The Dark Gateway

by John Burke

  “But they’re not always successful,” snarled Jonathan. “So far the ritual has not been carried out correctly. There have been mistakes. But what of the time when no mistakes are made? What defence can be put up then: what can be done in the hour—it’s close enough now!—when the gods are really recalled…what then? Another battle? The result.…”

  The voice laughed agreeably. “Another battle. Yes, there will be that. It may be that the White Adepts will be defeated this time; it may be that they cannot hope to vanquish evil in the end, despite the great hopes and prophecies. If they are wrong, blackness will triumph despite all efforts, and the great Day of Judgment will be a hideous shambles. No one can say. But the White Adepts will fight: they will fight as they fought at Moytura, at the Pyramid of Tarol, and in other distant universes that are not known on this tiny globe. They have become more than man, but they have not deserted man, and they can be recalled. As they came in a ball of light across the outer spaces to join combat and shatter the black ones in what you call the Great Destruction, so they may come again. They will ride in consuming fire and throw against the leagues of darkness all the glory of light. The gods of Atlantis have been banished, and it were better that the whole universe should be torn apart than that they should return. But then again”—with an endearing chuckle that Nora unaccountably seemed to recognise—“it might not even be necessary for the White Adepts to intervene. A charlatan might easily encompass his own destruction without any outside assistance. Just one small blunder—”

  Jonathan’s courage was quickly returning. He said, arrogantly: “There’s no charlatanry here. Things are going to happen—make no mistake about it.”

  The fire was dying down and the light became dull red. “Very well,” came the reply; “but have no illusions—if the call comes, it will be answered. As Arthur sleeps in Avalon, and the blessed knights keep watch in Caer Sidi for the day when there shall be need of them, so the White Adepts keep watch. Make no mistake, indeed.…”

  A pinpoint of light hung suddenly in the air at the centre of the circle. It grew and became more brilliant, and Nora felt Simon’s nails biting into her palm. The red glow on Jonathan’s twisted, evil face changed to a hard white radiance that caused him to squirm away like a rat from fire.

  Then, somehow—the light was too intense and the sense of angry excitement too overpowering for Nora to be sure of the details—the circle was broken, and there was a shout of possessive rage. The light died, and a chair shrieked along the floor. Jonathan was chanting in a high rasping voice. Simon rose unsteadily to his feet. The soothing spell of the discursive voice was broken. For long, unaccountable seconds the climax of the spiritual tussle was fought out in the room, without physical movement on the part of the antagonists, yet bearing agonisingly upon the nerves of the other members of the group.

  The weight of the untranquil silence.…

  This is madness, thought Nora despairingly. I’m mad. We’re all mad, and it will have to end soon. Something must break.

  The ceiling was far above, its distant beams clouded, hung with writhing shapes.

  Lunacy and evil.…

  The strain like the rising note of a siren. It can’t keep on.

  A violin string tuned up and up until it snaps.

  The human reason, and its capacity—how great?—for sustaining the assault of warped unreason.…

  Not much more, thought Nora wildly.

  The black shapes plunged.…

  Simon gave a hoarse gurgle and stepped forward, falling to his knees. Jonathan, still on his chair, emitted a long sigh. The struggle was over, and the stillness was like that of a deserted street after a violent political brawl. Only the faint but persistent smell of hatred remained.

  Simon got up slowly and dusted himself down as though nothing of any consequence had happened. Nora looked up at him. Neither of the two men gave any inkling of the outcome of their struggle. Nora waited for Simon to speak.

  Or for anyone to speak.

  The ticking of the clock was audible again.

  Jonathan said: “It’s done.” He spoke in a level voice.

  “It’s done,” agreed Simon. “One of us has been chosen…is possessed.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “You lost, then?” said Nora to Simon.

  Mrs. Morris was lighting the lamp again and tut-tutting as she caught sight of the clock, and, by an automatic swift calculation, realised that the time was almost nine o’clock.

