by Damien Love
A hearse.
Zia jumped out and ran to it. She pulled open the door at the back then clambered inside, out of sight. As Alex leaned forward, trying to see, Beckman’s coil constricted around him in warning, cutting into his arms
“Don’t move, please,” Beckman said pleasantly. “We will be on our way soon. You are very privileged, you know. You will be there to witness the opening of the gate. Something no one has seen in centuries. The Shadow Gate of Boll,” Beckman said the phrase in a soft, happy singsong, as if reciting a favorite lesson. Alex felt a nauseating shiver of excitement pulsing through the wire loop that bound him.
“They took it apart,” Beckman went on, gazing into the night. “All those hundreds of years ago, they took the gate apart. Too scared to destroy it, you see. Or maybe too curious. But, of course, you can understand that. You had the chance to destroy the name of God, after all, and you chose not to. Perhaps, in their hearts, they secretly always longed for the gate to be opened again. And now we have put it back together. And I helped.”
Alex peered at Beckman, morbidly fascinated by the wounds around the little man’s neck, bruised areas from which thin tubes ran down into his mechanical torso. Thick liquid quivered inside the transparent plastic lines as Beckman turned eagerly to Alex, his little head swiveling around on top of the unmoving body.
“You will see soon,” Beckman said. “The unseen. It’s only right you should be there. It’s because of you the gate will be opened again, you know.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Your meddling brought the fire down on him. In Prague.” Beckman spoke as though patiently explaining something very obvious. “That led us to this. He has studied the gate stories for such a long time but always hesitated to make the attempt. Until now. Too dangerous. Only to be tried as a last resort. But now, here we are. At the last resort. Or second last, maybe.”
Alex jumped in his skin as the car door was pulled open.
“What are you saying to the rabbit?” Zia demanded, nodding at Alex. Beneath her arm, she clutched a thick padded cushion brightly patterned with picnicking teddy bears.
“Nothing,” Beckman protested placatingly, bowing his head.
“Loose lips sink little tin men,” Zia scolded. “We will begin Alexander’s education when the time is appropriate. If such time ever comes. In the meantime: shtum. Now, move that one.” She pointed at Metz’s limp form. “We’ll take him, in case Father needs to use him again.”
Obeying, Beckman stepped out, dragging Alex on the end of the wire. Flexing his massive mechanical arms, he lifted Metz from behind the steering wheel, carried him around the car, and dumped him on the passenger seat, then worked hurriedly to bind Metz’s hands to the door handle.
Von Sudenfeld stood by the van, watching them. The bald man sat at the wheel. They had opened the van’s side door, and by the stark light inside Alex saw it was kitted out as a mobile workshop, a mix of electrician’s tools, engineering gear, and medical equipment. Robot parts were stacked on shelves. Fliers hung upside down from the ceiling. Von Sudenfeld straightened as Zia brought him the old empty wooden frame. He inspected it briefly, slanting it in the light, then slipped it inside the van, slamming the door.
Zia returned to the Silver Phantom, balanced her cushion on the driver’s seat, then perched on it, impatiently watching Beckman and Alex until they were all inside again.
“If we’re quite ready.”
She stretched to reach the pedals, the engine roared, and soon they were on the main road, hurtling southward, the other vehicles following. At a certain point, the van bearing von Sudenfeld, the bald man, and the old picture frame peeled off onto a road that split away in another direction. Zia tooted the horn jubilantly as they went.
“There it goes,” she sang, bouncing on her cushion. She revved the engine. “Vroom-vroom! What a lovely big motorcar! I think I’ll keep it. If there are still any roads left after.”
Metz’s limp form bobbed beside her as she enthusiastically spun the wheel, changing lanes. He gave one faint, confused groan, then fell silent again.
At spots along the dark horizon, distant fireworks flowered, reds, golds, and greens flashing and fading. As they slowed to enter a village, a giant flare exploded just above, sending down a sparkling shower of intense purples and blues.
“Look, bunny,” Zia said as they crawled along the main street. “Celebrating Walpurgis Night. See how funny they are? Happy little fruit flies.”
