by W.S. Lacey
“Summer in Egypt is beastly. I was walking through the streets like one of the damned, looking for a place to begin drinking, when I saw her underneath an awning. She was old and several children were slumped all around her on little stools. She was fanning herself and leaning her head back against the doorway she sat in front of; before her were her wares, set out on a cloth on the ground. I very nearly passed by, but my avarice got the better of me and I decided to have a look.
“The woman looked at me through mostly closed eyes as I perused the collection of jars and papyri that she hoped to sell. Most of it was exceedingly common and I had just begun to go when she reached out to me.
‘Wait’, she said, and drew a small basket out from under her stool. ‘Sir will appreciate’, she said. She handed me a roll of vellum and I opened it. As a matter of fact, sir did appreciate. It was a long scroll consisting of hieroglyphs and what looked like Phoenician in two columns side by side. What was remarkable about it was that it was illuminated, with gold leaf and intricate designs in the margins.
“It occurred to me, as it may have to you, that something so unusual was likely to be a fake. Still, I thought to pass it off myself and turn a profit.
‘Where did you find this?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘You don’t know?’ I said.
‘My son is a farmer, he found it in a jar,’ she said. I thought it useless to try to pry more, so I paid a pittance for the thing and went on my way. I didn’t take another good look at it until I had been home some months and was trying to sell some of my Egyptian spoils to pay off staggering gambling debts. I thought to myself that it would help if I knew exactly what I had got a hold of before I tried selling it. Since I was unwilling to show it to anyone else, I settled in to do the laborious translation myself. As I struggled through a load of dusty old books and took the occasional hieroglyph to an old school friend, it became clear to me that I had stumbled on a very peculiar document.
“It was over three thousand years old and was itself a copy of a much older stone fragment. It described a practice of the ancient Canaanites that would come to be seen as a terrible heresy by their Hebrew descendants. I found it all terribly uninteresting until I got to the map. Someone had added it at a later date and had written something that translated loosely as ‘Enter through Mot’s Door/ Made of the second son/ By the first wife’. My first thought was treasure and I promptly made a copy of the map to take to the school friend.
“His name was Abney; he was very bookish, you know. I’m afraid I stole from him on occasion when we were in school and used him as a scapegoat at least once. He was very good natured, though, and we got on remarkably well. He was very excited by the map for reasons quite different from my own, and begged to see the original. I decided then to bring him into my scheme, whatever that turned out to be.
“Abney was able to identify a city at the edge of the map as modern day Urfa. He spent weeks poring over the manuscript and at last produced a translation that showed the inadequacy of my own. We decided, at length, to go to Turkey and use the map to locate this door- Abney, for the archaeological find, and I for the purpose of looting whatever tomb or temple we might come across. It was around this time that I made Odd’s acquaintance. He was still going by Fletcher then, it being long before our black magic days.”
“What was it that brought you together?” Spender asked.
“I think I saw something in him that others didn’t. I saw his plays and thought that there was a latent- well I’m not sure what exactly it was, but I found it very interesting. It was not my original intent to include him in the hunt because that would have meant splitting the treasure into thirds. While he was staying with me, though, I took a great liking to him and, bit by bit, eased him into the idea of going with us.
“Urfa is a beautiful city. We three spent a week there and hired a man called Armağan to act as porter and guide. The next day, we left the city and headed south and east. After some searching, Abney and Armağan found the Door. Unaware of what we had found, we went in.”
“What did you find?” North asked.
“A garden; fruit trees, small ponds, and animals that knew no fear. We hadn’t gone far when we met her.”
“Who was she?”
“I can’t name her. Abney knew about her, he had read about her in an old Semitic work. She gave us the ‘treasure’, if you can call it that. It was not without a price, though. When we left, we left without Armağan and, really, we were glad to be alive. We carried the treasure in a glass phial and Abney hastened to write down what she had said. I am sorry,” Holroyd said, “if I seem cryptic. The symbols are not to be taken lightly; in the wrong conditions, even seeing them can rob you of your sight.”
“What,” said Spender, “are the right conditions?”
“They have to be inscribed in a door. It is important, when keeping them elsewhere, to only write fragments of the full text. We memorized the symbols by rote, Odd and I did.” Night had fallen and the sky above them was dusted with countless stars. “In the phial was-” Holroyd paused, “the stuff of creation. A single drop could create a Door. Odd and I were enthralled, fascinated. It was only a matter of time before we tried to make one ourselves. There was only one thing holding us back.”
“What was it?”
“To make a Door, there must be a death.”
#
“But we’d need to kill someone,” Abney said. “It’s impossible.”
“Not necessarily.” Dr. Holroyd sat with his feet up. “We could find someone who was about to die and simply wait.”
“It doesn’t work like that. You know as well as I that it needs to be a murder.” Abney pushed his glasses up his nose. “Look,” he said earnestly, “just give it to me; I’ll throw it away for you.”
“Abney, this may be the most valuable substance in creation and you want me to give you my share? You’ve got yours to do with as you like.” A look of concern crossed Holroyd’s face. “You didn’t throw it out, did you?”
