The Dark Gateway

by John Burke

  Simon laughed. “A taunt like that isn’t likely to draw me out.”

  “I didn’t think it would,” said Frank wryly.

  “We’ve wasted enough time dealing with you people,” said Simon. “The time has come. I’ll say goodbye, then—and many thanks for your hospitality in the past, Mrs. Morris. I’m sorry I wasn’t all you thought me.”

  Mr. Morris, whose head had been sunk on his chest, looked up slowly.

  “You’re mistaken,” he said in a voice that was curiously unlike his normal way of speaking. “Your aims have been quite clear. You have been watched for a long time. Watched.…”

  “By you?” said Simon, scornfully but uneasily.

  “Not by me as a person.”

  “What are you talking about, you old fool?”

  Mr. Morris said: “Who spoke of the White Adepts when you were taking possession of Jonathan? Whose voice was it that recounted the story of the Great Destruction? Not yours. There’s an adversary waiting for you.”

  Simon’s face had paled. He took a step forward, then seemed to remember the existence of the barrier he had thrown around the group of people, and stopped. “What makes you say that: what do you know about it?”

  “I’m an old man,” said Mr. Morris. “I know nothing about it. But even as an old man I am an instrument of divine good, as we all are. Men are the instruments of good and evil, and just as the voice of wickedness speaks through your mouth, so the voice of truth speaks through mine. Can you answer my question?”

  Jonathan said: “There’s someone—something—behind him…beyond him.…”

  “Be quiet.”

  “Why tell him to be quiet?” said Mr. Morris gently. “He’s your slave. He speaks only what you allow. Somewhere inside you is a thought that wills him to speak as he does. Do you, then, see someone behind and beyond this mortal frame?”

  “No,” said Simon desperately. “No. I see nothing. This is a trick. A vague threat—but I am not to be frightened. Nothing will stop me now.”

  As he spoke, his eyes lit up, for the new expression of strange vitality had died from Mr. Morris’s face, and he sank back into his usual slumped position, apparently losing all interest in the scene.

  Simon gave a deep sigh. “The White Adepts are too lazy to stir,” he said. “I propose to leave you now. You need not fear that the period of waiting will be too agonisingly long. The psychic emanations of the circle I have drawn around you will attract the servants of the gods immediately. They will come and”—he bowed derisively—“then it will soon be over.”

  He turned to Jonathan, whose lacklustre eyes were fixed on the far wall, seeing nothing.

  “A worthy end to your fine scheme, my friend,” he said. “You are to play your part, humble as it is, in the recall of the great masters. Shall we go?”

  There was a wild exhilaration in his features, flushed as they had never been before. Denis had never seen Simon like this before: it was a completely different picture from the studious, pale young man who browsed—so innocuously, one would have thought—through those accursed books. For a moment resentment flared in Denis’s mind against his father, who had stubbornly and foolishly kept those books. An old man’s whim would be responsible for the destruction of civilisation. It was always the way—the whims of old men and unthinking fools had plunged the world into most of its wars and persecutions; and now the end of all that was most valuable and constructive in man’s endeavours was at hand.

  Simon, after one last comprehensive look around the room, opened the door. There was the faintest suspicion of dull, steely light in the east. Jonathan walked behind Simon like a shadow.

  They went out, and the door closed.

  * * * *

  Nora sat with her head in her hands. Physical attempts to escape, and awkward, self-conscious, prayer had both proved useless. Whatever she tried to think of, and whatever hopes of a last-minute reprieve she might try to conjure up, only the vision of what she and Frank had seen in the ruined castle would come into clear focus. At any moment now the tension that existed between the two worlds might be broken, and those dreadful hordes would come pouring in. What would they be like on this earth? Great shapes or mere drifting clouds of abomination? It was impossible to conceive them as anything but grotesque animals, yet she knew they were something less physical, more terrifying than that. All normal conceptions would have to be warped in order to cope with the idea of these beings: no bounding, ludicrous monsters from story books, but predatory, all-pervading forces from which there would be no escape, no concealment.

