CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Gill and Barney crossed to where Turnbull stood panting over Anderson’s outstretched form. “What was all that about?” Gill wanted to know.
“When I saw his new suit of clothes, I thought he must have had an easy time of it,” the big man answered. “But it seems I was wrong. He’s mad as a hatter, went for my throat. He tried to kill me!”
Echoing wolf voices joined the first as the twilight deepened. “Look after him,” said Gill. “There might be hope for him yet. But not for Angela if I don’t get to her before they do. She was a mile behind him last time I looked. If she was moving faster than he was, she should be just about here. I’ll go give her a hand, and we’ll see you back at the crystal. But if we don’t—”
“Good luck, Spencer,” said Turnbull.
Gill climbed the spur to its crest, paused and deliberately silhouetted himself there for her to see, and called out, “Angela! Up here! Hang on—I’m coming!” His voice carried far out, came echoing back. At first only the calling of wolves answered him, but then her voice came floating up the side of the mountain.
“Spencer! I’m here … .”
Twilight is a bad time for vision: it distorts shapes, confuses distances. Gill saw a pale shape moving between the shadows of outcropping rocks some two hundred yards down. the mountain. On the level it was a distance he’d expect to cover in less than thirty seconds; here, in the poor light, even knowing the route, it was treacherous work and frustratingly slow. Or should be. But Gill couldn’t afford to waste any time.
“Barney,” he said, “I’m going down. She must be just about all in. Come if you want to, or go back to Jack.” It would be a great shame if the dog had survived so long only to meet death on an alien world in the jaws of his inhuman cousins tonight—just because he’d found himself a new master.
Gill went sliding down through the scree, balancing on his heels and windmilling his arms for stability, and Barney went with him. As he descended in this fashion, Gill slowed himself periodically by deliberately colliding with looming boulders; it was bruising work but effective, and the distance between himself and the climbing pale shape rapidly narrowed. Until finally, as Gill caromed from a boulder back onto the track, they met—and he saw that it wasn’t Angela.
A smiling, naked, handsome young man stepped out of a patch of shadow into Gill’s path, and he was moving too fast to avoid him. As they headed for a collision, the youth timed it perfectly and stepped aside, and grabbed Gill’s hair as he went skidding by. Yanked flat onto his back, Gill looked up into a grinning, moonlit face that changed even as he dipped into his pocket.
Great paws weighed on his shoulders and slavering jaws descended towards his throat, but Gill had the alien cylinder in his hand. Barney hit the werewolf from the side, and Gill struck upwards from beneath. His weapon whirred softly but bit like a shark’s fin slicing water. Barney sent the wolf’s body toppling one way, and its head fell the other. And as Gill climbed shakily to his feet, then Angela came.
She came panting up the hill, her body gleaming with sweat in the weird moonlight, naked except for the tattered shreds of her ski pants. “Spencer!” she gasped when she saw him. “Behind me … !”
But he’d already seen them, two of them, lean grey shapes with yellow triangle eyes, loping in her tracks and almost on her. He grabbed her, thrust her behind him against the face of a looming slab of rock, and faced the pair of wolves even as they rushed him. Snarling, Barney went for one of them, which served to distract it. The other leaped—and Gill met it head-on with his whirring weapon. Blood and brains splashed him as the beast was cut through snout, muzzle and head to crash against him before falling twitching to the dust. The second wolf crouched over a yelping Barney, its teeth dripping saliva. Gill paced forward, sliced downwards—and it was done. Two slashes had severed the beast’s spine in two places. Jerking and twitching, it flopped over onto its side, scrabbling in blood and dust until Gill decapitated it. And after that—
—The climb was a nightmare by any standards. Gill half-dragged the exhausted girl back up the steep slope, and the only encouragement he had was the dancing, barking Barney urging him to greater effort. Eyes were gleaming yellow as lamps in the shadows of the rocks; lean quadruped silhouettes stood gaunt and quivering along the crests, their muzzles thrown up to the moon, howling their lost, self-pitying howls; grey shapes flitted from shadow to shadow on the slopes, each moment closing the distance between themselves, the man, girl and dog.
