The Lazarus Gate

by Mark Latham

  My eyes was drawn through the disturbing scene to the patient nearest to me—so near that I felt I could reach out and touch her, though the thought that this ‘window’ could be a tear in the veil, such as was experienced by William James, prevented me from doing so. The patient, a young girl, was all too familiar. Though her head was shaven and her features drawn and gaunt, I recognised Elsbet at once. A girl of sixteen, imprisoned and experimented upon, screaming in terror at her tormentors. I knew that feeling; it was all too recent in my mind.

  And watching over it all, in the centre of the ward with his back to us all, was a figure quite apart from the others. A man dressed all in black, with flint-grey hair poking from beneath a Derby hat. Lazarus. My breath caught as I realised at once what I was looking upon. This was not a tear in the veil; how could it be? I was seeing not the far side of my present location, but some other place entirely, and those upon whom I spied could neither see me, nor the means of my surveillance. Or so I thought.

  It began with the girl. Elsbet quietened abruptly, and though her head was restrained, fixed forward by a harsh metal brace, her eyes flicked towards me. The others followed suit; every one of them—psychics all, I assumed—stopped their screaming and struggling, and stared at the corner of the ward at the invisible spy. The incorporeal mirror through which I watched began to ripple more ardently, and finally I saw, with growing dread, the man in black turned to see what had distracted his subjects so. For a moment, his eyes met mine. Lazarus saw me, or felt my presence, I was sure of it. It was then that a sound began to emanate from the mirror—a high-pitched whine. Lazarus squinted, and scowled, and through some inexplicable means I knew we were undone. Over the noise, something else caught my attention; something worse.

  All around the spectral image, the shadows flurried and gathered, tendrils of smoke-like blackness forming all around it. I saw—I think I saw—tiny, clawed hands in their hundreds scrabbling at the edges of the ethereal window; at the very edges of reality. I stepped back in terror, as the mirror began to peel away, and myriad tiny eyes peered at me from the space between. Something was ripping its way into our world from another universe entirely; I could feel it, gnawing inside me, screaming in my mind.

  We are one.

  The cacophony of demonic howls and screeches mingled with the whining sound of Otherside devices, and I understood at last the forces with which we dabbled. The forces that the Othersiders sought to escape.

  I turned at once to the sisters, and took Nadya by the shoulders and shook her, though she would not at first be roused. The noise grew louder, reaching fever pitch. Whether it was the sisters’ doing, or the psychics from the other side, I felt that the veil was about to tear, with dire consequences.

  ‘Wake them!’ I shouted to the Irishman, who stood gawping at the darkness; he saw something too. ‘Do it now, for God’s sake!’

  He hesitated, not sure whether to flee, to resist me, or obey me. Finally, he moved between the girls, shaking them awake while muttering something in a language I could not fathom. The sisters blinked, half-awake; the whining noise subsided instantly. I breathed a sigh of relief, and turned back to find the shimmering mirror gone.

  But in its place, standing in the darkness, was Elsbet. Her face, luminescent and dreadfully pale, seemed to loom from the shadows. Her movements were awkward, jerky, and she started to walk towards us, each step like a snapping motion, as though her limbs were not her own. The wraith drew nearer, and I could not take my eyes off it. My morbid terror held me, petrified. The spirit’s eyes, black as night, remained fixed on mine during her advance. Soon she stood over me, and her raven-black garb seemed nought but a cloak of mist and shadow, enveloping me, choking the breath from my body. I began to panic, as I felt caught up in a tumult of cloistering darkness and smoke.

  With every effort I could muster I stepped towards the phantom, battling all the while against the spectral mist that filled my lungs and clouded my vision.

  ‘Elsbet… I’m so sorry,’ I whispered. I felt it most keenly then, the guilt over the girl’s death flooded over me.

  No sooner had I uttered the words than the ghost was gone. I blinked, dumbfounded, unsure what was happening to me.

  You will burn them. You will bring about their destruction. It is foreseen.

