by John Burke
The Dark Gateway
BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY JOHN BURKE
The Black Charade: A Dr. Caspian Novel of Horror (#2)
The Dark Gateway: A Novel of Horror
The Devil’s Footsteps: A Dr. Caspian Novel of Horror (#1)
The Golden Horns: A Mystery Novel
Ladygrove: A Dr. Caspian Novel of Horror (#3)
Murder, Mystery, and Magic: Macabre Stories
The Nightmare Whisperers: A Novel of Horror
The Old Man of the Stars: Two Classic Science Fiction Tales
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Copyright © 1953 by John Burke
Copyright © 2013 by the Estate of John Burke
Originally published under the name, Jonathan Burke. Special thanks go to Heather and Dave Datta for scanning the original text.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidebooks.com
DEDICATION
For David
CHAPTER ONE
She awoke in the cold, dim light of morning. The temperature had, she knew at once, fallen below freezing point during the night, but she was conscious of perspiration damp on her forehead. There had been a dream.… Still on the borderland of sleep, she tried to look back into the country she had left, to catch a glimpse of what had frightened her, but the memory was fading, leaving only a feeling of horror dragging at her mind, like the ebbing tide sucking at the shore.
She turned over to look at the window, and saw that the slope of the hill rising to the castle was still white with snow. The ruins themselves were partly submerged in the whiteness, but here and there a black and twisted fang thrust up towards the flushed sky.
The dream—she remembered suddenly—a remembrance like an echo that hollowly sounded once and faded quickly—had been about the castle. The ruins of the old Welsh stronghold, so familiar a sight from any of the windows at the back of the farmhouse, had in some way been bound up with her terror. It was useless trying to recall the details: dreams that were vivid and possessive during the night hours lingered only as uneasy sensations when daylight came, sensations that soon died away. In any case, she preferred to forget. It would be better. Without knowing exactly what it was that had troubled her, she hoped fervently that it would not come again.
The whole thing had been Simon’s fault. He had been talking so wildly and irrationally the previous evening, with an almost fanatical gleam in his eye. She could still hear ringing in her ears the words that had given rise to her nightmare.
“If you let this man come down and stay here, there’ll be great harm done. I’m not crazy: I’m serious. You must believe me. I can’t tell you the whole story right now, but you must listen to me, believe me.… This house is more than just a house. And those ruins—that’s where the gateway is, and it ought not to be opened yet. This isn’t the time.…”
When they asked him what he was talking about, and tried to make sense out of his ramblings, he repeated grimly: “The time hasn’t come. It’ll be too risky. You mustn’t let him take the risk; you mustn’t let that man stay here.”
Later, he had talked in a more level tone, but the fact that he was unable or unwilling to name what it was that he feared did not help to make his meaning any clearer. Whatever it may have been that prompted his insistence on the necessity for keeping Mr. Jonathan away, his words had certainly had unpleasant consequences for Nora.
She got out of bed, shivering as her feet touched the carpet, and unwilling to move out on to the cold boards that intervened between the edge of the carpet and her dressing-table. Mother was already up: the usual bumping noises were rising from the kitchen, and by the time Nora was ready to go downstairs she heard the rasp and scrape of ashes being shovelled into a bucket.
The kitchen was cold when she went in, and her feet rang on the stone floor. Until the fire took hold, the room seemed strangely empty, and she kept herself warm by following a well-established routine of early morning tasks, scarcely exchanging a word with her mother. They worked with their mouths shut, as though to keep out the probing, unrelenting chill of the atmosphere. In the fireplace, unenthusiastic tongues of flame licked tentatively around the wood.
“What a bitter morning,” said Nora. She was still upset by her dream, and felt irritable. “If only we could lie in bed until it got warm, and get up when we felt like it!”
“In that case we’d lie there all day,” said her mother. “It won’t get much warmer today.” She swung the huge kettle towards the tap. “I expect we’ll have more snow.”
