The Lazarus Gate

by Mark Latham

  Ambrose snorted. ‘He certainly acts as if he is. Honestly, you really are green as duckweed at times, old chap.’

  I looked at him expectantly, ignoring the slight.

  ‘That was Lord Cherleten. You’ll never see him unless he wants you to, and he’s rarely about in daylight hours; a regular Varney the bloody vampire. Runs the armoury, and sits at Sir Toby’s right hand in the order—under sufferance, if rumours are to be believed. He’ll be in charge when Sir Toby retires—thinks he’s in charge now, by all accounts.’

  ‘Why would Sir Toby stand for that?’ I asked. The baronet didn’t seem the type to put up with dissent, even from noted peers.

  Ambrose shrugged. ‘Friends in high places, I expect. Word is that he goes shooting with Ponsonby of a weekend—when you’ve got the ear of the Queen’s secretary, you might as well have the ear of the Queen. He’s making a power play all right, and likes to undermine the old man whenever he can.’

  ‘Undermine how?’ I asked. I was annoyed on Sir Toby’s part, though I had never even heard of Lord Cherleten.

  ‘For a start, who do you think invited your friend Denny along tonight? Sir Toby does not share information with the War Office, the Admiralty, or any other agency until he’s certain of his facts—oh, God… speak of the devil…’

  Ambrose took a gulp of sherry, and I looked up to see Jim approaching our table, mercifully without the surly Colonel Stirling at his side.

  ‘I apologise for imposing,’ said Jim, ‘but the Colonel’s been called in with the top brass, and I don’t really know anyone else at the Apollonian.’

  ‘That’s because it’s an exclusive club,’ said Ambrose. ‘Drink?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Jim replied. He looked at Ambrose somewhat warily. ‘So, John, what do you think about Mr. James’ theories? I confess I am in two minds.’

  ‘What does Lord Cherleten think?’ Ambrose interrupted. Jim responded with a glare.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know what the honourable gentleman thinks. I’m here under orders. I thought we all were.’

  ‘But whose orders? That’s the nub, eh.’

  ‘Ambrose,’ I said, ‘the representatives of the War Office are honoured guests. We must extend every courtesy, must we not?’ This drew a shrug from Ambrose, and Jim sat a little more at ease. ‘To answer your question, Jim,’ I said, ‘I think the story is so fantastical that I need to see some real evidence with my own eyes. It is true that Mr. Hanlocke and I have made little sense of the strange things we have found so far, but that does not mean that we have to embrace every theory that comes along, especially ones as improbable as this.’

  ‘You say improbable,’ replied Jim, ‘not impossible? You have an open mind, and if what Mr. James is saying is true, you‘ll need it! And what about you, Mr. Hanlocke—will Mr. James make a believer of you this night?’

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ Ambrose retorted. ‘In fact, the longer we dally here, the more bombs those dynamiters are planting out there, I’ll wager. Real bombs, not figments of an overactive imagination.’

  ‘That’s strange; you don’t strike me as a man of action,’ Jim baited.

  ‘Appearances can be deceptive, as your uniform proves. No, I’m sure our superiors know best, but if I were in charge I’d be dragging every stage magician across the land in for questioning. Mr. Maskelyne has a show on this very week. Disappearing ladies are his specialty, I’m told.’

  It was clear that Jim and Ambrose were not going to get along. But before the irascible Mr. Hanlocke could launch into further wild speculation, Holdsworth appeared, summoning us once more to the boardroom. Relieved that I would not be called upon for further peacemaking, I followed Holdsworth from the room, eager to hear what William James would have to say next.

  * * *

  When we reconvened, the mood between the three senior figures was somewhat changed. Melville sat next to James, both to the right of Sir Toby, and although the tension in the room was palpable, it was equally clear that they had reached an accord. The mysterious Lord Cherleten was nowhere to be seen. Melville, that notoriously tough, inquisitorial Irishman, seemed strangely subdued. Perhaps I had imagined it, but I felt that he gave me the queerest look as I took my seat.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Sir Toby said, ‘I apologise for our short break, but I felt that Mr. James and I had done Mr. Melville a great injustice by not disclosing certain sensitive information to him ahead of time. I have now rectified that mistake, and Mr. Melville has graciously given his agreement for the meeting to proceed.’

