The Gates

by John Connolly

  “At precisely seven thirty P.M. on October twenty-eighth,” said Professor Stefan. “The collider was shut down shortly afterward.”

  Samuel paused, a spoonful of cornflakes suspended between the bowl and his mouth. Seven thirty P.M. on October 28. At seven thirty P.M. on October 28 Samuel and Boswell had been sitting on the Abernathys’ wall when they’d heard the bang from the Abernathys’ basement, when they’d seen the blue light and smelled that nasty smell. It might be a coincidence, of course, but for the first time Samuel sensed that there could be someone out there who might be prepared to listen to him.

  Samuel sat before his computer and examined the website for CERN. He couldn’t find a telephone number, but there was a section entitled “Ask an Expert.” Samuel didn’t know how long an expert might take to answer his question, or even if what he had to say counted as a question at all. He thought hard, then composed his message to CERN:

  Dear CERN,

  My name is Samuel Johnson, and I am eleven years old. I have reason to believe that I may have found your missing energy particle, or know where it ended up. I think it is in the basement of number 666, Crowley Road, in the town of Biddlecombe, England. It is owned by a couple named the Abernathys. It is very blue, and smells of rotten eggs. The energy, that is, not Biddlecombe. It materialized there at precisely seven thirty P.M. on October 28. I enclose a drawing of what I saw in the basement, scanned into the computer for your information.

  Yours sincerely,

  Samuel Johnson

  P.S. I believe Mr. and Mrs. Abernathy have become possessed by demons, and may be using the energy to open the gates of Hell.

  When he was finished, Samuel checked his spelling and went over the letter once again to make sure that he had included all the important details. He had considered leaving out the bit about Hell, but thought it might add a sense of urgency to his message. After all, he didn’t know how many people wrote to “Ask an Expert” every day, or if there was just one expert answering the questions or a whole team. In any case, he thought it was important to attract CERN’s attention and, if nothing else, the mention of demons and Hell was likely to make his message stand out.

  He pressed Send, and his missive shot off into cyberspace. He considered staying at his computer and waiting for a reply, but he suspected that, even if someone read his message promptly, a certain amount of discussion would still be required before it was answered.

  Samuel was not about to sit around doing nothing. It was Halloween, and he had heard Mrs. Abernathy say that she and her fellow demons had four days to prepare the way. Samuel didn’t know precisely what “preparing the way” meant, but by any calculation four days from October 28 led to November 1. He had a terrible feeling that, at some time the next day, the gates of Hell would begin to open.

  So Samuel went to the telephone and began making some calls.

  It would not be true to say that Samuel was unpopular at school. There were some boys and girls in his class who looked at him a little oddly, especially when he began talking about angels and pins, but for the most part he got on pretty well with nearly everyone. He was also very happy to spend time by himself, though, and after sharing the same small schoolroom with a bunch of kids his own age for two months, he had been rather enjoying being alone during midterm. His closest friends were Tom Hobbes and Maria Mayer. Tom’s father delivered milk for the local dairy, where his mum also worked, and Maria’s dad worked for the telephone company. Samuel, Tom, and Maria had planned to go trick or treating that evening, and Tom and Maria had been a little surprised to hear from Samuel so early in the day.

  When Samuel said he had something important to tell them, they were both intrigued. They agreed to meet outside the pie shop in the town center, and Samuel, with Boswell in tow, was already waiting for Tom and Maria when they arrived together shortly after one P.M. The pie shop was called Pete’s Pies, even though Pete had died many years before and his son Nigel now made all of the pies, but Nigel’s Pies didn’t sound right and, anyway, everyone would have just kept calling it Pete’s Pies even if Nigel had changed the name. People in small towns are funny that way.

  There were always tables and chairs outside Pete’s Pies, even in winter, which made it a popular place for people to meet. Pete, and then Nigel, never objected to people taking a seat there. Even if they didn’t come along with the intention of buying a pie, the smell from the pie shop would cause their mouths to water and, usually in less than a minute, they would be inside buying a pie “for later.” About one minute after that they would be eating the pie and considering having another, maybe the apple-and-raspberry, for dessert.

