The Gates

IV In Which We Learn About the Inadvisability of Attempting to Summon Up Demons, and of Generally Messing About with the Afterlife

SAMUEL AND BOSWELL SAT on the wall outside the Abernathy house and watched the world go by. As it was a quiet evening, and most people were indoors having their tea, there wasn’t a whole lot of the world to watch, and what there was wasn’t doing very much. Samuel shook his bucket and heard the sound of emptiness, which, as anyone knows, is not the same thing as no sound, since it includes all the noise that someone was expecting to hear, but doesn’t. [7]

Samuel didn’t want to go home. His mother had been preparing to go out for the evening when Samuel left the house. It was the first time that she had dressed up to go out since Samuel’s dad had left, and something about the sight of it had made Samuel sad. He didn’t know who she was going to meet, but she was putting on lipstick and making herself look nice, and she didn’t go to that kind of trouble when she was heading out to play bingo with her friends. She hadn’t questioned why her son was dressed as a ghost and carrying a Halloween bucket when it was not yet Halloween, for she was well used to her son doing things that might be regarded as somewhat odd.

The previous week, Samuel’s teacher, Mr. Hume, had phoned her at home to have what he described as a “serious conversation” about Samuel. Samuel, it emerged, had arrived for show and tell that day carrying only a straight pin. When Mr. Hume had called him to the front of the class, Samuel had proudly held up the pin.

“What’s that?” Mr. Hume had asked.

“It’s a pin,” said Samuel.

“I can see that, Samuel, but it’s hardly the most exciting of show and tells, now is it? I mean, it’s not exactly a rocket ship, like the one that Bobby made, or Helen’s volcano.”

Samuel hadn’t thought much of Bobby Goddard’s rocket ship, which looked to him like a series of toilet paper rolls covered in foil, or for that matter Helen’s volcano, even if it did produce white smoke when water was poured into its crater. Helen’s father was a chemist, and Samuel was pretty sure he’d had a hand in creating that volcano. Helen Kim, Samuel knew, couldn’t even put together a bowl made of lollipop sticks without detailed instructions and a large supply of solvent remover to get the glue, and assorted lollipop sticks, off her fingers afterward.

Samuel had stepped forward and held the pin under Mr. Hume’s nose.

“It’s not just a pin,” he said solemnly. Mr. Hume looked unconvinced, and also slightly nervous at having a pin rather closer to his face than he might have liked. There was no telling what some of these kids might do, given half a chance.

“Er, what is it, then?” said Mr. Hume.

“Well, if you look closely…”

Despite his better judgment, Mr. Hume found himself leaning forward to examine the pin.

“… really closely…”

Mr. Hume squinted. Someone had once given him a grain of rice with his name written upon it, which Mr. Hume had considered interesting but pointless, and he wondered if Samuel had somehow managed a similar trick.

“… you might just be able to see an infinite number of angels dancing on the head of this pin,” finished Samuel. [8]

Mr. Hume looked at Samuel. Samuel looked back at him.

“Are you trying to be funny?” asked Mr. Hume.

This was a question Samuel heard quite often, usually when he wasn’t trying to be funny at all.

“No,” said Samuel. “I read it somewhere. Theoretically, you can fit an infinite number of angels on the head of a pin.”

“That doesn’t mean that they’re actually there,” said Mr. Hume.

“No, but they might be,” said Samuel reasonably.

“Equally, they might not.”

“You can’t prove that they’re not there, though,” said Samuel.

“But you can’t prove that they are.”

Samuel thought about this for a couple of seconds, then said, “You can’t prove a negative proposition.”

“What?” asked Mr. Hume.

“You can’t prove that something doesn’t exist. You can only prove that something does exist.”

“Did you read that somewhere too?” Mr. Hume was having trouble keeping the sarcasm from his voice.

“I think so,” said Samuel, who, like most honest, straightforward people, had trouble recognizing sarcasm. “But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” said Mr. Hume. He realized that he sounded distinctly sulky, so he coughed, then said with more force, “Yes, I suppose you’re right.” [9]

Samuel continued. “Which means that I have as much chance of proving that there are angels on the head of this pin as you have of proving that there aren’t.”

“Are you sure you’re only eleven?” asked Mr. Hume.

“Positive,” said Samuel.

Mr. Hume shook his head wearily.

“Thank you for that, Samuel. You can take your pin-and your angels-back to your desk now.”

“Are you certain you don’t want to keep it?” asked Samuel.

“Yes, I’m certain.”

“I have lots more.”

“Sit down, Samuel,” said Mr. Hume, who had a way of making a hiss sound like a shout, a sign of barely controlled rage that even Samuel was able to recognize. He went back to his chair and carefully impaled his desk with the pin, so that the angels, if they were actually there, wouldn’t fall off.

“Anyone else got anything they’d like to share with us?” asked Mr. Hume. “An imaginary bunny, perhaps? An invisible duck named Percy?”

