Out of the Madhouse

by Christopher Golden

  The Gatekeeper’s wrinkled face changed, suspicion creeping over his features. His white brows knitted together, and his eyes closed to slits.

  “You are not with the Sons of Entropy?” he asked, his voice a dry rasp.

  “As much as they might regret it, I’m the son of the Harrises of Sunnydale, California,” Xander said. “And in case you didn’t know, your house is on fire.”

  Even as Xander spoke, Jean-Marc Regnier, the Gatekeeper, shuddered. His head lolled to one side, his eyes rolled up, lids fluttering, and he collapsed in a heap on the floor with a single tiny gasp of breath.

  “Oh, man!” Xander cried, kneeling at the old man’s side. “Was it something I said?”

  Regnier’s lips moved, and Xander lowered his ear toward the man’s mouth. The Gatekeeper whispered one word.

  “Cauldron.”

  Before Xander could ask him for clarification, a scream of utter terror broke the silence. Over the roar of the fire, and through the closed French doors, he recognized that voice.

  “Cordy,” he snapped, and leaped to his feet. Through the glass of the French doors, he could see her perched on the edge of the burning second-story roof of the Gatehouse.

  “Oh, my God,” Xander whispered.

  He turned quickly and rushed toward the arched doorway that led from the parlor into what looked like an enormous foyer beyond. Before he reached the archway, someone stepped forward to block his way. Xander tried to stop but could not. He barreled right into the old woman in front of him.

  Passed right through her.

  The cold was startling. So frigid, in fact, that Xander convulsed a moment and nearly lost his footing. He managed to stay upright, but hugged himself tightly and breathed deeply several times as he regained his bearings. He should have knocked the old woman on her butt, he thought. How could . . .

  “Help him.”

  “Ghaaaaa!” Xander cried, and stumbled back, even as the ghost materialized in front of him yet again.

  For that’s what she most certainly was. Spirit, specter, ghost, whatever. That was it.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Xander muttered, staring at her in terror. “You can haunt me later, okay?”

  He backed up, a quick glance confirming that behind him was a wide double staircase that led up from the first floor.

  “The others are already on their way to help Cordelia,” the ghost whispered.

  Xander paused, studying the old woman’s shade in detail for the first time. He thought he’d seen her in a portrait somewhere in this madhouse. Of course, in the portrait, he hadn’t been able to see through her. And, of course, she’d had legs.

  The ghost didn’t have anything but a weird mist below the knees. She floated there in the hallway, looking at Xander as sternly as an angry grandmother.

  “Were you the one in that wheelchair?” he asked, frowning. “ ’Cause I’d hate for there to be two of you.”

  “You would not reach her in time,” the ghost whispered. “Even your friends will not reach her in time. The only way to save her is by saving him.”

  “Him?” Xander asked. “The old guy, you mean.”

  “He is my son,” she whispered. “Only he can control the house. Only he can save your friends. But you must bring him to the Cauldron.”

  Xander bit his lip, staring at the ghost. He was nodding his head as though he were at the Bronze listening to a particularly righteous band. He bounced on the pads of his feet, energy coursing through him along with his fear and anxiety. What was the right thing? How did he decide?

  Come on, she’s a ghost, he thought. Why should I trust her?

  A tiny, bitter, frightened voice inside Xander told him that she was right about one thing. His chances of reaching Cordelia in time, through this maze of a house, were almost nil. What other choice did he have?

  Nearly running, he went back into the parlor and knelt again at the side of the fallen Gatekeeper. Without another wasted breath, Xander slipped his arms beneath the frail form of Jean-Marc Regnier, who seemed to have withered further in the intervening moments, and lifted him easily from the floor.

  He turned to face the ghost, who shimmered now, flickering in and out of existence before his eyes.

  “Okay, where’s this cauldron thing?”

  The ghost seemed to smile, before her face was creased once more with concern for the Gatekeeper. Her son, if she could be believed. Behind her, and around Xander, the walls seemed to become malleable again. Reality was flickering. The Gatekeeper moaned. Xander had never been good with math, but he could put two and two together. The old man was holding the place together. As he weakened, reality went on a coffee break. Which was bad. If the place was going to go wonky again, he’d never find his way to Cordelia, never mind some overgrown stew pot.

