Door of the Wayfarer

By S.P. Waugh

“Would you do that? Pull his dead body from his grave...?”

Dr. Grierson, a father, a husband and a ruined man would do anything to get his family back. But no one comes back from the grave... He knows this better than anyone. Until he meets the irrepressible Cartwright Elms, a man who looks like him, who, in fact, is him. The doppelganger. But what are the doppelganger’s motives? Who’s pulling his strings? From the foothills of Harriman State Park to the ethereal town of Serres Haven, Grierson will find many monsters on his way through perdition, along with a friend or two determined to save him from damnation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paused Books
• Release date: Aug 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9798215321188

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Door of the Wayfarer

By S. P. Waugh

Published by Paused Books 2021

Door of the Wayfarer

Copyright © Paused Books 2021

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance between these fictional characters and actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any device, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

This book may not be circulated without a cover or in any cover other than the existing cover.

A statutory catalogue deposit of this book can be found at the required libraries as required by the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000.

First Edition

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

www.pausedbooks.com

PART ONE

THRESHOLD

•   C H A P T E R   O N E   •

Matthew

Standing outside the management office, watching the first few patients arrive, Matthew felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Dr Rosa rushing past him.

‘Don’t look so worried,’ she said. ‘You’re a great doctor.’

‘Thanks, Ersilia.’ Matthew opened the door thinking what she’d told him yesterday. This is your livelihood!

Janet Thorne sat grim at her desk. Eyes lined deeper than her forty years should have seen. Premature grey, no interest in cosmetics. ‘Sit down, Dr Grierson,’ she said, fixed on her laptop.

He sat down across from her, the tick of an ornate clock on the desk jabbing his headache. An ugly thing, he thought, the enamel cherub growing out of the gilded clock more screaming than smiling. There was a postcard of Bar Harbor leaning against the clock. A pale schooner, with four bright masts, out in the wide blue of Frenchman Bay.

‘Matthew,’ Janet began. ‘You were running at ninety percent capacity last year, now you’re down below sixty. Need I remind you that this is a business as well as a medical practice?’

‘Remind me?’

‘When you came in here four years ago,’ Janet said. ‘You were the wonderkid! Everyone wanted to be on your book, but now…’ She smirked when Ersilia popped her head in the door. Matthew had trained with Ersilia, they’d risen through the ranks together, and she’d even gotten him his job here. Ersilia blushed when she saw him getting grilled.

‘Sorry, I’ll come back later,’ she said, closing the door.

‘Matthew,’ Janet said. ‘We’re having a meeting here. Focus on me, not Dr Rosa.’

‘Hang on—’

‘Now you know Dr Thorne and I need top practitioners onsite. Right now, you’re on your way down. Frankly, your day was up even before the accident.’

‘Wait,’ Matthew said, stung. ‘I need this job.’

But Janet was off in full flight.

‘… and we’re sorry about your family, Matthew, but we’ve already been more than fair allowing you to readjust, and you haven’t.’

‘Can I get a reference?’

‘No.’

‘What? That’s a four-year gap on my res—’ Matthew’s face reddened. Janet threw her eyes. ‘My mortgage,’ he said. ‘I’ll be on the street inside of a month.’

Janet Thorne measured him clinically. ‘Not my problem.’

He stood slowly and went to the door, his collar damp-hot with sweat. ‘That’s it?’

‘You can finish out the week, Dr Grierson.’

‘Janet?’

She looked up at him.

Fuck you. It was right on the tip of his tongue. ‘Nothing.’

‘Thanks, Matthew,’ Janet said. He left her office.

Tried to smile, acknowledging several past patients, and moved for the exit. Janet’s husband, David, stared at him nodding while busying himself with a stack of files by the front desk. Matthew nodded back and slipped outside. Walking toward his car, he felt strangely relaxed for having been fired. He supposed it would sink in later.

Thorne Medical’s door opened behind him.

‘Matthew.’

Ersilia was on his heels. He unlocked his Datsun, sat in, and rolled down the window.

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘When was the last time you cleaned your car, Matthew? It’s foul…’

He peered at his littered dash.

‘Look at me,’ she said, her hands on her thighs.