Nora groaned. There were times when she hated the sight and smell of this kitchen, all the jobs that had to be done there, and the knowledge that outside was the farmyard, soon to be trampled into brown slush as the day’s work went on. To escape from all this.…
She noticed that the lamp was still burning, and turned it out.
Her mother said: “Best give your father a shout. We’re late this morning.”
Nora went upstairs and knocked on the doors of her father’s and brother’s rooms. When she came down, the kitchen seemed warmer and more cheerful.
“You were very rude to Simon last night,” said her mother suddenly.
“Rude, was I? It was all I could do to sit and listen to him talking so much nonsense. He goes on and on for so long, but you never get any idea of what he’s supposed to be talking about.”
“He’s a nice boy. You used to like him.”
“Just because I used to like him doesn’t mean that—oh, Mum, you know he’s impossible. All he ever thinks of is the castle and those books. Honestly, I can’t even look up the hill now without thinking of all the stuff he talks about—and last night I was dreaming about it.”
“Perhaps he does read too much,” her mother conceded. “Too much studyin’ all the time.”
“It’s all he comes here for,” said Nora. “Those awful books…I wish Dad would stop him coming.”
“Your dad said he should come whenever he wanted to, isn’t it? He used to come in to read those books before you were ever interested in him.”
She smiled. The truth of this remark was no comfort to Nora. She warmed her hands by the swelling fire, then went into the parlour and stood aggressively in front of the bookcase. It looked very imposing, with its orderly shelves of beautifully-bound volumes—volumes that no one would want to read, she thought angrily, except Simon. She wondered what queer kink in his mind made him interested in these dull things. Many were in French or Latin, and one or two in languages she did not recognise. The few in English had seemed promising at first: she had been fascinated by the strange illustrations, and the detailed accounts of witchcraft trials and strange practices in remote parts of the country in days long past had looked exciting…at first. But when Nora had settled down to read any of the books, she found that she became sleepy. The words failed to mean anything. It was as though they pushed her gently away and settled back in their places to await another, more understanding reader. Perhaps there were terrible things to be discovered, if one read on far enough. But that was Simon again, putting ideas into her head. Nora wished her father would get rid of the books.
Her reflection moved gently and ethereally in the glass, wavering like a ghost over the books. There was no colour in it: the dark hair that blazed defiant auburn when the light caught it was nothing now but a darker shadow, and for once her features looked pale and elusive; Nora had always been glad that her eyebrows did not look as pale and thin as the eyebrows of so many red-haired people seem, and that her skin did not freckle easily—except, she admitted unwillingly, in the corners of her eyes and sporadically down the sides of her nose. The solemn wraith in the glass stared back at her. Overhead, she could hear the sound of her brother moving reluctantly about. She
gave the bookcase one last venomous glare, seeing her grimacing reflection and realising how silly she was being. She went back into the kitchen. The kettle was beginning to sing.
“Why don’t we get rid of those old books?” she said after a few minutes.
Her mother, leaning over the fire, said: “Where would we get rid of them?”
“Burn them.”
“Your dad would never let us burn them. He says they’re worth a lot of money. He wants us to keep them until he knows what they are worth.”
“If anything.”
“Simon’s found them interesting enough.” She smiled as she spooned tea into the pot. “Is that why—?”
“No, mother, it’s not. I just think it’s silly to clutter up the house with old books. We ought to sell them, or give them to the chapel for the next jumble sale.”
“I don’t think they’d be right for chapel jumble sale,” said her mother dryly.
“Well, why not try and find out what they’re worth? I think Dad just likes to sit and watch the lamplight on the bindings.”
Her mother shrugged. For some reason her husband was attracted to the books that the previous owner had left behind, though she had never seen him reading one. Men had whims: Rhys Morris had plenty of them, and you could do nothing but accept them.
“If he wants to find out, he’ll do it in his own good time. Someday—”
“Someday!”