“Not yet. Just give me your word that you won’t use it.”
“Have you asked Fletcher for his, yet?”
“I haven’t. I was about to-”
“About to what?” Fletcher entered the room carrying a clinking paper bag and several parcels.
“Abney wants us to give him our shares so he can throw them out.” Fletcher turned.
“Why?”
“We can’t very well use it,” Abney said pleadingly.
“Abney,” Fletcher set his load on a side table and looked grave, “this the single most important thing that will ever happen to any of us. All that we thought we knew has been overturned by this- this miraculous thing. I understand how you feel; I was terrified in the garden. We can’t just go back to living dull and uninspired lives.”
“Perhaps I should just get rid of mine.”
“Don’t-” Holroyd and Fletcher spoke out at the same time. Holroyd continued. “Don’t do something that you’ll later regret. There’s no harm to keeping it with you, yes?”
“I just don’t know. I can’t forget Armağan, the guide.”
“That wasn’t our doing,” Fletcher said. What he did not say was that neither could he forget the animal fear in the man’s eyes or his fading cries as they hurried back to the Door.
“Let’s not dwell on it at present.” Holroyd broke into his thoughts. “Let us break bread in a festive mood, if only for the sake of observance.” Abney seemed placated for the moment and Fletcher took up his bag and withdrew to the kitchen where, with the skill of an experienced bachelor, he began chopping and heating and taking things out of tins. Outside, snow fell thick and heavy and church bells pealed as pedestrians hurried home with flushed cheeks and calls of “Happy Christmas”.
#
Young Cole was a busker and sometime mountebank who was distinguished from his father, Old Cole, by the fact that he was not buried
in a churchyard. He had thought that, upon his father’s death, he would become Just Cole, but tradition and force of habit decreed otherwise. He had worked his own street corner with fiddle and hat for the past month and only now had been shifted out by carolers. Busking, he found, was a good business during yuletide and he didn’t at all blame the bourgeoisie for wanting to make a go of it. The carolers would probably pass on the odd coin they got to the unenterprising poor. This, Young Cole thought, was a bit of a waste of a corner.
He now walked along a side street, his hands plunged deep into his threadbare overcoat and his whiskered face protruding from an equally threadbare muffler. His flask was empty and he could feel the cold like a dull ache. As he stamped his feet and drew his shoulders up, he heard a call from a doorway. He had seen the man on the street before; he was quite recognizable due to the two thin scars that lay on his jaw and temple.
“Hello,” the man said, “happy Christmas.”
“And you; God bless you sir.”
“Oh, I doubt that. Come and we’ll drink to our good health.”
#
Young Cole found that he had somehow gotten his arm caught in something. His other arm, too, was caught, and he tried to make sense of his surroundings. He was laying on his back, looking up at a dimly lit ceiling. Although he couldn’t put his finger on it, he felt that he was outside the city. Perhaps it was because it was very still and no sounds came from beyond the walls of the room in which he found himself. He struggled weakly and realized that he was bound- moreover, that he was on top of a table of some sort.
“Hello?”
“Good evening.” Cole strained to look at the speaker, who was somewhere behind him. The man with the mensur marks bustled around the side of the table. “So sorry to have kept you so long. Your family must be terribly anxious.”
“No sir. Haven’t got one.” Cole felt all swimmy and was glad to be lying down for the moment.
“No aging parents upon whom you dote?”
“None living.”
“Well at least there’s that; should please Abney to some extent.”
“Who is-” Cole felt terribly slow, as if there was something very important going on and he was supposed to pay attention. “Who is Abney?”
“Abney is a man who will pity your monstruous fate.”
“How does he know me?”
“He doesn’t; he knows me, though, and that’s enough.”
“A monstruous fate…” Young Cole pondered through this for a moment. He looked up. “Please let me go.” The man pulled on the edge of the table, wheeled it across the room, and brought it to a stop in front of a large grey door.
“I’d let you pray first but I don’t know if that will affect things. So sorry.”
#
Fletcher and Abney were having eggs, bacon, and marmaladed toast and wondering where Holroyd had gone when the man himself swept in and made for the kettle.
“Where have you been?” Abney said. “Care for a piece of toast?”
“Thank you, no. I’ve just been to my home in the country and, just as soon as you’ve finished with that, you’re coming back with me.”
“Whyever for?”
“I don’t think I’ll spoil it. Believe me when I say it’s not to be missed.”
They made the 9.15 train and arrived at Crumline, the town closest Holroyd’s home, where Mrs. Worthy’s son was waiting for them (Mrs. Worthy being the woman who kept house and was so incredibly incurious that she was quite indispensible to the dissipated doctor). Abney continued in his attempts to get Holroyd to give some hint, but Holroyd remained cheerfully uncommunicative. They rode down an avenue flanked by beeches and down the drive, pulling up in front of the main doors.
“Come along,” Holroyd said, heading off through the grass.
“We’re not going in?” Abney said.
