by Brian Lumley
‘Pamela,’ said the Necroscope, ‘I’m Harry Keogh. I believe my mother might have mentioned my name to you.’
Your mother and others, she came back at once. I’ve been expecting you, Harry — and I’ve been warned off you, too!
Harry nodded, perhaps ruefully. ‘My reputation has suffered a bit lately, it’s true.’
Mine suffered a lot, she chuckled. For nearly six years, in fact, ever since I was fourteen and a nice ‘uncle’ showed me his little pink sprinkler and told me where it went. Actually, I seduced him, for I’d noticed that whenever he was near me he had a hard on. But if it hadn’t been him it would have been someone else, because I was just naturally like that. We played around a lot until his old lady caught us at it one day, the jealous old bat! I was going bouncy-bouncy on him when she walked in. He whipped it out but was too far gone and spurted on the carpet. I don’t think she’d seen him spurt for a long time, and she’d certainly never had it like that! Come to think of it, I don’t think he had either. Not before me. But I liked it all ways. It helps when you enjoy your work.
Harry was silent for a moment, surprised, even a little taken aback. He really didn’t know how to answer her.
Didn’t your Ma tell you I was a tart, a trollop, a whore? There was no bitterness in her, not even much of sadness, and Harry liked her for it.
‘Something like that,’ he answered, eventually. ‘Not that I think it matters a great deal. There have to be a hell of a lot of you down there by now!’
She laughed and Harry liked her even more. The oldest profession, she said.
‘But one night, nearly eight weeks ago, it caught up with you, right?’ He felt that with her he could get right to it.
Her assumed indifference fell away from her at once. That wasn’t why it happened, she said. I didn’t fetch him on. And anyway he didn’t want me… like that.
‘It was just an assumption,’ Harry told her, quickly. ‘I meant no offence, and I’m not eager to bring back hurtful memories. But it’s hard to see how I can track this bloke down if no one is able to tell me about him.’
Oh, I’d like to see him get his, Harry, she answered. And I’ll help you any way I can. I just hope I can remember enough, that’s all.
‘You won’t know until you try.’
Where do you want me to start?
‘First show me how you were, or how you thought you were,’ he said. For he knew well enough that the dead retain pictures of themselves as they were in life, and he wanted to try and draw some sort of comparison with Penny Sanderson. In short, he wondered if his necromancer quarry followed a pattern.
From her mind he immediately got back a picture of a tall, dark-eyed, leggy brunette in a mini-skirt, with slightly loose breasts unsupported under a blue silk blouse, and a shapely backside. But there was nothing of character in the picture, her picture, nothing to suggest quality of mind or personality; it was all sensual or outright sexual. Which didn’t fit with his first impressions.
So? How was I?
‘Very attractive,’ he told her. ‘But I think you’re selling yourself short.’
Often, she agreed, but without her customary laugh. Then she sighed, and that was something Harry was used to in the dead. It was the realization of a time and a thing done and finished with, which could never return. But she brightened up at once. And here am I actually talking to a man, and for once not wondering what he’s got in his pants. In the front, and in the back-pocket.
‘Was it always like that, for money?’
And sometimes for fun. I’ve told you, I was nympho. Do you want to get on now?
Harry was embarrassed. She’d given him a stock answer, had obviously heard that question before, often. ‘Was I prying?’
It’s OK, she answered. All men wonder about it, about what goes on in a pro’s mind. But suddenly her deadspeak was very cold. All men except that one, anyway. He doesn’t have to wonder, for he can always find out for himself, afterwards, when they’re dead.
And with that the Necroscope was sure she’d give him all she could. ‘Tell me about it,’ he said.
And she did…
It was a Friday night and I went to the dance. Being freelance, my time was my own. I didn’t need a pimp touting for me, taking my money and bringing his friends round for freebies. But the dance was in town and I lived quite a few miles out. After the midnight hour taxis are expensive; Cinders needed her coach home.
That was OK; there are always a handful of likely lads who’ll buzz a girl home on the chance of a grope. And if I liked the guy and if he wasn’t too pushy, maybe he could get more than a grope. A ride for a ride, as the saying goes.