Matthew met her dark eyes. ‘I’m out of here tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘It’s over.’

She frowned. ‘You let this happen! Coming in hungover, Matthew? Jesus, I know it must be hard for you without Celina … and Kevin, but you need to keep working.’

‘It’s just a job,’ Matthew said. ‘Means nothing.’

‘Careful,’ Ersilia said. ‘You’re one of the best paediatricians I ever worked with. You can’t just bin yourself.’

‘Like I said,’ Matthew replied. ‘It’s just a job.’

‘I’d better get back.’ She looked hurt. ‘I’ll try to put in a word for you with David.’

‘Ersilia, I’m sorry,’ Matthew said, watching her walk away. There was nothing more to do. He turned the ignition and drove out onto the street.

***

Drawn drapes, shadows, and dusty photo frames. The living room was a good memory gone wrong, a perfect pocket of Hell, filled with Janet Thorne familiars in the form of half-dead flies jeering at his downfall. ‘Don’t forget your wife!’ they seemed to cry. ‘We at Thorne know what happened to her, Matthew Grierson…’ And though the voices continued, he sat there feeling somewhat peaceful. Or maybe it was simply the three whiskies he’d had that made him tired.

There are certain modes of morbidity which serve as gates to dark memories. Like an unseen break in the hull of a boat, away out far on a night-time sea, with the whitecaps beginning to churn. He was a prey to such channels when meditating on his wife, his son. I visit her, care for her, so don’t tell me… he thought, running his fingers through his hair, and looking round the room, wondering when it was exactly he’d left it and himself get so wretched. The room full of Saturday-night memories and lazy Sunday evenings, always clean, well kept, and the large mirror over the mantelpiece gleaming… But why was there a crack in it, running through from top to bottom raggedly? How hadn’t he noticed that before?

The mirror was split but also held a man-shaped stain. Matthew went and slid his fingers on the glass. One of the cracks slit his skin. He hissed, sucking his fingers. The shadow in the mirror was like ice at the bottom of a coal scuttle. Trick of the light, he thought, and went to fill his glass at the drinks cabinet, a triple this time, before he left the room wondering if alcoholic psychosis finally had him.

Chest and stomach bourbon-hot, Matthew felt a mite better once he’d gained the landing window. Coal-stack clouds crept in from the north and the horizon was a palette of egg-wash mauve. He couldn’t ever recall seeing a sky that colour. He sipped his whiskey.

A talented doctor, that’s what they always called him, and he was. Maybe still so in some old heads. Dr Matthew Grierson … at thirty-six years of age it somehow sounded odd to him, and he continually wrestled with a lack of self-belief which worried his practice head, David, to no end. David pulled him on the drinking today. His eyes were cold and pitiful, two good tools to grate bones with. A disgrace to the profession, he’d said. David had the decency to leave him with a final warning based on past excellence and current circumstances. That was fair enough. Until Janet got involved. Matthew held his glass to the abstract canopy spreading in from the north, and a weakly buzzing clutch of flies sounded, unseen, from the corner. They were in the attic, behind the drywall, where next? ‘We at Thorne know you need that whiskey more than most, Matthew Grierson,’ Janet Thorne’s voice yammered in the corner. ‘Drink it and be done with it and be done with yourself as we are done with you. Can’t you at least listen for once, it’ll be for your own good, my boy, if you—'

He smashed his glass on the wall, and drifted into his bedroom.

Plodded across to the southern window and screwed his eye into it, looking toward Torresdale Avenue – the first leg of Celina’s last journey where she’d driven to the liquor store in Frankford. Celina didn’t even drink, but she went anyway, for him, and it was just a twenty-minute drive, thirty-five, maybe forty, give or take both ways. She hated driving the expressway, and it happened on the northbound tract right before she could take Exit-32 for Academy Road. Home was five minutes from that point when the truck had clipped her car.

Kevin was in the backseat. He’d been ten years old. Now there’d be no more birthdays and no more model building. The last one he’d finished was still in his room: a two-foot schooner, three-masted sails, and full rigging – a thing of beauty. It smelled of varnish from the lacquer they’d used on the faux-oak hull. Matthew’s last thought before falling on the bed was the report made by the eyewitness on that awful day.

