by Brian Lumley
As a kid Harry had played in the deep snows of England’s north-east coast. When he was quite small he’d love just to sit there in the piled snow with an old tin can, driving the open end plop into the cold, soft white bank. When you pulled the can out again it would be full of snow; short fat cylinders of snow, from which you could build castles like on the beach. Except unlike sandcastles, which melted away when the tide came in, these castles would last for days until the weather warmed up. But it wasn’t the castles he pictured now but the perfectly circular holes which the can had used to leave in the snow. In his mind’s eye he could see those holes even now… and they were crimson. And they weren’t cut in snow.
Harry looked at the other steel-tubing knives. There were five more of them. Four were called after girls whose names he knew from the police files but didn’t know personally, and the fifth carried the name Pamela. This bastard kept them like mementoes, like photographs of old flames! Harry could imagine him masturbating over them.
Six weapons in all, yes, but there were seven velvet-lined trays in the drawer. Found must have the seventh tube with him, except it wouldn’t have a name yet.
Suddenly Harry’s vampire awareness warned him of someone — in fact more than one — entering the main door of the house to creep in the communal corridor outside Pound’s door. E-Branch? The police? Both? He sent out his thoughts to touch upon their minds. Another mind stared back at him for a moment, then withdrew in shock and horror. It had been a middling telepath; E-Branch again; but the others out there were police. Armed, of course. Heavily.
The Necroscope snarled a silent snarl and felt his face twisting out of its familiar contours. For a mad moment he considered standing and fighting; why, he could even win! But then he remembered his purpose in coming here — the job still to be finished — and conjured a Möbius door.
He went to the Frigis Express depot.
Emerging from the Möbius Continuum on to the grass verge where the Frigis works exit turned on to an Al South access road, he was in time to feel the blast of a big articulated truck as it sped by. The man at the wheel was just a shadow behind the glassy night sheen of his windscreen, but despite the fact that the legend on the side of the truck said only frigis express, still it spoke volumes. For one leg of the ‘X’ was missing where the paint had peeled away, making it look like eypress.
Johnny Pound’s ‘lucky charm’ truck.
Harry came forward to the edge of the road, was trapped for a moment in sweeping headlight beams where a large, powerful car followed not too far behind the truck. Intense faces merely glanced at him as the car swept by.
But there was something about those faces. Harry reached out and touched their minds. Police! They were after Found; they still wanted to catch him red-handed, or if not that, at least on the point of picking up some poor unsuspecting girl. Fools! There was evidence enough in his flat to put him away for… not for long enough. Pamela was right: he’d probably go into a madhouse, and be out again in short order.
That other party back at Johnny’s flat in Darlington: maybe they had broken in by now. Maybe they knew. So if Harry wanted the necromancer for himself, he was going to have to work fast.
But then he remembered Penny, alone in the house in Bonnyrig. He didn’t know how long this was going to take. He could simply kill Found out of hand, of course, or cause him to be killed in any number of ways. Except he’d made a deal with Pamela Trotter, and he still wouldn’t cheat on the dead. Also, Pound’s punishment should fit the crime. But Penny shouldn’t be left on her own… Not for too long… They’d killed Darcy Clarke, hadn’t they?… Why the fuck was everything so complicated?
Harry felt the tension building… felt it swelling until the pressure inside was enormous… then gulpingly filled his lungs with the cool night air and took a firm, deliberate grip on himself. Penny had put him first; he must put her first; he took the Möbius route to Edinburgh.
She wasn’t in the house!
Harry couldn’t believe it. He’d told her to stay here, to wait for him. So where had she gone? He reached out with his telepathic mind -
— But which direction? At this hour of the night, where could she have gone? Why? For what reason? Or had she simply taken Trevor Jordan’s advice and walked out on him?
He let his vampire awareness guide him, sent probes into the night, spreading outwards like ripples on the surface of a sentient mind-pool, seeking for Penny… and found others! Espers! Again!
