Evil Star (9 page)

"It's at twelve o'clock tomorrow," the voice at the other end said.

"He's going to be at a church in London. St. Meredith's."

"Very good." Both of them were speaking in English. It was the language that Salamanda used for all his business.

"What do you want me to do?" the voice asked.

“You have done enough, my friend. And you will be rewarded. Now you can leave it to me."

"What will you do?"

Salamanda paused. An ugly light shimmered in his strangely colorless eyes. He didn't like being asked ques-tions. But he was in a generous mood. "I will take the diary and kill Mr. Morton," he replied.

"And the boy?"

"If the boy is there, then of course I will kill him, too."

Chapter 6 St. Meredith's

The church was near Shoreditch, in an ugly part of London that really wasn't like London at all. At school, Matt had learned about the Blitz, when German bombers had destroyed great chunks of the city, particularly in the East End. What the teachers hadn't told him Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star was that the blank spaces and rubble had been replaced with modern, con-crete office blocks, multilevel parking garages, cheap, tacky shops and — cutting between them — wide, anonymous highways that carried an endless stream of traffic with a lot of noise but not a great deal of speed.

He had been brought here by taxi, dropped off at the end of Market Street, which in fact turned out to be a grubby lane running between a pub and a launderette. The church stood at the bottom end, looking sad and out of place. It had been bombed, too. A new steeple had been added at some time in the last twenty years and it didn't quite match the stone pillars and arched doorways below. St. Meredith's was surprisingly large and at one time must have been quite grand, standing at the center of a thriving community. But the community had moved on and the church looked exactly as it was —

abandoned. It no longer had any reason to exist.

Once again, Matt wondered why the bookseller, William Morton, had chosen this place for their meeting. At least they would have no difficulty recognizing each other. There were few people around —

and certainly no sign of the hundred armed police officers that the assistant commis-sioner had promised. As he made his way down the lane, a door of the pub opened and a bearded man with a broken nose stepped unsteadily out. It was only twelve o'clock, but he was already drunk. Or perhaps he was still hung over from the night before. Matt quickened his pace. There was a cell phone in his pocket, and Richard was only a few min-utes away if he needed help. Matt wasn't afraid. He just wanted to get this over with and go back to ordinary life.

He walked up to the front door, wondering if he would even be able Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star to get in. The door was very solid and some-how gave the impression of being locked. Matt reached out and lifted the handle.

Cold and heavy in his hand, it turned reluctantly, with a creaking sound. The door swung open and Matt stepped forward, passing from bright daylight to a strange, shadow-filled interior. The sun was shut out. The sound of the traffic disappeared. Matt had left the door open but it swung closed behind him. The boom of the wood hitting the frame echoed through the empty space.

He was standing at the end of the nave, which stretched out to an altar some distance away. There were no electric lights in the church, and the stained-glass windows were either too dusty or too darkly colored to let in any light. But there were about a thousand candles illuminating the way forward, flickering together in little crowds, gathered round the chapels and alcoves that lined the sides of the building. As Matt's eyes got used to the gloom, he made out various figures, old men and women kneeling in the pews or hunched up in front of the tombstones, dressed in black and looking like ghosts that had somehow drifted up from the catacombs below.

He swallowed. He was liking this less and less, and he wished now that he had insisted on Richard coming with him. The journalist had wanted to, but Fabian and the other members of the Nexus had dissuaded him. Matt was to enter alone. That was what they had agreed with William Morton and if they broke faith, they might never see him again.

Matt looked around him, but there was no sign of the bookseller. He remembered the face he had seen on the video. At least he would know what Morton looked like when he chose to reveal himself.

Where was he? Hiding somewhere in the shadows, perhaps, checking that Matt was alone. If someone had come with him, there Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star were plenty of other ways out of the church. Morton could slip away without ever being seen.

Matt continued down toward the altar, passing a carved wooden pulpit shaped like an eagle. The priest would address the congregation from above its outspread wings. The walls of the church were lined with paintings. A saint shot full of arrows.

