The House of Doors - 01 (21 page)

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Authors: Brian Lumley

BOOK: The House of Doors - 01
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“Hold it,” Gill cut him off. “It’s not what
we
believe, it’s what
he
believed, Clayborne. The machine—crystal, House of Doors, whatever it is—shaped things to his way of thinking, his beliefs. And if it’s still working along the same lines—if it’s now tuned in to what
we
believe—”
“Two-twenty-two’s our door,” said Turnbull.
They moved as a body, stepping carefully in the dark, around the curve of the great crystal. And as they went, so doors number 444, 333, and 222 came into view.
“Incidentally,” Gill said as they came to a halt at a safe distance from the crystal, “what would Jon Bannerman’s number have been?”
Angela worked it out. “He was a seven,” she said. “But like threes and fives it won’t split down. Door number seven-seventy-seven would have been his door. Seven is the number of the scholar, the philosopher, the thinker. They’re reclusive and keep themselves apart—which he did. They’re reserved and self-controlled, and powerfully intelligent. Seven’s aren’t quite of this world—of Earth, I mean—and they generally consider the great mass of humanity in a poor light.”
“All of a sudden I’m interested in numerology!” said Turnbull. He glanced at Gill’s dark silhouette. “So Bannerman was a seven, eh?”
His remark was like an invocation. Gill sensed it coming just half a second before it happened … .
 
S
ith of the Thone had made several mistakes, was guilty of certain omissions. One mistake had been the loss of a surgical tool on the night he’d tried to kill Spencer Gill; another had been not to worry about it. He hadn’t because he’d known that no human being could ever understand it, divine its purpose, put it to use. He had omitted to credit Gill with that ability. Or perhaps in the back of his mind he had so credited him, only to put such thoughts aside because the chances were astronomically against Gill’s understanding. What—a simple rod of silver metal, dented, useless? Even if it were found, it would be tossed aside, buried in some scrap pile, lost. The human race was as negligent in its use of metals as in its misuse of liquids!
Another omission had been his failure to check on the progress of the test group. If he had—or if he’d checked the synthesizer’s recordings—then he might have hit upon one of those moments when Gill produced the tool to study it, perhaps even that moment when it had self-repaired. He would know that Gill had it, and might guess that he knew how to use it. Similarly he had failed to note the fact that the correction construct had lost its hypodermic; again, Sith might have checked the recordings to discover just how it was lost. But having done none of these things, he’d placed himself at a slight disadvantage—of which as yet he was completely unaware.
The one mistake he did know about, to which he must regrettably admit, had been a quite deliberate act at the time: to leave the Bannerman construct undisguised, in its original form, following that clash with Gill and Turnbull in Killin. Sith had been satisfied that merely restructuring the hand would suffice to disconnect him from that event. That had been sheer arrogance, an exuberant gesture of his superior psyche and entirely un-Thone. But he’d been bested by them once and so had desired to taunt them, almost to
defy
them to recognise him—which he believed Turnbull might finally have done. Well, what was done must now be undone. Sith must try to convince Turnbull that he was mistaken, and as soon as possible after reinserting himself into the game. The way he planned it, it shouldn’t prove too difficult. He’d already made his arrangements and inflicted a little necessary damage on the construct.
But to Sith’s great annoyance and just as he was about to vacate the control room through a duct into the synthesised world of the crystal, Miles Clayborne arrived. He was very badly burned, bursting out of his skin, and rimed with the hoar of deep space. In short, he was quite “dead”. Sith was not only annoyed but also surprised—and
very
curious. Obviously the synthesizer had been active to an extraordinary degree! What in the universe had Gill and the others—and especially Claybome—been up to? Eager to find out, Sith sealed Clayborne’s disgusting remains in a storage web and at last entered the duct … .
 
