Anthony Horowitz - Necropolis

Scarlett did as she was told. The liquid was boiling hot and burned her fingers as she lifted the glass. She took a sip. The tea tasted herbal and it was heavily sugared, so sweet that it stuck to her lips. She set it down again.

“I will tell you my story because it pleases me to do so,” Father Gregory said. “Because I sometimes wondered if this day would ever come. That you are sitting here now, in this place, is more than a miracle. My whole life has been leading to this moment. It is perhaps the very reason why I was meant to live.”

Scarlett didn’t interrupt him. The more he talked, the more passionate he became. She could see the coal fire reflected in his eyes, but even if the fire hadn’t been there, there might still have been the same glow.

“I was born sixty-two years ago in Moscow, which was then the capital of the Soviet Union. My father was a politician, but from my earliest age, I knew that I wanted to enter the Church. Why? I did not like the world into which I had been born. Even when I was at school, I found the other children spiteful and stupid. I was small for my age and often bullied. I never found it easy to make friends. I did not much like my parents either. They didn’t understand me. They didn’t even try.

“I was nineteen when I told my father that I wanted to take holy orders. He was horrified. I was his only son and he had always assumed that I would go into politics, like him. He tried to talk me out of it. He arranged for me to travel around the world, hoping that if I saw all the riches that the West had to offer, it would change my mind.

“In fact, it did the exact opposite. Everything I saw in Europe and America disgusted me. Wealthy families with huge homes and expensive cars, living just a mile away from children who were dying because they could not afford medicine. Countries at war, the people killing and maiming each other because of politicians too stupid to find another way. The noise of modern life; the planes and the cars, the concrete smothering the land. The pollution and the garbage. The people, in their millions, scurrying on their way to jobs they hated…”

Scarlett shrugged. “So you weren’t happy,” she said. “What’s that got to do with me?”

“It has everything to do with you and if you interrupt me again I will have you whipped until the skin peels off your back.”

Father Gregory paused. Scarlett was completely shocked but didn’t want to show it. She said nothing.

“I entered a seminary in England,” he continued, “and trained to become a monk. I spent six years there, then another three in Tuscany before finally I came here. That was thirty years ago. This was a very beautiful and very restful place when I first arrived, a refuge from the rest of the world. The weather was harsh and, in the winter, the days were short. But the way of life suited me. Prayer six times a day, simple meals and silence while we ate. We cultivated all our food ourselves. I have spent many hundreds of hours hacking at the barren soil that surrounds us. When I wasn’t in the fields, I was helping in the local villages, tending to the poor and the sick.

“A holy life, Scarlett. And so it might have remained. But then everything changed. And all because of a door in a wall.”

Father Gregory hadn’t touched his tea, but suddenly he picked up his glass between his finger and thumb and tipped the scalding liquid back. Scarlett saw his throat bulge. It was like watching a sick man take his medicine.

“It puzzled me from the start. A door that seemed to belong to a different building with a strange device – a five-pointed star – that had nothing to do with this place. A door that went nowhere.” He lifted a hand to stop her interrupting. “It went nowhere, child. Believe me. There was a brief corridor on the other side and then a blank wall.

“The monastery was then run by an abbot who was much older than me. His name was Father Janek. And one day, walking in the cloisters, I asked him about it.

“He wouldn’t tell me. A simple lie might have ended my curiosity, but Father Janek was too good a man to lie. Instead, he told me not to ask any more questions. He quickened his pace and as he walked away, I saw that he was afraid.

“From that day on, I became fascinated by the door. We had an extensive library here, Scarlett, with more than ten thousand books – although most of them have now mouldered away. Some of them were centuries old. I searched through them. It took me many years. But slowly – a sentence here, a fragment there – a story began to emerge. But in the end, it was one book, a secret copy of a diary written by a Spanish monk in 1532 that told me everything I wanted to know.”

He stopped and ran his eyes over the girl as if she were the most precious thing he had ever seen. Scarlett was revolted and didn’t try to hide it. The eyes underneath the white eyebrows were devouring her. She could see saliva on the old man’s lips.

“The Old Ones,” he whispered, and although Scarlett had never heard those words before, they meant something to her; some memory from the far distant past. “The diary told me about the great battle that had taken place ten thousand years ago when the Old Ones ruled the world and mankind were their slaves. Pure evil. The Bible talks of devils… of Lucifer and Satan. But that’s just story-telling. The Old Ones were real. They were here. And the one who ruled over them, Chaos, was more powerful than anything in the universe.”

“So what happened to them?” Scarlett asked. Her voice had almost dropped to a whisper. Apart from the flames, twisting in the hearth, everything in the room was still.

“They were defeated and cast out. There were five children…” he spoke the word with contempt. “They came to be known as the Gatekeepers. Four boys and a girl.” He levelled his eyes on Scarlett and she knew what he was going to say next. “You are the girl.”

Scarlett shook her head. “You’re wrong. That’s insane. I’m not anything. I’m just a schoolgirl. I go to school in London…”

“How do you think you got here?” The monk pointed in the direction of the corridor with a single trembling finger. Some sort of liquid was leaking out of his damaged eye, a single tear. “You have seen the monastery and the snow. You know you are not in London now.”

“You drugged me.”

“You came through the door! It was all there in the diary. There were twenty-five doorways built all around the world. They were there for the Gatekeepers so that when the time came, they would be able to travel great distances in seconds. Only the Gatekeepers could use them. Nobody else. When I pass through the door, I find myself in a corridor, a dead end. But it’s not the same for you. It brought you here.”

Scarlett shook her head. Nothing she had heard made any sense at all. She didn’t even know where to begin. “I’m not ten thousand years old,” she said. “Look at me! You can see for yourself. I’m fifteen!”

“You have lived twice, at two different times.” He laughed delightedly. “It’s beyond belief,” he said. “Finally to meet one of the Gatekeepers after all these years and to find that she has no idea who or what she is.”

“You mentioned there was an abbot here,” Scarlett said. “I want to talk to him.”

“Father Janek is dead.” He sighed. “I haven’t told you the rest of my story. Maybe then you will understand.” He nodded at her glass. “You haven’t drunk your tea.”

“I don’t want it.”

“I would take what you are given while you still can, child. There is much pain for you ahead.”

Scarlett’s tea was right in front of her. Briefly, she thought about picking it up and flinging it in his face. But it wouldn’t do much good. It was probably lukewarm by now.