  And Simon, most despicable of all creatures, willing to turn this abomination loose on humanity to satisfy his own perverted lust for power.… More than anything, she dreaded Simon’s triumphant, possessive return.

  * * * *

  Denis was beginning to sob dryly with frustration. This captivity was tearing at his reason.

  Frank said: “There’s nothing we can do. Nothing anyone could do. Maybe we ought to sing…or something.” He laughed awkwardly, mirthlessly.

  “It may be,” said Mr. Morris slowly, speaking with his own voice and yet fumbling, as though trying to sort out a confusion of thoughts and strange disturbances at the back of his mind, “that this is part of a great plan…a mighty trap. It may be.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Simon and Jonathan climbed the hill towards the castle. The packed snow rasped under their feet, beginning to sparkle with the early light. From the castle came a faint, pulsating intimation of another subdued light, shining through like a guiding beacon from another world. Simon fingered the knife in his pocket and began to mutter an invocation under his breath. A flaring exaltation beat out from the world beyond, and yet outside the turbulent ruins was absolute stillness—a snowy, reverent hush.

  As Simon and his powerless companion approached the black huddle on the summit of the slope, there was a mighty stirring and heaving from within—a great pressure on the other side of the gateway.

  The two men, one full of the confidence of his own unnatural powers, the other walking mechanically and unconscious of what lay ahead, were almost under the shadow of the outer walls, crooked above them like scarred talons, when the voiceless clamour from inside was answered by a restless movement that throbbed through the air and the ground as though set up by a distant earth tremor. Simon came to a halt. Not only from inside the ruins, but from all around, came the psychic vibrations—vibrations that were hostile to himself and to all that he stood for. Drowning out the urgent welcome that had been coming like a clarion call through the archway, came the persistent throbbing of some mighty defiance, a surging, threatening storm. And the sense of someone watching him from behind suddenly grew upon him and swung him round in his tracks.

  Light streamed from the open door of the farmhouse—the door that he had quite definitely closed. Walking up towards him was the figure of a man he had left imprisoned within the unbreakable circle. Mr. Morris, upright, moving as a young man moves, came proudly up the slope with complete confidence.

  “Quickly—it must be done quickly.” Simon drew the knife from his pocket and seized Jonathan.

  “Stop!”

  It was Mr. Morris, but only the known shape of Mr. Morris: the command was issued with all the authority of the forces that were ranged behind him. This was not an old man who spoke, but a human husk used as a mouthpiece by a disincarnate spirit, asserting its dominion over the forces of black rebellion. Simon, shaken by the majesty of that voice, hesitated, but did not let go of the limp, unresisting Jonathan.

  “Who speaks?”

  Behind Morris came the others who had been imprisoned within the house, and from the direction of the barn Nora moved into the light. The dawn was sending out fine silver fingers of benediction over the earth.

  “I speak with the voice of that Being of wisdom and beauty into whose essence flowed the spirits of the White Adepts many centuries ago. Thus translated, these spiritual forces that once activated the bodie
s of truth-seeking men have been withdrawn from the world, but not oblivious to the sufferings of the world. They have been plunged in the deepest meditation, but whenever they have been called on, in times of great stress or in the accents of the humblest prayer, they have allowed their light to shine on the earth. Their sleep has been the sleep of spiritual refreshment and knowledge, but their watchfulness has never slackened. Evil disturbances send out emanations of wickedness that stir the adepts when the time comes. No great concentration of forces such as this could escape their notice.”

  Nora reached out unsteadily, and Frank’s arm was there to support her. She watched her father, his figure erect and strangely unknown to her, standing at the foot of the slope. She watched him moving up towards the two men up by the ruins, suddenly puny and frightened. His tone of authority rang like a massive bell in the frosty air.

