by Brian Lumley
‘Metempsychosis?’ Jake cut him short. For despite that he was sure he’d never heard the word before, still he understood it; likewise another word that meant much the same thing. ‘You mean transmigration? Of souls? Like he was… what, some kind of body-snatcher?’ And now suspicion was written plain on the younger man’s face.
‘It wasn’t like that at all!’ the precog protested.
‘What?’ Jake’s voice was brittle now, cracking like glass splintering under the heel of a boot. ‘I don’t give a twopenny toss what it was like! Shit, look at it from my point of view! This bloke’s dead but he’s trying to control my mind? And then what, my body? And if he ever got it, do you really think he’d want to give it back? And what about me, Mr lan bloody Goodly, precog? What the fuck about me? Is that why you can’t tell me my future? Because the real me doesn’t have one!?’
‘Calm down, for goodness sake!’ Goodly looked alarmed. ‘My word, but you’ve a very short memory, Jake Cutter!’
‘Eh?’ That had served to slow Jake down a little. ‘A short memory? How so?’
‘But didn’t Harry get you out of jail? Hasn’t he saved your life twice already, and Liz’s, too?’
Jake considered it, relaxed a very little, said: ‘But what does he hope to do with me, this… this ghost?’
‘Well, perhaps that’s one I can answer,’ Goodly told him. ‘You see, the Necroscope’s principal tenet was that whatever a man does in life he will continue to do after death. He proved it, too: used it to discover the Mobius Continuum. You’ll just have to take my word for that, for the time being, anyway. But Harry’s greatest claim to fame, or one of them, lay in finding and destroying vampires. Oh yes, the Earth was infested before this latest invasion. And believe me, Jake, without the Necroscope on our side, our world would have become an unimaginable hell-hole of a place a long time ago. So…’
‘… So, you think he intends to keep on doing what he did before/ Jake nodded his understanding, all the while fighting hard to suppress his disbelief. ‘This Harry… he’s trying to come back because he somehow knows they have come back, and he wants to go on killing vampires. He’s the avenging ghost and I… I’m his gadget?’
The precog shrugged and answered, ‘And there you have it.’
Jake shook his head, looked bewildered, said: ‘Come again? Didn’t you get something backwards just then? Surely you meant there it has me!’
But Goodly was weary of this now. ‘As you will,’ he answered. And, pursing his thin lips, he turned away.
Jake saw his mistake, didn’t want to alienate someone who obviously gave a damn, and quickly said, ‘Listen, I appreciate everything you’ve told me. I’m not trying to mess you about — none of you — but looking for a little firm ground, somewhere I can safely plant my feet. The way I’m feeling, every step is like quicksand. And what you just said doesn’t help any. What, I’m supposed to be happy with the notion of this Harry working his will through me, if not actually on me? Well, that’s probably fine by you E-Branch people, all nice and safe in your own talented little skulls, but—’
‘But… there’s no safe place in E-Branch, Jake,’ the precog cut him short, glancing back over his shoulder. ‘However, I did say you would be around for quite some time. Which with the Necroscope — or something of him — on your side, seems a very fair forecast to me.’
‘But a ghost?’
‘There are ghosts and ghosts/ the other answered, walking away.
‘But he’s dead, for Christ’s sake!’ Made meaningless now, through repetition, still Jake’s exclamation exploded from his dry lips. ‘And not just a ghost — not just any old spook — but one who has access to my mind!’
