by Brian Lumley
‘What makes us think he might hide out in another world? A notebook we found an hour ago at Clarke’s flat, that’s what. Darcy had been jotting down a few thoughts, but that must have been before Harry got to him. It may even be why he got to him. The notes are only a mess of scribble but they make it plain that Darcy thought Harry would skip to Starside. Well, now the Soviets know about Harry, as much as we could tell them, anyway, and they’ll be looking out for him. So it looks like the Perchorsk Gate is closed to him.
‘OK, so now let’s consider our… equipment. And how to use it. Then we’ll get round to breaking you all down into balanced teams and doing a preliminary itemization of your tasks.’
Trask removed a blanket from various pieces of equipment laid out on a stout folding table. ‘It’s important you learn how to use this stuff,’ he said. ‘The machetes speak for themselves. But be careful with them — they’re razor-sharp! As for this: I suppose you all recognize a crossbow when you see one? This third item, however, might not be quite so familiar. It’s a lightweight flamethrower, a new model. So I think maybe we’ll take a look at that first.
This is the fuel tank, which sits on your back like so…’
And so it went on. The briefing lasted another hour.
Right after sunset Harry made his way to Darlington via the Möbius Continuum. He left Trevor Jordan sleeping (not surprisingly exhausted; his return from Beyond was still like the very strangest dream to him, from which he still feared he might suddenly awaken) in a secret room under the eaves of the house on the river. From the attic room there was a way into the deserted, crumbling old place next door, so that if anything should happen Jordan might use this route to effect something of an escape. But both espers had checked out the psychic ‘atmosphere’ of the locality and there didn’t seem to be anything happening; and in any case Jordan had been busy rationalizing his fears in that respect and really couldn’t see E-Branch doing a Yulian Bodescu on him. And in any event, he was satisfied that they wouldn’t do anything rash.
Johnny Pound’s address in Darlington was the ground-floor flat in an old, four-storeyed, Victorian terrace house on the outer edge of the town centre. The old red bricks had turned black from being too close to the mainline railway; the windows were bleary; three steps led up from a path in the tiny, overgrown front garden to a communal porch. And behind the fagade of that porch — behind the flyspecked, dingy windows, there in those very rooms — that was where Found lived.
In the twilight Harry’s skin tingled at the thought and he felt his eager vampire senses intensifying as he walked the street first one way, then the other, past this gloomy street-corner residence of a twentieth-century necromancer. The murderer of sweet young Penny Sanderson.
Simple confrontation would be the easy way, of course, but that wasn’t part of the Necroscope’s plan. No, for then the result could only be precipitate: the accused would either ‘come quietly’, in the parlance of the Law, or he would react violently. And Harry would kill him. Which would be far too easy.
Pound’s way, on the other hand, his modus operandi, was cruel, creeping, designed to terrify even before the terrible act — the monstrous crime itself — was committed. And Harry was concerned that in his case the punishment should fit the crime. Except… there should be something of a trial, too. But trial as in ordeal, not as in examination as a precursor to judgement. For if Johnny Found was in fact the man, then the sentence had already been passed.
The working day was over; traffic was thinning in the darkening streets; people wended their ways home. And some of them entered the house of the necromancer. A middle-aged woman with a bulging plastic carrier-bag, letting herself in fumblingly through the front door; a young woman with straggly hair and a whining child pulling on her arm, calling out after the woman with the bag to wait for her and hold the door; an older man in coveralls, weary and slump-shouldered, carrying a leather bag of tools.
A light came on in a garret room under steeply sloping eaves. Another winked into being on the second floor, and one on the third. Harry looked away for a moment, up and down the street, then looked back -
— In time to see a fourth, much dimmer light come on in an angled corner window in the ground-floor flat. But he hadn’t seen Found go in.
The house stood on a corner; there must be a side-door; Harry waited for the traffic to clear, then crossed to the other side of the road and turned the corner. And there it was: a recessed doorway at the side, Johnny Pound’s private access to his lair. And Johnny himself was in there.
