The Keeper of the Gate Read online

  "That stuff about the UFOs… you'll not tell anybody I mentioned it, will you?"

  I laughed.

  "What's the matter? You're not worried about the Men in Black are you."

  "No, not them… something else. We've all heard it, up on the roof of the house. There's a good reason Andy's staying away."

  "Stop havering, lad. Just tell me what you're on about here."

  "That's just it. We don’t know. We think Andy does, but he buggered off as soon as we all started hearing it."

  "Hearing what?" I said, nearly shouting. "Get to the bloody point, son."

  "Chittering," he said softly. "Lots of chittering; like a million insects at once, all of them angry."

  I was smart enough to leave The Rock before I got to the stage that I wouldn't leave until they threw me out. I went back to the apartment that I call my office, spruced up, had some coffee and a few smokes, then headed straight back out again.

  Party time.

  The last time I'd been down Duke Street to the converted church, it had been called Goth One and catering to the black-for-every-occasion crowd. I hoped this wasn't going to like that night; things had got hairy.

  The queue snaked back for a hundred yards or so through the old graveyard and onto the road. This lot were more of your normal city-center party crowd; a mixture of students, wide-boys, lassies with more bare flesh than sense and predators, their eyes gleaming at the thought of the drugs they could sell, the flesh they could peddle; just another night out in the big city.

  The church itself was lit up like a Disney fairy castle, its promises worth as little. Floodlights swirled and bounced off the old steeple and crenellated walkways and there was a distant throb of what might be music or might be a vibration from the Underground; it was difficult to tell them apart. When I got to the head of the line the bouncer looked me up and down.

  "You're thirty years too late," he said. "Come back tomorrow, it'll be bingo night and the women will be more your age."

  I gave him a twenty, and all my trouble went away as quickly as the note vanished into his pocket. As soon as I got inside I wanted to return and ask for my money back.

  The place was, as they say in Glasgow, heaving. A couple of hundred damp bodies bounced in time to a rhythm that was all bass and nothing much else, lights flashed just off the beat, too bright, and there was a stench in the air of sweat, beer and desperation.

  I'd always been too old for this crap.

  I walked the perimeter, studying faces, looking for a tattoo. I saw skinny Stevie, pissed as a fart, strutting his funky stuff in front of some lassies who couldn't quite conceal their boredom, but there was no sign of Andrew Penderton, and the crowd was getting more dense by the second. Soon it looked like one huge organism, seething and roiling as if in the throes of birth. Or maybe it was just getting ready to take a shit; either way, I didn't feel like staying around to watch.

  I went back out onto the steps. The queue had all made their way inside, and the bouncer leaned at the side of the door. I joined him in a smoke, and showed him another twenty.

  "I'm looking for a lad," I said. "Stocky built, well spoken, and a tattoo, here…" I motioned on the inside of my wrist."

  "A squiggly yellow thing? Aye, I know the lad."

  I waved the twenty in his face.

  "And? Tonight?"

  He nodded and took the note.

  "Last I saw of him he said he was taking a lassie upstairs to see the view from the top of the steeple. I sometimes let them up there."

  If they slip you a note.

  I didn't have to say it; we both knew the score.

  "Right through the back, the door on your left will see you to the stairwell. Be careful. It's dark, cold and slippery."

  He was right on all three points.

  I found the door easily enough, right where he said it would be, then had to grope in the dark for three steps before I caught a glimmer of light above me, just enough to show me the way up. After a couple of flights of narrow stone steps the sound of the party faded, although I still felt the vibration in the soles of my feet, channeled through the stone directly into my bones; it was all I could manage not to climb in time to the beat.

  The light above grew brighter; at first I thought I was looking at the swirling floodlights above the steeple, but this light was an internal one, pouring down from a chamber that was now only one flight of stairs overhead.

  Somebody was speaking. I didn't want to walk in unannounced on the lad if he had a girl up here, so I stepped up close enough to listen in, but far enough back in the stairwell that I wouldn't be seen.

  I needn't have bothered.

  A youth, I guessed it must be my quarry Penderton, spoke some words I couldn't quite make out. Whatever answered, it wasn't a girl. It was a chittering.

  Lots of chittering; like a million insects at once, all of them angry.

  The youth's voice grew angry in reply, shouting now, a yell with more than a hint of fear in it.

  "No," he shouted, and I heard a scuffle, and another yell from the lad, this time of pain. That was my cue to rescue any chance I might have of getting my five grand. I stepped into the room.

  The lad was wrestling – at first I thought dancing – with a heavy set, short figure wearing a long, floor-length leather duster coat and a wide brimmed hat pulled down over his face. The flickering lights I'd noticed on the stairwell came from a globe high in the ceiling that seemed to hang there, without any visible signs of anything holding it up. But I didn't have time to give it any attention; the heavy-set figure seemed intent on dragging the lad, and my five grand, away.

  "I will not come," the lad shouted.

  I heard chittering again. Skinny Stevie had indeed described it almost perfectly…and it wasn't a sound any human throat could have made. I tried to keep a tremor out of my voice as I spoke.