  ‘May I then ask, sirs,’ I ventured, ‘whether we are to assume that Mr. James’ earlier assertions are all correct? That we are indeed dealing with some foreign agency from… another universe?’ I could hardly conceal my incredulous tone, but at the same time I was filled with a boyish excitement. Deep down, I was hoping for Sir Toby to answer in the affirmative; I wanted to believe this incredible story, and be a part of it.

  ‘That is correct, Captain Hardwick. Forewarned is forearmed, so to speak, and we must begin the task of gathering intelligence on our infernal counterparts immediately.’

  ‘We keep hearing that word, “infernal”, gentlemen.’ It was Ambrose speaking now, and I feared what he might say after his impromptu sherry. ‘But does anyone really know their motives? If they are from some other universe, then how are we to interpret them as good or evil?’

  ‘How can we judge any man so?’ replied William James. ‘All men are capable of savagery for some cause or another. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.’

  ‘Do you not consider their callous actions a greater indicator of their character?’ I asked. ‘These “soldiers” conduct themselves like villains, killing innocents and destroying swathes of our great city.’

  ‘Unfortunately, Captain, if they truly are soldiers fighting for a cause, then these things are surely considered collateral damage. You have seen a great deal of action abroad, I believe—none of us are so naïve as to think that you have never seen an atrocity or injustice. But all for the greater good, yes?’

  I paled, and held my tongue.

  ‘What Mr. James is trying to say,’ Sir Toby intervened, ‘is that any man—soldier or no—can commit a barbarous act for his cause. However, we know that the cause of our opponents is a grim one, which can only be born of malice.’

  ‘And how could you know that?’ asked Ambrose, forgetting his place.

  ‘Because,’ William James replied, matter-of-factly, ‘I have been to their world, and talked to them myself.’

  * * *

  James had managed to stun the group for a second time that night, and the rest of the meeting continued with him telling his extraordinary tale. Supported by more of his photographic slides, William James explained how he had travelled to Alaska many years ago to view the northern lights, initially to assist in his study of magnetism.

  Living in virtual isolation, James chanced upon a strange, natural phenomenon near his cabin, which he at first had thought to be some ghostly manifestation. He saw in the cold night air a hazy window open up, through which he could see people eating, drinking and talking, as real as though they were standing on the other side of a pane of glass. When it had closed, James resolved to return to the same spot and observe the phenomenon again, which he did the very next night. Sure enough, at the same time almost every night, the window opened and James was able to see into the other world. He described how, as time progressed, the images became clearer, more expansive, until he felt as if he was a part of that world. And then, one day, quite simply, he was.

  ‘To this day I do not know how it happened,’ James said. ‘On the night when the aurora borealis reached their crescendo, I left the small party of locals whom I had befriended and went to my place in the woods. When the window opened, it was not a hazy, clouded image in the air, but rather a portal, surrounded by a corona of golden light. I stepped forward dumbfounded, and as I did so, the people on the other side—the
people I had almost come to know—seemed to look right at me. They saw me. In the next instant I was amongst them, in their world. The gateway closed behind me and there was no way back.

  ‘Gentlemen, can you imagine the horror of that realisation? The utter fear that gripped me was maddening. For aught I knew I had travelled to the spirit world that the new theosophy schools were teaching of. Though the people on the other side tried to calm me, their confusion and excitement only added to my own, and I think I spent days in a kind of fugue state, inconsolable at the thought that I would never see my family, or my own people, again.

