The Lazarus Gate

by Mark Latham

  I helped where I could, but in the afternoon I took my leave of the camp for a few hours. That night, we would set our plans in motion. Gregor told me where to meet up with them later that evening, a secret location where the Othersiders would surely not find them, and I left him my shotgun, hoping he would not have need of it before my return.

  My purpose that day was to visit Faversham, and meet with the caretaker of my old house. It was possible that the man would have some knowledge about the comings and goings of the Othersiders, whether he understood their motives or not. I suspected that he would be ignorant of the details, but I would be on my guard—I could trust no one until the affair was brought to a close.

  I rode into Faversham and found a small inn to stable my horse and refresh myself. I asked there about the whereabouts of Thomas Baxter. I was in luck, as it was one of the market days in the town, and thus the main bar was busy with patrons. Amongst the farmers, gamekeepers and ploughmen in the inn, my rather battered tweeds, flat cap and even eye-patch did not attract much undue attention, and I was told that Mr. Baxter could be reached through the offices of Boughton & Sons estate management, off Market Place. With time of the essence, and a sense of grim purpose about me, I set off to the office.

  It seemed that Mr. Baxter was under the impression that my father was very much alive. When I identified myself as John Hardwick, owner of Bluebell Cottage, he presumed that Marcus Hardwick had either passed away recently or had signed the deeds to the property over to me personally. His office had received the instruction from the solicitor, Mr. Fairclough, that the house was to be attended to regularly, but then less than six months ago Brigadier Sir Marcus Hardwick had come ‘back from the dead’, and had informed Boughton & Son’s that there had been a terrible mistake; that he had not perished, and that the Ministry of Defence had gotten his papers mixed up. Since then, Mr. Baxter had been employed to keep the place tidy but very little else.

  This revelation, that Lazarus could have been so brazen for so long, rather took me by surprise. And what was I to tell poor Mr. Baxter? That the man he took with his own eyes to be Marcus Hardwick was an imposter? Or a ghost? No, I could not raise any alarm. Instead, I thought on my feet and sold Mr. Baxter a lie—lying, it seemed, was becoming second nature to me.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mr. Baxter,’ I said, ‘my father is in rude health. Indeed, you are right enough—he has signed the cottage over to me in the hope that, now I am returned from service abroad, I might settle down and perhaps even find a wife. I see you’ve done a fine job of looking after the place, as I called in just last night. I expect my father will call in again from time to time—if he does so, do remember me to him. I’m afraid we’re rather like ships passing in the night these days.’

  That should set the cat amongst the pigeons, I thought. Though I did not have much time to be pleased with myself before Baxter surprised me again.

  ‘And your sister, sir. Miss Lillian—will she be coming back now that you own the place? Lovely girl, she is. Sad, though, I always thought, that she still always dresses in black, in mourning for your dear old ma, God rest her soul.’

  I almost lost my composure at this statement, but took a gulp of tea to collect my thoughts before replying.

  ‘I fear the memories in that house are proving more than my sister can bear, the delicate soul that she is. Still, you know Lillian—who can tell what she will do next.’

  He laughed with me conspiratorially at this jest, though inside I was like ice. In our own world, my gentle sister had died a child, sending our mother into a fatal spiral of melancholia, and leaving me alone to disappoint our father. This harridan from the other side, however, was cruel and dispassionate.

  I concluded my business with Baxter as quickly as I could, promising him that the necessary paperwork and deeds of ownership would be with him as soon as I returned to London. In truth, I had no idea then if I would take up residence in Bluebell Cottage when this affair was over, if it was ever over, but I would certainly pay one more visit to pull down that blasted gate!

  As I returned to the stables, I remembered to purchase a newspaper from a lad in the high street. When I glanced at the front page the whole world seemed to shrink around me, and I realised that there was no further time for delay. It read:

  LONDON SUBJECTED TO REIGN OF TERROR

  The city has been plunged into panic, as yesterday London suffered its worst day of anarchy since the Fenian attacks of ’85.

