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Chapter 1
Liam Mackenzie would have looked forward to the Saturday night weenie roast if not for the imminent threat of destruction hanging in the air.
“I’m scared,” Madison whispered. Just out of earshot, Liam’s dad poked the fire and bent to add more logs. “I wish I could just tell everyone the truth and have the place evacuated.”
“Wouldn’t do any good,” Ant muttered. “In fact, you’d end up in an asylum.”
It was just a small neighborly gathering, the Mackenzies and the Parkers, plus one other. Liam’s parents had come up with the idea, a way to truly welcome Madison Parker, her five-year-old brother Cody, and their parents to the neighborhood. Anthony Carmichael—Ant to his friends—was the extra. The sky was darkening, the fire good and hot, the beef hot dogs unwrapped.
“Who wants a roasting stick?” Mr. Mackenzie asked.
“Me! Me!” Cody yelled, jumping up.
“Careful with that,” Mrs. Parker said as the boy grabbed the long, sharpened stick. It had been soaking in a bucket of water for the past hour so it wouldn’t easily catch alight when held over the fire with a hot dog on the end. She helped him spear it, and he tentatively waved it over the fire. “Hold it still,” she said. “Not in the flames—hold it up a bit—that’s better.”
As the adults engaged in chit-chat, Liam leaned sideways in his chair. “Let me see the message again, Maddy.”
Madison frowned. “Not here.”
She was all about movie director Tim Burton tonight, wearing a t-shirt with The Nightmare Before Christmas characters all over it, and carrying a white-and-grey clutch with the dog from Frankenweenie. And clutch it she did.
“Come on, nobody’s looking,” Liam insisted.
She extracted a folded sheet of paper. Since she sat between the boys, both Liam and Ant leaned in to read it.
6:52 PM. Liam’s house. Keep Ant out.
The curiously specific instruction still mystified Liam. “Why Ant but not Madison and me?” he wondered aloud.
“The message is for me, so it probably wouldn’t mention me by name,” Madison said.
“Okay, but why just Ant? Why does he have to stay away but not me and you?”
Madison’s curious habit of writing herself messages in the night wasn’t just a form of sleepwalking. The information had been sent by her future self using an echo wand. Liam wished he could tell the truth about it, but eighty-something Madison had warned against disrupting the timeline. The echo wand was buried in the yard. Knowing the danger her messages were putting them in—or would put them in—what if she destroyed the wand in an attempt to avoid confrontations with aliens? Everything would change. Her future would unravel.
Liam had seen her future as well as his own. But he hadn’t seen Ant’s. What would happen if his friend defied the instruction and entered the house just before 6:52? The truth was, anything could happen. He could die.
There was also Ant’s premonition to consider. Last weekend, while Liam had been off battling Gorvian time grubs, his worried friend had used the echo wand to take a peek into the very near future and check on the state of affairs. Ant had seen himself arriving at Liam’s house . . . or rather a hole in the ground where the house had once stood. The house had been utterly pulverized.
Or would be. If the future was set in stone as Liam believed, the question was not so much if the house would be pulverized but when. Tonight? Was that what the message warned of?
“Why keep Ant out?” Liam said again, shaking his head. “Why not us, too?”
“What are you guys looking at?” his mom called, breaking through the adult conversation.
Liam glanced up to find all four parents looking his way. He and Ant jerked away from Madison and left her alone with the sheet of paper as though it were something distasteful.
To her credit, she refrained from stuffing it back in her clutch and looking even guiltier. Instead she shrugged and waved the paper in the air. “Just getting some feedback and ideas for a story I want to write.”
“Oh,” her mom said, half her attention on Cody as the boy leaned toward the fire with his slowly darkening hot dog. “Well, come on, let us in on the plot.” She gestured toward the other parents. “Maybe we can help.”
Liam ground his teeth together. Why did adults have to be so nosy and annoying?
