CHAPTER SIX: THE FEARFUL DOOR

Griselda arrives at the back door of Scrumblenose University

   Scrumblenose University had been established way back in medieval times by a King who was too fond of divorces and associated head-loppings, and as an institution it had been intended from the outset to be the mightiest seat of learning on the planet, but right from the beginning things started to go wrong.

The first catastrophe had involved fire. Not of the “burn the building down and rescue damsels in distress from high towers” variety but the will o' the wisp species that spooks many a drunken old slob on his way past eerily nocturnal glows over stinking marshland. It was all over the building, which being back then a wooden structure burnt down bit by bit over a period of about a century, it eventually had to be rebuilt in more permanent and less flammable stone. Nobody back then questioned the manner of the burning. People didn't question much back then in case their questions appeared to go against the currently accepted understanding of gods.

That may have been looked on as unfortunate at the time, but the mighty walls of the edifice when it was rebuilt meant it was virtually indestructible, and generations of students had been condemned to suffer behind its Stygian ramparts as centuries had passed and little (if anything) changed. Not even the Principal changed. He was an ogre of a man with a beard that swept the floor before him as, hunch-backed, he spooked his way along the cold corridors, oversized black gown trailing behind him and an iciness that seemed to frost the very fabric of the building accompanying him. Rumour suggested that he was above a hundred years old, but rumour was wrong. He was much older than that. He had reigned supreme in that dreadful college since its medieval inception and although generations came and went nobody took particular notice of the hunchback in charge. He was all-but invisible and his name was Fistule Stroggleoff, almost always referred to as “the Professor” even though no authority anywhere had awarded him that honour.

And it was to this place with this man in charge that our beloved Griselda Entwhistle had come. She stood there gazing at its craggy exterior and couldn't help wondering where all its windows had gone. The walls were huge, stretching high above her head, and unbroken by anything save the porter's door, a gigantic oaken affair, studded with bolts of iron, and it looked about as hospitable as a condemned cell but without the luxury of a rope. And that uninviting door was firmly shut when Griselda moved up to it. There was, after all, nowhere else to go.

“This is fantastic!” she breathed. “I never believed a university could look to be such a marvellous home from home! But first of all, before I do anything, I'd better become my niece! If this is a modern University then I'd better become a rock chick with a brain!”

She muttered a few inconsequential nothings, and a voice from everywhere and nowhere whispered into her ear, “are you sure, my dear? This doesn't look to be the kind of place where a nubile young beauty with a pert bosom and peek-a-boo undies might be welcome!”

She glanced back at the black stone smeared with an age of dirty rainwater and other less desirable fluids and it struck her that the voice might have something. But she had made up her mind. She was going to become a priestess so she had to go through the chore of being a student first, and she was going to enjoy it: the sex, the drugs and the rock 'n' roll, all were on her mental list �" and maybe a bit of learning as well.

“It looks exactly the place!” she snapped. “and I want to look like a tart ready for the taking, so do as I ask or I'll find another devil to help me!”

“Oh, all right,” whispered the voice, peeved. “But don't say I didn't warn you!”

She never knew, not then and not ever, whether that voice emanated from the world around her or the spirit within. It was a voice and she disliked the idea that she was hearing voices that weren't there because that was a sign of insanity, so she concluded some mysterious force in the Universe was addressing her.

She felt the familiar tingling sensation as her flesh metamorphosed into that of her entirely fictional niece with a factual body. The lines on her face and around her eyes smoothed out, her back straightened and she assumed a shape more usual in the teenage population than little old ladies in their nineties. Her hair became alive and whatever garment was trying to restrain her pert breasts was in danger of giving up the ghost. Then her black skirts shortened and rippled and changed to a rich Royal Stewart tartan, and became the most fetching mini-kilt on planet Earth, her fusty blouse and dingy vest became an open-necked t-shirt (maybe a little too open-necked for modesty) and she looked every bit the young vamp about town with her eyes open for a good time. She was perfectly aware of what she looked like. It was a metamorphosis she had used many times and the very reflection of her own young shape in a mirror made her almost fancy herself.

She looked down at herself then pulled a small vanity looking-glass from nowhere and examined her face in that.

“Practically perfect,” she sighed. “You are a clever old devil.”

