Odd's Door

by W.S. Lacey

  “You did this more than once?” Spender felt a bit ill.

  “I suppose you saw magic done there.” Holroyd ignored him. “I would imagine it involved flames and magic words and a smattering of Latin, did it not?”

  “That’s right,” North said.

  “Odd was always fond of things like that. Really, you could have read the newspaper as long as you had good strong intent.”

  “Dr. Holroyd,” Spender said, “what are the Doors?” The doctor was silent for a moment as the slightly sweet smell of his tobacco floated across the rooftop.

  “It is an enlightened age we find ourselves in,” he said at last, “and it’s a bit gauche to let slip words like ‘soul’ but I’ve never found a better way to describe it. Making a Door takes the undying part of a person and hurls it into the beyond- gives it extension. It creates a world from a single soul.”

  “And what happens to the person- the person who-” Spender stammered.

  “They are consumed entirely. I can’t even imagine that it’s a particularly restful afterlife, having someone manipulating your very being and living in your consciousness.”

  “Is there any way to stop it, to undo it?”

  “I’m coming to that in time. Before that, we discovered that some places had considerable limitations. One was very small, one had a nasty habit of fracturing into islands in a black sea of God-knows-what. If you took someone that had a horrid, diseased soul, you might imagine the types of things that you would find. Gigantic wasps…” Dr. Holroyd seemed lost in a disturbing memory.

  “Limitations. It became Odd’s obsession, finding a perfect subject. People began to notice, of course. He was careful enough to avoid outright accusations or imprisonment but people knew. The year after we went through my Door, he more or less vanished from society. It was the last time he was known as Fletcher.

  “That would have been the end of it as far as Abney or I were concerned, had he not run out.”

  “Run out?” North said.

  “The stuff of creation; it’s the key to making a Door. He needed more and it drove him back to us.”

  “Why didn’t he try to go back to the place it had come from?” Spender said.

  “He almost certainly did. I can only imagine his frustration at finding it had gone. At any rate, I heard of his return when Abney came to me. Apparently, Odd had come for his phial and Abney’s conscience wouldn’t permit him to relinquish it. Abney begged me to help him, to hide him.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I hid him in the best place I could think of.”

  “The Door.”

  #

  Holroyd realized that he must have dozed off. The steady patter of rainfall on the study window and- there seemed to be someone in the room.

  “No tea, thank you,” he said.

  “Holroyd.” It was Odd, as he had begun to style himself. Holroyd retrieved his book from the floor where it had slipped.

  “Alard- or Adelard, rather. Sit down; you don’t look at all well.” Odd indeed looked haggard and grimly driven in a way that reminded Holroyd of a hopeless dipsomaniac. “I must be honest, I find the new name a bit theatrical.”

  “I had no use for my beginnings. You know what they say about familiarity and contempt. What do you suppose is bred by unheimlichkeit?”

  “Fear.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Trying to get away from Fletcher, then?”

  “I’d kill him, if I could.”

  “It looks like you nearly have. Have a seat before you fall.”

  “Have you guessed why I’m here?” Holroyd looked blandly inquisitive. “I know Abney came to you. I need your phial and his.”

  “What on earth makes you think that I still have mine?”

  “I know.” It seemed to take Odd considerable effort to cross the room and kick over the chair that Holroyd was sitting in. Holroyd rolled and tried to reach a cane that was propped up by the mantle. Odd kicked him in the side and again in the head. “Where is it?” He knelt over Holroyd and drew a small knife out of his coat pocket. “Tell me.” Holroyd put up his hands to fend him off and felt excruciating pain as Odd stabbed him through the hand. “Where is it?” The knife slashed through Holroyd’s arm several times, leaving his dressing gown hanging in darkly soaked ribbons. As warm blood drizzled down on his face, Odd placed a knee on his chest and a stickily wet blade at his throat.

  “Wait,” Holroyd gasped. “On the mantle; small box on the left; the key’s in my pocket.”

