The Doorkeepers

by Graham Masterton

  Josh said, “There’s no point in yelling at them. You should appeal to their better nature.”

  The dog-handler had a blue-shaved head and his face was scarred like a patchwork quilt. “None of my dogs has a better nature.”

  “Yes, they do,” said Josh. He put out his hands and the dogs came trotting up to him. He rubbed their heads and tugged at their ears. The dog-handler was furious and astounded at the same time.

  “Did you ever hear of the Montenotte Method?” Josh asked.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “The Montenotte Method says that you can teach a dog to be aggressive by appealing to its sense of loyalty.”

  “This dog is aggressive because I’ll strangle him if he isn’t.”

  Josh rubbed the dogs’ muzzles and let them go. They walked uncertainly toward the staircase, paused, and looked back at their handlers, bewildered.

  “GO!” screamed the bald handler. “Kill, or I’ll feed your bollocks to the cats!”

  The dogs scampered off down the stairs and out of sight.

  “I see you have a very special talent, Mr Winward,” said Frank Mordant.

  “Anybody who cares about animals can do it,” Josh told him. “And I care enough about Abraxas to buy him a little more time to get away.”

  Frank Mordant smiled. Then he said, “You wanted to see Miss Andersen? Come along, and I’ll show you.”

  He stood beside Nancy’s bed and he hardly knew what to say. She was pale and drugged, and her eyes were puffy, but he could see that they hadn’t hurt her.

  “Josh,” she whispered, reaching out her hand for him. “I’m so sorry. I thought I could find Frank Mordant for you … I really thought I could do it.”

  He took a step closer to the bed, but the Hooded Man said, “That’s near enough.”

  Frank Mordant said, “As you can see, she’s a little sleepy, but we’ve kept her in the best of health.”

  “What are you going to do with us?” asked Josh.

  “Me, personally, nothing. I’m only a minion, I’m afraid. I brought Nancy here because the Doorkeepers had a warrant out for her arrest, and yours, and I really didn’t have a choice. If it had been up to me, I would have let her go. My conscience is clear about Julia, I promise you. She died by accident. But Miss Andersen came after me, and you came after her, so what was I to do?”

  The Hooded Man said, “Tomorrow at noon you will hear the judgement of the Masters of Religious Observance; and then you will know what punishment you will suffer.”

  “You can’t do this. You don’t have any right.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much, old man,” put in Frank Mordant. “They’ll probably decide to exile you, that’s all – on pain of imprisonment if you ever come back.”

  “Oh, you think so? If that’s what they’re going to do, why don’t they let us go now?”

  “It’s all a question of ritual. You know. Keeping up appearances.”

  “Follow me,” ordered the Hooded Man, and led him out of the room. Josh turned back just in time to see Nancy raising her hand to him in the Modoc sign meaning Hope.

  Twenty-Seven

  The Hooded Man locked Josh in a bare room with a view of the hospital lawns. In the distance he could see the glittering lights of London, with autogiros swarming over it like fireflies. He lay on the iron-framed bed without undressing and tried to rest, but his mind was teeming with fear and worry.

  At eleven o’clock a burly male nurse unlocked the door of his room and escorted him along the corridor to the toilet.

  “What if I try to make a run for it?” he asked, as he stood in front of the urinal.

  The male nurse let out a sharp, humorless bark of laughter.

  Josh was allowed to pour himself a Bakelite beaker of water, and then he was escorted back to his room. “Breakfast at seven,” the male nurse told him. “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

  He sat on the edge of his bed with his head in his hands. He almost felt that if he squeezed his eyes tight enough, he would open them again and find himself back in Mill Valley, in his own bedroom, with the wind-chimes tinkling on the verandah outside. He tried to wish this world into disappearing, by the power of mind alone. If somebody had wished the six doors into existence, maybe he could wish that he had never heard of them, and that time could turn backward.

  He was still sitting there when he felt something nudging his left leg. Something alive. Instantly – shocked – he opened his eyes. It was Abraxas, with his eyes bright and his tail slapping wildly against the frame of the bed.