On this occasion I picked the wrong one: no, not our man, but an armful all the same. Once I was in the car his polite, concerned attitude went right out the window. He didn’t know what I was, thought I was just a straight kid but easy meat. He could hardly drive for drooling and wanted to stop in every layby and back alley. I was wearing expensive clothes and didn’t want them ripped up. And anyway I didn’t like him.
He said he knew a place just off the motorway, and before I could tell him I didn’t need it he took the fly-on for Edinburgh. In a layby under some trees he made his move, and got my knee in his soft bits for his trouble! When he could drive again he did, but left me stranded there.
There was a service station a quarter-mile up the motorway. I went there and had a coffee. I wasn’t shaken up or anything, just dehydrated. Too many gin-and-its at the Palace.
But sitting there in this little booth I was joined by a driver. That was how I saw him: a driver. A long-distance man shaking off his weariness with a mug of coffee.
Don’t ask me what he looked like; the place was three-quarters empty and they’d turned the lights low to keep the bills down, and there was still a lot of gin in me. I spoke to him but I didn’t really look at him, you know? Anyway, he didn’t seem a bad sort and he wasn’t pushy. When he finished his coffee and made to stand up, I asked him which way he was heading.
‘Where do you want to go?’ he said. His voice was soft, not unfriendly.
I told him where I lived and he said he knew it. ‘Your luck’s in,’ he told me. ‘I go past it on the motorway. About five miles from here? There’s a flyoff where I can drop you. A couple of hundred yards and you’ll be at your door. Can’t take you any closer than that, I’m afraid, because my miles and fuel are monitored. Anyway, it’s up to you. Maybe you’d feel safer calling a taxi?’
But I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
We left the cafeteria and went out into the lorry park. He was cool and calm, in no hurry. I felt perfectly safe with him. In fact I didn’t give it a thought. His vehicle was one of these big articulated jobs, which we approached from the side and the rear. The headlights of a passing car as it flashed by on the motorway lit it up in a swath of light. The lorry had ice-blue panels with white lettering saying: frigis express. I remember it well because the white paint had peeled off one leg of the ‘X’ making it look like eypress.
But at the back of the lorry my driver paused and looked at me, and said: ‘I just have to make sure this door is secure.’
I stood beside him as he unlocked and slid up this roller door across the full width of the truck. A blast of ice-cold air came out, which made me shiver as it turned to a cloud of mist. Inside… there seemed to be rows of things hanging in there, but it was dark and I couldn’t see what they were. He reached inside with both hands and did something, then looked over his shoulder and said, ‘It’s OK.’ And I think it was then I realized that I hadn’t seen him smile. Not once.
He indicated we should go to the cab, and as he started to pull the door down again I turned away from him. That was when he grabbed me from behind. One arm went round my neck and the other hand held something over my face. Of course I gasped for air — and got chloroform!
I kicked and struggled, but that only makes you gasp all the more! And then I passed out…
&
nbsp; When I came to I was lying — or slithering about — on a patch of ice: that’s what it felt like, anyway. There was a smell but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. I was much too cold; all my senses were numb from the cold. And I felt dizzy and nauseous from the chloroform.
Then I remembered everything and knew I was in the back of the truck, slipping and slithering when he applied his brakes or accelerated. And of course I also knew I was in trouble, in fact dead trouble. Whatever my driver wanted, he was going to get it. And then there was a fair chance that he’d kill me. I’d seen his truck; I could more or less describe him, if not now, certainly later; it was odds on I was a goner.
I propped myself in one corner of the dark refrigerator (I suppose that’s what it was: a large mobile fridge, a freezer truck) and tried to get some warmth back into my body. I hugged myself, blew on my hands, beat my arms about. But I was weak from the cold and the after-effect of the chloroform. I didn’t have the strength of a kitten.