He snarled at them, in their minds, and felt the shutters slam into place as they clamped down tight as limpets to rocks when the tide goes out. They’d been close but not too close, probably in Bonnyrig, some house they’d made their HQ. Harry passed them by, attempted to search further afield, came up against mental static that sizzled like bacon frying in his mind. It was E-Branch scrambling his sendings.
Damn all you mindspies! he cursed. I should get out and let you all find your own paths to Hell. But I should leave something behind me to make sure you get there, something to give you nightmares for ever!
He could do it, too, if he so desired, for he had the plague in him. This could be his legacy to a world and race which had forsaken him: a plague of vampires.
Physically, his own vampire was undeveloped, immature as yet; but its blood was his blood and his bite must surely be virulent. And at his command, the infinite vastness of the metaphysical Möbius Continuum. Why, he could plant vampires in every continent in the world — right now, tonight — if he wished it. And maybe then they would wish they’d left him the fuck alone!
He rushed out into his garden under the stars and the risen moon. It was night, his time. Ahhh, his time! But maybe in more ways than one. They were here for a reason, these espers. They could be coming for him right now, invisible under their shield of static.
‘Come then, come!’ he taunted them. ‘And only see what’s waiting for you!’
At the bottom of the garden, someone pushed the gate creakingly open. ‘Harry?’ Penny stepped into view and started up the path towards him.
‘Penny?’ The Necroscope reached out to her with his arms and with his mind, but her mind was a blur — or rather a mist — in which her psyche hid without even knowing it. Mind-smog!
Harry felt devastated, but he must hide it. Now she was a vampire, or would be, and now she was his thrall. It wasn’t a crush any longer. And he wondered if it ever had been. After all, he had brought her back from the dead.
‘What were you doing out in the night? I told you to wait.’
‘But the night was so beautiful, and just like you I needed to think.’ She let him fold her in his arms.
‘What did you think about?’ The night lured you. You felt the first fires racing in your veins. And tomorrow the sun will hurt your eyes, irritate your skin.
‘I thought… maybe you didn’t want to take me with you. Maybe you wouldn’t.’
‘You thought wrong. I will.’ I have to, for to leave you in this world would be to sign your death warrant.
‘But you don’t love me.’
‘Oh, but I do,’ he lied. But it won’t matter one way or the other, for you won’t love me, either. Still, we’ll have our lust.
‘Harry, I’m frightened!’
Too late, too late! ‘I don’t want to leave you here now,’ he told her. ‘You’d better come with me.’
‘But where?’
He took her into the house, ran through the rooms turning on all the lights, quickly returned to her. And he showed her Johnny’s knife, with her name on it. She gasped and drew back from him. ‘Can you imagine him?’ he asked her, his voice dark as a winter night. ‘Can you picture him looking at this and remembering your pain and his pleasure?’
She shuddered. ‘I… I thought I’d forgotten. I’ve tried to forget.’
‘You will forget.’ He nodded. ‘And so will I… when it’s over. But I can’t leave you here, and I have to finish it with him.’
‘Will I see him?’ She turn
ed pale at the thought.
Harry nodded. ‘Yes.’ His scarlet eyes lit in a strange smile. ‘Yes — and he will see you!’
‘But you won’t let him hurt me?’
‘I promise.’
Then I’m ready…’
One hour earlier on Waverley station in Edinburgh, Trevor Jordan had boarded the overnight sleeper for London. He’d made no plans as such; tomorrow morning, early, he would probably give E-Branch a ring and see if he could sniff out which way the wind was blowing. And if it felt right he’d offer them his services again. They’d check him out (in the circumstances it was only to be expected) and of course they’d want to know all about his experiences with Harry Keogh. But he’d make sure that all of that took time, and by then Harry wouldn’t be here any more. In the event he was still here, Jordan would cry off any work that went against him.
Not out of fear but respect, and out of gratitude… yes, and if he was truthful out of fear, too. Harry was Harry and a vampire. In that respect, anyone who didn’t feel at least some trace of fear had to be an idiot.