  "You heard the lad," I said. "He's staying here. And you'd best get going if you don't want any trouble."

  The stocky chap turned towards me. His face was in deep shadow under the brim of the hat, and I couldn't see any eyes, but once again I got the feeling I wasn't looking at anything human.

  I stepped forward, close enough to make a grab for the lad if I needed to.

  "There's no need for any of this," I said, keeping my voice calm, even as I aimed a kick for the assailant's groin. I didn't meet flesh; I didn't meet anything I expected. Beneath the coat everything was soft, squishy, and my kick brought a sour, sickly smell into the room that threatened to make me lose my earlier beers. It had the desired effect though; he let go of the lad, and retreated across the chamber from us.

  I pressed my advantage, stepping in again for another blow, and would have got one in too, if the globe of light above us had not winked out, casting us into momentary darkness. I heard a flutter, accompanied by more chittering, and then a flap as of huge wings, which reminded me more than anything of the old lady feeding the birds earlier. One of the floodlights outside swirled round towards where we stood and I stared into Andy Penderton's frightened face.

  He stood on the other side of the chamber from me, and there was a leather coat and a wide brimmed hat lying on the floor at his feet.

  The lad was still shaking when I offered him a smoke back down in the quiet graveyard outside the church. He kept looking up towards the steeple, as if expecting another attack. It was only after he accepted a cigarette that he looked at me.

  "Who the fuck are you?"

  "I'm the fucker that just saved your life, but don't rush to thank me all at once."

  "No, I mean it. What were you doing up there?"

  "I was about to ask you the same question."

  He laughed.

  "We could do this dance for a while you know? I'm guessing from the suit that you're not here for the party. You're from him, aren't you? The old man sent you."

  "Aye. He's worried about you."

  "Is he fuck. He's worried what'll happen tomorrow night if I'm not there, that
's all."

  "And what will happen?"

  Penderton got a look in his eye I knew only too well; he was getting ready to run. I put a hand on his arm.

  "Look, son, I'm here to help."

  "Not if you're working for my father you're not. How much is he paying you?"

  "Five grand."

  He laughed.

  "Is that all. I'll give you ten if you let me go, right now."

  "I can't do that. But I can get you somewhere safe, and I can listen to persuasion. I think you've got a story, and I need to hear it. Deal?"

  We shook hands on it over another smoke, and I took him to the safest place I knew.

  He almost took fright and ran as the taxi dropped us off outside The Twa Dugs.

  "Are you daft, man?" he said. "This is too close to home. My flat's just up the hill there."

  "Aye, I know," I replied, ushering him toward the door. "It has two advantages; nobody will think you that stupid, and, as I said, it's the safest place in the city. Trust me."

  George was in his usual spot behind the bar, and gave me a raised eyebrow when he saw I had the lad in tow.

  "Trouble?"

  "A wee bit," I replied.

  "Polis trouble?"

  "Not that I know of. This is trouble of the unusual kind."

  George knew me well enough not to press the matter in public.

  "Do you want the back room or the cellar?"

  I knew what he was asking; the back room was for polite conversation, whereas the cellar was where questions were asked rather more forcibly, away from anybody who might hear the screams.

  "The back room," I said. "And best get the lad here a pint of heavy. He's got a story to tell, and he'll need lubricating."

  "I'll get one for all of us, on the house," George said.

  The back room of The Twa Dugs is no more than ten feet square, with peeling wallpaper, three battered armchairs, a coffee table and an ancient two-bar electric fire, but that wasn't what made it the safest place in the city; George's reputation saw to that.

  George was the bar's owner, but he was also a provider of favors to some of the richest and most influential men in the country. Everyone from police to politicians, reporters to sportsmen, came under his domain, and he had fingers in great many pies. All of which meant that the rest of the city's criminal element knew better than to cross him and George was left alone to maintain a growing empire. We were safer here than if we were in the cells below Maryhill police station.

  Penderton was still skittish, but he settled after the first beer went down and we all had a smoke.

  "You're not going to believe me," he said when I asked again for his story. George replied for me.

  "Laddie, unless you're another fucking werewolf, I'm willing to bet your story isn't even going to be the strangest one Derek has brought to the bar."

  The lad's eyes went wide at that, but I didn't have time to get into old stories of my own; there were too many to tell in one night anyway.

  "Your old man had me believe there was a time element involved here?" I asked, trying to get him started.

  "Aye. The gathering is tomorrow night. But to explain why that's important, I have to go back a year or two to when it all started."

  He spoke, and we listened over beer and smoke.

  "I was still at school when father started to get a bit strange. It wasn't long after he had the observatory built in the garden; he spent most of his nights out there, either watching the skies or poring over old star charts. I caught a glimpse of them once; ancient dusty things drawn on vellum, faded and worn. But when I asked father what relevance they had for modern astronomy, he never answered, merely studied the charts with even more concentration.

  "Groups of people came and went at all hours, well to do men in expensive cars who never smiled. I rarely saw father at all, for by then I was banned from the observatory. I could only look out from my bedroom at night and wonder at the causes of the dancing aurora of lights, or the source of the harsh, distant chanting in a language I could not fathom.

