The Gateway

The Gateway tells the history of a summer house in the mountains. It is infested with demons that were granted access into the house by the suicidal fall of its original owner. The Hawthorne family, which buys the house from the former owner's estate, has to learn how to live with the demons, has to learn their 'rules' and never break them under pain of revenge that is worse than death.

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The GatewayBy Cynthia DelafieldAuthorHouseCopyright © 2009 Cynthia DelafieldAll right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4389-8872-6Chapter One1898-1903 In spite of its great age, the living room rug was thick and soft with brilliant colors in intricate designs. When Will and Elinor Hawthorne bought the house it was empty except for the rug. The lawyers handling the decedent's estate told them it was a specific request in her will that the rug remain in the house. The Hawthornes were thrilled to have it. They noticed the stain immediately. It was the only defect visible on the rug's huge expanse. Roughly circular in shape and about three feet in diameter it looked like a dark shadow directly under the stair landing, right in the center of the passage from the front door hallway into the living room. "Oh, Will, what a shame!" Elinor cried when she saw it. "Someone must have spilled something here and never cleaned it up! It's absolutely criminal!" "We'll send it to be cleaned, Elinor," Will replied. "I would wager that it has never been taken up and cleaned in all the time it's been here, though the rest of it looks immaculate." It required four strong men to roll up the rug and cart it twenty miles to the Hudson River, where they stowed it on a river boat for the long trip to the City. An Armenian expert collected it at the wharf to clean and, if necessary, to repair it. The Hawthornes knew that the whole process would be terribly expensive, but they both agreed it was worth it. Unfortunately, when the rug was rolled up, they saw that the stain had leaked through to the parquet floor. The wood was dull from decades of being covered by the rug, but the stain appeared almost fresh, a dark, reddish blot with a sticky sheen. "Will? Look at the wall under the landing. Isn't that the same nasty stain?" Elinor shuddered as she started to point at it, and then quickly put her hands behind her back. The idea of touching it was repellent. "What can it be? It's horrible!" "Don't worry, my love," Will said, his face reflecting her disgust. "It will be gone before we move in." Finding the right paneling was a challenge. The wood had to be not only beautiful, both in the daytime and by lamp light at night; it had to be able to resist extremes of heat and particularly of cold. Winters in the Greene County Catskills could be brutally cold. Finally Will found the perfect wood: a rare red gum from North Carolina. It was installed, finished and oiled by the time the rug was returned, two months later, and it shone with a deep coppery glow. While the wood was being installed, Will hired two men to try to clean the stains from the floor and the wall. It proved impossible no matter how hard they scrubbed or what cleansers they used. If anything, the stains brightened to the hue of fresh blood. He considered replacing the parquet flooring, but his finances didn't go quite that far, and anyway the stains would be covered when the rug was re-laid. Elinor had the newly returned rug spread out on the front lawn in the sun and inspected it closely. She was thrilled again at its extraordinary beauty and condition and couldn't wait for Will and the two gardeners to haul it into the house and replace it on the living room floor. Its jewel like colors and the richly glowing walls complimented each other to perfection. The Hawthornes were thrilled with it, until Will turned to look at where the stain used to be and felt the hair rise on the back of his neck as it slowly reappeared. He said nothing, praying that Elinor would not notice it. But of course she did and was devastated. "Will! Oh, Will! It's still there! How can it still be there, Will? It wasn't there outside. I inspected every inch of this rug in bright sunlight, and I promise you it was not there!" "It's not as dark as it was before, Elinor," Will replied. "Anyway, I'm sure it's just a trick of the light, and it's certainly not bad enough to bother us. For heaven's sake, darling, it's barely visible." Elinor didn't care. For what they had to pay for its transportation and cleaning it should be perfect. She hurried to the little study by the front door and sat down to write an angry letter to the Armenian expert who had cleaned it. He replied by return mail to say that he was outraged that she could imagine that he would return the rug in less than perfect condition. There was no sign of a blemish when he received it, and certainly none when he sent it back! He added that the rug was an extremely rare and valuable Kashan and that he had never before handled one of such beauty. He said that it belonged on the wall of a museum, not on the floor of a country house! He enclosed his bill with an offer to buy it. Elinor sent him a check for the astronomical fee and replied that it was not for sale. In an effort to convince his wife and himself that the spot was only a trick of light, or that there was a damp spot there, or maybe the nap was being blown by a stray breeze, Will held lamps over it, had all the windows and doors checked for draughts and leaks, and to his disappointment, found nothing. He did, however, notice a strange phenomenon: on bright, sunny days