  Simon’s voice drifted weakly down, its arrogance gone.

  “It’s too late to try threatening. You should have pitted yourself against me before—you would have understood then how futile your attempts would be. I’ve read the books, and I know the prophecies.” He cried out something unintelligible, and behind him the shadowy outline of the great castle was momentarily sketched on the air; the sky was torn by a streak of flame. “I am an adept,” called Simon, regaining some of his confidence. “You cannot fight against the fulfilment of this destiny. I am a descendant of the Black Adepts, and all the world of spirits, forsaken ones, and the legion of Annwn and worlds deeper than Annwn are at my call. You cannot harm me.”

  An intense light began to glow around Mr. Morris. He went remorselessly on, and Simon seemed afraid to turn away. The uncannily straightened body of the old man was a blinding iridescence of power. He was a man who had awoken from no ordinary slumber: his whole deeper self had awoken, and he answered the frenzied jibes of the man above him with the voice of mankind and what was higher than mankind.

  “I speak for all the souls who have ever taken part in the conflict with evil since first life began to flourish in this cosmos. The books you sought have been waiting here a long time for your arrival. It was known that someone would come. When the families of the Black Adepts, defeated and scattered, lost track of many of their most precious volumes, they were assembled here to await the day when the most dangerous of adepts should come to seek them. If a city had been built over the ruins, the books would still have been preserved, and when the adept came to the archway, there would have been someone waiting. Waiting for him.… This is a trap, high priest of evil: your Atlantean dreams are no more than dreams; you and your sacrificial lamb have brought us more of the accursed volumes to be consumed in this moment of destruction.”

  Simon turned away by a great effort of will and bent down in the snow, his dark figure merging with the black shadows of the ruins. Nora’s heart began to beat madly. If it should be too late to stop him.…

  The awful voice that spoke through her father went on, an even, undeterred voice that might have been addressing an erring friend in normal conversation, yet singing about the hills and valleys so that it was a wonder the whole countryside did not awaken. “Cease your abominable incantations before it is too late, ignorant wretch. It is best that the solution of problems should be left to men alone. But when the scales are loaded too heavily, justice demands our intervention. Cease, before you call down everlasting wrath on yourself.”

  An unspeakably repulsive, convulsive light was beginning to rise like a cloud of heavy smoke about Simon. Within the ruins the clamour rose to screaming heights, and the distance between the farmhouse and the castle seemed to contract, so that Nora, clutching Frank tightly, felt that she was standing on the very brink of that hideous world into which the two of them had once been plunged.

  “It is a thing to be feared,” roared the voice of Morris, “when the mantle of contemplation is cast off and the angels of light ride the skies.”

  Nora closed her eyes. It made things no better. A thousand darting, smudged images chased across behind her eyelids, and the horror of what might be happening up in the ruins without her being conscious of it forced her eyes open again. Better to look, and know.

  Denis said in a strained voice: “If something doesn’t break soon, our whole world will crack up: I can feel it.”

  The grinding of two ships lying side by side in rough seas…the collision and shuddering of two worlds straining in an unnaturally warped space and time.

  “Great God,” said Frank.

  The ruins blazed into life. Against the glare that poured like liquid fire through the clearly defined arch, they saw Simon shrinking away, a cringing silhouette. The foulness of inhuman life bubbled in the archway, and a long ululating cry of triumph echoed down the valley. Simon stopped backing away, and they saw him hold out his arms in ecstatic welcome.

  Frank said suddenly: “Don’t look.”

  But there was no way of not looking now. There was no way of hiding the eyes from those shapeless distortions of all that was right and natural—writhing through the gateway, spreading like uncontrolled slime into evil-coloured viscosity. A miasma of insupportable depravity…a stench of primeval fecundity.… And advancing to meet it, like an inadequate David facing a giant whose magnitude knew no bounds, only that one small figure, radiating light. Yet he was, they suddenly realised, not alone. In the skies above was an unseen turbulence. Behind Morris as he walked up the slope was a powerful throbbing as of thousands of wings—a patient but menacing noise.

