The Keepers (13 page)

But that was it. That was the key. She could walk through walls; he could see the future. And because he knew the future, he could outmaneuver her. In a way, he could
outnumber
her. It was now 11:29. He was here now, on Sunday night, and he'd be out here again Monday night, waiting for the girl
at the end of the block, where she seemed to be headed.

With that, he secured the box in its pouch and cut across to Glendon Lane, one street over from Bromley. When he hit the sidewalk, he turned and ran north, the same direction the girl was headed. If she kept on as she was, the girl would emerge at the end of the block onto Marie Street, just across from a tiny neighborhood park where Horace used to play when he was little. His bare feet slapped against the concrete, stinging, hoping to beat her there. When he arrived, he pulled out the box again—
the girl, already here, hooded and hurrying down the sidewalk, coming straight for him; her head low; a glance over her shoulder and a quickening step; and there, far behind her, another figure, coming into the glow of the distant streetlight at the far corner
.

“That's me,” Horace said aloud. He was both behind her and in front of her, an incredible thought—he had her surrounded. “I've got you.”

And then the figure at the far end of Marie Street came more fully into the light
, and Horace realized something was wrong.
Not himself, not at all; long limbs, a spider's gait; arms and legs and arms and legs; a crawling, towering mass of a man, smudged and smoking but dark as black—Dr. Jericho
.

Seeing the thin man again was like waking into a nightmare—all the more so because this Dr. Jericho was even more horrible than when he'd last seen him on the bus. Through the box, the man was crisp and clear, but smudged and blurry at the same time, as though he were both certain to be here
on this street tomorrow but unpredictable in every other way, and this made him look more monstrous than ever—a bigger, boiling, tentacled version of himself. And he was headed this way, fast. He was chasing the girl. He
would be
chasing the girl.

“Run,” Horace said aloud, uselessly, as the girl approached. “Hide.” Only ten feet away now, her face showed no fear—just a fierce, chiseled concentration. She wasn't running, but clearly she was aware of the thin man. Around her neck, tucked into the unzipped V of her sweatshirt, the pendant she wore was shining bright and plain to see—a long, thin body and wide double wings, a tail like a sword. Not a cross—a dragonfly. And it was exquisite, beyond beautiful. Horace gaped at it as the girl passed by.

Dr. Jericho pulled closer still, surging forward horribly after the girl. And now the girl turned abruptly and broke into a run, barreling into the road. Horace rushed after her, struggling to keep track of today's world and tomorrow's simultaneously. He risked a glance back with the box as he ran. Twenty yards behind—
Dr. Jericho, spilling into the street, multilimbed and growing bigger, spreading across the road and the sidewalk, a ghastly insect
.

Horace tripped over the opposite curb. He ducked beneath the branches of a tree and came to a halt at the edge of the park. The park was triangular shaped, streets running along each side. It had a few benches and a creaky swing set and a couple of those old wobble horses on thick springs.
There was nowhere to hide—no buildings, no nothing—but the girl had vanished.

Horace, box in hand, watched as the cloud that was Dr. Jericho crept up onto the curb and churned forward between two of the trees at the park's edge—
his long, shifting, multiple faces, swinging from side to side; great hands parting two tall trees like curtains
. Horace backed slowly away, up into the park. Every bone in his body shouted at him to flee, and even the box itself seemed to want to cringe away from the sight of the thin man, but that was illogical. Dr. Jericho wasn't here—he wasn't
now
. Horace had to stay, had to know what would happen to the girl. Maybe then he could help, if something bad happened. He could help change the future. Maybe warn her so that none of this would happen in the first place.

But as Horace watched and hoped, as the horrible thin man who wasn't a man at all drew nearer, his appearance began to change:
blurring lines growing sharp; ghostly limbs solidifying; many shifting faces meeting, becoming one face, a face with button eyes turning in Horace's direction, growing closer; the many-bodied beast becoming one towering man, and that man staring at Horace, approaching
.

What was happening? Could he see Horace through time? Horace held his ground. Dr. Jericho leaned forward, looking Horace straight in the eyes through the impossible barrier of the box's blue glass, and Horace was just beginning to understand what that might mean when Dr. Jericho frowned and narrowed his terrible eyes, cocking his long, thin head, and
then: the long, horrid hand, with its four-knuckled fingers, swiping viciously through the air at the box itself.

Horace cried out. He stumbled back, arms pinwheeling. The box tumbled into the sand beneath the wobble horses. Dr. Jericho could not get to here from there, could not reach him from the future, absolutely not—and yet he had tried. He'd known. Horace snatched up the box, brushing it off and inspecting it. The lid had slid closed in the fall. Horace did not even consider opening it again.

Mr. Meister had warned Horace against revealing the box to Dr. Jericho, even with the leestone's protection. Now it was clear that Dr. Jericho could sense the box being used—even from the other side of the glass! Horace's stomach crumpled as he realized that the girl must be in even greater danger. That strange white pendant . . . no doubt Dr. Jericho could sense her using it, too. But if she was still here, hiding somewhere, Horace could save her. He could draw attention away from her to himself. And he ought to be able to do so without fear. Dr. Jericho would be drawn to the box, but he could not harm Horace. Right? Horace closed his eyes. He swallowed. He squeezed the box, feeling its constancy and strength. And then he opened it.

