Clive Barker - Coldheart Canyon

Tammy started going through the drawers, as quickly as possible. There seemed to be dozens of them. Did she want aluminum foil and plastic bags? No. Spoons and ladles? No. Cutlery? There were a few knives in here, but they were too flimsy for her purposes. She needed a blade she could use to dig at the wood. If she didn't get the icons out of the threshold, the ghosts would stay out there.

"Todd! Let me in!"

"You have to go," Todd said to Tammy.

"Not until I've got a -- "

Yes! A knife! The ninth drawer she opened was a treasure trove of knives; large, small, middle-sized. Knowing she could only have a few seconds left before Katya came in, Tammy simply gathered up a handful of knives -- five or six -- and headed back to the passageway.

As she reached the door, she heard Katya's voice from across the room.

"You think you're going to save yourself with those?"

Tammy looked back over her shoulder. Katya had pushed the door open, and shoved Todd aside, raising her hands as she approached, ready to take Tammy by the throat.

Todd raced ahead of her to stand between the two women.

"Hey now," he said. "Let's just calm down. Nobody's going to hurt anybody."

Katya seemed to listen to him. Her agitation quieted. "All right," she said, looking at Todd with wide, dark eyes. "What do you suggest?"

Tammy didn't trust this little performance at all; but it gave her time to back off towards the door. As she reached it, one of her hastily-collected knives slipped from her hand. She bent down to pick it up, and in attempting to do so, lost her grip on all the others. She cursed as they went spinning across the polished tiles in all directions. "Pick them up, Todd," Katya said.

"Later," Todd replied, his tone still mellow.

In response she slapped him, hard, across his already-wounded face, striking blood from it. "I want them picked up."

He stared at her for a minute. Then, very calmly, he caught hold of her hand and said: "Don't do that."

"You want to hit me back?" Katya said. "Go on. If that's what you want to do, then do it! No, you won't will you? You're too damn weak. All you men. Too damn weak."

As if to prove the point she pulled her hand out of Todd's grip and pushed past him, heading straight for Tammy.

Faced with the choice of waiting a few seconds to see if Todd would come to her rescue, or making an escape while she could, Tammy snatched up the first knife to hand, which was neither the largest nor toughest of the blades, and made a run for the door.

Katya came after her; Tammy stumbled as she got up, and Katya would probably have caught up with her if Todd hadn't finally found the courage to put his arms around Katya from behind, and hold her back. "All right!" he yelled to Tammy. "Go!"

Tammy didn't need a second invitation. She ran out into the passage and slammed the door after her. It had a lock but regrettably no key.

She looked down the passageway to the back door. There was a glass panel in it. The glass wasn't flawless, but it was clear enough for Tammy to see the shapes of the ghosts, assembled like a pack of hungry dogs eager to be let into the house. She could hear the odd, listless murmuring they made, the words like objects that had been used so many times they had lost all their shape.

Did they know, somehow, that she was on her way to let them in? Was that why their murmuring became a little more urgent as she opened the door, and the silvery stare in their eyes a little brighter?

"Wait." she said to them, "I'm going to do this. But you have to wait."

There was noise from the kitchen behind her. Plainly Katya was attempting to persuade Todd to go and fetch her -- probably kill her. Tammy couldn't make sense of the words, and that was probably for the best. She couldn't afford to be panicked any more than she already was, or she'd screw this up.

Tammy glanced back over her shoulder, to check that Katya wasn't already in the passageway, then she went down on her hands and knees and examined the threshold. The wood was worn with time, and rot had got into it, softening it. She ran her fingers over the full length of it, clearing away the dirt. The area smelt vaguely of vomit, but she supposed that was the rot she was smelling. At three or four inch intervals along the length of the threshold there were metal markers, like nails with large, elaborately configured heads, hammered into the timber. She dug around one of them with the nail of her forefinger. It seemed very solidly imbedded in the wood. But she had no doubt she was on the right track, meddling with these things, because as soon as she started to do so the ghosts' murmuring became almost reverent in tone; worshipful.

She looked up at them. The light they emitted had grown brighter; either that or they'd narrowed their eyes. Yes, that was it; they narrowed their eyes to study what she was doing.

"This is it, isn't it?"

They answered the only way they could: they fell completely silent. This was not a procedure they wanted to put at risk by making so much as a single sound.

There were five icons in the threshold, the middle one slightly bigger than the other four, which was a circle with two irregularly-shaped 'arms' coming from it, at noon and seven o'clock on its dial.

She dug her knife into the centre of the symbol. "Okay," she said softly to it, "out you come."

The wood was so wormy it crumbled beneath her knife-point. She dug deeper, exposing parts of the icon that were still dean. It gave off a subtle iridescence, like mother-of-pearl. Her confidence growing, she kept digging until she had cleared the wood away around the whole thing. Then she put her knife-tip under the rim and tried to lever it out. Much to her disappointment, it wouldn't budge; not even a little bit.

"Damn," she said softly.

She worked at it a little more, then remembered the old school adage, trotted out before every test. "If you can't answer the first question, don't waste time on it. Move on to the next one."

That's what she did. She moved left, and started to stab at the wood around the icon at the far end of the row. If anything, the threshold was even more rotted here than it was at the centre; the wood came away in fat splinters.

There was more noise from the kitchen shouting now, but she ignored it. Just kept digging. Bigger splinters flew. She felt a rush of certainty. She was going to do this. She pressed the knife under the edge of the icon. There was a moment of resistance, then the pressure of the blade on a nerve in her hand sent a spasm of pain up her arm. She yelped. And in the same moment the icon jumped free of the wood, landing on the tile outside.

The din from the kitchen suddenly became very specific. She heard Todd say:

"Don't do that."

It was a voice she'd never heard from him before, not even in a movie. There was fear in his voice. Something Katya was doing, or was about to do, had made him afraid. Not a very comforting thought.

Without wasting time looking over her shoulder, she quickly went to the other end of the threshold, and started to work there. Though there was plenty of light between the trees, she was cold. There was a length of clammy flesh down her spine, and another across her shoulderblades, as though somebody had painted a cold cross on her skin. Her teeth chattered lightly --

But again, she was in luck. The wood around the icon came away in three or four large pieces. She pressed the knife as deep under the device as it would go and levered. The thing shifted instantly; and as it did so the same spasm she'd felt before ran up her arm. It wasn't a nerve she was striking, she realized. It was a jolt of energy given off by the metalwork as it was levered out. It hurt so much she dropped the knife for a moment, to massage her hand. Her fingers were getting numb.