Harry crossed the cobbled street away from the house and merged with the shadows of the building on the far side. He turned and leaned back a little against the wall, and looked at the light where it shone out on this side, too, from a tiny window in Pound’s ground-floor flat. And he wondered what his quarry was doing in there, what he was thinking… until it dawned on him that he didn’t have to just wonder. For Trevor Jordan had given him the power to find out for himself.
He let his vampire-enhanced telepathy flow outwards on the night air, out and away into the dark and across the road, and through the old brickwork into the smoke-grimed, stagnant house of evil. But the probe was aimless, unpractised and lacking authority, spreading out like ripples on a dark pond in all directions. Until suddenly — the Necroscope found more than he’d bargained for!
His telepathy touched upon a mind — no, two minds — and he knew at once that neither one of them belonged to Johnny Found. They weren’t in the house, for one thing, and for another… they were already intent upon him! Upon Harry Keogh!
Harry drew breath in a sharp hiss of apprehension — fought hard against the urge to crouch down, which would only serve to illustrate his awareness — and looked this way and that along the dark alley. E-Branch? No, for there was no strength there, no talent, no metaphysical power. So who and what were they? And where?
Along the alley a cigarette glowed in the dark as someone took a drag, someone keeping to the shadows no less than the Necroscope himself. And across the main road under a lamp-post, there stood a figure in a dark, lightweight overcoat with his hands stuffed forlornly in his pockets, turning first this way and then that, for all the world like a man stood up who still hopes that his date will show: a decoy, to distract attention from the one in the shadows.
And both of them wondering about Harry, so that he picked up their thoughts in snatches right out of their unsuspecting minds.
The one under the lamp-post: Pound’s home, but who’s this bugger?… Up and down the street, prowling like a cat… The one we were told to watch out for?… Said if he showed up we shouldn’t touch him, but… feather in the old cap… Promotion to Inspector?
And the one in the shadows, who was now stepping out of the shadows and heading Harry’s way: Dangerous, they said… Well, let him try it on. If I’m obliged to protect myself… blow his fucking head off! (And Harry could actually feel the man’s hand tightening nervously about the rubber grips on the butt of a pistol in his pocket.)
As the one with the gun came almost jauntily on, so the other straightened up and took his hands out of his pockets, then headed across the road towards Harry. And quite casually, patiently (but with their hearts pounding in their chests and their eyes sharp as daggers), so they converged on him.
Harry glared at them and was surprised to hear himself snarl. A river of fire raced in his veins, setting light to something inside which blazed up and sang to him of slaughter and spurting, crimson blood; of life, and of death! Wamphyri!
But the human side said: ‘No! These are not your enemies! Upon a time, before you were a law unto yourself, they might even have been your friends. Why hurt them when you can evade them so easily?’
Because it isn’t my nature to flee but stand and fight!
‘Fight? Not much of a fight! They’re like children…’
Oh? Well, at least one of these children has a gun!
The man crossing the road waited for a stream of cars
to go by in the nearside lane; he was ten to fifteen paces away, no more. The other one was maybe twenty paces away. But both of them were definitely homing in on Harry. His vampire knew the danger no less than he did, and worked to protect him. The Necroscope sweated a strange, cold sweat and breathed a weird mist, which clung to him like an ever-thickening cloak. And as the two policemen came on, so Harry’s mist spilled out of the shadows where he waited and poured itself into view like the exhalations of a basement boiler room.
Their guns are useless now. They can’t see me in this. But I can see, smell, sense, even reach out and touch them, if I wish it. Reach out and snuff them!
‘Damn you!’ Harry cursed himself-or the thing inside him — out loud. ‘Damn you — you slimy black bastard thing!’
‘Yeah, well never mind all that, pal,’ one of the policemen answered him, crouching down and aiming his gun two-handed into the fog. ‘We’ve been damned and cursed before, right? So just come on out of there, OK? I mean, all of that steam has to be bad for you. Do you want to ruin your lungs? Or do you want me to do it for you, eh? Now, I said come on out of there!’