That truck was chasing them down, he’d said.

Afterward, they’d found the truck abandoned on Mill Road. The investigating officer said the driver most likely panicked and took the next available exit north on I-95 away from the scene of carnage. The cab was empty, unlocked, and there hadn’t been a shred of detail in the glovebox except for the insignia of the disposal company that owned the vehicle. Exhaustive CCTV followed interviews with the drivers until the case dropped flat without the barest trail to chase. A wiped steering wheel and the truck may as well have been driven by a ghost. It wasn’t long before the whole thing turned cold. That was late January, a little over nine months now.

When he woke, the room was lit by a sickly coloured moon. He lay there staring out of the window, drifting in heady half-sleep. Sometimes when he did this he’d hear Kevin laughing in the hallway, and once, he could have sworn that Celina had sat up in bed, right next to him, like she used to do before reading. He knew by now it was just his whiskey-wired brain playing games. He’d given up jumping for their ghosts months ago.

The phone rang and that was real enough to start a scramble for the receiver. The digital clock showed two a.m. in pale green numerals. Matthew picked up the phone and listened. There were prank callers pestering lately. They’d come through at all hours and they were ugly. Grunts, howls, and something that sounded like raw meat being ripped apart. Tonight, however, was the mute treatment.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Little early for Halloween.’

It was October 7th. Maybe they were starting early, and who better to harangue than the grieving alcoholic with a son in Tabor Hill Cemetery, and a wife wasting away, comatose, without hope of reprieve in Jerusalem Hospital. He couldn’t hear any breathing from the earpiece, but he knew someone was on the line. Matthew was about to unload every degenerate slur he could concoct when a voice finally spoke. It was paper thin and pathetic.

‘Don’t go back.’

Matthew swung his legs around the bedside. ‘Speak up.’

Light giggles turned moaning sobs.

A sliver of violet light split the night beyond the north window. Matthew shook his head, unsure of what he’d seen.

‘I don’t want any more calls,’ he tried gruffly. ‘You hear me? I’m talk—’

Quickening breaths on the other end.

‘Just tell me who you are,’ Matthew pleaded.

A long pause.

‘Don’t go back,’ the voice whispered.

***

Sleep was a long time finding him after that, but when it came it was mercifully dreamless. Since the accident, all he ever dreamed were hospital corridors, endless, warm, and lit like the middle of rush hour when gurneys trundled, and heels clacked, and telephones rang on infinite loop. There would never be anyone around, yet he could sense somebody watching him in those dreams, in the dark spaces, from vacant wards. He always woke just as the walls merged into blue from cream. He knew where that led – Jerusalem ICU.

Matthew opened his eyes in the cold room and gripped the duvet close. He needed to get himself together. He knew it. Outside the staff-room of Thorne Medical, he’d heard one of the nurses gossiping to Joyce the receptionist. It’s been nine months, when is he going to get over it? she’d whispered. I know, I know, Joyce had exclaimed breathlessly. He didn’t go in for coffee that day or any day after for that matter.

Some half-dead flies buzzed a kind of furious dance in the space between the wardrobe and the curtains. In the room, this coffin-like room where once love had lain, all he had now was a sudden urge to find the man who’d stolen his wallet, or his phone which he knows were left on a stool in some sordid little bar somewhere. And why was there a broken cigarette in the pocket of his jeans this morning. Or was that the gas cylinder he’d heard hissing in the kitchen…? The flashing images of his night continued, these images which would never kill but only maim. The wolf’s head, tongue lolling, in the window. But just a purple shadow thrown by a streetlamp, the wolf’s mouth open, empty eyes spinning out in black pits. The shuddering realness of his DTs, the awareness of the streetlamp, his sense of the close night, the stale air in the room, and yet the shapes each time becoming more curious, more fantastic.

