Timescape Read online

  “I thought Taksidian tried to be creepy and mysterious.”

  “Slippery,” Dad said. “Hard to pin down, to figure out. I think that’s more his style.”

  “Well,” David said, “that’s pretty creepy and mysterious.”

  The front door opened. David narrowed the gap in the leaves before him. A scene suddenly played out in his imagination: Taksidian stepping out onto the front stoop, raising a huge Arnold Schwarzenegger–type machine gun, laughing insanely, and opening fire on their position.

  Instead, Taksidian bounded down the three steps and walked to his car. He was whistling some tune and tossing and catching his keys.

  Just an Average Joe skipping off to terrorize children and snip off the fingers of old folks, David thought.

  Freak.

  The Mercedes engine roared. A dark-tinted window slid down, releasing a symphony of strange music: chanting vocals, banging drums, and plucky strings—played so loudly it hurt David’s ears from across the yard. The car reversed, swung around, and peeled down the rutted drive.

  Xander pushed back from the bush and rose to his knees. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Where?” David said.

  Xander said, “Check out the house.”

  Simultaneously, Dad said, “Follow Taksidian.”

  “Follow him?” Xander said. “If we’re going to find dirt on the guy, it’ll be inside.”

  Dad shook his head. “I want to know who he sees. If he’s planning another attack on us, he’ll talk to people. We need to know who. Who can we trust, who we can’t.”

  “You follow him,” Xander said. “Dae and I will stay here.”

  Dad said, “I don’t think—”

  “Dad,” Xander said, “we may never have this chance again. We’re actually getting the upper hand for a change. We have so many things to do, we’re going to have to split up sometime.”

  Dad considered it. He turned to David. “Dae?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You should have seen us get away from the berserkers this morning.”

  “The what?” Dad held up his hand. “Tell me later.” He pulled out his mobile phone and turned to Xander. “Got yours?”

  “Right here,” Xander said. He fished it out of his back pocket.

  “I got a signal,” Dad said.

  “Me too.”

  Dad said, “I’ll call you if he heads back this way. Otherwise, we’ll coordinate a rendezvous after we see what’s what.”

  “Got it,” Xander said.

  Dad stood. “Keys?”

  “In it.”

  Dad took off, booking through the woods like a deer.

  David reopened a space in the bushes. “Think it’s empty?” he said.

  “No other cars.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “Besides, what about the garage?”

  “One way to find out,” Xander said. He pushed through the bushes.

  He was halfway across the yard when David emerged. “Xander!” David whispered. It wasn’t the stealthy approach he had imagined.

  Xander strode across the concrete pad in front of the garage and went around to the other side. David reached the corner just as Xander was pulling his face from a closed window.

  “There’s an old Jeep in the garage,” Xander said. “But it’s up on blocks, and the engine is hanging from a chain.” He hurried around David, cut across the front of the house, and jumped onto the front stoop.

  Before David could stop him, Xander pounded on the door. David backed away. He scanned the perimeter of the clearing: so dark and dense, someone could be watching them and they’d never know.

  Xander pounded again. He tried the knob. “Locked,” he said. “Come on.” He hopped down and stopped in front of the bay window. He cupped his hands around his face and looked in.

  A part of David expected Xander to reel back in horror, saying something like, Bodies! Bodies everywhere! Run!

  “What is it?” David said quickly: Whatizit?

  “A living room,” Xander said. He took a step back to examine the glass. “These don’t open.” He studied David for a moment. “You with me?”

  David walked toward him. “All the way.”

  “Good. Let’s try around back.”

  David watched him slip around the corner. I can do this, he thought, swallowing hard. He headed for the corner, his mind crowded with a thousand possible scenarios, all of them bad. At least he didn’t hear Xander screaming—yet.

  CHAPTER

  forty - seven

  THURSDAY, 5:30 P.M

  Upon hitting the main road, Taksidian turned toward town.

