Читать книгу The Dark Gateway: A Novel of Horror - John Burke - Страница 8

CHAPTER FOUR

“A full house we are having,” said Mrs. Morris, without annoyance.

The newcomer had been made comfortable and given a drink of hot rum— “Not up to the old naval rum ration, eh, Frankie boy?” said Denis—and was now seated in the semicircle. Mr. Morris had heaved himself painfully up from his slumbers and gone outside to make a tour of the outhouses, but he was not away for long.

“Piling up,” he said briefly on his return. “Have to dig for the milk tomorrow.”

He slumped back into his chair, fumbled for his pipe, and began to stuff tobacco in with blue, cold fingers.

Frank said: “I’m terribly sorry I didn’t start out sooner. I’ll be an awful nuisance—”

“No nuisance at all,” said Mrs. Morris. “I hope your mother and father aren’t worryin’ about you. Still, they know you’re here. A dreadful night, that is what it is—no night for anyone to be out.”

Automatically they turned to the stranger, whose first breathless, spluttered remarks had not made any coherent impression. Now the cold had been drawn from his limbs and he had had time to collect his wits. He began to explain, reciting the story, thought Nora, as though it had been learnt off by heart, every now and then addressing himself to Jonathan, whose gentle nods seemed to be nods of approval and confirmation.

“I’m sorry I’ve had to trouble you like this. It’s my own fault—I oughtn’t to have tried walking over here, but I wanted to see the view from the top of the Horse.” He referred to the mountain known as the Horse of Gwyn ap Nudd, a humped peak that stood arrogantly above the surrounding hills and valleys. It was not a stiff climb, and an ardent hiker might have been pardoned for wanting a glimpse of the great white blanket over the countryside, bulging and wrinkled over Wales, then flattening out and lying smooth and dazzling upon Shropshire. The only false note was struck by the man himself: he was not in the least like a hiker. “I thought I could make it easily,” he said. “I wanted to have a look from the top, just so I could say I’d been, and then I was going to get down on to the main road near Plas Mawr.”

“The main road would not have been easy to find,” said Mr. Morris.

The stranger waved one stubby hand and grinned. He had a tooth missing from the front of his mouth. “That was just it,” he said. “I missed it altogether, and got mixed up with a lot of hills. As fast as I got up one, expecting to see a village of some sort, there was a slope downwards and then more hills. I knew the castle when I saw it, and I made for it, ’cos I knew once I was over, I could get down to Llanmadoc. But it was dark by the time I made it, and what with the snow and the darkness, I don’t think I could have got down to the village. It was lucky I saw your light.”

“Quite a walk you’ve had, Mr.—er—”

“Brennan.”

When he had spoken of the darkness, a sudden fantastic idea had come to Nora. She remembered, all too vividly, the vision that Jonathan had conjured up, and for one wild moment she wondered if he had also called up this man Brennan, a fiend in human shape. All the ghost stories she had ever read, the lurid films she had seen, and the more dubious illustrations in the books that stood in the parlour bookcase, all these came to the aid of her imagination, and she looked at the stranger with an indefinite but compelling dread.

Her fear died away. If this was a demon that Jonathan had summoned, it was an inoffensive demon. Brennan looked like a shopkeeper, with a worried, pimply little face and one ear that stuck out grotesquely, as though—Nora could have laughed now—as though weighed down by the weight of too many pencils resting on it. He would not look directly at anyone except, for brief spaces of time, at Jonathan, but sighed at intervals and fumbled with scraps of paper in the pockets of his jacket. Twice Nora caught those glances that he exchanged with Jonathan, like a nervous shop assistant who hopes he has not offended an influential customer.

“Perhaps,” he said, “if you would be good enough to lend me a light of some sort, I could try to reach the village.”

“Not safe,” said Mr. Morris sleepily, opening one eye. “Drifts there are that you would get caught in. The snow do give under you if you don’t know every little turn of the ground. Tomorrow, when you can see where you are going.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

“For a lonely place,” said Nora ironically, “we get a lot of visitors.”

They all laughed, and for a while, in a babble of general, more or less lighthearted conversation, it appeared that the cloud of unrest that had clung to the house all day would be dispelled. But Jonathan and the newcomer, Brennan, were held together by some mysterious bond. Nora wondered whether anyone else sensed this as acutely as she did. There was something between the two men, and she could not believe that this meeting had been an accident. Come to that, she could not believe that any of today’s occurrences had been accidents: from the moment she awoke this morning she had been conscious of the existence of a certain fatalistic pattern into which the lives of all present had been woven. Things were moving towards a climax. These strange comings and goings—though so far, she thought, there had been a pronounced lack of goings—all meant something that would soon be revealed. She could not imagine where she had picked up these ideas, but they had in the last hour or so become an obsession. Now she was waiting. Waiting, not knowing what she was to expect.

Jonathan stood up, holding the book that had been lying open on his knee.