He remembered the subway in Cambridge Massachusetts. They’d been travelling on a car to Arlington after he’d exhausted all the bars on Brattle St. Waking to the rattle of the tracks, the sway of the car, the night-dark windows, with haggard men, kind of hobos, arrogant wasters, hanging lazily on handholds and leaning on upright bars, leering at him. At them! Celina beside him speaking with her reasonable voice, the tone she probably used when she was teaching, she telling him once proudly: You have to be firm, show them who’s boss… But these men, six of them, hoodies and flea-bitten noses, fingerless gloves and rotten teeth, moth-eaten overcoats, one of which was once a very good cut but was no longer that. Men of the barrel-fire night, of wet pavements and frozen doorsteps.

Money and keys! Money and Keys! one of them said, jumping in toward Celina.

Laughter.

The one in the well-cut coat, which was no longer that, they’d called him professor, was muttering to himself, then shouted in a strange falsetto: A night of W.C. Fieldsian proportions!

Pop, Pop – Baom! another cried, throwing sloppy shadow-punches, stupid from drink.

We’re getting off, Celina’d said, standing as the car began to slow.

I’ll get you off!

Laughter.

The car was slowing by the platform of the subway, the tiled walls visible in the spaces between some cement pillars, and above to the left of a telephone-kiosk was plastered a loud advert of a clown slathering béarnaise sauce on a rare porkchop. HYSTERICAL JOE EATS PORK, SO SHOULD YOU! FULL OF FAT AND PROTEIN AND LYSINE! Something about the advert, the garish colours, the ribald clown, the red mouth, the bloated lips parted to reveal the brown idiot-teeth. Whatever it was, it sparked his temper. He lunged, his teeth sinking in the professor’s face as they wrestled to the floor of the car, Celina screaming, the professor screaming, the men cursing as they kicked Matthew unconscious.

Hours later on the steps to the hotel, reeking of drink, missing a tooth, his nose broken in two places, the doorman had said. Lady! You can’t bring him in here. Take him to the homeless shelter! She’d been crying, crying softly. He remembered how she cried.

They’d returned home to a cool Philadelphia autumn. He’d brought her to the Belmont Plateau, where the leaves of the lone maple were yellow on an overcast sky. And how caring, how sharp she was to begin matching grey and yellow in her wardrobe, her street wear: a grey cap and yellow gloves, a grey jumper under a yellow coat, all because he’d admired the colour of the tree on the sky—

A window smashed downstairs.

He jolted, switching on his bedside lamp. But maybe he imagined it? Delirium? He waited, listening. There was no further disturbance below. He was beginning to relax when he heard someone coming up the stairs, fast, two at a time.

He leant over, rooting under the bed and grabbed a four-kilo dumbbell. ‘Cops are on their way!’ he said. Patient footsteps approached along the landing and stopped outside his door, which opened quickly.

A hooded man, in a balaclava, stood on the threshold. His height was average, but his frame was dangerously built, and his big shoulders trembled with amusement. ‘Every time,’ he said laughing. ‘Always the cops,’ he shouted, then stilled instantly quiet. ‘That’s not true,’ he went on, nearing the bed. ‘Once, I was threatened with a dirty syringe. And the mess I made of him, Grierson!’

‘What do you want?’

‘You.’

Matthew sprang out of the bed, dropped his dumbbell, ran to the window, the dresser, anywhere. His back was turned when the invader caught hold of him with unnatural strength. Matthew struggled, tried to bite before sinking to his knees. When the stranger spoke, calmly, his voice was eerily familiar.

‘Grierson,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe how weak you …’

The rest was lost as the stranglehold took him.

***

Smell was the first thing, a sweet opiate that made him slightly high. He woke face down in warm moist earth. Every draught he took from it was filled with iron and heavily oxygenated. His lungs filled like hot-air balloons. He felt good, incredible even, and rising to one knee, he noticed his lower back was pain free. He’d had an irreparable disc injury from playing hockey at university years ago. His bottom spinal facets had since become calcified and every movement thereafter was like a sharp knife into the little V-shape above his tailbone. Now, however, the agony was completely gone.

A sweeping field of blue sun orchids stretched out ahead. The sky looked carved from carnival glass; azure blue falling to chalk magenta, and heartache indigo turning vermilion, all cascading in a wondrous kaleidoscope. At the edge of the field stood a hundred-foot tree. The bole was twisted and rilled with an alchemist’s dream of liquid gold. Part gingko, part olive, and more – a melange of all things. Puce drupes swelled amongst bifid leaves which mimicked and coalesced with that sorcerer’s sky. A balmy breeze rose across the plain rustling foliage and tingling ethereal resonance from a million unseen bells. A hand fell lightly on his shoulder.

