The House of Doors - 01 (31 page)

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Authors: Brian Lumley

BOOK: The House of Doors - 01
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A
long the sandy shore of the river where it shallowed out, the first palms were growing. That was where Angela had dragged herself wearily ashore, pausing only sufficiently to recover a little of her strength before climbing the nearest tree. Its bole actually grew up out of the sweet water and so she left no tracks on otherwise virgin sand. From the top of the tree she’d scanned the beach in both directions, seeing nothing either to alarm or especially interest her; and then, finding the soft cup at the heart of the wide, spreading leaves, she’d lowered her body in and quickly fallen asleep.
Her dreams—nightmares within nightmares-had been full of Rod, an entire army of Rods; so that now, as the dream became more violent, she started awake. But only to discover that the dream persisted, and that now it was real again.
It was nighttime, and along the beach fires had been lit, flaring up here and there as far as the eye could see in both directions. And in the warm darkness she could hear his voice—his many voices—calling from both beach and forest alike:
“Angelaaa! Why are you hiding, Angela? You know you like it, so why not get your fill? Let us fill you, Angela. You’ve let everyone else, you little cow, so why not all of us? We’re hard for you, Angela. We’re all so very, very hard for you … .”
Swine!
she thought, gasping her fear from between clenched teeth.
Great swines!
She moved her aching body a little—and froze. From below, almost directly below, she’d heard the sound of someone snoring. Moments passed while she held her breath, but the snoring continued unabated. Parting the branches, she peered down. By the light of a scattered handful of small, variously coloured moons, she saw him: Rod, of course, or one of them, sprawled out on the sand close to the foot of her tree, with one foot washed by the water gentling oceanward. And in his wide-flung hand, a bottle. But … a bottle, here? Also, this Rod wore clothes—his own clothes—and he looked just as exhausted, perhaps even more so, than Angela herself!
Now what kind of trick was this that the House of Doors was playing on her?
She crept out between two of the great leaves, turned herself about and commenced her descent, and inch by painful, agonizingly slow inch lowered herself to the ground. The cusps left by dead branches hurt her feet as before, but she could do nothing about it, and certainly not cry out! Finally she was down; turning from the sea and keeping a low pronie—especially in the vicinity of the still-sleeping, dishevelled, fully clothed Rod—she headed for the fringe of the forest where the sand of the beach turned to loam.
Her intention was to skirt the woodland, using the shadows at its rim for cover, and so make her way along the ocean strand to a place—anyplace—beyond the area of the campfires. There were Rods in the forest, too, she knew, but in that she had a small advantage: they were noisy, and she was only one and they didn’t know where she was. Or so she thought.
But as she reached the trees she heard a low panting from close behind, and looking back in cold fear she saw him: the one in the clothes, with the light of the small moons on his face and in his frightened eyes. Frightened, yes, and suddenly she knew for a certainty that this was the real Rodney Denholm.
The fact was confirmed as his wide eyes swept over her moonlit face and figure. He gasped: “Angela? Is that you? Is it really you? I woke up on the beach and saw you, and I couldn’t believe it was you. But … Jesus Christ, what is this place? Where are we, Angela? God, what’s happening to me?”
To him, always himself. Not what was happening to them but to him. As if no one else in the entire universe mattered a damn! But at least while he was frightened like this he’d be no threat to her.

