The Dark Gateway

by John Burke

  “That’s funny.”

  Brennan whimpered.

  “I’m getting confused,” said Frank. “I thought I’d got a pretty good idea of the place from my last visit. It doesn’t look the same, blotted out like this. Still, if I keep my eye on the cluster of lights up the Rhos road, we can’t go wrong.”

  Again they struck off, and Frank tried to keep the lights in focus, but found that they dimmed and then sparkled, clouded over and seemed to shift, winking at him sardonically, like distant stars being revealed and then wiped out by spasmodic clouds.

  Brennan floundered up to his knees in a swift declivity, and fell forward on his hands.

  “Lost,” he said. “Lost.”

  “Of course we’re not lost, man. Up you come. We’ll make it.”

  Frank wiped his brow grimly. He was not deterred. This was uncanny, but he was going on. He had heard tales of the strange things that happened to men on snowy mountains and on the great frozen wastes of the Polar regions. It was a matter of keeping your head. This wasn’t the Arctic, and he couldn’t go very far wrong. Strange things, maybe, but he was going to stay calm and be ready for them. Snow blindness, mirages, the whole lot—let ’em all come.

  But he was nevertheless not prepared for the sight of the farmhouse ahead of them once more. They were at the front, the dark windows gaping toothlessly at them.

  “We’re going right round the house,” said Frank. He had no desire to alarm Brennan still further, but he had to speak aloud in order to give himself courage.

  “We might as well go back,” said Brennan hopelessly.

  “I think it’d be as well. We can leave tomorrow morning. No. No, I’m not going back. One more attempt, first.”

  “Not worth it.”

  “We can try. Now keep those lights ahead of you, and if you lose sight of them tell me, and we’ll stop.”

  It sounded all right. It sounded reasonable and intelligent, and you couldn’t very well go wrong. But they finished up with the farmhouse lying ahead of them up the slope.

  “And I’m positive we didn’t turn round,” said Frank.

  He understood something of the fear that was clutching at Brennan. His only wish now was to get back inside the house, where there was warmth and company—and sanity. Out here.…

  “All roads lead to Rome,” he said shakily, trying to pass it off as a joke. “Let’s go back.”

  Brennan made no reply. He had already begun to walk with an air of resignation towards the house. Frank caught up with him and together they went along the side of the house into the yard. The lighted window welcomed them, and there was a cheerful line of brightness along the bottom of the door. Frank knocked. Nora opened the door. He was conscious of an immediate surge of pleasure at the sight of her slim shape, the light falling on her cheek and the shoulder of her dress. Even now, with an unnatural fear at his back, out there in the twisted night, he thought of the local girls he knew who ran to fat through eating too many potatoes and too much bread and butter, the staple farmhouse diet. He smiled at her shadowed face and said: “Dare we come in?”

  “Come along in,” she said, and he thought he detected relief in her voice. It made recent events look different. “Couldn’t you make it?” she said.

  “Failed miserably.” He stepped back into the warm kitchen, Brennan shuffling in behind. “Here we are again.”

  “The bad pennies!” Denis roared a greeting, as though they had not met for weeks. “Defeated, hey? The gallant trailblazers turn back, defeated by the elements.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  Denis nodded with amusement at Brennan. “You look worse than you did the first time,” he said candidly. “Was it very bad?”

  “Bewildering,” said Frank.

  The two of them were incorporated once more into the group around the fire, which had been on the verge of breaking up as they came in, and he told the story of their futile attempt to get away from the Morris land. Mrs. Morris and Denis looked incredulous. Mr. Morris was awake, but he was browsing over the red coals, and apparently paying no attention. Only Nora listened carefully, her green-flecked eyes narrowed and contemplative; she was obviously weighing his words and not liking what he was saying. What did she know? Once, she made a slight motion in the direction of the passage door, and Brennan also strained towards it.

  Frank said: “Where’s your visitor—Mr. Jonathan?”

