The Gatekeeper Trilogy, Book One - OUT of the MADHOUSE

by Christopher Golden

  “Must be a boy Tatzelwurm.”

  The thing started for them, and Cordelia shrieked. Xander jabbed the air with the stake in his hand, and the Tatzelwurm stopped once more. Steam began to rise beneath it as the floor bubbled with heat.

  “Would you just keep your eyes on that thing!” Cordelia snapped.

  Xander nodded. “Got it.” He rubbed his eyes. “Smoke’s getting to me.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  Her face felt like it was cracking, it was so hot. The smoke stung her eyes and tears ran down her cheeks. She wished Buffy would come back. With Giles. She wished the house would do something weird again so they would end up in a different room.

  The worm rose up on its hind legs, twining around itself like a snake.

  “It’s going to jump!” she cried.

  “Get back!” Xander shouted.

  It struck then, propelling itself into the air. Cordelia scrambled backward, but she knew it was too late. The arc of the thing’s attack would bring it down on top of her. Flames flickered to either side. As the smoldering belly of the Tatzelwurm came down toward her face, Cordelia realized she had nowhere to run

  “Cordy!”

  Xander was there, stake in his hand, his arm wrapped around her. He held the stake up, elbow locked, and Cordelia knew in that instant that even if Xander impaled the thing, the molten heat from its body would kill him.

  She smelled the Tatzelwurm’s awful stench; felt the heat of its body as it plummeted toward them.

  There was an explosion.

  They stood pressed together in a tiny, airless room. The walls were covered with yellowed paper, an ancient floral pattern. In the corner was an old, rickety wooden wheelchair. A waltz played very faintly.

  “Well, that was very nearly a disgusting way to die,” Cordelia said, wrinkling her nose in revulsion.

  Xander glared at her. “I’m sure I can come up with something more pleasant for you, Cor.”

  Cordelia huffed at him, as usual.

  The wheelchair began to move.

  At the airport, with the afternoon sun glaring through the windows, they faced each other. Oz said, “Hey, I’ll be back soon.”

  Near tears, Willow tried to smile bravely, but she could only muster a sniffle. It seemed to her that no one who went to Boston was coming back.

  “Take care,” she pleaded. “Please call us.”

  Oz pulled her into his arms and kissed her. He held her for a long moment against his chest. She could hear his heart beating. She could feel the pulse in his neck.

  “I’m sorry,” he began, then shrugged. “You know.”

  “You don’t ever have to apologize for who you are.” She touched his hair. Tears spilled down her cheeks.

  Then somehow he was gone, hurrying down toward a gate to catch the last plane to Boston. After the plane took off, Willow sat and waited several minutes until Buffy’s mom hurried up.

  “I can’t believe it took that long to find a space.” She smiled faintly. “Did Oz get off all right?”

  Willow nodded. “We just made it in time. Thanks so much for driving us. Oz wanted to leave his van at Angel’s, in case Angel needed it.”

  “Happy to do it,” Mrs. Summers replied.

  “That’s so . . .” And then the reality of what was happening hit her: she’d been out all night, she hadn’t recast her binding spells, and her parents had probably already called the police, despite Buffy’s mom covering for her.

  She must have looked upset, for Mrs. Summers murmured, “Oh, Willow,” and pulled her into her arms. Willow couldn’t help it, she burst into tears and let Joyce Summers rock her for a few comforting minutes.

  “I’ll drive you home now,” she said.

  In the car, Joyce suggested a wonderful, terrible lie to cover up for Willow’s frequent absences: a friend of hers had run away from home, was living on the streets, and Willow was trying to urge her to go to the runaway shelter run by Connie DeMarco.

  “It’s the thoughtful kind of thing you’d really do,” Buffy’s mom said, smiling gently at her. “Your parents won’t really be surprised.”

  Willow shifted uncomfortably. They came to a red light and she automatically looked out the window, looking for more men in long coats. They had a name now. The Sons of Entropy. Somehow that made them more terrible.

