The Dark Gateway

by John Burke

  Simon rubbed his chin. “I found the books very interesting.”

  “Anything at all…special?”

  “It depends on what you mean,” said Simon, gently.

  Mr. Jonathan did not pursue the matter, but studied the young man apprehensively. His nervousness was some consolation to Nora, who felt that perhaps the danger—that danger that had so far remained undefined—had passed. She looked across at Frank, and saw that he did not share her optimism. He was frowning. He said: “I think Mrs. Morris’s idea of going out for a while isn’t at all bad. It would clear our heads.”

  “And shake our lunch down,” said Simon. “But then it’s such a shame to shake Sunday lunch down in that rough way. I prefer the languid sort of afternoon.”

  Nora came to a decision. “I think you’re right, Frank.” She was pleased—and surprised at her own pleasure—to see that this annoyed Simon. “I’ll come out for a little while,” she said. “We can’t go far, but it’ll put everything in a new light, perhaps.”

  She was resentful towards Simon, who ought to have cleared everything up on his arrival: she was positive that he could have settled their fears and suspicions at once, but for some reason he had refused. He knew what Jonathan was doing, but he would not put the minds of the others at rest. If he thought he was making an impression as a strong, silent, knowledgeable man.…

  She said: “I’ll just get a scarf and my coat.”

  Simon was too fond of playing the part of the mysterious young man. At first she had been attracted by his air of aloofness, but that sort of thing very soon palled. Now, for instance, he could have been so reassuring and helpful—instead of which, he was being silly. She put on her bottle-green coat with the deep pockets, into which she could thrust her hands, and joined Frank by the kitchen door.

  “We won’t be long,” she said.

  Frank opened the door, and they went out.

  The sensation of freedom was delightful. Was this all that had been needed, right from the start? Could she have shaken off all that dismal apprehension merely by opening the door and stepping outside into the invigorating air? Probably not: Frank and her father had not fared so well.

  She said: “How do you think Simon got over here? Do you think that—that whatever stopped you has gone now, and that we’re all right?”

  “I don’t know. That’s been puzzling me ever since he arrived. He’s hiding something.”

  “Simon always gives you the impression that he’s hiding something: he’s worked it up to such a fine art that I wouldn’t swear that he was always sincere. There may be nothing behind that appearance.”

  “He’s got Jonathan frightened, anyway.”

  Nora conceded this point. It was one of the few satisfactory aspects of the situation at present.

  “But how did he get to the house?” she persisted. “There must be a gap somewhere—unless, as I said, the whole thing is over and done with.”

  “There’s one way to find out.”

  Her heart quickened as she followed Frank down the slope. It was bad enough sitting indoors and hearing the story of those who had come back after attempting to reach the village: going down the apparently clear hillside towards an invisible obstruction to encounter it yourself was a very different matter, and far worse. She admitted her nervousness, and let Frank lead the way. He was beginning to progress more slowly, with one hand outstretched.

  He stopped.

  “Still there?” she said.

  “Come and try it for yourself.”

  Tentatively, she dabbed with her hand, thinking how ridiculous it was to be waving it about in mid-air like this. But it was not so ridiculous when she felt its movement arrested by that unseen wall, force, or whatever it might be, of which she had already heard Frank speak.

  “Still there,” he said.

  “In that case—”

  He said: “Which way does your friend Simon have to come in order to reach the house?”

  “Round the other side of the hill. He can come up and round or right over the top: there’s not much to choose in actual time, but coming over the top by the castle involves a steeper climb.”

  “Does he usually come that way?”

  “I think so.”

  Frank turned to face the ruins. Not very far away, but there would be a lot of floundering through the snow before he reached them, and then there was the descent of the other side. He said:

  “You’d better go back in, Nora. I’m going to go over and see if there’s any gap in this—this curtain, on the other side.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “I don’t know how deep—”

  “You said that we ought to hunt in pairs,” she reminded him. “I don’t fancy going back into the house just yet, anyway. I’d sooner come with you.”

  She could tell that he was reluctant to agree to this. He scented some risk, although the bright snowy slope and the huddled ruins were innocent enough, to all appearances.

  At last he grinned and began to trudge upwards.

  “Excelsior!”

  They passed the farmhouse, giving it a wide berth in case anyone should come out and call to them. The going was heavy, but the effort made them both warm, and Nora had to loosen her scarf. It was a magnificent day. Sun gilded the peaks of the distant mountains and fell indiscriminately on scattered slopes and barely distinguishable farm buildings on neighbouring hillsides. The unfolding panorama of sparkling white splendour was in itself an incentive, urging them to the top, so that the whole world might be displayed at their feet.

  But as the castle ruins came closer, the farmhouse seemed to fall away too rapidly: the distance did not seem to correspond at all with the distance they had actually covered. It was doubtless an optical illusion caused by the snow, but it was alarming, and Nora automatically kept closer to Frank, who grinned encouragingly and said: “Soon be there.”

