The key turned in Tovey's hand as he crossed the yard, He felt it twitch like a living thing, an electric rod, the jolt from which made him start, half in fear half in fascination. It was as if the old, rusty key knew where it was going and was somehow throbbing in warm, joyful anticipation. Tovey shrugged off the feeling, surely it was nothing more than the involuntary spasm of a hand pulsing and sympathetically resonating with the bated excitement of his purpose- it could be nothing more.
He eyed the faded oak door with its iron serpents and black, studded nails and knew intuitively that somehow beyond it must lie the reason for everything that had so far transpired at Butterkeld. The Well House.... this must be it, what else could it be? Above the door he could see a stone slab with a weathered inscription, illegible- scored and scoured by the elements long ago, leaving nothing but patterns on mossy grey stones. To either side of the door were lancet windows, walled up in recent years and giving the whole the appearance of a sad face with blinded, sightless eyes of red, crumbling brick, incongruous against the venerable grey of the whole. Above the door Tovey could make out a small, circular opening high up in the gable end, a mercy of light no doubt accidently left by those nameless workmen who had obviously set to with the intention of entombing the building in perpetual night.
For a moment Tovey hesitated. Perhaps it could, after all, wait until later, wait for a secure day when reason might not be so beset on all sides by fears and uncertainties. But no! Tovey knew he must act now. He laughed aloud to himself, half embarrassed by his childish fears, by his apprehensions concerning the nameless destiny which he might find beyond this old, fossilized door. In the end (as always with Tovey!) reason prevailed and with a gruff mumble about being 'bloody silly!' he inserted the massive key into the stiff old lock, wrenched it round, and with a push of his shoulder flung the door wide......
A cold thrill ran through Tovey's body as the stygian gloom within spilled out into the summer sunlight like a dark, spreading stain. He hung there, trapped, frozen, mesmerised- like one suspended in time on the threshold of some vast abyss, some infinite void. It was as if the world had stopped turning, as if the stars and endless, wheeling constellations of an ever expanding universe had simply stopped dead, like a clock with a broken spring. And it was somehow familiar, like deja vu, like a direct encounter with that nameless, faceless one whose vast silences he knew so well yet could not name, that inner reality that likes to give the lie to those vain dreams we like to call our lives. Tovey could no longer hear the birds singing or the rustling of the trees in the wood; a total blanket of silence had engulfed his soul, the clamour and soundless song of eternity.
Tovey opened his mouth to yell, but no sounds came forth, his cry was like the ringing bell in the jar after the air has been pumped out. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, like an action replay in slow motion, Tovey began to move forward through the door, a tiny oasis of moving warmth in a frozen suspended universe. All around him it seemed as if space and time had simply stopped.
In front of him Tovey could see a hazy white spot, and could perceive a glistening on the walls- frozen stars in the gloom of a crystal cave. The spot drew nearer, a shaft of light reflecting on a sheet of plate glass, spread beneath a shining spear of frozen stalactite, seemingly emanating from the gaping mouth of a hideous troll. Tovey walked towards it like one in a dream, reaching out his hand to touch the shining virgin crystal.
Instantly a high pitched hum, like the ethereal oscillation of a tuning fork emanated from the ripples which slowly began to radiate outwards from his point of contact with the hitherto unsullied surface of the glass. The ripples slowly expanded and hard upon the heels of the ringing came a faint hiss, like the distant warning of an incoming tide. The hiss grew louder, nearer, and sped past him with a clamouring, rushing, roar. Now it was Tovey who was motionless as the air seemed to burst all around him with the brutal fury of the living, breathing world. An expanding balloon, an unborn child being roughly thrust from its mother's womb, a tiny matrix of pulsing sinew, blood and bone plummetting headlong into the babbling bustling abyss of life. "Tovey!" Behind him a faint, distant echoing voice seemed to be calling his name, and, as the voice grew louder, more urgent, Tovey, summoning up an agony of will finally wrenched at his body and spun it round, sweat on his brow, his heart thudding violently in his breast....