  Denis poked the fire and felt for the coal shovel.

  Frank came and stood beside Nora. He said: “What went wrong?”

  “Don’t be despondent,” said Simon.

  “Despondent? We want to know where we are. What happened when you fell on your knees? Were you giving in to Jonathan, or is it going to work out all right, or—”

  “Someone in this room,” said Jonathan precisely, “is possessed.”

  Mrs. Morris cautiously turned the wick higher.

  “Try and put it in simple words,” said Denis harshly, turning from the fire.

  Simon said: “Perhaps I’d better do it. What friend Jonathan planned to do has been accomplished. One of us is completely under a spell—you can call it hypnosis, if you like, though it’s deeper than that. In order to have an untroublesome human body to provide the earthly energy that will enable the gods to return, the adept must make use of one of us. That one of us has been chosen and claimed: that’s what the struggle was about. One of us is no longer in possession of his or her full faculties—little more than a zombie, as a matter of fact.”

  “Which one?” snapped Denis.

  Jonathan laughed. “You’d like to know.”

  “There’s no way of telling,” said Simon. “It might be any of us. He—or she—will behave normally, speak and eat normally. From outside there will seem to be no change—”

  Frank said: “It could be you. Jonathan could be making you say these things.”

  “It could be. Or you, for that matter.”

  “I know it’s not me.”

  “That’s what you’re saying, but how are we to know?”

  Denis took a step forward. “I’m prepared to bet on Frank being the same as he was,” he said. “How can we tell it’s not you, Simon?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Bewildering, isn’t it?” said Jonathan, with obvious relish.

  Frank and Denis closed in on either side of Simon, moved by a common purpose. Jonathan said, with a swift change of mood: “Stay where you are.”

  Simon frowned. “You seem very sure it’s me, you two.”

  “You’re so damned cool about it,” said Denis suspiciously. “We know you had some sort of fight with Jonathan, and that you lost—”

  “Do you know I lost?”

  “Well.…”

  “Because I admit someone in this room has been—taken over, shall we say?—because of that, have I necessarily lost? The game isn’t played yet. In fact, it doesn’t start for a few hours yet.”

  Nora said impulsively: “I think Simon’s the same as he was before.”

  Her brother’s eyes narrowed. “He himself says that there wouldn’t be any change that you could detect,” he pointed out.

  “All the same—”

  “Who do you think it is, then? Me?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Denis.”

  “Who, then?”

  She realised how impossible it was. There was something about Simon that made it hard for her to believe he had been changed in any way—but that applied to all the rest of them equally. They were all as they had been from the beginning. She knew that Jonathan’s eyes were fixed on her, and she turned angrily to him.

  “Well?” he said.

  “If you’ve hurt my mother, or my father.…”

  Mr. Morris started. He had already edged his chair back to the newly flickering fire. “Eh?”

  “Is it…?”

  “I’m not saying anything,” said Jonathan. “But why worry? Whoever
it is, the rest of you will come to no harm. This is no Frankenstein’s monster, but a walking shadow of a being completely under control.”

  “Yes,” said Frank; “under your control.”

  Jonathan adjusted his tie. “It will do you no harm. As far as any of you are concerned, he—or she, as my young friend has pointed out—will be to all intents and purposes the same person as the one we knew earlier in the evening.”

  Mrs. Morris said: “We’ll do the washin’ up, Nora fach.”

  Even as they went out, Nora was wondering whether her mother had been chosen. But was there any way of finding out? She knew all her mother’s gestures, and so far had detected nothing unusual, but that meant nothing. She turned up the lamp fastened to the wall over the sink, and then said:

  “The kettle.”

  “There was some water in it. Hot it’ll be in no time.”

  They were not looking directly at one another.

  Nora said: “Mother.…”

  “The sooner we get this finished, the sooner we can go to bed, and tired I am tonight. No more talk after this, I’m thinkin’.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Tired I am,” Mrs. Morris repeated.