‘In E-Branch/ Goodly told him, without looking back, we do believe in ghosts, especially in the ghost of Harry Keogh. We have every good reason to. But that’s something you don’t have to take my word for, Jake. You see, I’m sure that before very long you 11 believe in them, too. I, Mr lan bloody Goodly, precog, am very sure of it, yes.. p>
CHAPTER SIXTEEN A Meeting Of Minds
Jake was in Chopper one with Trask, Liz, Goodly, Lardis, and a pair of technicians, Jimmy Harvey and Paul Arenson. Their next stop was Alice Springs (a ‘mere’ eight hundred miles east) for refuelling. Chopper two needed an hour’s maintenance and would follow on behind. As for the vehicular contingent:
‘They’re heading south for Kalgoorlie,’ Paul Arenson, a gangling, blue-eyed blond of maybe thirty-three years was telling his younger colleague. ‘From there they’ll go piggyback on a freight train to Broken Hill, then back on the road again to Brisbane. All except the big artic. It has to be the Great Aussie Bight coast road for the big feller. I calculate something like two thousand three hundred miles all told. We’ll be home and dry in less than five hours; that’s taking it easy, including a stop to stretch our legs at Alice. But as for the lads in the big truck… just be glad you’re not one of them. Five hours for us, and three or four days for them!’
The conversation buzzed in Jake’s head, singing with the vibration of the jetcopter. The airplane was safe and stable, but with its paramilitary design it hadn’t been built for comfort. Jake sat on the floor in the narrow stowage area towards the tail, where there were no seats. Half-reclining, his large, angular frame was cushioned by holdalls, sausage-bags, and various packs of personal belongings, some hard and some soft; it wasn’t his idea of luxury. But tired, and even hoping to get a little sleep, he repositioned himself as best he could and let the aircraft’s singing soak into him.
The ‘tune’ was much too regular for a lullaby, and snatches of muted conversation kept drifting back to him, monotone lyrics that didn’t fit the music but clung like cobwebs to his thoroughly weary mind. Cocooned in this odd mix of white noise and blurred babble, gradually Jake felt himself nodding off.
Liz Merrick was loosely belted into the rearmost of the seats, a gunner’s swivelling bucket-seat between wide sliding doors on both sides. Her long legs were up, flopping over the gunner’s arm rests; the gun itself slumped nose-down, strapped in position. Glinting a dull blue-grey, and despite its proximity to Liz’s lovely body, the weapon looked sullenly impotent. But the picture Jake kept in his mind as he drifted into sleep was that of a naked Liz with the gun between her legs…
… But then he was asleep, and he was the gun between her legs! And — damn it to hell! — he wasn’t fucking Liz but was facing xwsy from her out of the door. And she wasn’t trying to ride him but was firing him… her arms round his waist, with one hand massaging his balls while the other, working his rampant dick, shot burst after burst of silvery, smoking semen at nightmarish vampire shapes that flapped in the chopper’s slipstream, snarling their bloodlust as they fought to get inside the plane, to get at Liz, Trask, Goodly and the others!
Barely asleep, Jake jerked awake. Liz was staring at him, her cheeks flaming, mouth half-open, eyes wide. And Jake didn’t need a degree in psychiatry — or in parapsychology — to understand what had happened here. Whether as a deliberate voyeur or an innocent observer, Liz had been in his mind. She’d seen that last scene. And as for what it meant: that was his fear surfacing, his ongoing suspicion that Ben Trask was simply using him, now complicated by the notion that Trask was also using her as some kind of bait — like a carrot for a donkey? — to keep him happy as he plodded on. He could be right at that, or he could be wrong. But if Liz were the carrot, then what did Trask have in mind for the stick? Everything remained to be seen.
‘I… I…’ Liz mouthed words at him — mouthed them, but nothing came out — as she quickly, selfconsciously, ashamedly slid her jean-clad legs from the gunner’s arm rests and sat up straighter in the bucket-seat. And:
Serves you fucking right! Jake snapped back, but silently, in his head. And he knew he’d reached her from the way her head jerked. And now keep the fuck out!
Following which, as his anger cooled, it took some time to get back to sleep…
Snatches of conversation drifting bac
k to him. But in his ears or in his had? Perhaps he was still on Liz’s mind, and unsuspected even by the girl herself where she sat in her bucket-seat midway between Jake in stowage and the others in their seats up front, she had become some kind of mental relay station. For in the few days she had known him Liz had established something of a rapport with Jake; it was possible that the sending technique she had used to taunt Bruce Trennier had ‘fixed’ itself and was now developing more rapidly in her special mind. Maybe this was simply her way of making amends: by letting Jake in on the conversation. The conversation about him. Or was it something, or some one, else entirely?
