The House of Doors - 01 (18 page)

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Authors: Brian Lumley

BOOK: The House of Doors - 01
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“W
hat about Anderson and the others?” Despite the circumstances, Angela was almost herself again. Something of hope had returned, and with it anxiety for the safety of the majority. “Didn’t they come with you?”
“They were … incapacitated,” Gill answered. “That’s putting it mildly. They tried eating some of the fruit back there, which apparently didn’t want to be eaten! They were okay when we left, but not up to moving just then. If they’re coming, it should be anytime now. I would think the fall of night—seeing it coming—would spur them on.”
Haggie was logical for once. “If they set out an hour after you,” he said, “then they should take an hour longer. Maybe more. That Anderson’s a bit on the heavy side … .”
“We were delayed a bit on the way,” said Turnbull. Then he saw the warning on Gill’s face and said no more. Pointless and even foolhardy to scare Haggie right now by mentioning the hunter. They didn’t want him bolting again.
“But will they be able to see this place in the dark?” Angela was concerned for them.
Gill glanced at the mansion. “I should think so. It’s like a great blob of snow with the starlight on it.” Then his voice changed. “
Oh-oh!
”
The others looked up. The bat things had come down a tier, were perched shoulder to shoulder, a row of them, all along the rim of the second storey. Their feral eyes were unblinking, fixed firmly on Gill and the rest.
“We could do with lighting a fire,” said Turnbull. He immediately felt Haggie stiffen a little in his grasp. “Oh, and you have the makings, do you?”
Haggie wriggled again and Turnbull caught up his hands. Gill searched the little man’s soiled suit pockets. In the inside jacket he found a book of matches—and recognised it. “Clayborne’s,” he said.
“I … I picked them up from where he left them.” Haggie searched for a way to excuse himself. “They were beside the fire in the cave. They’d dried out. I … I didn’t want the fire to set them off and waste them. Precious things, matches.”
“You thieving shit!” Turnbull growled. He released Haggie, shoved him away from him. “God, you’re probably contagious! But I’m telling you: run for it if you like, but if you do—and if and when I see you again—you’re a goner.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Haggie answered. “Not yet.”
Gill and Angela got a few dry branches and bits of heather together. He tore a strip of lining from his jacket, set fire to it. In a little while the heather caught, then the twigs and branches. Flames leaped. Turnbull found some heavier branches. In little more than five minutes they had a blaze going. Now the only problem would be to keep it fuelled. Meanwhile, however, the bats had retreated to the topmost tier again.
Through all of this Haggie could only protest, “Jesus, you’ll frighten them off!”
“We
want
to frighten them off,” Gill told him.
“Not the bats and howlers,” Haggie snorted. “The things the howlers hunt!”
Turnbull rounded on him. “We lit this fire as a beacon. Now what’s more important to you? Your stinking guts or the lives of Anderson and the others?”
Gill looked at Haggie and thought:
That’s easy: his guts! Haggie has to
be
one of the lowest forms of—
Abruptly, his thoughts were interrupted. From far out in the night, a frenzied renewal or addition to the howling—in screams which could only be human!
“Jack!” Gill grabbed the big man’s arm. “Help me up onto the roof there.” Turnbull made a cup of his hands; Gill stepped into it, was thrust aloft, grabbed the rim of the parapet and drew himself up and over the low wall. Inside his head, he told himself:
I don’t believe I’m doing this! Maybe Turnbull’s dream theory isn’t so wild after all. Where am I getting all of this strength? Or is this the final flare-up before the candle expires?
“Toss up a brand.”
Turnbull yanked a fat, burning branch from the fire, carefully lobbed it up to Gill. He reached out, snatched it from the air. “This way!” he shouted then into the night. “We’re over here!” And he waved the blazing branch over his head, this way and that as a signal. As his voice rang out and came echoing back, silence fell like a cloak on the starlit plain and the silvered forest beyond. Gill heard a shuffling and scraping, a flapping of wings from behind and above. He whirled, thrust out his sputtering torch …
… But no problem. The bat things were cowering back from the rim of the top tier, using their wings to shield their eyes from the burning yellow light. He thrust the torch at them, shouted, “
Hah!