  It came from behind me, from the circle, and I wheeled about to face it.

  Elsbet’s dead face was mere inches from my own. Taller in death than she had been in life, and with a ghastly pallor to her skin, it seemed that there was nothing else in the tent, nothing else in the world beyond that terrible visage and the blackness that surrounded us. Her frightful eyes blinked open, revealing once more the dread black orbs. Her lips seemed to creak apart, and a hoarse, rasping sigh rattled from her. Then her head tilted backwards, ever further, revealing a throat cut across by an assassin’s blade. Blood spilled from the sickening wound in a hideous torrent, staining the floor crimson. As the blood splashed onto me, the ghoul began to scream like a banshee. I was overcome. My screams and her screams became one, until I passed out, hitting the floor of the tent quite unconscious.

  * * *

  The next thing I remember was Gregor handing me a tin cup full of strong black tea. I was sitting outside the tent, next to a small, crackling fire, with a woollen shawl draped over my shoulders. My head pounded, and I was shivering, though the night was mild. I looked up at the sky, and saw that it grew pale already. Surely I would not see out another dawn! When I asked Gregor what had happened, he gave a heavy shrug of his broad shoulders.

  ‘They ask me to carry you out here. They say you saw something in a vision. They have been in there talking about it for hours.’

  ‘Hours!’ I cried, alarmed. I stood up, quite forgetting the cold and my tiredness. ‘I must go back inside.’ I set down my cup and started towards the tent, then paused, checking back to see if Gregor would stop me. The big man merely turned back to the fire to light a cheap cheroot. Romani customs and taboos were still a mystery to me, but I was encouraged by Gregor’s inaction, and so continued on my way. I stopped briefly at the tent-flap, remembering part of the horrid experience I had had in there, before drawing a deep breath and entering.

  To my considerable relief, the tent was more brightly lit than earlier. A lamp was burning, along with more candles. The four sisters and the Irishmen sat in the centre of the space, though all signs of the séance had been cleared away. They looked up at me as I entered—the Irishman wore a strange expression, partly deferential and partly afraid, I thought. Could he have seen what I had seen? The thought of it made me shudder.

  ‘You may go now, Donal,’ Rosanna said to the youth. ‘We thank you for your efforts.’ The Irishman bowed his head and walked past me, casting only the minutest glance at me with his small green eyes before leaving the tent.

  ‘I don’t know what happened to me,’ I said, ‘but I pray it was not in vain. Did you find what we were seeking?’ Even as I spoke I saw a sullenness about the girls, a groaning sadness that pervaded the air. Rosanna got to her feet.

  ‘Dear sisters, would you return to the caravan? I must speak to the captain alone.’

  The captain? There was something in Rosanna’s manner that was not right. Whatever had passed between us during my short time with her seemed dim and distant since the tragedy of the previous night. Was it just grief, I wondered? Her large, dark eyes were fixed upon me, and did not leave me until the last of the sisters had departed the tent.

  ‘You have endangered us all. I knew this would happen, and I knew we had to help you, but this… I do not know if we can assist you further, John Hardwick. Your destiny is changing all the time. It is a dark path that you tread, and it is not a path that my sisters and I can unravel.’

  This statement, delivered without her usual passion, left me reeling.

  ‘Rosanna, I don’t understand. What did you see? What does it mean?’

  ‘We saw what you saw, and perhaps more besides. We saw the fate of the
world in the balance. Fear, war and bloodshed. We saw death and destruction on a scale unimaginable. And you were at the heart of it all, John. What are you involved in?’

  ‘You have the truth of it, I think. England—the world—is about to be threatened by forces that I can barely fathom. Forces so powerful that they just might succeed and spell the end of us all. An army is coming that wishes to conquer all in its path, and I don’t know if I can stop it. I needed your help, Rosanna—and your sisters—because this army is not entirely… conventional. God, how can I explain? Let us just say that they have powers not unlike your own, and they use these powers to hide from us until they are ready to strike.’