Luckily, Madison kept her cool. “No way. Sorry, Mom. I love you, but this is not your thing at all.” She folded the paper and carefully tucked it away.
All four parents laughed and returned to their own affairs, leaving Liam, Madison, and Ant to continue their highly sensitive discussion. “It’s 6:35 already,” Ant whispered. “Do you think I have time to roast a dog before the event?”
“You have time for anything you like,” Liam retorted. “You’re not going inside the house. You can sit here chewing while Madison and me are annihilated.”
“We’re not going inside,” Madison said firmly. “I don’t care what the message says or doesn’t say. If something bad is going to happen to the house, we’re staying out here at a safe distance.”
Liam opened his mouth to argue, to say that time couldn’t be altered, that if future-Madison was suggesting her past self go into the house with Liam, then that was exactly what would happen. He decided to hold his tongue, though. There was no point debating the issue. The next twenty minutes would decide things.
Still, no matter how sure he was that the future could not be altered, Ant’s premonition had to be a mistake. Everything was quiet right now, the air still and the temperature only a tiny bit on the cool side. It was an almost perfect evening for a weenie roast.
None of that would stop a laser bolt from space, though. Or a meteor. He looked upward, half expecting to see a flaming ball with a fiery contrail heading toward the small town of Brockridge.
“No matter what,” Madison warned, “all three of us stay outside. Agreed?”
Both Liam and Ant mumbled their agreement.
At that moment, Ant’s driver Barton emerged from the darkness of the lane and caused a break in the adult conversation. “Can I help you?” Liam’s dad said, getting to his feet as the dark figure ambled up the driveway. “Oh, it’s you.” He stood and held out his hand. “Barton, right? I don’t think we’ve properly met. Want a hot dog?”
Ant had a frown on his face as the adults exchanged introductions. “Weird,” he whispered. “Barton never leaves the car and butts in like this.”
After a few minutes of small talk, Barton excused himself from the parents and moved toward Ant. “Excuse me for interrupting, young sir,” he murmured. “It’s nearly time, is it not? And this is something I felt I had to see.”
A look of understanding fell over Ant’s face, and he turned to Madison. “He overheard me talking to you on the phone when you called this morning. I was heading into town at the time. I might have repeated out loud what you told me.”
Madison nodded. “You repeated it once or twice, yes.” She smiled at Barton. “I guess we should have let you in on this properly since you have, um . . .” She gestured toward Liam’s house, which stood thirty or forty feet away.
He smiled and gave a single nod. “A special interest in this residence? Yes. I hope you don’t mind if I join you on this occasion?”
Our gang is growing, Liam thought absently.
“Liam!” his dad barked suddenly. “Don’t just sit there. Get the poor man a chair.”
“Huh?”
“There’s another fold-up chair in the laundry room. Go grab that, would you?”
His mom chimed in. “And bring the glow sticks. I think they’re in the closet in my room. Top shelf on the left.”
Liam felt a chill. He could feel Madison and Ant staring at him. He even saw, out of the corner of his eye, Ant sneaking a glance at the time on his phone. Liam didn’t need to see it to know the significance and the timing of this turn of events.
“Don’t go inside,” Madison whispered.
“Liam!” his dad barked again.
Barton turned and held up a hand. “It’s okay, Mr. Mackenzie, I don’t need a chair. I’ve been sitting all day. All a chauffeur ever does is sit.”
Liam’s dad huffed a laugh while still managing to scowl at Liam. “Whether you stand or sit is up to you, Mr. Barton, but you should still have the choice. Liam! Get the chair and glow sticks.”
With Madison and Ant staring wide-eyed at him, Liam shrugged and stood up.
Ant turned his phone around so Liam could see it. The time read 6:45 PM. Only eight minutes until the event.
“I can do this,” Liam said quietly, suddenly determined to be in and out in record time. “Five minutes tops. Be right back. Stay here.”
He dashed past Barton, who looked on with narrowed eyes. Was he confused by the exchange or eagerly awaiting the outcome?