  It was one of these same apple-and-raspberry pies that Samuel was eating when Tom and Maria strolled up to his table. Tom was taller than Samuel by a couple of inches, and never really seemed to have bad days. He was always in good spirits, except when the school cricket team, of which he was one of the star batsmen, lost. Tom didn’t mind losing at most things, but he drew the line at cricket. Tom and Samuel only ever argued on the cricket pitch. Samuel was a good bowler, with a strong right arm, but his eyesight was poor, and he had trouble catching balls when fielding. This meant that he was both an asset and a liability on the cricket pitch, and more than one match had ended with him and Tom shouting at each other at the tops of their voices. Still, they remained friends, and Tom was secretly a little in awe of Samuel, whose mind worked in ways that Tom admired, even if he did not understand.

  Maria, meanwhile, was smaller than both of them, and had very long hair that she tied in a ponytail each day with one of a selection of bows. She sometimes seemed shy and quiet to those who didn’t know her well, but Samuel knew she was very clever and very funny. She just didn’t like showing off. Maria wanted to be a scientist when she grew up, and was the only person Samuel and Tom knew who did homework for pleasure.

  Boswell wagged his tail in greeting at the two new arrivals, then returned his attention to the pie on the table. He knew that Samuel would share some with him eventually. Samuel shared nearly all of his food with Boswell, except chocolate, because that wasn’t good for Boswell and gave him wind, and Boswell could be a smelly dog if he was fed the wrong things.

  “All right, then,” said Tom, once he and Maria had bought pies of their own and settled down on their seats. “What’s the big mystery?”

  Boswell finished the piece of pie that Samuel had fed to him, licked up the last of the crumbs, and began drooling over Tom’s shoe instead. Tom decided to give him some pie to distract him before Boswell’s spit started to soak through to his socks.

  “Well, it’s like this,” said Samuel. “You’re probably going to have trouble believing me, and I’m not sure how I’m going to prove that what I have to say is true. All I’m asking is that you listen to me, because I really need your help.”

  He was so serious that Tom stopped eating for a moment and Tom, like Boswell, didn’t like to stop eating without a good reason.

  “Wow, that sounds serious,” he said. “Off you go, then. I’m listening.”

  He looked at Maria, who nodded. “We both are.”

  So Samuel told them everything, right up to the point at which he’d sent off his message to CERN. When he was finished, nobody spoke for a time, then Tom said:

  “You’re barmy.”

  “Tom!” Maria scolded him.

  “No, really. You’re trying to tell us that this Mrs. Abernathy isn’t really Mrs. Abernathy but a thing with tentacles, and that in her basement is a blue hole that somehow is a tunnel to Hell, and tomorrow some gates are going to open in that tunnel and—what? Demons are going to come out?”

  “Something like that,” said Samuel calmly.

  “You are barmy,” repeated Tom.

  Samuel turned to Maria. “And you?” he asked her. “What do you think?”

  “It is a little hard to believe,” said Maria gently.

  “I’m not lying,” said Samuel. He looked at them both, his face serious. “
On my life, I promise you I’m not lying. And—”

  He paused.

  “What?” said Maria.

  “I’m scared,” said Samuel. “I’m really scared.”

  And they both believed him when he said it.

  “Well,” said Tom. “There’s only one thing for it.”

  “What’s that?” asked Maria, but she already knew the answer.

  Tom grinned.

  “We’ll just have to take a look at the Abernathys’ house.”

  • • •

  Meanwhile, at CERN, the technician who had been monitoring the “Ask an Expert” section of the website approached Professor Hilbert holding a printed message at the bottom of which was a drawing of a blue spiral.

  “Professor,” he said, nervously, “this may be nothing, but …”

  XVI

  In Which We Visit the Abernathy House, and Decide That We Wouldn’t Want to Live There

  IT WAS DETERMINED THAT they should leave the visit to the Abernathys’ house until the light had begun to fade, so Samuel and Maria spent the early part of the afternoon helping Tom to practice his batting. When it began to grow dark, they paid a brief visit to Samuel’s house to check his e-mail, but there was no reply to his message from CERN.