  As if she’d read his mind, the ghost whispered to him. “Close your eyes, dear boy. They will lie to you. My words, my voice will guide you.”

  The room began to spin. Xander sighed, rolled his eyes, and then closed them.

  “Why do I feel like I’m really going to regret this?” he asked aloud.

  The ghost ignored his question. “Quickly, now,” she whispered. “Forward twenty paces, then left and down the stairs. I’ll warn you when we get there.”

  “Yeah, unless I’ve got a practical joker for a ghost. I’ve seen Charlie Brown fall for Lucy’s taking-away-the-football gag too many times, lady.”

  But the ghost did not respond. After a moment, Xander began to walk forward, eyes firmly closed. From far off, he thought he heard Cordelia screaming once more.

  * * *

  Giles rattled down the steps to the third-floor landing as fast as he could go without stumbling. He held the railing tightly, and actually leaped the last two steps for good measure. Buffy had been a bit more direct about it: she’d actually jumped from the fourth-floor stair entrance to the landing between that and the third floor below. Then she’d done the same thing getting down to the third floor, lost her balance, tucked her head into a roll that brought her back to her feet, and she was off down the hallway before Giles had rounded that between-floors landing.

  Now he turned right and began to run down the hallway, even as the lights started to flicker on the walls. Things seemed to wobble a bit, as though reality weren’t quite certain of itself, and then they were righted. But there was no way to tell how long such a thing would last.

  He was stunned by how little the fire seemed to have damaged the hallway. Buffy had stopped halfway down the corridor, and even now she stooped slightly to look out a window.

  “Buffy?” Giles called.

  “Oh, my God,” she said, fear in her voice.

  “The fire must be burning the outside of the house already, perhaps the floor just above as well . . .” His voice trailed off as he saw the smoke seeping through the seams of the wooden ceiling.

  Buffy hadn’t noticed. She was staring out the window. Giles bent to look out a window he was passing.

  On the roof of a wing of the house that jutted out into the courtyard, Cordelia clung to the heated brick of a chimney that seemed to be protecting her from the fire. She had moved around behind it, putting it between herself and the blaze, and it was only pure determination, Giles was sure, that was keeping the poor girl from tumbling off the roof into the garden below. In fact, he wondered why she hadn’t done exactly that.

  For the fire was moving in. The entire roof was ablaze outside the window, and certainly the outside of the house must be as well.

  The smoke began to thicken in the corridor.

  “This is impossible, Buffy,” he said anxiously. “Fire doesn’t burn like this. It doesn’t . . . choose its movements.”

  “I do,” the Slayer replied.

  She spun, ripped a large portrait in a heavy wooden frame from the wall, and swung it toward the window she’d been looking out of.

  “Buffy, no!” Giles cried in alarm.

  Too late.

  The window shatter
ed under Buffy’s assault, and oxygen rushed into the hallway, carrying the blaze along with it. Flames roared into the corridor, and Buffy barely leaped out of the way without being scorched badly. As Giles watched, the fire shot out tendrils that seemed to caress the corridor’s wooden ceiling almost tenderly. There was a shriek of stress from the wood, and the ceiling collapsed into the hall, blazing wood and furnishings from the floor above coming down with it. The two pieces of the fire joined like lovers too long apart.

  Together, the flames began to consume the hall and everything in it.

  Outside, Cordelia continued to alternate between screams and what Giles could now see were quiet sobs of surrender.

  Giles ripped off his jacket. He could only hope that a second influx of oxygen would not cause the same reaction. The fire had found its entrance. Perhaps he could now create an exit. He wound the coat around his fist and slammed it against the window nearest him even as Buffy joined him. The window shattered and the Slayer used her sneakered foot to kick the rest of the glass free. The window, at the end of the hall, was away from the burning roof, but nothing out there was stable. It could all go up at any second, the blaze spreading as quickly as it had inside.