Trask’s hushed voice, asking: ‘But why him?’ Lardis Lidesci: ‘Does the why of it really matter? If Jake has been chosen, he’s been chosen.’
And lan Goodly: ‘There are certain similarities. Maybe we shouldn’t overlook them. I’m sure mental characteristics — how Jake thinks — are more important than the purely physical way he looks. When we look at him we don’t see Harry, that’s true, but the Necroscope was a hard act to follow. Perhaps we should give more thought as to how Harry sees him. And there are similarities.’ Trask: ‘Go on.’
Goodly: ‘For one thing, they both lost loved ones. Both of them drowned, murdered, too.’
Trask: ‘Granted, but that’s where it ends. And as for losing a loved one, murdered, you could say the same about me. But where is Harry’s humility? Where’s his compassion, his warmth? This Jake… he’s abrasive, a roughneck, spoiled and wild.’
Goodly: ‘A roughneck? But in the right circumstances that would be — and it already has been — a positive bonus. A rough diamond, maybe. Surely the Necroscope would know better than to choose a weakling for a job like this?’
Trask: ‘But a hard man? A killer, even if he does have his reasons?’
Lardis: ‘Me, I say they were good reasons. I like him! And I say it again, if he’s Harry Hell-Lander’s choice, that’s good enough for me.’
Trask: ‘And me… well, within limits. So don’t misunderstand me — I’m not arguing the Necroscope’s choice — it’s just that I don’t understand it. I have this feeling that Jake’s not only fighting us but fighting Harry, too.’
Goodly: ‘Oh, he is, be sure of it! But aside from his manners and tendency to aggression, there are similarities.’
Trask, dubiously: ‘More similarities?’
Goodly: ‘Indeed. For Harry believed in revenge, too. Don’t you remember? An eye for an eye? He was just a boy when he went after Boris Dragosani. If like attracts like — mentally speaking, that is — then I can well see how Harry would be drawn to this one. And that’s something else you might give some thought to: if you want Jake firmly on the team, and his mind exclusively on the job in hand, you could do a lot worse than find this man, this Luigi Castellano.’
Trask ‘And then what? Let Jake go after him?’
Goodly: ‘This Castellano is rubbish and should be disposed of — we’re all agreed on that. I think Jake will chase him down no matter what, which makes Castellano a distraction. But if he were to be taken out…. no more distraction. And we would have Jake’s gratitude.’
Trash, mildly surprised: ‘Well now! And just listen to the cold-blooded one! But you’re right, and we’re checking into it. Interpol and other friends abroad. If we could just bring Castellano to justice, that might suffice.’
Goodly: ‘No, it wouldn’t.’ (A sensed shake of the precog’s head). ‘When he is dead, that will suffice. You know as well as I do how Jake dealt with the other members of that gang. Do you really think he’ll be satisfied to see their boss nice and comfortable, all warm and well fed behind bars?’
Lardis: ‘Anyway, in case I haven’t already said it loud or often enough, I like Jake Cutter. And so does Liz.’
Liz, heatedly: ‘I do not! Well, not especially.’
Lardis, chuckling throatily: ‘See?’
Then silence for a while, the darkness deepening, and Jake finally adrift in dreams. And a strange cold current taking him in tow, steering him to an unknown yet oddly familiar destination…
A river bank, and below its grassy, root-tangled rim, the water swirling in the eddies of a small bight. A boy, sitting on the edge and leaning forward at what seemed an unsafe angle, dangling his feet close to the slowly swirling surface. His elbows were on his knees, his hands propping his chin, and he appeared to be talking to someone. Perhaps to himself.
Jake’s shadow fell on him, and the boy turned his head to look up at him. He didn’t seem at all surprised by Jake’s presence (but then, neither did Jake). On the contrary, he smiled a pale, painful, yet appreciative greeting. ‘Hello, there! So you came. Why don’t you sit down a while and talk to me?’