But finally they were at the top, and descending again into the hollow of the crystal. By moon and starlight Turnbull saw them coming, but the light was poor and deceiving and he wanted to be sure it was them. “Gill, Angela? Is that you?” His hoarse shout carried to them.
“It’s us,” Gill croaked, then tried again and managed to shout the words across the space between. “Jack, tear Anderson’s shirt into strips. Make a rope.”
“What?” came back Turnbull’s answer. “A rope?”
Gill almost carried Angela the rest of the way, with Barney dancing round their sliding, slipping feet. They met Turnbull at the crystal and the big man at once gave the girl his jacket. She accepted it gratefully enough, but told him, “It’s getting so that it hardly matters anymore, isn’t it?”
“Everything still matters.” Gill was grim. “We’ve still got everything to play for, believe me.”
“I already had his shirt off,” said Turnbull. “Tore it up to bind his hands and feet. He’s still out, so I tied him up while I had the chance. Here’s what’s left.” He handed Gill a bundle of rags.
“Tear it up.” Gill gave him it back. “Knot the pieces together,” he panted, fighting to get his breath. “Then tie one end to the knocker of door number six-sixty-six—but for God’s sake be careful! Don’t let the knocker fall!” Arid to Barney: “Good dog—watch ’em, Barney!” Barney moved off into the shadows, sniffing here and there, guarding against the gathering wolves.
“You think a mongrel dog can do much against that lot?” Turnbull worked at fashioning a rope of sorts.
“No,” Gill answered, “but at least he’ll warn us when they’re coming. Now listen, both of you: I know this will sound crazy, but I have to communicate with the crystal. Don’t ask me about it, just take my word for it. I can do it. So unless the mountains themselves start coming down on us, don’t disturb me. Just let me get on with it, okay?” He sat down with his back against the boulder where Angela perched shivering, put his head in his hands and fell silent. And in a little while his ragged breathing grew even again.
Angela got down from the rock and went to Turnbull. He finished making his rope and showed her a length some eight feet long. “Weak as shit,” he said. “You couldn’t swing a cat on it. I hope Gill knows what he’s up to.” The big man was nervous—even him—and his voice was beginning to break a little. “I mean, what the hell’s it for, anyway?”
“A remote knocker,” she answered, taking the looped, knotted rags from him. “Give me a lift and I’ll do it. I probably have a softer touch than you.”
He lifted her piggyback on his shoulders and moved to stand before door number 666, where she carefully formed a knot around the ring of the gargoyle-shaped knocker. “There,” she said as he let her down. “And now we can knock from one side if it comes to that. Well out of the way of the result.”
Now Turnbull understood. “A flamethrower? But what if it’s space in there, like when Clayborne fell in?”
“Maybe that’s what Spencer is trying to fix,” she answered.
Barney came back just then; creeping, cowering, ears flat, his stump of a tail depressed and quivering. “Oh-oh!” said Turnbull. Down in the hollow, forming a wide circle all around, yellow eyes glared hungrily out of the darkness; wolf shapes made a creeping, living silhouette on the crags on both sides and at the back of the crystal.
Angela took Turnbull’s arm. “They could take us right now if they wanted to,” she gasped. “Spencer, too,
even with that cutting thing he’s got. There are just too many of them. So what are they waiting for, Jack?”
“You shouldn’t have asked,” he groaned. And he pointed down the mountainside, where even now a weird luminosity had sprung into being and was advancing up the slopes. It was the aurora effect they’d seen before, but this time it was different. Lighting up the mountain it came, a curtain of cold, eerie fire, its pastel shades merging and separating, dancing like a live thing as it lifted to meet the sky. But in the shifting, shimmering folds of the curtain, the vast white faces that were forming were not the horned devils that Clayborne had made. They weren’t evil spirits or demons at all—or at least they hadn’t been, not when they were alive!
“Varre’s face!” Turnbull cried, his mouth opening into a gape. “Jesus—look!”