” And they drew back more yet.
But … the howlers were still now, utterly silent. And in the threatening night, where the crackling of the fire was the only sound, Turnbull quietly said, “Well, if they didn’t know we were here before, they certainly know it now!”
“Listen to that,” said Haggie softly. “Silence, yes—but you can almost hear the bastards thinking … .”
Gill propped up the branch against the wall to light the way for the three men—if they still lived—and shouted again into the silence, “This way! Follow the fire!” Then he stepped over the wall, lowered himself to arm’s length and jumped down. And straightening up, he heard again out in the wild the first faint howlings starting up, and the answering calls from other howlers as they recovered from their astonishment.
Now, too, from out of the night, they heard a human voice, Varre’s voice, shouting, “Gill, Turnbull—we see you! We’re coming!” They could hear Clayborne, too, but he was incoherent, yelling and gibbering like a madman. But if Varre and Clayborne were coming, so too was something else; for no sooner had Varre stopped calling to them than the drumming of the earth started up again, the mad thundering of hooves.
“This time!” said Haggie excitedly. “Maybe this time!”
Gill had been developing an unconscious nervous habit: at times of stress he would reach into his jacket pocket and clasp the cylinder there. He did so now as the sound of the stampede grew louder and frightened shapes were seen bounding in darkness. He clasped the cylinder and squeezed it, and turned it in his dry, nervous fingers. And …
what
?
There was no dent; the “bruise” of Turnbull’s bullet had disappeared, smoothed itself out of existence! Gill’s jaw fell open. He remembered the self-sufficient hunting thing. Machines that refuelled and repaired themselves. And wonderingly, he drew the cylinder out of his pocket. He looked at it in the firelight, a liquid silver cylinder—and knew!
Liquid, yes—but liquid which could imitate a solid! It would work now, could be used as a tool or a weapon. And Gill knew how to use it … .
He was snatched back to the present in a blast of wild, panicked screaming as Haggie’s “food” came on the scene. A small herd of four-footed deer creatures burst into the firelight, split up, and went bounding like springboks to left and right. But one of them wasn’t so fortunate or so surefooted; screaming, it leaped high over the fire, smacked headlong into the mansion’s wall between two of the doors. And it crumpled to earth there.
Angela, Turnbull and Gill had crouched down low, with their arms held up over their heads for protection; Haggie, on the other hand, had known more or less what to expect. He was on the stunned creature in a flash. Maybe it wasn’t just stunned but already dead, Gill couldn’t say, but Haggie was taking no chances. He held the animal between his legs, twisted its head and neck until something snapped and there was no more resistance.
He was jubilant. “God!” he gasped. “God—I can eat!”
But these things were only the hunted. And now came the hunters!
Perhaps because Haggie knew a little of what to expect, he was the first to see them. All of the jubilation went out of him in a moment. “Oh, Jesus
Christ
!” he moaned. And clutching his prize like a pet dog to his chest, he backed up against the mansion, the House of Doors.
As the sounds of the stampede died away, the others peered fearfully into the gloom where Haggie had fixed his gaze. Gill saw …
something
—several of them—and thought:
God!
Except where Haggie had blasphemed, with Gill it was a prayer. But where the little redhead was concerned, Gill had learned to be sharp. Now was exactly the time when the little man might try to make a break for it. “Jack,” Gill said, low-voiced, never for a moment taking his eyes off the black things that squatted and shuffled and crept closer out there beyond the fire’s glow, “watch Haggie!” And to Angela: “Get behind me, quick!”
She crept behind him, trembling like a leaf; and Gill faced front, held the cylinder weapon out before him. It was a close-combat weapon, yes, but deadlier by far than teeth and claws. The howlers shuffled closer still, and out in the night their brothers and cousins kept a deadly silence, with no more howling to cause a distraction. Word had gone out that there would be strange, rich fare tonight.
