Necroscope: Invaders e-1

by Brian Lumley

  ‘Not that she was ugly. On the contrary, she was incredibly beautiful — irresistibly so. And that was Vavara’s menace: she was a beguiler, a spellbinder. It was a kind of hypnotism, Jake, but by no means the same as Grahame McGilchrist’s. Grahame uses a drug to enhance the authority of his eyes and voice; his is a skill as opposed to a true Power. There again, who can say? Perhaps Vavara’s hypnotism was just such a skill, but one enhanced out of all proportion by her vampire leech, as all human senses are enhanced by vampirism.

  ‘Trask’s science has it that not only humans but all creatures possess lures other than the purely physical attractions efface and form. But in humans the voice and the eyes are especially important in defining a person’s — what, charisma? Hah! But that is also a Szgany word, for personality. Ben talks about pheromones, and chemistry and such. But all I know of chemistry is how to mix a decent gunpowder. And it’s a damn hard thing to beguile a rocket, or silver shot from double barrels!

  ‘Anyway, and whatever this attraction is, Vavara had it. And again, perhaps Ben’s right. For the spell she cast over men was stronger than her power over women, and usually fatal. Any man who took her fancy — whether a simple Sunsider or even, on occasion, a Lord of the Wamphyri — he was a goner. To resist Vavara was a wasted effort.

  ‘So much for the witch. Now for the wizards: ‘The other two were Lords, as I have said. Lord Szwart was one, for he had taken his Szgany name, by which the Szgany knew him: Szwart, pronounced like the German “schwartz,” which means black. And black he was, blacker than night, black as the black heart of the leech that empowered him… but with what strange powers? I’ve said he was blacker than night: a totally inadequate description. Lord Szwart was the night!

  ‘Now, all of the Wamphyri are children of the night. Certainly they are, for they cannot bear the sunlight. And because night is their element — because they are awake at night, and see and revel and hunt at night — it is like a cloak they wear, disguising them even from the most keen-sighted of men. On Sunside when vampires were abroad in the forest, the Szgany would lie still in their hiding places and watch them pass. And sometimes when they passed a clinging mist would spring out of the earth, by which you would know they were there; or perhaps the stars would blink as a shape flowed across them, but you would not see whose shape it was, just a darkness in the lesser dark. And sometimes — oh, sometimes — the mist and the shape would come close, closer, and sniff… and laugh!

  ‘But you must excuse me, Jake, the things of which I speak are not pleasant things. I may not speak of them without remembering…

  ‘Anyway, Lord Szwart’s command over the night was so much greater than any other’s that when the sun was down he was simply invisible. He made no mists, blotted no stars, and cast no shadows. Yet he was seen, but only once, by a man of the Szgany — seen in a storm, in a flash of lightning — and then no more. But the man who saw him was a madman until his dying day, which wasn’t long in coming. For he went into the woods to dig a hole to hide in, but never stopped digging! And when finally the pit fell in on him, he didn’t cry out in his horror at being buried alive but only his lunatic joy… for at last he was safe, and Lord Szwart could never get him now.

  ‘I do not know what Lord Szwart was. Only that he was Wamphyri.

  ‘Which leaves one other, and perhaps the most dangerous of all. Lord Nephran Malinari — called Malinari the Mind, or simply The Mind — was a mentalist, a thought-thief, a mind-reader without peer. None of the stripling telepaths in Ben Trask’s E-Branch today would have stood a chance against Lord Malinari in any battle of minds, nor all of them together. Let me tell you how it was with him:

  ‘Among the Szgany, even more so than in your people, there were weird talents. My own sixth sense — my seer’s blood — is but one example. But we had mentalists, too, and oneiromancers, and even men like lan Goodly, aye, despite that their precognition was a dubious art at best. For it’s as I’ve said, there’s a trace of the Wamphyri in all men of Sunside; their taint lingers on, and I fancy it has carried over even into this world. But Malinari… was special. His evil was special! Why, among the Wamphyri themselves, Lord Nephran Malinari had no friends. But don’t let me mislead you, Jake: it’s not that the Wamphyri were given to forming lasting relationships. They weren’t, but some of them did form alliances; well, occasionally. But never with Malinari the Mind. How may a man trust, or remain on good terms, with a creature who knows his every thought, who is one step ahead of his every move? The Wamphyri are devious, secretive… but how to keep secrets from such as Malinari?