  “But apart from that—?”

  “Are you thinkin’ I’m the one, then?”

  They stood by the sink, both suspicious. She’s not sure it’s not me, thought Nora. She said: “You think it’s me, and I think it might be you. If we both think that way, it can’t be either of us. I can see what you’re thinking, and—”

  “A clever way it might be to make me think…but of course it’s one of the others. Though I don’t know what’s goin’ on, anyway. Mad.”

  Nora went to fetch the kettle from the rejuvenated fire, sensing the hostility in the room as she crossed it. They had been studying one another covertly, and now they turned their attention to her. Denis said, speculatively: “Nora—”

  “I’m busy,” she snapped back at him.

  Back with her mother, she began to wonder again. It was all very well to say that someone else had been chosen, but when you were alone with someone, even engaged on such a mundane business as washing and drying crockery, you couldn’t help feeling a nervous prickling over your scalp. There was a buzz of voices from the other side of the passage. What were they talking about now? Nora wanted to go to bed, yet she also wanted to watch what everyone else was doing. To separate now would be to invoke nightmares and nervous awakenings from sleep, hearing the creak of old boards, the sound of the wind under the roof, and the ceaseless chatter of noises that existed only in one’s imagination, but did not prove any the less frightening because of that.

  Mrs. Morris was apparently anxious to return to the other room. She was hurriedly mopping the drain-board and drying her hands before Nora had finished hanging the cups on their hooks.

  “Cold in here.”

  It was always cold in here in winter—why say such a thing now? It was not like her mother: was it a false note, an intimation that Jonathan’s camouflage was not perfect? Nora automatically stepped away. Mrs. Morris sensed this sudden fear, and twisted round impatiently. “Don’t get yourself so jumpy, girl. Bad enough without jumps and shakings.”

  “Who do you think it is?”

  Mrs. Morris shook her head. “It might be anyone.”

  “Dad—”

  “Be quiet.” The words were snapped out. Very convincing in their way, but.…

  They went back to the sullen group by the fire. Jonathan’s crouching shape dominated the room, as menacing as a patient vulture.

  “Welcome to Suspects’ Corner,” said Frank.

  “We’re all sitting around asking questions and hoping someone will make a slip,” said Denis grimly. “It’s fun. Afterwards there’ll be some forfeits.”

  Simon said: “You’re wasting your time.”

  Mrs. Morris looked at the clock and yawned. “For once,” she said defiantly, as though poking a lion through the bars of a cage just to see what would happen, “it’s early to bed for me. If anythin’ happens, there’s no use me interferin’, so there’s not long I’m going to stay down here. But I’d like to know when it’ll be—whatever it is.”

  She folded her hands across her apron like a Crusader’s effigy and surveyed them provocatively.

  “Well, then?”

  Frank favoured her with an admiring smile. “If you’re the zombie, Mrs. Morris, you’re a very self-willed one. Personally, I’m crossing you off my black list.”

  “That’s not what I’m asking.” Mrs. Morris was not to be drawn. She asserted her position as mistress of the household, so proudly that even the dark spirits that clustered about the lonely farm buildings might well have been abashed.

  Frank was right. This couldn’t be a pretence, thought Nora.

  “What about it?” Denis said to Jonathan. “As Mum says, when will it be, whatever it is?”

  “At dawn.”

  “How appropriate. Do we all assemble in a reverent circle?”

  “You won’t find it any laughing matter,” said Jonathan. “At the appointed time, the chosen human will be called, and the ritual will be carried out. You may all sleep. Won’t do you any harm. There’s nothing else you can do—this time there will be no mistakes. Get what rest you can: no one will harm you during the night.”

  “We accept your word for that, of course,” said Denis bitterly.

  “If there’s nothing to do, we’re only wastin’ time with this old talk,” said Mrs. Morris. “Come on, Rhys. Give your dad a push, now.”