  With explosions causing mayhem at Gallions Reach, East Ham, Ilford, Hampstead, Crouch End and Islington (in that order), this marked the first time that serious casualties had been inflicted by these dynamiters. Several public buildings were damaged, including a civic hall and library, and more than forty people are believed dead or mortally wounded.

  As doctors and fire-men struggled to help the injured and dying, London was subjected to the ugly face of urban society as mass looting took place along evacuated high streets. Late in the evening, fires blazed as the beleaguered city was hit by several arson attacks in Mayfair, Southwark and Battersea.

  Assistant Commissioner Bruce of Scotland Yard has sworn today that the perpetrators of these heinous crimes will be brought to justice. He reserved particular disdain for those members of the ‘criminal underclass’ who brought such shame on the greatest city in the world with their ‘despicable and cowardly capitalisation on events of real tragedy, for nothing more than avarice’.

  I could read no more. How could it be that I had spent the day in a bustling town, and had heard no one so much as mention this news? The good people of Faversham evidently believed themselves far removed from the affairs of the big smoke; how different their actions would have been if they’d known that the anarchists had struck just last night, a few miles from their homes. Or just how much danger these atrocities posed not just to London, but to the entire globe! I realised then that my consideration for Rosanna’s feelings had caused me to delay my plans. I was now more certain than ever that I needed their help to plan my next move, and I had to return to the gypsy camp at once. I purchased an ha’penny map and a storm lantern with the last of my coin, and set off to the agreed meeting place, near a little village on the far side of the expansive Denge Wood. It would be growing dark before I arrived there, and I could not afford to be tardy. And yet, despite my determination, I was reluctant. It was not merely a tearful yet happy reunion with my recently bereaved lover to which I rode; I was on my way to a séance.

  FIFTEEN

  It was well past midnight. The sisters were clothed all in white, and seated on the floor, huddling together in a conspiratorial circle, with a conspicuous space in their line where the departed Elsbet would have sat. They whispered in a language that was unlike any I had ever heard. The tent was lit only by five candles—one for each of the sisters, living and dead—and the flickering light danced across the silks that lined every inch of the tent walls, throwing a cold and eerie cast upon a scene that by daylight would be cheery and gaily coloured.

  A young traveller sat on a stool in the corner opposite me, with a sketching pad in hand. He was not of the blood, but an Irishman, apparently descended from a family of witches. I was told he was a sort of amanuensis, whose role was to interpret the visions of the sisters, and help guide them through the dangerous world of the spirits now that there were only four of them. I was positioned by the tent door, an observer only, and I felt like a complete outsider.

  Since returning to the camp, Rosanna had barely spoken a word to me. Gregor had told me that she was unhappy about holding the ritual that night, that her gifts would be clouded by her grief, and that it was bad luck to navigate the afterlife with one so recently deceased. And yet she knew how important it was. She alone of the sisters, as the eldest and wisest, understood that their earlier premonition called for great sacrifice. She was doing it for me, but that did not mean that she could not resent me for asking it of her. I had tried to thank her for her sacrifice, but had been coldly reproa
ched for my efforts, and had thus kept a respectful distance until the hour drew near. Any questions I had about how the séance would proceed were met with cold stares and snapped instructions—and so I sat in my chair, quietly and patiently, until they were ready to begin.

  The séance was unlike anything I had expected. There was no table-rapping—nor was there a table to rap upon—no Ouija boards, nor crystal balls either. Instead, the four girls sat facing each other, eyes closed and hands joined together, and muttering all the time in their language. Occasionally the boy in the corner scribbled a note, or seemed to sketch something, though it was difficult to tell what he might usefully be doing in such poor light and with his eyes closed. I was reminded of the Artist, and tried to repress a shudder. A few times one of the girls would speak more loudly, sometimes in Romani, sometimes Spanish and occasionally English. To my surprise, it was Drina who took the lead, not Rosanna—the younger girl was assured and forthright in her statements, directing her sisters and sometimes crying out as if in protest, warning away some dark spirit or other that seemed to be plaguing her.