‘Grierson.’

It was the intruder, and this man could well have passed for Matthew’s identical twin. The doppelgänger was different in ways and though of the same height, sable hair, and equal facial structure, he was of disparate stock. Where Matthew was erring toward pudgy, this other was lean and defined. Where Matthew’s face was soft, the other’s was hard and cold – fashioned in a kiln of malcontent and brutality – a man you would cross the street to avoid. The doppelgänger said no more and pointed at the tree.

Afterward, Matthew couldn’t say why he started to walk, aiming for that mass of trunk and branches and fruit. It was like a magnetic force, tugging deep beneath his heart. It felt natural. Neat drills in the rust-coloured earth allowed for some manner of pathway through the orchids. He couldn’t register the length he travelled. Measure and time were indefinable here. The tree appeared to rest at least a mile away, yet he came upon it after taking no more than seven or eight steps. Matthew craned his neck to look at it, and a flood of vertigo washed him. The trunk towered endlessly, and a pale light pulsed from the bed of its Y-shaped axis.

He began to climb. Found easy holds in the ridged bark. And closing on the point where the trunk split into great reaching arms, he felt as if his brain was trying to push its way out of his skull. The sky dropped bitter dark, casting instant night. He glanced around behind him. The double arc of twin moons loomed on the black horizon. Consciousness blurred as if he’d been suddenly clasped with a mask of chloroform. He was falling and, while he fell, the stranger’s familiar voice called out.

‘Not yet … not yet … closer.

Matthew woke on his living-room floor with the worst headache he’d ever had. Crawling, as if in thick glue, he made his way to the couch where an envelope lay on a cushion. Sitting, envelope in hand, he looked up at the mirror; the crack remained, but the man-shaped stain was gone.

•   C H A P T E R   T W O   •

Sinem

She was patient and selfless. For one who had given up so much at the age of twenty-seven, no bitterness tainted her features. Her father hailed from Turkey and moved to the Languedoc region of her mother’s France after they’d fallen in love during a sightseeing tour of Istanbul. Their ethnic combination had gifted Sinem a sun-kissed tan, copper-tinted black hair, and treacle irises that contrasted heavily with the sheer white of her eyes. She inherited her father’s predisposition to eat well and yet maintain a physique that suggested a form of athletics or gym training. She was beautiful, in an easy natural way that made people smile when they met her.

Sinem’s nephew Jordi lay in the crib by her bed. He looked so delicate at eight-months, tucked into the duck-embroidered blanket his mother had knitted. It made her heart ache to know he would never meet his parents, one of whom was her older brother Pascal.

There had been a terrible accident last winter in the Fjärland valleys of Norway, where Pascal and his wife Isabelle had taken a driving holiday for some overdue time alone. Their car had spun out of control on a hairpin turn near the Bojabreen glacier, hurtling them across a verge in the road and into an icy fjord. The vehicle was on its roof when the emergency responders found it. Sinem had been playing with Jordi when she was told that Pascal and Isabelle were dead. She forced herself to believe they were unconscious when their car left the road. It was the only way she could accept it.

Hard decisions needed to be made, and Sinem knew her parents were past the age of caring for a new baby, as were Isabelle’s. But what could they do? Put Jordi in care and allow him to be raised by strangers? Visit him at weekends, once per month, and eventually every second year? Being forgotten as the years went by. Of course, she could move on with her career, maybe keep an eye on Jordi from the outside, perhaps as an unseen benefactor? Who’d just be known for a box of birthday cards and strained phone calls. The family who didn’t fight for him. These were not the values she was raised by. She affirmed that Jordi would know a mother, and he would bear the name Akan.

After taking sole guardianship of Jordi, Sinem stepped down from her management position at the company she worked for, without question or thought for her own ambitions. Pascal had left provisions and the insurance settlement from his passing allowed her to keep her upmarket apartment in Riverbank Square, perched high, with an easterly view over the Delaware. She took part-time work at a Mexican restaurant on South 13th St, which was just a twenty-minute drive from her condo, and the arrangement granted her as much time as possible with Jordi.