  “Upstairs in his room,” said Denis. “He must be frozen by now. Unless he’s gone to bed without saying goodnight. A queer cove. I wonder what he’d make of your story? More Welsh quaintness, I guess. Of course, it’s all quite plain: you had a bottle of hooch concealed in your pocket, young Swift. Staggering around like that! Disgusting!”

  “Whatever it was that hit us,” said Frank, “it wasn’t drink.”

  They heard Jonathan coming downstairs. He came along the passage, and the door opened. The latch fell back with a loud rattle. He said slowly: “You enjoyed your walk?”

  “How did you know we’d been for…a walk?” said Frank.

  Brennan shrank into his chair.

  “Eh?” said Jonathan. “Oh, I had an idea. A nice night, quite perfect for a stroll. If I hadn’t been out once already this evening.… But no doubt I shall have another opportunity while I’m here.” He smiled benignly at Brennan, then glanced at the clock. “Surely your clock isn’t right?”

  Even Mr. Morris laughed. They were fond of their clock, which Mrs. Morris regarded as being a member of the family. It was a large mahogany affair, hanging from the wall beside the window, its pendulum nodding to and fro behind a glass panel. The clock was fast. Sometimes it was an hour fast: this was regarded as normal. Sometimes it varied from this normal by ten or fifteen minutes either way, in which case Mrs. Morris became very worried.

  “It’s a touchy clock,” she explained to Jonathan. “Rhys has never liked it—”

  “You and your old clock,” her husband confirmed obligingly.

  “It won’t go for him. Let him touch it, and it stops—right away, mind. If he winds it, stopped it is until I come and give it a shake. And if you try to alter it—”

  “Not that you’d dream of altering it, whatever happened!” laughed Denis. “It’s always an hour fast because you like it that way. You like to think the time’s not what it looks, as though it is when you look at it. That is, I mean—”

  “We couldn’t alter it,” asserted his mother stoutly. “No one can touch it at all, except only me. And if you altered it, stop it would, right away. A fine time we did have when you thought you would take it to pieces. Take it to pieces, is it? It doesn’t fancy being played with.”

  “Old clock,” grunted Mr. Morris.

  “It’s strange,” said Frank, “but we always have our clock running a bit fast. It’s amazing what a pleasant feeling it gives you of being ahead of yourself.”

  Nora shook her head and laughed. She said: “I’ve never been able to see the point of it. Why not have the right time, so that you know exactly where you are, instead of having to go through a lot of calculations?”

  “Logical enough,” Frank said, “but the matter’s a psychological one, I fancy.”

  Jonathan leaned his hands possessively on the back of Nora’s chair. “But the right time?” he asked. “My watch has stopped, and I want to know the right time. If I wake in the middle of the night, you know; like to know the time.”

  “Fifty-three minutes fast,” said Mr. Morris curtly and authoritatively.

  “Thank you. I think I’ll go to bed now. Perhaps Mr.—er—Brennan, you said, I believe—perhaps you’ll come up soon, so as not to disturb me? I’m a light sleeper, and if it’s all the same to you—”

  Mrs. Morris was beginning to wipe her hands vigorously on her apron. “Oh, Mr. Brennan. Forgetting I was—I hadn’t made any arrangement—that is, I can get you some blankets down here if you still want.…”

  He shook his head, apparently past caring.

  “I’
ll sleep in Mr. Jonathan’s room.”

  “Good,” said Jonathan. “Goodnight, one and all.”

  Brennan clasped his hands on his knees, and said: “I’ll be getting along, then.”

  Mrs. Morris said: “Come on to your bed, Rhys, before it’s asleep you are.”

  Nora stood up. Frank, drowsy, knew that he was staring at her, but in this drowsiness he could believe that no one else noticed, since everyone else seemed so far away. He wanted her to say something. Just the sound of her voice, that was all.

  Denis slapped him on the shoulder and startled him into unexpected, resentful alertness.

  “Hell’s bells, Denis.”

  “I wonder if Simon will come over tomorrow,” said Nora. “He knows so much about these things.”