  “Abraxas! How the hell did you get in here?” But then he remembered that the male nurse had left his door ajar while they went along to the head. There wouldn’t have been any point in him locking it, after all – he wouldn’t have imagined that anybody wanted to get in.

  “How’re you doing, boy? Hungry? I don’t have any food, sorry. But here, you can have a drink of water.”

  Abraxas thirstily slurped from Josh’s beaker, and then he shook himself and sat down beside him, as if he were waiting to be told what to do next.

  “You’re a good dog, you know that. You must have the best-tuned nose I ever came across. A Stradivarius of noses. And you didn’t let those mangy hounds find you, did you?”

  Abraxas gave a whine of appreciation in the back of his throat.

  Josh said, “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do now. I’m going to teach you the Montenotte Method. I’m going to teach you how to be fearless and brave and a little bit crazy. I’m going to teach you to fight your way out of here. You’re going to be the fiercest dog that ever was. That’s the least that Ella deserves.”

  He started to stroke the top of Abraxas’ smooth, well-boned head. “Now you listen to me,” he began. “This is the last time I’m going to stroke you like this, because you and me, we’re equals.” He pressed one hand flat against his chest, and then he pressed it against Abraxas’ chest in exactly the same way. “We see with the same eyes,” he said, pointing to his own eyes, and then to Abraxas’ eyes. “We hear with the same ears, and we feel with the same heart. You wait. By the end of tonight, you and I are going to be so physically and mentally attuned to each other, you’ll be wondering why I’m wearing pants and you’re not. We’re going to be symbiotes, you got it? And more than that, we’re going to be friends.”

  All through the night, until a ghostly gray dawn began to reveal the trees and the lawns and the hospital buildings, and the streetlights began to wink out, Josh talked and touched and trained Abraxas to understand everything he was thinking and everything that he needed from him.

  It was almost a dreamlike experience for both of them, a Zen master and his pupil, and Josh found that he could ask Abraxas to do things that he had never asked of a dog before, such as growling to order, and walking around the room seven times, and jumping in the opposite direction whenever he jumped himself.

  He taught him more than tricks, though. Josh taught Abraxas to look at him and know what he wanted him to do next. Sometimes he needed the slightest of winks, or an almost-imperceptible nod of the head, but by morning he was sitting and lying down just because Josh was thinking sit and lie.

  At five after seven, the male nurse came into his room with a tray. He set it down on a folding table, and gave Josh a Bakelite knife and fork. “There you are. Better make the most of it.”

  Josh lifted the aluminum cover off his plate. Underneath lay four rashers of fatty bacon, two sausages, two fried eggs, and two soggy slices of fried bread.

  “Is this the punishment? Execution by cholesterol?”

  “Very funny,” said the male nurse, as he walked back toward the door.

  Josh waited until the door was closed and locked. Then he set his breakfast plate down on the floor. “Abraxas? Come and get it.”

  Abraxas shuffled out from under the bed and wolfed down the entire plateful in less than twenty seconds. “Now, get back under there and grab yourself some zees,” Josh told him. “I can
’t take you out for a walk, not just yet, so you’ll have to hold it.”

  The Hooded Men came for him at five after twelve. There were five of them, with three dog-handlers and two drummers. As they escorted him along the corridors, the drummers let out an intermittent bang!-bang!-bang! that almost pierced his eardrums.

  They went down the main staircase and across the hallway. Ahead of them stood two huge double doors, clad in polished copper. Two of the Hooded Men produced keys, and unlocked them. Two more pushed them open.

  “Come on, now. This is your time,” said one of the Hooded Men, pushing Josh forward. They marched him down a long corridor, lit only by dim greenish skylights. Josh could feel a faint draft blowing along it, and the draft carried with it the pungent smell of camphor, mingled with the dry aroma of herbs. It reminded him of hiding in his grandmother’s closet when he was very small, and how he had once been accidentally locked inside it for a whole afternoon, crying and calling out for help.

