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Authors: Brian Lumley

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G
ill felt unbearable horror, and more than horror. It was as if Clayborne and the House of Doors were connected, but by much more than the fire which had reduced him to red and black ruin. Gill felt it, was on the point of grasping it, when Turnbull came running.
“Oh,
shit
!” The big man was gasping, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Oh my
God
! What the hell happened?” He had seen everything but hadn’t taken it in. He ran to Clayborne, went down on one knee. His huge hands fluttered helplessly. “I can’t … don’t … where can I touch him?”
But he was now within range of door number 666, and the thing was still working; Gill could feel it. “Jack!” he called out warningly.
Clayborne had lifted his smoking head and opened his eyes. His back had been to the blaze. When the tongue of fire had engulfed him, he’d closed his eyes and so saved them. But they were all that had been saved. And perhaps something of his mind, too. “I … I’ve been a bloody fool,” he gurgled. “But I believed. I believed. I should have known. How could there be a God in a … godless place like this, eh? Hell is the devil’s domain.”
“Don’t speak,” Turnbull told him, aghast. But Clayborne wasn’t only speaking, he was trying to get to his feet.
“H-help me … up,” he said, his agony reaching such a crescendo that it became nothing. “Let me do it, before everything welds together, seizes up.”
The House of Doors did nothing, it
waited
as Turnbull somehow got Clayborne to his feet. Gill felt it waiting. He stood up, ran forward, helped Turnbull guide the staggering, dripping thing that had been a man. Huge blisters burst and released their contents; fluids fell from the roasted body like rain; barbecued, blackened ribs were visible in the steaming mass of Clayborne’s back.
“Six, six, six,” Clayborne mumbled, his face a molten mask. And between Turnbull and Gill he staggered like a crippled robot, aiming himself at the door. “Let it … finish what it started!”
Gill could feel the affinity. The House of Doors waited for Clayborne. More than that: he was its guideline! “Jack!” Gill hissed. “We have to leave him now—right now—or we’re dead men, too!”
They released Clayborne but he continued to shuffle forward. “Finish it,” he told door number 666 as Gill and Turnbull backed off. “Put … an end to it.” This time the door slid to one side, and there was no fire. Instead there was the vacuum of space. Stars like jewels hung in the vast, unending void of it. And Clayborne was sucked in.
They saw him go tumbling head over heels, a blackened thing falling forever into his own ultimate nightmare of vertigo. And this time when the door slammed shut, its rim was rimed with frost … .
 