The town’s Walpurgis Night celebrations were in full, noisy swing. Cavorting forms crammed pavements in the wavering light and shadows of swaying lanterns. Music pulsed. It seemed as if half of the town’s inhabitants had dressed up for the occasion. Everywhere Alex turned, people loomed at the car in outlandish masks of painted wood and papier-mâché: merry gangs of devils, witches, and wolves, alongside other, weirder, more obscurely grotesque and twisted faces.
“‘When people put masks on, they’re really taking their masks off,’” Zia announced in a haughty, professorial tone. “Has your grandaddy bored you with that philosophical pearl yet, Alexander? That used to be one of his very favorite bits of puffed-up windbaggery. Although, to be fair, on nights like this, I can see what he means.”
A small bonfire had been set up at an intersection. As Zia nudged the Rolls past, happy witches and devils took turns leaping through the flames, using pitchforks and broomsticks like little vaulting poles. A circle of people cheered them on, waving bottles. In the flickering firelight, the masks seemed alive.
Reaching the town’s outskirts, Zia accelerated through a stretch of unlit country, then stopped as the road ran out. The Black Forest loomed ahead, solidly filling the horizon, blacker than the night. The hearse rolled up behind them.
“C’mon, walkies.” Zia jumped out.
“I can’t walk like this,” Alex complained angrily as Beckman dragged him from the car. He gestured at the wire looped around him, pinning his arms to his sides. “I twisted my ankle. I’ll need to use the broom or something as support.”
“Little knocks and sprains.” Zia wrinkled her nose in disdain. “Coughs and colds and lumps and bumps. What a ridiculous way to exist. We do without them.” Her face suddenly fell. “It’s only the really big hurts hurt us.”
She nodded to Beckman. “Let him take his stupid brush. Hold his other arm. If he tries anything, knock him out. Oh, but do be careful not to kill this one quite so much, hmmm?”
She grinned horridly, then almost skipped to the hearse. A life-sizer climbed from the driver’s seat and strode to the back. Beckman moved to join it, pulling Alex along behind. The robot opened the hearse’s back.
There was indeed a coffin inside, a huge one of heavy black wood, intricately carved with spiraling galaxies of countless numbers, letters, and symbols that Alex could just make out.
Atop the casket, tied in place by black-and-purple ribbons, sat a similarly inscribed plant pot. As Beckman pulled the door wider, Alex saw the flower. It was an unimaginably hideous thing: a single, ugly bloom, glowing pale in the moonlight, and, growing from the stem, a solitary new leaf that horribly suggested a kind of living green flesh.
Zia measured the leaf between her fingers, then turned smiling to Alex. “Soon be time for its dinner again. It’s always hungry just now.” She clambered inside to retrieve the flower, then jumped back down, clutching it to her chest.
“Come on.”
They walked in line, Zia leading with a bright flashlight. The life-sizer and Beckman went next, carrying the enormous coffin between them. Alex came stumbling after, tugged along on Beckman’s wire. As he crossed into the forest, the trees glimmered red, reflecting another mighty firework hanging like a distress flare above the little town behind them.
The woods closed in. Aside from the flashlight’s beam dancing on the trees ahead, the darkness was absolute. A heavy, spicy smell clun
g to the air. The track grew thin, the ground treacherous and rocky. Once or twice, as they trudged deeper, came the growling, splashing sounds of waterfalls nearby. All the while Zia cooed a gentle song to the plant.
Eventually, they left what path there was and started laboring up a steep slope. Alex dug into the wet earth with his makeshift crutch and dragged himself forward, reluctantly using his weak foot. Each step still sent pain flashing through him, though it wasn’t as sharp as before.
As they neared the brow of the hill, the trees thinned and suddenly he had his first sight of the ruined castle that lay hidden in the forest, stark and alone on the ridge above.
Perhaps it was the darkness he had emerged from, but the moonlight seemed stronger. The pale, crumbling stone almost glowed. A sign cautioning against going any nearer stood planted beside a fence blocking the way.