  Ed King hung back as much as he dared. A half mile later, he almost lost the Mercedes. He didn’t see it turn off, but he noticed a dirt road coming up on the right. He passed it slowly and caught a glimpse of two red orbs glowing in the trees. Brake lights. He pulled over, let a car pass, then reversed to the road.

  This one wasn’t as treacherous as the ruts leading to Taksidian’s house. Probably a hunter’s road, he thought. It was on the other side of the main road from the house and obviously more heavily traveled. It brought him higher and higher into the hills, sometimes steeply, sometimes gradually, but always up.

  He had not seen another sign of the Mercedes since the turnoff, but he’d passed no other roads. It had to be up ahead. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if it came roaring back toward him. Turn his head, pretend to be someone else, maybe; hope Taksidian didn’t stop to question him.

  He crested another rise and stopped. The road leveled off here for a stretch. It cut through a valley, formed by woodsy hills on both sides. A few hundred yards farther on, the Mercedes was parked in the weeds on the side of the road. Its windows were too dark to see if Taksidian sat behind the wheel. No movement. No brake lights.

  Mr. King killed the Bug’s engine and poked his head out the window: no music.

  He depressed the clutch and let the car roll back down the hill. He coasted onto the shoulder and got out. He didn’t see any way to hide it this time. He only hoped he could leave before Taksidian. At least it was a car the man wouldn’t recognize as belonging to the Kings. Taksidian couldn’t get any nastier, but if he knew they were investigating him, he could make their task much more difficult.

  He stayed close to the tree line as he approached the sedan. Twenty yards behind it, he crouched and watched. When nothing drew his attention, he moved in. The passenger’s window was down. No one in the front seat. He crossed the weedy shoulder and peered in. Empty.

  He examined the woods. It wasn’t as dark or dense as Taksidian’s property; this was more like the woods around the Kings’ house.

  Noises reached him. Voices drifting in the still air. They were faint, but he thought they were coming from the hill on the same side of the road as the Mercedes. He went among the trees and spotted a trail. It wound through the trees, up the hill.

  He spent a full minute staring into the woods in all directions. Seeing no one staring back, he stepped onto the trail and began following it.

  CHAPTER

  forty - eight

  THURSDAY, 5:45 P.M

  “Got it!” Xander said.

  He was standing on a trash can to reach a window set into the back of the house. They had tried all the ones they could reach without assistance, plus a sliding glass door. The ground at the back corner of the house, opposite the garage, sloped to a creek. And wouldn’t you know, it would be the window in that corner, the hardest one to reach, that would be unlocked.

  “Doesn’t it open wider?” David said.

  Xander grunted. “That’s it.”

  “Can you fit? I could try.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “What’s inside?” David said.

  “Give me a minute.” Xander pulled himself onto the sill. He twisted sideways and slipped in. His hips and butt wedged in the opening, but he wiggled them through. He stuck his head out. “It’s a bedroom.” He leaned out sideways and extended hi
s hands toward David.

  David crawled onto the trash can. It wobbled under his knees, then his feet. He had kept it steady for Xander, but without anyone holding it for him, it became another obstacle to overcome. It tilted, almost fell, then came back under his weight. He grabbed Xander’s hands, and the can toppled out from under him. It tumbled down to the creek. Xander hoisted him inside.

  When David spilled off the windowsill to the carpeted floor, Xander said, “You’ve been packing on the pounds, man.”

  “I doubt it,” David said. “All the stuff we’ve been doing? I’m ready for the Olympics.” He stood and looked around. The room wasn’t so much dark as it was gloomy. As starkly furnished as a motel room: bed, nightstand, dresser, lamp.

  “Nothing,” David said. “Like the kitchen and living room.” He had looked through the sliding glass doors into those areas. They were as plain as a slice of white bread. Some magazines on a coffee table, a glass on a table—they were the only things suggesting that someone lived here.

  Xander stepped out into a hallway. David was right on him. He resisted the temptation to grab hold of his brother’s shirt. The ordinariness of the place didn’t fool him. This was Taksidian’s lair. There was nothing ordinary about the man; he was certain that under its humdrum appearance, there was something very unordinary about this house.