Nora could have choked with disgust. It was always the same. Someday. Someday, someone will mend the front gate, swinging loose on one hinge; someday, someone will see about the hot water system, that has always been queer. Someday…it was the old story.
She heard her father coming downstairs. She said: “Nothing ever gets done in this house.”
“A fine mood you’re in this morning, my girl.”
Nora picked up a cup of tea that had been poured out. She walked over to the small side window, looking down the slope. The narrow lane up to the farm was stifled with snow.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I had a bad night, and I feel awful. Mother, don’t you ever feel that this house is getting you down?”
Her father came in. A cheerful man at most times, he was taciturn and remote in the mornings. He would not waste a word, and there would be no murmur of his deep, characteristic chuckle until breakfast-time. He peered into a cup, added more sugar without tasting the tea, and sat down with a sigh by the table.
Nora stayed by the window, staring out until her eyes ached. To get away from this house; to go somewhere and see things. But what? This was the sort of place from which you did not break away. She knew the girls of her own age in the district, nearly all farmers’ daughters, tied down until old age: even those who married usually married farmers, and life was still the same, and there was another family in the district, and the same routine to go through in the house—on and on and on.
She knew that her mother was looking at her. Turning from the window, she said with forced casualness:
“I wonder why Mr. Jonathan wants to come down now? We don’t usually get visitors at this time of year.”
Her father got up and opened the door, admitting a knife-edged gust of cold air.
“Better get the buckets from the dairy,” he said gruffly.
Nora put her cup back on the table and went into the dairy, the clean, sterilised smell annoying her by its very familiarity. This was all part of it. On her way back through the kitchen she could not resist glancing once more towards the small window. Her mother said gently:
“No silly ideas, Nora fach. And it’s no good lookin’ out yet: he won’t be here till this afternoon.”
CHAPTER TWO
The man who ploughed his way up from the village through the snow drifts, heaped up before and around him like fantastically-shaped meringues, was not suitably dressed for the occasion. He was wearing a dark suit, a sober black overcoat, and a black hat, and looked as though he had come straight here from some city office. He was carrying a small case that brushed against the snow along the side of the lane, and his trousers were soaked up to the knees.
Nevertheless, he was smiling as he looked up at the farmhouse and the shattered castle beyond. Small, black, and incongruous, he stood at the foot of the slope up to the house and looked with apparent equanimity—almost with satisfaction—at the waist-high drifts through which he had yet to fight his way. About him and below, the dazzling, painfully white glaring fields sloped and reeled away, the village itself almost lost in what appeared as an uneven hummock of snow broken only by occasional grey roofs or patches of street that had been cleared.
The man pushed onwards. He was breathing heavily by the time he reached the front gate of the farm, his face an unhealthy colour. He coughed—a hoarse, smoker’s cough. It took all his strength to open the small gate, cutting a wide swathe through the white carpet that lay evenly and indiscriminately over the front lawn—its untidiness now hidden—and the gravel path. There were no marks of footsteps up to the front door and the ramshackle porch because no one who knew the family ever used the front door. The house was shaped like a large, grey L, two doors opening from the back into the farmyard. Everyone came and went by means of the door that gave access to the kitchen. The path that led around the side of the house by the once ornamental hedge was overgrown in summer, and was now choked with snow. It was rarely used; only strangers came to the front of the house.
The visitor took his last few steps, glancing around with a smug look of satisfaction, and knocked.
The use of the large brass knocker invariably created confusion throughout the house. Anyone who knocked at the front door must be a stranger, and that, according to Mrs. Morris, meant bad news. She would turn white, clutch her pinafore to dry her hands—even if they were not wet—and say: “Oh, dear. Now what? And I haven’t done my hair neither.” She would tremble and fiddle with her hair…even today, when she must have known who it would be. In the end it was, as usual, Nora who went to open the door.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Jonathan. We didn’t expect—”
“Good afternoon, Miss Morris.”
“We didn’t really expect you. We thought the weather would have put you off.”