Shh
!” she cautioned him. “Be quiet! Can’t you hear them calling? They’re after me.”
“After you?” He stepped closer, his voice questioning, suspicious, hardening a very little. “Those men?” But in a moment he was lost again, bewildered. “Angela, have you. seen them? They all look like me!”
Yes, and I’ll bet they all act like you, too
! And yet suddenly she felt she could cope with him, and far better than she might ever hope to cope with the pseudo-Rods. His fear gave her the edge over him; for the first time since the day she’d married him, she had the upper hand.
He was like a lost, petulant child. The neck of a bottle stuck out from his jacket pocket, but he seemed sober enough. It would be a difficult thing, to get drunk in a place like this. He’d tried, though, for she could smell it on his breath. Or maybe he’d slept it off. Now if only he could stay sober, perhaps he could be of some use to her yet.
“Rod,” she whispered, “I have to get away from here—but quickly and quietly. You can come with me if you like—but only if you do as I say. God knows you never protected me before, the opposite in fact, but right now I could use some protection. You’re a man and you’re strong. You could be if you wanted to. So these are my terms: look after me as best you can and you’ll benefit from my knowledge of this place.” (That was a joke!) “And if there’s a way out, maybe we’ll find it. It’s up to you, take it or leave it. But now I’m on my way.”
“Angela!” he gasped, and she guessed he’d scarcely heard a word she’d said. “But don’t you understand that something terrible has happened to me? I was in the police station in Perth. A man came in the night. He … he killed a policeman, horribly! He pulled him through the bars of my cell—literally
pulled
him to pieces! I—”
“I haven’t the time, Rod,” she said, feeling sickened. Not by what he’d said but just by the fact of him. “I should have known you wouldn’t be able to look after yourself, let alone me.” She turned into the shadows.
“I’m coming!” He stumbled after her. “Don’t leave me, Angela. I’m coming!”
“Quietly, then!” she hissed, her heart lurching with its terror. He took her hand in trembling fingers and the touch of him felt like slime. She shook him off and said, “Very well. Stay right behind me. But Rod—don’t touch me, do you hear?”
 
“How long have you been here?” she asked him, when they were past the last fire and the calling voices had fallen far behind. They trudged along the beach under alien moons and constellations, and Angela guessed that theirs were the first human footprints to ever mar these strange sands—and probably the last. Those other Rods back there: they weren’t human, couldn’t be, for the human Rod was right here beside her. And even he wasn’t her idea of human. Not anymore.
He shrugged. “I woke up on the beach back there with these clothes I stand in and two full bottles. I saw some of those men—saw that they could all be my twins, or whatever—and thought I was dreaming. They were calling your name and searching for you, but sort of aimlessly. When it dawned on me that I wasn’t dreaming, then I thought I was mad. And what had happened at the police station, maybe that was my madness, too. So I drank one of the bottles and passed out. When I woke up again, it was dark and I saw you. It seemed to me you were my last hold on sanity, or proof of my insanity, and so I followed you.” He looked at her. “You still haven’t told me where we are, or how we come to be here.”
“There’s a castle on Ben Lawers,” she answered. “Not a real castle but an alien thing. It’s a sort of trap. We call it the House of Doors. It took us in, absorbed us—don’t ask me how. Since when we’ve been to many different places, all of which were terrible. And finally I’m here.”
“We?” He uncorked his bottle, took a swig.
Watching him drink, Angela couldn’t hide her disgust. Now that they were away from the other Rods—now that there was no “competition” and his fear of the unknown was fading—he was beginning to sound and behave like his old self again. His true self: his swinish, overbearing self. “Me,” she finally answered, “Spencer Gill, a man called Jack Turnbull, an MOD minister called David Anderson—oh, and some others. It’s all very confused and confusing. I might have been here for a couple of days, a week, even a month for all I know.”
He thought about it, nodded. “All of that time,” he said, “with all of those men.” His voice had thickened; she could almost feel his eyes on the loll of her breasts where Gill’s shirt barely covered them, coveting them. He pulled on the bottle again, drinking deep. “Dressed like that, and with all those men …”
The beach had narrowed to a strip of sand fifty feet wide between the sea and the forest. Away out across the ocean a faint silver nimbus was forming on the horizon. Dawn was about to break. Angela brushed dangling ringlets of jet hair out of her eyes. “I must have slept the night right through,” she said. “That’s how badly I needed it.”
“Needed it?” Rod repeated her, chuckling gruffly. “You, badly in need of it? That’ll be the day! Oh, sleep! I see what you mean!” And suddenly his voice was thick with sarcasm.
Finding the firm, ocean-washed sand easier going, Angela walked faster. It had dawned on her that she was stronger than Rod, or at least that she had more stamina. There was that to say for the House of Doors at least: it built up your stamina!
“I suppose you realise,” he said, panting as he hurried to catch up, “that we’re pretty much like Adam and Eve in this fucking place? I mean if we can’t get out of here, if we’re actually stuck here, we—”
She whirled to face him, her deep, dark eyes alive in the first ray of light from the rising sun—but alive with anger, not fear. “I realise a lot of things,” she snapped. “Like what a cheap, shitty, bullying bastard you were! Like just how bad it was with you! And like how it will never be that way again, not on any world! A Garden of Eden? Is that what you were thinking? Well forget it, Rod. I’d have those mindless clones of yours before I’d ever have you again!”
He grabbed her arm, brought her to a halt. His face had twisted into that familiar, ugly, lusting snarl she knew so well of old. “You’re still my wife,” he reminded her, his voice guttural now. “You can’t deny me anything. And especially not here.” He took another long pull at his bottle, which was already three-quarters empty. “God, how I’ve missed pouring myself into you—Angela,
sweetheart
!”
Something snapped. She drew back her arm, balled her small fist and hit him. But it was more shock and astonishment than pain that felled him. Snarling obscenities, he scrambled upright again. But before he could say or do anything further—

