Graham Masterton - The Doorkeepers

Josh looked down at the illustration. “But supposing you did know how to do it?”

“Josh … you don’t seriously think this could have anything to do with Julia’s disappearance, do you?”

“What? No, how could it? This is nothing but a children’s rhyme.”

“But?”

“But, like you said, Ella thought that it was important. Ella thought the old woman was trying to tell me something.”

“But a parallel world? A real parallel world? Come on, Josh!”

“Sure, you’re right, you’re absolutely right. I’m tired. I’m still jet-lagged. I’m letting my imagination run away with me. It’s crap.”

“But? Look at you, your whole face is saying but!”

“But it really clicked with something I was reading a couple of weeks ago, in the Chronicle. They had a scientific convention down in San Diego, and they were talking about parallel worlds. About two hundred of the world’s greatest eggheads. And they decided that the likelihood of a parallel world not existing was so remote it was almost impossible. In fact, they thought there could be an infinite number of them, because the universe is all about an infinite number of choices, an infinite number of alternatives. It simply wouldn’t make sense if there weren’t any parallel worlds.”

“That’s easy to say. But where are they, these parallel worlds? And how do you get to them?”

“How the hell should I know? In 1491, they probably used to say that about America. But it’s a possibility, isn’t it? Julia disappeared for ten whole months, and in all of that time nobody saw her and nobody knew where she was. Nobody. She was supposed to be working for a company that doesn’t exist, and she left an address that doesn’t exist, either.”

“This is the great skeptic speaking, remember.”

“And I’m still skeptical. But that doesn’t mean I have to close my mind off altogether, does it? OK, the Wheatstone letter could have been a practical joke. That’s the most likely explanation, even if it isn’t a very good explanation. So what are the other possibilities? Maybe Julia left London altogether. Maybe she left England altogether. Maybe she was still in London but she was abducted and kept tied up in a cellar someplace. But then again …”

Nancy said, “Go on.”

Josh slowly closed the book. “Maybe there is a parallel world, where Wheatstone Electrics really exists, and Kaiser Gardens really exists. Maybe there are six doors, and Julia found out how to get there, and that’s where she’s been.”

They left the library and walked down the steps. The rain had stopped and the streets were glistening with reflections, an upside-down world of blackness and lights beneath their feet.

Nancy said, “Even if these six doors exist, how did Julia find them?”

“Search me. They can’t be easy to find, or everybody would be jumping through them.”

“You’re not going to tell Detective Sergeant Paul about this, are you?”

Josh unlocked their car, and they climbed in. He switched on the windshield wipers and a parking ticket was dragged backward and forward across the windshield in front of him.

“No,” he said. “I’m not going to tell Detective Sergeant Paul. The first thing I’m going to do is find somebody who knows more about these six doors.”

Nancy kissed him on the cheek; and then on the lips. “What was that for?” he asked her.

“Because you’re always trying to make out that you’re such a logical, rational person when all the time you’re crazy and spontaneous and you follow your instincts just like one of your dogs.”

“Woof,” he said, and shifted into reverse by mistake, colliding with the car parked behind him.

Eight

They went back to Ella’s that evening, uninvited, but taking two chilled bottles of California Chardonnay with them. Josh didn’t think that Ella could really help them any, but they needed somebody else to talk to, and she was the only person who would listen. He knew what DS Paul would think about them if they tried to discuss the six doors with her. His old schoolfriend Steve Moriarty had joined the SFPD and was always griping about the “X-Filers” who pestered him after every unexplained disappearance.

There was the old man whose false teeth had been found in the bottom of the toilet bowl: his wife had immediately assumed that he had been devoured by a giant anaconda that was lurking in the sewer system. Seven months later he was found alive and well and living in Santa Cruz. His wife’s cooking had always made him physically sick, and the very last time, when he had lost his dentures, he had walked out and vowed that he would never go back.

Other absconders were said by their relatives to have been sucked off their sundecks by the slipstream of passing UFOs; or to have walked through mirrors, to be trapped for ever in back-to-front land. A parallel world from a Mother Goose rhyme sounded just as insane.

Ella didn’t seem surprised to see them. She was wearing a black headscarf and huge silver hoop earrings. “Come on in,” she said. “I’m just cooking up some sancoche.”

Abraxas came running over and threw himself up at Josh’s knees. Ella said, “Down, Abraxas! How many times have I told you, you disobedient mutt!” Abraxas barked and kept on bungee-jumping up and down, so Josh popped his fingers and gave him his famous obedience stare. Abraxas immediately whined and hung his head and went trotting back to his basket under the sink.

“How do you do that?” asked Ella, shaking her head.

“It’s an unarmed combat technique. Eye-karate, they call it. They teach you how to do it in the US Marine Corps. I guess I’m the only person who thought of trying it out on dogs.”

“You were in the marines?”

Josh looked up at the ceiling. “Briefly.”

“He doesn’t talk about it,” Nancy explained.

“You don’t mind if I carry on cooking?” asked Ella. She went over to her stove and lifted the lid of a large orange casserole pot. A strong smell of meat and peppers and vegetables wafted into the room. Josh went over and peered at the bubbling brown stew inside. “Sancoche,” said Ella. “It’s a traditional Trinidadian dish, with salt pork and beef, thickened up with yam and dasheen and cassava root and sweet potatoes, with coconut cream and hot chili peppers.”

“Smells pretty nourishing.”

“My grandmother taught me how to cook it. She always used to say that it brought you good luck. Whenever you cook sancoche, they can smell it in the spirit world, and it reminds them of the good times they had when they were alive. They gather round close, just to breathe it in.”

“You’re not expecting anybody to supper, are you?” asked Nancy. “We can always come around tomorrow instead.”

“As a matter of fact, I was expecting somebody. Here, I kept the cards to show you.”

“The cards?”

Ella led them across to her dining table. Arranged on the purple velveteen cloth were twelve greasy, worn-out playing cards, with a thirteenth card in the center. Seven of the cards had been turned over so that their faces were visible. They bore tiny representations of each of the traditional playing cards in the top left-hand corner, and a large colored illustration in the center.

“These are French fortune-telling cards, la Sybille, from Martinique,” said Ella. “Handed down by the women in my family from one generation to the next. Whoever uses them gives them a little of her power, so they are very powerful now, very knowing. You both carried such a strong aura that I laid them out yesterday, after you were gone. I wanted to find out what would happen to you.”