So they tried the spell that way, and then they tried working it inside a pentagram they made with masking tape on the floor, as Angie had seen such things done on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, even though Marvyn said that didn't really mean anything, and they tried the herbs again, in a special order that Marvyn thought he remembered. They even tried it with Angie saying the spell, after Marvyn had coached her, just on the chance that his voice itself might have been throwing off the pitch or the pronunciation. Nothing helped. Marvyn gave up before Angie did. Suddenly, while she was trying the spell over herself, one more time — some of the words seemed to heat up in her mouth as she spoke them — he collapsed into a wretched ball of desolation on the floor, moaning over and over, «We're finished, it's finished, we'll never get out of Thursday!» Angie understood that he was only a terrified little boy, but she was frightened too, and it would have relieved her to slap him and scream at him. Instead, she tried as best she could to reassure him, saying, «He'll come back for us. He has to.»
Her brother sat up, knuckles to his eyes. «No, he doesn't have to! Don't you understand? He knows I'm a witch like him, and he's just going to leave me here, out of his way. I'm sorry, Angie, I'm really sorry!» Angie had almost never heard that word from Marvyn, and never twice in the same sentence.
«Later for all that," she said. «I was just wondering — do you think we could get Mom and Dad's attention when they get home? You think they'd realize what's happened to us?»
Marvyn shook his head. «You haven't seen me all the time I've been gone. I saw you, and I screamed and hollered and everything, but you never knew. They won't either. We're not really in our house — we're just here. We'll always be here.»
Angie meant to laugh confidently, to give them both courage, but it came out more of a hiccupy snort. «Oh, no. No way. There is no way I'm spending the rest of my life trapped in your stupid bedroom. We're going to try this useless mess one more time, and then … then I'll do something else.» Marvyn seemed about to ask her what else she could try, but he checked himself, which was good.
They attempted the spell more than one more time. They tried it in every style they could think of except standing on their heads and reciting the words backward, and they might just as well have done that, for all the effect it had. Whether Marvyn's herbs had truly lost all potency, or whether Marvyn had simply forgotten some vital phrase, they could not even recapture the fragile awareness of something almost happening that they had both felt on the first trial. Again and again they opened their eyes to last Thursday.
«Okay," Angie said at last. She stood up, to stretch cramped legs, and began to wander around the room, twisting a couple of the useless herbs between her fingers. «Okay," she said again, coming to a halt midway between the bedroom door and the window, facing Marvyn's small bureau. A leg of his red Dr. Seuss pajamas was hanging out of one of the drawers.
«Okay," she said a third time. «Let's go home.»
Marvyn had fallen into a kind of fetal position, sitting up but with his arms tight around his knees and his head down hard on them. He did not look up at her words. Angie raised her voice. «Let's go, Marvyn. That hallway — tunnel–thing, whatever it is — it comes out right about where I'm standing. That's where El Viejo brought me, and that's the way he left when he … left. That's the way back to Sunday.»
«It doesn't matter," Marvyn whimpered. «El Viejo … he's him! He's him!»
Angie promptly lost what little remained of her patience. She stalked over to Marvyn and shook him to his feet, dragging him to a spot in the air as though she were pointing out a painting in a gallery. «And you're Marvyn Luke, and you're the big bad new witch in town! You said it yourself — if you weren't, he'd never have bothered sticking you away here. Not even nine, and you can eat his lunch, and he knows it! Straighten your patch and take us home, bro.» She nudged him playfully. «Oh, forgive me — I meant to say, O Mighty One.»
«You don't have to call me that anymore.» Marvyn's legs could barely hold him up, and he sagged against her, a dead weight of despair. «I can't, Angie. I can't get us home. I'm sorry… "
The good thing — and Angie knew it then — would have been to turn and comfort him: to take his cold, wet face between her hands and tell him that all would yet be well, that they would soon be eating popcorn with far too much butter on it in his real room in their real house. But she was near her own limit, and pretending calm courage for his sake was prodding her, in spite of herself, closer to the edge. Without looking at Marvyn, she snapped, «Well, I'm not about to die in last Thursday! I'm walking out of here the same way he did, and you can come with me or not, that's up to you. But I'll tell you one thing, Ex–Lax — I won't be looking back.»
And she stepped forward, walking briskly toward the dangling Dr. Seuss pajamas…
…and into a thick, sweet–smelling grayness that instantly filled her eyes and mouth, her nose and her ears, disorienting her so completely that she flailed her arms madly, all sense of direction lost, with no idea of which way she might be headed; drowning in syrup like a trapped bee or butterfly. Once she thought she heard Marvyn's voice, and called out for him — «I'm here, I'm here!» But she did not hear him again.
Then, between one lunge for air and another, the grayness was gone, leaving not so much as a dampness on her skin, nor even a sickly after–taste of sugar in her mouth. She was back in the time–tunnel, as she had come to think of it, recognizing the uniquely dank odor: a little like the ashes of a long–dead fire, and a little like what she imagined moonlight might smell like, if it had a smell. The image was an ironic one, for she could see no more than she had when El Viejo was lugging her the other way under his arm. She could not even distinguish the ground under her feet; she knew only that it felt more like slippery stone than anything else, and she was careful to keep her footing as she plodded steadily forward.
The darkness was absolute — strange solace, in a way, since she could imagine
Marvyn walking close behind her, even though he never answered her, no matter how often or how frantically she called his name. She moved along slowly, forcing her way through the clinging murk, vaguely conscious, as before, of a distant, flickering sense of sound and motion on every side of her. If there were walls to the time–tunnel, she could not touch them; if it had a roof, no air currents betrayed it; if there were any living creature in it besides herself, she felt no sign. And if time actually passed there, Angie could never have said. She moved along, her eyes closed, her mind empty, except for the formless fear that she was not moving at all, but merely raising and setting down her feet in the same place, endlessly. She wondered if she was hungry.
Not until she opened her eyes in a different darkness to the crowing of a rooster and a familiar heavy aroma did she realize that she was walking down the hallway leading from the Santeria shop to … wherever she had really been — and where Marvyn still must be, for he plainly had not followed her. She promptly turned and started back toward last Thursday, but halted at the deep, slightly grating chuckle behind her. She did not turn again, but stood very still.
El Viejo walked a slow full circle around her before he faced her, grinning down at her like the man in the moon. The dark glasses were off, and the twin scars on his cheeks were blazing up as though they had been slashed into him a moment before. He said, «I know. Before even I see you, I know.»
Angie hit him in the stomach as hard as she could. It was like punching a frozen slab of beef, and she gasped in pain, instantly certain that she had broken her hand. But she hit him again, and again, screaming at the top of her voice, «Bring my brother back! If you don't bring him right back here, right now, I'll kill you! I will!»