it was barely visible, but at night or by lamplight sometimes it appeared quite dark, and once it even looked like a hole. He also found that the area above the shadow was markedly cooler than the rest of the room, but that had to be from draughts, didn't it? When the front door was left open, a breeze blew through the hallway and the living room. It created a welcome coolness on a hot summer day. But the door wasn't left open all the time - not at night, not when the weather was bad. He thought it best not to mention the shade and temperature variations to Elinor. She was expecting their third child within a few weeks, and there was no point in upsetting her further. Will never walked on the shadow. Neither did Elinor, so as not, she said, to make it worse with wear. Oddly enough their guests, too, almost always walked around it, rather than over it, although it was in the center of the hall leading from the front door into the living room. On the rare occasions that someone inadvertently walked on it, they shivered and drew their shawls close around them, and remarked on the dampness of the weather. * * * On July 7th of 1900 a little girl was born to the Hawthornes. Her parents were delighted, as they had been hoping for a girl, and her two brothers were pleased to have a little sister to protect and eventually to tease. She was christened Elinor, but they called her Nell. As the children grew they found they felt uncomfortable when they were alone in the living room. It wasn't fear, exactly, but more a creepy feeling that they were being watched. The shadow on the rug had never been the cause of anything alarming, so the family had become accustomed to its being there in spite of its odd fluctuations. But children have rich imaginations, and all parents know how children love to scare themselves. After they mentioned their feelings to their parents Elinor discouraged them from playing alone in the living room, saying that the family's lovely old things would be at risk from the antics of two rambunctious little boys. After dinner at night, however, the whole family gathered there, with lamp light glowing on the walls and a fragrant fire crackling in the hearth. They talked over their day together, played Hearts or Parcheesi or Chinese checkers, or, best of all, their mother read to them. It was on one of those evenings, just after her third birthday, that Nell discovered something nasty was in the rug. It was a cool summer evening. Elinor sat in her usual chair at the left of the fireplace reading aloud. The fire crackled quietly. Bill, eight, and Ben, six, lay on the rug at their mother's feet teasing a cricket that had jumped out of the woodpile stacked in the right hand archway between the living room and the dining room. Their father was lying on the couch engrossed in his newspaper. Nell sat on the rug behind her mother's chair humming a little tune under her breath and idly followed the designs on the rug's border with one forefinger. She was outside the warm family circle, and it was cool away from the fire, but she didn't care. She liked doing things on her own. Her mother was reading from a new book, "Five Children and It", by E. Nesbit, and the convolutions of the plot were a little tangled for a three year old. Weaving her way along the rug's intricate border design, Nell trundled along in a squat, pretending that her tiny forefingers were racing each other to get to the far distant corner first. When she neared the area under the stair landing she stopped. Just ahead of her the rug was darker, the colors deeper, as though there was a big round shadow on the nap. And it was cold right there! She shivered suddenly. She wondered why she felt so uneasy. The lights were on; her family was all there, happy and safe. There was nothing scary to be seen, only the big shadow on the rug. She sat back on her petticoats and stuck one of her adventurous fingers in her mouth, staring at the shadow and wondering why it made her feel so strange. She itched to follow the pattern through the shadow and on to the corner, but something was warning her away. "No, Nelly! Don't be a naughty girl! Don't go near that nasty spot!" She heard the voice clearly in her head. "I will too! I will if I want to!" She whispered. She hunkered down again, the rug prickly soft under her chubby knees, and cautiously put her wet finger back on the design an inch away from the edge of the shadow. She pushed her finger into the rug but didn't move it forward, then stopped and looked around at her family. Her mother was still reading. Her brothers, engrossed in the story, had tired of the cricket and let it go. Her father snored gently under his newspaper. No one noticed her. She turned back and ground her finger into the rug. Scratch scratch. Scratch. Her hand felt icy cold. The shadow appeared to be getting darker. The back of her neck prickled and she breathed a little faster. Scratch scratch. Her finger worked its way forward to the very edge of the shadow. Then, very carefully, she pushed her finger hard against the nap of the rug until its tiny tip barely entered the shadow. A whirling dizziness roared through her head as she saw a black hole, a great hungry maw, open in front of her. She felt herself falling towards it, and with a shriek she flung herself backwards, then burst into loud wails, picked herself up and rushed to her father. Will was shocked out of his doze as she catapulted into his lap. He leapt to his feet and his sons scrambled up off the floor. "Hush, Nelly, hush! What's wrong, baby, what is it?" He looked at his wife's startled face as he cradled Nell close