Necropolis

THE MAN FROM LIMA

Matt heaved himself out of bed, threw on some shorts and a T-shirt and ran downstairs barefoot. The whole house was awake. There were lights on everywhere and the alarm system was buzzing, warning them that somebody was approaching.

It had already occurred to him that this sudden interruption must be connected to the fact that Scarlett had been found. If all five of the Gatekeepers were now out there and known to each other, that made them a greater danger to the Old Ones, and it was no surprise that they’d want to take action. It was exactly what he and Richard had been worrying about. On the other hand, it could be a false alarm. Over the past four months, there had been plenty enough of those. Sometimes the children came out from the town, looking for food or something to steal. Professor Chambers kept llamas for their wool, and one of them might have broken loose. The system was sensitive. Even a bat or a large moth might have been enough to set it off.

Matt hurried into the main room. There was a computer standing on a table in the corner and it had already activated itself, automatically connecting to the radar on the roof. It showed a single blip moving slowly and purposefully towards the front door. It was half past eleven at night. A bit late for a visitor.

Jamie and Scott had come downstairs, fully dressed. Pedro followed them – barefoot like Matt, but then he often preferred to walk without shoes. When the two boys had first met, he had been wearing sandals made out of old car tyres and he still mistrusted proper trainers. He was yawning and pulling on a sweater. Joanna Chambers had arrived ahead of everyone. She was wearing an old dressing gown. Matt watched her open the gun cabinet and take out a rifle. So far, nobody had spoken.

“What’s happening?” Jamie asked.

“A single figure moving through the garden.” She nodded at the computer. “It looks like there’s only one of them, but we can’t be sure.”

Richard went over and examined the screen. “I’d say he’s trying not to be seen,” he muttered. “Why don’t we take a look at him?”

He leaned over and pressed a switch. This was another part of the security system. The entire garden was instantly lit up by a series of arc lamps so bright that it was as if he had set off a magnesium flare. Matt blinked. It was quite shocking to see the brilliant colours, the wide green lawn, so late at night.

There was a single figure, a man, trapped in the middle of the lawn. He was dressed in a linen jacket, jeans and a polo shirt, buttoned up to the neck. There was a canvas bag across his shoulder. As the lights had come on, he had frozen and stood there with his hands half-covering his eyes, momentarily blinded. He seemed to be on his own. He certainly wasn’t carrying any visible weapons. Richard opened the French windows. Professor Chambers stepped outside.

“Stay where you are!” she shouted. “I have a gun pointing at you.”

“There is no need for that!” the man shouted back in heavily accented English. “I am a friend.”

“What do you want?”

“I want to speak to the boy. Matthew Freeman. Is he here?”

Richard glanced at Matt who moved forward, stepping through the French windows. He was careful not to go too far. Professor Chambers lifted the gun, covering him. “What’s your name?” he called out.

“Ramon.” The man cupped his hand over his eyes, shielding them, trying to make him out.

“Where have you come from?”

“From Lima.” The man hesitated, unsure what to do, whether to move forward or not. He seemed to be pinned there by the light. “Please… are you Matthew? I am here because I want to help you.”

Pedro had come over to the window. He was standing next to Matt. “Why does he come, like a thief, in the middle of the night?” he muttered. Matt nodded. He knew that Pedro was the most suspicious of them all. Maybe it was something to do with the life he’d once led.

Richard agreed. “We can ask him to come back in the morning,” he muttered.

But Matt wasn’t so sure. “What do you want?” he shouted.

The man hadn’t moved. “I will show you when I am inside,” he said. He looked around him. “Please… it is not safe for me out here.”

Matt knew he had to make a decision. It was something he was finding more and more. Although he was in the professor’s house and she and Richard were far older than him, he always seemed to be the one in charge.

Quickly, he turned over the options. They were all supposed to be leaving the house at ten o’clock the next morning, driving up to Lima to catch the flight that would take them to London. This was no time to be meeting with complete strangers. On the other hand, there were six of them and one of him. Professor Chambers had a weapon. And the man seemed genuine enough.

“All right!” Matt called out. “Come in…”

The man began to walk towards the house. At the same time, Richard went over to the cabinet and reached inside. There was another gun there. He wasn’t taking any chances.

The man came into the main room, Professor Chambers following him with the rifle. Now that he was inside, Matt could see that he was a few years older than Richard, with the dark hair and olive skin of a native Peruvian. He had obviously been on the road for a while. He was dusty and unshaven and his clothes were crumpled with sweat patches under the arms. There was a haunted look in his eyes. From the look of him, he didn’t seem to be a threat.

