exploded out. Xander flew back and tumbled along the floor.
David yelled, stumbled back, and tripped over the stack of studs. Sitting on the floor, his legs hitched up over the wood, he saw Keal on the floor, flat on his back. The door lay over him. Only his chest, head, and arms protruded out from it.
Phemus ducked his head to fit through the opening, and stepped on top of the door.
Keal groaned and fought to get free, but he was pinned under Phemus’s massive weight.
“Keal!” David and Xander yelled at the same time.
Phemus noticed their stares and looked down at Keal. Stepping forward on the door—pushing a gasp of pain from Keal—the big man stooped, reaching for Keal’s head.
David snatched up a stud and thrust it into Phemus’s neck. Phemus reared up, and David rammed the stud into his stom-ach. The big man grabbed the wood and shook it. David held on, stumbling around like a bull rider.
Xander grabbed Keal’s arm and began pulling. Keal put a hand on the top edge of the door and pushed, inching his way out.
Lightning bolts shot into David’s shoulder from his broken arm, but he refused to release his grip. He had to keep Phemus busy for as long as it took to free Keal. The stud slipped over his hands, pushing splinters into his flesh. Phemus swung the stud, slamming David into the wall.
“Hurry!” he yelled.
Xander dropped to the floor. He hooked his hands into Keal’s armpit, planted a foot on the top of the door, and pushed. Keal slid farther out until only his legs remained pinned.
Phemus jerked David back and forth on the end of the stud. Then he yanked it toward himself, and David stumbled forward. He had no choice: he let go just before coming close enough for Phemus to grab him.
Phemus hoisted the stud and jabbed it down at Keal. Keal twisted sideways, and the stud smashed into the floor. It broke through the hardwood floor, penetrating it like a pick shattering through ice. Phemus raised it for another strike.
Xander pulled. Keal thrashed, and shot out from under the door. Xander rose and fell back, pulling Keal along the floor with him.
David helped them up, and together they ran round the corner into the main hallway without looking back.
“Outside!” Keal yelled.
They hit the stairs leading to the foyer, and David leaped down, touching every fourth step.
“Haven’t we done this already?” Xander said, moving past David in a near-freefall down the stairs.
“He’s going to keep coming,” David said, arching around the door that Xander swung open.
“Let him try,” Keal said. He pushed the brothers down the porch steps. “Get to the car! The car!”
At Keal’s rented Charger, David looked back. Phemus was coming down the porch stairs. David jumped into the back-seat as Keal dropped down behind the wheel.
“Aaah!’ Keal yelled. He reached behind him, and his hand came back holding the dagger. He dropped it into a cubby in the center console and cranked the engine.
Phemus was running now, clomping through the trees toward them. Keal didn’t bother turning the car around. He looked through the rear window and peeled away in reverse.
“Pull a Jim Rockford,” Xander said.
“What’s that?” Keal said.
“From
The Rockford Files
. Slam on your brakes and crank the wheel. You can turn the car around without slowing down.”
Keal threw him a quick glance. “I’m not Jim Rockford.”
At the first bend in the road, he stopped.
The three of them stared through the windshield at the dust cloud the car had made. Slowly it settled, revealing Phemus trotting toward them. He was still a good distance away.
“What was that back there?” Xander said. “Stopping to put up the door. Come on.”
“I didn’t want him in the house,” Keal said. “When we go back, he could be hiding somewhere.”
“Till Time sucks him back,” David said.
Keal looked at him in the mirror and smiled. “Forgot about that,” he said. He turned the wheel, put the car in drive, and drove around the bend. When David looked, Phemus was still coming.
F
RIDAY
, 2:02
P. M
.
They drove through town and out the other side. Keal followed the winding road past the turnoff to Taksidian’s Pinedale house, then turned around. Cruising slowly back into town, he stopped at a gas station, where they all used the bathroom, and Keal bought a bagful of first aid supplies.
Back in the car, he looked at his watch. “Think Phemus is back in his own time now?”
Xander looked back at David, who shook his head no. “We’ve been able to stay in the worlds thirty, forty minutes,” Xander said.
“Longer,” David said, “when we went from world to world without returning to the house first.”
Keal snapped his head toward him. “You
did
that?”