She pulled the door open wide; it creaked a squeaky protest. Mr. Jonathan entered and stood in the narrow stone passage, holding his case away from his damp legs and grimacing.
“I had no idea how wet I was becoming,” he said, in a precise voice that did not quite eliminate his Liverpool accent.
Nora took his coat, shook it, and hung it beside her own. Mr. Jonathan put down his case, then picked it up again.
“Come into the kitchen and dry yourself,” said Nora. “And perhaps I’d better take your coat and hang it on a chair. If you’ve brought a change of clothing—”
“I’m afraid I omitted to take that precaution. As it was only for a weekend, you know. Foolish of me, wasn’t it?”
Nora was trying to fight down her disappointment. This was what she ought to have expected. If she had not allowed her imagination to dictate to her memory, she would not at this moment be feeling so annoyed. It was her own fault. Since the day that Jonathan had written, asking if he could come down for a weekend, she had been building up the most extravagant hopes.
Why should he want to come down in the middle of winter to a place where he had spent one week’s holiday in the summer? Without consciously wishing the thoughts to come to her, she had imagined—only imagined, at first—what it would be like if he had been so attracted by her that he had decided to come back and ask her if she would leave the farmhouse, to go with him.… It was the dream of leaving the house that had attracted her, and at once she was able to find reasons for believing that she might, at last, get away from it. She was surprised to find that her recollections of Mr. Jonathan were vague, but she filled in details and built up quite an attractive picture of him. A middle-aged, understanding sort of man, with a quality all his own. Her youth had appealed to him, and he was coming
back. What had started out as a dream became reality. She had almost expected that when she opened the door—well, what had she expected? It was all gone now. Already it was incredible that she should ever have found it hard to thrust such an absurd idea from her mind.
But if he had not come to see her, what could have brought him down on a day like this?
Mr. Jonathan, still clinging to his case, went thankfully towards the fire, greeting Mrs. Morris in his clipped, sibilant voice. She pulled up a chair for him, and he sat down before the leaping flames, the steam from his trousers mingling with the steam from the spout of the perpetually-boiling kettle.
“That’s better,” he said, and he put his case on the floor beside the chair.
“A cup of tea, Mr. Jonathan?” said Nora.
“Thank you. Yes, it would be very welcome.”
Mrs. Morris hovered anxiously about him, going “Tch, tch,” and saying: “If your clothes—well, with all the damp there is…I expect Rhys could find you something.”
“No, really. Very kind of you, but I’ll soon be dry. If only I had realised how bad it was going to be—”
“I s’pose it wasn’t like this when you left Liverpool?”
“All the snow was trampled into slush days ago. People and traffic, you know. I was quite surprised to see how white and clean everything looked when we left Chester. The further we got into Wales, the thicker it got.”
“You picked a bad time to come down here. We don’t get many visitors this time of year.”
“Very good of you to have me—very kind indeed. I don’t mind the weather.” He smiled strangely. “I had to come this weekend. I’ve found out so many things just lately.”
Nora watched him without seeming to. She was shocked by the change in him. At least, there seemed to be a change, though that may have been because she had built up such an idealised portrait of him. He was older than she had thought, and there was something malignant about him. He crouched rather than sat. His hands twitched nervously. He looked scared, yet indefinably anticipatory. Nora knew that he had certainly not come down to see her, and she was unexpectedly relieved. He was a small, unprepossessing man, with his creased forehead and eyes never at rest. His nose was faintly pockmarked at the end, and although he could not have been much more than forty, he was going raggedly bald, his lank, dark hair smoothed back from his walnut-shell forehead. No, thought Nora with a shudder, not even if it had been a way of escape from the farm: no, not with this stunted little clerk, bringing with him the atmosphere of his Liverpool office. Even if he had come because of her—and now she was quite positive that he had not done so. She wondered again what could have brought him; and, glancing at her mother, she saw that she, too, was puzzled.