by Brian Lumley
So locating people you’d known in life occupied a little of your time, eh?
A little of it? All of it! I mean, once you get over your fear of death — of being dead — it can pretty soon get boring! So I traced Trevor, and discovered that he was dead, too, and I would have spoken to him except the Great Majority did a job on me and blocked me out. There are some fine talents among the dead, Harry, and not a lot they can’t do if they’ve a mind. So they’d throw up a lot of deadspeak flak every time I tried to talk to anyone. Anyone, that is, except…
… Me?
Exactly! They’ll do their damnedest to mess us around, but they don’t mess with us! We want to talk to each other, that’s fine — just as long as we’re not trying to pervert one of them.
I see, Harry said. So the only way you could get to speak to Trevor was through me.
That’s right.
Except you’re too late and your deadspeak won’t work anyway — because Trevor is alive again. Which means you still can’t communicate direct but must use me as a go-between.
Complicated but, in a nutshell, correct.
Well, you picked the wrong time, Harry was half-apologetic. Try me when I’m awake.
I’ll do that. But in the meantime — maybe I can do you a favour, too.
Oh?
Harry, Layard said, I was one of the good guys a long time before I copped it. And even at the end I was still pretty much my own man. I was a creature of Janos’s making, ‘in thrall’ to him, yes, but given even the smallest chance I’d have taken him out if that were at all possible. It wasn’t possible — not for me, anyway — and so I died. But you’ll never know how glad I am that he got his, too. So as you said, I owe you one. Not one of the worst but a good one. Like… the talent of locating? How would you like to be a locator, Harry?
It would come in handy, certainly, the Necroscope answered. I already have deadspeak, telepathy, one or two other things. Being able to find someone or thing in a hurry would be a big bonus.
That’s what I thought. So maybe we can trade. You get my talent, and I get to talk to you now and then, plus a reintroduction to Trevor Jordan. I mean, you act as our go-between. Trevor would like that, I’m sure.
What will it entail? Harry became cautious.
Well, Layard offered a deadspeak shrug, I’m already in your mind — in contact, anyway — so I suppose you’ll just have to open up and let me look deeper inside. I mean, I know my own trick, the mechanism which makes me a locator, and if I can find a similar thing in you…
… And activate it?
Something like that.
And you want me to open up to you of my own free will, right?
Layard chuckled, albeit drily. You’ve played this game before, Harry.
Harry nodded. Yes, I have, occasionally with disastrous consequences.
Layard was serious at once. Harry, there’s none of that shit in me. I was still myself when I went out. I don’t have anything up my sleeve.
The Necroscope considered it. But what did he have to lose? Very well, he finally said, except… I’ve already warned you that my mind’s a weird place. Don’t try to mess with me, Ken. You don’t have much, I know, but I swear if you fool around in there I won’t leave you with anything.
Hey, you don’t have to convince me!
OK, Harry said. And, after a moment: One last thing. You said you came to thank me, for what I did for Jordan? I take it you mean his resurrection? So how did you know I’d brought him back?
Layard shrugged. Just because the Great Majority don’t speak to me doesn’t me I can’t eavesdrop now and then. Also, the dead don’t move around too much, you know? But Trevor does. So I knew that what I’d heard was true. You have a heap of rare talents there, Harry. A pity you didn’t get Darcy’s too, before they got him!
That focused the Necroscope’s attention to a pinpoint.
He fastened on it in a moment. Darcy’s dead? I thought that was just a nightmare. I hoped it was, anyway. Which means I have to hope this is, too.
You have my sympathy, Harry, Layard told him. But it’s all real.
No one brings me any good news any more… Lost for words, Harry shook his head, then deliberately returned to the former subject. All right, Ken, my mind’s all yours.
The locator went in — and was out again almost as quickly. And: You’re right and that’s a strange place, Harry, he said. It’s as if it was radioactive in there: hot and cold at the same time! But I found what I wanted; or rather, I didn’t find it. You don’t have the equipment. There’s nothing there for me to switch on.
Harry shrugged. You tried, anyway.