The first thing he did was to take a pair of spectacles out of his top pocket and put them on. Now he looked like a school teacher or perhaps an accountant working in a small, local office. He had a cheap watch on his wrist and his shoes were scuffed and down-at-heel. He looked straight at Matt. “Are you Matthew Freeman?” He blinked. “I did not think I would find you here.”

“Sit down,” Richard said.

The man sat on the sofa with his back to the French windows. Richard pressed the button that turned off the garden lights and everything outside the room disappeared into blackness again. It had clouded over during the night. The moon and the stars had disappeared. Richard came back over to the sofa and sat down on one of the arms. He hadn’t reset the security system. But then the visitor wouldn’t be staying very long. Scott and Jamie perched on the edge of the coffee table. Professor Chambers sat in a chair with the rifle between her knees.

“So what do you want?” she demanded.

“I will tell you everything you want to know,” Ramon said. “But can I first ask you for a drink? I have been travelling all day and I had to wait until night before coming here. Believe me, if I had been seen I would have been killed.”

“I’ll get it,” Pedro said. He got up and went into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a glass of water. The man took it in both hands and gulped greedily.

“How do you know about me?” Matt asked.

“I know a great deal about you, Matthew. May I call you that? I know how you came to Peru and I think I know what you have been doing since you arrived here. I was present, also, the night you came to the hacienda at Ica, although perhaps you did not see me. I was there because I was hired to work for Diego Salamanda.”

Ramon must have known the effect the name would have on everyone in the room. Salamanda had been the chairman and owner of a huge news corporation in South America. Deliberately deformed as a child – his head had been grotesquely stretched – he had used his power and wealth to bring back the Old Ones. Matt and Pedro had gone to his hacienda searching for Richard, and later on Matt and Salamanda had confronted each other in the Nazca Desert. Matt had killed him, turning back the bullets fired from his own gun.

“Please… do not think of me as your enemy,” Ramon continued, hastily. “I swear to you that I was not part of his plans.” He paused. Beads of sweat were standing out on his forehead. “I am not even in business. I am a lecturer at Lima University and Senor Salamanda paid me to help him with a special project. I should explain that my speciality is Ancient History.” He bowed in the direction of Professor Chambers. “I have heard you speak many times, Senora. I was there, for example, last April when you gave the presentation at the Museo Nacional de Antropologia. I thought it was a brilliant talk.”

Professor Chambers thought for a moment. “It’s true that I was there,” she said. “But anyone could know that.”

“ Senor Salamanda told me that he was in possession of a diary which he wanted me to interpret on his behalf,” Ramon went on. “The diary had been written in the sixteenth century by a man called Joseph de Cordoba. This man travelled here to Peru with the Spanish conquistadors. Salamanda told me that he bought the diary from a bookseller in London, a man called William Morton.”

“He didn’t buy it,” Matt said. “He stole it. He killed William Morton to get it.” Matt knew because he had been there at the time. Morton had been demanding two million pounds but all he had got was a knife in the back.

“I did not know these things,” Ramon exclaimed. “I was innocent. My job was to work only on the text, to unlock its secrets and I spent many, many hours in his office and also at his home in Ica. The diary was never allowed to leave his side. He made it clear to me from the start that it was the most precious thing to him in the world. And as I read it, as I began to study it, I realized why. It told this extraordinary history… the Old Ones, a battle many thousands of years ago and a gate that could be unlocked by the stars.” He lowered his head.

“I know that I am responsible for what happened last June. I did the work that I was paid to do and I helped Salamanda to open the gate. I have allowed a terrible thing to happen and it has been on my conscience ever since.” He twisted on the sofa, urging them to believe him. “I am not a bad man. I am a Catholic. I go to Church. I believe in heaven and hell. And I have been thinking… what can I do to make amends for what I have done? What can I do to undo the damage that I have caused? And I knew, finally, that I must find you. So I came.”

“How did you know where we were?” Jamie asked.

“Senor Salamanda often mentioned the name of Professor Chambers. I guessed that you would be with her and I have brought you something. You will not shoot me if I reach into my bag?”

He glanced at the professor, then reached beside him. He took out an old, leather-bound book and laid it on the table. Nobody in the room said anything. But they all knew what it was. It was hard to believe that it was actually there, in front of them. The cover was dark brown with a few faint tracings of gold, tied with a cord. The edges of the pages were rough and uneven. Matt recognized it at once. It contained everything they needed to know about the Old Ones. It might even describe how they could be defeated.

“It is the diary of the mad monk,” Ramon said.

And it was. The small, square book sitting there in the middle of the table was, supposedly, the only copy in the world. There was no limit to how many secrets it might contain, how valuable it might be.

“How did you get it?” Richard demanded.

