The Doorkeepers (37 page)

“Hey … there's a way
through
here!” Petty exclaimed. “I didn't see that before!”

“You have to look, that's all.”

“What? Meaning I'm blind, as well as stupid?”

“Meaning you have to
look,
that's all.”

They hurried through the dark, dripping passageway between the buildings. Pigeons fluttered from the windowsills high above their heads. From time to time, Josh glanced back worriedly, but it seemed as if the Hooded Men had chosen not to follow them. Not today, anyhow. But he had no illusions that they wouldn't go on hunting him down until they found him.

“Slow down,” he panted. His teeth were aching so much that he could hardly think, and every wound that had been inflicted by the Holy Harp was prickling with pain. Petty slowed down, and leaned against the wall, trying to catch her breath.

“They're not coming after us, are they?”

Josh shook his head. “Maybe later. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe they're waiting for us in this world.”

They turned the next corner in the passageway. Petty said, in bewilderment, “We're back where we started from.”

“That's right. That's the way the doors work. You're not going from one
place
to another. You're going from one reality into another.”

They stepped out into Star Yard. It was raining hard and
there was almost nobody around. Josh took Petty to the derelict building in which he and Nancy had first escaped from the dog-handlers, and they hid themselves in a corner office, listening all day and all night to the rain beating on the ceiling above their heads, and cascading down the stairs.

Petty fell asleep, her head resting against Josh's shoulder, one clogged-up nostril whistling. Josh was exhausted, reality-lagged, but he still found it almost impossible to sleep. He kept thinking of the Hooded Man's head, when he had torn his hood open. The sight had overwhelmed him. More than that, it had dropped open a trapdoor beneath his feet, so that he could no longer be sure of what was believable and what wasn't. It was just as if his father and mother had suddenly dragged latex masks off their heads when he was thirteen years old, and shown themselves to be two hideous-looking strangers.

Petty stirred and touched his shoulder. “What time is it?” she asked him, without opening her eyes.

“Seven and a half hours to go. Don't worry about it. Go back to sleep.”

An hour later, he heard drums rattling. The Hooded Men, on patrol. They came up Chancery Lane toward Holborn, but they didn't stop. If Josh knew anything about dogs, they wouldn't have stopped to sniff them out, not in this weather. All they wanted was a dry kennel and a bowl of food.

The rain stopped. Josh fell asleep at last, with his head tilted back. He woke up at five o'clock in the morning with a raging sore throat and a crick in his neck.

“Have we got any food?” asked Petty.

Nancy opened her eyes and was aware at once of the utter silence. Complete, flawless silence. She was lying on an iron-framed bed in a hospital room with cream-painted walls and a light green dado. She knew it was a hospital room because it smelled of hospitals: antiseptic and boiled vegetables. The only other furniture was an oak-veneered nightstand with a glass of water on it, an oak-veneered closet, and a green armchair. For some inexplicable reason, she felt that somebody had recently been sitting in the green armchair, watching her.

Her head felt thick, as if she had been drinking too much red wine. She tried to lift her head but she felt swimmy and nauseous, so she lay back on the pillow again. It was a big pillow, with a starched pillowcase, and it reminded her of staying in hospital when she was a child. Homesick, and alone.

She turned toward the window. Outside, she could see the upper branches of some tall elm trees, and some angular rooftops, and chimneys. Even if she had been familiar with London, she wouldn't have been able to tell where she was. The sky was clear blue, with only a few high clouds in it, unraveling themselves in the upper atmosphere like skeins of white cotton. And it was silent. She couldn't even hear any traffic.

She tried to think what had happened to her. The last moment she could remember was Frank Mordant hitting her. After that, all she could recall was a jumble of voices and a kaleidoscope of faces.

An hour went past. The sun moved across the window. Still
there was silence. She tried to keep her eyes open but she couldn't, and she slept. She had a dream that she was walking along a desolate seashore, with the tide gradually coming in. It was foggy, and she knew that it was getting late, and that it was time for her to turn back. But up ahead of her she could see a hooded figure, and felt that she had to catch up with it, and ask it if it could tell her where Josh was. She was deeply afraid of it, this figure, the way it walked through the fog with its robes curling and flapping, but she knew that there was no alternative. She hurried across the hard, ribbed sand, even though the water was already starting to surge across her shoes.