The House of Doors had nine sides at ground level, with doors numbered 111 to 999. Since Gill and the others stood back a little way from door number 444, number 777 was just out of sight, hidden by the curve of the great crystal. Therefore no one actually saw Bannerman emerge from 777—but they did all hear Gill’s hoarse cry of alarm in the instant before he grabbed Angela to him and carried her bruisingly to the hard, cutting scree.
After that there had sounded the reverberations of a great door slammed, its echoes bouncing off the mountains, and in the weirdness of the ensuing, ringing silence human cries of terror—cries for assistance—from around the crystal’s curve.
Shaken and trembling, Gill was on his feet again, helping Angela up and urging her away from the crystal, when Bannerman appeared. He came staggering from behind the House of Doors, his clothes in tatters and feet a bloody mess inside flopping, shattered shoes. He held his arms out wide before him, claw hands groping at the air, feeling his way like a man in total darkness—or like a blind man.
“Help!” he called again, hoarsely, croakingly. “For God’s sake—is anyone there?”
Paralysed with shock and horror, they could only watch as he stumbled on sharp stones, collided with a corner of the crystal and fell. But as he climbed painfully, groaningly to his feet. again, they moved towards him in a body and began to understand something of his condition. His hair had been scorched to stubble on his head and his hands were blistered, raw and bleeding. He looked like he’d crashed headlong through a burning thorn tree. And his eyes … were the colour of sour milk and quite blank, reflecting only the pale yellow pulse of the freshly risen moon.
“Blind!” Anderson gasped—and Bannerman heard him.
“Anderson?” His voice was almost childlike, pleading, wanting to hope but scarcely daring to. “Is that you? Why don’t you speak to me?” He came stumbling towards them.
Angela flew to him, a sob in her voice as she said, “Oh, you poor man! Yes, it’s us, Jon. All of us—except Haggie and Miles Clayborne. They’re … not with us.”
“Angela? And … the rest of you?” Now he believed.
“We’re here, Jon,” said Anderson as Angela took Bannerman’s hand.
He grasped her, clasped her to him, cried, “Then it’s a … a miracle! God, I was never much of a believer, but I believe in you now!”
Gill and Turnbull swapped glances, Turnbull’s a little sheepish. But Gill still wasn’t quite sure. Here in the vicinity of the House of Doors—especially now, with the crystal still active, if temporarily stable—alien machine presence was just too great to distinguish between Bannerman and the major source of activity. Gill’s sixth sense was swamped by his awareness of the crystal.
“Sit down before you fall again.” Angela found Bannerman a seat on a flat stone. “Here, let me help you. There.” She had to crouch beside him, because he wouldn’t let go of her hand.
“What happened to you?” Varre was over his astonishment. “The last time we saw you was in that cave on the escarpment, when we settled down to sleep.”
“What happened to me?” Bannerman’s voice was a little deeper now, more the voice they would normally associate with him. His terror and hysteria were ebbing, relief and exhaustion flooding in to replace them.
And Gill thought:
If this is an act, it’s a good one.
And:
Would he really go
so
far as to blind himself?
“I’ll tell you what happened,” Bannerman continued. “I thought I heard something. Whatever it was, it woke me up. I left the cave and went to the rim of the escarpment. Down there in the forests, things were on the move, shrieking and fighting. Then I saw something—an impossibly huge insect thing—climbing up the cliff towards me. It had reached an overhang and was having difficulty bypassing it. I thought it might have smelled us out and was on its way up to get us!”
Gill asked, “Can you describe this thing you saw?”
Bannerman nodded and gave the description of the hunting machine. “I found a loose boulder and rolled it to the rim,” he continued. “The thing had just about manoeuvred itself up over the obstruction when I toppled the boulder down on it. I knocked it loose, thought I’d done for it. But … it fell only a little way, onto a ledge. And it clung there. It looked up at me with its faceted eyes, and they shone on me like powerful beams—like lasers! They blinded me in a moment, and the pain was so terrific that I … I must have blacked out. Since then … God, you tell
me
where I’ve been!” His voice had started to break.
Angela tried to comfort him, and in a little while he went on. “I’ve been in deserts where the sun burned me, swamps where
things
like flatfish clung to my thighs, a place where everything I touched was sharp as broken glass. Finally I was finished, had given up hope. Then … I found myself in a place of fires and terrific heat; and when I was just about ready to lie down and die, then I heard a voice.” He turned towards Angela where she crouched beside him. “I think it was your voice. I forced myself to move in your direction, and—” He paused, shrugged, blinked his blind eyes in the bland moonlight. “Here I am.”