There was no answer, only a sudden swirling as the fog seemed to fold inwards upon itself, as if someone had shaken a blanket or slammed a door right in its heart. And in a few seconds more the mist thinned out, fell to earth, turned to a film of liquid which made the cobbles damp and shiny. And the wall was high, black and blank, with no alley and no basement boiler room.
And there was no one there at all…
Back in Bonnyrig, Trevor Jordan was awake; some immediately forgotten night terror had drenched him in his own sweat and snatched him panting out of his bed in the attic room; now he prowled the rooms and corridors of the old house where it stood by the river, putting on all the lights, his every nerve jumping as he looked out from curtained windows into the night. Just what his apprehensions were he couldn’t say, but he felt something looming, hovering, waiting. Some terrible Thing for the moment conserving its energy, but full of monstrous intent.
Was it Harry, Jordan wondered? The thing that Harry was far too rapidly becoming? Possibly. Could it be concern over Harry’s fate if — when — E-Branch finally moved on him? Well, yes, that too. Or was he worried about his own fate, if he was still with the Necroscope at that time? Was this how Yulian Bodescu had felt at Harkley House in Devon, that evening when the Branch had closed in on him to destroy him? Something like this, Jordan was sure.
It was time for Jordan to leave Harry, and he knew it. To leave him for good and merge back into the mundane world of ordinary men. Oh, the telepath knew he could never more be truly mundane, for he had seen the other side and returned from it. But he could try. He could work at it, work into it, gradually forget that he had been — God, he couldn’t bear the thought of the word even now! — that he had not been alive, and eventually become just another man again, albeit one with a talent. And when Harry was well out of it and fled into that other world which Jordan could scarcely imagine, then he might even return to the Branch. If they would take him back. But of course they would want to be sure about him first. They would want to check that he was who and what he was supposed to be.
But the trouble was (and Jordan knew now that this must be the source of his nightmare) that he couldn’t be sure he would be the same person. For if Harry’s awful metamorphosis continued to accelerate…
Harry!
Jordan sucked air gaspingly as telepathic awareness of the Necroscope suddenly flooded his being. The sensation was like being doused with ice-water, causing his whole body to shudder violently. Harry, out there somewhere, across the river. Harry, listening to Jordan, to his thoughts. But how long had he been there?
Only a minute or two, in fact. And he had not been eavesdropping on Jordan but telepathically checking the vicinity of the house. He had detected something of Jordan’s fears, however, which did precious little to calm the beast which raged within him, denied expression when he’d fled from the two policemen watching Johnny Pound’s flat.
The reason Harry chose to emerge from the Möbius Continuum into the bushes on the far side of the river and not directly into the house was simple: when he’d read the minds of those plain-clothes policemen in Darlington, he’d plainly seen that they were expecting him. Indeed, someone had told the man with the gun that Harry might be dangerous. Obviously E-Branch must have alerted them to the possibility of him showing up. So… whatever Darcy Clarke had told the Branch about him, it hadn’t cut any ice. They weren’t having any.
And if they were looking out for him in Darlington, plainly it wouldn’t take long before they were doing it here, too. He’d scared off Paxton (for the moment, anyway) but Paxton was only one of them and untypical of the species. So from now on he would have to check locations very carefully before venturing into what were previously ‘safe’ places. It all went to reinforce the Necroscope’s feeling of claustrophobia, a doom-laden sensation of space — Möbius space included — narrowing down for him. To say nothing of time.
And now, to discover that Trevor Jordan was also afraid of him, of what Harry might do to him… it was too much.
The dead — even Möbius himself — had turned against him; his mother had become worn out and left him; there was no one in the world, neither alive nor dead, who had anything good to say on his behalf. And this was the world, and the race, which he had fought so long and so hard for. Not even his own race. Not any longer.