Five minutes in and out, Liam thought as he tore across the lawn, up onto the deck, and in through the French doors. Ant’s vision of a destroyed house ate away at his gut, but his brain suggested he would survive no matter what, because he’d already proved the universe wasn’t done with him yet. He’d returned to life twice during his recruitment as one of the Ark Lord’s soldiers. His own vision of the future featured an elderly version of himself and Madison. He would survive whatever life tossed at him over the next seventy or eighty years.
Still, the prospect of impending annihilation had his heart pumping. How could he survive a laser bolt or meteor from space?
He grabbed the folding chair from the dumpy laundry room first, not caring that he bashed the walls with it on the way out. The room was undecorated anyway.
Next he hurried into his parents’ room and yanked the closet doors open. Flipping the light switch on, he stood on tiptoes and ran his hands across the top shelf. Where were the glow sticks? Ah, right there—a whole box of them bought specially for an outdoors party such as a weenie roast. They were for kids, really, and Liam wasn’t a kid anymore, but maybe his mom just wanted to light up the lawn to prevent anyone from tripping. It didn’t matter as long as he got them and the chair outside pronto.
His fingers brushed against the box, but he couldn’t get hold of it. He tried jumping, then unfolded the chair to stand on. How much time did he have? He couldn’t have been inside more than two minutes, surely? Three at the most.
Placing a foot in the middle of the seat, he hoisted himself up—and the chair’s fabric ripped. His foot shot through a hole, and he staggered, grabbing at whatever dresses hung nearby. A few hangers came loose, and he growled with annoyance as he tried to untangle himself from everything.
He thought he heard a door open, and he paused to listen. Hasty footsteps. Then a pause and a whispered voice from the hallway: “Liam? Where are you? Hurry up!”
Madison? What was she doing in the house?
A terrible feeling came over him. The specifics of her message, the timing . . . All of it seemed to be coming together. Which meant the house might very well be destroyed within the next minute.
“Madison, get out!” he yelled, kicking at the ripped chair.
Then again, what if he tore out of the house and absolutely nothing happened? How would that look to his parents?
He fumbled with the handful of dresses for a second, then threw them down in frustration. Sort them out later, he thought. If there’s a later. He made a leap for the shelf and batted at the box of glow sticks.
“Liam, get out of there!” Madison yelled from the bedroom doorway, her voice much sharper and clearer now.
“I can’t reach the stupid glow sticks,” he yelled back. “You’re taller. Come help me—”
“Leave them! We have to get out!”
Liam made one last attempt at grabbing the box and managed to hook it closer to the edge of the shelf so he could get a firm grip on them.
Then he froze.
First he heard a faint whispering sound, then a rumble. After that, a tremor started under his feet. His fingers were still on the box of glow sticks, which vibrated under his touch. He felt the floor twist as the tremor increased. Earthquake, he thought with a jolt of terror. Before his eyes, a crack appeared in the wall and drywall dust trickled out.
He heard shouting and Madison calling to him. He glanced toward the window. Although dark outside, there was enough light to see both his parents’ cars in front of the garage.
The cars were starting to rise, along with the garage, driveway, and everything else.
Paralyzed, Liam watched with disbelief, his fingers resting on the box of glow sticks on the shelf. Then the floor bucked, and his knees gave out. He sprawled on the floor and just had time to see solid rock moving upward outside the bedroom window before the room tilted violently and he was flung deeper into the closet. The doors snapped closed, and then one came loose and whacked him on the head. At that point the room lights went out, and he was in darkness with an awful feeling in his stomach, the sort of feeling associated with descending in a speedy elevator. He heard Madison scream.
The noise was terrifying: groaning and crashing, the rending of metal, creaking and cracking, and above it all a continuous scraping sound that reverberated all around. And throughout the ordeal, Liam was pummeled by the contents of the closet and slammed back and forth against tilting walls.
Then came a deafening crash. He slammed into a wall, and heavy objects pummeled him in the darkness.