Everyone laughed. Bobby Goddard kicked the back of Samuel’s seat.

Samuel sighed.

So that was why Mr. Hume had called Samuel’s mother, and afterward she had given Samuel a talking-to about taking school seriously, and not teasing Mr. Hume, who appeared to be, she said, “a little sensitive.”

Samuel glanced at his watch. His mother would be gone by now, which meant that Stephanie the babysitter would be waiting for him when he returned. Stephanie had been fine when she had first started looking after Samuel a couple of years before, but recently she had become horrible in the way that only certain teenage girls can. She had a boyfriend named Garth who would sometimes come over to “keep her company,” which meant that Samuel would be rushed off to bed well before his bedtime. Even when Garth wasn’t around, Stephanie would spend hours talking on the phone while watching reality TV shows in which people competed to become models, singers, dancers, actors, train drivers, or anything other than what they really were, and she preferred to do so without the benefit of Samuel’s company.

It was now dark. Samuel should have been home fifteen minutes ago, but the house wasn’t the same anymore. He missed his dad, but he was also angry with him and his mum.

“We should be getting back,” he told Boswell. Boswell wagged his tail. It was getting chilly, and Boswell didn’t like the cold.

At which point there was a bright blue flash from somewhere behind them, accompanied by a smell like a fire in a rotten-egg factory. Boswell nearly fell off the wall in shock, saved only by Samuel’s arms.

“Right,” said Samuel, sensing an opportunity to delay returning home, “let’s go and see what that was…”

In the basement of 666 Crowley Road, a number of cloaked figures were covering their faces with their sleeves and spluttering.

“Oh, that’s disgusting,” said Mrs. Renfield. “How horrid!”

The smell really was terrible, particularly in such an enclosed space, even though Mr. Abernathy had earlier opened the basement window a crack to let some air in. Now he rushed to open it wider, and, slowly, the stench began to weaken, or perhaps it was just that there was now something else to distract the attention of the four people in the basement from it.

Hanging in the air at the very center of the room was a small, rotating circle of pale blue light. It twinkled, then grew in strength and size. Slowly, it became a perfect disk, about two feet in diameter, from which wisps of smoke were emerging.

It was Mrs. Abernathy who took the first step forward.

“Careful, dear,” said her husband.

“Oh, do be quiet,” said Mrs. Abernathy.

She kept advancing until she was mere inches from the circle. “I think I can see something,” she said. “Wait a minute.” She drew closer. “There’s… land there. It’s like a window. I can see mud, and stones, and the bars of some huge gates.

“And now there’s something moving-”

Outside, Samuel crouched by the small window, looking down on the basement. Boswell, who was a very intelligent dog, was hiding by the hedge. In fact Boswell was under the hedge, and had he been a larger dog, one capable of restraining an eleven-year-old boy, for example, Samuel would have been right there beside him; that, or both of them would have been well on their way home, where there were no nasty smells, no flashing blue lights, and no hints that something bad had just happened, and was likely to get considerably worse, Boswell also being a melancholic, even pessimistic, dog by nature.

The window was only a foot long, and opened barely two inches on its metal hinge, but the gap was wide enough for Samuel to be able to view and hear all that was going on inside. He was a little surprised to see the Abernathys and two other people wearing what looked like black bathrobes in a cold basement, but he had long ago learned not to be too shocked by anything adults did. He heard Mrs. Abernathy describe what she was seeing, but all that was visible to Samuel was the glowing circle itself. It seemed to be filled with a white fog, as if someone had blown a big, dense smoke ring in the Abernathys’ basement.

Samuel was very anxious to discover what else Mrs. Abernathy might have been able to glimpse. Unfortunately, those details were destined to remain unknown, apart from the fact that something on the other side had gray, scaly skin and three large, clawed fingers, for that was what reached out from the circle, grabbed Mrs. Abernathy’s head, and dragged her through. She didn’t even have time to scream.

Mrs. Renfield screamed instead. Mr. Abernathy ran toward the glowing circle, then seemed to think better of whatever he was planning to do and settled for calling out, plaintively, his wife’s name.

“Evelyn?” he said. “Are you all right?”

There was no response from the hole, but he could hear an unpleasant sound from within, like someone squishing ripe fruit. His wife had been correct, though: something was visible through the hole. It did indeed look like a pair of enormous gates, ones that had developed a small hole and were now bubbling with molten metal. Through it, Mr. Abernathy could see a dreadful landscape, all ruined trees and black mud. Shapes moved across it, shadowy figures that had no place except in horror stories and nightmares. Of his wife, there was no sign.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Mr. Renfield. He began bustling his wife toward the stairs, then stopped as a movement in the corner of the basement caught his eye.

“Eric,” he said.

Mr. Abernathy was too concerned with the whereabouts of his wife to pay any attention.

“Evelyn?” he called again. “Are you in there, dear?”