Really, though, Alex felt there was little need to ward people away from this place. For one thing, its hazardous condition was plain to see. The ancient ruin had been corroded by the centuries. The decomposing relic of a once-strong tower poked up like a blunted old fang, riddled with rot. Alongside, the high remaining walls were like unsupported curtains of stone that might collapse any moment.
But that wasn’t it. Something about the ruin itself, the very way it sat there, seemed to generate its own forbidding atmosphere. The place lay shrouded in a thick, silent sense of time and decay best left undisturbed. Mottled by moss, the cracked gray facade had a strange, organic look. The empty black windows made Alex think of skulls that had been petrified in wide-eyed, openmouthed grimaces, crying out frozen warnings. Everything sent the same ominous message: stay away.
Zia moved aside to let the life-sizer kick down the fence, then hurried on, passing beneath a high archway, flashlight beam bouncing.
“Mind your paws on the way down, bunny,” the disappearing shadow called. “We don’t want you snapping your neck.”
It was not an unlikely prospect. Beyond the arch, the ground fell away steeply. As they went lumbering down, Alex found himself sliding helplessly, caught in a mini-landslide as loose rubble gave way. Beckman’s loop of wire bit into his arm, saving him.
Finally, they stood down in a desolate space strewn with strangely shaped rocks that Alex realized weren’t rocks at all but fragments of long-destroyed walls. The area must once have been the castle vaults but now lay open to the elements. The broken tower loomed above at the top of the slope they had come down. The full moon hung almost directly over it.
“Towers and moons,” Zia said, catching his glance. “And everyone forgot but us.” She turned to Beckman. “Quickly now.”
As Beckman and the life-sizer lowered the coffin, Alex noticed a new detail. There was a small glass panel in the lid, about where the face would be on a body.
The glass was misted from inside.
Beckman’s wire arm lengthened, unspooling with a shivering sound as he and the lumbering robot disappeared off into darkness beyond the moonlight, leaving Alex leaning on his makeshift support. He glanced down and saw that he was standing on something. It took a moment to recognize the discarded old painting covered in footprints. A woman holding out a plate, forever offering a waffle nobody wanted.
Zia placed her plant pot down and started fussing with two large black pebbles that lay near the center of the space, some distance apart. Smooth and shiny, they seemed out of place amid the dirty old rubble, as if they were recent additions.
She produced a compass and measuring tape. Studying the needle, she shifted the stones, making tiny, just-so adjustments. Finally, she took a small rock from her pocket and firmly tapped each stone three times before nodding and stepping back, dusting her hands. She turned to Alex, closed her eyes, then raised a finger, pointing to the sky behind her.
“Here it comes.”
Alex looked up, mystified. Then he saw it. Two fliers were approaching, carrying the empty old picture frame between them. As the little machines landed, the life-sizer and Beckman reappeared, dragging a massive form shrouded in tarpaulin. Zia stepped forward and pulled the covering away, then helped maneuver the object into position between the two stone markers.
It was a strange assemblage, but Alex knew instantly what he was looking at: all of the stolen frames, broken into pieces and joined together to form one huge structure.
The frame that had held the enormous painting stolen from the museum in Munich—The Great Last Judgment—was intact, surrounding the rest. Within it, the other pieces had been lashed together in a rough, crisscross arrangement. At the bottom left corner, Alex saw the space for the last frame, which the fliers had just dropped by Zia’s boots.
“The Shadow Gate of Boll,” she said, kneeling to begin knocking the final frame apart. “You honestly don’t know how lucky you are to see this, rabbit. It’s been over five hundred years since it stood intact.”
With a weary blink, she sent the two fliers up and off, vanishing toward the trees. She finished tying the wooden strands into place and stood. “Look, see how happy it is?” As she spoke, she took the rock from her pocket and gently touched it to the structure. For a second, the entire gate pulsed with glimmering, white-blue light.
“Now, now, not yet,” Zia said soothingly, removing the rock. The light died. She squinted up at the moon over the tower, wielding her thumb like an artist gauging a measurement. “Soon, though. Hans, toss me the astrolabe.”
