by Nick Gifford
“Yeah?” said Vince, watching him carefully. “Why does she think that then?”
Was Vince trying to trap him into saying things he shouldn’t? But then he had just stopped Matt from attacking Tina... sometimes, despite everything, Vince seemed the sanest person in this mad household.
“It’s like you said that day we went out to Gramps’ house,” said Matt, not sure how much he should say, how much Vince already knew. “This family’s blighted: there’s a madness, a weakness. Tina thinks that just by being here I’m somehow making Kirsty worse – that’s what Kirsty told me, anyway. Gramps has taught Kirsty how to control the madness, but she says that because I don’t have this control, I’m disturbing things.”
Vince was nodding slowly. “You think that’s true?”
“Do you?”
“Like I told you,” he said, “you and Kirsty are the same. That day you blacked out in the basement, you looked just like Kirsty does when she has a turn: frozen rigid, your eyes staring. It happens because you’re sensitive to the place, so why shouldn’t it happen because you’re sensitive to each other too?” He paused, then said, “So Tina doesn’t like it, eh?”
Matt shook his head. “She says I’m a destabilising influence. Until I came along she was in charge, but she knows she can’t control me.”
“It’s more than that, though,” said Vince. “She’s missed out. This sensitivity runs in families, doesn’t it? But not everyone inherits it. Kirsty’s got it, you’ve got it. So where does that leave Tina? She’s just an ordinary girl and she hates it.”
Vince was envious. He was talking about this sensitivity as if it were a gift, Matt realised – just as Gramps had called it a gift. Maybe he could answer some of Matt’s questions, if only he would work out how to phrase them.
Vince broke the silence. “You thought I was the mad one when I talked about all this stuff before. Remember? So what’s changed your mind? Is it because you spoke to Kirsty? Or has something else happened?”
Vince was looking out across the bay and Matt couldn’t read his expression. Should he trust him, he wondered? But he had said so much already, he had little to lose by revealing a bit more. Your talent must be mastered, Gramps had said. But to do that he had to understand it first. He reached into his pocket for the letter. Slowly, he withdrew it, unfolded it, handed it to Vince.
Vince studied the letter, nodding occasionally, smiling. When he had finished, he peered at Matt through his dark fringe. “That’s what she called it, too. Alternity.” He stared out to sea through narrowed eyes and drew deeply on his cigarette.
“Who?” asked Matt, but Vince didn’t respond.
Finally, he said, “So now you believe. The big question is, how are you going to learn how to handle it?”
Matt reached out and took the letter from Vince’s grip. “How do you know about all this?” he said. “Gramps wouldn’t have told you.”
Vince shook his head. “Like I said before: I’ve studied these things. I’ve been stuck with this family for most of my life – I’ve had to make sense of all the weird things that have gone on. Gran was the only one who ever trusted me. None of the others will have anything to do with me, but she was okay. She thought I had a right to know why things were like this. She explained a lot, but not everything. I had to work some of it out for myself. Fill in the gaps. If you know where to look and who to speak to, you can find out all kinds of things.
“The old goat uses different language to describe it, but the kind of thing he’s talking about has been known to mankind for thousands of years. There have always been special places, and special people who know how to use them.”
“Gramps didn’t say anything about using the Way,” said Matt, thinking of all those graves, the lives lost when things had gone wrong in 1898. “He talked about defending it, or protecting it...”
Vince laughed. “Even though he has some of the sensitivity,” he said, “he’s just like Tina: scared of change, convinced that any development will be bad.”
“That makes sense to me.”
“Think about it! Why have you got this gift, if not to use it? Generations of gifted people have used their skills – healers, great leaders of men. Think of all the power just waiting to be tapped, and controlled – you must be aware of it, you must have felt it. Even I’ve felt it, and I’m not as sensitive as you. Read between the lines of the old goat’s letter, Matt: he’s telling you that you’re in charge. You’re a Wareden: a guardian – the Way through to Alternity is in your care, along with all the powers that, as the letter says, ‘emanate from this place’. It’s up to you, Matt, to use however you choose: in the letter he calls it ‘tapping into the power of the ancient’. Think of all the things you could do with that power!”
Vince was staring at him, grinning excitedly. “It’s up to you, Matt,” he said, “whether you use the powers you’ve been given, or whether you just turn away from them like your grandfather did.
“But one thing’s certain: you’ve got to learn to control them. Otherwise you’ll just crack up, or Alternity will take you by surprise one day and destroy you.”
Matt knew Vince was telling him the truth: he had come to exactly the same conclusion himself. He had to master his sensitivity, before it mastered him. “But how?” he said. “How do I learn to control it?”
“Confrontation,” said Vince, still grinning. “The only way to master Alternity is to confront it...”
~
Matt sat in the car, still not quite believing he was here, not quite believing he had let Vince talk him into coming to Crooked Elms. He wasn’t ready for this. He was too young to handle it.