Chapter 2
When Liam woke in pitch-black darkness, he was spread-eagled on his back buried in what felt like shoes and dresses, with a busted closet door pressed painfully against his right arm. He immediately started choking on dust as he fought to extract himself from the mess.
With shaking hands, he covered his mouth and nose with his shirt as he twisted around and sat up. He couldn’t shift the broken closet door, so he maneuvered out from under it, flinging shoes aside. He stared blindly into the darkness, wondering how it could be so utterly black. He checked his face with one shaking hand, convinced his eyes had been gouged out. But no, his face seemed fine, his eyes still in their sockets. The dust was making him blink furiously, so maybe he’d been temporarily blinded.
Or maybe the house was buried under tons of rubble.
He breathed hard through his shirt, and finally found his voice. “Dad! DAD!”
No answer. All was eerily still.
“I’m alive,” he said loudly. Then: “Maddy! MADDY! Are you okay?”
He waited, listening hard. When he received no answer, fear gripped him again. What if she was dead? Crushed under falling debris or pierced by a rafter?
Trying hard to control his thudding heart, he took a deep breath. She couldn’t die, because he’d seen her in the future. He had to cling to that. Maybe she was just unconscious.
Speaking of which . . . He fingered a bump on his head. How long had he been out?
His parents had to be clawing their way through rubble to get to him by now. There were probably rescue crews on the way already. Liam knew very little about earthquakes and fallen buildings, but he was sure the structure was unsafe. If he moved around, he could cause something to shift, and the whole roof could fall in on him. He was lucky to be alive. If he hadn’t been in the closet, maybe he would be squashed under the bedroom ceiling right now, or crushed against the wall by the bed.
My phone! Eagerly, he fished in his pocket and pulled out his smartphone. Thumbing the ‘on’ button, he frowned when nothing lit up. If he could only see . . .
An idea leaked into Liam’s mind. The glow sticks! Where were they?
He felt around, finding shoes, clothing, bits of drywall, splinters of wood, and finally a box. He wished his hands would stop shaking as he jerkily ripped open one end and pulled out a bag. He dug his fingers into it, and a collection of long plastic sticks tumbled into his lap. He grabbed one and bent it sharply. Light flared immediately. He shook it from end to end, and a welcoming green glow began to illuminate the closet.
Then he looked at his phone with disgust. Its glass front was completely shattered, the entire thing bent out of shape.
He tossed it aside and crawled out of the closet to inspect his parents’ bedroom in the wan glow stick light. It wasn’t pretty. There really wasn’t much left to call a bedroom. The whole room had tilted. The walls had buckled and folded, and the ceiling hung low, just three feet off the floor at one end and maybe five at the other. It sagged even lower in the middle because of a split that ran its length, allowing pink insulation to hang down around splintered ceiling joists. It was like a monster’s underbelly had been sliced open.
It was staggering how much debris littered the floor. The bed was remarkably intact, though coated in dust. His mom’s dresser and chair remained in place, but her giant mirror was obliterated, her jewelry, hair brushes, and makeup lost.
Through the destroyed window, outside in the blackness . . . Liam stared hard, trying to figure out what he was looking at. Again he wondered how long he’d been unconscious. Maybe it was already hours later, the middle of the night. Still, even the blackest of nights offered smudges of light here and there, unlike this suffocating vacuum.
He thought about fumbling his way across the debris to get a better look outside, but something held him back. He wasn’t ready for that yet. First he had to find Madison and check the rest of the house. Surely it wasn’t all as bad as this.
Liam coughed some more as he crawled out of the closet toward the bedroom doorway, which seemed to have withstood the collapse despite the sagging ceiling. He remembered something about people in earthquake zones being taught to get out of buildings if there was time, but otherwise stand in a doorway, which acted as a brace.
