by Brian Lumley
A pet, a puppy, an accident, she sighed. And some poor child’s heart broken. In Bonnyrig. Just this minute.
The Necroscope felt his own heart give a start; he’d lost so much during his life that the thought of another’s loss, however small, stung him with its poignancy. Or maybe it was just the way his mother had reported the occurrence, so soulfully. Or there again it could be an effect of his heightened emotional awareness. Maybe there was someone he could comfort.
‘Bonnyrig, did you say? Ma, I’ll be going now. I’ll come and see you tomorrow. Maybe you’ll know something by then.’
Take care, son.
Harry stood up, looked up and down the river and across it to the other side. The bright sun had passed behind fluffy, drifting clouds, which was a relief.
He climbed a tottering fence and entered a small copse, and in the dappled heart of the greenery conjured a Möbius door. A moment later and he emerged in a back alley close to the high street in Bonnyrig. And letting his deadspeak sensitivity spread out around him like a fan or cobweb, he searched for a newcomer among the ranks of the dead.
And there it was, close by: a whining yelp in memory of the panic and pain of a few moments ago, and a certain astonishment that the pain was no longer here, and disbelief that the bright day could so quickly turn black and blacker than night. A dumb animal’s perception of sudden death.
Harry understood it very well, for it wasn’t too dissimilar to the reaction of a human being. The only difference being that dogs have neither foreknowledge of nor preoccupation with death, so that their surprise is that much greater. But strike or kick a dog unjustly or cruelly and it will draw back with just the same astonishment, the same disbelief.
Taking a chance that he wasn’t observed, the Necroscope used the Möbius Continuum to follow the pup’s thoughts to their source: a kerbside in the main village street, at a junction where the street turned left on to the main road into Edinburgh. A workday, there weren’t many people about; the handful which had gathered had their backs to Harry anyway where he emerged on to the pavement as if from thin air. And the first thing he saw was the long, dark skidmark burned into the road’s surface.
The pup’s deadspeak thoughts were more desperate now as it realized that it couldn’t extricate itself from this new predicament. There was no feeling, no contact, no light. Where was its God, its young master?
Shh! Harry hushed. It’s OK, boy! It’s all right! Shh!
He moved to the forefront of the handful of onlookers, saw a young boy kneeling there in the gutter, his cheeks shiny with tears, the broken pup dead in his arms. One of the pup’s shoulders was askew and its spine kinked; its right foreleg flopped like a rubber band; its crushed head oozed brain fluid from a torn right ear.
Harry got down on one knee, put an arm round the boy and stroked the dead pet. And again: ‘Shh, boy!’ He comforted both of them. And in his mind the pup’s whines and yelps quietened to a panting whimper. It could feel again. It felt Harry.
But the boy couldn’t be comforted. ‘He’s dead!’ he kept moaning. ‘He’s dead! Paddy’s dead! Why didn’t the car hit me and not Paddy? Why didn’t the car stop?’
‘Where do you live, son?’ Harry asked the boy, a towhead of maybe eight or nine.
The other glanced at him through blurred-blue eyes. ‘Down there.’ He nodded vaguely over his right shoulder. ‘Number seven. We live there, Paddy and me.’
Harry took the dog gently into his arms and stood up. ‘Let’s get him home then,’ he said.
The crowd parted for them and Harry heard someone say, ‘It’s a shame. What a terrible shame!’
‘Paddy’s dead!’ The kid clutched the Necroscope’s elbow as they turned the corner into a narrow, deserted street.
Dead? Yes, he was, but… did he really have to be? You don’t have to be, do you, Paddy?
The deadspeak answer which came back wasn’t quite a bark and it wasn’t quite a word — but it was an agreement. A dog will usually agree with his friends, and rarely if ever disagree with his master. While Harry wasn’t Paddy’s beloved master, he certainly was a new friend.
And the decision was made as quickly as that.
Before they reached the small garden in front of number seven, Harry looked down at the lad and said: ‘What’s your name, son?’
‘Peter.’ The other could scarcely get it out past his tears and the lump in his throat.
‘Peter, I — ‘ Harry jerked to a halt. Play-acting for all he was worth, he glanced at the pet in his arms. ‘ — I think I felt him move!’