It’s simple and sufficient. That’s all we need for now, she’d say when her friends inquired as to how the change was going. What mattered was that they were alive, and they were together.

This week she was bothered. Jordi was thirsty all the time, his lips were dry, and his complexion appeared more flushed than ruddy. All along he was so good to sleep through the night from nine at night until four in the morning when he woke for his feed, and slept again until seven-thirty. Then the nights came when it seemed no amount would slake him. During the day he cried more, and his temperature read high almost constantly. Yasmin next door was a young mother, and she suggested it might be a fever or a touch of colic that should pass of its own accord.

Babies are temperamental when out of sync, she’d said.

It didn’t make Sinem feel any better though, and Jordi’s next check-up wasn’t scheduled until next week. That wouldn’t do. She called Thorne Medical, requesting an urgent appointment. The receptionist said that Sinem’s regular doctor, Ersilia Rosa, had the day off. Would she see a Dr Grierson? Sinem said she would. He must be good if he works for Thorne, she thought.

Sinem phoned the evening waitress Daniela to cover her shift in the restaurant. Dani was sweet and was usually glad to take anything extra that could help with her fees at University of Pennsylvania. She’d met Jordi a few times and adored him.

‘Make sure to call me after the doctor sees him, OK?’ Dani said as somebody urged her off the phone.

Sinem dressed Jordi in mittens, fleece coat, and a floppy-eared hat. It stressed her to feel the baked clamminess of his skin. She held him for a few minutes by the windows, watching the mist rise in grey ribbons on the quayside. It was a cold day in the city.

***

Thorne Medical opened at nine that morning. Sinem arrived fifteen minutes before the first rush of patients and went straight to reception.

‘Good morning, Joyce. I’m here to see Dr Grierson.’

‘Morning, you two,’ Joyce greeted. ‘Dr Grierson’s is the second door on the right.’

‘Thank you,’ Sinem said, moving off down the corridor. She nodded to Janet who was just going into her office. Janet returned a mannequin’s smile and closed her door marked, Administration.

‘Good morning, Sinem,’ David Thorne said merrily, as he jogged past with his laptop.

‘Hello, Dr Thorne,’ Sinem said smiling.

‘Is Dr Rosa here?’ he asked, pausing to tack a roster on the notice board. ‘Hi, Jordi,’ he said grinning.

‘No,’ Sinem said. ‘We’re here to see …’ she indicated the nameplate on a door beside her: Dr Matthew Grierson.

‘OK,’ David said, as she went inside.

The doctor within the office, who was in his mid-to-late thirties, appeared oblivious to her entry. He was holding a black card, working it around in his hands like he couldn’t quite decide what to do with it.

Sinem cleared her throat. ‘Dr Grierson.’

He flinched, and again she wished Dr Rosa had been available. Grierson was already out of his chair though, offering his hand.

‘Matthew Grierson,’ he said shakily. ‘And you are … Sinem and Jordi Akan.’

Sinem could see that he was nervous, but she’d once managed an employee who’d suffered from a debilitating anxiety disorder and he’d excelled at his job. ‘That’s us,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind seeing us on such short notice,’ she added, putting him in the driving seat.

‘Not at all,’ he said, offering them a soft chair near his desk.

‘Thank you, doctor,’ Sinem replied, and sat with Jordi on her lap.

‘So, what can I do for you?’ He arranged his chair to face them and seemed more settled now. Just like her past underling, you’d never guess he had any problems once engrossed in his work. The real person came out from behind the curtain and so it was here. His eyes were quite heavy though, like he lacked a good night’s sleep.

‘It’s Jordi,’ Sinem began. ‘I mean, it’s probably nothing, maybe a fever or something … colic?’ She was reaching, she knew. ‘Anyway, I just wanted to have him checked. He’s been so thirsty. And the tiredness,’ she exclaimed. ‘He cries a lot more than normally, and his temperature has read high over the past week.’

Dr Grierson examined the baby while she held him, and his face was set like he’d already found the problem. Sinem felt something twist in her