SUNDAY, 5:48 A.M.
“I was seven at the time,” Dad said. “My father brought us here.”
The four of them were sitting at the dining room table. Toria and David were tending to Dad’s and Xander’s head wounds. David had a nasty black eye and a bruise on his cheek and forehead that approximated the shape of the big man’s fist. Dad had given him Tylenol. When Toria went for the first-aid kit, David had said he felt well enough to help her.
“Grandpa Hank?” Toria asked. She dabbed at the back of Dad’s head with a Bactine-soaked gauze. It came away bright red. She wrinkled her nose at it and frowned. She tossed it in a wastebasket and stepped from behind his chair to the table where the supplies were neatly arranged.
He touched his wound and grimaced. “Yeah, Grandpa Hank,” he confirmed. “We came here when he got a job at the lumber mill. He had come out earlier and found the house for us.” His eyes became unfocused as he remembered. He shook his head. “It was just a house. I didn’t notice anything weird. Not for a long time.”
“The noises?” Xander said, across the table from Dad. His voice was sharp as broken bones. “How sounds here aren’t right? You’re saying there was none of that?”
“It was a year, at least, before I noticed anything weird.”
“But you did . . . eventually.”
Dad agreed. “I—” But Xander didn’t let him finish.
“So you knew!” Xander said. He hissed and pulled his head away as David parted his hair. He was after the laceration caused by the wall light that had fallen on Xander’s head. “Stop!” Xander said, pushing his brother away.
“There’s a lot of blood,” David said.
“Let David clean it, Xander,” Dad told him. “Who knows what kind of bacteria that hallway’s got?”
Xander scowled at him. “Like I should listen to you.”
“I’m still your father.” He stared Xander down unapologetically. He was firm about his role in his family’s lives.
Regardless of mistakes, Xander thought. He said, “Could have fooled me. You lied about coming here for a job . . . and when you were acting like you’d never seen the house before . . . even going to the real estate office! It was all a big scam!”
“Xander!” Toria scolded. Xander would have snapped at her as well, trying to take over for Mom already. But just as quickly, Xander knew that was wrong and unfair. Toria had often been like that, a mini-Mom. If Toria fully understood what had happened the way Xander did, she wouldn’t be playing Nurse Nightingale for their father. She would be too angry and, even more, too distraught over the loss of their mother. Upstairs, Dad had said, “We’ll get her; we will,” and Toria had believed him.
“Wait a minute,” David said. “You’re the little boy in that picture?”
Dad nodded.
“That was your lightsaber I found?”
Dad smiled, more sad than happy. “I was a Star Wars freak.” “My bedroom was your bedroom!” Toria said.
“Whoa,” David said, thinking. “You were that family that disappeared. So the father didn’t kill his wife and kids and then himself.”
“Grandpa Hank couldn’t put down an old dog. After Mom was taken, he tried finding her. Every chance he could, he’d go through one of the doors and come back. Each time he got more depressed and worn down. And the house wasn’t content to have taken my mother. The weird sounds continued, even got worse. When the big man started showing up again, that was it. My dad said he was afraid he was gonna go insane or that your Aunt Beth and I would be kidnapped next.”
Xander noticed his father had been referring to Grandpa Hank as “my dad”—the first time Xander could remember him doing that. Xander believed his dad was back there, seven years old and reliving his experiences in this house.
Dad continued, his voice more strained. “I know it was the hardest decision he ever made, but he took us away. For our sake and his sanity, we left this house and never returned. He made us promise to never come back. I was so young, and as I got older, he kept reinforcing how important it was that we stay away.”
“You should have listened,” Xander said. His words were as cold as the glare he cast on his father.
Dad nodded. “Deep inside, I knew that someday I would come back and look for her, my mother. If there was no finding her, then I would at least discover what had happened and make sure it never happened again. When my dad— Grandpa—died last year, I felt released from the promise I’d made him. I couldn’t stop thinking about this house.”
Xander practically screamed. “So you bring us into it, your family? How stupid is that? Why would you do that?”