Another broken on a wheel. A crucifix-ion. Why did religion have to be so dark and cruel?

As he arrived at the apse, just in front of the altar where the east and west formed a cross, a man stood up and ges-tured to him. The man had been sitting in a pew, his head half hidden in his hands. Matt recognized him at once. Overweight, with silver hair in tufts on either side of a round, bald head. Ruddy cheeks and small, watery eyes. The man was wearing a crumpled suit and no tie. There was a pack-age, wrapped in brown paper, in his hand.

"Matthew Freeman?" he asked.

"I'm Matt." Matt never used his full name.

“You know who I am?"

"William Morton."

Matt could see at once that the bookseller was a very different man from the one he had seen in the television interview. Something had cut through his arrogance and self-regard. Both physically and mentally he seemed to have shrunk. Now that they were closer, Matt could see that he hadn't shaved. Silver stubble was spreading across his cheeks and down to his neck. And he hadn't changed his clothes in days. He smelled bad. He was sweating.

“You're very young." Morton blinked a couple of times. “You're just a child."

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

"What were you expecting?" Matt didn't try to keep the annoyance out of his voice. He didn't like being called a child. He still didn't know what this was all about.

"They didn't tell you?" Morton asked.

"They told me you had a book. A diary ..." Matt glanced at the brown paper package and Morton drew it closer to him, holding it more tightly. "Is that it?"

Morton didn't answer.

"They said you wanted to meet me," Matt went on. "They want to buy it from you."

"I know what they want!" Morton glanced left and right. Suddenly he was suspicious. “You came here alone?" he hissed.

“Yes."

"Come this way. . .."

Before Matt could say anything, Morton scurried along the line of the pews and began to move down the side of the church, leaving the other worshippers behind. Matt fol-lowed slowly. It occurred to him that the bookseller might be a little mad. But at the same time he knew it was worse than that. He thought back to the farmer, Tom Burgess, who had spoken to him outside the nuclear reactor at Lesser Mailing and who had later died. He had been just the same.

As he walked into the darkness in the farthest corner of the church, Matt realized that William Morton was scared out of his wits.

Morton waited until Matt had arrived, then began to speak, the words tumbling over each other in a soft gabble. There was nobody else around in this part of the church. Presumably that was why he had chosen it.

Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star

"I should never have bought the diary," he said. "But I knew what it was, you see. I'd heard of the Old Ones. I knew a little of their history . . . not very much, of course. Nobody knew very much. But when I saw the diary in an antique shop in Cordoba, I recognized it immedi-ately. There were people who said it didn't even exist. And many more who thought that the author — St. Joseph of Cordoba —

was mad. The Mad Monk. That's what they called him.

"And there it was! Incredibly. Waiting for me to pick it up. The only written history of the Old Ones. Raven's Gate. And the five!" As he spoke this last word, his eyes widened and he stared at Matt. "It was all there," he went on. "The beginning of the world, our world. The first great war. It was only won by a trick.. . ."

"Is that the diary, there?" Matt asked a second time. This was all moving too quickly for him.

"I thought it would be worth a fortune!" Morton whis-pered. "It's what every bookseller dreams of. . . finding a first edition or the only copy of a book that has been lost to the world. And this was much, much more than that. I went on television and I told everyone what I had in my hands. I boasted — and that was the biggest mistake I could have made."

"Why?"

"Because ..."

Somewhere in the church, someone dropped a hymn book. It fell to the floor with a thunderous echo, and Morton's head whipped round as if a shot had been fired. Matt could see the sinews bulging on the side of his neck. The bookseller looked as if he were on the edge of a heart attack. He waited a moment until everything was silent again.

"I should have been more careful," Morton continued, speaking in a Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star whisper. "I should have read the diary first. Maybe then I would have understood."

"Understood what?"

"It's evil!" Morton took out a handkerchief and wiped it across his brow. "Have you ever read a horror story, Matt? One that you can't get out of your mind? One that stays and torments you when you want to go to sleep? The diary is like that, only worse. It speaks of creatures that'll come into this world, of events that will take place. I don't understand it all. But what I do understand won't leave me alone. I can't sleep. I can't eat. My life has been turned upside down."