  "One day last summer, just before I moved here to go to Uni, he made me a very peculiar offer; he told me that he would fully fund my course, and all my expenses, if I would get a tattoo done to his specifications. I thought he was mad of course, but you know how strapped for cash you can get here, so I went along to that wee parlor off Renfield Street, and the old man sat bedside me while I had this done."

  He rolled up his sleeve and I saw it was indeed the exact replica of the one his father had shown me; a yellow squiggle in a circle.

  "Is it meant to represent anything?" George asked.

  The lad smiled grimly, and accepted another smoke from me.

  "I'll get to that soon enough. It's at the center of the whole thing though, I can tell you that much."

  Once he got his cigarette lit, he went back to his story.

  "For a wee while I was too busy with my life to worry about his, but when I went home or Christmas I saw a change in him, and it wasn't for the better. He was more or less living in the observatory, sleeping by day and spending all night at the scope. I quickly ascertained that he was only watching one area of the sky, but I couldn't figure out why until he told me.

  "'It will be closest in late spring,' he said. 'That is when they will come again, and we must be ready to meet them. They have much to teach us, if we allow the to take us with them.'

  "It took me a while after that to figure out what he meant. It's a long story that I won't go into detail here, but the gist of it is that my father is a member of a UFO cult. They believe that aliens from Pluto – Yuggoth as they call it – are coming here looking for the best and brightest to take them away; save them from the coming catastrophes, if you believe that kind of crap. My father certainly believes – they all do, all of the folks who carry this same tattoo. You see, it’s a representation of the alien's home, and it's like an invitation for them to take us away. My father believes they are coming tomorrow. He's organized a party and some kind of ritual welcome for them at the house in Balloch. That's the reason he sent you after me; he's going to go with them…and he wants me along for the ride."

  George laughed, and punched me lightly on the shoulder.

  "Easiest money you'll ever make, Derek. Take the lad home and get your cash before the faither comes to his senses."

  His laugh faltered when he saw the look on my face.

  "The problem is, it's not a load of old bollocks, is it?" I asked Penderton. "These things are real, and I met one earlier, in the steeple."

  The lad went pale and nodded.

  "I was drawn up there, as if hypnotized. If you hadn't come along when you did, I might be gone with them already."

  For once George was stumped for something to say. I can't say as I blamed him.

  "You won't make me go back to him," the lad said, and he suddenly seemed much younger than before, a terrified boy rather than a young man. "You won't let them have me?"

  "Don't worry, lad," I said. "I'm not in the habit of turning metaphorical damsels in distress over to big bad wolves, even for five grand."

  "That's good," the boy said, and managed a thin smile, "for I don't have ten to give you anyway. But what do we do?"

  George answered for me again.

  "You'll stay right here until after tomorrow night, if you've got any sense. We can see what's what after that."

  Penderton looked at me.

  "If you say it's the right thing to do?"

  I nodded.

  "I'll stay with you, and George will make sure nobody disturbs us… him and I have played this game before. You're safe here. Get comfortable; you're going to be sleeping in that chair."

  "In that case, can I have another couple of pints and a packet of fags?"

  He was a lad after my own heart. He liked his beer, he liked to smoke, and he played a strong game of chess, as we found out over the next few hours. He also liked to talk. I learned of a mother died young, of a lad brought up in
a world of astronomy, physics and mathematics who disappointed his old man utterly by choosing to prefer English Literature as a career path. Just by talking to him I could tell he was a strong willed youth, and he showed no sign of being overly shaken by his earlier experience, not beyond what I'd expect anyway. I certainly liked him a lot more than I liked his father.

  I also learned a bit more about the purported 'Space Cult' but to my ears it was the usual Californian influenced wishful thinking bollocks that had been so popular in the Sixties. If anyone was daft enough to think that wee green men were going to take them away to a better place, I was happy to leave them in their delusion.

  There was only the one thing bothering me though; I'd definitely encountered something out of the ordinary early in the steeple; I just wasn't sure yet what it had been.

  We chatted, drank, ate snacks from behind the bar and played chess through until the early hours of the morning. I looked up after considering a move to see that Penderton had dozed off, sitting upright in the chair. I left him to it, and went through to the bar, where George was clearing up and washing the glasses from the night before. There was no one else in the bar.

  "It's a good story, I'll give him that," George said to me. "But is it really worth five grand? All it will take is a phone call, his faither will be here to take him off your hands, and you'll have enough cash to pay your bar tab."

  "Steady on," I said, smiling. "I'm not sure I'm ready for that kind of commitment."

  George looked me in the eye.

  "Seriously, Derek. You don't need to look after every lost puppy, you know?"

  I nodded.

  "But when the alternative is watching somebody giving them a kicking, I don't really have a choice. There was something after that boy earlier, and it wasn't looking for a kiss, a cuddle and polite conversation."

  After George finished washing the glasses he broke out the good stuff and we shared a couple of glasses of Speyside malt over a smoke, talking about nothing of consequence. I wasn't aware that I'd been waiting for something, but when it came I knew I had been expecting it all night. I heard it just after I stubbed out a smoke.