Then, after — oh, I don’t know how long, maybe fifteen minutes — there was a bumpy patch and I heard his airbrakes go on. To this day I don’t know where we were, for I never did see the outside again. The truck stopped; in a little while the door rolled up and it was dark outside; a dark figure clambered up panting into the rear of the trailer. He pulled the door shut again and put on a dim interior light, just a single bulb under a grille in the ceiling. And then he came for me.
He was wearing a long coat which was all dark-stained leather on the outside and brown fur inside; he took it off as he approached me and threw it down on me. ‘Get on it,’ he said, panting with some weird emotion. But his voice was just as cold as the place where he planned to have me, which I now saw was a meat safe. Beast carcases, all grey, brown and red, hung from rows of hooks. And the layer of ice on the floor was frozen beast blood.
There… there doesn’t have to be any rough stuff,’ I told him. ‘We can do it just as you say.’ And freezing cold though I was I opened my blouse and hitched up my mini to show him my frilly panties.
He looked down on me in that unsmiling way of his, and I saw that his face was all puffy and bloated, and his eyes winking like little lumps of shiny coal in the swollen red mask of his face. ‘Just as I say?’ He repeated my words.
‘Any way at all. And I swear it will be good. Only just don’t hurt me. And you can trust me. Afterwards… I won’t say a word.’ I lied like hell. I wanted to live.
Take ‘em off,’ he panted. ‘Everything.’
God, there was no soul behind his voice, nothing behind his eyes. There was just the steam-heat of his body and the pounding of his feverish blood. I could feel how strong he was, and how weird and different. ‘Quickly!’ he said, and his voice was a croak and his gorged face was wobbling with strain and horrible excitement.
I had to do what he told me, keep him happy. But I was so cold my fingers wouldn’t obey me. I couldn’t get my clothes off. He got down on one knee and I could see tools glinting in the loops of his wide leather belt. One of them was a meat-hook, which he took out and showed me!
When I gasped and turned my face away, he tore my jacket right off my back; my blouse, too. Then he put the hook in the top of my skirt and ripped it down through the plastic belt and material, laying it open. He ripped open my panties in the same way. And all I could do was huddle there as cold as one of the dead animals on its hook. And I thought: What if he uses that hook on me? But he didn’t. Not the hook.
Then he was tearing his clothes off: not his upper clothes, just his pants. And I knew this was it. But a man as strong and as dangerous as this could hurt me badly. I had to make it as easy for him — as easy for myself — as possible. I opened my legs and stroked my bush of cold hair. And God help me, I tried to smile at him. ‘It’s all here,’ I said, my words turning to snow as they came out. ‘All for you.’
‘Eh?’ he grunted, looking at me, his penis huge and jerking about on its own, with a life of its own. ‘All for me? All for Johnny? That?’ And then he smiled. And he took up another of his tools.
This one was like a knife, but it was hollow and had been cut from steel tubing about an inch and a half in diameter, cut at an angle, to give it a sharp point. And its edges had been sharpened to razor brightness.
‘Oh, God!’ I gasped then, for I couldn’t hold my terror any longer. And I clutched at myself and tried to cover my nakedness. But my driver, my all-too-soon-to-be murderer, that… that thing, he only laughed. There was no emotion in it, not as I understood emotion, but he laughed anyway.
‘Yes, cover yourself,’ he gurgled at me, the saliva of his lust overflowing from his wobbling, grimacing mouth. ‘Cover it up, girlie. For Johnny doesn’t want your ugly little fuckie hole. Johnny makes his own holes!’
He moved closer and his flesh was alive and leaping, bursting for me. And then… and then…
‘It’s OK.’ It was as much as Harry could bear. His voice was trembling, broken. ‘I know what then. You’ve said enough. I… I’ll go on what I have.’
Pamela was crying now, spilling out her poor mutilated soul, all of her defiance and resilience crushed and drained from her by the horror of what she’d forced herself to remember for the Necroscope.
He … he made my body ugly! she sobbed. He made holes in me! Before I was dead he was into me. And after I was dead I could still feel him grunting on me, hurting me. It’s not right that when you’re dead someone should still be able to hurt you, Harry.
‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ was all Harry could say to comfort her. But even saying it he knew it wasn’t, knew it wouldn’t be until he himself had put this thing right.