Harry stepped through a Möbius door into a dark corridor of the house across the river and silently commenced to climb the stairs to his own bedroom. Suddenly he was tired; his cares seemed too great; sleep would be curative, and… to hell with everything! Let the future care for itself.
But Jordan’s voice stopped him when he was only halfway up the first flight: ‘Harry?’ The telepath looked up at him from the foot of the stairs. Trevor Jordan, who could read the Necroscope’s mind as easily as Harry read his. ‘I… shouldn’t have been thinking those things.’
Harry nodded. ‘And I shouldn’t have overheard you. Anyway, don’t worry about it. You did your bit for me and did it well, and I’m grateful. And it won’t be so bad being alone, for I’ve been alone before. So if you want to go, then go — go now! For let’s face it, I’m losing more and more control to this thing, and leaving now might be the safest thing to do.’
Jordan shook his head. ‘Not while the whole world’s against you, Harry. I won’t leave you yet.’
Harry shrugged and turned away, and continued to climb the stairs. ‘As you wish, but don’t leave it too long…’
4 Dreams…
The night was still young when Harry laid his head on the pillow, but the moon was up and the stars were bright, and it was his time. His senses were no longer strong in daylight, but in the dark of the night they were sensitive as never before. Even those which governed or were governed by his subconscious mind. And his dreams were stronger, too.
He dreamed first about Möbius and sensed that it was more than an ordinary dream. The long-dead mathematician came and sat on his bed, and while his face and form were indistinct, his deadspeak voice was as sharp and no-nonsense as ever.
The last time we can talk, Harry — in this world, anyway.
Are you sure you want to? the Necroscope answered. It seems I can’t help giving people a bad time lately.
The vague, weightless figure of Möbius nodded. Yes, but we both know that’s not you. That’s why I’ve chosen to come to you now, while your dreams are still your own.
Are they?
I think so. Certainly you sound more like the Harry I used to know.
Harry relaxed a little, sighed and sank down in his bed. So what is it you want to talk about?
The other places, Harry. The other worlds.
My cone-shaped parallel dimensions? The Necroscope gave a wry, apologetic shrug. They were mainly bluff: I argued for argument’s sake. We were practising, my vampire and I.
That’s as it may be, Mö
bius answered, but bluff or none you were right anyway. Your intuition, Harry. The only thing your vision didn’t take into account was how.
How?
More rightly, who, said Möbius.
How? Who? Are we talking about God again?
The Big Bang, said Möbius. The primal light, back at the dawn of space and time. All of this couldn’t have come out of nothing, Harry. And yet we’ve already decided that before The Beginning there was nothing. Which was foolish of us, because we both know that you don’t need flesh to have mind!
God, Harry nodded. The Ultimate Incorporeal Being. He made it all, right? But to what end?
Möbius’s turn to shrug. To find out what would happen, maybe?
You mean He didn’t already know? What’s that for omniscience?
Unfair, said Möbius. No one can know before the fact. And it’s dangerous to try. But He’s known everything since.
Tell me about the other places, said Harry, fascinated despite himself.
The world of Starside and Sunside is one, Möbius told him. But it was … a failure. There were unforeseen paradoxes and things went disastrously wrong. Starside, the vampire swamps and the Wamphyri themselves: they were cause and effect both! But that’s for the future, and for the past! To tell it now might be to change it, which would be presumptuous.
Space and time are relative, Harry argued. Haven’t I always said so? And in their own way they’re fixed. You can’t damage them by talking about them.
Möbius chuckled, however sadly. Clever, Harry, I’ll grant you that. But you can’t work your vampire wiles on me, my boy! And anyway, Starside isn’t the place I’m talking about.
Well, I’m listening, the Necroscope answered, just a little disgruntled.
Once when we talked, Möbius reminded him, you mentioned the balance of the multiverse, with black and white holes shifting matter around between all the different layers of existence and delaying or even reversing entropy. Like the weights governing the swing of an old clock’s pendulum. But that’s only one sort of balance, the physical sort. Then there’s the metaphysical, the mystical, the spiritual.