“Eric,” said Mr. Renfield again, this time with more force. “I think you may want to see this.”

Mr. Abernathy turned and saw what Mr. Renfield and his wife were looking at. As soon as he did so he decided that, all things considered, he might rather not have seen it, but by then, of course, it was too late.

There was a shape in the corner of the cellar, rimmed with blue light. It resembled a large, Mrs. Abernathy-shaped balloon, although one that was being filled with water and then jiggled by some unseen force so that it bulged in all the wrong places. In addition, its skin, visible only on its face and hands where they emerged from the now tattered and bloodied cloak, was gray and scaly, and the fingernails of each hand were yellow and hooked.

As they watched, the transformation was completed. A tentacle, its surface covered in sharp suckers that moved like mouths, coiled around the figure’s legs for a moment, and then was absorbed into the main body. The skin became white, the nails went from yellow to painted red, and something that was almost Mrs. Abernathy stood before them. Even Samuel, from where he watched, could see that she wasn’t the same. Mrs. Abernathy had been quite pretty for someone his mum’s age, but now she was more attractive than ever. She seemed to radiate beauty, as though a light had been turned on inside her body and was glowing through her skin. Her eyes were very bright, and some of that blue energy flickered in their depths, like lightning glimpsed in the blackest night.

She was also, Samuel realized, quite terrifying. Power, he thought. She’s full of power.

“Evelyn?” said Mr. Abernathy uncertainly.

The thing that looked like Mrs. Abernathy smiled.

“Evelyn is gone,” she said. Her voice was deeper than Samuel remembered, and made him shiver.

“Well, where is she?” demanded Mr. Abernathy.

The woman raised her right hand and pointed her finger at the glowing circle.

“In there, on the other side of the portal.”

“And what is ‘in there’?” said Mr. Abernathy. To his credit, he was being rather brave when faced with something that was clearly beyond his experience and, indeed, beyond this world.

“In there is… Hell,” said the woman.

“Hell?” said Mrs. Renfield, entering the conversation. “Are you sure? It doesn’t sound very likely.” She peered into the hole. “It looks a bit like that place on the moors where your mother lives, Reginald.”

Mr. Renfield took a careful look. “You know, you’re right, it does a bit.”

“Bring Evelyn back,” said Mr. Abernathy, ignoring the Renfields.

“Your wife is gone. I will take her place.”

Mr. Abernathy regarded the thing in the corner.

“What do you want?” asked Mr. Abernathy, who was cleverer than Mr. and Mrs. Renfield, and all the little Renfields, had they been there, put together.

“To open the gates.”

“The gates?” said Mr. Abernathy in puzzlement, then the expression on his face changed. “The gates… of Hell?”

“Yes. We have four days to prepare the way.”

“Right,” said Mr. Renfield, “we’re off. Come along, Doris.” He took his wife’s arm and together they began ascending the steps from the basement. “Thanks for an, um, interesting night, Eric. We must do it again sometime.”

Mr. and Mrs. Renfield got as far as the third step when what looked like twin strands of spiderweb flew from the glowing blue hole, wrapped themselves round the waists of the unfortunate pair, then plucked them from the steps and dragged them through the portal. With a puff of foul-smelling smoke, they were gone. The portal grew larger for an instant before the blue rim seemed to disappear entirely.

“Where is it?” shouted Mr. Abernathy. “Where has it gone?”

“It’s still there,” said the woman. “But it’s better that it should remain hidden for now.”

Mr. Abernathy reached toward where the circle had been, and his hand vanished in midair. Quickly he pulled it back again, then held it up before his face. It was coated in a clear, sticky fluid.

“I want my wife back,” he said. “I want the Renfields back.” He reconsidered. “Actually, you can keep the Renfields. I never liked them anyway. I just want Evelyn back. Please.” Mr. Abernathy might not have been fond of his wife, but having her around was easier than being forced to look after himself.

The woman merely shook her head. There were twin flashes of blue behind her, and two large hairy things moved in the shadows of the basement. From where he crouched, Samuel glimpsed black eyes glittering-too many eyes for two people-and some bony, jointed limbs. While Samuel watched, the shapes gradually assumed the forms of Mr. and Mrs. Renfield, although they seemed to have a bit of trouble finding somewhere to store all their legs.

“I won’t help you,” said Mr. Abernathy. “You can’t make me.”

The woman laughed. “We don’t want your help,” she said. “We just want your body.”

With that a long pink tongue slithered from the portal, and Mr. Abernathy was yanked from his feet and disappeared into thin air. Moments later a fat blob, green and large eyed, assumed his shape and took its place beside what looked, to the casual observer, like Mrs. Abernathy and the Renfields.

By then, Samuel had seen enough, and he and Boswell were running as fast as they could for the safety of home. Had he waited, Samuel might have seen the creature that was now Mrs. Abernathy staring in the direction of the small window, and at the faint shape of a boy that hung in the still night air where Samuel had been hiding.