Timescape

  “You bet I am,” David said. Spooked, confused, frustrated, scared out of his pants for himself, his sister, his whole family: if it fell under the category of This is a nightmare! Wake me up now! David was feeling it. He said, “I thought . . . and Toria coming up here . . . I mean . . . what . . . why?”

  “Exactly,” Keal said. His rock-solid voice was like granite compared to the shifting sand of David’s shaking words. “What and why? If whoever put the teddy bear up here wanted to lure Toria upstairs, what do they want and why do it this way? Why not just go downstairs, grab her, and run? That’s more their style, right?”

  “They surprised us before,” Dad said. “When they took Gee—my wife—it happened so fast, we had no idea it was coming. Maybe they figured they couldn’t do it like that again.

  As for why . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know. To drive us out of the house? Hold her until we leave?”

  Toria’s skin went a whiter shade of pale as he spoke. David slipped out from under Dad’s arm and sat beside her. He nudged her with his shoulder and whispered, “It’ll be all right.”

  She looked at him, unsure. She appeared tired and frightened and far from the bouncy, confident girl who was both funny and a pesky sister.

  “Where did you last see it?” Keal said, nodding toward Wuzzy.

  “The MC,” Dad said. “The night—” He frowned at David and Toria. “The night the big guy took Gee, Wuzzy recorded his voice.”

  “The big guy?” Keal said.

  “Phemus,” David said.

  Keal nodded. “What did he say?”

  “It was in some language I don’t know,” Dad said. “I’ve been meaning to find someone who can translate it, but . . . well, it’s been pretty crazy around here.”

  Keal leaned over and snatched Wuzzy up by an ear.

  “Careful,” Dad said. “We don’t want to erase what he said. Wuzzy could record new sounds over it.”

  “The switch is set to playback,” Keal said, examining the panel on the bear’s back. “How do you get it to speak?”

  “Squeeze his paw,” Toria said.

  Mom’s voice came out of the furry face, speaking Toria’s name.

  Despite having heard it minutes before, David felt like someone had given his heart a sharp poke. His breath turned into a lump and lodged in his throat. He swallowed hard and looked at Toria. She’d felt the poke, too: her eyes glistened. A drop ran down her cheek.

  “Mom?” Xander yelled from down the hall. His footsteps reverberated through the floor. He hit the door frame. His hair was in a particularly messy state of bedhead. That and his wide eyes gave him the appearance of a wild man. He looked from face to face, disappointment deepening as he didn’t find the one he had expected.

  Dad stepped forward. “It’s just a recording, son. Someone got hold of Wuzzy.” He explained what had happened.

  David knew his brother’s pained expression matched his own.

  “Could Mom . . .” Toria’s voice trailed off. She was staring at Wuzzy again. “Could Wuzzy have recorded her after she was taken? Could that be her, you know, talking from wherever she is now?”

  David’s mouth dropped open. Mom—since she’d been taken? Someone would have had to take Wuzzy to her, then come back with it. Could finding her, reaching her, be that easy? Yesterday, when Xander had yelled at Phemus—Where’s our mother? Bring her back!—David had thought it couldn’t possibly be as simple as that. Because their own efforts to find her had been so difficult, dangerous, and futile, somewhere inside he’d assumed that’s the way it was, that no one could just go get her. But Phemus could, couldn’t he? Did he know where she was, even though it seemed that she was traveling from world to world? David wasn’t sure how this could help, but it was something, a new possibility, a new reason to hope, a new—

  “No,” Xander said. “Wuzzy already had Mom’s voice.

  That night, before she was taken. After Phemus scared Toria, David and I slept in her room with her. We all said good night. Mom, too. I checked the memory chip in Wuzzy and heard it. That was her saying good night to Toria.”

  David’s shoulders slumped. Of course, he thought. As soon as the smallest spark started to rekindle his hope, something would stomp it out again. That’s the way the house worked.

  That’s the way their lives were these days.

  He said, “It’s mean, teasing us with Mom’s voice. Like . . .”

  He searched for the word that described how he felt. “Like torture.”