The fire sputtered and threw up sparks, then sank low. And the howlers advanced again, beginning to grunt quietly among themselves, slowly closing their circle towards the little knot of humans. There were … a good many of them.
Gill stared hard at the one closest to the fire, who also seemed to be the biggest of the bunch. Haggie was right: the thing’s hide looked black, rubbery. It walked upright on two legs, but crouching low, shambling. Three and a half feet tall, anthropoid but scarcely manlike, the howler was as broad as he was tall and shaggy as a sheep. An alien Neanderthal covered in masses of ropy, matted hair or fur.
It was hard to discern faces, just slanting, red-glowing eyes in black rubber masks—until the one Gill was watching opened its jaws. And then he saw that the great shaggy head of the thing was
mainly
jaws!
Somewhere to Gill’s right Haggie sobbed, and Turnbull’s voice was tight, urgent when he whispered, “Spencer, I—”
Gill stooped, picked up a brand, tossed it towards the tightening circle.
And in that same moment, from
beyond
the circle: “Gill! Turnbull!” It was Varre. He came at a stumbling run, heading straight for the fire and seeing little else but the flickering flames and the knot of familiar human forms and faces. Behind him, raving, staggered Clayborne.
“Hell!” the American babbled and shrieked in the night. “The infernal regions. The very
confines
of hell! For I have seen Satan shambling in the dark and hovering on bat wings, and I have seen his eyes yellow and red and lusting for my soul. Yea, though I walk in the shadow of the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, for … for …
for God’s sake
!” He seemed entirely unhinged.
To the howlers it must seem they were under attack from the rear. Gill’s firebrand had landed amongst them, scattering both sparks and the creatures themselves, and now these shouting, lurching figures were coming straight at them out of the darkness! Hooting their alarm, the howlers broke and ran—or rather bounded—in all directions; how far couldn’t be determined.
Varre and Clayborne came on, collapsing to their knees in the firelight. Gill and Angela searched in the immediate vicinity for more branches to fuel the fire, and Turnbull continued to guard Haggie.
“
Mon Dieu!
” Varre gasped, wild-eyed in the fire’s glow. “I thought we were finished. The things we have seen! Great spiders in the forests, and that monstrosity which pursues Haggie, stuck in a bog and sinking. We skirted it and came on. On the heath things thundered by us, and great bats flew overhead. There were eyes everywhere. And the howling, that dreadful howling … I think Clayborne is mad.”
Clayborne jumped to his feet. “Mad? I’m as sane as any man. Saner than most. Speak for yourself, Frenchie. What? It was my prayers carried us through! Now you people have
seen
these devils with your own eyes. Surely it’s obvious to you by now that this is no place of science but the supernatural!”
“You’re raving.” Turnbull was blunt, as always.
Clayborne growled low in his throat, charged at the big man. Turnbull had not witnessed Clayborne’s attack on Bannerman at the pool under the waterfall, but he knew trouble when he saw it. Clayborne was blocky, powerful. And half-crazy, he’d be strong as hell. Releasing Haggie, Turnbull ducked under Clayborne’s wildly swinging fists, folded him with a blow to the stomach, then straightened him with another to the chin. Clayborne was sent sprawling with all the wind knocked out of him.
But Haggie, freed, had immediately begun sidling towards door number seven. Gill saw him; if it wasn’t for the carcass Haggie carried, he’d have been through the door before. anyone could stop him. What advantage this would give him was hard to say: the rest of them would surely follow him through at once. This was the thought that puzzled Gill as he put himself between Haggie and the door, blocking his escape.
And at that point Anderson arrived … .
 
A
nderson came stumbling, trembling, utterly exhausted, out of the dark and into the firelight. Gone for now any semblance of his old guise of authority; the power in which he’d cloaked himself for most of his life had been stripped away; he was only a man fending for himself, and by no means best equipped or in the best possible condition. But seeing Varre crouched there beside the fire, and Clayborne where he sat dazed from Turnbull’s blows, he rallied himself and tried to throw out his chest a little.