  ‘Let him but touch a man, a mere touch of the fingertips, and it was as though the other’s thoughts flowed like water — or like blood? — out of their owner and into the mind of Malinari. Ah, a vampire with a difference: he slaked two kinds of thirst, the one for blood and the other for knowledge! No idle curiosity, Jake, but the lust for knowledge itself. And once a thing was learned, Nephran Malinari never forgot it.

  ‘But of course in Sunside/Starside, just as in this world, there were those who could not be read. Be it strength of will, or simply their nature, there was a wall in their minds no ordinary mentalist could ever breach. Ah, but Lord Malinari was no ordinary mentalist. I have said his touch opened the way. So it did, like opening a dam in a pent river. But if the soft brush of fingertips would not suffice… there was another way.

  ‘Fingertips… and the incredible strength of the Wamphyri… Trask says it’s their metamorphism that allows them to punch stiffened fingers into a man’s chest to nip his heart. I think so, too, for it certainly wasn’t brute force with Malinari. His fingers were fluid, like liquid, allowing the exploration of a man’s inner ear, or the sockets behind his eyes, or the brain itself. And whenever The Mind stole a man’s thoughts out of his very brain… then he left nothing behind. No, not even the will to live…

  ‘We’re almost done. What remains is not for me to tell but for Ben Trask — in his own time, that is.

  ‘Just one more thing. I spoke of Vavara, Lord Szwart, and

  Malinari the Mind in the past tense. For that’s how I heard of them, around camp fires when I was a boy, as part of Sunside’s legends. The final part of the legend had it that four hundred years ago the rest of Starside’s Lords and Ladies got together to be rid of them, and it took all of their strength and their fighting forces together to do it, to banish them into the Icelands.

  ‘But five years ago — when Nathan and Trask’s espers turned Sunside/Starside towards the sun — it appears that some of the ice melted. And if Vavara, Szwart, and Nephran Malinari were locked in the ice, waiting out the long cold years…?

  ‘That’s Trask’s explanation, anyway.

  ‘And now we’re done, for that’s all I know of it, or all I’m willing to say for now… except for one final thing that I’m sure you’ve worked out for yourself: the fact that they’re back, Jake. All three of those monsters, they’re back.

  ‘And that’s the nature of Trask’s mission. It’s what he and his espers are pledged to do. For once again there are vampires on the loose—

  ‘—And no longer confined to Sunside/Starside!’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN Trask’s Story

  When Jake looked up he was alone. Perhaps he’d been asleep by the end of Lardis’s story, but he didn’t think so. It had gone in, all of it, and perhaps a lot more than Lardis had actually said. Weird, but that’s how it had felt during the telling: as if Jake had been there on Sunside/Starside; as if he had known all or most of these things — the sights and sounds and smells of Lardis’s world — and had only needed the old gypsy’s corroboration.

  But that was during the telling, and now it was all receding; the scenes that Lardis had painted so inadequately, which Jake’s own mind had coloured, and into which he’d inserted the finishing touches, were just words instead of feelings, sensations… emotions? And all that was left was a legend in its own right. Half of a legend, anyway.

  ‘You didn’t tell me every
thing…’ Jake accused, before he fully realized that he was alone. Then, looking all around and feeling foolish, he stood up, tossed aside the dregs of coffee gone cold in his cup, stretched the stiffness out of his limbs. It would be good to get some real sleep sometime.

  Suddenly the silence, the emptiness, the loneliness of the place had become oppressive, weighing on him… until he spied movement in the clump of pale, stumpy trees between himself and the big Ops truck. It was Ben Trask, dappled grey and green and gold in the partial shade of the trees, heading his way.

  ‘Jake?’ Trask called ahead. He wasn’t shouting, but in the clear morning air — the silence of the near-deserted campsite — sound carried a long way. And drawing closer, Trask asked, ‘Did I hear you talking to someone?’

  ‘Talking to myself,’ Jake answered, rubbing at the stubble on his chin. ‘Or maybe to one of your ghosts — Lardis? That old man has this strange effect on me. He doesn’t just tell a story but takes me with him! Says his piece and leaves me there, then vanishes.’

