Free The Doorkeepers by Graham Masterton Page B

and smell things that are way beyond human capabilities. But spirits? I don’t think so.”
    â€œWhat about that old woman at the hospital?” Nancy challenged him.
    â€œThat wasn’t anything supernatural. She could sense what I was thinking about, that’s all. She tuned in to my anxiety.”
    Nancy explained to Ella what had happened at St Thomas’s. “Ah!” said Ella. “She didn’t just read your mind, though. She tried to
tell
you something.”
    â€œShe told me a Mother Goose rhyme, that’s all I know.”
    â€œBut that’s the way these things work. The spirits always speak in a kind of code, right. They tell you things in messages that you can’t immediately understand. Snatches you pick up from the radio. Or a song that you only half-hear. How many times have you come across an unusual word, right, or maybe a reference to something strange, and after that you hear it again and again? That’s the spirit world, talking to you, guiding you,
warning
you, when it’s necessary, and it’s so much closer than you think. The spirit world is totally mixedup with ours. You can’t say where one world ends and the other begins. Sometimes you feel as if somebody’s touched you. That’s not a human hand, that’s a spirit.”
    Josh said, “I’m sorry, I just don’t believe in it. I believe in the wind, and I believe in radio waves. They’re invisible, too, but they’re scientifically measurable.”
    â€œBut that old woman gave you a message.
Six doors they stand in London Town. Six doors they stand in London, too.
She was trying to tell you something, put you on the right track.”
    â€œWell, yes. Maybe she was – although I still can’t be persuaded that there was anything supernatural about it. I’m going to check it out. I’m going to find out what that rhyme actually means. Just like I’m going to go to the Great West Road and find the Wheatstone Electrics Company. And I’m going to find Kaiser Gardens, too, and the mysterious Mrs Marguerite Marmion. I don’t believe that any of this has anything to do with spirits. Julia’s disappearance was pretty damned strange, I admit. But there’s a totally rational and scientific explanation for it.”
    â€œWhich is what, do you think?”
    â€œI don’t know. I’m not a scientist. But one day, somebody’s going to discover what it is, one day, and then all you mediums are going to have to hang up your crystal balls.”
    Ella poured them all another cup of tea. She was silent for a while, but then she said, “May I ask you something? If you do all of that, and you still can’t find out where Julia went, will you come back here, and ask me to try?”
    â€œSo what could
you
do that Nancy and I can’t do?”
    â€œI’m very sensitive, Josh,” she said, and tapped her forehead just like the old woman in the hospital had done. “If you can bring me a clue – a name, a place, even a piece of clothing – I’ll do whatever I can to find out what happened to Julia. If I succeed, it doesn’t matter whether you believe in spirits or not, does it? And if I fail, well, there won’t be any mischief done, will there?”
    She paused, and held up her hands in front of her face, so that only her shining brown eyes looked out. “I was very fond of Daisy. She was your sister but she was alsomy friend. I don’t like to think that any part of her life was lost.”
    She slowly took her hands away, but she kept staring at Josh as if she could see right inside his head. Abraxas, who was standing close beside Josh’s thigh, suddenly shivered; and even Josh felt as if something cold had passed through the room. He looked at Nancy, and by the expression on her face he could tell that she had experienced it, too.
    Ella said, “You felt that? You know what that