  ‘At length the madness passed—although there are some amongst you who would surely disagree. The people on the other side were scientists, sent to study the phenomenon that had been discovered in their world long before I had chanced upon my “window”. Their early attempts to pass objects—and even animals—through the portal had proved disastrous. They believed it to be a window onto another universe, as I now do, but could not traverse it. My arrival had been like a bolt from the blue, and had confounded their greatest hypotheses. And they knew me! In their world, William James is a great scientist, and “his” sudden appearance in their midst was a doubly great shock to them. But, gentlemen, there is a price to pay for dabbling with the laws of nature.

  ‘They told me that there were small portals such as these opening up across the world, and that they were somehow linked to the rise of spiritualism. I could see no connection, but in their world the practice of magic and mysticism is not a supernatural art, but more of a science. They believed that spiritualists and theosophists had somehow roused energies that man was never meant to dabble with, and strange phenomena were occurring all across the globe as a result. They showed me to their lab, where several supposed psychic mediums were wired to incredible electrical machines, being tested for who-knows-what. These psychics appeared fairly well treated, but it was obvious that they were prisoners, and not volunteers. Isolated in the far north, we were apparently beyond the worst of the psychic phenomena, and thus the experiments were comparatively safe to conduct; but the scientists told me that elsewhere, in the cities and towns where human beings dwelt en masse, the very laws of physics were being upset. I began to read their notes, even assisting with their experiments where possible. They said they would help me return home if they could, but our camaraderie and spirit of cooperation was altered soon after, when a telegram arrived from Washington.

  ‘My arrival seemed to have changed everything. For the first time, a human being, with a soul and a conscious mind, had crossed between two universes. All of the terrible things that the Othersiders feared were lurking beyond the veil—and they were not afraid to use the word “demons”, gentlemen—were starting to break through. Scientists across the globe were struggling to prevent an upswell in ghostly manifestations and violent explosions of pure chaos, and it all coincided with the time of my journey through the portal. Some members of their expedition sought to turn me over to the authorities in the United States. They mentioned that I would be taken thence to London for “study”. It seems that on the other side, the reach of the British Empire is long indeed. The greatest nations have come together in the common interest, ruled by a shadowy cabal who use any means to preserve the world as they know it. It is led by an Englishman known only as Lazarus—an enigmatic dictator, it seemed to me, sworn to lead his people to salvation from the growing esoteric threat. The scientists explained to me that the people needed to believe that God is on their side, and judging by how much this Lazarus fellow is both feared and respected, I’d say he likes to play God more than a little.

  ‘Thankfully, there were others who spoke for me, and determined that they could set things right, if only they could find a way to send me back rather than turn me over to Lazarus. In the end, it was this latter group who won out, and for that I am thankful.

  ‘They subjected me to some unpleasant study, which I will not delve into. Some of it was of the type that our best scientists would mock, but in their world, with their incredible scientific apparatus, they were able to achieve astounding results. They used magnetism—the very thing that I was studying as a philosophical pursuit—as a genuine science and found some method to use my own innate biological energy to create a limited portal. They were incredibly excited by the breakthrough, as I am sure you can imagine. A life’s work, come to fruition in a few days—they believed they could now create a device that could, by using vibrations, magnetism and high-frequency sound, pull a person or object back through the veil and into their own world. They would not use it upon me, however, for they did not think it possible for a being to survive the process. This device is, I believe, what the Otherside agents now use to retrieve their dead.’

  James paused to take a sip of water, and I took the opportunity to ask a question.

  ‘If I may ask, Mr. James, if you did not return by those means, then how did you find your way back home?’