Beckman threw something she caught easily. When she turned back, Alex saw it was a flat, brassy metal disc. She held it up at arm’s length and sighted along it toward some point in the sky, then drew it back toward her and fiddled minutely with it, muttering. Within the outer disc, several flat concentric plates were housed, all elaborately inscribed. She dialed one around a few notches, held the thing to the sky again, and nodded, satisfied.
As she tucked it away in her coat, she caught Alex’s eye. “Not seen one of those before? That’s a computer, rabbit. A proper computer, one that tells you important things, not like the distractions you play with.” She turned away. “Continue, Hans.”
Beckman and the life-sizer had removed the casket’s lid. Now they slid away the side panels to reveal the body stretched out within.
The tall man.
He lay on a red velvet base, arms folded across his chest, hands loosely joined over his cane’s silvery handle. His black coat was folded like a pillow under his head, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up over his forearms, exposing pale skin covered in interconnecting swirls of illegible black writing. The edge of a thick, dark patch of scars just barely showed on the underside of one arm.
But it was the man’s face that made Alex shiver most. Or, rather, the lack of a face. A rigid white mask covered his visage entirely, from hairline to chin. It appeared molded to replicate the features hidden beneath, but was utterly, eerily, expressionless. There were two eyeholes cut in the mask.
The body seemed lifeless. But Alex thought about the thin layer of mist on the window of the coffin’s lid and stared harder, then started in fright when the eyes behind the blank mask snapped open, as dark and wild as the heavens above.
XXXIII.
GATE, LOCK, KEY
“Look at you, all lost in the woods,” Zia called to Alex. She shifted the flower so it stood by the gate structure with its single leaf touching the old wood, then scooped up some of the surrounding dirt and poured it into the pot, patting it around the stem. As she worked, she sang reassuringly to the plant: “We’re poor wittle wabbits who’ve wost our way . . .
“Scared, yes?” she continued happily, smiling over her shoulder. She stood, wiping her palms on a silk handkerchief bearing a checkerboard pattern of purple and black.
“What’s . . . wrong with him?” Alex still stared at the figure on the ground. The eyes behind the mask burned with an awful frenzy. The flesh Alex glimpsed around them looked ravaged.
“What�
��s wrong?” Zia suddenly exploded. “Look at him, dumb-dumb! See what you did! The fire came down on him. It would have killed anyone else. Straight to dust. But we have protection, Thumper.” She gestured to the plant.
“Still,” she continued, forcing herself into a calmer voice. “Even so. His body is badly damaged. He’s kept it going through sheer will. But he can’t keep it going much longer. He’s going to use what he has left to open the gate.”
Alex tried to swallow. He looked at the wooden structure.
“Confused?” Zia said. “But, oh, curious, too, eh? And that’s stronger, really, isn’t it? You want to know. Father saw it in you. You kept the name of God and didn’t tell anyone and tried to learn all by your lonesome. Aw. Father thinks maybe you’d like to learn properly, one day. Which is very forgiving of him, if you ask me. It’s the reason I haven’t popped your head off your shoulders yet. Would you like to learn about this?” She pointed a jaunty thumb over her shoulder at the wooden construction.
Alex looked up from under his brow. He hated that she was right. Even after everything, a large part of him wanted to know about the gate very badly.
“My old brother hasn’t taught you anything, we know that,” Zia said, with another quick glance toward the moon. “But we can’t blame him for not telling you about this one. This one’s ultra-top-super-secret, bunny.
“Storytime, then,” she went on, slapping her hands in a gesture Alex had seen his grandfather make countless times. The longer he spent with Zia, the more he could see an awful resemblance between them. “Has brother dear told you about the weak spots yet?”
“Powerful places.” Alex nodded. “Places where things . . . get thin.”
She rolled her eyes. “Is that it?”
“Yes.” Alex fixed her with a direct stare. “That’s it.” Despite the hopelessness of his situation, he felt a sullen, rebellious anger growing. She scared him, she sickened him—but, above everything else, she simply annoyed him. He yanked roughly at the wire around his arm but stopped when Beckman tightened it to the point where Alex thought it might draw blood. He looked at the fine line trembling between him and Beckman.