The Doorkeepers Read online

  “Where am I?” he asked, but his voice sounded deep and blurred, as if he were talking inside an empty metallic tank. “N-a-a-a-nnnnc-y-y-y, where ammmm I?”

  He passed a stone pillar with a rampant bronze dragon on top of it. He passed a church. People wove around the sidewalk in front of him as thick as flies. Gray suits, pale faces, blank expressions. He turned a corner and began to walk beside a long iron paling. He reached another corner, and another. The light came and went, came and went. One second it was sunny and the next it was shadowy and cold.

  Now he was making his way up a narrow alley with tall soot-blackened buildings on either side. The sharp shuffling of feet had died away, and all he could hear was his own footsteps echoing, and the distant rumbling of traffic. He didn’t feel frightened. In fact he felt almost elated, as if something exciting was going to happen to him. He wasn’t worried about Nancy any more. He was sure that she could find him. After all, this was probably a dream and he would wake up in a minute and Nancy would be lying right beside him, as still as death.

  He followed the alley until he reached the corner. There was a narrow niche here, cluttered with rubbish and dead leaves. He paused, and peered into it. It was quite deep, as if it had been a space between two buildings, but it was bricked up, leading nowhere. All the same, he stepped into it, and made his way cautiously to the very end, where the leaves and litter were at their deepest. There, on his left, was another niche, just as narrow and just as deep, and equally cluttered with old newspapers and cigarette packets and leaves and broken twigs. That appeared to be a dead end, too, but he turned into it, and trod through the rubbish, until he found another niche, off to his right.

  He looked up. The buildings on either side were very tall, with black-painted drainpipes running all the way down their black scaly brickwork, and window ledges clustered with diseased-looking pigeons. It was curiously silent here. He couldn’t hear the traffic. He couldn’t even hear the pigeons. The sky was gray, completely neutral, so that it was impossible to guess what time of day it was, or even the season. He carried on trudging his way forward, until he reached yet another niche, on his left. This niche wasn’t bricked up. At the far end, he could see people walking backward and forward, and he could hear traffic again.

  He began to make his way out of it, high-stepping over the rubbish. But before he was halfway to the end, a tall dark figure appeared in the entrance to the niche, wearing a long black overcoat and a tall black hat. He stood facing Josh as if he were waiting for him – as if he had known all the time that he was coming. There was no drumroll, but Josh felt as if there ought to have been.

  “Hallo?” called Josh. His voice sounded weak and flat. The figure didn’t answer.

  Josh came closer and closer. He wasn’t sure why, but the figure disturbed him deeply. He was reminded of having to go to his father for a punishment, when he was small. He was reminded of a black robe that used to hang on the back of his door at his grandparents’ house – and which, at night, became a vampire. The inaudible drumroll grew more insistent: maybe it was the blood rushing in his ears.

  As he came nearer, the figure spoke. Its voice sounded like somebody dragging a dead body over a concrete floor. “You came? You don’t know how delighted I am.”

  Josh said, “Yes.” He turned around and looked behind him, wondering if he ought to run back into the niche – right, left, right – and back to where he had come from.

  But he was too close now. In fact he wasn’t even conscious of the last six steps. The figure laid a hand on his shoulder and said, “Welcome to your new job. And welcome to your new life.”

  Josh looked up at him. His face was difficult to see, because the bright gray daylight was behind him. But then he stepped to one side, and Josh saw that over his head he was wearing a rough hessian hood, with torn-out slits for eyes. Over the slits were painted two larger eyes, black and slanted, like the eyes of a demon or a huge predatory insect.

  Josh’s fear was so overwhelming that he felt as if his knees were going to give way.

  “Trust me” said the figure, leaning so close that the brim of its hat almost touched Josh’s forehead, and he could see its real eyes inside its hood, glittering and greedy.

  Ten

  “Trust me,” Ella repeated, and there was a sudden rumble of thunder.

  Josh blinked and stared at her. The three of them were still standing facing each other in her Earl’s Court flat. Outside it was raining hard. The window was open a few inches so that they could smell the ozone, and hear the clattering of water down the drainpipe.

  “That was … unreal,” said Josh. He reached out for Nancy’s hand, and squeezed it. Nancy looked as bewildered as he did.

  “You thought you were somewhere else?” asked Ella.

  “That’s right. I thought I was back at Star Yard. The place where Julia was supposed to meet the man from Wheatstone Electrics.”

  “I was there too,” said Nancy. “It was so clear… I believed I was really there.”

  “Didn’t you see it?” Josh asked Ella.