Angelaaa!
” a voice called from the forest. “Where are you, sweetheart? Just think of all the good times when we find you, Angela. Why you’ll be able to have us three at a time! It will be fun while it lasts, anyway. While
you
last, Angela …”
“They
know you
!” The real Rod drunkenly blurted his accusation. “They’ve had you-you, can’t deny it. But you’d deny me, wouldn’t you-bitch!” .
Naked figures stepped out of the trees, and others were coming from back along the beach. For a moment Angela was frozen in horror-with the horrific futility of it all—but only for a moment. It still wasn’t her time to give in, not yet by a long shot.
She turned from Rod and ran through the shallow water and softly lapping wavelets. Alarmed by her thudding footsteps, and possibly by the renewed burst of calling from the forest and beach, great strange night-feeding crabs came trundling out of the ocean-fringing palms, tumbling each other in their eagerness to make it back to the safety of the sea. They were timid things, all of a foot long ,but carrying no pincers, and they reared up and cowered back from Angela where she ran and Rod as he pursued her.
“Bitch!” he shouted after her. “Cow! It’s the end of you, sweetheart. You’d better believe it—
the end
!”
She tripped on what looked like a length of slimy rope-which immediately snaked across the wet sand and was sucked down out of sight! It was the siphon of some great clam, which had been sent up like a snorkel to lie on the surface of the quaking sand. Then she saw what was happening: the great crabs, scuttling down to the beach, were triggering the clams. Vast hinged shells were opening, and the crabs were tumbling into their scalloped cups; and when they had their fill, then the shells were grinding shut again. But huge? Why, these things could surely take a man! Some of them must be all of ten or twelve feet across, and the shell of the horny valves was at least eight inches thick! And yet, while there was an obvious danger in it, there was nothing sinister; it was Nature at work and nothing more.
Again Angela stepped on some wriggling, snaking thing, and a shell opened immediately in front of her. Sand and salt water fountained as the huge bivalve yawned like a trapdoor; inside, pink and grey flesh pulsated and a mantle full of black, saucer-sized eyes flopped and writhed. Angela leaped to one side—straight into the arms of Rod! He grabbed her shirt and tore it from her, then threw her down and nailed her writhing body to the sand with his own superior weight.
“You …
bastard
!” she spat at him, but he caught her breasts in his hands and squeezed.
“Hold it right there, sweetheart,” he said, “and hold it very still. Or I swear I’ll pulp these tits of yours!” He would and she knew it. She did as he demanded—for now—relaxed and lay quite still. He pinned her throat with one hand, tore open his trousers with the other. Nothing happened. Made impotent by the liquor, he was no threat.

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