  “Maybe they’re very busy,” said Tom, “what with their big collider thing being broken.”

  “It’s not broken,” said Samuel. “Well, not exactly. They’ve shut it down while they investigate the energy leak.”

  “The one that you say has turned up in the Abernathys’ basement,” said Tom. “That’s a long way from Switzerland. They’re not Swiss, are they?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Mr. Abernathy didn’t sound Swiss when I spoke to him. Mrs. Abernathy just smells funny.” Then again, Samuel had never, to his knowledge, spoken to a Swiss person. He just suspected that Swiss people didn’t sound like Mr. Abernathy, who spoke with a gruff northern accent, or Mrs. Abernathy, who seemed quite posh.

  Maria looked out of Samuel’s bedroom window. “It’s getting dark now,” she said. “Are you sure we should be doing this? It doesn’t seem right, creeping around somebody’s garden in the dark. I mean, what is it that you hope we’ll see?”

  Samuel shrugged. “Just … something. Something that will make you believe me.”

  “And if we do believe you?” asked Maria. “What then?”

  “Well, you’ll know I’m not mad,” said Samuel. “Or a liar.”

  Maria smiled fondly. “I know you’d never lie to us, Samuel,” she said.

  “Although you might still be mad,” added Tom, but he too was smiling. “Well, come on, then. I have to get home for tea or I’ll catch hell from my mum.” He realized what he had just said. “Catch hell? Get it? See, I’m funny even when I’m not trying to be.”

  Maria and Samuel rolled their eyes.

  “Oh, please yourselves,” said Tom. “Some people have no sense of humor …”

  The Abernathys’ house appeared to be empty when they reached it, Boswell somewhat reluctantly in tow.

  “Doesn’t seem like there’s anybody home,” said Tom.

  “It looks creepy,” said Maria. “I know it’s just a normal house, but maybe it’s because of what you’ve told us about the people who live there …”

  “No,” said Tom, his tone subdued. “You’re right. I can sense it. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up. There’s something wrong here.”

  “Boswell senses it too,” said Samuel, and, indeed, Boswell was whimpering. The dog planted his small bottom firmly on the ground outside the garden gate, as if to say, “Right, this is as far as I go. If you want me to go any farther, you’ll have to drag me.”

  Samuel tied Boswell’s leash to the garden gate. “We’d best leave him here,” he said.

  “Can I stay with him?” asked Tom, only half joking.

  “Come on, silly,” said Maria, taking Tom by the arm and pulling him into the garden, Samuel close behind them.

  “Weren’t you scared just a minute ago?” whispered Tom.

  “I’m still scared,” said Maria, “but this is interesting.”

  The expression on Maria’s face had changed. She looked excited. Mr. Hume had once said that she had the perfect brain for a scientist. She was both curious and careful, and once she got the scent of something that intrigued her, she would pursue it right to the end.

  Samuel led them to the basement window. A bare bulb glowed orange in the ceiling, casting a dim light on the room. They crouched down and peered inside, but apart from the usual junk that accumulated in people’s basements, there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen.

  “That’s where it happened,” said Samuel. “The blue circle, the big clawed hand, all of it.”

  “Well, it’s quiet now,” said Tom. “Mind you, it smells disgusting here.”

  He was right. A stink of rotten eggs hung around the basement and the area of the garden nearest it. A concentrated breeze was blowing, carrying the stink on it, as though a hole had been bored in a wall behind which a great wind was blowing.

  “Do you feel that?” said Maria. She raised her hand so that it was very close to the glass. The two boys did likewise.

  “It feels like static electricity,” said Tom. He moved his hand farther forward, as though to touch the glass, but Maria reached out to stop him.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “It’s just static,” said Tom.

  “No,” said Maria, “it’s not.”

  She pointed at the frame of the window. There, barely visible to the naked eye, was the faintest blue glow.

  Maria moved on, following the wall of the house.

  “Where’s she off to?” said Tom.