“I stole it!” Ramon took out a handkerchief and wiped it across his forehead. “I thought it would be impossible but in fact it was easy. You see, I still had my electronic pass-key to the office of Salamanda News International in Lima. And I had this crazy idea. Maybe the key had not been cancelled. Senor Salamanda was dead but surely they had forgotten about me. Two days ago I returned to the office. Nobody saw me, although by now they will know that it is gone. I took it from his desk and hurried away into the night. It is possible that the cameras will have identified me and that they will be searching for me even now.”

Richard was still suspicious. “What do you want from us?” he asked. “Do you want us to pay you?”

Ramon shook his head. “Can you not understand me?” he exclaimed. He clasped his hands in front of him. “I am twenty-eight years old. Next year I hope to be married. When I was given this work by Senor Salamanda, I knew nothing. It was just, for me, a job.

He pushed the diary away.

“Here! You can have it without payment. It is yours. I brought it to you only because I thought you might make use of it in this great…” He searched for the word in English. “…lucha. Struggle. I want nothing from you. I am sorry that I came.”

There was a pause. Matt knew that he had just been given a fantastic prize. The diary might explain the dreamworld. It might tell them the history of the twenty-five doorways that stood in so many different countries. Who had built them, and when? It might even help them work out what they were supposed to do when the five of them finally met in London. Ramon was right. Salamanda had been prepared to kill to get his hands on the diary and now it had just been handed to them, out of the blue.

Jamie leaned forward and picked it up. He unwound the cord and the diary opened in his hands. He examined the page in front of him. It was covered in handwriting which would have been almost unreadable even if it hadn’t been in Spanish. There were tiny diagrams in the margins. Suddenly his eyes lit up. He pointed to a single word.

“Sapling,” he said. “That was my name when I went back in time. Sapling was killed and I took his place.”

The diary was real. Matt had no doubt of it. But what about the man who had brought it to them? He looked genuine, but Richard had been expecting some sort of trap and this could well be it. Suddenly Matt had an idea. There was an easy way to find out. “Jamie,” he said. “Ask him if he’s telling the truth.”

Jamie understood at once. But before he could act, Scott stood up. “I’ll do it,” he said.

Scott walked forward and stopped in front of the visitor. He looked Ramon straight in the eyes. “Are you telling the truth?” he demanded.

“On my mother’s grave,” Ramon replied, crossing himself and then kissing his thumb. “I’m only here because it is the right thing to do. Because I want to help.”

Scott concentrated. This was his power, the ability that had kept audiences entertained for the many months when he was performing in Reno. They had thought it was a trick but in fact it was real. He could read minds.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as easy as that sounded. It wasn’t like throwing a switch. Scott and Jamie had a connection with each other. When they were in the same room or even a short distance away, they could communicate with each other just by thinking. But when it came to other people, strangers like Ramon, what they saw was confused, chaotic. Nothing was ever black and white.

Perhaps a minute passed. Then Scott nodded. “He’s telling the truth,” he said.

“I promise you…” Ramon knew that he had been tested in some way. The words came pouring out. “I don’t care if you don’t trust me. I’ll leave you with the diary. I’ll go. I have no other reason to be here.”

“You said it wasn’t safe for you outside,” Richard said. “Were you followed?”

Ramon shook his head and swallowed nervously. “I don’t think so. After I had taken the diary, I hid in Lima. I wanted to see if the police would come. Then, when nothing happened, I took a tourist bus to Paracas. I thought it was less likely that I would be noticed that way. By now they will know that the diary is missing. They will know that I have taken it. And although Salamanda is gone, there are people in his organization who will still wish to continue what he began.”

“So where will you go now?” Professor Chambers asked. “Do you have somewhere to hide?”

“I was hoping…” Ramon began. There was a strange sound, a whistling that came through the air, then the tearing of fabric. He looked down. There was something sticking out of his shirt. Puzzled, he reached down and touched it, then tried to pull it free. It wouldn’t move and when he released it, his hand was wet with blood.

They had all heard it but hadn’t realized what it was. A fence post. It had been thrown with impossible force from out of the darkness. It must have travelled more than fifty metres before the pointed end smashed into the back of the sofa penetrating through the leather and padding before impaling the man who was sitting there. Ramon’s eyes widened. He tried to speak. Then he slumped forward, pinned into place, unable even to fall.

The alarms hadn’t gone off. The radar screen was empty. Professor Chambers sprang to her feet and pressed the button to turn on the outside lights. Nothing happened.

Something was moving in the garden. There were figures, edging forward, dressed in filthy, tattered clothes that hung off them as if they were rotting away. Matt could just make them out in the light spilling from the room. It was suddenly very cold and he knew at once that dark forces were at work and whatever they were, coming towards him, they weren’t human.

They had come for the diary.