  “You can’t go out there,” Giles said, and turned to the window. “Cordelia! We’re here! You’ve got to make it to this window, or you’ll have to jump!”

  She only wailed louder. Buffy threw one leg over the edge of the window frame.

  “You can’t go out there,” Giles repeated, more sternly this time, and clasped a hand on her shoulder.

  Buffy winced, looked at him, and shook her head sadly. “Isn’t that what I’m here for, Giles? Isn’t that what we do? Slayers, I mean. My mom wants me to grow up and make something of my life, and you want me to risk my life to save the world. I guess you just can’t please everyone, can you?”

  Giles felt sick to his stomach, and not from the smoke.

  “Buffy!” he snapped, aghast. “How could you . . . you know it would destroy me if anything were to . . .”

  She held up a hand to stop him. “It’s the gig, Giles. I know that. One dies, another is called. I don’t have to like it, I just have to do it.”

  With that, she slipped through the window and began carefully picking her way across the roof toward Cordelia, staying well clear of the burning areas even as she crab-walked backward across the shingles.

  “Buffy? Oh, thank God! What are we going to do?” Cordelia shrieked.

  Giles watched Buffy open her mouth to respond. She was perhaps twenty feet away from Cordelia. Then there came a loud crack like the snapping of a bullwhip, followed by several others. Where it burned, the roof began to fall in on itself. The chimney to which Cordelia clung tilted toward the house and began to crumble as it collapsed into the widening circle of flame and charred wood.

  * * *

  Walking with his eyes closed had taken some getting used to, but Xander had managed eventually. He remembered playing the game Marco Polo—which was sort of like hide-and-seek with your eyes closed—with Willow when they were kids. That’s how she’d gotten the little scar under her chin. They’d been playing the game when her mother asked Willow to go get the mail, and she’d gone to do so—with her eyes still closed. And tripped over something in the garage, and fell, hard. And bled.

  Xander had always kicked Willow’s butt in Marco Polo.

  With the ghost whispering in his ear, close enough for him to feel the coldness of her presence, Xander had made his way along several corridors and then down a flight of stairs that his unseeing mind reasoned must go to a basement or some such. He’d slammed the side of his head into a door frame only once, stubbed the toes of his right foot, even through the sneaker, twice, and, with the prone form of the Gatekeeper in his arms, knocked over something that shattered loudly.

  But he’d made it.

  “Open your eyes,” the ghost whispered.

  Xander did. The room was extraordinary. A huge bedchamber with a canopied bed, an ancient writing desk, and a full-length, silver-backed antique mirror in one corner. Out the windows, he could see the garden in the courtyard and the burning portion of the house on the far side.

  “But we went down . . .” Xander began.

  “Nothing is what it seems in this house,” the ghost whispered. “Not unless my Jean-Marc wishes it so.”

  Xander saw movement on the burning roof, by the chimney, and then he couldn’t look. Couldn’t bring himself to watch it anymore. For that second, Cordelia was still alive. That was all that mattered.

  He scanned the room. A tall spear was hung on hooks on one wall, along with several paintings. There were shelves of odd artifacts, intricately carved boxes that looked more like puzzles than anything else, statues and crystals, and what looked like a scepter or a wand.

  “Okay, where’s the—”

  The word was going to be cauldron, but before he could finish, he saw the huge, black, iron pot in the darkest corner of the room, away from both door and windows. It was filled with what appeared to be water, and though there seemed nothing out of the ordinary in the room’s temperature, there was steam above the water.

  “Put him into the cauldron,” the ghost demanded. “Do it now!”

  She was no longer whispering.

  Another time, Xander might have managed a witty remark. He would certainly have felt reservations about what he was going to do. But he didn’t have time for such luxuries as doubt.

  He walked over to the cauldron, and as gently as he could, he lowered the Gatekeeper into the steaming water. Jean-Marc Regnier slipped into the iron pot, his head under the water, and air bubbles slid to the surface. Xander blinked and began to reach in after him.

  “Stop!” the ghost snapped.