  Keal nodded, thinking. “That may be it,” he said. “Wartime tactic. A psychological assault. It’s done all the time, in all kinds of ways: demoralize the enemy, crush their spirits so they don’t have it in them to fight anymore. Maybe nobody was after Toria. Maybe they just wanted her or all of you to hear your mother’s voice, get your hopes up, so they could be knocked down.”

  Somehow that was even worse, David thought. Intentionally hitting them in such a sensitive spot.

  “Well,” Xander said, his face tight, “it just ticks me off. It makes me want to fight harder.”

  “That’s always the risk to using psychological warfare,” Keal said. “It can backfire.”

  Dad let out a heavy breath and sat beside David. He patted the bench on his other side, and Xander sat too. They watched Keal. He was obviously thinking things through. The man had been a stranger to their family until last night, when he showed up with Jesse, but David felt he’d known him a lot longer. He’d heard that shared extreme experiences, especially involving life-and-death situations, drew people together quickly. They’d certainly had that: the fight with Phemus, the struggle getting out of the future world, saving Nana from getting sucked to the Titanic. David thought sharing their secrets about the house, the portals, and Mom’s kidnapping also contributed to his feelings for Keal: the man had become an ally when they badly needed one.

  Not a coincidence, he thought again.

  Keal held Wuzzy by the ear and paced about the small room. Something about Toria’s expression caught his eye, and he made a sweet face, totally out of sync with his stern, get-it-done appearance. He handed her the teddy bear, which she clutched close to her chest, and resumed pacing. Muscular as he was, and with the family seated in a line facing him, Keal seemed like a commander about to address his troops.

  Except when he finally did, he sounded more like Mom: “You guys have school tomorrow, right?”

  Dad nodded.

  “But . . .” Xander started.

  Keal stopped him. “Everybody back to bed.”

  David wished he had a camera for the expression on Xander’s face.

  CHAPTER

  twenty - eight

  THURSDAY, 5:05 A.M.

  In his dream, David was in the third-floor hallway. He was opening door after door, looking in, moving to the next one. Every time he did, one of his family was standing in front of an open portal. Xander or Dad or Toria faced him, waved, then would get sucked backward through the portal, fast as a blink. It didn’t bother him, though. He watched it happen, shut the door, went to the next one. Xander: no expression, just a wave, then he was gone. Dad: same thing. Then Toria. Over and over, door after door. Open, shut, open, shut. He started to feel the pull himself. He opened a door, saw Xander wave and then fly back through the portal. His shoulder pulled in toward the antechamber. He shut the door, but the tugging continued. Shaking him as he tried to walk.

  He woke, felt the shake. Someone was leaning over him, shaking his shoulder. He jumped. “What—?”

  “Shhhh.”

  The room was dark. Even the moonlight had stopped glowing through the window sheers.

  “Xander?”

  “It’s me,” a deep voice whispered. “Keal. Don’t wake your brother.”

  “Keal?” David turned his head. He could barely make out Xander’s form in bed, a blacker shadow against black shadows. The clock on the nightstand between their beds said it was still an hour before they had to get up. “What’s going on
?”

  “You want to see Jesse?” Keal whispered.

  “Now?”

  “Best time. Hospitals are quiet this early. Just a few tired nurses. We’ll sneak in, sneak out. Nobody the wiser. Your dad suggested I take you along.”

  “I feel like I was up all night, opening and shutting doors.” David tossed his covers aside. “But yeah, sure. Let’s do it.”

  “You and Jesse kind of hit it off, huh?”

  “I like him,” David said.

  Xander moaned and rolled over.

  David held his breath. He thought Keal did too.

  As soon as Xander’s breathing fell back into a slow rhythm, Keal whispered, “Get dressed. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

  CHAPTER

  twenty - nine

  THURSDAY, 5:33 A.M.

  Keal and David squatted beside a metal door with the numeral 2 stenciled on it. They were on the landing at the top of a flight of concrete steps inside the hospital. It was the same place where David had his arm set in a plaster cast. This time, instead of rushing into the ER, David had waited outside the building while Keal found a way in. Keal had come back out a side door and led David up the stairs.