But you do have David Chung’s kind of mind.
Chung? The sympathetic locator?
That’s right. So I tripped that switch instead. Now all you need is something belonging to the one you need to locate. You focus on it, and bingo! Except being what you are — everything you are — you’ll probably be better at it than Chung is.
Harry nodded, said: Well, I suppose it’s my turn to owe you again. Thanks, Ken.
Oh, I’ll be back later to collect, Layard told him. I mean, Trevor was like my kid brother, you know? And now I’ll go and let you get some sleeping done. You’re tired, Harry, in mind and body both.
As Layard backed off and faded into nothing, the Necroscope’s mind cleared itself for whatever else, whoever else, was waiting. And she didn’t take long in coming.
He dreamed of Penny. But was she a dream… or just a fancy? Even dreaming, he wondered about it: was she an adjustment of psyche — part of the pigeon-holing of mundane occurrences into all the subconscious slots between forget it, through trivial, to highly important — or just a remnant left over from a moment or two of waking lust?
He’d known of course that the dead girl had a crush on him. It had been obvious even from their first meeting. For after all, how many men get to see their ladies naked on a first date? In Harry’s day, damn few! Maybe this was simply the extrapolation of something his subconscious mind had been working on, and should have been titled: ‘How Things Might Have Been if Harry Keogh Could Spare the Time and if He Wasn’t a Bloody Vampire’.
Whichever, it was a soothing and blessed relief to his tormented mind after the nightmare of association with Johnny Found, the delirium of Darcy Clarke’s accusations, and the revelations of Ken Layard; and it brought physical relief, too, as he answered Penny’s caresses and loved her with his body as any ordinary man loves a girl. The initiative, however, was all hers — had to be — else his exhaustion must drag him down even deeper into dreamless sleep.
And Harry wondered about that, too: how come she knew how to do it all? For after all, he knew she was an innocent… his little innocent, whose death he would soon avenge.
‘Isn’t bringing me back enough?’ she whispered, guiding his rubbery fingers to her stiffening nipples. ‘Do you have to go after him, too? You know, Harry, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since all of this happened. And, I mean, I’ve got so much to be glad for. I was dead, and now I’m alive! It would be sort of ungrateful of me to want revenge, too. Oh, I wanted it at first, I know, but now I’m not so sure. But I’d settle for you, certainly.’
He lay back and listened to her, and felt her small, gentle fingers tight on his flesh where it throbbed, but lazily as yet like a motor waiting for the throttle. And in the darkness she sat up beside him, crouched over him, and patted him with her hands so that he swayed from side to side, jerking and snatching at the darkness.
Are the sexual arts instinctive in some people? Harry couldn’t remember who had shown him. Or had he just known? Maybe he would remember when he woke up. But for the moment he didn’t want to wake up. Here, now, asleep, he was just a man. No more the Necroscope, no more the vampire, just a man being loved and making love, and waiting for the sweet sucking thing which was the heart of Penny’s womanhood to descend on to his silently singing flesh. And hoping against hope that the dream wouldn’t fade or change its c
ourse, and that he would get to come. The last time he’d made love had been… just weeks ago, but already it felt like forever. He felt full to bursting. Maybe it was just being with this girl, Penny, just being human, which from now on he could never be again.
And the poignancy of that was so great that when at last, gasping, she actually slid her sweet young body down onto him, he came almost at once, like an urgent youth stroking his first love’s breasts. And feeling him shuddering within her — the hot spurt of his juices — she clenched him that much tighter, until the jerking of his flesh had spent him to the last drop.
Following which… the gradual resurgence of his need was slow but sure, and her guidance unwavering, until he was in her again.
This time they lay on their sides, and while his left hand stroked, squeezed and compressed the pillow of her right buttock, so the tight tube of her vagina sucked on him for the milk of love and life. And Harry thought: If this were real I wouldn’t dare, for fear of making her pregnant with my damned ‘milk of life’! Or in my case, my tainted Wamphyri sperm!
And deep inside his vampire laughed at him. Milk of life? Frothing spume of lust, more like. For as everyone knows, only the blood is the true life.