“Interesting,” he muttered, apparently referring to something he had read. “Would you mind if I went out for a stroll around the buildings?”

Brennan tensed. Nora, with her new, unaccountable sensitivity, felt this at once. So this whim of Jonathan’s—for such it seemed on the surface—was a part of whatever was being planned.

Her father said drowsily: “You could have come round the barn with me if you’d wanted a stroll, and done a bit of heaving on bolts, eh?” He snuffled spasmodically, and this time fell sound asleep.

“You’ll get wet, out in that,” said Mrs. Morris indignantly. “Better wait until you can see instead of splashing about this time of night. No sense in it.”

“I’ll be safe, I promise,” said Jonathan. “A little breath of night air—the raw wind of the great wild mountains, as it were.” He giggled excitedly. “Back in a minute—just steeping myself in the atmosphere, that’s all.”

Brennan watched him go.

Denis said scornfully: “Steeping himself in the atmosphere—that’s rich, if you like. Hope he gets well and truly steeped in it: soaked in it.” He picked up the book Jonathan had left on the chair. “‘The Gates of Fomoria’,” he quoted. “Where’s Fomoria?”

“Under the sea,” said Frank.

“What do you know about it?”

“I read about it once, somewhere, a long time ago. It’s the home of an evil race who came before there were any human beings—all the usual stuff, you know. The Fomorians were old gods who ruled a bleak, horrible world, until the powers of light came to overthrow them. I can’t remember the details—I expect there’ll be plenty in this book”—he tapped the black, wrinkled cover with one long, brown finger—“but I believe there was a colossal struggle, spiritual and physical, and the Fomorians were flung out of this world. Under the ocean, or something.” He grinned apologetically. “I’m not well up in my folklore, I’m afraid.”

“Better than we are,” said Denis. “It’s always the same: when I go to London and meet some pals, I have to show them—Londoners, mark you—where we can go to get a good meal.”

“As if you ever ate anywhere else but a canteen!”

“That’s enough, brother. Not anymore, anyway. We’re free now. And as I was about to say when I was so rudely interrupted, I never yet met a Welshman who knew any of his own fairy stories. I don’t myself: I used to like Hans Andersen.” He laughed immoderately, as though he had made a great joke.

“This is not exclusively a Welsh story,” said Brennan in a timid voice. “It’s ancient. The earliest Gaelic name for the gods who overthrew the dark rulers of the earth was Tuatha de Danann. But that’s only symbolical, really.”

He was silent again, unhappily withdrawn. Denis wagged his head. “How come that we get all this sort of talk? Last night Simon, today Jonathan—then you, Frank, and now you, Mr. Brennan. You make me feel bloomin’ ignorant.”

“It’s the weather,” said his mother calmly.

They marvelled at her.

“It’s funny,” said Nora, finding that she had become interested in this topic of conversation, “that so many of those old stories resemble one another.” She was remembering things Simon had said: they had bored her at the time, but now she was quite eager to discuss them. Tonight, with the house wrapped in its baffling new cloak of mystery, they were reasonable, credible things—important things. She said: “All these tales of dark gods and white gods—”

“The goodies and the baddies,” chuckled her brother, “like in a cowboy film.”

“Like in anything at all,” said Nora. “The same two sides come up in every story and legend that I’ve ever heard. I remember we used to hear about them at school. There was one master—Mr. Hemingway, remember, Denis?—who left because they thought he was too advanced for the children. He used to tell us that all religions came from basic ideas, and that we ought to study the similarities and think them over before we made up our minds about any one of them. He hated Mr. Jones the Chapel.”

She laughed. Frank smiled at the swift glint of her small, even, white teeth.

He said: “It’s a pity they can’t let schoolmasters be more interesting. Passing on all the old myths—”

“They’re not myths,” said Brennan excitedly, “they’re fact.”

Another of Simon’s breed, thought Nora wearily. What series of coincidences brought them to this house? Coincidence…? A chill of apprehension again. She asked:

“Did you know Mr. Jonathan before you met him here?”

The question took Brennan unawares. He moistened his lips and made a gesture that was ludicrously reminiscent of Mrs. Morris reaching for her apron to wipe her hands nervously and unnecessarily.

“No,” he said. “No, I never met him before. What makes you ask?”

“I don’t know. It just occurred to me. You seem to be interested in the same things.”

“Perhaps you met at some spook society convention?” said Denis facetiously. He, too, was curious.

Brennan shook his head.

“I wonder if Mr. Jonathan is all right, out there?” said Mrs. Morris. “Out in that snow—silly, he was, to go out like that. Denis—”

“You don’t expect me to go out, do you, Mum?” complained her son. “Give him time. He’ll be back: people like that don’t get lost in the snow.”

“No,” said Brennan in a low voice.

Jonathan’s presence had been depressing; Brennan’s was even more so. The dejection in the droop of his shoulders had a damping effect on everyone in the room.