  “He’s probably sleeping,” Keal whispered.

  David frowned at him. “Sleeping . . . or unconscious, as in a coma?”

  “That’s one of the things I’m here to find out,” Keal said. “I want to read his chart. You can see him for two minutes, that’s all. Deal?”

  David nodded. He wondered if Keal was sure Jesse had even made it through surgery, but he kept the question to himself.

  Staying low, Keal turned the handle and eased the door open enough to peek through. He shut it again. “Okay, I’m going in. I’ll find where he is, check for the staff, and come back for you. If I’m not back in five, get out of here. Oh . . .” He reached to a back pocket and produced a mobile phone. “It’s your brother’s. Call your dad. He’ll come pick you up.”

  “What about you?” David said. He checked the phone and saw that someone had already turned off the ringer.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Keal said. He winked, opened the door, and slipped through.

  David backed into a corner. It was no place to hide, but he felt better with a wall on either side of him. It was crypt-quiet in the stairwell.

  David pushed a button on the phone. The screen lit up, showing him the time. After an unblinking amount of time, waiting for a minute to click by, he lowered the phone. He knew it would be best if he didn’t think about things: he’d only scare or worry himself into an upset stomach. But he could take only so much of listening to his own breathing, feeling his heart pound, staring at the mustard-colored walls of the stairwell. Soon his mind started churning.

  What could happen that would prevent Keal from returning? If a nurse saw him, couldn’t he just claim he was there to see a patient and didn’t know when visiting hours were?

  At five thirty in the morning? Probably not.

  There was also a good chance the staff had been alerted to watch for him, the man who’d vanished after dropping off a stabbing victim. Jesse might have guards watching over him, just in case someone came to finish the job.

  In Pinedale? David didn’t think the town had enough cops to be so diligent. The hospital was small. He’d counted only a half dozen cars in the lot. The place might not even have its own security guard.

  Maybe it was a trap! A sting!

  Stop thinking, he told himself. Keal knows what he’s doing.

  I hope.

  A noise rushed at him from the stairs. He slammed back, deeper into the corner. Water was flowing through pipes against an opposite wall; the pipes rattled in their brackets. Nothing more. After a few seconds, it stopped. Silence again.

  How long had it been? A minute or two. No problem.

  Under normal circumstances, sneaking in to see a relative after visiting hours wouldn’t be such a big deal. They’d kick you out. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Jesse was the victim of an attack. He’d been brought in by a stranger who hadn’t stuck around. The town—because of Taksidian—was looking for reasons to get the Kings out of the house. Catching David here, now, could lead to all sorts of accusations, including charges that the family had hurt Jesse. Everything could come unraveled. They’d get arrested, taken away—Dad and Keal to jail, David and his brother and sister to juvenile detention or some child welfare facility. Mom would be gone. Forever.

  Stop thinking!

  David took a deep breath. He looked at the tops of his sneakers. Old Reeboks. Not his favorite Chucks. He’d lost one of them in the Civil War. That didn’t even sound weird anymore. He wondered if he’d get it back. Didn’t the worlds balance themselves out? What belonged there, went back; what belonged here, returned? Not the case with Mom. She—

  The door clicked and opened.

  Keal poked his head through. “Okay, come on,” he whispered.

  David went through the door and followed Keal down a long corridor. They tiptoed, but moved fast. Keal edged up to a corner, peered around it. He held his hand up. Then he slapped David’s shoulder and darted forward. As David passed the other hallway, he saw a nurse walking away from him. He picked up his pace and nearly tripped over Keal.

  Keal grabbed him and stepped close to a wall. “Just up here. Through those double doors. It’s the intensive care unit, so there’s a nurses station front and center. There’s a break room behind it. That’s where the on-duty nurse was when I went in.” He went to the doors, flashed his head past one of the windows set in them, then pushed through. David followed.