  ‘The woman who attacked us at the camp… she was one of these invaders?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she sought to kill me and my sisters to prevent us from helping you?’

  ‘No… I don’t believe so. She did not know I was alive until last night, because she thought she had seen me killed back in London.’

  ‘Ah… she is Lillian?’ said Rosanna. My heart lurched at the name. How could she have known? She saw my confusion and said: ‘You spoke her name many times during your fever. You asked over and over why she had done this thing to you. Was she a lover?’

  ‘Good Christ, no,’ I protested. ‘It is… complicated.’

  ‘With you, John, I think it always is, and always will be.’

  ‘Please, Rosanna,’ I said, ‘you must tell me what you saw. Or at least help me to understand. I must know when and where these invaders will strike.’

  She reached past me and opened a book. The scrawls within were almost indecipherable to me, though occasionally there was a crude drawing of some resonant thing—a feverish rendering of a dragon silhouetted against a large moon; a ship passing beneath a bridge; a hideous spider with eight sinister eyes staring at me from the page.

  ‘The attack will follow the night of the burning witches. At first we thought the vision spelled our doom, and our distress was such that our sight was clouded for a time. But then we realised that it was a sign.’

  ‘Burning witches? I have heard this before.’ I shuddered. What was it that Lillian had said? A fitting tribute, the burning of witches at the stake as in days of old.

  ‘Then you should have listened to the signs,’ she said. ‘The burning of the witches is an auspicious day, known to our German kin as Walpurgisnacht—you call it May Eve. It will happen before the sun rises on May Day, I am sure. And the invaders will come by ship to these lands. It is clear—they will pass by a great bridge, and sail into the heart of a city, where they will kill everyone they can. And you, John Hardwick; you will be there. There will be men with you—some you can trust, and some that you cannot, though you may not know which are which until the end. Does this make sense to you?’

  I was transfixed by the revelations. It all made perfect sense, and I knew from my own hellish dreams and the things I had seen during the séance exactly what I needed to do.

  ‘May Day…’ I said, distantly. ‘There is so little time to prepare. But at least I know where they will strike. I will stop them.’

  ‘But will you stop them, John?’ she asked. ‘The vision was quite clear—you will hesitate, and you may well fail. There was an army of men in masks, symbolising treachery; people who are not as they appear. And there is a man, like you, who will stop at nothing to destroy us all. You know him, and for some reason you will find it hard to face him.’

  ‘Lazarus…’ I said.

  ‘Ah. He who has risen. Yes, this makes sense now. He will oppose you to the bitter end, and the portents suggest that he will succeed. But the future is not written; you could still win, though the odds are stacked against you. Tell me—if this “Lazarus” is to destroy your Empire, and kill us all in the name of his cause, why would you hesitate to kill him?’

  ‘Because… he is my father.’

  It was Rosanna’s turn to be shocked. And it was the first time I had said it aloud—the first time I had admitted it to myself, and the suddenness of the proclamation was a surprise even to me. The Artist had told me the terrible secret to break my spirit, but I had convinced myself that it was a lie, even though I knew the truth in my heart. And when Lazarus had stepped out of the shadows with the gun in his hand… there was no doubting it. He was my father, and a traitor to the British Empire. I was his son, and this Otherside Lillian was not his daughter.

  ‘Your father…’ Rosanna repeated. ‘I understand now. And it was your father then who tried to murder you in London? How could any father treat his child so?’

  ‘We never exactly saw eye-to-eye, though I confess shooting me and leaving me to die in the Thames was a somewhat extreme measure. The other side must have offered him something too good to refuse. He was once a servant of the Crown, like me, but he has forsaken his oaths. And, also like me, everyone in London believes him dead.’