The thin man, creeping between the trees; but now turning back toward the open box, cocking his head as though trying to pick out a faint sound, swinging his head to look directly at Horace; stepping out across the sidewalk again, moving fast, so fast
—Horace gasped and took a step back, jolted by Dr. Jericho's slashing
swiftness. Dr. Jericho surged after the box, and Horace turned and ran, leaving the box open, luring the thin man away from the girl. Horace left the park behind, rounding the corner at full speed. A block up, he slowed to check the box. Clearly the box hadn't been built to be used while running. The thin man was right there—
leaping forward, opening his mouth as wide as a football, a ferocious bite at the air
. Horace almost felt he could hear the man's long teeth gnashing together. Then the view through the box went completely dark, and Horace understood: the box was seeing into the inside of Dr. Jericho's mouth, inside his throat, occupying the same space tonight as Dr. Jericho's horrible body would tomorrow.

Horace turned and ran, block after block, the soles of his feet burning now. At last he stopped, exhausted. It would have to be far enough. He hoped the girl had been able to get away. Horace raised the still-open box, gasping for air, looking back along the way he'd come—
nothing; the dark street, the empty sidewalk
. “Where are you?” Horace murmured. He spun slowly in place. And then—
Dr. Jericho, close enough to touch, huge and glaring, hunkering down on the sidewalk, one ghoulish finger pointing straight into the box, straight into Horace's face
. The man shook his long head, wearing a thin smile like a scar. He spoke, his mouth forming words Horace couldn't hear. The man's lips curled slowly and greedily around two final words, and Horace understood them:
Find . . . you
.

Horace slammed the box closed. He pulled it tight against his gut. He wilted to his knees, there on the empty sidewalk.
He thought he might drown in his own exhaustion. The solitude of the neighborhood at night closed in around him. The burn of his muscles and the sting of his feet and the stitch of his lungs were all that remained of what he'd just done. Horace held them like the last rags of a dream. Dr. Jericho couldn't get to him here, tonight. Of course he couldn't. The truth was, Horace had been alone all night. There was no girl here, no Dr. Jericho. None of what he'd just been through had really even
happened
.

Not yet.

T
HE NEXT NIGHT, AT
11:18, H
ORACE CREPT DOWNSTAIRS
. H
E
took the toolshed key from the nail by the back door and slipped outside. The night was windy and cool, invigorating him. He felt confident and ready—in the right place at the right time. The box was at his side.

He'd had no school that day—Memorial Day—so he'd slept late and spent most of the afternoon thinking about the night before, wondering what to do next. It was a grand puzzle, just the kind of problem his mind was suited for. He'd decided he could not leave the experiences of the previous night unlived. That was the right word,
unlived
, because he had begun to believe that the future the box revealed was dead—the territory of ghosts. At first, he tried to convince himself that he had already done what he needed to do. He had lured the thin man away from the girl's hiding place.

But was that really true? After all, the girl hadn't hidden yet. The chase hadn't even happened. There was no guarantee that they
would
happen, because the box could be wrong. And unless the events of tonight unfolded exactly as he'd seen, the timing of the whole sequence of events would be off! The box had already been opened at specific moments in time, in the past. Those moments had to align with what would happen tonight, in order to lead Dr. Jericho away from the park. And if they didn't, the girl might not be saved.

But maybe—just maybe—none of it had to happen in the first place. He now knew the girl was coming. He knew when and where. He could intercept her and warn her, or at least scare her off. It'd be the last thing she was expecting.

Quietly, Horace let himself inside the toolshed to wait for the girl. The shed was really a tiny old garage, swaybacked and decrepit, with a gravel floor. Most of its paint had peeled away, and the single window was covered in a curtain-thick layer of grime. When he was younger, Horace used to play in the shed sometimes, but now they only kept lawn stuff in here. It still had a bunch of other junk in it that the previous owners had left behind—shelves full of weird old cans and broken tools, a workbench propped up on homemade sawhorses, a refrigerator door, an ancient and chainless bicycle hanging from a hook like a side of beef.

Horace swiped the cobwebs out of a corner with an old rake. He stood beside the hanging bicycle and waited,
squeezing the flat tire and spinning the wheel occasionally. At 11:27, he stilled the bike and went completely quiet. The girl would be here any minute now. But now he had a sudden, troubling thought—if he was deliberately changing the future he saw, would he feel sick again? The way he had with the sandwich? He began to wrestle with that new thought but was interrupted as a shadow sprouted out of the opposite wall. A small leg, and then an arm, materializing through the wooden slats. And now the girl's face, hooded and pale, swinging inside to peer around, disembodied. Horace sat utterly still, amazed to see this in person. The face disappeared, but a moment later the girl backed into the shed completely, silent and magical, as if she were made of the darkness itself.

Horace held his breath. Now that she was here, he had no idea what to do. The girl snuck over to the window and tried to peer out, looking up toward Horace's bedroom. She licked her fingers and tried to rub the grime from the glass. He thought he heard her curse quietly to herself.

Horace stood up, not bothering to be quiet. His feet scuffed against the floor, and his shoulder knocked over the rake. The girl actually jumped into the air like a cat, spinning to face him. The dragonfly around her neck swung in the dark, gleaming. She pressed herself against the wall. Her face was livid with shock.

“Wait,” Horace said, feeling stupid. “I knew you would be here. I . . . saw you coming.”

The girl glared at him. “How did you—? You saw me. You
saw me just now.” She clutched the dragonfly, hiding it in her hand.

Horace laid a hand on the box at his side. “Yes, and I—”

But in a flash, the girl was gone. She turned and bolted through the wall before he could say another word.

Horace stood there for a few seconds, stunned, and then went after her. He sprinted out the door just in time to see the girl disappearing through the fence on the north side of the lawn. He realized this was exactly the future he'd seen last night—she'd run from the shed because of Horace. “The thin man,” he called after her, hopefully not loud enough to wake anyone, but loud enough for her to still hear. “He's coming. He's going to find you.”