  “Well, it’s not something I’m really doing,” she said. “But I can’t tell them that. Any more than I can tell them that Oz is . . .” she trailed off. Had Buffy told her mother about Oz? “That he’s a really good guitarist.”

  Mrs. Summers shook her head. “You kids definitely have it tougher than I did.” She laughed shortly, derisively. “But then how did I know I was going to give birth to a vampire slayer? When you’re a little girl, you think you’re going to be a ballerina or a cheerleader. I guess.”

  She glanced at Willow. “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

  “Marie Curie, discoverer of radium,” Willow said dreamily.

  Buffy’s mom chuckled and shook her head. “Well, I certainly didn’t. And Buffy . . .” She sighed. “Well, who knows what Buffy really wanted to be.”

  The light turned green. “Don’t be too hard on your parents, Willow. They’re just kids who grew up. You’re a version of the dreams they had.”

  Willow was taken aback. “I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

  “You’re their chance to get it right.” She made a face. “A weighty responsibility, I know. And unfair.”

  Willow shrugged. “I guess we have expectations of our parents, too.”

  Joyce nodded. “To always be right, and strong, and fair, and there. I’m afraid I haven’t been there for Buffy much.” She lowered her voice. “Angel told me to get out of Sunnydale. He said things might get worse before they get better. Do you agree?”

  “Maybe,” Willow ventured. “Are you . . . are you going to leave?”

  She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “How can I? I need to be where Buffy is. Or can find me. When she comes back.” She glanced from the road to Willow, and a single tear coursed down her face. “You do think she’s coming back, don’t you?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Willow assured her.

  There was a moment of silence between them.

  “Hey, maybe I can do some of your research for you.” Joyce moved her shoulders shyly. “I’ve taken some classes about the Internet. I’m sure there’s something I can do to help.”

  “Oh, thank you so much,” Willow said, as they pulled up to her house. “About the runaway thing. Do you think they’ll believe me? I really hate lying to them.”

  Joyce smoothed Willow’s hair away from her temple. “Sometimes the truth is so much harder to bear,” she said softly. “If you think it’ll help, I’ll come in with you and talk to your parents.”

  “Oh, I . . .” Willow nodded gratefully. “I think it’ll help. A little.”

  But the nice thing was, it helped a lot.

  Joyce was feeling low by the time she got back to her house. Things were not good in Sunnydale. Her daughter was obviously in great danger. Willow was under a terrible strain. Even Angel was showing signs of extreme stress.

  She hated this whole Slaying thing. If only there was some way Buffy could quit.

  She remembered one night when Buffy was a baby. She and Hank had had a terrible fight—nothing new there. She was exhausted, and depressed, and had just managed to fall asleep when Buffy had woken up, squalling. Demanding to be fed.

  Joyce had dragged herself out of bed and stumbled down the hall. As she pushed open the door to Buffy’s room, she’d muttered, “I quit.”

  And then she had seen her perfect little baby, her daughter, and even though tears of exhaustion and anger were rolling down her cheeks, she smiled. Her heart filled with more love than she thought it was possible to feel. She would do anything for this baby.

  She would kill for this baby.

  Being a parent was like that.

  Being t
he mother of the Slayer was like that.

  “GILES!”

  Buffy had called her Watcher’s name over and over, to no avail. She’d tried to follow him, but the malleable house had thwarted her time and again. She had been dumped unceremoniously at the top of a long flight of carpeted stairs. When she looked around, it became clear that she had fallen from nowhere, from some nebulous pocket of chaos in the house.

  The house had calmed some. She could no longer hear it screaming, but she was certain that what she did hear, a kind of whispering or hissing, was the sound of the thing breathing. As though it needed time to recover, or to gather its strength for another attack.

  Yet, for whatever reason, the floor and walls seemed solid enough. The wooden planks of the ceiling were nothing more than that, now. Out the window at the far end of the hallway, Buffy could see that night had fallen, and she only hoped that whatever chaos was happening in here, it wasn’t yet affecting the outside world.

  “Giles!” she cried again.