  ‘Sunside/Starside?’

  Jake nodded. ‘But he left a lot out.’

  ‘He was told to,’ Trask said. ‘But that’s okay… you can have the rest of it from me. Most of it, anyway. And if there’s stuff I leave out, you’ll just have to believe me that there’s a good reason. Let’s go to the Ops truck. It’s going to get hot out here in the next hour or so, by which time the chopper will be back and we can get on our way. Meanwhile, the Ops truck has air-conditioning.’

  As they walked back towards the articulated vehicle, Jake said, ‘The stuff Lardis left out, I mean apart from the technical stuff, or “science,” as he calls it, was mainly to do with people. Harry Keogh, of course, the mysterious Necroscope? But also his sons: The Dweller, Nestor, and Nathan. Huh! I learned more about Vavara, Malinari, and Szwart than about these human figures.’

  Trask looked at him but said nothing, and so Jake went on: ‘That term, Necroscope. It comes up time and time again. Now I know what a telescope is. “Tele” is from the Greek, right? Far, as in far away? Likewise “micro” in microscope, which obviously means very small. But Necroscope? An instrument for seeing corpses?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Trask told him.

  ‘And that makes sense to you?’

  ‘And to you, eventually,’ Trask answered. ‘I hope.’

  Jake shook his head. ‘So it’s your belief that this Harry Keogh, this Necroscope who sees dead folks, is in my head? Now, I know I’ve tried asking this before, but what the hell is this guy? Some kind of telepath?’

  Trask nodded. ‘He was that, too, towards the end.’

  ‘Was?’ Jake frowned. ‘Towards the end?’ Then he snapped his fingers. ‘Oh, yes, and that’s the other thing. Lardis mentioned a bomb — a nuke? — that came through the Gate into Starside. And I somehow got the impression that Harry and this, er — this “changeling” son of his, The Dweller? — that they were there at the time.’

  They were approaching the steps at the rear of the big Ops vehicle. Trask paused in his striding to take Jake’s arm. ‘They were there/ he said, his voice hoarse now. ‘And before you ask me: no, Harry didn’t escape.’

  ‘What?’ Jake said.

  Trask climbed the steps and made to enter, then turned and looked back. ‘Harry Keogh, Necroscope — the original Necroscope — is dead and gone, Jake,’ he said. ‘In one way an incredible waste, and in another a merciful release, and probably a blessing, too.’

  ‘Dead?’ Jake said, and was suddenly cold fn the full glare of the sun. ‘Then how can—?’

  ‘—Harry’s gone/ Trask cut him short. ‘He’s just another one of E-Branch’s ghosts. But dead and gone or alive and living in you, he has never been more important to us than he is right now.. p>

  Inside the vehicle’s Ops section, the Duty Officer and the pre-cog lan Goodly were seated within the central control area. Liz was standing outside the desk, her elbows on its no-longer-cluttered surface, her chin cupped in her hands. Apart from minimum services — the permanent telephone array, one small radio crackling with static, and a dimly-luminescent wall screen — Ops had been more or less unplugged and decommissioned, however temporarily.

  The muted conversation tailed off awkwardly as Trask and Jake entered, but the Head of E-Branch held up a hand and said, ‘It’s okay, I want all of you to stay. I have to speak to Jake, and I can’t see any reason to leave anyone out. lan, if I slip up and forget some important detail, you’ll be here to correct me. And

  Liz, there may be the odd tidbit of information that’s new to

  you, too.’

  He hitched himself up onto the desk, and Jake let down one of the wall seats and sat opposite. Then, without further pause, Trask told his part of the story.

  ‘Jake, Lardis Lidesci has told you something about his world, a parallel world called Sunside/Starside by its inhabitants. He’s told you about Vavara, Szwart — and Malinari, too. So by now you know that these aren’t just legendary or mythical figures but a very real threat to everyone in our world. They’re here, biding their time, hiding out somewhere on Earth. Now, please take that for granted and believe that it’s so, for last night was a mere lesson — a primer, a single leaf— out of the Great Textbook of the enormous threat posed by the Wamphyri.

  ‘So let’s deal with it step by step. How they got here has to be the first question, that’s obvious.