Dad gazed at Xander for a long time. At last he said, “I am sorry. I thought I could control it. Keep you guys away from the rooms. Keep them—” He looked up at the ceiling as if seeing “them.” “Keep them out of the house. As I said, when I had lived here before, it was a long time before we realized there was something weird about the house. I thought I would have time to secure everything. I thought even if you kids found the false wall, you couldn’t get up the stairs. I thought finding my mother was something I could do on my own, without anyone finding out.” David squirted ointment onto the top of Xander’s head. He said, “Did you know about the rooms before your mother was taken?” Xander, David, and Toria had been told their paternal grandmother, Grandpa Hank’s wife, had died in a car accident many years before. They had not talked about her much.
Dad said, “We discovered them right before she was taken. When we started hearing noises at night and finding footprints on the floors—around then is when I think my father found the rooms.”
“So your mother gets taken and the rest of you up and leave?” Xander said accusingly.
“I didn’t want to, Xander. I cried and begged to stay. And, for years afterward, to come back. I hated my father for a long time. I was an adult before I fully realized why he had given up.”
Xander’s face was pinched. He said, “Oh, sure. Gotta get on with your life. Can’t grieve forever.”
“It wasn’t like that. He feared for all of our lives. And for his sanity. He came very close to losing it: he’d lost his wife, and the things he experienced in those . . .”
Xander stood abruptly. His chair flipped over backward. His head and shoulder knocked into David’s arms. The gauze and tape David had been holding flew out of his hands. Xander said, “Well, we’re not leaving! Do you understand? We’re not going anywhere. I don’t care what excuses Grandpa had, he never should have left his wife, your mother! I’m not leaving my mother here!” Tears erupted from his eyes, instantly wetting his cheeks. “You can talk all you want about saving the rest of the family, about getting away from this house before it makes you go crazy . . . But we’re not leaving without her. We’re not!” He bolted toward the dining room entrance. He shoved David so hard the boy fell, plopping down hard.
Dad stood. “Xander!” he called. “That’s not what I’m saying! I—”
Xander went through the front door and slammed it on his father’s words.
Xander had no idea how long he paced the woods in front of the house. Through the trees, the sky had lightened to steel gray, then caught a bit of the approaching sun’s orange fire.
He dropped onto the front porch steps. Behind Xander, the door opened and closed. His father sat beside him, too close.
When he put his arm across his back to drape his hand over his shoulder, Xander pulled away.
“I’m not saying we have to leave,” Dad said.
“Not yet, you aren’t.”
“Not at all, Xander. Not until we have your mother back. I’ve made some mistakes, some horrible mistakes. I endangered all of you. Your mother, my wife, has suffered, is suffering, because of my . . . stupidity. I just hope—”
The way his voice broke, the wet sounds he made, made Xander look. His father was trying to be tough, resolute. His grief was getting in his way. At that moment, it was impossible to hate the man. As terrible as his actions had been, he was right; he was still Xander’s father. The grief in his face was as clear as the grief in Xander’s heart. His father had not wished this on them.
Dad swallowed hard. “I hope you can forgive me, and that you’ll help me set this right.”
“Set it right?” Xander squinted at him.
He nodded. “Help me work this house. Work those rooms. Figure it all out. Get her back. Xander, get her back!”
Despite it all, the pain, the loss, the anger, Xander found himself smiling. There was nothing okay about any of this, but Dad’s words sounded so good. They were exactly what he wanted to hear. Several sentences formed in his mouth, but he bit them back. Finally, he said, “Now you’re talking.” He brought his hand up around his father’s back and hugged him. Dad showed him an expression of utter relief. It said, Thank you for not making me lose my son on the same morning I lost my wife.
Behind Xander, the door opened again. Two pairs of feet. Toria came down a step and sat next to Dad. She leaned her head into his side. David brushed against Xander, stopped halfway down the stairs. He leaned back against the railing. Xander knew it did his brother and sister good to see him and Dad friends again.
Xander smiled at David. He said, “We’re going to rescue Mom.”
All of the emotions Xander was feeling crossed over David’s face: sadness and worry, doubt and fear, and, finally, hope and determination. David’s eyes scanned the front of the house, as if seeing it differently. Then, he took in Toria and Dad before his attention settled on Xander.
David nodded. He said, “Let’s do it.”
NOT THE END . . .