Still crawling, he held aloft his glow stick and found his way into the hallway. The laminate wood flooring, which his dad had laid himself, remained glued together in large twisted sections. He peered into the shadowed hall, envisioning rather than seeing the doors to the laundry room and bathroom on his right, his own bedroom on the left, and the lobby leading to the kitchen and living room at the end. He knew those doorways were there in the darkness; he just couldn’t see them.
“Maddy?” he said softly.
Thinking of flashlights and candles in a drawer in the kitchen, he headed straight up the hall, staying low, afraid to stand. The ominous creaking and groaning reminded him that the place could collapse again, so he crawled in near darkness, illuminated in a lurid green glow which stretched maybe five feet ahead.
He passed the bathroom on the right and glanced inside.
“Maddy? Are you in there?”
Seeing and hearing nothing, he moved on to the laundry room, also on the right. There was nothing of interest except a squarish hole in the floor, a washer and dryer, a spilled laundry basket, and a fallen shelf.
“Maddy?”
His bedroom was next, on the left-hand side, and he couldn’t help thinking about his last remaining precious things, all of which had escaped being sucked into a wormhole last Saturday: a few favorite science fiction and fantasy novels, his Star Wars action figure collection he’d always kept stashed under the bed, his Frodo sword, and of course his laptop!—all most likely destroyed.
Liam called again for Maddy but was greeted only by silent darkness. Gritting his teeth, he crawled past and on to the lobby, then into the kitchen through a twisted doorway. “Maddy?” he said again as he entered and tried to penetrate the shadows with his glow stick.
Still no sign of her.
He edged down the kitchen’s sloping hardwood floor and bumped into the cupboard under the sink on the opposite wall. Something crunched under his knees, and he winced and jerked away. The floor at this end of the house was tilted sharply in two directions, but as the green glow filtered into the darkest corners, Liam realized the room wasn’t in bad shape all things considered. At least the walls weren’t buckled and folded, and the ceiling, though warped, was in one piece. The refrigerator leaned back against the wall. If the room had tilted the other way, the monstrous appliance would have launched across the room.
The door to the garage stood wide open, revealing a black nothingness beyond. The extension, which had been built onto the house many years ago, seemed to have vanished.
Liam sniffed. He smelled gas, but it wasn’t incredibly strong. He just had to hope it wasn’t seeping into the house. Perhaps it was escaping into the backyard.
Thinking of the backyard, he noticed again how utterly black it was outside the glassless window and adjacent double doors that led onto the deck. He had come in through those doors just a short time ago to fetch a chair; now they stood open with a few remaining shards of glass poking out of the frames, the rest having slid down the slanting floor to where Liam knelt.
He couldn’t get his head around what he was seeing outside. Or rather, what he wasn’t seeing. There was nothing—no light from the moon or weenie roast fire, no stars, no flashlights bobbing frantically as rescuers scrambled over rubble, no strobing blue lights from fire trucks and ambulances. Nothing at all except blackness. And no sound either, just an eerie silence.
Yet the doorway offered a clear exit from the house. Madison had probably already staggered outside, dazed from a head injury. Liam knew he had to follow her out.
He climbed to his feet, discovering for the first time that his left ankle hurt. Come to think of it, his right elbow hurt too, and when he touched it and held up his finger in the green light, there was something dark smeared there. Blood. He leaned against the countertop, his back to the sink, and checked himself over. His t-shirt was torn on the right side where the closet door had pressed against him. He was bruised there, too. The side of his face felt a little delicate as if he’d been scraped by something. His ear on that side felt sensitive, like someone had clobbered him upside the head.
But nothing serious. No broken bones, no gaping wounds.
He pulled open the drawer next to the sink—or rather yanked at it for half a minute until the handle came off, then levered it open with a bread knife. Inside he found the flashlight he had been expecting. He switched it on and dumped the glow stick on the floor.
Then he shone the flashlight outside onto the deck.
And saw nothing but a wall of rock.