"TOVEY!" Silhouetted in the bright shaft of light which flooded through the open door stood his wife Susan.
"Are you alright love? You look ghastly!"
He did and it showed . He struggled to regain his composure.
"I think so love. Just had a bit of a funny turn that's all. Felt a bit faint. How long have I been in here?"
"How long? No time. I saw you open the door, you went in as I came across the yard. What on earth happened?"
" Oh just felt a bit dizzy that's all. It's been a bit of hectic day I suppose."
"Hey look at this.... it's beautiful!"
Tovey turned round. He could now make out clearly the lofty interior of the well house. It was, as he had been told, like a church- a church crossed with a grotto. Above him spread a vaulted roof, seemingly hewn from the rock, and before him was the 'ghastly troll'- a carved stone head in the centre of the wall from the mouth of which poured a frothing, noisily babbling torrent of crystal clear water. Above the head was an inscription, mounted between two miniature classical pillars, the text of which had long ago become illegible. The water fell into a small stone cistern with three overflow niches in its rim, obviously fashioned to direct its flow. To the left and right of the well were two recesses, each containing a large stone trough filled with springwater to a depth of about three feet- 'big enough to take a bath in' Tovey thought. The water from the central overflow spilled into a deep channel which ran down towards the entrance, bisecting the slate tiled floor, at which point it disappeared beneath the flagstones of the yard. Along each side of the well house Tovey could discern stone bench seats, set along the wall, and high above the central cistern way up in the roof he could make out what was perhaps the strangest thing of all- a chink of light betraying the prescence of a deep mossy cleft in the overhanging rock into which spilled the green boughs of a rowan tree.
Tovey traced the line of the central channel back to the door, following it out into the blinding sunlight of the yard, the summer heat irradiating his clammy, chilled limbs. He examined the first flagstone outside the door- it's joints were filled with fresh cement!
"So that's where Frank Waddington plumbed in the water! The crafty bugger! He simply raised this flagstone and took the pipes from this water channel!"
His wife frowned. "So you mean, John, that all our water supplies come from here?"
Tovey grinned. "That's about the size of it love."
Her frown deepened. "It's untreated. What if we come down with some loathsome bug or something?"
"I don't think there's much chance of that love. Look at it... its fresh, crystal clear and icy cold. Its straight off the moors! All the same I think he's got a cheek for not telling us."
"Do you think we should complain to him ?"
Tovey shrugged. "Its not going to do much good is it? This is the only water supply. It's a case of like it or lump it. It's me who's the fool. I should have realised that you can't get mains water to a house this far off the beaten track. It was the only thing he could do I suppose."
His remaining thoughts Tovey kept to himself... the possible reasons as to why Frank Waddington had deliberately stopped short of the well house for example. The obvious thing would have been to plumb in the water directly from the main cistern of the well - it was ready made for the job. Only one thing had prevented Waddington from doing this- his fear of going inside. That was the reason and Tovey knew it.
Tovey gazed across the yard at the dark open door of the Well House. Shafts of evening sunlight were now slanting through the trees on the low crag. A gentle breeze rustled their branches, and beyond the lazy insect hum he could hear the distant murmer of water. Everything seemed serene, at peace, just as before.
But it wasn't. There was nothing he could see to indicate it, but Tovey knew instinctively that something had changed, and things would never be the same again. For a moment time had spun off its track and had stood still. Now things were seemingly back to normal, So why did he feel that everything had slipped over onto a different track, intuitively bound for a different and unfathomable destination? Everything seemed the same- the dell, the trees, the rushing waterfall , so why the feeling of living in a parallel existence in a world same yet not the same as the one he had known? Tovey gazed apprehensively across the yard- at the dark stain, at the catalyst of the change, full knowing that the serpent door had been opened, and whatever had been sealed behind it had escaped and was now free to work its will. He gazed at Susan. She was smiling.