The boy’s mouth fell open. ‘Paddy moved? But he’s so bad hurt!’
‘Son, I’m a vet,’ Harry lied. ‘Maybe I can save him. You run quickly now and tell your people what’s happened, and I’ll take Paddy to the surgery. And whatever happens, I’ll be in touch just as soon as I know how bad he is — or how good. OK?’
‘But — ‘
‘Don’t waste time, Peter,’ Harry urged. ‘It’s Paddy’s life, right?’
The other gulped, nodded once, flew to the gate of number seven and through it, and as he vanished pell-mell into the garden Harry conjured a Möbius door. By the time Peter’s Ma came out of the house wringing her hands — came flying to see the vet — Harry was at a different address entirely…
The Necroscope had perhaps too few friends among the living, but one of them was an old potter up in the Pentlands who fired his own kilns. Paddy was absolutely dead, no doubt about that, when Harry handed him over to Hamish McCulloch for calcination in one of his ovens. ‘It’s worth a twenty to me, Hamish,’ he told the old Scot, ‘if you can bring him down to ashes. Well, if not to me, to his master, a young lad with a broken heart. And I’ll pay you for one of your pots, too, to keep him in.’
‘I reckon we can manage that, Harry.’ Hamish nodded.
‘Only one thing,’ said the Necroscope, ‘be careful how you gather him up. I mean, the young lad wants to know he has all of him, right?’
‘Just as you say.’ Another nod. And Harry waited for five hours until the job was done, but stayed calm and patient and controlled throughout. For now he was the old Harry who, while he had little enough time left of his own, nevertheless had all the time in the world for this.
And anyway it would serve his wider purposes too, wouldn’t it? A little preview of what was to come? A chance to observe any possible… discrepancies? For Trevor Jordan’s brain had also been shattered, and Penny’s flesh had been torn.
At 10:00 p.m. Harry was down in the spacious, dusty cellar of his old house a mile or so out of Bonnyrig. He’d cleaned the place out as best he could and scrubbed an area in the centre of the stone floor until it was smooth as glass. Old Hamish had told him the weight of the dead pup’s body before calcination, so that even if Harry’s grasp of maths had been meagre it wouldn’t be too difficult to calculate pound for pound the various amounts of chemicals required. His knowledge was anything but meagre and he’d calculated it down into grams.
Finally ashes and chemicals were poured together, making a very small mound in the scrubbed floor space, and Harry was ready. And this time there was no pausing to check if his own personal mind-flea was up and jumping, for this time he wasn’t worried for himself but for a little kid who wouldn’t be sleeping easy tonight.
Except now that he was ready it all seemed so ridiculously easy. Was this all there was to it? Had he perhaps forgotten something? Had those weirdly esoteric words he’d uttered down in the bowels of Janos Ferenczy’s ruined castle — that formula out of hideous aeons — really sufficed to bring about… resurrection? And if so, had it been an act of blasphemy? On the other hand, where was the profit in worrying about that now? If the Necroscope was to be damned for his works then he was already damned. And purgatory has to be something like infinity: if you’re to suffer for all eternity, there’s no way you can be made to suffer twice as long. Is there?
As always his arguments went in a circle, making his head spin. But suddenly he
‘knew’ that it was the vampire in him, working to confuse him, and in that same moment he acted and so broke the thread. Directing a rigid finger and his thoughts at the pile of ingredients, he spoke the words of evocation:
‘Y’ai ‘Ng’ngah,
Yog-Sothoth
H’ee-L’geb,
F’ai Throdog
— Uaaahr
It was like putting a lighted match to a pile of incendiary materials: there was phosphorescent light, coloured smoke, a not-quite-sulphur stench. And there was a yelp!
Paddy, called up from his ashes, came staggering from a mushrooming smoke-ring of rapidly dispersing gas or vapour. His ears and stump of a tail were down, trembling, and he wobbled on legs of jelly which seemed incapable of supporting him. He had returned from death and weightlessness — from incorporeity — to life and substantiality in a moment, but his pup’s legs were already unused to it.