But Angela didn’t need telling. She was already looking, couldn’t draw her eyes from those of the vast faces in the glowing, weaving corpse-fire curtain. Jean-Pierre Varre was there, certainly, but his ears were those of a wolf, his eyes feral, and his teeth when he laughed—they were bone daggers! Nor was Varre alone: Alec Haggie was with him; licking his lips, his puffy bloated face leering, eyes alive with lust. Likewise Rod Denholm, his face a snarling mask of hatred.
“Rod!” Angela couldn’t stand against this, not anymore. She went to her knees. “Dear God!” she sobbed.
“And Clayborne!” Turnbull croaked, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Shit, what a nightmare!” Clayborne’s face was blistered, split open to the bone, rimed with the frost of deep space—but he leered and laughed like the others. For without exception, the faces in the sky were each and every one that of a raving madman.
Turnbull lifted Angela up, hugged her to him—as much for his own comfort as for her safety. She was human where nothing else appeared remotely so. She hid her face from what was happening all around them. Tight in his arms, she was, he sensed, on the verge of complete collapse. “I … I can’t take any more,” she whispered. “A door—any door—has to be better than this.”
Wolves came Joping—a handful, five or six of the lean, slavering beasts—their tongues lolling from slavering mouths. They made straight for Turnbull and the girl. He hugged Angela to him, backed up and to one side of door number 666. And as the wolves began snarling and crowded to the attack, so he yanked on the rope of rags and knocked.
The door opened and fire leaped out in a withering tongue of belching, gouting white and yellow heat! The wolves were caught in it, set alight, crisped where they stood or sent yelping off like living fireballs in all directions. And in another moment the door had slammed shut again. But the same fire from hell had burned through Turnbull’s rope; now he was left with nothing but his sanity, and that beginning to fall apart.
“Spencer!” the big man yelled. “For fuck’s sake, Spencer!” But there was no answer from Gill.
Again the wolves held back; but as the huge faces in the sky lost cohesion and melted back into the curtain of eerie light, so a new terror commenced. Without warning, door number 222 opened and vomited something unbelievable into the hollow. It was pulped flesh, broken bones, the remains of some crushed thing—and it lay steaming under the light of the weird moon and writhed with hellish life!
The fragments of white bone came together like the pieces of a grisly puzzle; flesh lapped over them redly and clothed them in raw red meat, which itself became sheathed in skin; a man screamed his dreadful agony where he wriggled like a snake with a broken back in the dust and the scree. But in another moment he lay still, lifted his head and looked all about, finally got to his feet and swayed a little before standing steady. It was Jean-Pierre Varre, naked, his right forearm missing from just below the elbow.
“Varre?” Turnbull couldn’t take it in. But the Frenchman only smiled and backed off, joining the wolves where they lay in a circle, like furry, fearsome spectators. And as he got down on his belly with them, so his form changed yet again and he became one of them.
angel tried to free herself from Turnbull’s arms and run to Gill, but seeing her intention the big man held on to her. “No,” he said. “If he was going to do anything he’d be doing it; he would have answered me when I called to him. So let’s give him this last chance. Don’t break in on him now.”
Even as he spoke door number 666 slid to one side. No fire in there now but the deeps of deepest space. Something came sliding out of the star-flecked darkness beyond the door and tobogganed a little way out onto the scree of the hollow. It was the blackened, ruptured figure of a man frozen solid, beginning to steam as temperatures clashed. And both Angela and Turnbull knew exactly who it would be.
“Two-twenty-two was Varre’s door,” she whispered, “and six-sixty-six was Clayborne’s, remember?”
Turnbull nodded. “So … we’re all here now,” he said.
“No,” she answered, “I don’t think so. There were four faces in the sky. One of them was my husband. I know well enough that he’s a twelve. His door would be four-forty-four.”
She was right. As Clayborne’s hideously disfigured body rapidly defrosted, 444 hissed open and Rod Denholm came staggering out. He saw Angela in Turnbull’s arms and at once said, “Angelaaa! What’s this, sweetheart? Another boyfriend?” But the remark had no sting, because she knew for a certainty that it was programmed.
