Graham Masterton - The Doorkeepers

“Tell me something about the doors. Is there any way that you can tell that somebody’s just about to come through?”

“It’s like dowsing for water, guvnor. You got to have the feel for it.”

“So you can tell? And that means you can be lying in wait for anybody who steps out?”

“It’s possible, yes, guvnor. There are ways and ways. But it ain’t all that easy. The only guaranteed way to catch the Purgatorials one hundred percent is to stand by the door twenty-four hours through the day and never get no kip. But – if you know what you’re looking for, you can see the door change. Something in the substance of it, like that wobbly air you get, when the roads are hot. You came through it: you must have seen it for yourself. Me and San, we walked through the Yard today, and we saw the door was different-like, just the faintest of wobbles, and that’s when we knew that somebody had opened it. That’s why we was hanging around, waiting for you. Purgatorials generally come back to the door they come through, given an hour or two, although I never know why.”

“The Hooded Men … were they aware that we had come through, too?”

“Oh, yes. They always know. That’s why they was coming after you. Don’t ask me how they know. But nobody comes through them doors without the Hoodies being there in five or ten minutes at the most. Then phwwitt! that’s it, they’re catched and off to wherever they take them.”

“But if the Hoodies don’t want us here,” said Nancy, “why don’t they simply close the doors off? Brick them up, so nobody can get through?”

“Because bricking them up wouldn’t make no difference. The doors is always there, even if you build a church on top of them. I know for a fact that one of the doors is right slap bang in the middle of the river these days, even though it must have been on dry land, when it was first opened up.”

“You know where all the other doors are?” asked Josh.

“I wish I did. There’s one at Southwark, I do know that, on the corner of Bread Street and Watling Street. My old china Crossword Lenny looks after it, so to speak. I heard there was some up west, too, but as for their precise whereabouts, you’d have to ask an expert on doors and their precise whereabouts, if there is such a person.”

They cleared books and magazines out of the seats of the huge sagging armchairs and sat back and sipped their tea out of thick British Railways cups. Josh was beginning to feel exhausted – not only from their chase across the rooftops of Chancery Lane, but because this world in which he and Nancy had found themselves was so familiar, and yet so disturbingly different. It felt different. There were different noises, different smells, different sounds; and when Simon and San talked together, they used words that Josh had never heard of, and referred to events that had never happened. Not in the “real” world, anyhow. He thought, even if you went to Beijing, you could say “McDonald’s!” or “Julia Roberts!” and people would know what you were talking about. Here, they simply didn’t exist, and never had.

“What if I said to you, ‘the Beatles’?” Josh asked Simon.

Simon looked uneasy. “The beetles? I don’t understand.”

“The Beatles. The 1960s pop group.”

“Pop? Group? What’s that?”

“You’ve never heard of the Beatles?”

“Never.”

“The Rolling Stones? Glenn Campbell? Hootie and the Blowfish? The Doors?”

“I don’t understand.”

Nancy said, “All right … let me ask you something more serious. What is the name of the current President of the United States?”

“The United States of what?”

“The United States of America, of course.”

“Oh, America! Well, America doesn’t have a president. They have a Lord Protector, like us.”

“No President? No White House?”

Simon was completely bemused. “Why don’t you have some more tea?” he asked them.

“Don’t you British have royalty any more?” Josh wanted to know. “What about the Queen and Prince Charles and the Duke of Edinburgh?”

“The last king was Charles I. Sixteen-something. Chopped his bonce off, didn’t they?”

“So who ruled England after him?”

“The same people that run it now. The Commonwealth.”

“And America is being run by the Commonwealth?”

“Of course.”

Josh said, “What about World War Two?”

Simon shook his head.

“You’ve never heard of World War Two? When America and Britain got together and fought against the Germans?”

“We never fought the Germans,” said Simon, as if the very idea of it was totally ridiculous.

“What about the Japanese? Did you ever hear of Pearl Harbor? How about Hiroshima, and the atom bomb?”

“Sorry, guvnor.”

“All right, then, let’s go back a bit. World War One? No? Fighting in the trenches? No? How about the Titanic ? No? You must have heard of the American Civil War, north versus south. You must have heard of Abraham Lincoln.”

“No … I don’t think so. I’ve heard of Lincoln cars, they’re American, aren’t they?”

Josh sat back. “OK, tell me. What was the most important worldwide event of the past decade? In your opinion?”

Simon sucked in his breath. “Whooo … that’s a tough one.”

“You know what it was?” put in San, still meticulously ironing, and hanging up his shirt. “It was Miss Burma, winning the Miss World Competition.”

“Listen to him!” said Simon, in mock disgust. “No … I reckon the most important thing that happened was them two geezers flying round the world in a Zeppelin. It won’t be long before anybody can fly practically anywhere they like.”

“How about that?” said Josh, turning to Nancy. “No World War One … no World War Two. I guess that’s why everything’s sixty years out of date. No jet engines. No antibiotics. There’s nothing like a war to speed up new inventions.”

“It’s all wars, is it, where you come from?” said Simon.

“Not entirely. There hasn’t been a major war in over half a century. And at least we don’t have Hooded Men.”

“You don’t? What do you do about the Catholics?”

“We don’t do anything about the Catholics. Being a Roman Catholic isn’t a crime, where we come from.”

“Blimey.” Simon rummaged in his coat pocket and took out a small cream-colored pack of Player’s Weights cigarettes. He lit one and blew a series of smoke rings. “Seems like a bloody dodgy kind of place to me. All wars and popery.”

Josh looked down at the dog-torn hemline of Simon’s overcoat. “Depends on your definition of bloody dodgy.”

San finished his ironing and went into the kitchen. “I hope everybody’s hungry,” he said; and without waiting for an answer he started chopping onions.

“You’d better kip here tonight,” said Simon. “The Hoodies’ll be out looking for you still. Tomorrow you can go back through the door and find yourselves some decent clobber. Bring me some pens and some watches and anything else that you can think of and I’ll get you some dosh and anything else you need. Maps, tube passes, little black books.”

“Little black books?”

Simon reached in his pocket and produced a small, worn-out, leather-bound book. “The Sayings of Oliver Cromwell . Everybody has to carry one. Do you know what my favorite saying is? ‘Necessity hath no law’. In other words, guvnor, what you has a need of, you furnishes yourself with.”

“Tomorrow I want to go to Kaiser Gardens and Wheatstone Electrics,” said Josh. “Maybe you’d like to come along and help us. You know, act as our scout.”