The figure stopped. She slowed down, and cautiously circled around it, until she was facing it.

“I know what you want,” the figure said, in a hollow whisper. “I know what you've
always
wanted.”

It reached inside its robes and drew out a yard-long poker, the tip of which was red-hot and crackling with tiny sparks. “You want the Five Holy Cauterizations, don't you? Eyes, tongue, and ears – the greater to seal your purity.”

She wanted to turn and run, but she couldn't. All she could do was sink slowly to her knees in the chilly seawater as the figure slowly approached her, the poker held aloft. She could actually smell the overheated iron.

“The supplicant always has a choice,” the figure whispered. “You can decide which cauterization you will enjoy first, and which last. You'd be surprised how many leave the tongue till last, so that even when they're deaf and blind, they can still curse the Lord that made them.”

The figure was standing right over her now, its robes stirring in the breeze. The seawater swilled around her knees. She lifted her head and stared defiantly into the blackness of its hood. “You can do whatever you damn well like,” she told it.

“Well, that's jolly generous of you,” said another voice. She opened her eyes. She wasn't on the seashore at all, but lying in her hospital bed. Frank Mordant was standing not far away, his hands in his pockets, beaming. Two other men stood much closer, both of them dressed in starched white collars and
black coats and gray pinstripe pants, like bankers. One of them had wiry gray hair and gold pince-nez that were perched on a bulbous, port-wine-colored nose. The other was young, with a neck like a heron and a dark, downy moustache.

“What am I doing here?” asked Nancy, thick-tongued. She tried to sit up but the older man gently reached out and pushed her back on to the pillow.

“You ought to rest,” he told her, with an avuncular smile. “Conserve your energy.”

“I want to get out of here, that's all. I want to go back to where I came from.”

“You
did
go back to where you came from,” said Frank Mordant, still beaming. “But then you decided to return, didn't you, and make a nuisance of yourself. Your choice, darling. You can hardly put the blame on me. We all have to cover our asses – as you Yanks put it – don't we?”

“So what are you going to do? Are you going to murder me, the way you murdered Julia?” She turned to the two men in black coats. “Did you know that? Did you know that he was a murderer? He admitted it to me. He confessed.”

Frank Mordant stepped forward and laid one hand on each of the men's shoulders. “Perhaps I ought to introduce you, Miss Andersen. This is Mr Brindsley Leggett, senior surgeon here at the Puritan Martyrs Hospital, and this is Mr Andrew Crane, his junior.”

“He confessed to me,” Nancy insisted. “He told me that he's been hanging women and making goddamned videos while they die!”

“Come on, now,” said Mr Leggett. “You've been through a very disturbing experience. I'm not at all surprised that you've been suffering from misapprehensions. My goodness, if it had happened to me …!”

“You're trying to say that I'm sick? If there's anybody who's sick around here, it's Frank Mordant! He's a killer, I tell you! I can prove it!”

“You can prove it, can you? Now, how can you do that?”

“If you let me take him back to where I come from, I have DNA evidence.”

Mr Leggett shook his head. “DNA evidence? What's that, when it's at home?”

“Irrefutable scientific proof that Frank Mordant killed a woman called Julia Winward.”

“And where did you say this evidence was? Do the police have it? Or the Doorkeepers?”

“It's back in the other London. It's back through the door.”

Mr Leggett turned to Frank Mordant and shook his head. “Poor dear. The other London.' What a way to speak of Purgatory.”

“I didn't come from Purgatory, you superstitious asshole!” Nancy shouted at him. “It isn't Purgatory on the other side of those doors! It's another London, that's all – just like this London, only different. It has people and houses and hospitals and cars. It's real – not some goddamned medieval never-never-land!”

Mr Crane looked quite pale. “I've never seen a Purgatorial so … deluded.”

