Dianne Salerni - The Eighth Day

Jax strapped the watch above his dad’s Rolex while Riley wheeled the generator up to the electric meter on the side of the house. “So—it’s like a parallel universe?”

“No, because it doesn’t run parallel. It skips over days. And this is the same universe. Things you do on this day stay done.” Riley narrowed his eyes at Jax again. “What’d you do last week? You must’ve been pretty freaked out.”

“Uh . . .” Try as he might, Jax couldn’t keep his eyes from darting to the back of the property.

Riley looked too and saw the handle of the Walmart cart sticking out from beneath the bush. “Is that—? Aw, Jax.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I should’ve known a Walmart break-in on a Wednesday night wasn’t a coincidence.”

“I thought it was the zombie apocalypse!” Jax said. “How was I supposed to know any different? How did you know, your first time? Why you , anyway? Why me? What are we doing in a different timeline?”

“We inherited it. Me, from my family. You, from your father.”

A shiver trickled down Jax’s spine. “You’re telling me this happened to my father?”

“Every week, between Wednesday and Thursday. You only get it from your father’s side,” Riley said, attaching cables from the generator to the electrical box, “which is why I wasn’t sure you’d be one of us at all.”

“One of us?” Jax croaked. “Aren’t we human?”

“Of course we’re human.” Riley looked shocked. “What kind of bad science-fiction movies have you been watching?”

“Where’s everybody else?”

“People living in the normal timeline can’t see into Grunsday, and vice versa.”

“So they aren’t here?”

“Oh, they’re here. We just can’t see them.”

“Shouldn’t there be some sign of them? Uh, their clothes . . . ?” Jax imagined puddles of clothes dropped wherever the people were standing, sitting, or lying. Had there been pajamas in the beds at the Ramirez house? He didn’t remember.

“Nah. Whatever’s on your body goes with you. But that doesn’t mean the people aren’t still there.” Riley pointed at the house across the street. “If that house burned down today, the occupants would die.”

“It could burn down between Wednesday and Thursday?”

“In the regular timeline, the house would explode into flames. It would be gone in an instant.” Riley unscrewed the gas cap on the generator and checked the fill level. “Fetch me one of those containers in the shed.” Jax did as he was told, and Riley called after him. “Things you do on Grunsday have consequences in the other time stream. Break stuff, move stuff around, and they stay broken and moved. And it looks pretty freaky to people on the other side.”

“That can’t happen very often,” Jax reasoned, handing him a gasoline can, “or people would notice.”

Riley filled the generator. “It happens all the time. Explosions from unexplained gas leaks. Poltergeists. Crop circles—how do you think they appear overnight?”

“Are there a lot of people like us in Grunsday?”

“A few, but not all can be trusted. Your father wanted to make sure you ended up with someone who would watch out for you. That’s why I couldn’t let you live with your cousin.”

Jax clenched his fists, suddenly reminded of why he resented Riley. “You never explained any of this to me.”

“I had to wait and see what you were. Since your mother was a Normal, you only had a fifty percent chance of being one of us. Most of us transition for the first time when we turn ten or eleven. For some, it doesn’t happen until the twelfth birthday.” Riley powered up the generator. Jax expected a loud roar, but it hummed with surprisingly little noise. “It’s a late bloomer who gets it on the thirteenth birthday—and a dud who never gets it at all. If your birthday had passed without you having a Grunsday, I would’ve let you finish the semester here and then sent you to live with your cousin.” He added under his breath, “In fact, I was counting on it.”

Jax steadied himself against the house, because this really was the final blow. He could’ve lived with Naomi after all, if this bizarre thing hadn’t happened to him.

Except it had happened.

And Jax’s father had kept it a secret.

“Where were you last week?” Jax couldn’t vent his anger at his father, but Riley was a handy target. “Why weren’t you here?”

“I had to make an overnight trip to meet someone who lives only on Grunsday. I had no choice.”

“Someone who what ?”

“Normals live seven days a week and don’t know about the eighth one. But there’s a race of people who don’t experience the regular seven. And then there’s people like you and me, who transition between the two time streams. We call ourselves Transitioners.”

“Wait, back up,” Jax said. “A race of people who live only on Grunsday . . .”

“Right. They exist on this one day and skip over the other days of the week. They can’t interact with anyone confined to the normal seven days, although they frequently live in those people’s houses.” Riley leaned on the dolly. “Any place that’s ever been called haunted probably has one living there, eating the food and moving stuff around.” He looked like he was waiting for Jax to reach some kind of revelation.

But Jax was already there. “Mrs. Unger’s ghost . . .”

“Yeah,” said Riley. “She’s real.” Then he looked at the second floor of Mrs. Unger’s house and made a thumbs-up sign.

Jax lifted his head.

A girl with long, ghostly-pale hair was watching them from an upstairs window.

EVANGELINE DROPPED THE CURTAINand walked away.

Now there was a second Transitioner living next door—a newly developed one, if yesterday was any indication. New Boy had been terrified, banging on Mrs. Unger’s door and peeping in windows all over the neighborhood. Then he’d dragged groceries home in a cart and carried them inside like he was preparing for a siege. Evangeline had watched his antics from the upstairs windows. It would’ve been funny if he hadn’t obviously been scared half to death, and she wondered why the boy had been left so ignorant.

Not that Evangeline could claim to know a lot about Transitioners. Maybe they let all their children discover the eighth day by surprise.

It seemed as if he was getting an explanation now. She’d only caught a few words of the conversation by the shed, but apparently New Boy would be living here. She didn’t like it, but no one cared what she did or did not like. And she’d tolerated the other boy for eight months, so what was one more?

Of course, in their timeline it had been several years since the first boy arrived. He’d been not much older than New Boy was now—maybe thirteen, with dark-auburn hair in need of a haircut and bruises on his face like someone had beaten him. He’d walked with a crutch. Evangeline had assumed he was a runaway passing through town and thought if she kept herself out of sight for a few days, he might move on without ever being aware of her.

But then he’d stood on the lawn between the houses, leaning on his crutch, and called out her name—her family name. “I know you’re there,” the boy had shouted at the house. “The Taliesins told me. I don’t mean you any harm.”

Evangeline’s first instinct had been to flee, to dash out the back door and take off running down the street. But if he really did know the Taliesins . . .

Cautiously, she had approached the window. He raised his left hand when he saw her, identifying himself.

“Will you come out?” he’d called.