  ‘The same way I got there,’ he said. ‘They used their new discoveries to make a good many adjustments to their old equipment. They had been monitoring the window for a decade or more, to no avail, and I had provided them with a test subject for experimentation. Through the use of some marvellous sonic and electrical equipment, and the concentration of the psychic subjects’ powers, they were able to harness the rift between worlds, to create a portal big enough for me to pass through. Whereas previously they had been unable to create a stable portal in thin air, we had hit upon the theory of gateways to contain the energy of their strange devices, focusing the power from their machines as a glass may transform the diffuse light of the sun into a tiny point of heat. The psychics conducted some form of meditative séance, entering a trance-like state while wires conducted electrical impulses from their brains. As the portal opened, the demons that the Othersiders spoke of were clearly visible to me, probing for ingress into the real world—as real as their world is to us, at least. When I stepped into the portal I had no idea what would happen. Even the scientists themselves were not certain—they knew that our two universes were linked somehow, but if there were other universes out there, which one could slip into accidentally… well, if that had happened, I would not be standing before you now. Remember also that the apparatus we used was experimental. They believed they could only open the gateway for a few seconds at most, and warned me not to stop moving until I was back in my own world—and under no circumstances to turn back and attempt to cross through or even touch the portal. I cannot explain what I saw as I crossed over; it was like an hallucinatory dream, but when I finally re-emerged into the Alaskan winter, I saw the portal fizzing and glowing behind me for mere seconds before vanishing. It worked, of course, and here I am.’

  ‘And this… portal? Can it be reopened? Can they still use it?’ The question came from Melville.

  ‘The natural portal that I used to cross over in the first place is now closed—I could not find it again upon my return, and many others have tried and failed to do so. There is a detail of soldiers posted to the very site of that phenomenon, standing watch in case it reappears, and anyone—or anything—should pass through it. The Otherside scientists said something about the amount of power required to maintain a portal for any length of time being almost impossible to generate. Before I left, the scientist in charge, a certain Dr. Leiber, told me that it would be theoretically possible to create larger portals for longer periods of time, but that even these would be limited in their application. Most notably, as I have described, a body could perhaps only travel in one direction, and never back and forth as one might wish.’

  ‘Convenient,’ sniped Colonel Stirling, barely loud enough for us to hear.

  ‘Mr. James, you mentioned earlier that the Othersiders were here on some dark business, and mean us ill. Yet the men you describe sound rather beneficent. Perhaps you can explain?’ This was Sir Toby, asking a question to which he evidently knew the answer already.

  ‘Certainly, Sir Toby, althoug
h what I know has been pieced together from various intelligence, and owes much to my own speculation. I believe that the other world is in dire peril, from the predations of supernatural entities. I was told as much, and saw evidence for it with my own eyes. I fear that my crossing over may have accelerated the process. Their agents are finding ways in and out of our world, and whilst here they are assassinating psychics and mediums, and doing Lord knows what else. And it can only be for one purpose, gentlemen. They have decided to abandon their world, and take ours for their own.’

  This caused much disquiet amongst the party once more.

  ‘But why kill these “psychics”?’ asked Jim, speaking up for the first time. ‘Do they fear them for the harm they did to their own world?’

  ‘Perhaps. I have oft wondered if the Othersiders wish to eliminate all such folk from our side, so that there is no similar threat to them if their plan to take over our world succeeds. The death toll so far would certainly suggest so. Captain Hardwick and Mr. Hanlocke can attest to the fate of one unfortunate Mr. Jeffers, a noted medium of the East End. Perhaps the Othersiders fear that our psychics could be used as weapons against them. As Sir Arthur intimated earlier, psychic abilities come in rather handy for detecting them portals between worlds, or at least for identifying potential sites for infiltration and escape. I am certain they are also used for creating them, at no small human cost. I believe that by eliminating psychics—and by that I mean any spiritualist, clairvoyant, gypsy fortune-teller or ceremonial magician who displays inexplicable mastery of their art—the Othersiders are removing opposition to their plans.’

  ‘So when their plan is complete, will they turn on their own psychics to avoid a repeat of all this chaos?’ asked Jim.

  ‘Perhaps not. What they gleaned from me during my short stay is that no violent supernatural phenomena had occurred in our world, even though spiritualism had been on the rise for the same length of time. Their dabbling in the supernatural has had quite terrifying consequences, whereas ours has not. Perhaps our two worlds operate under different scientific laws or, simply, maybe their world lies in closer proximity to some incorporeal realm than ours.’