‘Harry!’ she clawed at his shoulders, rubbed his chest furiously with her flattened, generous breasts. And, ‘Harry!’ she panted again. ‘I’m coming… coming… coming!’
It brought him to climax, too, the thought of her orgasm and the feel of its wet, wrenching tremors. But more than that, it brought him to his senses. Suddenly he was awake. Wide awake in their sweat and their fluids and the pungent smell of their love — which wasn’t fading back into the depths of his subconscious mind! Which wasn’t the ephemeral stuff of dreams! Which was in fact totally, terribly, real! Because Penny was there in his bed with him!
Harry gasped and opened his eyes, and shot bolt upright in the tumbled bed.
‘It’s all right, it’s OK!’ Penny said, grasping his wrists in the moment before she saw his eyes. Then: ‘Oh!’ she said, as her hand flew to her mouth.
Harry’s mind whirled. What the hell was happening here? How had Penny got into the house? Where was Jordan? ‘Oh?’ he finally repeated her. ‘Bloody oh!? Penny, you don’t realize what you’ve done!’
He tossed back the covers and pulled on his clothes; naked, she came after him, drew him to a standstill and reached tremblingly to touch his redly illumined face in the darkness of the room.
‘When I was dead,’ she said in a whisper, ‘they tried to tell me you were a monster. I wouldn’t listen to them, because I didn’t want to talk to dead people. But I remember they said there was life, and death, and a place between the two. People have existence in the first two places but not in the third, which is reserved for…’
‘… For vampires,’ Harry cut in, harshly. ‘Yes, and for their victims, people they turn into vampires. And for foolish girls who through their thoughtless actions change themselves into vampires!’
She shook her head. ‘But you didn’t take my blood, Harry. You didn’t even make me bleed!’ She was defiant. ‘I’m almost nineteen and anyway, I wasn’t a virgin. I… I knew a man for a whole year, once.’
‘Knew a man!’ he snorted. ‘You’re a child!’
‘And you’re out of touch!’ she hit back. ‘It’s 1989! Plenty of girls — British girls — get married at sixteen and seventeen these days. Yes, and plenty more prefer not to get married but simply live with their lovers. I’m no child. Are you saying my body felt like a child’s?’
‘Yes!’ he snapped, then gritted his teeth, folded her in his arms and groaned, ‘No. You felt — you feel — like a woman. But still a foolish one. Penny, you don’t understand. I didn’t need to make you bleed. You see, there’s something of me in you now. It’s not much but it doesn’t need to be, for even a little is enough to change you.’
‘Then let it, as long as I’m with you.’ She clutched him to her. ‘You brought me back, Harry, gave me my life. For what it’s worth, I owe it to you. All of it. And I want you to have it.’
‘You’ve run away from home?’ He put her away from him, to arm’s length.
‘I’ve left home,’ she sighed. ‘Nineteen-eighty-nine, remember?’
He wanted to hit her and couldn’t. He thought: Dear God, she’s in thrall to me! And then thought, But she was even before this. Except we’d call it a ‘crush’. Please don’t let anything of me — of that — be in her!
His head cleared; sleep and all that had accompanied it receded; the implications came home to him, fully. ‘What time is it?’ He glanced at his watch. Only 10:30 p.m. ‘How did you find me? More importantly, how did you get in?’
She sensed his urgency and reacted to it. ‘What’s wrong, Harry?’ And now her eyes were frightened.
As he put on the lights and his face took on a more normal aspect, she said, ‘When I was here before, I saw the address on some of your mail. I remembered it, remembered everything about you. In fact you haven’t been out of my mind for a minute. And I knew I would have to come to you. No matter what.’
‘And Trevor Jordan let you in? Without waking me?’ Harry hurled open his bedroom door. ‘Trevor!’ he shouted. ‘Will you come — the — hell — up here?!’
There was no answer, just Penny shaking her head.