  They reached another pair of double doors, and swung these open, too. Inside, it was darker still, and it took Josh over half a minute for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. He looked around and saw that they were standing in the entrance to a Victorian operating theater, with a hexagonal floor, and tiers of balconies rising up on three sides. Right at the very top, there were six clerestory windows, but they were glazed with dark blue glass, so that only the inkiest of lights could penetrate the theater itself.

  As his eyesight improved, Josh saw that the balconies were occupied by Hooded Men, with their Puritan hats and their black tunics; and by other men in Puritan costume, their pale faces gleaming in the darkness like Hallowe’en lanterns. There was a murmur of conversation and a thick rustle of clothing, as well as the clank of scabbards.

  The theater must have been very poorly ventilated. Apart from the smell of camphor and herbs, there was an overwhelming smell of stale sweat and tobacco. Josh found it suffocating, and had to steeple his hands in front of his nose.

  Out of the shadows, Frank Mordant came forward, dressed in a black double-breasted suit with dandruff specking his shoulders. “The moment of truth,” he grinned. “I don’t know whether you’re going to enjoy this very much, but it’s going to be an experience like you’ve never had before, I promise you.”

  “Where’s Nancy, you bastard?”

  “Oh, she’ll be here in a minute, don’t you fret about that. In fact – look – here she comes now.”

  Two doors at the rear of the theater opened up, and a high surgical trolley was wheeled in by two hospital orderlies. A figure lay on it, draped in a white sheet, one arm dangling. As it was wheeled nearer, Josh saw that it was Nancy, very pale, her hair tied back and covered by a white surgical cap. She looked like Saint Joan, on her way to be martyred.

  Josh tried to step forward, but one of the Hooded Men immediately grasped his arm with a gloved hand that felt like a bag full of crushed bones. “Stay here and observe,” the Hooded Man breathed. “Your turn will come soon enough.”

  Now the two surgeons entered the theater, Mr Leggett and Mr Crane, both of them dressed in white surgical robes. There was a spattering of applause, but they stayed in the background.

  One of the Hooded Men raised his arm and called out, “Pray silence for Master Gordon Spire!”

  The theater became suddenly hushed. A thin man in Puritan costume descended from his place on the tiers, and stalked stiff-legged into the center of the theater. He had a sharp, ratlike face, with a hairy wart next to his nose, and when he took off his hat he revealed a mane of steel-gray hair, curled up at the back.

  “What we have come here to do today is historical,” he said, in a sharp, penetrating voice. “We have come here to judge, yes. We have come here to punish, yes. We have come here to uphold the law. But we have also come here to perpetuate the consciousness that gives us rule and dominance over every manifestation of our Lord’s creation.

  “This man that stands before you, Joshua Winward, stands accused of heresy, conspiracy, subversion and murder. We have deliberated and found him guilty. This woman who lies here, Nancy Andersen, is similarly accused of heresy, conspiracy, subversion of the Commonwealth, and deception. We have deliberated, and we have found her guilty as charged.”

  “On what evidence?” Josh shouted out. “Where are your witnesses? Where is your proof? You didn’t even give us a chance to speak in our defense!”

  The Hooded Man gripped his upper arm even tighter. “Quiet,” he insisted. “This is a court of law.”

  “This isn’t any goddamned court of law! Where’s our defense? Where’s the goddamned jury? This is a total travesty, and you know it!”

  “Quiet” ordered the Hooded Man, and crushed his arm harder.

  Now Mr Leggett stepped forward. He paused for a moment, for effect, and then he said, “What you will witness here today will be a miracle of modern surgery. Out of justice, comes perpetual life. This woman who lies here on this trolley is convicted of mortal offenses against the Commonwealth. But now she will have the opportunity to give the greatest contribution possible to its welfare and its survival.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Josh wanted to know. “What the hell’s he talking about?”

  “Shh,” said Frank Mordant, lifting one finger to his lips.

  Mr Leggett said, “The six doors which we all have sworn to protect for all eternity were created by one woman. Out of this one woman’s mind, out of this one woman’s consciousness – a flame that has been kept alight for two thousand years.