  The castle, so impressive from below, assumed a totally new aspect as they reached the last steep rise which led on to the broken stones and rubble, now dusted with silvery powder: it brooded with an unsuspected malevolence, resenting their intrusion and musing to itself. The holes in the walls became gaping, ravenous mouths. The cardboard silhouette became a three-dimensional, massive erection of crumbling, harsh stone.

  They walked under the old arch and stood on the edge of a sudden declivity, beyond which lay the remains of the main wall itself.

  “A moat?” said Frank. “At this height?”

  “I don’t think it could have been: just a sort of trench to make things more awkward for the enemy.”

  “Awkward is the word,” Frank agreed. “It seems to breathe intolerance and defiance, this place. Bloodshed and villainy, and all that sort of thing.”

  “I’ve never noticed it before,” said Nora. “We used to come up here and play a lot, and in summer I’ve often brought a book and read it, propped against a heap of stones. It’s never been anything very special. But today the place isn’t the same at all. It’s come to life—a rather nasty sort of life.”

  “Maybe we ought to skirt the castle and go down the other side out of harm’s way. No sense in—”

  “Nonsense!” said Nora stoutly. “I’m not going to be put off by queer sensations. I’ve been having nothing else but premonitions and weird notions all weekend, and I’ve had enough of them.”

  She marched resolutely forward, taking the narrow path, banked up from the trench below, that led to another shattered gateway. It leered at her, and, absurdly, she wondered what lay beyond.

  “Something’s troubling you,” said Frank. “Don’t go on: it’s not worth it.”

  “Dreams,” she said. “My horrible dreams.… I’ve got to get over the effects of that nightmare I had about this place. Come on.”

  She went through, and even as she passed under the last frail remnant of archway she knew that the castle had changed. She did not see the usual heap of jutting ruins on the other side; she was not at all sure of what she di
d actually see, but she knew, as she led Frank out on to another patch of level ground, where in summer the trippers carved their initials in the springy turf, that this was not as it should be. They had walked out of the brightness of the snow into a shadow.

  She looked up, suddenly seeing clearly, and the world ahead was black.

  “Good God,” said Frank, coming to a halt.

  There was hard, well-trodden ground beneath their feet. A low wall in a perfect state of repair was before them, and beyond it was.…

  Could this still be Wales? They had never seen mountains like these before. These were raw, ragged shapes, curiously unfinished, as though flung up but a short space of time previously by some gigantic natural upheaval; there were no trees as yet on their naked slopes, and in the shadowed valleys was no life. No life as we know it, that is: something moved and had its being down there. It could not be seen, but they were acutely aware of its presence, its manifestation coming up to them much as a putrid smell might arise from the depths of some hideous pit. The sky was dull crimson, stained by the afterglow of a colossal, unnatural sunset, and the ripped edges of the mountains stood up stark and ferocious against its dying fury.

  “How did we get here?” demanded Frank in a whisper.

  His voice was the pitiful squeak of a tiny animal in a massive world. They had walked into something that had only the most tenuous ties of kinship with the world they had just left.

  Nora said: “A dream.…”

  “For both of us? No.”

  And then he dared to do what she had realised would be necessary, but which she had been unable to contemplate. He turned sharply around and she heard him gasp. She put out her hand to clutch his. “What is it?”

  “You’d better have a look,” he said in a choked voice.

  She forced herself to follow his example, praying that despite his incredulous gasp she would find the view as it should be—the ruins, and the white landscape beyond.

  Instead, she saw the colossal bulk of the castle as Jonathan had shown it to her from the window. From here, caught on its very perimeter, she found it more terrifying than ever. Its very magnitude was something beyond the bounds of reason: nowhere in Wales, a country of frowning castles and citadels, was there such a pile. It heaved its great bulk up against the sky, in itself as fierce and incredible as the mountains that stalked about it. There was far more of it than the hill as Nora had known it could possibly have accommodated. It blotted out everything she expected to see. This was a fortress built even before the one with whose ruins she was familiar, in another land, on a hill that was not as she had known it, in a world that.…

  “What world is this?” she asked.

  “Not ours,” said Frank. “At least, not ours of today. It might be…no, how in heaven’s name can we tell what, where, or when it is?”

  “Can we get back?”

  “We’ve walked through something to get here,” said Frank. “If we walked through, we can walk back.”

  He was trying to sound confident, and she admired him for his gallant attempt to cheer her up. In the face of those ponderous walls she found it hard to respond. Then Frank said: “That gate—right ahead of us.”

  He was indicating a low arch, in shape not unlike the ruined one through which they had come. It was impossible to see where the arch led: there was a sort of swirling darkness beyond it, that might have been a mist rising from within the castle. Certainly there was no apparent break in the walls, and it seemed unlikely that a perfectly normal stretch of countryside should lie on the other side. Unless the castle itself was merely an illusion.

  “I’ve just thought of something Jonathan told me,” she said in a low voice, feeling that it was unwise to speak out too loudly. “He conjured up that vision for me through the passage window and called it—what was it, now? Glamourie, I think he said. If that was just a mirage, or something he produced by hypnotism, or however you do these things, why shouldn’t this be the same?”

  “It looks solid enough to me.”

  “If we walked towards it, do you think it would vanish?”