  There was no way for her to tell what floor she was on. From the top of the stairwell, she’d seen nothing more than a landing and a turn down some more stairs. The corridor was beautiful, if antiquated. Each room had an oak door, and Buffy studied the incredible woodwork as she walked along.

  The doors were all closed.

  “Xander! Cordelia!”

  There was an echo, then, but it wasn’t her voice. Instead, it was a kind of singsongy, mimicking voice that she could barely make out. There was no way to tell where it came from, either.

  Buffy froze. She slid down to sit cross-legged on the floor and buried her face in her hands.

  “God, I want to go home,” she whispered to herself.

  For several moments, she sat there, hoping against hope that something would happen. That Giles or Xander or even Cordelia would suddenly appear, maybe fall right through the ceiling and slam to the carpet next to her.

  No such luck.

  With a sigh and a grunt as she stretched the shoulder she’d bruised when she fell out of the air, Buffy rose and started down the corridor again, calling her Watcher’s name. It was too quiet. Buffy could not believe that this was the same house as the thing that had come alive around them, sweeping them into a maelstrom of chaos and insanity. It seemed too . . . too real.

  “Giles!”

  Buffy paused. The hall was longer than she’d originally thought. Maybe my depth perception is whacked, she thought. That fall may have given me a concussion. She looked back the way she’d come, and the feeling grew even stronger. This was a big house. But she’d seen it from the outside.

  There was no way a straight corridor in this house could be this long, or have anywhere near this many rooms. It was impossible . . . but everything in this house was impossible. Magic made it real. So, somehow, she reasoned, the house was much larger inside than it was outside.

  Which was just great, seeing as how it made it even less likely that she’d be able to find any of her friends in the madhouse.

  “The hell with it,” she snapped, and reached for the nearest doorknob. Buffy had been a bit anxious about opening any of the doors, what with the freakiness of the whole house, but at this point she didn’t think she had much to lose.

  She turned the knob and pushed the door open.

  Wind swept her face. A hard breeze filled with grit and heat, the baking dust of the west. From inside the room, the sun blazed down.

  It wasn’t a room.

  Buffy felt her stomach churn, and her equilibrium was totally shot. She swayed on her feet and nearly pitched forward into the room . . . onto the hard-packed earth and scrub in front of her. The western plains stretched out for miles in the distance. Buffy squinted against the sun, felt her skin prickling with its merciless heat, and then closed her eyes, feeling the solid oak of the door frame under her fingers.

  Somewhere close by came a rumble like distant thunder, but growing nearer. Buffy bit her lip and forced herself to open her eyes.

  The dusty plains were still there. It took every ounce of her self-control to hold onto the door frame and poke her head through, into that other place. She glanced left, glanced right, and realized that the doorway she stood inside was just a hole in the world. Some kind of tear in the fabric of reality itself.

  The rumbling grew louder, and Buffy looked off into the distance. A dust storm was rising, but something moved within it. The ground shook. The door frame trembled under her fingers. She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out what was in the huge cloud of dust, even as the sound began to separate itself out. It wasn’t one sound, but many. Thousands.

  It was a stampede.

  Buffy watched with fascination as the herd approached, trying to make them out. Dark, hugely lumbering shapes moving at a pace far too fast for their size. Then she saw it—what the cloud had become. For it did have a shape, almost as though it had become a spirit, floating above the plains. The dust kicked up by those thousands of hooves had coalesced and formed itself into the huge spectral head of a buffalo.

  Buffalo, she thought. But most of the buffalo were dead.

  The stampede drew closer, impossibly fast. She could make them out now. And then Buffy knew, just looking at them. Bloody and rotted.

  These buffalo were dead as well.

  “Oh, my . . .” Buffy began to say.

  A firm hand clamped on her shoulder, yanked her back, and shoved her to the ground. Buffy scrambled to her feet, spun to face her attacker, ready to take his head off with a roundhouse kick.

  “That will be quite enough of that, I think,” Giles said calmly, and reached into the other world, grabbed the knob, and pulled the door shut. The stampede’s hoofbeats echoed for a few seconds before dissipating completely.

