Evil Star

crucifix-ion. Why did religion have to be so dark and cruel?
    As he arrived at the apse, just in front of the altar where the east and west formed a cross, a man stood up and ges-tured to him. The man had been sitting in a pew, his head half hidden in his hands. Matt recognized him at once. Overweight, with silver hair in tufts on either side of a round, bald head. Ruddy cheeks and small, watery eyes. The man was wearing a crumpled suit and no tie. There was a pack-age, wrapped in brown paper, in his hand.
    "Matthew Freeman?" he asked.
    "I'm Matt." Matt never used his full name.
    “You know who I am?"
    "William Morton."
    Matt could see at once that the bookseller was a very different man from the one he had seen in the television interview. Something had cut through his arrogance and self-regard. Both physically and mentally he seemed to have shrunk. Now that they were closer, Matt could see that he hadn't shaved. Silver stubble was spreading across his cheeks and down to his neck. And he hadn't changed his clothes in days. He smelled bad. He was sweating.
    “You're very young." Morton blinked a couple of times. “You're just a child."

    Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star
    "What were you expecting?" Matt didn't try to keep the annoyance out of his voice. He didn't like being called a child. He still didn't know what this was all about.
    "They didn't tell you?" Morton asked.
    "They told me you had a book. A diary ..." Matt glanced at the brown paper package and Morton drew it closer to him, holding it more tightly. "Is that it?"
    Morton didn't answer.
    "They said you wanted to meet me," Matt went on. "They want to buy it from you."
    "I know what they want!" Morton glanced left and right. Suddenly he was suspicious. “You came here alone?" he hissed.
    “Yes."
    "Come this way. . .."
    Before Matt could say anything, Morton scurried along the line of the pews and began to move down the side of the church, leaving the other worshippers behind. Matt fol-lowed slowly. It occurred to him that the bookseller might be a little mad. But at the same time he knew it was worse than that. He thought back to the farmer, Tom Burgess, who had spoken to him outside the nuclear reactor at Lesser Mailing and who had later died. He had been just the same.
    As he walked into the darkness in the farthest corner of the church, Matt realized that William Morton was scared out of his wits.
    Morton waited until Matt had arrived, then began to speak, the words tumbling over each other in a soft gabble. There was nobody else around in this part of the church. Presumably that was why he had chosen it.

    Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star
    "I should never have bought the diary," he said. "But I knew what it was, you see. I'd heard of the Old Ones. I knew a little of their history . . . not very much, of course. Nobody knew very much. But when I saw the diary in an antique shop in Cordoba, I recognized it immedi-ately. There were people who said it didn't even exist. And many more who thought that the author — St. Joseph of Cordoba —
    was mad. The Mad Monk. That's what they called him.
    "And there it was! Incredibly. Waiting for me to pick it up. The only written history of the Old Ones. Raven's Gate. And the five!" As he spoke this last word, his eyes widened and he stared at Matt. "It was all there," he went on. "The beginning of the world, our world. The first great war. It was only won by a trick.. . ."
    "Is that the diary, there?" Matt asked a second time. This was all moving too quickly for him.
    "I thought it would be worth a fortune!" Morton whis-pered. "It's what every bookseller dreams of. . . finding a first edition or the only copy of a book that has been lost to the world. And this was much, much more than that. I went on television and I told everyone what I had in my hands. I boasted — and that was the biggest mistake I could have made."
    "Why?"
    "Because ..."
    Somewhere in the church, someone dropped a hymn book. It fell to the floor with a thunderous echo, and Morton's head whipped round as if a shot had been fired. Matt could see the sinews bulging on the side of his neck. The bookseller looked as if he were on the edge of a heart attack. He waited a moment until everything was silent again.
    "I should have been more careful," Morton continued, speaking in a Horowitz, Anthony - [Gatekeepers 02] - Evil Star whisper. "I should have read the diary first. Maybe then I would have