Graham Masterton - The Doorkeepers

Another extravagant burst of thunder made the lamp shake and the ornaments rattle. There was a few seconds’ pause, and then the rain began to beat so furiously on the roof outside the window that spray came through the open window and sparkled on Ella’s geranium plants.

Josh said, “You’re right. You’ve been a great help, Ella. But I guess we’re on our own, from here on in.” He took his billfold out of his back jeans pocket and took out a twenty pound note. “Listen … we have to give you something for doing this. You don’t normally hold séances free of charge, do you?”

“I can’t take your money, Josh. I did this for Julia.”

“Come on. Buy something for Abraxas if you won’t take it for yourself. I’m sure Julia would have wanted you to have it.”

“You don’t know yet, what Julia wants. When you find out, come back to me.”

“You’re sure?” said Josh, offering her the note again.

“If you’ve really discovered one of the six doors, there’s a chance that I won’t ever see you again, not in this life. So try to remember that you owe me twenty pounds. It’ll give you one more reason for coming back.”

Nancy came up and took hold of Josh’s arm. “Josh …it’s getting late. I think it’s time we left.”

“Yes, you go on and catch up on some sleep,” said Ella, kissing Josh on the cheek.

“I’m sorry I made such a mess. Puking and all.”

“That wasn’t your fault. Anyway, puke is easier to clean up than ectoplasm.”

It was still raining hard so Ella lent them a large yellow umbrella. She took them down to the front door, and kissed both of them again.

Josh said, “What happened up there, that was real, wasn’t it? I didn’t dream it?”

Ella’s eyes shone white in the gloom of the porch. “What happened up there, Josh, was the realest thing that you’ve ever experienced in the whole of your life. I swear to you.”

Josh’s throat was sore and swollen, and even though he gargled with dispersible aspirin before he went to bed, he hardly slept.

When he did manage to doze off, he had endless unraveling dreams about walking down narrow London alleyways, left and then right and then left and then right and never reaching the end. In his dreams it was raining hard and he was forced to wade knee-deep through wet leaves and trash. He saw something that looked like a note or a letter, and he bent over to pick it up. It turned out to be a cream-colored cigarette packet called Player’s Weights. Josh briefly wondered what kind of cigarettes would be referred to as “weights”; he dropped the packet and carried on wading through the rubbish.

A nagging voice kept saying, “You lost something, mate? You lost something, mate? You want to watch yourself, mate. You’re looking for trouble, you are. You want to watch yourself.”

He tried to reply but his lips felt as if they had been anesthetized.

“You want to watch yourself, mate,” the voice persisted.

“You’re going to get yourself in shtoock, you are. You’re going to end up brown bread.”

Nancy slept soundly and silently as she always did. Just after seven o’clock, a warm sun began to shine through the open-weave drapes, and Josh drew them back to look out over a bright cloudless morning in West London, with the sparrows chirruping and the traffic already busy. Down in one of the gardens below, a man in a grubby undershirt and gray pants was admiring a row of beans and smoking a cigarette. Josh sat down on the bed next to Nancy and stroked her tangled shiny hair. Eventually he bent over and kissed her on the forehead and the tip of the nose and she opened her eyes.

“Wake up,” he told her. “It’s a beautiful day.”

She turned over and smiled at him. “I was having such an amazing dream. I was back home, in my mother’s house, and all of my relations were there. My grandfather and my grandmother, my aunts and my uncles, my nieces and nephews, everybody.”

“It’s good to have your family reunions in dreams. It sure saves on air fares.”

“I could never have had this reunion anyplace else. My grandparents are dead, remember? So are three of my uncles.”

“So what was the occasion?”

“I’m not really sure. It was kind of a farewell party.”

“A farewell party? For who?”

“For me, I guess. Everybody came up one by one and kissed me on the cheeks and gave me a little gift.”

Josh couldn’t fully understand why, but Nancy’s dream made him feel worried. He switched on the television news while he showered and dressed. A car bomb in Ulster had killed a well-known woman lawyer. The European Commission had imposed a ban on British-cured prosciutto. American warplanes had attacked Iraq and accidentally blown up a school, killing twenty-three children.

He put on a plain blue shirt and a pair of blue jeans. Nancy wore a simple maroon dress with a matching headscarf and all of her Modoc jewelry, silver and turquoise and red enamel. They went down to the hotel restaurant. The rosy-cheeked girl behind the counter asked Josh if he wanted his “full English” again, but he contented himself with a peach yogurt. He still felt sick at the thought of bringing up Julia’s lung.

“You’re quiet,” said Nancy during breakfast, laying her hand on top of his.

“I was thinking about that old woman in the hospital. I mean, do you think that was a coincidence, her telling me that rhyme about the six doors? It’s almost as if she was planted there.”

“Planted? An old woman like that? Who would do that? And why?”

“We never would have known about the six doors otherwise, would we? It’s like that movie about the Twelve Monkeys. I just get the feeling that somebody wanted us to find out about them.”

“Then they would have called us up or left us a note, wouldn’t they? Not sent a hundred-year-old woman to tell us a Mother Goose rhyme.”

“It’s the kind of thing that spies used to do. Like the SOE, during World War Two. They sent all their messages in poems.”

“But this isn’t wartime, is it?”

On the far side of the restaurant Josh could see a television silently showing the twisted Vauxhall of the dead Irish lawyer. “It’s always wartime, someplace or another.”

They drove to St Thomas’s Hospital, and walked through the automatic doors into the sunny, white-tiled reception area. A middle-aged woman with gray bouffant hair and a strident blue suit kept them waiting while she finished a conversation with one of the hospital porters about her holiday in Kos. “Mosquitoes! You should have seen me. I was all blown up like a balloon.”

Josh emphatically cleared his throat. When the receptionist didn’t take any notice, he did it again. She swiveled around in her chair and peered at him through fishbowl glasses. “Nasty cough, dear. ENT, is it?”

“I haven’t come here for treatment. I’ve come to visit a patient.”

“Ward?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know which ward she’s in. But she’s a very old lady, a hundred and one years old, and her name’s Polly.”

“I’m sorry, if you don’t know the ward.”

“How many old ladies of a hundred and one do you have in this place?”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t honestly tell you, offhand.”

“Well, how many old ladies of one hundred and one called Polly do you have?”

“We’re not allowed to reveal patients’ ages. It’s against policy.”

“But the policy about knowing her age is irrelevant if I know it already.”

“Ah, but you don’t know who she is, do you? If I told you who she was, that would be the same as revealing her age.”

Josh was just about to shout at her in sheer exasperation when he caught sight of the hospital porter who had been pushing Polly into the X-ray room. He said, “Hold on,” to the receptionist and pushed his way through the crowds of patients. He managed to catch the porter just as he reached the elevators.