  ‘Five years ago the Gate in Perchorsk was closed. That was in large part Gustav Turchin’s doing, for which our thanks. But Turchin is only one man, and Russia is a big place; the expansionist element hasn’t gone away; there are still plenty of powerful people in the former USSR who hanker after the “good old days”, when their satellite subordinates paid tribute to Mother Russia. So while Communism may have been wounded, its scars are quickly healing and the scene is set for a resurgence. The Russians are rather well known for their capacity for the odd revolution now and then, and their armed forces are now political factors in their own right. Well, the fact is they always have been, but never more so than now.

  ‘In E-Branch we all remember how Turkur Tzonov, then head of the Opposition — our term for the USSR’s answer to E-Branch — planned to take his partly nationalistic but mainly egomaniac schemes, along with a dedicated crack military unit, into Sunside/Starside to conquer it for Russia. But Turchin had his own ideas about Tzonov’s real motives, and so did we.

  Sunside/ Starside is rich in gold, far richer than the Yukon’s Klondike in its heyday. And it’s not some kind of localized motherlode: gold is common in the vampire world, it can be found literally anywhere. Working with Turchin, we tried to keep that a secret, too, for obvious reasons. Or maybe they’re not so obvious, so I’d better clarify:

  ‘Russia is broke. Her army, navy, and air force are destitute, or so close it makes no difference. They can’t even afford to decommission their clapped-out nuclear submarines and leaking missiles but have to dump them in someone else’s backyard! But Russia’s generals, her admirals and air marshals are still very powerful. When that lunatic Turkur Tzonov went into Starside to get himself killed, he left many of his men behind, trapped in Perchorsk by Gustav Turchin’s security forces. Tzonov had promised his men gold, and we all know what gold does to men.

  Gold is power, power corrupts, and ultimate power…?

  ‘So then, Sunside/Starside was literally one big goldmine, and the only sure access was through Perchorsk in Russia’s Ural Mountains. Oh, it was blocked, flooded, that’s true. But if you can turn a tap on, you can also turn it off.

  ‘Okay, the rest of this can’t be guaranteed as pure fact, but we’re E-Branch and we do what we do, and we’re not usually very far wrong. We keep our eyes and our ears — oh, and a lot of other equipment — open, and try to keep up to date. And we also have what Nathan Keogh told us. So it’s a patchwork quilt of sorts, but pretty accurate, we think…

  ‘Where was I? Oh, yes: the Perchorsk Gate was closed, but somebody wanted it open. Enter Rus
sian Internal Security, a militarized, updated KGB lookalike headed by General Mikhail Suvorov. They stepped in and did just that: diverted the Perchorsk dam waters back into the ravine and let the Gate drain the complex dry. Then they had to decide who was going to explore Sunside/Starside, though “exploit” might be a better word for it. But in any case, it didn’t quite come to that.

  ‘More than eighteen months had passed since Turchin closed the Gate, since when he’d had a hard time fighting off Suvorov, who of course wanted it opened up because he had heard rumours about the gold. And Suvorov eventually won the fight, because Turchin was over a barrel. Russia was in the red and Suvorov — who was very Red — had the answer: a huge goldmine in a primitive world at the other end of an interdimensional tunnel whose only accessible entrance lay deep in the earth and deeper still inside Mother Russia!

  ‘Thus Turchin had very little choice: he could step aside and let Suvorov get on with what he’d promised would be a “limited” exploration, or Suvorov would tell all the hungry Russian people about the unlimited wealth that their Premier was striving to deny them! Well, we all know what that would have meant… only think back on the Klondike and you’ll see what I mean. Everyone would want a piece of the action. And remember, Gustav Turchin knew something about the horrors of the vampire world — knew as much if not more than we do about what happened at Perchorsk in its early days. Certainly he realized that the fewer people who entered the Gate, the smaller the odds they’d bring something back with them out of Starside. Something other than gold, that is…

  ‘And in all that time — some eighteen months — we’d had no word from Nathan Keogh, who of course had made his home in Sunside. But how could we have heard from him, since the Gates had been closed? Ah, but Nathan had his own route to Earth, through the Mobius Continuum! That’s the place where you go, Jake — er, between going places? — it’s the darkness between leaving one place and arriving at the next.