  They ran straight for the nurses station, which looked like a fast-food counter. At a perpendicular hallway, Keal shot right. As they skirted past doors on either side, David heard noises behind him: an electronic chirping and then footsteps. Keal whipped through a door, David right on his heels.

  David found himself standing at the foot of Jesse’s bed. The old man looked like a deflated balloon: wrinkled and barely there. His skin matched the color of the stark white sheets. Blue veins made a road map of his cheeks, temples, and forehead. His closed eyes seemed too deeply recessed; David could make out the ridges of his skull around each socket.

  Beside the bed, two IV bags hung from a chrome tree. A tube ran from each bag to his right arm. A machine mounted high on the wall beeped the rhythm of Jesse’s heart. A mountain range, reflecting the recent history of his heartbeats, scrolled across a small screen. Various digital readouts flashed with changing numbers. Another contraption consisted of a transparent cylinder, inside which a bellows puffed up and sank down with each of Jesse’s shallow breaths.

  David wasn’t sure if he should draw closer. Could he hurt Jesse simply by being there? He imagined all sorts of infection-causing bacteria wafting from his lungs, off his skin, attacking Jesse’s fragile body. There were so many machines, wires, and tubes—they seemed designed to ensnarl uninvited visitors. He turned his eyes to Keal, seeking permission.

  “Go ahead,” Keal whispered with a nod.

  David went around to Jesse’s left side, which looked free of medical clutter. Jesse’s head lay on an uncomfortable-looking pillow. His arms were flat on the mattress, close to his sides.

  This is what he’d look like in a coffin, David thought.

  Stop!

  He noticed now that tubes snaked into Jesse’s nostrils. His lips were as white as his skin, making it seem he had no lips at all, only a tight line under his silver mustache. Cautiously, David reached for Jesse’s hand. He stopped. It was bandaged—and incomplete. Where his index finger should have been, there was nothing. It was a gauze-wrapped gap, making the space between the thumb and fingers grotesquely wide. It looked like an alien hand. A faint red stain marked the spot.

  David stared at his own index finger, imagined it gone, taken. A tear rolled down his cheek. “I’m sorry, Jesse,” he whispered. He gently laid his hand over the old man’s.

  Jesse pulled in a jagged breath.

/>   David gasped. He swung his head to Keal, who was standing at the foot of the bed. Keal looked up from the clipboard in his hand and smiled.

  When David retuned his gaze to Jesse, the old man’s eyelids were fluttering. They closed, then opened halfway. His irises were the bluest David had ever seen, even more than Mom’s and Xander’s, which he’d always thought were movie-star perfect. Those sapphires angled toward David, and Jesse’s mustache trembled.

  “Jesse,” David said. He blinked, and the tears fell.

  Jesse’s lips parted, then closed again. His eyes did the opposite: they closed, then opened.

  “Don’t try to talk,” David whispered. “It’s okay.”

  The old man moved his head slightly one direction, then the other: no.

  No? No what? It’s not okay?

  Jesse said, “Dae.” The word was so airy and weak, it reminded David of a wisp of smoke.

  “I’m so sorry, Jesse,” David said. A fat teardrop splattered on the old man’s thin arm. “You came to help us, and . . . and . . .” He sniffed.

  Another almost nonexistent word eased out of Jesse’s mouth: “Stay.”

  David snapped his head around to Keal. “He wants us to stay.”

  “Can’t, David,” Keal said quietly.

  “But . . .” When he looked, Jesse’s eyes were closed, and his head was moving again: again, no.

  “No?” David said. “Don’t stay?”

  Jesse caught David in his eyes. They were so vivid, so alive, so unlike the body in which they were housed. His eyebrows slowly came together. David realized Jesse was giving him all the strength he had.

  The old man said, “Stay . . . together.” He blinked slowly.

  “You . . . and . . . Xan . . .” He inhaled, exhaled, inhaled.

  “Xander. Stay . . . together.”

  “Xander and me?” David said. “We should stay together?”

  Jesse’s head moved again, this time barely up and barely down.

  “When? All the time?”

  Jesse said, “Come . . . see . . . me.”

  “I’m here,” David said. “I came. You want Xander too?”