  ‘No amount of varnish can hide the grain of the wood…’ she muttered absently. ‘So you must first return to London and find your allies, I suppose—and then you will stop your father?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know who my allies are. The enemy could be anyone. My father was the most pious man I ever knew—not for God, but for Queen and country. If he could be turned… not to mention those agents and spies who have walked in our midst for goodness knows how long… No, my dear, I am afraid I will be without allies until I can work out who I can trust.’

  All of Rosanna’s portents had pointed to the fact that I would shy from killing Lazarus, and they were right. Regardless of what he had done, and how he had mistreated me, I knew that if there was any way of ending the madness without killing Marcus Hardwick, I would have to find it.

  ‘In the vision, you and he were the same,’ Rosanna said, her eyes fixed on me. ‘Two sides of the same coin. The sins of the father shall be visited on the son.’

  ‘We are nothing alike! I… I saw him at work, in there—I saw what he does. He was my father once, but now he is a monster.’

  ‘Tell me, what else did you see?’ she asked me, her face grave.

  ‘I… what do you mean?’ I faltered. ‘Did you not see it too?’

  ‘The visions are often different for all of us. But for you—without the Sight—to see something so terrible that it frightened you so… Even Donal was unnerved. What did you see?’ She seemed wary.

  I told her everything. The hospital, Elsbet, the strange apparatus… Lazarus. She listened, and when I finished, she nodded sagely.

  ‘John Hardwick, you have seen the source of our power. Somewhere out there, beyond the veil of life and death, are our other selves. From these spirit guides we draw our strength. All of us, all of my sisters, have seen our guides during our visions. And now you have seen Elsbet. Although my little sister is passed, her spirit lives on, and you are the key to everything, John.’

  ‘The key? I don’t understand.’

  ‘You can bring Elsbet back. She is trapped in another world, a mirror realm. You have seen her… you know how to travel there, and will do so before the end. You can bring her back to us.’

  ‘Rosanna… it’s not like that. This isn’t some mirror world of spirits and fairies—this is another world beyond our own. The Elsbet that I saw is not your sister, not really. Elsbet is gone.’

  When the slap came, I was wholly unprepared, and my face stung hot.

  ‘Is this how you repay us?’ she snapped. ‘She appeared to you so that you would save her, so that you would bring her home. We risked everything for you! Elsbet gave her life for you, and—’

  I held her arms as the tears came, but she would not be calmed. She pulled away from me and glared at me.

  ‘Rosanna, please… please do not cry. I swear to you I will do all in my power to stop these invaders. And when it is over I will return to you, and I will never again give you cause to shed tears.’

  ‘Bold words, and a promise you will not keep,’ she said.

  ‘Rosanna, I tell you again
, the girl I saw was not your sister. Please trust me—I know of what I speak. Is not Lillian from the same world?’

  ‘Lillian does not suffer as Elsbet suffers.’ She turned her back to me, and gazed into the flame of a candle. On a small table next to her was the book that Donal had been scribbling in throughout the séance. She traced her fingertips across its cover and sighed.

  ‘I will tell you what you need to know. But I do not help you for your sake, for our sakes, or for your Empire. I help you for Elsbet, for revenge… to repay a debt of blood. My people will assist you as much as they can, if I command it, though you must promise not to put them in harm’s way.’

  ‘Of course…’

  ‘Swear it,’ she said, firmly.

  ‘I swear it, and I accept your offer most thankfully.’

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘There is something more; something else that I must tell you. The fight that is to come is all we were able to see. Win or lose, we could see nothing beyond it—it seems, John, that our fate rests in your hands, for the future of my people is unwritten… This scares me.’

  ‘Do not be afraid.’ I moved to kiss her, but she turned away.

  ‘No, John.’

  I understood that she was grieving, and I guessed from our earlier conversations that it was not seemly for a Romani woman to cavort with an outsider so soon after meeting, if at all. I think also that she wanted to distance herself from me in case the worst happened—that I might fall in battle, or perhaps even join my father rather than do what was right. I needed her so badly, which seemed foolish to me even then, as I had known her such a short time. I accepted her resolution with as much grace as I could.