Her fingers bit into Turnbull’s arm. “He’s not real,” she said. “He’s a pseudo-Rod. None of these things are real or natural. They’ve all been caused to appear here—made to threaten us—for the entertainment of whoever is running the show!”
Turnbull put her behind him. “Well let’s see if he’s real enough to feel this,” he said. And he hit the synthesised man with every ounce of muscle and energy in his body. The clone was lifted off its feet and knocked down like a felled tree, and Turnbull winced as he clutched his fist. He wouldn’t be hitting anyone else that hard for a while, for sure.
“Only one left,” said Angela. “Alec Haggie. I’ve worked it out and he’s a three—door number one-eleven.” Again she was right: 111 opened and Haggie came bounding through. But he was no threat.
“Oh, Jesus! Jesus!” he screamed, leaping away from the crystal. And right behind him, scuttling from the door before it slammed shut, came the lobster-scorpion hunter, pursuing him still where he fled screaming through the startled ranks of wolves.
“That has to be the lot,” said Turnbull. “The cast is assembled. The Big Show can start.”
“No,” said Gill, standing up and swaying, leaning a little against his boulder. “There’s still someone missing. The conductor. The one who orchestrates the whole damn thing. The one with the key to all the doors! Jack, Angela—get over here.”
“Well, did you learn anything?” Turnbull asked as they stumblingly joined him.
“Almost everything,” said Gill. “Once you get into it, it’s like hacking a computer. I know all the whys and wherefores, and all I need now is the who. And he’ll be along shortly—through door number seven-seventy-seven.”
“Bannerman?” Turnbull knew he must be right.
“The same.” Gill nodded. “And if he wants the job done, finished, this time he’ll have to do it himself.”
Angela believed she understood. “It was you who stalled the wolves and these other horrors?”
“I’ve stalled everything,” Gill answered. “I’ve thrown a hell of a spanner in this alien bastard’s works. So now we wait until he comes to clear the obstruction. We wait just as we are, right here, and see if he has the guts to play the game out to its end.”
Nor did they have long to wait … .
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Clayborne’s crust of ice melted away and he sat up. His face was a mess and his guts flopped like sausages out of his trunk; he sat there examining them in apparent astonishment as they slithered through his fingers.
“We can be horrified,” Gill said, turning away, “but no longer menaced. The frighteners are off. I’ve seen to that, at least. The House
of Doors had orders to drive us to madness and the very edge of death—and over the edge, if it was in the cards. But we wouldn’t actually die. We were to be tested to see just how much we could take, and how we faced up to it. But somebody reprogrammed things so that we could actually die—except that he waited too long to do it and now I’m onto him. Which is why I say that if he still wants it done, he must do it himself. You’ll see what I mean if we survive that final showdown. But there are still a good many ifs, so we’ll have to take them one at a time.”
“Why don’t you just call him Bannerman?” said Turnbull.
“Because that’s the human name he chose,” said Gill. “What’s underneath isn’t human.”
“You say we can die ‘now,’” said Angela. “But Varre and Clayborne did die—they are actually dead.”
“It wasn’t them.” Gill shook his head.
She didn’t understand and he didn’t enlighten her. On top of everything else, that might be too much of a shock. Later—if there was to be a later—would be soon enough.
“Are you saying it wasn’t Varre who got changed into a werewolf, got himself pulped, and is lying there with that pack of hungry bastards right now?” Turnbull wondered if maybe Gill, too, had finally cracked.
“In a way it was him,” said Gill. “But that thing over there isn’t him, no. You know it isn’t. Human guts don’t reconstitute themselves like that. Human beings don’t change into wolves.”
“And this isn’t Clayborne playing with his entrails like they were oozing out of an overripe gooseberry?” The big man’s voice quavered on the edge of hysterics. “Clayborne, mad as a hatter and amusing himself with his own guts?”
“Same answer,” said Gill. “It is and it isn’t. Save it until later.”
“But my real husband was there in that nightmare world of mine,” said Angela. “I mean the real Rod Denholm!”
“Possibly,” said Gill, “if you say so. I don’t know about him.”