‘Paddy,’ the Necroscope whispered, going down on one knee. ‘Paddy — here, boy!’ And the little dog fell down, stood up, shook himself so as almost to fall again, and came to him.
Black and white, short in the leg, floppy-eared, a mongrel entirely — and entirely alive!
… Was he?
Paddy, the Necroscope spoke again, this time in deadspeak. But there was no answer.
Paddy lived. Truly.
Half an hour later Harry delivered Paddy to house number seven of a row of neat terraced houses in Bonnyrig. He didn’t mean to stay, would escape immediately if he could, but there were things he needed to know. About Paddy. About Paddy’s character. Was he the same dog exactly?
And apparently he was. Certainly Peter thought so. Paddy’s master had been ready for bed for an hour, but he wouldn’t go until he’d heard from his ‘vet’. And Paddy’s return was a miracle to him, though only the Necroscope knew how much of a miracle.
Peter’s father was a tall, thin, callused man, but a kind one. ‘The boy told us he thought Paddy must be dead,’ he said, pouring Harry a liberal whisky, after Peter and his pup had disappeared for the night. ‘Broken bones, blood and brains from his ear, a spine all out of joint — it had us worried. He loves that pup.’
‘It looked a lot worse than it was,’ Harry answered. ‘The pup was unconscious, which made his limbs flop; there was some blood from a few scratches, and that always looks bad; and he’d coughed up some slaver. Shock, mostly.’
‘And his shoulders?’ The other raised an eyebrow. ‘Peter said they weren’t working, that they were definitely broken.’
‘Dislocated.’ Harry nodded. ‘Once we fixed that everything else came right.’
‘We’re grateful to you.’
That’s OK.’
‘What do we owe you?’
‘Nothing.’
That’s very kind of you…’
‘I just wanted to be sure that Paddy was the same dog,’ said the Necroscope. ‘I mean, that the bump he took hadn’t changed his personality. Did he seem the same to you?’
There came a yelp and a bark, and laughter from Peter’s bedroom.
‘Playing.’ The boy’s mother nodded, and smiled understandingly. They shouldn’t be, but tonight’s special. Oh, yes, Mr…?’
‘Keogh,’ said Harry.
‘Oh, yes, Paddy’s just the same.’
Peter’s father saw Harry to the garden gate, thanked him again and said goodnight. When he went back inside his wife said: ‘What an uncommonly decent, nice person. His eyes, so soulful!’
‘Hmm?’ Her husband was thoughtful.
‘Didn’t you think so?’
‘Oh, aye, certainly. But — ‘
‘But? Didn’t you like him, then? Is there something you can’t trust in a man who won’t accept payment for a job well done?’
‘No, no, it’s not that! But, his eyes…’
‘Soulful, weren’t they?’
‘Were they? Down at the garden gate, in the darkness, when he looked at me — ‘
‘Yes?’
But: ‘Nothing,’ said Peter’s father, shaking his head. ‘A trick of the light, that’s all…’
Back home Harry felt good. Better than at any time since Greece, when he’d got his deadspeak and numeracy back. Maybe he could feel even better, and cause others to feel better, too.
In his study he sat in an easy chair and talked to an urn where it stood shadowed in one corner of the room. Or it would appear that he talked to an urn, but urns don’t talk back: Trevor, you were a telepath and a good one. Which means that you still are. So I know that even when I don’t speak to you, still you’re listening to me. You listen to my thoughts. So… you know what I did tonight, right?’
I can’t help what I am, Harry, Trevor Jordan answered, his deadspeak voice ‘breathless’ with excitement. No more than you can. Yes, I know what you did — and what you’re planning to do. I can’t believe it yet, and don’t suppose 1 will for quite some little time after it has happened, if it happens. It’s like a wonderful dream that I don’t want to wake up from. Except there’s a chance it will be even more wonderful when I do wake up. There was no hope, none, and now there is…
‘But surely you knew my intention all along?’
Knowing what someone wants to do doesn’t make them capable of doing it, the other answered. But now, after the dog…
Harry nodded. ‘But a dog’s a dog, and a man’s a man. We still can’t be sure until… we’re sure.’
Do I have anything to lose?
‘I suppose not.’
Harry, any time you’re ready, then so am I. Boy, am I ready!