But what about Kirsty, a voice inside his head reminded him? She was only four when her sensitivity had awakened and Gramps had taught her how to cope.
Vince was watching him with dark, intense eyes. “Are you going to learn to control it?” he asked softly. “Or are you going to let it control you?”
Matt ignored him, remembering the last time he had been here.
Vince took the bunch of keys from his jacket pocket and jangled them in front of Matt’s face. “Come on, Matt,” he said. “You’re different to the others. I noticed that when you were here in March. You’re tougher than the rest of them. You’re not the sort to bottle out, are you, Matt? Are you?”
Matt reached for the door and pushed it open. He wasn’t going to let Vince bully him into anything: this was his own decision, something only he could do. Something he had to confront. He thought of the dreams, of how they had become steadily more intense and disturbing – Alternity reaching out for him, trying to take a hold of his mind, he felt sure of that now.
He had to face up to it. The alternative was to lose his mind.
Outside, he leaned against the car and stared at the house’s front door. “So what do I do?” he asked, as Vince came round to join him.
“Reach out,” said Vince. “Can you feel it yet? The old goat called it an affinity with Alternity, a mental bridge. A Way is the place where that mental bridge becomes real. He said that in your head you have a key that links the real with the alternate. You just have to learn how to use it. Can you feel it yet?”
Matt could feel it, all right. Something just beyond his normal perception, beyond seeing or hearing. Beyond reality.
Vince opened the door and stepped inside. He paused in the hallway and looked back at Matt, his pale features ghostlike in the shadowy interior.
Matt swallowed, but the dry lump in his throat wouldn’t go. He made his feet move, followed Vince inside.
He stared at the door to the basement. “That’s where it is, isn’t it?” he said. It made sense. Gramps said that people tended to build churches and shrines at these special places – the Way was here before these buildings, so they must be rooted in the ground, in the bedrock below the soil.
The basement.
Matt stepped towards the door, but was stopped by Vince’s hand on his arm.
“Remember las
t time?” Vince said. “You just blacked out. Where’s the sense in that?”
“But I can control it now that I know what’s likely to happen. Gramps could. Kirsty can – at least some of the time.” He tried to think. “The key’s in my head. That’s what the letter said. I have to work it out.”
“Is there anything the old boy has told you that gives any kind of hint about how you get this control? What does Kirsty do? It must be something significant, but also something simple enough for a small girl to use. What does she do, Matt? Think!”
He remembered Kirsty’s words: Gramps looked after me. He told me stories and taught me old poems that would help me close the doors in my brain. Something special, yet simple enough for a small girl to use: those old poems that Gramps loved! Words have a magic, Gramps had told him, years ago. They work the locks to the doors of the mind. All those years ago, Gramps had been preparing him for this!
Something about the doors of the righteous – Gramps had taught him that one when he was small: he had used it to help settle him at night. Matt hadn’t understood it, but he had found that the strange words had seemed to shut out the dreams, the night terrors that had plagued his first stay in this house.
The doors of the righteous... what else was it?
He was on the right tracks, he realised. Even thinking about those words was sending a wave of reassurance through his mind: calming him, helping him think. How had it gone?
“You know, don’t you, Matt?”
He nodded. “I think so,” he said. “Special words. If only I can remember them.”
“Say them out loud, Matt. Assert yourself.”
He started hesitantly.
“Never the doors of the righteous be breached.” It was coming back to him!
“The minds of the pure are our shield,
“Protect us from evil, protect us from fear...”
What was the rest of it? “Shine light where the shadow concealed.”
Silence. A stillness so absolute it was as if time itself had paused.
He stepped towards the basement door. “I’m going down there,” he said. “Down to where it’s strongest.”
He went down the stone stairs.
The basement was the same as before: piles of boxes and accumulated junk retreating into the shadows. He walked on a concrete floor, next to smoothed brick walls that glistened with moisture. The basement was lit by a pool of light from a single bare bulb suspended from the middle of the low ceiling.
He turned around, passing through 360 degrees. This place felt ancient, he realised – a chamber in the ground that was far older than the house itself. He remembered last time: how his feet had grown so heavy, just as in the dreams. How he had been almost unable to move, struggling to drag himself across the floor. How he had finally collapsed on the stairs, where Vince had found him.
The heat struck him first, an intense wave passing over him, as if he was about to faint.
Then it was suddenly a huge effort simply to breathe.
“The words, Matt.” Vince had followed him, he realised.
He struggled to turn his head, to look at his cousin.
“Never the doors of the righteous be breached.”
He filled his lungs as the weight momentarily lifted.
“The minds of the pure are our shield,
“Protect us from evil, protect us from fear,
“Shine light where the shadow concealed.”
“Confront it, Matt! Assert yourself!”
He peered at Vince’s white face, his staring eyes. How?
The words, he thought. The power is in the words. He should change the words, then. Take control of them. Twist them, shift them, reverse them. As soon as he thought that, it seemed the right thing to do...