“He was controlling it,” Gill told the others. “Inadvertently. He didn’t know, had no idea. But that machine was in tune with him. It still is in tune with his line of thought. Its programming is based on his worldview.”
“His netherworld-view,” said Turnbull, and Gill nodded.
Varre looked sceptical. “And just like that”—he snapped his fingers—“all of a sudden, you ‘know’ these things. Is that what we’re to believe?”
Anderson said, “Jean-Pierre, you haven’t seen Gill’s talent in action. I have, so I’d advise you to hear him out. Please go on, Spencer.”
“I don’t know why he was chosen for the pattern, for copying,” Gill continued, “but he was. It could be because his mind was the most chaotic, the best suited to produce horrific results. But—”
“Could it be,” Angela cut in, “that it was simply a question of whoever was first through that door from the forest world? You’ll remember, he was first.” She shrank a very little as all eyes turned in her direction.
“That’s a distinct possibility,” said Gill at last. “That point had escaped me. It’s definitely worth keeping in mind.”
“I’m sorry,” she said apologetically. “I broke your chain of thought. You said ‘but’?”
“But”—Gill gathered his thoughts—“to accept the idea that Clayborne was chosen because he was unhinged, because his perception of things would produce monstrous effects, is to accept that we are being deliberately misused, manipulated—”
“But we
are
being manipulated!” Anderson snorted. “Surely that’s obvious.”
Gill nodded. “By whatever alien intelligence controls the House of Doors. The question is, to what end? I mean, why torment us?”
“To see what kind of stuff we’re made of?” Turnbull raised his customary eyebrow.
“The Castle has stood on Ben Lawers for some considerable time,” said Gill. “Given that it’s a device that’s come across light-years of space, its builders or controllers aren’t stupid. They
know
what we’re made of.”
Varre remained unconvinced about something. “This thing about Clayborne having shaped this world with his mad mind,” he began.
“Not this world,” Gill cut him off. “Just what happens in it. Or specifically, what happened to himself, and what happens to us.”
“But nothing has happened to us!” The Frenchman’s frustration was getting the better of him.
“Yet,” said Gill coldly. “Nothing has happened to us yet. But less than half an hour ago Clayborne was disfigured and murdered hideously—I said murdered!—and if we wait long enough, events will shape themselves in representation of the supernatural forces and powers of evil in which he believed. Forces which will turn themselves on us.”
“You
know
this?” Varre snapped.
“Can you hear your watch ticking?”
“Eh? When it’s working, of course!”
Gill nodded towards the House of Doors. “That place is ticking,” he said. “Like a bomb!”
Varre felt reality slipping—felt the terror of his cynic’s worldview being erased with giant strokes—and fought against it. “Proof!” He blurted the word out. “There’s no proof. You can show us nothing!”
“Clayborne feared two things worse than all others put together.” Gill was relentless. “The devil and all his works, and falling. Hell and high places. Hellfire burned him, and he fell into space forever.”
For long moments there was silence. The dusk was eerie, with only a handful of nondescript stars to light it. And now to the east the rim of a lesser moon was rising, its light a faint, pastel yellow tinged with red. Finally Anderson asked, “So what are you suggesting? Surely we aren’t simply going to wait here for something else—something even more monstrous—to happen to us? Where do we go from here, Spencer?”
“I’ve told you how things are,” Gill answered. “I could be wrong but I don’t think so. I
felt
that machine working with Clayborne, and working against him. Now I suggest we each think it through. Five heads have to be better than one. Any ideas—all ideas—are welcome.”
“And meanwhile, if something does … come up?” This from Angela.
“Then we’ll be obliged to use a door,” Gill answered. “And maybe that’s a good starting point: figuring out which door to use. Now I suggest you all get on with it. And if anyone comes up with anything at all, well, for God’s sake don’t keep it to yourself! Me”—he looked at Varre—“I’m just going to sit here and listen to that thing tick. If you choose not to believe me, that’s your problem. Do your own thing.” He walked off some little distance and found a boulder to sit against.
After a while Turnbull came to him. “We still haven’t told them about Bannerman,” he said, keeping his voice low.
“No,” said Gill, “and I don’t think we should, not right now. Hell, there’s enough confusion! Anyway”—he shrugged helplessly—“I’m not even sure about Bannerman.”
“
What!
”
“It might have been machine static. I mean, we’re inside a machine! My mind’s confused no less than anyone else’s—maybe more so. Christ, if I’m to believe everything my senses are telling me right now, then you’re not entirely human either, Jack! You’re giving off the same kind of half-machine aura I sensed around Bannerman. And so are the others. And I just
know
that girl’s the most human creature I ever met!”
Turnbull grunted, perhaps disappointedly. “But there was still that business at your flat,” he said, “and I’m fairly certain it was him. And where did he vanish to, eh? So he saved my life, and Claybome’s—but where’s Clayborne now? Jesus,
someone
has to be playing a game with us, and Bannerman fits the—”
Gill held up a hand. “
Shh!
” he said. And a moment later: “It’s building again, preparing itself. Arranging … something.”
Breaking his conversation, Angela came slipping and sliding across the scree slope. She had Anderson and Varre in tow. “Spencer!” she called out excitedly. “An idea.”
He looked at her blankly.
“Numerology!” she said.
“What?”
“Clayborne would have been interested in numbers, wouldn’t he?” She was breathless. “Their occult meaning and application?”
“So?”
“The numbers on the doors: he knew the number of the beast in Revelations.”
Gill’s expression didn’t change. “I should think that just about everyone knows the number of the beast in Revelations.”
“But it was
his
number, too!” she said. “Clayborne’s.” And she quickly went on to explain the Hebrew system of numerology, where numbers are substituted for the letters of a name to divine a person’s destiny or affinities. She broke down the alphabetical values in the following manner:
 
“Miles Clayborne adds up like this,” she said: “Four, one, three, five, three, three, three, one, one, two, seven, two, five, five. Which equals forty-five. And four plus five is nine. Six-six-six equals eighteen, and one and eight makes nine. He and the door had the same number. It was his door and he couldn’t avoid it. That’s where that old saying comes from: his number was on it! Also, in various types or ‘states’ of numerology, nine is the death number—as in the nine of spades … .”
Gill shook his head, looked mystified; but the action of the House of Doors had steadied again, enabling him to give her his attention. “So where do we go from there?” he asked.
“We need to work out our numbers,” she answered, “to discover which door is most applicable—most propitious—to whom! For instance, I’m a six. My door would be two-two-two. That’s a good one: the number two stands for peace and harmony, tranquility and sincerity. And if it’s good for me, it should be good for all of us.”
Gill frowned. “That was damn quick reckoning!” he said. “How come you know all of this, anyway? I mean … Hebrew?”
“I’ve always been interested in numerology, astrology and the like,” she explained. “The Hebrew system’s the one I know best, that’s all.”
Gill nodded. “So what’s my number?”
“You’re a five,” she answered with certainty. “I already worked it out. You occasionally live on your nerves, but you’re also resourceful, resilient, multifaceted—just like the crystal. You can be sexy, too, and irresistible”—Varre snorted—“and clever. Sometimes you’re not too considerate, but you are well meaning. And you love travel.”
Dryly, Varre said, “World-hopping, for instance?”
Gill looked sideways at him, said, “What about him?”
“His number?” She worked it out. “Fifty-one! He’s a six, like me. Door number two-twenty-two—again. But he has
three
names. The three tempers the two: ambitious, proud, sometimes overbearing.”
Jack Turnbull totalled thirty-eight, which equalled eleven, or two—yet again. And David Anderson was a three.
“If we were to take this seriously,” Gill said, “door number two-twenty-two would seem the best choice.”
“You don’t take it seriously?” She seemed to be disappointed.
But Gill surprised her. “Yes, I do!” He grinned.
“You do?” Her excitement was back again.
Anderson. and Varre couldn’t believe their ears. They looked at Gill as if he were raving mad. “What?” said Anderson flatly. “You actually believe all of this rubbish we’ve just been subjected to? Gill, I begin to have serious—”
BOOK: The House of Doors - 01
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