The Door in the Moon Read Free

experts.
    He tried to yell, fought so hard a flask toppled from a bench and smashed, a star of glass shards.
    â€œHold him! Hold him still!” The small man walked up to the mirror and pushed back one dark sleeve of his coat.
    Around his wrist curled a silver snake bracelet with a stone of amber.
    Jake swore, kicked free, turned to flee, but the tall man gripped him with wrathful ease. Already the mirror had opened into a throbbing emptiness, the wide black doorway into time. Jake yelled,
“No. No! You can’t do this!”
    â€œJust watch us, Jake.”
    They grabbed him, one on each arm, and before them was nothing but darkness, and they forced him forward and leaped into it. But just as Jake felt the throbbing terror of the mirror envelop him, his eyes widened in astonishment.
    A small hand, cold and invisible as a glass glove, had slipped into his.
    And
journeyed
with him.

    The cat waited until the black vacancy had collapsed, until the room had stopped shaking, until the mirror stood silent and solid. Its own fur and whiskers were flattened with the terror of the implosion, its green eyes wide.
    Then it padded to a secret infra-red beam that crossed the floor, and very deliberately, put a paw on it.
    Every alarm in the house exploded into noise.

2
    I have long forgotten where I was born. Maybe I had no birth. Maybe memory cannot last the centuries I have endured. In truth I have journeyed among beings that were hardly men, even unto the courts of kings and wizards. Always I sought wisdom, from chained dragon, from forbidden tract, from demon and angel.
    I have read the great stones. I have stolen the apple from the Tree.
    And out of all my sorcery I have made that which will destroy the world.
    From
The Scrutiny of Secrets
by Mortimer Dee
    W HARTON’S DREAM WAS definitely a nightmare.
    He was back in the stark white classrooms of Compton’s School, standing, in some ridiculous pajamas, before a class of bored and belligerent boys. Lounging at the front desk, wearing a shirt, tie, and slim gray trousers, was Summer.
    The faery creature propped her small bare feet on a chair and looked around curiously. “Hello, George! So this is where you used to work. It’s a bit grim.”
    He ignored her, and cleared his throat. “Gentlemen, please! This term we’ll be studying Shakespeare’s greatest comedy,
A Midsummer
—”
    â€œMy play!” Summer blew him a graceful kiss. “George, you’re doing my play. How very sweet of you!”
    The boys sniggered. Wharton glared. He knew this dream. He loathed this dream. Because, any minute now, all hell would break loose.
    â€œYou know”—Summer swung her legs down and stood—“it’s so lovely being in your dream. Venn only dreams about Leah, and Gideon isn’t allowed dreams anymore. But yours are so easy, George.”
    She reached out a red-nailed finger and touched his pajama lapel. A white rose sprouted from the buttonhole. “Let’s do my play. Shall we?”
    Before he could answer, he felt his ears grow, his nose thicken. His hands clenched up into hooves, he sprouted a coat of velvety gray hair. He opened his mouth and all that came out was a startled bray.
    Summer giggled helplessly. “I always knew you could act, George.”
    He was nothing but a donkey-headed man in pajamas, and the boys roared with delight as he shook his head and stamped and hee-hawed his wrath, until suddenly the school fire bell erupted into sound, and he sat up so fast in bed that he almost cricked his neck.
    For a moment hot humiliation was a sweat all over him. He put both hands to his ears, bemused.
    The bedroom door crashed open. “Alarms!” Piers gasped. “Intruders!
Go!
”
    Army training kicked in. Wharton was out of bed in an instant, trousers dragged on, dressing gown grabbed. He opened the wardrobe, pulled out the shotgun, loaded both barrels. “Who? How did they get