He sat like predestined victim awaiting the hour of sacrifice. Without warning he began to speak, ruminating aloud: “You think you’ve got minds of your own, but you haven’t. Even across so many centuries, you come when they call. They tell you it’s time, and you don’t argue about it: you come. If I were to make a stand now and say I wouldn’t…well, you can never tell what might.…”

He became aware of his surroundings and stopped abruptly. “My mind’s a bit hazy,” he said apologetically. “I’m half dreaming.”

“Do you good to go to your bed, now,” said Mrs. Morris briskly. “Let’s see. We must work it out, else there will be a mix-up tonight. Frank, if you and Denis squeeze in together in Denis’s room—”

“That’ll do me nicely, thank you,” said Frank, “and I’m sorry—”

“Go on with you. Now, Mr. Brennan, we’ll have to see if you can’t be fitted in somehow with Mr. Jonathan, if he doesn’t mind.”

Brennan’s lower lip quivered. Nora had the idea that he might easily burst into tears. He said:

“I wouldn’t want to…to be any trouble. Maybe Mr. Jonathan—”

“I don’t suppose he will mind. Ask him I will when he comes back.”

“If you’d just let me sleep across a couple of chairs in front of the fire, or on the couch.…” Brennan appealed like an anguished dog for their help.

Mrs. Morris, saying: “There’s not very comfortable you would be,” shrugged, smiled, and turned to the cupboard.

The wind dropped.

It was so sudden that they all sat in silence for a moment, wondering what was wrong. There had been no great force behind the wind for the last twenty minutes or so, but it had been sighing and hustling snowflakes about the house for most of the evening, and this cessation came as a surprise, producing a hush as portentous as that caused by a clock that has stopped ticking.

Mr. Morris stirred in his sleep and emitted a disturbed snuffling noise. He did not actually wake up, but some part of his consciousness registered this unexpected change in the weather, and his face twitched unbelievingly.

Denis got up and opened the door, half nervously, not knowing what to prepare for.

“What a queer change!” said Frank.

Denis stood at the door and looked out. The heaped snow was clear and quiet, undisturbed.

“It’s going to freeze, by the looks of it,” he said. “I can see the stars.”

He closed the door again and came back to the fire. He was surprised, but not disturbed. Only Brennan, thought Nora, was disturbed, apart from herself, but it was hard to tell whether his nervousness was due to the surprising calm or to something that had been in his mind right from the time of his arrival here. For herself, she was profoundly uneasy: that hushing of the wind was no natural thing, and despite all attempts to reassure herself with the thought of the presence of her family, she felt that Jonathan had had a wicked hand in it.

But that was absurd. No man could control the wind.

What he had shown her from the passage window had been done by hypnotism—by this time she could just about persuade herself of this, though aware that it would not stand up to criticism—but no man could hypnotise the wind. The idea was fantastic.

“I wonder where Mr. Jonathan is?” said Mrs. Morris.

“Stop fidgeting, Mum. He’ll come in and tell us that he cast a spell on the wind, so that it would stop,” said Denis.

It was not a particularly brilliant remark. Frank supplied a mild, polite smile, but Nora found the words too close to her own thoughts, and Brennan obviously agreed with her.

Then they heard Jonathan coming. He must have walked softly through the snow until he came close to the path that Denis and his father had tried to keep clear up to the door. Jonathan’s feet crunched on the path, and rang the usual two different notes on the flagstone and the doorstep above it. He came in, brushing his coat with great, exultant, sweeping movements of his hands.

“Gone off,” he said happily. “Here we are at peace again. Quiet, and calm air.… Delightful!”

He looked at Brennan, his eyes twinkling.

Denis said: “You didn’t get very wet, then?”

“Only at first, and that didn’t take long. Soon over. Tranquillity after the blizzard—splendid, is it not?”

Frank pushed his chair back. “I might have a shot at getting home now,” he said. “If it’s reasonably clear—”

“I suggested you should leave earlier,” said Jonathan quietly. “You’ve left it a trifle late.”

He was moving across the room towards the door into the passage. Denis made a movement towards him, then hesitated.

Frank said: “I think I’ll try.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Denis.

“Don’t be silly, old man: you’d only have to turn round and come back.”

“Well, I’ll come part way.”

“No, you won’t.”

“No sense in it,” said Mrs. Morris.

“I’ll be all right,” said Frank.

Jonathan went out, still smiling. As soon as he had gone, Brennan said, in a choked, urgent voice: “Take me with you. I want to come with you.”

“But—”

“Much better if you stay the night and be comfy until tomorrow,” said Mrs. Morris.

“No. You go through the village, don’t you—that’s the way you go from here?”

“As a matter of fact, it is,” said Frank, “but I really think that if Mrs. Morris doesn’t mind—”

“You’ve got to take me,” said Brennan. “I’ve got to try to get there tonight. I must come with you.”