Graham Masterton - The Doorkeepers

“I don’t talk about it.”

“They made him play the Holy Harp, didn’t they? And he grassed up all of his friends. Seven people hanged because of him, and eight more in prison.”

“Why are you asking me, if you know?”

“Because I want to look in your squinty little eyes and see that you’re not deceiving me. The Hoodies can make anybody turn. I think they could even make me turn, if they ever caught me – which I hope to God they never will.”

Josh said, “Listen, for what it’s worth, we’re just two people looking for someplace safe to sleep tonight. If you don’t want to confide in us, it’s fine by me. Tomorrow we’ll be out of here early and you won’t have to see us again.”

“So what are you doing tomorrow?” asked John Farbelow, lighting his cigarette with a shocking-pink butane lighter that must have been brought into this world by some unfortunate Purgatorial.

“First, I’m going to visit the house in Lavender Hill where my sister was lodging. Then I’m going to go to Wheatstone Electrics where she used to work.”

“Wheatstone Electrics? You’re not talking about Frank Mordant?”

“That’s the man. He was the one who offered my sister a job.”

John Farbelow slowly shook his head. “Frank Mordant… there’s a man I’d like to see again. Nailed to the floorboards, preferably.”

“You know him?”

“Oh, yes, I know him. He’s a Purgatorial, like you. Well, let’s not use the word Purgatorial any more, but he came through one of the six doors, like you. He’s been here for years, running various little enterprises.”

“How come the Hoodies leave him alone?”

“Because like all of his kind, he’s come to some kind of arrangement with them. I imagine that he supplies them with all manner of goods and services which the rest of this godforsaken world have to do without. He comes and he goes, from your world to ours, wheeling and dealing. There are six or seven like him, that I know of, but he is definitely the slimiest of all of them.”

Nancy said, “Did he hurt you, personally?”

John Farbelow waved the clouds of smoke away from his face. “Well, well. You’re the perceptive one.”

“My grandmother taught me how to read people’s auras. When you started to talk about Frank Mordant, yours grew very dark.”

“You can read my mind?”

“No, but I can see your sorrow. It’s all around you. You look like you’re wearing a muddy cloak.”

“A muddy cloak … That’s poetic. But yes, you’re right. I do bear Frank Mordant a very great deal of ill will.”

“It’s to do with a woman, am I right?”

The young people in the room began to shuffle restlessly in their chairs. They weren’t bored: they were showing their support for John Farbelow; and that they didn’t approve of any questions that might hurt or embarrass him.

John Farbelow turned to a pretty gipsylike girl sitting closest to him and said, “It’s all right, Siobhan. Don’t get upset about it. These people may need our help.” Then he turned back to Nancy and said, “Why don’t you sit down? You look tired, both of you. What about a cup of tea, or something a little stronger?”

“A glass of water would be fine.”

John Farbelow nodded to Siobhan and she went off to fetch them a drink. Simon dragged over a sagging couch and an armchair and they all sat down. A gray cat suddenly appeared, and jumped up on to Josh’s knee. It peered up at him, sniffing, and purring as loudly as a wooden rattle.

“That’s not the same cat we saw in Star Yard, is it?” asked Nancy.

“Couldn’t be,” said Josh. But the cat rubbed its head against him and kept patting his hand with its paw as if it was encouraging him to stroke it.

John Farbelow said, “That animal seems to have taken a shine to you, Josh.”

“Animals always go for Josh,” said Nancy. “He treats them like human beings, that’s why.”

“You think they have souls?”

“Sure,” said Josh. “Just because they have fur and fishy breath, that doesn’t make them any less spiritual than we are. I know a lot of old women with fur and fishy breath, and nobody ever suggests that they shouldn’t go to heaven.”

“That’s Ladslove. She used to be Winnie’s cat. Winnie was the woman that I have such a muddy aura about.”

“What happened?” asked Nancy. Josh had heard her use this tone of voice before: calm, coaxing, and oddly dreamy. She had used it on him when they first met, and it had cast a spell over him immediately. It was like having your temples lightly massaged.

John Farbelow said, “I met her on a number fifteen bus, of all places. I was going to work. I used to be respectable then. Conformist. Collar-and-tie. She was bright-looking. So bright. I remember she was wearing a red coat with bright gold buttons. But she couldn’t work out her bus fare. It was only 7½d, but she was like a child, or a foreigner. She just held out a handful of coins and asked the bus conductor to pick out the right money.

“She spoke in a normal South London accent, but right from the beginning there was something about her that struck me as strange. She used peculiar words, and odd sentence constructions, and when she talked she would make references to things that I had never heard of.

“I met her again the next day, and we carried on talking where we’d left off the day before. I loved listening to her. She’d be chattering on about something perfectly ordinary, like her holiday, and then she’d suddenly drop in something so – fantastic – that you couldn’t believe your ears. I don’t know … something like ‘I went to France last year. I love Calais. I don’t like the Channel Tunnel, though. I keep thinking about all that water up there.’

“It was breathtaking. I thought she must be suffering from some kind of brain damage. But I didn’t interrupt her. I let her prattle on about famous actors that I didn’t know and television comedies that I had never heard of. It was like talking to a madwoman except that everything was so logical. No matter what questions I asked her, she always had an answer. She kept talking about ‘Princess Di’ and saying. ‘Wasn’t it sad?’ as if I was supposed to know who Princess Di was, and all about this sad thing that happened to her.

“I asked her where she came from, and she said Bromley. Her mother had died of cancer and her father had committed suicide two weeks later. She had suffered from terrible depression herself. Then she answered an advertisement in the paper for a new job somewhere completely different. Escape, that’s what it said. If your life is getting you down, come and work somewhere completely fresh. New job, new friends, new place to live. And that’s when she met Frank Mordant.

“She didn’t talk much about Frank Mordant. Eventually – after a great deal of persuasion – she told me that one of the conditions of her job was that she didn’t tell anybody how she had got it and where she came from. But … she and I saw each other every day on the bus, and then every evening after work and then we fell in love.

“And one night, in a hotel on the Hog’s Back, in Surrey, after we had made love for the first time, she told me where she came from.”

“Purgatory,” said Josh.

“Well, the Hooded Men want us to believe that it’s Purgatory, to discourage us from trying to visit it, and to give them an excuse for capturing and killing everybody who accidentally makes their way through. It’s a mystical explanation for a place that actually exists. Not in the mind. Not as a myth, or an ancient legend. It’s a parallel world, similar but critically different, that actually exists. As I now believe that heaven does, and hell. They exist. They can be reached. They are other worlds, so close to our own that we can reach out and touch them.”