Harry looked at her: long-legged, yellow-haired, blue-eyed. His gaze took in her firm breasts, thighs and backside, all of her beautiful young body. And the uneven slant of her mouth, which was quite unintentioned but still made her look sexy and somehow provocative. When he’d first seen her like this, naked, there had been ugly black holes in her flesh. But now she was whole again. Whole, but probably unholy.
‘Better get dressed,’ he said. And: ‘Jordan?’
‘Gone,’ she said, slipping easily into her clothes. ‘I told him I had to be with you, but not how I intended to be with you. He made me promise to look after you, and told me to tell you goodbye.’
That’s all?’
‘No, he also said I shouldn’t stay. When he couldn’t convince me, then he left. He said you’d understand. Oh, and I remember he said he hoped that — er, E-Branch? — that they would understand, too. For his sake.’
‘E-Branch,’ Harry echoed her. And then, remembering his dream, ‘Darcy!’
‘Who?’ She was dressed. She stared at him.
‘Go downstairs,’ he said. ‘Make some coffee. For yourself. There’s red wine in the fridge for me. Pour me a glass.’
‘Harry, I — ‘
‘Do it now!’
She went.
And when he was alone, Harry sent out his deadspeak thoughts to search for Darcy Clarke, and prayed he wouldn’t find him… but found him anyway. Found him blowing on the wind, drifting with the tides, flushed away like so much flotsam. Or maybe jetsam? Jetsam, yes: materials hurled from the deck of a ship in peril. Sacrificed for the greater good.
The Necroscope sat on the edge of his bed and shed several hot, slow tears. It was his humanity, amplified by the overpowering emotions of the Wamphyri. Even if he were only human he would have cried, except then his tears wouldn’t burn like the overflow of the volcano rumbling within.
‘Darcy,’ he said, ‘who was it?’
lt was you, Harry. Darcy’s deadspeak was faint as the wind over the sea, heard in the whorl of a small shell.
‘God, I know!’ Harry felt stabbed to the heart. ‘But who was it physically? Who took your life? And… how did you die? Not the old way?’
The stake, the sword, the fire? No, just a bullet. Well, two bullets. The fire wasn’t until later.
‘And your executioner?’
Why? So you can go after him? No, no, Harry. For after all he was only doing his job — and he obviously suspected that I was a deadly threat. Also… well, it’s a fact my own actions could have been more prudent. So maybe it was as much my fault as it was yours. But on the other hand, maybe if I’d known I was no longer protected, then I would have been more careful.<
br />
‘You won’t tell me who killed you?’
I have told you. You did.
Then I’ll have to find out some other time, from someone else.’
Why don’t you just steal it out of my deadspeak mind?
‘I don’t just take. Not from my friends. If you won’t tell me of your own free will, then I’ll just have to find out some other way.’
But you did take — and not just information — and it most certainly was not of my own free will! So that now I’m a dead friend. Just one of the Great Majority.
A third party asked, ‘Find out what some other way?’ And Harry gave a small start. But it was only Penny, standing in the doorway with a glass of red wine in her hand. She’d heard the Necroscope apparently talking to himself.
Harry’s concentration slipped; Darcy Clarke’s deadspeak disintegrated; contact was lost. But Harry wasn’t angry. Not with Penny. If he and Darcy had continued, then they probably would have parted on even worse terms. ‘Let’s go downstairs,’ he said. ‘Out into the garden. It’s a warm night. Are the stars out? I’d like to look at the stars. And think.’
He would like to look at his stars, yes: the familiar constellations. For who could say, maybe it would be his last opportunity. And the stars over Starside were very different. And he would like to think. About what Penny had said, for one thing: did he really need to even the score with Johnny Found? And why the hell should he want to know who had killed Darcy Clarke? Darcy wasn’t himself vengeful, was he?
And then there was Ken Layard and his gift. Harry was now a locator. Well, and he always had been, to an extent.
Telepathically, he could readily seek and discover others of his acquaintance, such as Zek Föener and Trevor Jordan. And given an introduction to a dead person, from then on he’d always been able to find his way to that person’s graveside. And no matter the distance, he’d rarely had difficulty conversing with such dead friends. But now… the teeming dead didn’t much want to speak to him any more.