  “No … I stayed here to make sure that you both came back. You have to be careful, when you start messing around with potions like that.”

  “I went to Star Yard and then I went through a kind of a narrow alleyway and found myself someplace else.”

  “You actually went through the alleyway?” said Nancy. “I didn’t. I just stayed in Star Yard. I guess I was too frightened to go any further.”

  “So what does it all mean?” Josh wanted to know. “I went through the alleyway and met some guy with a hood over his face … just like the Hooded Men in the nursery-rhyme picture.”

  “Do you know what you were seeing?” said Ella. “You had Julia’s ectoplasm flowing through your bloodstream, and what you were seeing was what Julia wanted you to see. She was showing you the way to discover how she died. She was showing you the way through.”

  “So that alleyway in Star Yard … that’s one of the ‘six doors’?”

  “Perhaps. It’s certainly the way through to somewhere.”

  “But we checked it out. It’s nothing but a blank wall.”

  “You need a ritual. You need some way to get through. Jack be nimble. Jack be quick. Perhaps you don’t need to do anything more than light a candle.”

  “Supposing that’s nothing but a children’s song? Suppose that alleyway doesn’t lead to anyplace at all?”

  “Then I don’t know, Josh. I’ve done my best for you. When it comes to the spirit world, there aren’t any tour guides. The Hereafter on Five Dollars a Day. You have to find your own way.”

  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.

  “Hold up a minute! Please!”

  The porter gave him a gilded grin. “It’s all right. This lift takes a very long time coming. I didn’t have a beard when I first pushed the button … That’s a joke,” he added, with the pedantic care of somebody who looks after the elderly.

  “Polly,” said Josh. “The old girl, one hundred and one years old.”

  The porter kept smiling, but his eyes were no longer focused. “I’m sorry.”

  “What do you mean, you’re sorry? Yesterday morning we met outside the X-ray Department. You were pushing this very old woman in a wheelchair. She called out my name, so I stopped you and I talked to her for a couple of minutes. You told me her name was Polly and that she had just celebrated her hundred-and-first birthday.”

  The porter kept on smiling at him blankly.

  “You don’t remember that? That was less than twenty-four hours ago.”

  “We asked you about the Mother Goose rhyme,” put in Nancy. “Six doors they stand in London Town. Don’t you remember that?”

  “I’m sorry, madam. I was born in Punjab. I didn’t speak English until I was seventeen.”

  “That’s what you said yesterday, too.”

  “I don’t think so, sir. You must be making a misidentification.”

  “It was you, God damn it. You were pushing this white-haired old lady called Polly. You told me how she kept on grabbing people.”

  The elevator arrived, and the door opened. A man on crutch
es pushed his way between them. “I’m sorry, sir,” said the porter. “But I am very busy now. So, please.”

  Josh snatched his lapel and pulled him quite violently away from the elevator doors. “You listen to me, my friend. I don’t know why you’re lying to me, but I need to find that old lady and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Either you take me right to her, right now, or else I’m going to drag you around this hospital, ward by ward, until I do.”

  “I’m sorry, I shall have to call security.”

  “Go on then, call security,” Josh challenged him, although he didn’t have the faintest idea of what he would do if he did.

  The porter looked at him for a long time, saying nothing.

  “Well?” Josh demanded.

  “It is the best plan for you, sir, if you leave quietly. There is no woman called Polly.”

  “What are you trying to say to me?”

  “I am saying that there is no woman called Polly. Enough that you know the rhyme. Now, please release me. There could be somebody watching.”

  Josh released his grip on the porter’s lapel and slowly looked around. He didn’t know what he was looking for. Men in hoods? But all he could see was people in plaster and people in wheelchairs and people with an almost comical assortment of exaggerated limps. When he turned back, the porter had gone.

  “Something’s wrong here,” he said, taking hold of Nancy’s hand. “Something’s very, very wrong.”

  “This is beginning to frighten me,” said Nancy, as they left the hospital and walked back across the parking lot. The sun was dazzling and the wind fluttered her scarf. “What happened last night… that was so gross. And now this. That porter was telling us a barefaced lie.”

  Josh unlocked the car. “First I want to go back to the alleyway in Star Yard. We both saw it, didn’t we, and theoretically that’s impossible, two people having the same hallucination. So it must have some kind of significance. If there’s nothing there, then OK. We’ll have to admit that somebody’s playing us for mugs. We’ll tell Detective Sergeant Paul everything that’s happened and leave it to her to go figure. That’s a promise.”