“I hope you know what you're doing, but I doubt it,” huffed the hidden voice into her ear (either outside the ear or inside the ear, she didn't know which) before it disappeared in a flash of white noise.

“The trouble with you is you're jealous,” growled Griselda. But it was too late. Her devilish assistant had gone.

“Well then, here goes,” she murmured to herself, and she marched right up to the enormous oak door. It was rugged and ancient and the biggest door she had ever seen, as well as possibly the oldest. No bell push or rope adorned it, and the iron studs were thick with a crumbling red rust that was the stuff of ages.

There was a small sheet of paper pinned to it, one she hadn't noticed from a distance because the paper was almost exactly the same shade of brown as was the ancient door.

“KNOCK AND WAIT,” it instructed her.

“Not the warmest of welcomes,” she sniffed, but she clenched her fist and knocked the door three times. “Ouch! That hurt!” she complained to herself, shaking the hand that had knocked and examining it for splinters and traces of her own precious blood.

The sound of that knock, though, travelled way past the door and into whatever rooms and halls existed beyond it. She could hear it go. Never before had she been able to hear any kind of sound travel into the darkness of an unknown building. But from that travelling knock she built up, in her mind, an impression of dark halls and secret rooms, of shadowy places where all manner of weird spirits lurked, of long forgotten deep passages leading to lost dungeons and crumbling rooms. She shook her head to dislodge the image.

Then the sounds were replaced by others. From beyond the vast oaken edifice came a scraping sound as if some great insect was pulling its bloated thorax over a flagged passageway.

“Interesting,” murmured Griselda, cocking her pretty young head to one side and concentrating on the sound, which rapidly grew louder and more mysterious.

Then there was an almost deafening scraping sound and Griselda knew that some great bolt was being forced open. And she was right, for the sound was followed by a creaking squeak as the enormous door slowly swung ajar.

Griselda shivered with anticipation. This was a mystery and there was nothing on planet earth that she liked more than she liked mysteries. A good mystery was and long had been grist to her intellectual mill. But she had little time for thoughts of satisfaction, for a mean little face appeared in the opening left by the door.

She stared at it. Topping a pale face was a lank mop of fair hair, and it moved in a random kind of way as if masses of small insects were crawling in it. But it was the sallow face that attracted her. Whiter than a death mask, with the thinnest line of red lips slashed across it, it gazed at her. The expression from those pale eyes made even Griselda shiver. Of all the people she was expecting to be greeted by, this was not him.

“I've come...” she said, hesitantly.

“You've come, dearest?” hissed the pale face.

“I'm … I'm Griselda … I've come to University to study...” she almost stammered, and could have kicked herself for the weakness in her own voice.

“Yes, dear,” whispered the face. “I am the … what would you call me? Janitor? Porter? I am called Hagman.”

“Well, Mr Hagman, I'm here. I've got a letter...”

“Yes, dear.”

“So what … where … who?” Griselda was getting close to be lost for words. She hadn't been at all sure what she had expected of her University, but she was sure none of her mental images had included this weird man and this heavy, oaken door.

“So where..?” she asked after a moment of dreadful silence during which the strange man had breathed audibly and questioningly.

“Where, dear?”

“Where do I go?”

“Go, dear? Yes, let me see... you have come to the back door, where my little lodge is. That really is unusual! The bus usually drops our wonderful students off at the front! The student entrance is round there,” (he pointed to his right), “a considerable walk round cold, cold stone. But come in, child, and I will show you. I will take you to the main entrance where you will be able to sign the Book of Entry and enjoy your Freshers' day. Come in, come in! This lofty house of learning has been waiting a long time for one as �" er �" tender and delicious as you - to join its long history of academics and learners. Come in, my dear, and follow me...”

And Griselda Entwhistle followed the grotesque little man as he led her through the dark corridors that formed this part of Scrumblenose University.

And she knew, once the door clanged shut behind her, that whatever the future offered there would be no going back.

The passages were dark with barely a glimmer to light the way. She was dimly aware of other passages criss-crossing the one she and the hideous Hagman were padding along, and occasionally, as they passed a yawning side-passage a stench like death wafted into her face and up her nostrils so that even Griselda shivered.

And the pale face of her guide swayed from side to side as he led the way, and she told herself, very firmly, that she'd have to watch this one �" or else!