  “Bingo,” Xander said.

  Here we go.

  His brother was standing in the doorway of another room. David pushed past him and entered the room.

  A countertop ran the length of one wall. On it, two computer monitors displayed screensavers: On one, a crest of some kind, depicting an eagle with the tail of a snake. The tail formed a circle around the bird. On the other was a painting. An ancient battle. A warrior stood atop a hill, slashing his sword down at combatants rising to fight him. David realized that the mound on which the warrior stood wasn’t earth, but corpses.

  Scraps of paper and computer printouts littered the rest of the countertop.

  Two filing cabinets were so stuffed with documents, none of their drawers could close. The walls were plastered with maps, diagrams, photocopies of the pages of books, newspaper articles, photographs . . . every sort of printed matter David could imagine.

  The wall on David’s right seemed dedicated to war. A world map was marked with battles throughout time: Tanga (AD 1914); Avarayr (AD 451); Kohima (AD 1944); Jerusalem (AD 70); Hastings (AD 1066); San Jacinto (AD 1836); Troy (1193–83 BC) . . . hundreds of them. Around the map, Taksidian had taped articles about weapons, strategies, commanders: the discovery of gunpowder in ninth-century China; the first atomic bomb, called “Little Boy,” detonated on Hiroshima in 1945 . . . Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great. Lines in different-colored ink connected the battles to each other and to the articles.

  “It’s like what we’re doing in the MC,” David said. “He’s mapping history, but only wars.”

  “Not only wars,” Xander said. He was staring at another wall.

  As David took it in, his stomach cramped tighter and tighter.

  The wall was covered from floor to ceiling with pictures, diagrams, notes—all of them related to the Kings and their house.

  CHAPTER

  forty - nine

  THURSDAY, 5:57 P.M.

  Ed King reached a sloping meadow. He put his hands on his knees and breathed. He had stopped hearing the voices about five minutes ago, and the trail didn’t seem to lead anywhere. He stretched his back and looked around. A picturesque hillside, but nothing more. No cabins, no fire pits, no people . . . no Taksidian.

  Where are you? he thought. What is this all about?

  Then he heard it: the slamming of a car door—faint in the distance.

  The dull hum of an engine, revving, revving.

  Music—that quick-rhythm weird stuff from Taksidian’s car.

  No, no!

  He ran. Before reaching the woods, he saw the black Mercedes on the road. It crested the hill over which he had parked. Its hulking body rose up and slammed down, it had taken the hill so fast. Then it disappeared.

  He heard it sliding to a stop. The top of its roof reappeared, barely visible on the other side of the hill. A cloud of yellow dust caught up with it and engulfed it. When it cleared, Taksidian was standing on the road, gazing at him.

  He stumbled down farther and stopped. “Taksidian!” he yelled.

  The man’s head and shoulders lowered below the level of the hill, as though he had crouched down.

  “Taksidian!”

  A dozen seconds later, the car door slammed again, and the roof glided out of view. A wall of dust rose in its place.

  Mr. King tore down the hill.

  How’d you do it? he thought. How did you return to the car without my seeing you?

  He had to have known he was being followed. No other way.

  How long before Taksidian reached his house? Ten minutes. Less—a lot less if he hauled. And he was hauling!

  Running, in the trees now, he pulled the mobile phone out of his pocket. He flipped it open with his thumb. His foot snagged on a tree root, and he fell. He flipped and slipped, crashed into a tree. The phone was not in his hand. He scampered back up. There: banked up on a rock.

  Don’t be broken! Don’t be!

  He picked it up. It appeared to be fine. Except for the words flashing on the screen: No service.

  No!

  He pushed Xander’s speed-dial number anyway. When he held the phone to his ear, it was as silent as a dead man.

  He ran. Under branches, over crevasses, through thickets of leaves, twigs, thorns. He crashed out of the trees and tumbled into the weeds. He scrambled up, stumbled onto the road. The phone was still out of range. He took off for the hill and the Bug.