  Frank looked hopelessly around at the ugly mountains. “There’s no other way out,” he said. “We might as well take a running jump at the walls and hope to go through.” He strode resolutely across the few yards of blackened ground and touched the nearest wall. It was disagreeably solid.

  “This is no illusion,” said Frank.

  Nora began to feel the groping of panic at her heart and in her throat. Until Frank had reached out and tested the undeniable reality of that wall, she could not really accept this as anything but a nightmare. Now, following him, she too felt the cold stone under her hand, and knew all this madness was real.

  “We could try walking round the castle,” said Frank. “We’re near the end here, and we could at least get a view of what it looks like where—where the farmhouse ought to be.”

  “How long have we got, do you think?”

  “How long—?”

  “There must be someone here. Sooner or later they’ll find us, and then.…”

  “We don’t know that anyone—or anything—lives here now. It looks deserted. Come on, let’s go and see what there is to see. Remember this spot, so that we can get back and try that little arch if we have to make a break for it.”

  Carefully, treading with caution on the unyielding ground as though it might give way at any moment, they went along the side of the silent building that rose above them, approaching the corner around which they would see what lay beyond. Anything was possible. In this world where logic had ceased to be effective, there was no reason why the snowy hills of Wales should not be there: that was their only hope. Just as they were reaching the end of the wall, with no hint of anything but grim darkness awaiting them, there was a sound in the air, far away.

  “What was that?”

  They paused. The noise was repeated, coming closer, and it was possible to establish the direction: it came from the part of the world that they had hoped to see as home, and this was no noise that would ever have been heard around their home. It was a long, despairing cry—the cry of some terror-stricken hunted creature. The derisive mountains flung back the cry, so that it was magnified a hundredfold, dinning in the ears of the two listeners with fierce insistence. And behind it, muffled but plain, was a confused roaring and howling.

  Frank put his arm around Nora’s shoulders and drew her against the wall. It offered no protection, but there was a comfort in the pressure of the stone against their backs.

  Suddenly a dark shape fled across the sky above them, towards the distant peaks. Behind it—close behind—was a dark, heaving pack of distorted shapes, and from this pursuing cloud came a great clamour like the baying of bloodthirsty dogs. The shapes were shadowy and undefined: Nora, afraid to watch but equally afraid to close her eyes, was glad that the light was not more revealing—she felt that those beings who streamed across the sky were not fit for human eyes to look upon. The pursuers were gaining, she could see. Frank’s grasp tightened. Down the sky went the grotesque, screaming creature in the lead, and then, as it seemed to plunge towards the mountains, it was surrounded and caught up by the pack that had been giving chase. There was a second of dark turmoil, then a great, ululating cry that seemed to fall as the heaving cloud itself fell, towards the hidden valley, echoing round and round in a last, utterly damned despair.

  Nora began to cry with hard, dry sobs, shaking with the effort not to scream, fighting down the desire to scream out so that she could hear the echoes come howling back.

  There was silence once more.

  Frank said: “God, what have we stumbled into? If this isn’t hell.…”

  “Listen,” said Nora. “They’re coming back.”

  A rustling and flapping sound rose from the valley.

  With it, they became aware of a dim, secret rumbling within the castle; a stirring and activity like a heart beginning to beat.

  “They’re coming here—I’m sure the
y are!”

  They were so conspicuous that it was only a matter of time before they were seen.

  “Round the corner, quickly,” said Frank.

  They reached the end of the wall, and looked along the side of the castle…to see yet more gargantuan peaks and the shadows of more secretive valleys. There was no way out for them down there.

  “Back to the gate: we’ll have to chance it.”

  “We’re too late.”

  They shrank down, trying to flatten themselves against the unfriendly earth as the incredible shapes came rolling, stumbling, striding, and muttering up the path from below. Some might have been human silhouettes—and yet, as they stalked along to some entrance that Frank and Nora had not noticed before, there was something evil in their movement that proclaimed their complete inhumanity. Travesties of men, of animals, of creatures for which there was no name on this earth; spawn of a reckless, proliferous Nature lost in an insane, lustful fecundity.

  Frank murmured: “They’re going. They haven’t seen us.”

  The last of the party hopped like a misshapen toad over the ridge and along to the entrance. It was gone.

  “What are they? Are those…those things the people who built this place?”

  “They don’t look intelligent enough: there’s something twisted and subhuman about them that doesn’t fit in with a building like this. No, there must be someone higher—someone for whom those awful twisted things are only servants or beasts of burden.”

  “Or hunting dogs,” said Nora with a shudder.

  Frank nodded grimly, his lips set. “That’s pretty close to the mark, I should imagine.”

  They were still afraid to move. The short stretch of ground between the arch and where they lay was deserted, but the silence of the castle now seemed far more threatening than before. There was no telling what might not spring out at any moment.

  “We’ll have to make a dash for it,” said Frank. “I can’t see anything through that arch, and it might quite easily lead us right into the castle itself. Once we got in, I doubt whether we’d get out. But there aren’t any alternatives. We either try the arch, or we stay here.”