  “What things is it?” demanded Mr. Morris.

  “Nothing, really. Just that…oh, dear, I’m so tired.”

  Brennan said: “No one can come here tomorrow. Nothing can get in here now, or out of here—nothing human, that is.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I don’t feel sleepy anymore,” said Frank.

  Denis yawned. “Don’t you? Well, I do. Blow out the candle, will you?”

  The candle burned with a steady, straight flame on the chest of drawers that stood by Frank’s side of the bed. Frank lay and looked up at the ceiling. A thin crack ran across from one corner to the middle of the room, like a strand of spider’s web caught up in the plaster.

  He said: “Would you mind very much if I left the candle on and read for a few minutes?”

  “Reading—at this time of night?”

  “Not if it’s going to cause you a lot of restless tossing and sleeplessness.”

  “What—me? I’m easy, Frankie. If you want to strain your eyes, that’s your business. What have you got—a dirty book?”

  Frank reached up—it was cold when you put your arm out of the bedclothes—and took down the old volume that lay beside the candle.

  “The book Jonathan was so interested in,” he explained. “He left it downstairs. I thought it might clear up some of these problems.”

  Denis yawned again, cavernously. “What problems?”

  “The way we were turned back to the house, for one thing.”

  “Seeing things,” said Denis. “Mmm. No problem there.”

  Frank twisted himself round so that the light fell on the yellowed pages of the book. A musty smell rose from the paper. There was no publication date given, but the pompous English made it obvious that the volume was not so very recent.

  It was, at first, very disappointing. The tortuous language and noncommittal style made it seem like so many vague mystical books; at times, however, there was an alteration, and a collection of dry facts would be stated in a singularly dull fashion. Frank, trying to keep the sheets and blankets up to his chin and to leave no more than his hands poking out to hold the book, wriggled into another position and tried to concentrate. He had a feeling that this hotchpotch of words made sense, if only one could fit the pieces together. There was something elusive about the book: its meaning was evasive, always just that little distance too far to be seen clearly. If only he could stop his mind wandering to the thought of Nora, mingled with impressions of this room, and memories of that incredible attempt to get away from the house, he might extract some meaning. But so far he was not having much success. This section about the priests of an old religion, for instance, was apparently the usual anthropological stuff. The priests were almost certainly Druids: the details given tallied with what he remembered of what he had heard about Druids. It’s as vague as that, he thought, and wondered whether he might not be well advised to stop trying to puzzle out matters on which he had insufficient knowledge.

  “Found anything?” said Denis sleepily.

  “Only the usual business about wielding the powers of illusion, bringing up storms, magic yew wands, mistletoe, and so on. The Silver Bough of communication with the gods…hm. This writer doesn’t think much of the Silver Bough brigade. In fact”—he turned over a few pages—“he hasn’t much patience with the gods of light at all. It’s only the more material things that seem to appeal to him. Powers of transforming one’s fellow human beings into all sorts of unpleasant animals. Our ancestors had some nice tricks, when you come to weigh them up. Delightful rites they indulged in so that they would be granted certain powers from those who ruled the air and the underworld. Useful powers, admittedly.” He turned a crackling page. “Calling on Arawn, King of Annwn, and Pwyll, and Manawyddan, and Pryderi.… There seems to be a mixup over these gods of the nether regions. They can’t all be bosses. Unless, of course, they have different functions, like saints, only the other way round.”

  Denis began to breathe heavily, but was woken by a sharp cry and an involuntary movement on Frank’s part. “What’s bitten you?”

  “This,” said Frank, thrusting the book across to his friend, with one finger indicating a paragraph that had taken his attention.

  “Don’t be so ruddy stupid,” Denis protested. “I couldn’t open my eyes wide enough to read that sort of print. What is it—the one about the old witch of Endor, or the young lady of Gloucester?”

  “The magic powers of the priests. They could cast mists over the countryside, bring on storms, and raise obstacles in the path of their enemies.”

  “Nice for them. What about it?”

  “Don’t you see?”