The telepath had paid for a bed but couldn’t sleep. There was just too much on his mind. He was a man back from the dead and he couldn’t get used to it, probably never would. Not even a man who makes a full recovery from a desperate illness could feel like Jordan felt. For he had gone beyond illness — beyond life itself-and returned. And it was all down to Harry.
Unknown to Jordan, unknown even to Harry himself, was the fact that there was a lot more than that down to him. For the one thing Jordan hadn’t taken into account was that Harry had been in his mind: the Necroscope had touched upon his mind — ‘fingered’ it, however briefly — but enough that he’d left his prints there. And no way to erase them.
To E-Branch — certainly to the two espers who had followed Jordan on to the train, one a spotter and the other a telepath — those prints took the form of a reeking mental mist called mind-smog. Of course, they couldn’t probe too deeply, because Jordan was himself a quality telepath and he’d know it; indeed Gareth Scanlon, one of the two men who shadowed him, had once been Jordan’s pupil, brought on by him until his own talent had matured and taken shape. Jordan would know his mind (not to mention his face, his voice) immediately. Which was why the two kept well away from him, boarded a carriage far down the train, on the other side of the buffet car, and sat for the first part of their journey with their hats on, hiding behind newspapers which they’d already read four or five times.
But Jordan never once headed in their direction or sent a single thought their way; he was satisfied just to sit in his sleeper compartment, listen to the clatter of the wheels on the tracks, and watch the night world roll by beyond his window. And be glad he was once more a part of that world, without once pausing to wonder for how long.
As the train slowed down a little for a viaduct crossing between Alnwick and Morpeth, Scanlon sat up straighter in his seat and closed his eyes in sudden, half-fearful concentration. Someone was trying to get through to him. But the thoughts were sharp, clean and entirely human, with nothing of vampire mind-smog about them. It was Millicent Cleary at the HQ in London, from where she, the Minister Responsible and the E-Branch Duty Officer were co-ordinating and running the show.
She kept it short: Gareth? Do you have a Sitrep?
Scanlon relaxed his screen of static and gave a brief situation report, finishing: He’s in a sleeper, coming all the way into London.
Maybe not, she came back. It depends how things are going, but the Minister says we might pull the plug on all three of them very soon now.
What? Scanlon’s concern was obvious; also his horror, that at any moment he and his colleague might be called upon to kill a man — indeed, to kill a former friend.
Clearly picked that up. A former friend, yes, but now a vampire. And a moment later: The Minister wants to know, is there a problem?
There wasn’t, except: I mean, we are on a train, remember? We can’t very well burn him on the bloody train!
The train will be stopping in Darlington, and we already have agents there. So be ready for the word. You may have to get off the train there and take Trevor… er, Jordan, with you. That’s it for now. We’ll get back to you.
Scanlon passed the message on to his companion, the spotter Alan Kellway, who was one of the Branch’s more recent recruits. ‘I didn’t know Jordan all that well,’ Kellway answered, ‘and so have no problem that way. All I know is he was dead and now is alive — life of a sort — and that it isn’t natural. So we’ll only be restoring the natural order of things.’
‘But I did know him.’ Scanlon shrank down in his seat. ‘He was my friend. It will be like murder!’
‘A Pyrrhic killing, yes.’ Kellway put it his way. ‘But is it really? You have to remember: Harry Keogh, Jordan and their kind… they could murder our entire world!’
‘Yes.’ Scanlon nodded. ‘That’s what I keep telling myself. That’s what I have to keep telling myself.’
In the Möbius Continuum, Johnny Pound’s unthinkable knife was like a lodestone: it pointed in Pound’s direction. Rather, Harry’s locator talent pointed the knife, and he simply followed where it led.
Penny clung to him with her eyes closed; she had looked once, but that had been enough. The darkness of the Möbius Continuum seemed solid. That was because of the absence of everything material, the absence even of time. Where there is NOTHING, however, even thoughts have weight.
It’s a kind of magic, she whispered, as much to herself as to anyone.
No, the Necroscope answered, but you can be forgiven for thinking it. After all, Pythagoras thought it, too. At which point, expert in the ways of the Möbius Continuum that he was, Harry sensed a cessation of motion and knew he’d found Found.