  Taksidian had a couple minutes’ head start on him. But he only needed to get to where his phone worked. Then he could call, tell Xander and David to get away from the house before Taksidian arrived.

  He ran to the hill, down to the Bug.

  He stopped so fast, his feet slid out from under him. The two tires on the driver’s side of the car were flat. Long, ragged gouges in their sidewalls showed where Taksidian had slashed them.

  Mr. King got to his feet. Checked the phone: no service.

  He pulled open the VW’s door, climbed in, and started the engine.

  I don’t care about the tires, he thought. If it’ll roll with them flat, it’ll have to be good enough.

  But he wasn’t sure it would roll. He put the car in gear, popped the clutch, and punched the gas. The engine roared. The car lurched forward, bounding up and down as though he’d driven over boulders.

  He cranked the wheel, and the Bug’s front end swung around in the road.

  Go! Go! Go! he cheered it on, though the desperation cramping his mind was anything but cheery.

  The shredded tires thumped, throwing him up, sideways, around, each time. Thump . . . thump . . . thump.

  The feeling of driving over boulders never changed. He bounced in his seat. The steering wheel jerked one way, then the other, but somehow he kept the car moving in a somewhat straight direction. He thought that if his course were drawn on a piece of paper, it would look like the scrabblings of a shaky-handed old man.

  But he was moving . . . and building speed: thump-thump-thump- thump-thump.

  Every fifteen or twenty thumps, he squinted at the phone. No bars, no service.

  Come on! Come on!

  He shifted, pressed his foot harder against the gas pedal.

  The bug slid around on the dirt road as though on ice.

  Mr. King’s head hit the ceiling. His shoulder slammed against the door. Still, he willed the car to go faster.

  I’m coming, boys, he thought, praying that somehow his words would reach his sons. Hide . . . fight . . . do whatever you have to do! I’m coming!

  CHAPTER

  fifty

  THURSDAY, 6:14 P.M.

  “Take a picture,” David said.

  Xander
pulled out his phone, stepped back from the wall, and snapped a shot. The flash made each piece of paper appear to jump out at David: photographs of the Kings coming out of the house, David sitting in class, Dad climbing into the Pathfinder, Toria opening the oven—seemingly taken from outside the kitchen window; diagrams of each floor of the house, including the third. In each of the antechambers, Taksidian had scribbled words in a language David didn’t know. He didn’t even recognize the letters.

  Xander snapped another picture.

  The photo that jumped out at David was of Dad pumping gas into the Pathfinder. The heads of David, Xander, and Toria were blurry shadows behind the windows. It was the same gas station where they had watched Taksidian talk to the mechanic earlier today.

  A memory hit David’s brain like a blast of liquid nitrogen, freezing it. He grabbed Xander’s arm.

  “He knows!” David said. “Taksidian knows we’re here. He knows we followed him.”

  “David, no! He can’t. How do you—”

  “The stops he made on the way to his house! The grocery store, the fast-food place, the gas station. Xander, they’re the exact places I said he would go when you wanted to follow him. In the exact same order. Remember, I said, ‘a hundred nothing things at a hundred nothing places.’ ”

  “But how—”

  “Who cares how? He knew all along. He was playing with us. He was showing us he knew. I thought something was weird, but I didn’t get it!” He made a fist and wanted to punch himself.

  Xander looked down at the phone. He tapped a button.

  “What are you doing?” David said. “We have to get out of here! Now!”

  “Calling Dad,” Xander said. “He’d have called us if—”

  Music came out of the tiny speaker. Xander glared at the phone. His forehead wrinkled like an old man’s. “What—?”

  “That’s the music Taksidian was listening to in his car,” David said.

  Xander turned on the speaker function. The weird chanting filled the room, then stopped.

  “It’s called an infinity transmitter,” Taksidian said, his voice deep and gravelly. “It allows me to turn on the microphone of any phone for which I have the number. No ringing, just an open connection. So I can listen to everything said within earshot of your phone. Shouldn’t bring phones to school, you know.” He laughed a hearty laugh that echoed.