“Well, she's certainly the liveliest we've ever had,” said Mr Leggett. “Mr Mordant usually sends us those who are so close to meeting their Maker as makes no difference; and the Doorkeepers have usually been having a bit of a chat with the others.”

“The Doorkeepers wanted this one kept as she is,” said Frank Mordant. “They have their reasons, apparently.”

Nancy said, “If you're not going to believe me, then I just want out of here.”

“Oh, you can't
go,”
said Mr Leggett, benignly. “We have plans for you, after the Doorkeepers have done whatever they want to do. You want to make a contribution to society, don't you, before you finally make your peace with God?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Nancy demanded.

Mr Leggett laughed. “This is so interesting, isn't it? I wish they could always send me Purgatorials in this condition! From the way she talks, though, I don't know whether she's going up …” he pointed to the ceiling, “or you know where …” and pointed to the floor.

He turned to Frank Mordant and shook his hand. “Very
good to meet you again, Mr Mordant. I particularly enjoyed that brandy you brought me the other day. Where did you say you found it?”

“Oh … just on one of my business trips,” smiled Frank Mordant.

Mr Leggett and Mr Crane left the room. Nancy was left on the bed, frustrated and enraged. Frank Mordant came over and stood beside her, but he wasn't smiling any longer.

“I'll tell you something, darling, you made a serious error coming after me. I've got too many contacts in too many different realities. Too many friends in high and low places.”

“Why won't you let me go?”

“Because you're wanted by the Hoodies, that's why. Do you know what the Hoodies would do to me, if I sprung you from here? I was tempted, I must admit. I think you're a very lovely girl, and I wouldn't like to see anything … you know,
ugly
happen to you. But then you had to blurt it out that you had evidence against me. So you can see that I wasn't quite so tempted after that.”

“You bastard.”

“Sorry, darling. You should have stayed where you were, and forgotten about Julia, and that would have been the end of it. But as it is …”

“What do the Hooded Men want me for?”

“They wouldn't say. But my guess is, they want that boyfriend of yours, and you're the Judas goat. That's why they wanted you alive and well; and that's why they haven't touched you so far – although they probably will.”

“So what are those two going to do to me? Those surgeons?”

“You'll find that out in the morning, so I'm told. But I think you can safely assume that they're going to be carrying out one or two operations on you. Major operations.”

“Operations for what? What the hell are you talking about?”

Frank Mordant leaned over her, so close that she could see the hairs in his nostrils. “You seem to have forgotten that you came from Purgatory. People who come back from Purgatory are dead already. They don't have any rights to their life or
property. That's what the Lord Protector teaches us, anyway. So gentlemen surgeons like Mr Leggett and Mr Crane feel quite unconcerned about cutting them up and taking whatever organs they require.”

“You're crazy, all of you. You're all stone crazy.”

Frank Mordant stood up. “You know that it's tommy-rot.
I
know that it's tommy-rot. But men like Mr Leggett and Mr Crane have been brought up to believe it, as do ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of the rest of the population. You took the chance and came back here, my darling; and now you're going to have to pay the price.”

“You, Frank Mordant – you are the most disgusting piece of slime that ever slid across the earth.”

Frank Mordant's left eye twitched. “It depends on your yardstick, my darling. I do have a heart, you know, whatever you think. I had a dog once. I loved that dog. I really, really loved that dog.”

Nancy had never spat at anybody in her life, but now she did, hitting Frank Mordant on the cheek. The saliva slid down to the corner of his mouth. He stared at her for a moment and she thought that he was going to hit her, but then he took a carefully-pressed handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed at his face.

“Don't you blame me,” he told her. “You're the one who came back.”

Nancy had another night of appalling nightmares. She saw dark crablike shapes leaping and hopping across the ceiling. She heard her grandmother screaming her name. When she woke up, the sun was shining through the window again, and a nurse was setting out her breakfast on a tray. Toast, solidified scrambled eggs, and a grilled tomato. The nurse was young, with a long pale face and freckles, and she stared at Nancy anxiously all the time that she was serving her.