Forming a Möbius door and looking through, he saw a hedgerow paralleling a ribbon road that stretched into the distance straight as a ruler. Vehicles thundered by on the metalled surface, their lights strobing the bushes of the hedgerow into a flickering kaleidoscope of yellow, green and black. And even as Harry watched, so the Frigis Express truck whoofed by.
A short Möbius jump took them a mile farther down the road, where they exited inside a catwalk spanning the Al’s multiple lane system. And a minute later Harry said: ‘Here he comes.’
They gazed down through the walkway’s windows, watched the Frigis Express truck thunder by beneath them to rumble on down the road. As its lights diminished and merged with those of the rest of the night traffic, Penny asked, ‘What now?’
Harry shrugged and checked their location. ‘Borough-bridge is a mile or two further south,’ he said. ‘Johnny might stop there or might not. In any case, I don’t intend to monitor his progress mile by mile; but I do know that somewhere along the line he’ll call a halt, probably at an all-night diner. That’s his modus operandi, right? It’s his venue, the hunting ground where he finds his victims; women, on their own, in the dead of night. Except… I don’t have to tell you that, do I?’
Penny shuddered. ‘No, you don’t have to tell me that.’
They looked around. On one side of the road was a petrol station, on the other, a diner. Harry said, ‘I’m happy now that I can find Johnny any time I want him. So let’s take a break for a coffee, OK? And I can maybe explain something of how I want to play it.’
She nodded and even managed a shaky smile. ‘OK.’
They headed along the walkway towards steps leading down to the cafeteria. People were coming up the steps, heading down to the petrol station and its car park. Before they could climb up to the walkway’s level, Penny grabbed Harry’s arm. ‘Your eyes!’ she hissed.
Harry put on his dark glasses, then took her hand. ‘Lead me,’ he said. ‘You know, like I was a blind man?’ It wasn’t a bad idea. From then on, in the cafeteria where a handful of travellers were eating, people only looked at them once and quickly looked away.
It’s a funny thing, Harry thought, but people don’t much look at someone with an afflict
ion. Or if they do, they look sideways. Hah! They’d jump sideways if they knew the nature of my affliction!
But they didn’t.
Not all of them, anyway…
On the bank of the river some little way from Bonnyrig, Ben Trask and Geoffrey Paxton stood in the dark of the night under the moon and stars and listened to the gurgle of blackly swirling waters. They ‘listened’ for other things, too, but heard nothing. And they watched.
They watched the old house across the water — the house of the Necroscope, with all its lights ablaze — watched it for movement behind the open, ground-floor patio doors, for shadows falling on the fabric of the curtains in the upper windows, for any sign of life… or absence of life, undeath. And watching it they fingered their weapons: Trask his sub-machine-gun, with a magazine of thirty 9mm rounds seated firmly in its blued-steel housing, and Paxton his metal crossbow, loaded with a hardwood bolt under pressure sufficient to hammer through a man like a nail into softwood.
A mile away, on the road into Bonnyrig, two more E-Branch operatives sat in their car, waiting. They had small talents of their own but weren’t telepaths; neither one of them had Ben Trask’s experience, or Paxton’s ‘zeal’. But if it became necessary, certainly they would be able to do whatever must be done. Their car was equipped with a radio, tuned in on London HQ. At the moment their job was simply to relay messages, and act as back-up for the men up front. If Trask or Paxton called them, they could pick them up in little more than a minute. Which at least gave the men on the river bank a feeling of security; Paxton a little less than Trask, for he had been here before.
‘Well?’ Trask whispered now, taking the telepath’s elbow. ‘Is he in there or isn’t he?’
Standing close to the very spot where Harry Keogh had tossed him into the river, Paxton was nervous. The Necroscope had warned him that next time… that there had better not be a next time. And now that time was here; and Trask’s hand still gripped Paxton’s arm just above the elbow. ‘I don’t know.’ The telepath shook his head. ‘But the house is tainted, for sure. Can’t you feel it?’