  It was difficult for me to fully embrace what I was witnessing at that point. I had no doubt that the gypsies believed wholeheartedly in their endeavours, but as half an hour and more passed by in the same manner I became increasingly of the opinion that I would learn nothing of use from the sisters. That opinion very soon changed.

  I remember growing very tired, and rubbing my eyes to keep sleep at bay whilst all the time the whispering and chanting filled my ears. Then I heard another voice join the throng, as if there was someone new joining in the séance. At this I looked up, and could not believe my own eyes. Elsbet sat in her place with her four sisters, between Rosanna and Nadya, illuminated only by the weak candlelight. Her back was to me, but I knew it was her. She wore the bloodied yellow dress in which she had died, and her form seemed to grow from the very shadows, almost absorbing the wan light from the candles. A chill ran through my veins. I rose to my feet and took a tentative step forward, to convince myself that I was awake and not dreaming, and that the apparition was really in the room with us.

  The moment I stepped towards the circle of sisters, an icy gush of air was sucked into the tent through the flap behind me, causing me to stop in my tracks. The candles guttered and went out, one by one, leaving only the glowing wicks and a smell of sulphur on the air. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I glanced over my shoulder as if expecting another spirit to be looming behind me, and was relieved to find nothing but the flap of the tent rustling in the uncanny breeze. Then I heard a whisper cut the air like a knife, and I slowly turned back to the circle.

  ‘We are one.’

  The whisper was so familiar, a phrase from my dreams. And all the sisters spoke it, in unison. They had slipped from the land of the living into a realm of shadow; I had not really believed it possible, but at that moment I was convinced of it. Elsbet was still in their midst, her ghostly hands clasped tight around her sisters. Her body, if the word applies, was almost invisible in the darkness of the tent, but her skin seemed to glow with a translucence that transferred itself to the pure white garments of her sisters, making them shimmer in the gloom as if the girls were all phantoms sent to haunt me.

  The Irishman stopped scribbling abruptly, and all was silent. As my eye adjusted to the darkness, I saw my breath misting on the unnaturally cold air. I shivered. And then the sisters began to speak—sometimes together, sometimes in turn. They stared straight ahead, blankly and unblinking, focused on something that no ordinary mortal could see.

  ‘We are one. One against the coming storm.’

  ‘We will all be caught in its wrath. There is no escape. It is as certain as the tides.’

  ‘Unless…’ This time one voice rang out. It was Drina. ‘Unless the dragon comes.’

  ‘He is afraid,’ said Rosanna. ‘He cannot do the thing that he knows he must. We will be consumed. All will be flames, and the dragon will burn with the rest.’

  No.

  I could not see the speaker’s lips, but I heard the whisper, as soft and chill as winter’s first snow, cutting through the other voices and silencing her sisters. It was Elsbet.

  He is afraid. He is a child. He is the son of the dragon. But he can succeed where others have failed. He must join us, for without knowledge he is nothing. With the Sight he is our only hope.

  As Elsbet’s voice left my mind, I realised that I had been transfixed, staring into space like the gypsy girls before me. I did not know how much time had passed, but I blinked myself back to the present, and realised also that the four living sisters were now looking directly at me. The fifth, the shade, still had her back to me, but now the head turned to look over her shoulder. Her dark hair seemed to float out of the way as she moved inexorably slowly, as if she were lying in a deep pool of water. The side of her face came into view—her skin, once dark, was now pale as ivory. I saw her lips, cracked and blue, parted sensually as if she were still in a trance. And then the eyes opened… good Christ, those eyes; wide and black, like the dead eyes of a shark. They flicked upon me, and I could not suppress a murmur of fear. I was paralysed as the spirit beheld me.

  In an instant, my mind was filled with such visions as I could not bear. Fires burned; a pair of dragons wheeled and fought in a red sky; a great city—London, perhaps—was host to a grotesque carnival, with men and women cavorting in painted masks while all around them buildings burned; a monstrous spider rose from a burning river, bringing death to everything it touched with its massive legs. Men fought with rifle and bayonet—men of all nations died in droves. And through it all, at the heart of chaos, was a golden arc of light, a portal of such cyclopean magnitude and brilliance that no living thing could approach it—yet through it came a gibbering horde of monsters that were the bane of men, and harbingers of the end of all things. I closed my eyes tight as I wrestled with the painful succession of images, and opened them only when the visions had stopped.