  Odd plucked the key from his pocket and rose, breathing heavily. When he had taken the phial and thrown the box on the floor, he turned to Holroyd who was on his knees, clutching his wounded hand to his chest.

  “Where is Abney?” There was a pounding in Holroyd’s ears and he felt faint. Something in his side felt distinctly broken.

  “He’s gone through the Door. He’ll be ready for you there. It’s like a great maze now, a Gordian Knot of a place. You may never find him.”

  #

  Holroyd rubbed the back of his hand thoughtfully. North remembered the vision he had had at the bottom of the well.

  “That was how I discovered that a Door could be unmade. I don’t know where he learned it; I suppose it’s possible that he later visited the Garden unbeknownst to the rest of us- before it was moved, that is.”

  “Moved?” Spender said.

  “When I had staunched the blood and gotten a gun, I went to the dairy to see what I might find. What I found was the Door destroyed and Abney lying dead. Up until that point, we had believed that, once made, a Door was indestructible. Trying to damage one led to, well, a gruesome death. As a result, the Doors we made remained standing where we left them. Odd undoubtedly created a proliferation of them in his search for the perfect world.

  “It was clear that, rather than going in after Abney, Odd had simply destroyed the Door and taken the phial. The only clues to how he had done it were charred fragments of writing on the pieces of doorframe that were lying about. It later occurred to me that he needed my phial in order to do whatever he did.”

  “What happened then?” North said.

  “It was only a matter of time before he went too far. He was arrested under deep suspicion of murder; several murders, actually. While imprisoned, he impressed no one with his sanity. They found him to be a lunatic and sent him to Quartersoake. I visited him just before I fled the country.”

  #

  It was an uncommonly fine day that found Holroyd driving down the row of cypresses and into the wide circular drive in front of the asylum. It was clear and mild and had a way of buoying one’s spirits such that the orderly took him through the courtyard despite it being not particularly necessary.

  “The patients enjoy working in the garden.” The orderly was young and very clean. He showed Holroyd around in a manner that could only be described as optimistic. “The lupins are very nice this year.”

  “Are they?” Holroyd said absently. “Tell me, does Mr. Odd work in the garden?”

  “Not that I know of. He paints, though. It’s said to be very calming.”

  “Do the other patients-” Holroyd pulled a petal from an azalea as they passed and rubbed it between his fingers, “do they like him?” The orderly looked completely baffled.

  “If they didn’t it would be no reflection on him, sir. A number of the patients here have no idea what they like.”

  “Beyond gardens.”

  “Yes, there’s that.”

  The orderly left him at the door to Odd’s room and dutifully slipped away. Holroyd knocked and entered, feeling as he did that there was something strange about the place. The air was quieter, charged somehow. Odd was sitting on the bed and writing in a small red book. This he tucked away and half rose to greet the doctor.

  “It’s a pleasant enough view you have here,” Holroyd said, looking around the room with a critical eye. There were watercolors on the walls,
not quite bad but almost carelessly done. They looked to Holroyd like a diversion in more than one sense. Odd sat on the bed with his hands folded in his lap.

  “It is.”

  “Are you well?”

  “You mean, am I mad? I often wonder. No more so, perhaps, than you.”

  “That’s hardly reassuring.” Holroyd smiled while scrutinizing Odd for some sign, some hint of what existed below the surface.

  “You may have thought me mad when I attacked you,” Odd said. “I wasn’t, though. I was determined, desperate even. I have been so close for so long to finding what I’ve been searching for. This world has been colossally disappointing; most days it’s all I can do to overcome my disgust and keep on living here.”

  “They tell me you’re doing well.”

  “Listen,” Odd began to whisper, “I’ve found what I was looking for. The person affects the place. Know one and you know what the other will be like. That was our problem, we didn’t know them well enough. It has to be a special person- that was the original intent. It was to be someone set apart as the seed of- of whatever they are. I’ve found the perfect person.” Someone, a doctor or orderly, passed by in the corridor outside and Odd fell silent, looking at the floor and blinking rapidly.