  “No.”

  Frank groaned with exasperation. “The way we were forced to come back this evening,” he said. “You don’t think there’s any connection? Jonathan reads a book like this, then disappears for a while. The wind drops, but when we try to get away, we find we’re cut off, that the landscape isn’t what it seems, and that we can’t get past a certain point, whatever we do.”

  “Are you suggesting,” said Denis, speaking less thickly, “that there’s black magic going on around here? In the twentieth century—and by that little drip?”

  “It seems absurd,” Frank admitted. “But it ties up so well.”

  He felt that the book ought now to be clear to him. He was on the track of something, and it should not be hard now to pick out what was of importance. The candle had a long way to burn yet. The wax was dripping slowly, heavily, down into the dish. The flame continued to stand erect like a sentinel.

  But still the meaning was clouded in mystery. What was the vengeance yet to be exacted for the misery brought on the sons of Tuirenn; what was the threatened return of Balor the One-eyed; who were the sleeping ones who would awake when challenged to fight once more, at a Moytura that would be blacker than before? Dormarth, the red-snouted hound, would once more lead the pack.…

  “Come on,” said Denis. “You’ve woken me up. Now tell me what you’ve found.”

  “I haven’t found anything really definite. I wish these cursed writers wouldn’t speak in riddles. ‘There shall be that day when the gateway is opened once more, and the Old Ones shall ride back, and the world shall be delivered over again to the masters. Then the names of Arawn and Pryderi, of Black Powys, and Moro with his Black Steed that sets the water ablaze, will be called upon, and beyond, the echoes will answer with the real names of which these are only names.’ Clear as mud, isn’t it?”

  “Sounds nuts to me.”

  “There’s something about the ring of it that I don’t like. There must have been something in the old days to make people fear the Druid priests so much. All these stories of witchcraft and evil wouldn’t have come about if there hadn’t been some foundation of truth, however small. The sacrifices, the stories that you can still hear in Ireland and Scotland about the evil eye—”

  “Now I’ll never get any sleep at all,” Denis lamented.

  “I’d like to know just how much truth there was in them.”

  “It was all fear and superstition. Witch doctors playing on people’s nerves, that was all.”

  It was easy to think comforting thoughts like that nowadays, thought Frank. What had i
t been like in the past?

  He said: “What do we really know about the Druids?”

  “They wore nightshirts and twigs in their hair.”

  “That’s the way we see them in pictures—”

  “And at the Eisteddfodau.”

  “Without many of their original characteristics,” said Frank, grimly. “We’ve only heard of them as a priestly caste, whose word was law, but we don’t know what went on. History is patchy, and there’s a lot of information missing. We know that from the first reliable records available, we can get a full picture of a fully developed religion and social system; but we don’t know how it was built. How long had these powerful men been here, ruling the destinies of the people of this island? Were they perhaps only the remnants of an incredibly ancient race that did not exist only here, but all over the face of the earth? There are traces of similar rites all over the world—”

  “Where, for example?”

  “I don’t know,” said Frank. “This is all stuff I’ve read. Admittedly I haven’t delved very deeply into the subject, but I’ve come across references here and there, and I know I’ve always had the impression that the Druids weren’t just the crude priests of a barbarous people, as so many folks seem to think.”

  Denis sat up suddenly in bed. The wind had started again.

  “That wasn’t right,” he said.

  They listened. There had been absolutely no warning. One moment there had been silence, then there had been the wind. But it was not, as both of them had realised almost immediately, a normal wind. It was a sighing wind, like the sound of a voice calling. It seemed to have sprung up about the farmhouse itself, and Frank felt that it did not blow across the hills. He glanced down at the open book on his pillow. The candle flame had begun to flicker, and the light dabbed at the old, faded print. “Then shall there be a calling upon Mathonwy and Balor, and upon the names that are the real names.” Same sort of thing again. And the wind called like the sound of a voice moaning around the house. He shut the book with a snap and looked apprehensively towards the billowing curtains across the window.