  “Bed?” exclaimed Denis. “Without any supper?”

  “You don’t want any,” his mother told him.

  Nora’s suspicions were aroused again. This was unlike her mother. Not even a cup of tea.…

  “With so much disorganisation, I don’t think we ought to expect anything,” said Frank equably.

  Denis said: “You’re being very obliging, mate.”

  They eyed one another.

  “For myself,” said Denis, “I think I’d sooner stay up. I think we ought to stick around down here, so that if anything happens we know who’s causing it. When the big bang comes, I want my eyes open.”

  Simon said: “It wouldn’t be any good. Nothing will happen before dawn, and then we shall see whether Mr. Jonathan gets everything his own way. Personally, I propose to sleep down here, if Mrs. Morris doesn’t object.”

  “I could make up a bed for you in.…”

  “In Jonathan’s room,” Denis finished for her.

  “That’s a smashing idea. Let them fight it out together.”

  Simon bowed and smiled. “Very kind of you. But if you’ve no objections, I’ll settle in front of the fire. Please take my word for it that you’ll be all right. Jonathan isn’t going to get up to any mischief once you’re asleep: he can’t do anything until dawn. I promise you I’ll be doing a lot of thinking between now and then.”

  “How do we know you’re capable of thinking at all?” asked Frank. “You might be using words that Jonathan has put into your head right at this moment.”

  “In which case you can sit up and watch me all night. You’ll be very tired by the time morning comes, and very disappointed when you realise that it was time wasted. Believe me: nothing will happen until the time comes to call the—er—assistant.”

  “And then what?”

  “It won’t be the end of the world,” said Jonathan persuasively. “You’ll all go on living…if you don’t do anything foolish.”

  “I have a feeling we recently fought a war about this sort of thing,” Denis said. “Well, what about it? Do we all stay up, or do we go to bed?”

  Nora said: “I think we can trust Simon. I believe he knows what’s going on. Let’s go and get some sleep.”

  When she had spoken, she wondered what her words meant. Had she dismissed the possibility of Simon being possessed? Cross off Simon, and her mother—and Frank…and Denis, who was her brother…but what had being her brother got
to do with it? And there was no way of being sure about Simon, really.

  There was so little hope of being sure of anything that they all accepted the hopeless position and turned to go to bed. Simon remained in the kitchen, assuring Mrs. Morris, who was not to be daunted, that he needed only a couple of blankets. For a few minutes the fire of her hospitality warmed the trembling house, and it was just as though a visitor were staying after an evening’s enjoyment. The sensation did not last, and Nora hesitated as she and her mother stepped into the dark passage, the flame of the candle bending protestingly before the draught. A chill struck up from the floor. Nora glanced back, and saw Simon standing in front of the fire, his head bowed in thought. Simon was their only chance; Simon was the only one of them who knew what all this grotesque charade meant. She said: “Simon, you’ll try…?”

  It was impossible to formulate an expression that would say what she meant him to understand. “You won’t give up?” she appealed.

  He started. She could not see his face.

  “Get some rest,” he said gently. “There’s the whole night before us, and you’ve nothing to fear.”

  He sat down on the edge of the couch that had been pulled out from behind the table for him, and she left him, wishing that they had all decided instead to stay in the room together. Perhaps there was no safety in numbers, but one felt more comfortable. Her mother, walking ahead with the flickering candle, was a distorted, unfamiliar shape. The passage itself was a territory of nightmare, full of crouching things that had never been there before. Nora wanted to run along to the stairs and dash up them, away from the whispering fear that walked mockingly behind her, in her footsteps.

  The light of the candle in her room was little comfort. It exaggerated the shapes of the furniture and seemed to retreat from advancing black fingers that tapped in the corners. The little webwork of cracks in one part of the ceiling took on the lineaments of a grinning face, and she could not find any angle from which it did not look the same. It had never been that way before, but now the grimace was set and could not be avoided.