  “And yet you’re in here,” Holroyd said. “Fortune really is cruel.” Odd went to the window and looked out. “Do you still have the phials?”

  “I wasn’t allowed to keep my personal effects,” Odd said. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they had been poured out a long time ago.”

  A short time later, Holroyd left Odd and walked back through the courtyard. A patient, an old man, was sitting on a stone bench beneath a tree. He beckoned to Holroyd and leaned towards him conspiratorially.

  “There are nasty things that run about in the dark all around the world. You need to get through life without them noticing you. Do you know how to do it?”

  “No; how?”

  “Don’t step on the cracks. It’s like stepping on a harp string. They can hear it and they come running.”

  “Hello there Mr. Aintree, are you bothering our guest?” The eager and correct sunbeam of an orderly had returned, leading an even older man who shuffled to the bench and fairly collapsed onto it.

  “Telling him things he needs to be privy to,” Mr. Aintree said. As Holroyd left the courtyard, he could faintly hear Mr. Aintree telling the man beside him about the nasty things that run about in the dark.

  “Are Mr. Odd’s personal effects available?” he asked as they neared the front hall. “He had hoped that I would be able to take them with me.”

  “Oh, we don’t keep patients’ personal effects. If Mr. Odd was typical, he came with little more than the clothes he wore.”

  “I would never accuse Adelard Odd of being typical.”

  #

  Dr. Holroyd had gone out and left Spender and North to their own devices. They both sat, deflated by the heat, in the small kitchen at the back of the house.

  “Do you think we can trust him?” Spender said.

  “I don’t see him killing us in our sleep, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Do you think he’ll be able to help us?”

  “I do.” North moved his glass several times, looking at the rings it left on the tabletop. “Something somewhat disturbing has happened. For the longest time, I’ve been able to see into multiple futures, almost without limit. Ever since we arrived here, that’s changed. I can see up to a point but, after that, it’s like I come to a blank wall.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “I think it means I’m going to die.”

  “When?”

  “The day after next.”

  Holroyd came back late in the day, laden with brown parcels and bags.

  “There’s a woman coming with lamb and fish and couscous and God knows what else. We’re going to break bread and make merry tonight.”

  “What are we celebrating?” Spender said.

  “You’ll be leaving tomorrow and I intend to send you off as hospitably as I know how.”

  “Leaving? Where are we going?”

  “We’ll leave that until after dinner. Until then, I think it’s time for some indolence; I’ve been far too active today.”

 

  After they had eaten and sat about in a postprandial stupor, Holroyd took them to the rooftop and sat with them for the last time. The sun had already gone down and the heat of the day had subsided to a degree. Holroyd prepared his pipe in silence and sat for a while in the darkness as Spender and North waited expectantly.

  “I told you before that Odd was most likely frustrated in his attempts to find the Door we had gone through in Turkey. He was unsuccessful because I had the Door moved at no small expense. A team excavated around it and shipped it out of the country. I didn’t dare keep it at my country home; Odd would have found it easily. Instead, I had it taken to a relatively inhospitable island riddled with caves and cliffs.”

  “Where exactly did you take it?” Spender said.

  “Northeast of this city is Cape Bon. Several miles from the coast there, in the Gulf of Tunisia, is a small island called Zembra. On the northern end of the island is a cave that contains the Door to the garden.”

  “You hid it here?”

  “When the time came to avoid arrest, I chose to come here in order to be close to the Door. There may come a time when I find it necessary to go there.”

  “Why would you need to go to the Door?” North said.

  “Fear,” Holroyd said. “I’ve had a suspicion since the early days of experimentation with the Doors. Tell me, when you saw Odd did he appear to be a man of fifty?”

  “No,” North said, “he seemed younger.”