  “She has outlived kings and emperors, uprisings and rebellions, invasions and conquests. She has survived so long because of the pharmacological skills of the Druids, and by mystical influences which we still cannot fully understand, even today, for all of our scientific advances. For century after century, she has been cared for by the finest doctors and surgeons and herbalists – still conscious today, where she is sustained by the latest in surgical techniques.

  “This, gentlemen, will guarantee her survival through this new millennium, and into the next, and probably for ever. The six doors will never close!”

  Josh tried to pull himself free, but another Hooded Man grasped his other arm, and all he could do was kick and twist.

  Mr Leggett turned to Mr Crane, and said, “Shall we begin?” Then he looked around at the audience in the theater and shouted out, “What you are about to see now is a miracle! Praise the Lord!”

  The doors at the back of the theater opened again, and a paler blue light suffused the auditorium.

  “Gentlemen,” said Mr Leggett, his voice cracking with emotion. “I give you the queen of all queens. I give you Boudicca.”

  Six hospital orderlies slowly pushed a black-draped carriage in to the center of the operating theater. It looked like a moving tent, because it was completely covered, so that only the lower half of its wheels were visible.

  After the tent came a stainless-steel trolley, laid out with dozens of surgical instruments – saws, clips, scalpels, and some extraordinary devices which Josh had never seen before, and whose purpose he couldn’t even begin to guess.

  The theater fell completely silent as one of the orderlies pushed Nancy closer to the tent-like affair. Then, like a waiter whipping off a tablecloth, he removed the sheet that covered her. Josh struggled again, but the Hooded Men were holding him far too tight for him to break free. Nancy was completely naked, her pale skin shining blue in the light from the clerestory windows. The orderly secured her wrists and ankles with leather straps, and tightened them.

  Now – on a signal from Mr Leggett – another orderly tugged a string at the side of the black tent. It resisted for a moment, but then it abruptly dropped to the floor. Josh looked at what was underneath, and felt a prickling sensation of utter horror, like centipedes running up his back.

  The carriage was an elaborate construction of slings and pulleys and supports. Suspended on all of these slings were layer upon layer of coarse dried-looking fabri
c, the color of rotten linen. Out of these layers hung scores of gnarled sticks, hundreds of them, like the legs of long-dead spiders crushed between the pages of an ancient book.

  At first, Josh couldn’t understand what he was looking at, but gradually he realized that the layers of fabric formed a pattern, like a huge dead chrysanthemum. Toward the center of the chrysanthemum, the layers appeared to be thicker, and paler, and the sticks much less gnarled. Josh peered at them more intently, and then he saw that they weren’t sticks at all, but human arms, their skin dried out, their flesh desiccated. Between them, there was a distorted, twisted torso, thick with ribbons of scar tissue, and another torso attached to it, at an angle, and a third torso beneath them.

  This enormous flower was nothing less than the mummified bodies of literally hundreds of people, all sewn together to form a single, immense being. And most terrifying of all was the face that lay in the very center of it. A woman’s face, as white as if she had been powdered with flour, her red-rimmed eyes staring out of this concatenation of arms and legs and bodies as if she were right on the point of screaming. Yet the minutes passed, and she didn’t scream.

  She blinked, and that frightened Josh even more, because that meant that she was alive. She was actually alive, in the middle of all of these layers of atrophied skin and time-brittled bone.

  There was no smell of decay, only a haunting mustiness. As each new organ was attached to her body, she must have drained it of all of its blood and all of its mucus, until it became nothing more than human paper. So this is why Julia had been emptied; and why all of the girls that Frank Mordant had murdered before her had been selectively dismembered. Their mutilations had depended entirely on this creature’s particular needs. New heart, new lungs, new stomach – whichever had been drained of all of its nourishment, and started to fail her.

  Her face was both alarming and remarkable. It wasn’t the face of a modern woman at all. It was broad, with a heavy jaw, and the faintest trace of freckles across the bridge of a small, straight nose. A wide black band of cloth had been tied around her forehead, but underneath it Josh could still see traces of reddish-gray hair.