“What I’m going to show you isn’t in the house.” An earlier Holroyd that had come and gone before the doctor’s time had kept a model farm as a hobby and the small building that had once been a dairy stood well behind the hothouse that was attached to the kitchens. It was to this defunct dairy that Holroyd brought his guests and, unlocking the rusted padlock, ushered them into the cool interior. “This,” Holroyd said, crossing to a large grey door, “is what I brought you to see.”
At first, neither Abney nor Fletcher understood what Holroyd had done. When it became clear, Abney was noticeably distraught.
“You took an innocent life!”
“I made far more of him than he ever would have made of himself.”
“Why did you do this?”
“Have you gone in?” Fletcher said quietly.
“Not yet,” Holroyd said. “I thought the both of you might want to go along.”
“I won’t do it,” Abney said. “This is a sick perversion.”
“Do as you like, Abney.” The doctor went to a stall and fetched a walking stick. “Lest you forget, you translated the manuscript and went on the expedition. You left the guide to save your own life. You are quite inextricably a part of this.” Abney turned away and stood still for a moment before stiffly walking out of the dairy and back to the house. Holroyd looked at Fletcher. “Are you ready?” Fletcher shivered as Holroyd opened the door and stepped through. He followed and looked around the darkened stalls.
“Is that it?” Holroyd chewed his lip.
“I must have done something wrong. This is no good. I don’t know how many tramps I can get a hold of before someone notices.”
“Does it feel warmer to you?” With a short laugh, Holroyd ran out the door. Fletcher hastened after him and stopped short. The snow was gone and so, for that matter, was the house. In their place was a country road bordered by a hedge, all beneath an ostentatiously perfect summer sky.
“Do you know,” Holroyd said, “I think I did it right after all.”
“What’s that?”
“It appears to be a bicycle.” Riding the bicycle was a large man in a striped shirt and straw boater. As he came closer, they saw that he appeared to be-
“Dripping!”
“What?” Holroyd said.
“He’s dripping; his nose and the handlebars.”
“How ghastly.” The man seemed to be melting as he went and, by the time he had drawn near, he and his bicycle had become distinctly wobbly and runny. At last, with a kind of viscous splatter, he dissolved completely into a puddle. Fletcher and Holroyd approached cautiously. “He’s turned into icing.” Holroyd said, obviously concerned.
“With nonpareils.”
“I must say, this is not what I was expecting.” They skirted around the icing and walked up the road. “I have a feeling that vast amounts of wealth and power are to be had with this but I’m not sure how to go about it.”
“Look!” They had come back to the dairy. “I don’t understand,” Fletcher said, “it was a perfectly straight road.”
“Was it? Let’s try again.” They set off in the same direction and soon found themselves at the dairy a second time. “Well,” Holroyd said, “through the hedge we go.” They struggled through the hedge, which was very thick, and fell through on the other side. Fletcher picked bits of hedge off of himself and dusted off his trousers.
“I wonder if we should go back and prepare for this a bit.” Before them was a gentle incline covered with conifers.
“Let’s explore just a little further,” Holroyd said. They walked over a soft carpet of needles. “I’ve never been very fond of pines. I have always thought that too many in one place was in bad taste.”
“Did you hear something?”
“Sorry?”
“A coughing sound, I thought.”
“Ah, probably something to do with that.” There was something looking at them from behind a tree. It was a sizeable something, as somethings go, standing about eight feet high. It was covered in fur and had two spiraling horns like a ram. Seeing that it had been noticed, it came
out into the open and stood in the way someone does when they aren’t sure what to do. It is likely that it would have put its hands in its pockets but, as it was a horned beast, it hadn’t any.
“Is it going to charge?”
“I’ll ask,” Holroyd said. “You there, what are you doing?”
“Hiding,” the beast said. Fletcher, who had been unnerved by the beast’s appearance, was put further off balance by hearing it speak. Holroyd, on the other hand, had been inexplicably certain that it would answer him.
“What are you?” he said.
“I’m a Fear of Dark Cellars,” it said.
“Why were you hiding?”
“Since I’m newly made, I didn’t know whether you needed hiding from.” Holroyd got quite stern as he felt that the beast was being roundabout.
“Newly made?”
“Just a while ago we weren’t anything. Then you gave us all thingness.” The Fear of Dark Cellars dug at the ground with its hoof. “I don’t much like clomping around in these woods.” Fletcher, who had been observing with interest, spoke to Holroyd in a low, counseling way.
“I don’t wonder if you had something to do with those nonpareils,” he said. “Try wishing him away.” Holroyd nodded and looked at the Fear of Dark Cellars, who looked for all the world like a naughty child (albeit one that was eight feet tall, horned, and hairy).
“Beast, I’m going to banish you to the immaterial slurry of strangeness from whence you came.”
“Oh, thank you,” it said and promptly vanished. Holroyd and Fletcher looked at each other with a dawning comprehension that, had he seen it, would have filled Abney with dread.
Chapter Nineteen
“From then on we discovered more about the nature of the other places by trial and error.” The third night had found them again on the rooftop. Dr. Holroyd knocked out his pipe and began to carefully refill it. “The maker of the Door has incredible power on the other side. It’s a bit like working on a canvas- one already populated with the aspects of the life we took to make it. We called them effusions. They were different in every one.”