  “I thought as much. The maker of a Door cannot die in the world he created. Though I had never stayed on the strange side of a Door for long enough, I always wondered if the maker would age. That, Mr. North, would be the thing that could drive me back to the Garden. I fear death like nothing else.” Holroyd worked vigorously at his pipe until the depths of the bowl lit with bright embers and curling wisps of tobacco.

  “ In order to unmake Odd’s Door, you’ll have to go to Zembra and speak to the- the person you find in the Garden. You will learn what you need and you will most likely receive that essence of existence- if you live. Be forewarned, it will come at a steep price. What price vengeance?” He looked at Spender with detached amusement.

  “Thank you, doctor, for all your help,” Spender said.

  “As I said before, I am a wicked man and, though Odd may never realize it, it pleases me to know that I am his undoing. I’ve hired a boat that will take you to the island. After that, you may strike out with my best wishes.”

  “When a Door is destroyed,” Spender said, “what happens to the person that was used to make it?”

  “They move on to heaven, they go to oblivion, cease to exist; I don’t know. I’m not a philosopher, Mr. Spender. Whatever happens, it will be a more natural fate than the one they face in the weird otherness created by a Door.”

  As they left the rooftop, Dr. Holroyd stopped North and spoke to him at length. Spender waited on the stair and, when North joined him, did his best to not look too curious.

  “What did he say?”

  “Oh, he just said to be careful on the island.”

  #

  The morning had not defied convention and had started out unpleasantly warm with every indication that it would only get hotter. Holroyd was gone and had left a note wishing them good luck and telling them where they could find the man with the boat. As it turned out, it took a man with a cart to get to the man with the boat and, by eleven o’ clock, they were out of the city and riding along the coast.

  The boatman was uncommunicative and struck out for the island as soon as they were on board. A warm wind whipped across the water, scouring it into multifold ripples and ridges that lapped against the boat and sent up spray
. Dark clouds had gathered in the north and Spender and North watched these with an unaccountable melancholia.

  They could make out Zembra at some distance as an uneven rocky mass that rose up to a considerable height above the sea. As they drew nearer, they could make out cliffs and sea birds wheeling and crying in the wind. Spender looked over at North and thought he looked unwell.

  “Alright, North?” North nodded and kept his white-knuckled grip on the rail.

  Chapter Twenty

  Some nights, Holroyd dreamt that he never left. He would wander through dense growth, pushing aside fern fronds and ducking under wild grape vines. All around was the overpowering scent of growth and life. The loud steady hum of insects could be heard throughout. In these dreams, Holroyd would cross a stream or a stagnant pool of water and come out into a clearing. As always, she waited for him, terrifying and unhuman.

  “Why did they leave me?” he would ask. When she spoke to him, as she invariably did, her words were unintelligible. Still, he imagined that she spoke to him of the price of her blood.

  Once, before he died, Abney had been drunk and had told Holroyd his theory of the woman in the garden. She was ancient, he said, and had dwelt in the Garden since the beginning. As one of the first things created, the power to create worlds ran in her veins.

  “Everyone, everything else from that time is gone now,” Abney had said. “As for all of us, there have been so many ‘begat’ here and there that it’s all been diluted away; but her,” he had tapped his wrist, “a drop of her blood is genesis.”

  “The genesis of what?” Holroyd had asked.

  “Well you know that already.”

  #

  They had gotten out of the boat some distance from the shore and stood with the water up to their chests and their packs held overhead. The boatman had said “Tomorrow,” and had gone back out to sea, leaving them looking at the beach and the hilly inland.

  On dry land, North set down his pack and withdrew a small bundle of paper.

  “What’s that?” Spender asked.

  “It’s a map of the island with the location of the Door marked on it,” North said. “Holroyd gave it to me yesterday.”

  “That’s incredible; why didn’t you mention it before?”

  “It must have slipped my mind.” North looked away, out to sea, and shouldered his pack. Spender had the feeling that North was hiding something but could not for the life of him imagine what or why. “This way,” North said. “It won’t take us long; the island’s actually quite small.”