  “Giles,” Buffy said in relief.

  Then she ran to him and threw her arms around him.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” she said, her voice fraught with emotion.

  “Yes, so did I, for a few moments,” Giles agreed. “I heard that awful noise and came running up the stairs, and there you were. The house seems to have settled on a shape, at least for the moment, hmm?”

  Buffy sighed, let him go, and looked at him purposefully. “Great. Now what? What the hell is this place? You told us that the Gatekeeper’s responsibility was to close breaches into this limbo realm where all the weird phenomena stay separated from us.”

  “And apparently, those things were kept here,” Giles said idly, glancing about. Then he nodded toward the door he’d just closed. “That stampede, for instance. The unpublished journals of your Buffalo Bill Cody discuss visions he had as an elderly man. Those visions concerned herds of dead buffalo, whose spirits would not rest until the plains were wild again. Their species was decimated in the latter part of the nineteenth century, where once they were as common as deer.”

  “So they were more than visions?” Buffy wondered.

  “Apparently. And apparently, the Gatekeeper does more than close those breaches, he . . . collects them, for lack of a better word. I’d suggest we don’t open any more doors without being a bit better prepared.”

  Buffy stared at the door, then at Giles. “Good idea.”

  At the end of the corridor, something caught her eye, a flicker of light that didn’t belong. Buffy looked past Giles and froze, her mouth open in a tiny, startled O. The window was gone. The night sky beyond it had been replaced by a swirling maelstrom of gray and flickering silver, weird blue and purple hues. The whirlpool expanded quickly, stretching from floor to ceiling and all the way across the corridor.

  “Giles,” Buffy whispered.

  But he had already turned, alerted by her expression. Together they stared at the pool. Then, without warning, a dark figure stepped through it as though emerging from behind a waterfall. Silver strands of crackling magick swept off the figure like beaded curtains.

  Its body was white oilskin. Its fangs glistened with the dim light of the hallway. Its eyes were dark holes, windows on the abys
s.

  It looked at them. “Excellent,” it whispered, and when it laughed, blue flame spurted from its open mouth. Then it turned left and disappeared into an open doorway. Buffy heard footfalls on stairs, but they stopped abruptly. Somewhere there was a loud crash.

  “Was that . . .” Giles began.

  “Springheel Jack,” Buffy confirmed.

  “But how could he have traveled here so quickly?” Giles wondered aloud.

  Buffy looked at him carefully, frowned. “You said yourself that a lot of things that are supposed to be in this house are showing up in Sunnydale. Like that Tatzelwurm thingie. Maybe there weren’t two of them after all. Why there? I mean, it’s the Hellmouth, right? But it’s a big country out there, a big world, and Sunnydale is three thousand miles from here.”

  Giles’s eyes widened and he nodded to himself. “Indeed. It would seem impossible, were it not for the extraordinary amount of magickal energy contained in this house. I would hypothesize that it is the single most concentrated source of magickal power in the world, an intricate web of spells, incantations, and wards that is constantly changing. Something of this magnitude will become utter chaos if left untended.”

  He turned to regard her gravely. “We must find the Gatekeeper.”

  Buffy blinked. “Giles, hello? I’m still lost. I can see the lure of the Hellmouth to creepy things. But what’s the deal?”

  “Well,” Giles said tentatively, “I’m only just beginning to form a hypothesis myself. It’s quite complicated. We know that the realm of the demons exists, and that the Hellmouth is the thinnest and most vulnerable part of the barrier between our world and theirs.

  “According to the legend of the Gatehouse, there is at least one other realm, sometimes referred to as the Otherworld, where all manner of mystical and mythical creatures and things—things that might once have existed on Earth but have since become, shall we say, extinct—a world where such things still exist. The evolving natural laws of our world have somehow shunted them aside. This Otherworld is where they’ve been shunted to.

  “The Gatekeeper, if my research is correct, is responsible for gathering and effectively imprisoning things which have somehow escaped the Other-world—subverted the natural laws, you might say.”