Trevor, just a second ago you said you can’t help being what you are any more than I can. Did that mean more than it sounded? You must have read quite a lot, in my mind.’
And after a long pause: I won’t lie to you, Harry. I know what’s happened to you, what you’re becoming. You don’t know how sorry 1 am.
‘Pretty soon,’ said the Necroscope, ‘the whole damn rat pack will be after me.’
I know. And I know what you’ll do then, and where you’ll go.
Again Harry’s nod. ‘But it’s like my Ma told me,’ he said. ‘It’s a strange and sinister place. Any help I can get, I’ll probably need it.’
Is there something I can do? Not much, I reckon. Not from where I am right now.
‘Actually, yes,’ said Harry. ‘We could do it right now. But I won’t take that sort of advantage. If the thing works, that will be soon enough. And even then — especially then — the decision will still be yours.’
So… when? (Again Jordan’s breathlessness.)
Tomorrow.’
Jesus!
But: ‘Don’t!’ the Necroscope cautioned him then. ‘Curse all you want, but be careful who you name…’
After that they talked generally and remembered old times. A pity there wasn’t anything good to remember. Oh, good had come out of it, but it had been evil as Hell at the time.
And after a lull in their deadspeak conversation: Harry, you know that Paxton’s still watching you, don’t you? It was Jordan who had first brought the mindspy to the Necroscope’s attention. Harry remembered that with gratitude. But ever since the initial warning a week ago, it had been his own intuition which alerted him to the telepath’s proximity.
His first instinctive reaction to the problem had been to invoke a talent he’d inherited from Harold Wellesley, an ex-boss of E-Branch who had suicided after being found out as a double-agent. Wellesley’s talent had been a negative sort of thing: his mind had been better than the vaults of a bank, literally impregnable. But it had seemed to make him the ideal candidate for head of the British mindspy security organization. Had seemed to, anyway. By way of atonement, he’d passed on his talent to Harry.
But Wellesley’s talent was sometimes a two-edged sword: if you bolt your doors against your enemies, your friends get locked out, too. Also, when you blow out the candle in a deep cave, everyone goes blind. Harry would prefer the light, prefer to know Paxton was there and what he was about
.
And in any case it was draining to have to keep his guard up like that. Power, all power, has to be generated somewhere, and with the Necroscope’s constantly increasing emotional stress his batteries were already sufficiently drained.
Now it was the business of Harry’s intuition to keep tabs on the mindspy, his intuition and the expanding intelligence of the thing inside him, its waxing talents. Eventually these would develop into a sort of telepathy in their own right — into telepathy and other forms of ESP — but it could do no harm to have Jordan’s brand of the art as an ‘optional extra’.
Jordan heard that, too.
Harry, there’s no sweat on that. I know you’re different. Anything I can give you, take it. Now or after you … try it out on me, it makes no difference. I’m not going to change my mind. You’ll use it to protect yourself, of course you will, but not to hurt us, I’m sure.
‘Us?’
People, Harry. I don’t think you could hurt people.
‘I wish I could be so sure. But the thing is, it won’t be me. Or it will be, but I won’t think the same any more.’
So all you have to do is stick to your plan. When you know it’s coming — or when circumstances force you to take defensive or evasive action — that’s when you get the hell out of it.
‘Chased out of my own world!’ the Necroscope growled.
That or let the genie out of its bottle, yes.
‘You’re a straight talker, Trevor.’
Isn’t that what friends are for?
‘But in a way you’re a kind of genie in a bottle yourself, right?’ Harry’s contrary Wamphyri side was surfacing, his need to argue the point. Any point. Jordan hadn’t sensed it yet, but in any case he was trying to keep the conversation light.
Maybe that’s where those old Moslem legends spring from, eh? A man with the Power, who knows the magic words, calling up a powerful slave from dust in a bottle. What is your wish, O Master?
‘My wish?’ Harry’s voice was gaunt as his face. ‘Sometimes I wish to fuck I’d never been born!’
And now Jordan sensed it: Harry’s duality — the strange tides in his blood, eroding the coastline of his will — the horror which challenged his human ascendancy even now, whose challenge was strengthening hour by hour, day by day.