“Never the shield of our minds be breached.” He didn’t know what he was saying, or why he was saying it... the words just seemed to rearrange themselves on his tongue.
So easy.
So tempting.
“Shine shadow, where light had concealed.”
The basement was shifting, rearranging itself just as the words were doing.
“Protect us from evil, protect us from fear –”
The air was wavering, so that it was like looking through a lens, like looking into a distorting mirror.
“Shine shadow, where light had concealed!”
A shimmering disc appeared about two metres in front of him, a ripple in the air itself. A rift in reality.
The Way was taking physical form right before his eyes. His mental bridge was becoming real. He had found the key.
He stared at it, barely comprehending, aware of the surging forces all around him.
“Go on, Matt! Go on!”
He looked across at Vince, who was backing away up the stairs. He looked frightened. He looked exhilarated. “Go on!”
Matt took a step forward, then another.
Suddenly the shimmering disc rushed around him, engulfing him. Swallowing him. He felt an intense dizziness, the gorge rising in his throat.
He closed his eyes, and a sudden darkness stole over him. He blacked out.
13 Trapped
He was alone. He had never felt more alone than this.
And yet...
He was looking down on himself from a distance, it seemed. Watching himself: a figure adrift in nothingness.
All around was impenetrable darkness. A darkness so deep it was almost a physical thing, a solid. Black stone, engulfing everything.
He rubbed at his face, and saw the figure of himself reach up and rub at its eyes. It was like looking in a distant mirror. Watching an image of himself. He remembered Gramps’ words: battling inside our heads is a whole set of alternative selves – the people we might have been. That was the basis of Alternity: the realm of alternatives, the world inhabited by our rejected selves, our darker sides.
He turned – somehow he turned, although he realised he had no real sense of his own body. There was another figure, another Matt. Turning, peering around, looking lost.
He closed his eyes and the darkness was complete. What had he done? What had Vince led him into?
Did all these versions of himself feel this way, he wondered? Were they all as lost and confused, as vulnerable and scared, as he was?
In that case, which one was he? Where was he? Who was he?
He felt as if he was sinking, submerging in the madness of repeated, unanswerable questions. Sucked down by forces too awesome for him to comprehend: a leaf dragged from its tree by an October gale, a fish caught up in a tidal wave.
He was in Mad City. Loonyville. Gagaland.
He’d been taken by the family madness and Vince had led him right up to its front door and helped him ring the bell.
~
He was in a passageway, the maze of his dreams. Brick walls rose up on either side of him, their surfaces smoothed by the ages, slick with a slimy moisture that seemed to seep out through the mortar.
He felt cold, and his lungs were filled with the foul, fetid odour of decay. He hugged himself, and struggled to control his ragged breathing, to cut off a self-pitying whimper – because once it started, he knew he would lose control altogether.
He looked down at the stained concrete floor. A shallow channel ran along the centre. It glistened wetly with moisture from the walls. There was a red tinge to the moisture, he saw. The red of blood.
He became aware of something approaching. There were no sounds, he could see nothing, but he knew there was something there. It was a presence rising up in his mind, a dark shape which he knew would materialise at any moment.
He looked both ways, but they appeared identical: a short distance of corridor, then a blank wall as the route turned left or right.
Which way?
He chose at random and ran until he came to a junction. Was this the right direction? He didn’t know, he could only hope.
He plunged on into the gloom.
~
He had been runnin
g for what seemed like forever. Through endless brick-walled corridors, coming to junctions and guessing which way to go. He had no idea of direction, only that he had to keep going.
The presence was always there – sometimes near, sometimes distant. Occasionally he heard sounds, but could never be sure what they were, or where they came from. They might even have been his own sounds echoing back to him, for all he knew.
He had started talking to himself, chivvying himself along. “Left or right? Forward or back?”
Left.
Left again.
You’re going in circles. You don’t want to go in circles: you might just catch up with yourself.
But was he talking to himself, he suddenly wondered? Telling himself to keep going, or to go back. Telling himself that he had to run for his life, or that he should turn and confront whatever it was that was pursuing him.
Voices in his head.
Battling inside our heads is a whole set of alternative selves... That was where Gramps had claimed Alternity came from: all the alternate versions of ourselves, battling it out in our heads, forging an alternative reality that haunts our dreams. The voices in our heads.
But he was in Alternity! If such voices came from Alternity, then were there other, deeper Alternities hidden within this one: an endless sequence of Russian dolls, one inside the other?
He felt dizzy, just at the thought. Like when he had come round first of all, and seen all those alternate versions of himself – losing track of his own identity in an infinite hall of mirrors.
He shook himself, made himself keep running. “Come on, boy,” he muttered. “Gotta keep going. Gotta keep on.”
But eventually it was no good. He had to stop. He had been running forever and his legs were like concrete.
He had to stop.
He came to a corner. It seemed darker here, welcoming.
He slumped against the wall, slid down. He was unconscious before he had even reached the floor.