"Then why don't you just sell it? You've been offered millions of pounds."

"And you think I'll live to enjoy a penny of it?" Morton laughed briefly. "Since I read the diary, I've had night-mares. Horrible nightmares. And then I wake up and I think they're all over, but they're not. Because they're real. The shadows that I have seen, reaching out for me, aren't just in my imagination. Look!"

He pulled back a sleeve and Matt winced. It looked as if Morton had tried to cut his wrists. There were half a dozen mauve lines, recent wounds, crisscrossing each other about an inch away from his hand.

“You did that?" Matt asked.

"Maybe I did. Maybe I didn't. I don't remember! I wake up in the morning and they're just there. Blood on the sheets! Cuts and bruises. I'm in pain. . . ." He rubbed his eyes, fighting for control.

"And that's not all. Oh, no! I don't see things properly anymore. Ever since I read the book, all I see are the shadows and the darkness.

People walking in the street are dead to me. Even the animals, the dogs and the cats . . . they look at me as if they're going to leap out Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star and ..."

Once again, he was forced to stop.

"And things happen," he continued. "Just now! Com-ing here today.

A car nearly ran me down. It was as if the driver hadn't seen me —

or
had
seen me and didn't care. Do you think I'm going mad? Well, ask yourself what happened to my house. It burned down. I was there. The fire just started, all on its own. It came from nowhere!

The doors slammed shut. The telephones stopped work-ing. Do you see what I'm saying? Do you
understand?
The house wanted to kill me. It wanted me dead."

Matt knew that at least part of this was true. The Nexus had already told him about the fire.

"I am a condemned man," Morton said. "I have the diary. I've read all its secrets. And now it won't let me live."

"Then why don't you just get rid of it?" Matt persisted.

Morton nodded. "I've thought of destroying it. Of course I have. But there's the money!" He licked his lips and it was then that Matt saw the true horror of Morton's predicament. He was being torn apart between fear and greed. It was a constant battle and it was destroying him. "Two million pounds! It's more than I've ever earned. I can't just throw it away. How would I be able to live with myself? No! I'll sell it. That's what I am. A bookseller. I'll sell it and I'll take the money and then it'll leave me alone."

“You have to sell it to us," Matt said.

"I know. I know. That's why I agreed to meet you. Four boys and a girl. They're in the diary. You're one of them. One of the five."

"Everyone calls me that," Matt interrupted. "But I don't even know Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star what it means. Ever since I got tangled up in all this, I've been trying to find a way out. I'm sorry, Mr. Morton. I know you want me to prove something to you. But I can't."

Morton shook his head, refusing to believe what Matt had just told him. "I know about the first gate," he said.

“Raven’s Gate.”

“There’s a second gate. It's all in here. .. ."

“Then give it to me." Suddenly Matt was tired. "If you really want to get rid of the diary and I'm the only person you'll give it to, that's fine. Give it to me. You'll get your money. And then maybe we can both go home and forget all about it."

Morton nodded, and for a brief moment Matt thought it was all over.

He'd hand over the package, and he and Richard would be on the next train to . .. wherever. But, of course, it wasn't going to be as easy as that.

"I have to be sure you are who you say you are," Morton rasped.

“You have to prove it to me!"

Matt's head swam. "I've already told you. I can't do that."

“Yes, you can!" Morton was gripping the book so tightly that his fingers had turned white. He looked quickly around the church, once again making sure they weren't overheard. "Do you see the door?"

he asked.

"What door?"

"There!" Morton twitched his head and Matt looked past him to a strange, wooden door set in the stone wall. What was strange about it? It took him a few moments to work it out. It was too small, about half the size of all the other doors in the church. He assumed it must Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star lead out into the street. It was set underneath a stained-glass window with gloomy paintings on either side. Looking more closely, he saw that there was something carved into the wood. A symbol. A pentagram. A star with five points.