  Elsbet was gone. Rosanna and Nadya held out their hands towards me.

  ‘Come,’ said Rosanna. ‘Join us and see for yourself.’

  I could not have been less inclined to sit beside two such pretty girls if I had tried, but I took my place—Elsbet’s place—all the same, and linked hands with them.

  The whispering began again. The girls rocked back and forth; the Irishman scribbled. At first, I experienced nothing whatsoever, and felt rather foolish. Had I imagined the manifestation? I was certainly over-tired, and the atmosphere of the tent was frowsty and dreamlike. I very soon felt that my foolishness was not my vision, but my scepticism, as Drina shouted out:

  ‘He comes! He who died and has risen again—he comes to destroy our world by fire!’

  She had to be referring to Lazarus. I blurted out: ‘When? Where?’ and received a hard squeeze of my hand from Rosanna.

  ‘He is the old dragon,’ Drina continued, in a voice that did not sound like her own. It was deep and guttural, and did not seem to come from her throat at all. I glanced at her, and saw that her eyelids flickered, and behind them her eyes were rolled back showing only bloodshot whites. ‘The old dragon is empty inside. He is the destroyer of worlds and the healer of worlds. He has seen his realm burn, and seeks to burn ours and everyone within it. Only the young dragon can stop him, but he does not have the strength. So we are doomed; it is foreseen.’

  ‘It is foreseen,’ the other sisters whispered in unison.

  I wanted to ask further questions, but there was something terrible in the aspect of Drina, and I felt that further interruption might either break the spell or do her harm. I had heard too many tales of mesmerism gone awry, or spiritualist trances broken without a thought for the mental well-being of the medium. Whether I fully believed such reports or not, it seemed wrong to test the theory here.

  ‘Our doom is written,’ Drina eventually continued, almost in a whisper. ‘It comes on a most auspicious day. As the witch-fires die to embers, the dragon will
come through the ancient arches, and set the very river awash with fire and death. Beyond that, there is nothing. Only darkness awaits us.’

  I felt my spine tingle. The sisters were staring at me—not fully conscious, I think. Then I realised that they were not actually beholding me at all, but were looking through me, or past me. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end once more, and I am ashamed to say that I was gripped by fear. I battled the funk as best I could, and turned my head to see what they were all looking at. And then I saw the scene from earlier in reverse. I was staring towards the tent door, and standing there was a tall shadow, blurry and indistinct at first.

  Where had previously been an empty tent, cast in darkness, there was now a cascade of shimmering, dancing lights, of red, purple and green. As we watched, a pinprick of brilliant white light appeared in the centre of the display, and began to widen in a circle, eating into the rest of the iridescent lights like a burning hole in a piece of paper. As the circle grew bigger, the brilliant white began to fade, until soon the entire vista was like a large window looking upon another place entirely, blurred at first as though we were gazing upon a scene through ill-matched spectacles, but eventually clearing. I rubbed at my eye, and tried to convince myself that I was hallucinating, but I was not. I stood, disengaging from the circle of gypsy girls, and stepped towards the queer image that now filled the tent, as though it had been cut in twain. The image shimmered occasionally, like a pool of water rippling in a breeze, but otherwise it was quite clear, and I was dismayed.

  I peered not into a gypsy tent, or even into the Kentish fields beyond, but into a large hospital ward. Upon thirty or more spindly stretchers lay patients, in great distress. I could not hear them, but I could see that they were crying out, or mouthing words with a look of agony etched on their faces. All of them were strapped down, like lunatics; tubes fed into their arms, and most had a mesh of wires attached to their part-shaven heads, running to strange machinery at their bedsides. Nurses ran this way and that to attend to each patient, while men in long white coats stood next to the machines, making notes based on the sequence of flashing lights and twitching needles that perhaps only they could decipher.