to his chest. "Bill, run and ask Annie for a towel, please. She's wet herself. Nelly, what's wrong? What happened to you?" "Something jumped at me, Daddy, something bad! I almost fell down the hole! It was all black and cold! Oh, Daddy, don't let it get me, don't let it get me!" She howled. "Nelly, baby, I've got you now and you're quite safe. Everything is alright now, Hush, baby, hush," he crooned. He carried her to Elinor who wrapped her in the bath towel Bill brought. She sat on the bench in front of the fireplace and stripped off Nell's wet clothes. "Nell," she said gently. "Darling, what frightened you so badly? You haven't had an accident in such a long time!" "It was a cold black hole and something jumped at me! It wanted to eat me up!" Nell sobbed. "Oh, now, Nelly, I'm sure there's nothing there at all," Will said. "Be a brave girl and let's go look. You'll see that there's nothing there that could frighten you so badly." "NO!" Nell screamed. "Will," Elinor said. "What on earth could have scared her so badly?" She was beginning to look frightened herself. "I think she was over there by the ... the shadow ... could something ...?" "Oh, of course not, Elinor. Don't you start now! I think we may be witnessing the birth of a marvelous attention-getting imagination, that's all." Will suggested, smiling. "She's much too young to do that, Will. She's not that kind of child!" "Well, then, maybe she fell asleep on the rug and had a bad dream. Let's get her upstairs to bed. I'm sure she'll have forgotten all about it by morning." He sounded much more positive than he felt, though there was no way he would let Elinor see that. He took Nell out of her mother's arms. "Come on, Pumpkin, Let's get you to bed." "Mummy?" Bill's voice was shaky. "Yes, Dear?" "Could Ben and I please sleep together in Ben's room, and could we ask Annie for a glass of milk before we go to bed?" "Yes, my darling, and ask Annie to tuck you both in for me. I'll come and kiss you goodnight as soon as I have Nellie settled." Together, the two boys hurried to the kitchen to find Annie. To their relief, they knew she would take them up the back stairs to bed: they wouldn't have to pass the shadow on the rug. Will stood with the child in his arms as Elinor circled the living room extinguishing the lights. Nell snuggled into her father's neck and put a finger into her mouth to suck, a habit she had cured herself of months ago. As the three of them moved towards the stairs and passed the barely perceptible shadow on the rug, Nell clutched her father's neck and whimpered. She relaxed as they climbed the stairs. It took Elinor only minutes to put her to bed in the little room next to the master bedroom, and to make sure the night light was lit. As she went to kiss the boys in Ben's room she passed Annie in the hall. Elinor thanked her and wished her a good night. Annie and her husband, Fritz, the head gardener, had come from Germany many years before, and had been with Elinor's family since their arrival. Annie was plump, motherly and childless. She maintained a permanently grumpy attitude in order to hide her love for the Hawthorne children, who adored her. She and Fritz lived in the apartment above the carriage house, though when the Hawthornes were short handed she spent the night at the Gateway. That happened all too often. Elinor couldn't understand why she couldn't keep servants at the Gateway. She had no trouble at all during the winters in the City, where they acted as though they never wanted to leave her. Will and Elinor were thoughtful as they prepared for bed. "Will, it wasn't darker than usual tonight, was it?" Elinor asked. "That stain on the rug, I mean. I noticed it as we came upstairs." "Actually, darling, I thought it looked lighter than usual. Are you suggesting that Nelly saw something there that scared her? Perhaps there's a big black monster just waiting to pounce on her?" "For heaven's sake, Will, you'll wake her up if you speak so loudly. I just asked you if you thought it looked darker, that's all, because I saw you looking at it." "You are deliberately frightening yourself, just like Nelly. It's only the nap on the rug, for God's sake! I've walked on it, you have, the children run through it, guests, everyone has passed through it at one time or another, and nothing bad has ever happened to anyone! What could? Please, Elinor, leave it alone!" She looked at him for a long moment until he had to turn away. "You're making it very hard for me to talk to you, Will," she said softly. "You're yelling, and that makes me think you don't believe what you're saying, and that really scares me." Her chin trembled and her huge blue eyes filled with tears. He pulled her to him. "Darling Ellie, I'm sorry I yelled. It's just that the whole family seems to be getting spooked by this lovely old house, and I can't stand to see it happen. There is nothing here that will harm any of us, and you know that as well as I do." He took her face in his hands and tipped it up gently to look in her eyes. "Once more, dearest love, I'm sorry. I promise never to yell at you again." She smiled up at him. "Not even if I let my attention-getting imagination run away with me?" He laughed and, hugging her, swept her onto the bed. After a while, like the children, they slept. A summer night in the mountains is deeply quiet, broken only by the soft sounds of the trees or the occasional conversation of owls. (Continues...) Excerpted from The Gatewayby Cynthia Delafield Copyright © 2009 by Cynthia Delafield. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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