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.
NIGHT ATTACK
Slowly, determinedly, they closed in on the house.
There were more than a dozen of them: nightmare figures, shuffling across the lawn. Where had they come from? Matt could imagine them climbing out of the local cemetery. There was something corpse-like about them. A gleam of light from the living room caught one of their faces and he saw glistening bone, one empty eye socket, dried blood streaking down the side of the cheek and neck. At that moment he was sure of it. These creatures couldn’t be killed. They were already dead.
As if to prove him wrong, Professor Chambers stepped forward and fired a shot at the nearest of them. Matt saw a great gout of blood explode out of the back of its head. It fell face down and lay, shuddering in the grass. So at least they could be stopped! She fired again, hitting another of them in the shoulder. The creature twitched as if shrugging off the bullet. Blood spread across what was left of its shirt. But it kept on coming. It didn’t seem to feel pain.
Richard was already on his feet, loading the revolver that he had taken from the gun cabinet. A few weeks before, Matt had smiled when he had stumbled across him, shooting tin cans in the desert. Now he was glad that Richard had decided to practise.
When the attack had begun, Scott and Jamie had snatched up a couple of makeshift weapons – anything they could get their hands on. Jamie had a baseball bat. Scott had found a kitchen knife which he was holding in front of him, the blade slanting up. Pedro had backed away to the other side of the room. He was standing with his back to a full-length window, his eyes darting left and right, waiting for the first attack.
He hadn’t looked behind him.
“Pedro…! Watch out!” Richard shouted the warning.
One of the creatures was looming out of the shadows on the other side of the glass. Pedro spun round just in time to see a dead, white face, staring eyes, grey lips, hands stretching towards him. The creature didn’t stop. It walked straight through the window, smashing the glass which cascaded all around it, and came into the room with blood streaming down its face. Shards of broken glass were sticking out of its flesh, but it didn’t seem to notice. Richard lifted his revolver and shot it twice in the head. It crumpled and fell at Pedro’s feet. At the same time, Richard twisted round and fired again. Another of the creatures had reached the open French windows and was about to step inside. It threw up its hands and fell back with a bullet between its eyes.
But there were still many more of them moving slowly across the lawn, unafraid of dying, determined only to reach the house. Perhaps Ramon had been a diversion after all. While he had been talking, the night attackers had completely surrounded the house. Matt heard the sound of wood splintering upstairs and knew that some of them must have climbed up to the balcony and broken in that way. Jamie stepped forward and grabbed the diary, which he threw to Scott in a single movement. Scott caught it without even looking and slipped it into his jacket. Neither of them had spoken and Matt knew that the two of them must have communicated telepathically. He had seen them do it often enough. Each one of them knew instantly what the other was going to do. They were almost like reflections of each other.