  Samuel didn’t know, but he decided to follow Maria nonetheless. Tom, not wanting to be left alone, was soon trotting along behind.

  The Abernathys’ house stood in the center of a large garden, so that there was nothing to stop someone walking from the front of the house to the back. Maria was pointing at the windows as she went.

  “There!” she said softly. “And there!”

  If they concentrated hard, each time they looked they saw that faint blue glow around the window frames.

  “I think it might be a kind of alarm,” said Maria. “They’ve secured the place, somehow.”

  By this time they had reached the back of the house. To the left of the back door was a kitchen, which was empty. To the right was a living room, with a TV, some couches, and a pair of armchairs. A lamp was lit in the room, casting a square of light upon the lawn.

  Together, the three children made their way to the window and peered inside.

  Boswell was very unhappy at having his leash tied to a garden gate. Like most dogs, he didn’t like being tied to anything. If you were tied to something, it was hard to fight if a bigger dog came along, and impossible to run away if fighting wasn’t an option. Boswell was not much of a fighter. To be honest, he wasn’t even very good at running away, given his short legs and long body.

  But if there was anything worse than having his leash tied to a garden gate, it was having it tied to this particular one. The big house smelled wrong to Boswell. It wasn’t just the stink that the children had also picked up. No, Boswell’s sense of smell was far more sensitive than that of any human. He had twenty-five times more smell receptors than a person, and he could sense odors at concentrations one hundred million times lower than a human could. As he sniffed the air around the big house, drawing it deep down to the receptors at the back of his snout, he picked up hints of tainted meat, of disease, of dead things that shouldn’t be touched, or tasted, or even sniffed for very long for fear of being sick. Lurking behind them all was one smell in particular, one that every animal hated and feared.

  It was the smell of burning.

  Suddenly Boswell stood up. He had heard something, the sound of footsteps approaching. One of the bad smells started to grow stronger, although it was mix
ed up with another that wasn’t quite so bad, as though the not-so-bad smell was being used to hide the really bad one. The not-so-bad smell was familiar to Boswell, although that didn’t mean he liked it. It was too strong and sweet and sickly. It reminded him of the scent that sometimes came from Mrs. Johnson, the scent that emerged from some of the little bottles she kept in her bedroom. It smelled of too many flowers.

  Even with his poor eyesight Boswell was able to identify the woman as soon as she turned the corner. He had already built up a picture of her using his nose, and now his worst fears were confirmed.

  It was the nasty lady, the one who had brought the Darkness.

  Boswell began to whine.

  There were three people, two men and a woman, sitting in the living room, the walls of which were covered with a strange orange mold that was spreading from the carpet and extending toward the ceiling. The mold covered the chairs on which the three people were sitting, as though they were rotting and their decay was slowly infecting the room. They were not moving, or speaking, but they all had strange, fixed smiles on their faces, like people who had seen something that only someone with a very strange sense of humor would think was funny. Samuel recognized the men as Mr. Abernathy and his friend Mr. Renfield. The woman was Mrs. Renfield.

  They had changed since last he had seen them. They appeared fatter; bloated, as if by a great internal swelling. He could see Mr. Abernathy the most clearly. Mr. Abernathy’s skin was a gray-green color, and there were blisters on it. He looked so sick that Samuel wondered if Mr. Abernathy might actually be worse than sick. Despite the time of year, the room was filled with flies, and Samuel knew immediately that the people in the room stank badly. Samuel thought he saw a fly land on one of Mr. Abernathy’s eyeballs and crawl across it, a black speck against the milky white of the eye. Mr. Abernathy didn’t even blink.

  It was Tom who voiced what Samuel had been thinking.

  “Are they … dead?” he asked.

  As he spoke, the fly buzzed away from Mr. Abernathy’s eyeball. At the same instant a long tongue unrolled from Mr. Abernathy’s mouth, like a party favor. It was pink, and covered with little spines that looked sharp and sticky. It plucked the fly from midair, then rolled back into Mr. Abernathy’s mouth. He chewed on the fly for a moment before swallowing it down.