She took this from his deadspeak, understood his resolve, reinforced his anger with her own. Get him for me, Harry! Get that dog’s bastard for me!
‘And for myself,’ he told her. ‘For if I don’t I know he’ll always be there, clinging like slime to the walls of my mind. But, Pamela — ‘
Yes?
‘Simply killing this one won’t be enough. I mean, it’s just not enough! But if you’re willing, there’s a way you can help me. You’re strong, Pamela, in death just as you were in life. And what I have in mind… I believe it’s something you would enjoy even more than you did in life.’ He explained his meaning, and for a little while she was silent.
Then: I think I know now why the dead are afraid of you, Harry, she said, wonderingly. And: Is it true that you’re a vampire?
‘Yes… no!’ he said. ‘Not like that. Not yet, anyway. And not here. But somewhere else I will be — or may be — one day.’
Yes. He sensed her nod. I think you must be — or will be — for nothing human could ever think the thought you thought just then. Nothing entirely human, anyway.
‘But you’ll do it?’
Oh, yes, she answered him at last with a grim, emphatic deadspeak nod. Who or whatever you are, I’ll do anything you tell me, Harry Keogh, vampire, Necroscope. Anything, everything and whatever it takes to get even. Whatever you ask and whenever you ask it. Anything…
Harry nodded. ‘So be it,’ he said.
For the next thirty-odd hours the Necroscope was busy; not only him but E-Branch, too. And the next day, a warm evening in mid-May, the Minister Responsible caused the Branch emergency call-in system to be brought into play.
First, acting on disturbing information received from Geoffrey Paxton (concerning among other things the files Darcy Clarke had mailed to Harry Keogh), the Minister had relieved Clarke of all duties and placed him under what amounted to house arrest at Clarke’s own north London flat in Crouch End. Second, he must now attend the O-group briefing he’d called at E-Branch HQ. The espers would know, of course, that something big was in the offing: all available agents were to be present.
Paxton was there to meet the Minister on the ground floor. Even as they exchanged curt greetings Ben Trask, just back from a job, came in from the street through the swing doors. Trask looked drawn, even haggard. The Minister took him to one side where the
y conversed in lowered tones for a minute or two, and for once Paxton knew enough to keep his nose out. Then they all three took the elevator upstairs and went directly to the ops room.
The called-in agents were silent, seated, waiting for the Minister. He took the podium and his eyes swept the mainly ordinary-looking faces of the espers — Britain’s ESP-endowed mindspies — where they stared back at him. He knew them all from photographs in their files, but only Darcy Clarke and Ben Trask had ever met him. And Paxton, of course.
If Clarke had been here, perhaps he would have stood up as a sign of respect, and maybe the rest of them would have followed suit. Or there again maybe not. The trouble with this lot had always been that they thought they were special. But here the Minister knew he wasn’t fooling anybody, least of all himself. They were special, bloody special!
And looking at them he felt as several before him must surely have felt. Physics and metaphysics, robots and romantics, gadgets and ghosts. Two sides of the same coin. Were they really? Science and parapsychology? The mundane and the supernatural? And he wondered what was the difference anyway? Isn’t a telephone or radio magic? To speak with someone on the other side of the world, even on the moon? And has there ever been a more powerful, more monstrous spell or invocation than E=mc2?
These were some of the Minister’s thoughts as he scanned the faces of E-Branch’s espers and put names to them: Ben Trask, the human lie-detector; blocky, overweight, mousey-haired and green-eyed, slope-shouldered and lugubrious. Possibly Trask’s sad expression sprang from the knowledge that the whole world was a liar. Or if not all of it, a hell of a lot of it. It was Trask’s talent: to recognize whatever was false. Show him or tell him a lie and he would know it at once. He wouldn’t always know the truth of the thing, but he would always know when what was represented as true wasn’t so. No facade, however cleverly constructed, could ever fool him. The police used him a lot, to crack stone killers; also he came in handy in respect of international negotiations, when it was good to know if the cards on the table made a full deck.