Chapter 3
Ant Carmichael couldn’t help feeling anxious when Liam disappeared inside the house to fetch the chair and glows sticks. Madison couldn’t, either; she sat fidgeting and chewing her lip as precious minutes ticked by.
6:52 PM. Liam’s house. Keep Ant out.
It was already 6:49 PM.
“He’s not going to make it,” she murmured. “He shouldn’t have gone in.”
“No, he shouldn’t,” Ant agreed, suddenly feeling irritated. What was it with Liam? Why did he always have to leap into danger? He could have thought up a dozen excuses to avoid the place for an extra few minutes. Heck, he could have flat-out argued with his parents, obstinately refusing to go inside. Yes, it might have gotten him in trouble, but he would have been forgiven the very instant a laser bolt from space hit the house and obliterated it.
Instead, Liam had thought it better to dash inside and get the job done.
Idiot.
Madison repeatedly checked the time on her phone, her hand shaking. Meanwhile, Barton loitered in the background, clearly aware that something was about to happen.
Abruptly, Madison climbed out of her chair. “I’m going to hurry him up.”
Ant jumped to his feet also. “Maddy, don’t be an even bigger idiot than Liam. He’ll be out in a minute.”
“We don’t have a minute,” she said fiercely, waving her phone in his face.
Actually they did. Three minutes remained on the clock. Still, it was cutting it close.
He grabbed her arm, but she shook him off and whispered, “I’m not going inside. I’m just going to yell at him from the door to get his butt out here.”
Ant opened his mouth to say that a laser bolt from space wouldn’t care if she stood inside the house or in the open doorway; it would still fry her. But she was already hurrying across the lawn.
All four parents had been deep in conversation, but now they looked up. “Where’s she going?” Mr. Parker asked.
“Bathroom?” Ant suggested, returning to his seat and trying to look nonchalant.
That simple answer did the trick. They resumed their conversation, unaware of the impending doom. Ant wondered if he should try to move them farther away. Just how big a blast would this laser bolt cause? Would the parents be caught up in it? And Cody was just a small thing. He was standing away from the fire with a flashlight in his hand, pointing the beam directly into his face, a picture of innocence.
Ant grimaced. A laser bolt from space? Maybe he was jumping to the wrong conclusion about this latest sleep-written event. Maybe it was just another wormhole. If so, Liam and Ant might end up being sucked into it, but at least it wouldn’t be as dramatic as a massive beam of light incinerating the house.
He watched as Madison climbed the steps to the deck and stuck her head inside the double glass doors. He didn’t hear her calling Liam’s name, but he guessed she was doing so. Ant reached for his phone and thumbed it on. Roughly two minutes left.
When he looked up again, he had time to see Madison disappearing inside.
“What the—?” he growled. Looking up at Barton, he whispered, “She said she’d stay outside! What is it with those two?”
“I fear I’ve caused a major problem,” Barton said, reaching up to remove his chauffeur’s cap so he could smooth back his thinning hair. “If I hadn’t showed up here, Master Liam wouldn’t have been told to go inside and fetch me a chair.”
“Or glow sticks,” Ant muttered.
Barton leaned forward and spoke in Ant’s ear. “Are you expecting something other than a wormhole to appear?”
Any other time, Ant would have been surprised at how much Barton had picked up on. Right now, though, he didn’t care what the chauffeur knew. “I had a vision of the house being destroyed by the Ark Lord, but the Ark Lord is dead, so I don’t see . . . I mean, I might be wrong about this. Maddy’s never wrong about her messages, though. Something’s going to happen. We just don’t know what.”
“The Ark Lord?”
Ant shook his head. “Evil space villain with a massive prison ship. Liam lured him into a wormhole and then deactivated it. The Ark Lord had no space suit on, so he died.”
After a pause, Barton said, “And I take it Liam had a space suit on at the time?”
“No, he was a robot, so he didn’t need one.”
“Ah.”
No doubt Barton was putting several pieces together in his head. He’d seen things but had never been told the full story.