  “He’s drowning!” Xander replied. “He’s going to die!”

  “No. He’s going to live!”

  * * *

  Cordelia didn’t even hear Buffy scream her name. Over the pitch of her own terrified, final screeching, how could she? The chimney crumbled beneath her, and she wished frantically that she had found the courage to jump to the courtyard below.

  As she slammed down onto brick and mortar and charred beams and blazing fire, an errant thought slid through her mind: her mother would be so disappointed if Cordelia burned to death. Closed-casket funerals meant it just didn’t matter what the corpse was buried in.

  The fire began to burn her, even as she fell, and Cordelia screamed in agony.

  * * *

  Then it was gone.

  With a painful thump, Cordelia landed on a Persian carpet in front of a roaring fire, in a beautifully appointed room that seemed to be a library of some sort. Aching, she forced herself to sit up and examine herself.

  “I . . . I don’t . . . how can this just . . .”

  She started to laugh. And it was this sight—Cordelia completely unsinged, but partially unhinged—that Giles and Buffy discovered when they came pounding down the stairs just outside of the library and burst into the room.

  “Cordelia!” Giles said in shock and astonishment.

  “Giles, how can this be?” Buffy demanded. “The fire. We both felt it. It was completely . . .”

  “Real, yes it was,” Giles agreed. “I don’t understand it either.”

  “It’s a miracle,” Cordelia said, eyes dull with shock and lingering fear. “Or just magick.”

  Buffy and Giles had come deeper into the room to help her up. None of them were facing the door to the library when the new voice spoke.

  “I beg to differ,” the voice said. “It isn’t ever ‘just magick.’ ”

  All three of them turned, still attempting to reorient themselves. The house was more normal now, though still palatial. The man who stood in the doorway was handsome, with rugged features and gray hair that was the only hint of his age. Buffy would have guessed he was in his early fifties, but he had an air of youth about him. Of energy. He wore olive trousers and a black turtleneck sweater, which only added to hi
s debonair appearance.

  “Though you are unexpected guests,” the man said, “you are quite welcome in my home. In truth, were it not for you, the Gatehouse would still be in chaos, and I might well be dead.”

  Giles cleared his throat. “Indeed. Well, let me introduce myself at least,” he said. “My name is Rupert Giles.”

  “Yes, the Watcher,” the man said, then his eyes turned to Buffy, and they shone with crackling energy and confidence. “And you must be the Slayer, then. You have my gratitude, and my deepest respect. I am Jean-Marc Regnier, the current keeper of the gate.”

  “You’re not doing a very good job of it, are you?” Cordelia said angrily. “Our whole town is filled with nasties that escaped your little zoo, and as for this place, obviously it’s the maid’s day off.”

  The Gatekeeper only smiled. “Ah yes. You must be Cordelia. My mother and your friend Xander have told me a great deal about you.”

  “Xander?” Cordelia asked, glancing around.

  Buffy was also interested in Xander’s whereabouts, but the mention of the Gatekeeper’s mother intrigued her as well. They had yet to see anyone else in the . . . Buffy blinked. Behind the man, in the hallway, a ghostly woman seemed to hover briefly. Then she disappeared, and Xander came through the door behind the older man.

  Cordelia gasped his name and ran to him. He held her close and kissed her hair. Then Cordelia pushed him away to arm’s length and punched him hard in the chest. Xander’s eyes went wide.

  “How could you leave me in that attic by myself?” she demanded. “God, I don’t know why I put up with you!”

  “Cordelia, I fell out the window,” Xander snapped. “I almost got eaten by ghouls! And we’d all be dead if this guy hadn’t taken a bath!”

  They all stared at him. Xander shrugged.

  “It’s a long story,” he said. “Ask the old ghost lady.”

  “Hmm,” said the Gatekeeper. “Now that you’ve mentioned the ghouls in the garden, please excuse me a moment while I do a bit of the aforementioned housecleaning. It is, after all, the maid’s day off.” This last he said while smiling mischievously at Cordelia. Then the Gatekeeper lifted one hand, and it began to glow with a dark green light.