“That was sheer treachery!” he accused, pointing a shaking hand first at Varre, then Clayborne. “If I hadn’t made it, then it would have been nothing less than murder!”
Gill didn’t know what any of this was about, but before tempers could flare any further, he said, “Save your outrage for later, Anderson. You’re not out of trouble yet. None of us are.” He turned to Haggie. “It seems we’re all here—those of us who are going to be, anyway. Now what about these doors?”
“I’ve told you about them,” Haggie answered. His mouth had swollen up and he mumbled his words. “I only ever used one of them, this one.” And he looked at door number seven. “What’s in there?” Gill asked him.
“Another place.” Haggie shrugged. “Same as always. But there’s water to drink, a few vegetables you can eat, and the climate won’t kill you. Don’t ask me about the rest of the doors, for I don’t know. But I’d chance any one of them against this place at night!”
Gill looked at the others. “That’s it then. So what’s it to be?”
The howlers had meanwhile started up again. Red-and-yellow gleaming eyes crowded the darkness beyond the fire’s sphere of light. From out on the heath there came many small thunderings, shrieks of terror, howls of elation, triumph.
“I’m with you,” said Turnbull. “It’s why we’re here. And if we don’t go through, what then? No way we can live here. Not for very long, anyway.”
“He is right,” said Varre. “Who cares where we go as long as it is away from here?”
Clayborne agreed. “A door out of hell? Let’s chance it. The Lord shall provide!”
Angela said nothing but simply stayed close to Gill, and Anderson was already at the door, staring up at the knocker. “Are we agreed, then?” he said, as if he were solely responsible for the arrangements. “Is everyone ready?”
Clayborne shoved him roughly aside. “Let me be first,” he said. “I have the strength of my knowledge, the armour of my faith. If there are demons, I shall know them.” He opened his arms wide, threw back his head and cried, “In the name of the Lord I make pure, I
exorcise
this gateway out of hell!” And he reached up and knocked.
It was like pulling the plug in a bath full of water, or as if the door were an airlock, with empty space behind it. It fell—was
sucked
flat—inwards, and like ants under the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner, Clayborne, Gill, Angela, and the others were sucked up. All except for Haggie, who had somehow contrived to place himself at the rear and well out of range.
Whirled head over heels and tossed down in something warm and soft, Gill slid to a halt facing the other side of door number seven. The door was a dark oblong set in a white surround, beyond which Haggie was silhouetted against the fire. Gill saw the look on his face where he strained backwards from the door’s suction—elation, criminal glee that he’d made such great fools of the six—and thought:
You bastard!
Haggie was still clutching the carcass of the deerlike quadruped; but then the door sucked harder still and the look on his face turned to one of desperation as he backed off farther yet. But the creature he’d intended to eat was snatched from his arms, drawn through. It went tumbling overhead, and Haggie was left with nothing for his troubles.
He gestured obscenely and his lips formed a pair of parting words. Gill couldn’t make them out over the howling of the wind, but he knew what they were anyway: “Fuck you!” And he guessed that this new place wouldn’t be as Haggie had described it. He got to his knees, gritted his teeth, pointed at Haggie and shouted some choice invectives of his own … then stopped and in the next moment laughed. He looked beyond Haggie and laughed.
The little man’s jaw fell open. He whirled about-face … .
And the last thing Gill saw before the door slammed gongingly shut and disappeared was the hunting machine, coated in slime, closing its pincer claws on Haggie’s upper and lower body.
The last thing he
heard
was the redhead’s terrified screaming, echoing off into silence … .
 
“Desert!” Turnbull called down from the top of the dune. “White, glaring desert in all directions. And thataway”—he pointed at something the others couldn’t yet see—“is a mountain range. Don’t ask me how far, could be five miles or fifteen—or just a mirage. Everything shimmers. But … is there something glinting up there? A mirror? A piece of glass or crystal? Windows?” He shrugged. “If we’re going anywhere, I’d guess that’s our destination. Anywhere else is nowhere.”