“Where are they?” Ant demanded, standing up again.
Liam’s dad looked up. “I was wondering that myself. How long does it take to find a chair?”
“And glow sticks,” Mrs. Mackenzie said.
Ant took a deep breath. “I’ll go look.”
As he strode across the lawn, he realized he was falling into the same trap as the others and labelling himself an idiot. This was exactly the kind of scenario he hated in TV shows and movies. Why couldn’t characters stay put? Madison had even mentioned him specifically in her sleep-written message: Keep Ant out.
He stopped, clenched and unclenched his fists, took another few steps, paused again, and ended up checking his phone once more.
6:52 PM.
He felt the blood drain from his face. If the event hadn’t happened already, it was about to, anytime within the next sixty seconds. Or forty seconds, or whatever was left . . .
A sudden rumbling caused him to freeze. This was it. He instinctively looked up, expecting to see a massive spaceship descending from the evening sky, or perhaps the creepy shadow of it blocking the stars, or maybe even just a fiery ball of destruction plummeting toward him. He saw nothing, but the rumbling quickly grew louder, and the ground began to shake.
“Earthquake!” one of the dads shouted.
Ant backed away from the house. A crack appeared in the grass, rapidly lengthening, snaking its way all around the main structure in a zigzagging circle but passing under the deck and then the garage. He watched, amazed, as the ground within that circle began to sink, taking the house with it, along with plant beds, bushes, part of the concrete path outside the front door, and the steps. Some of the deck descended too, but the rest stayed behind, cracking and splintering as it broke up.
He fell to his knees. Dimly aware of shouts and screams behind him, he remained where he was about twenty feet from the newly formed abyss into which the house was sinking. The modest property was gone in seconds, the roof vanishing from sight and leaving a shaft some fifty or sixty feet wide, its edges crumbling and cracking. Only the garage remained, along with the Mackenzies’ cars in the driveway.
The grinding, crashing, booming noises continued for another half-minute, gradually receding while the shouts and screams behind him grew louder. Parents rushed past him to the edge of the abyss and threw themselves down on hands and knees to peer over the edge.
“Get back, get back!” Mr. Parker cried, yanking at his wife’s feet as clods of turf tumbled away beneath her hands.
They all scrambled backward as sections of the shaft wall slid away and the rim widened. The twisted remainder of the deck teetered on the edge, secured by several concreted support posts that stuck firm. Dust plumed in the air, rolling outward across the lawn.
“Liam!” the Mackenzies screamed over and over.
“Madison!” her parents shouted.
A firm grip on Ant’s shoulder caused him to wake from his shocked paralysis. He looked up to see Barton leaning over him. “Is this what you saw?” he whispered.
Looking again, Ant realized it was true. This was exactly what he’d seen when he’d used the echo wand. From his limited vantage point in the lane, he’d assumed the hole in the ground was a burnt-out crater, but a closer inspection would have revealed to him this enormous, seemingly bottomless pit instead. The future really was set in stone, just open to interpretation.
“They’re okay,” he said softly. “Liam has seen himself as an old man. He’s definitely okay.”
“And Madison?”
“I . . . I don’t know. I think so. The message she wrote to herself said I should stay away, but it didn’t mention her or Liam because . . . because they were meant to be inside the house.”
“Meant to be?” Barton repeated, sounding almost cross.
Ant climbed shakily to his feet. “I think that if I’d been inside, I probably would have died. Or might have. But Liam and Madison were never in danger. Maybe they got banged up a bit, but they’re okay. I’m sure of it.”
The more he spoke, the more he felt sure of their safety . . . even though his logic about Madison might be badly skewed.
He heard crying and turned to find Madison’s little brother Cody standing alone, sobbing. Ant hurried over to comfort him, knowing the boy’s parents were far too busy yelling for their lost daughter. “It’s okay, buddy,” he said over and over. “Kind of scary, right? But Liam and Madison are okay. They’ll be back soon.”
I hope.
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