  Simon turned to face him.

  The gateway frothed evil. Colours changed and faded—colours never seen before on this earth, shining in from another world, another state of being. Simon, in a strong voice that spoke for all the wickedness surging out behind him, cried: “Go back. You are too late. There will never be another Moytura: you have come too late.”

  No human being, even the handful who were watching, would ever be able to give a clear account of what happened then. There are no terms in any human language that would adequately describe the clash that shook the hills around and brought forth the feeble answering cries of a hundred terrified dogs. Every living thing stirred and trembled.

  What swooped from the air on the twisted beings that writhed through the gateway was formless and noiseless. It was not a cloud, but it fell upon the castle like a fog; it was not a living creature, but it fought and struck like an octopus with constantly sprouting tentacles. The sudden unleashed fury about the castle was like a colossal whirlpool, into which were swept Simon and the human form of Mr. Morris, tiny pawns in a ruthless game that had reached its climax. It seemed that there was wrestling and conflict in the skies, and the ground reverberated to the shuddering impact of warring forces.

  “Do you think we ought.…” It was Denis speaking, but his voice was lost in the thunder, and from his face it was obvious that he had not really known how to finish the question. They were powerless—spectators, nothing more.

  Mrs. Morris, in a strangled, pitiful voice, said: “Rhys.…”

  Denis took her hand and held it firmly.

  The fog thickened, as though squeezing the resistance out of the castle. Its lower edges crawled like the drifting ends of a wind-blown curtain. A long, high screaming began at the very summit of the hill, issuing from the fog: it might have been the voice of the hill itself, or the cry of the tortured world, for it certainly came from no human throat.

  “I think we ought to move back a bit,” said Frank, trying to sound calm. “I’ve got a feeling that there’ll be a nasty wrench soon.”

  “I can feel something building up,” Denis confirmed. “But Dad—”

  Mrs. Morris said, her mouth trembling: “There’s quite able to look after himself he is. He’s out of our care now. Go down the hill we ought—he’d want us to.”

  Reluctantly and yet thankfully they turned and went some way down the slope from the house, their way lit by the light that was slowly growing like a flower inside the black cloud hanging over the ruins. Nora
looked over her shoulder, and saw that the shape of the ruins was becoming faintly visible. In the smudged outline of the arch was a desperate upheaval, frightening in its ferocity, although none of the details were apparent.

  Denis said: “If only we could do something.…”

  “Whatever we did,” said Frank, “it wouldn’t count for much either way.”

  He still had his arm around Nora. Useless as it might be in the face of the unleashing of such cataclysmic forces as those milling about the castle, it was an undeniable comfort. She smiled at him. Just this reassuring pressure of his arm was more of a solace than all Simon’s attempted verbal reassurances. But then, Simon.…

  She turned as they halted, staring up with unwilling fascination into the pulsating cloud. What had happened, or was happening, to Simon and her father? Their weak, human frames were the focal points of the conflict. And Jonathan…he had provided the pathway for the old gods. She wondered, shuddering, what hideous death he had suffered at Simon’s hands in order to fulfil the conditions of the return.

  “It’s coming,” said Denis abruptly in a low voice.

  The fog lifted as though blown away by a great breath of wind. For one second they saw the slime and putrefaction that rippled back through the gateway, and standing before the arch was a shape of fire, like an angel with a flaming sword; then a great stab of light struck from the heavens and played like water over the ruins, splashing and dancing down the slope and immersing the farmhouse.

  Mrs. Morris could not stifle a cry, but it was lost in the last roar of destruction. The castle seemed to rise in the air like a stricken beast, and its dissolving fragments rained upon the hillside, plunging fiery coals into the house, which fell apart. With uncontrollable sensations of regret and yet peace, horror and yet acceptance, Nora saw their home shattered and crumbling.