“Is that it?” Gill called back. “No trees anywhere? Buildings? Ruins?” He sat at the foot of the dune, roughly where the door had been, and gazed at the drifts of sand all about. His jacket felt rough against his shoulders and back, for now Angela was wearing his shirt. It gave her back something of modesty and protected her from the sun. For it was broad daylight here, and hot; something less than twenty minutes had gone by since their arrival; sufficient time that they’d all made their adjustments and recovered their senses.
“That’s it,” Turnbull answered. “A few kites in the sky far off—birds of some sort, anyway. Nothing else. Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, this isn’t Earth. As well as that sun up there”—directly overhead was a small, blinding white orb—“there’s another one low on the horizon.
And
a big moon; its craters are clearly visible.”
Gill looked at the others. Anderson was already toiling up the side of the dune, with the muttering Clayborne a little to his rear. Give the ex-Minister his due, at least he was making the best of it. He paused for a moment for a breather and wiped his brow. His foppish handkerchief was little more than a silken rag now. “Come on, let’s go!” he called down to Gill, Angela and Varre. Apparently he’d got his second wind! People seemed to make very quick recoveries … here.
Varre was examining the carcass of the quadruped. He licked his lips. “Haggie said we could eat this?”
Angela went to the thing and looked at it, said, “Oh!” and drew back. She looked shocked or disgusted—or both—Gill couldn’t say. He, too, went to look at the dead creature. It was like a fawn from tail to shoulders, but from the shoulders up its “neck” was more a tapering torso, with short, childlike arms and six-fingered hands. The face was also childlike, which is to say very nearly human. And it was female.
“Haggie would have eaten this?” Angela was appalled.
Varre looked at her curiously. “But it is an animal, a beast. It is meat.”
“Like a small centaur.” Gill shook his head in wonder, gently closed the large, sad, lifeless eyes. And to Varre: “Meat? Of course it is. So is Angela. So are you.” He shook his head again. “I couldn’t touch this. It would be like eating a legend, a kind of cannibalism.”
“You think so?” Varre lifted his eyebrows. “Come now, hardly that!” He licked his lips again, insisting, “And it is meat.”
“If you want it,” Gill told him bluntly, “you carry it.” He turned away and with Angela started up the side of the dune. A moment more and Varre came scrambling after them.
“Actually,” he said, “or even amazingly—I’m not especially hungry!”
“A sign!” Clayborne whispered as they reached the top. The American was pointing at the low range of grey mountains shimmering on the horizon. Under the crags, something burned silver in the shadows with an intensity that hurt their eyes. “Do you see it? Do you know what it is?”
Turnbull whispered in Gill’s ear, “This bloke’s condition is becoming serious!”
“A burning bush!” Clayborne cried, his eyes blazing in their dark orbits. “I told you I would lead you up out of hell, and I will! We were like children in a wilderness—like the Children of Israel, wandering in the wilderness—but soon we shall find a land of milk and honey … .”
Varre scowled at him. “They wandered for forty years, didn’t they? The Children of Israel?”
And Turnbull added, “Yes, and a hell of a lot longer since then! Better calm yourself down, Miles. Christ, you’ll be demanding a burnt offering next!”
Clayborne glowered at him, and at Varre. A vein pulsed in his neck and he began shaking with rage. But then his eyes went wide and his jaw fell open. He gasped. “Out of the mouths of babes! But don’t you see? We were
given
a fatted calf to make our offering—and we abandoned it!” Before the others could say or do anything to stop him, he’d gone scrambling back down the side of the dune.
They watched him go and Anderson said, “Let him get on with it. He’s mad as a hatter, anyway—and treacherous.” He glanced sideways at Varre. “He was treacherous when he was in his. right mind, so God only knows what he’ll be like now.”
He turned away and started off along the crest of the dune. In front of him the desert stretched in wave after white wave, and to his rear the others followed in his tracks. There was nothing much else for them to do … .

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