“She spoke your number,” Turnbull told him. “She … called you through a door? Door number seven-seventy-seven.”
Gill said, “Jack, will you come with me?” As Turnbull joined him, Gill looked at the others. “Stay here. Take care of Bannerman. We’ll be back.”
They walked round to the front of the crystal, to door number 777. At its base the scree had been disturbed. Several slabs of loose stone had been sliced through like blocks of cheese; their flat faces lay flush against the door’s obsidian panel. Next door, 666 was the same. Both doors had been activated; since they knew about 666, obviously Bannerman had emerged from 777. Gill shook his head in blank astonishment. “If Clayborne’s mind really did help fashion this place,” he said, “then it was a weirder mind than even we suspected. What bothers me especially is that he’s still influencing things. Damn it, this was
his
world! We’re not just inside a machine, but a machine programmed by a madman!”
Turnbull looked at Gill’s moon-yellowed silhouette. “And Bannerman? What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Gill answered. “Part of me is inclined to say he’s okay, but there’s another part—”
Both men gave massive starts, felt their hearts start to race in their chests. From far away along the ridge of the mountains, a bloodcurdling sound had reached down to them, a sound awesome enough in its rightful place, but one which should never be heard in a place like this. It was a howling—but very different from that howling they’d heard in the world of the great escarpment. This one was a deep, throbbing, ululant baying. And it seemed entirely familiar.
They weren’t the only ones to hear it. “Gill, Turnbull!” Anderson’s fearful voice came echoing. “Get back here—quick!”
They returned to the main party. As they went Gill advised, “Jack, just forget about Bannerman for now. Stay vigilant, but not up front, if you follow me. If we were wrong about him, fine. If not—well, we may have his measure anyway. Forewarned is forearmed.” He allowed Turnbull a glimpse of the silver cylinder before thrusting it back into his pocket.
By the time they got back, the night was alive with the howling, some of it echoing from afar and some from quite close at hand. Too close. “What do you make of it?” said Anderson, obviously a mass of nerves.
“Don’t ask them,” said Varre, “ask me.” And without any hesitation: “Wolves! There is no other sound quite like the howl of a wolf. I have relatives in Canada—in the far north, where I’ve visited them—and that was where I heard it. Timber wolves.”
Anderson grabbed his arm. “Are you serious? Timber wolves—in a world with no trees?”
“None that we’ve seen.” Varre angrily shook him off. “But so far we’ve seen nothing—not even the other side of this range of mountains. They are wolves, I tell you. I would stake my life on it!”
“How about all of our lives?” Turnbull’s voice was grim, heavy with foreboding. “Look up there.”
They looked. In the darker cracks and crevices of the mountain’s flank, many pairs of eyes burned yellow as tiny triangular lamps. A shaggy shape was silhouetted where it loped between outcrops of rock. Now there could be no doubting it. “My God!” Anderson backed off a pace on legs like jelly. “A pack of the bloody things!”
“I don’t understand this.” Even Turnbull was unnerved. “I mean, we’ve seen nothing to explain how—”
“And look down there!” Angela’s shuddering gasp cut him short. Down on the floor of the desert, converging upon the same trail which had led the party of human beings to this place, strange streams of flickering lambent fire—like massed ignes fatui or sentient St. Elmo’s light—eddied and flowed where it (they?) followed their trail like bloodhound trackers.
“Sniffing us out,” said Varre in a series of gulps. “But what are they?”
“Who cares?” said Turnbull. “Me, I think it’s high time we decided which door we’re taking out of this place!”
“I vote for Angela’s door,” said Gill, backing towards the House of Doors. “Door number two-twenty-two.”
Anderson hopped from one foot to the other, dancing like a girl in his anxiety. “But we can’t be sure,” he said.
“One thing’s certain,” said Turnbull. “We’re not using six-sixty-six or seven-seventy-seven. Angela, what do you think?”
She made no answer. They looked at her where she sat beside Bannerman, clutching his hand. Her eyes were wide and terrified; they were fixed on the scree slope which they’d all descended from the spur. And coming down that slope—a naked man! The light of the alien moon was full upon him. He smiled as he stepped easily, unerringly down through the sliding scree. And behind him came other human forms. All naked, all smiling.
“Clayborne’s world!”
Varre suddenly hissed. “A world full of supernatural powers. Gill, Anderson—these are not men. And the wolves are not wolves. They’re—”
“Werewolves!” said Gill … .

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