‘I, er, didn’t like to cut in on you!’ Jake answered, not knowing what else to say. And then, because he wasn’t sure what else to do, either — and wondering if he knew the other — he finally followed his suggestion, sat down, and asked him: ‘Er, do you think it’s possible we’ve met somewhere before?’
Beginning to feel the strangeness of it all, he looked the boy over more closely, perhaps even warily.
Apart from the obvious fact that the other had recently been fighting, there didn’t seem to be anything especially odd about him. He could be any scruffy boy, though for some reason Jake found himself doubting that. Maybe eleven or twelve years old, sandy-haired, freckled; he wasn’t skinny yet barely filled out his ill-fitting, threadbare, second-hand school jacket. The top button was absent from a once-white shirt that hung halfway out of his grey flannel trousers, and a frayed, tightly knotted tie with a faded school motto hung askew from his crumpled collar. His lumpish nose supported plain prescription spectacles, small, circular windows through which dreaming blue eyes gazed out in a strange mixture of wonder and weird expectation.
Then, suddenly aware of Jake’s inspection, the boy looked down at himself, wrinkled his nose in disgust, said: ‘This will be the school bully, big Stanley Green’s work. He’s got it coming, has our Stanley. In about a year from now, or maybe two.’ And his lips were thinner, tighter, more determined.
There was dried blood on those lips, a gash in the corner of his mouth, but little or nothing of fear in his dreamy eyes, which were now other than dreamy and contained a certain glint. Indeed, they looked older than the rest of him, those eyes, and Jake thought there was probably a pretty mature mind in there, somewhere behind that half-haunted face. But he could never in a million years have guessed how mature — or how wise in otherworldly ways.
And because the boy hadn’t as yet answered his first question (as to whether or not they knew each other), Jake now felt the urge to remind and prompt him. ‘Er, son?’
But he needn’t have concerned himself. Obviously the other had considered Jake’s earlier question, and now took his prompt into account, too.
‘Son?’ he finally repeated Jake, and cocked his young-old head on one side. ‘And you’re wondering if we know each other? Well, I’ve got to answer no to both questions. Uh-uh, Jake. You and I don’t know each other, not yet. And I’m not too comfortable with you calling me “son”. It’s a case of — I don’t know — what came first, the chicken or the egg?’ There was no animosity in his reply.
‘Eh?’ Jake frowned. ‘Someone else just bursting with riddles? I don’t need that right now.’
‘But it’s a hell of an adventure,’ said the boy, sounding not at all like a child, despite his child’s voice. ‘Er, working them out, that is. I’ve done my share of that, Jake.’ Then, sitting back and gazing directly into Jake’s eyes, studying his face and perhaps more than his face: ‘So you’re him. And you’ve been having a hard time of it, right?’
‘Well, since you seem to understand what’s going on here,’ Jake answered, perhaps peevishly, ‘why don’t you tell me?’ His dream might be working something out for him, resolving a problem.
And the other nodded. ‘Very well, I’m telling you: you’re having a hard time of it. But that’s just as much your
fault as mine; you have a very defensive mind. And me, I don’t have much of a mind at all! Or I do, but not all in one place, not all at one time. Oh, I know — I mean, I’ve known — a lot of things. But what I remember and what I’ve forgotten are completely random. Like a kind of amnesia or a bad case of absent-mindedness. Except it’s not. For you see, I’m really not all here. Or putting it more sympathetically, all of me isn’t here. Which means that while I won’t get things one hundred per cent wrong, I may not get them entirely right either. That’s why I need a focus. But now, since you seem determined to reject me, it looks like it may be hard for us to get along, and harder still for me to get it together. So, how long do you plan to keep slamming the door in my face, Jake?’
‘Who are you?’ Jake asked him then, feeling a weird tingle in his scalp, an unheard-of sensation of negative deja vu: that it wasn’t him but the boy who had been here —
or somewhere — before. And Jake felt he knew where he’d been.
But the other frowned and now seemed as uncertain as Jake. ‘I… I’m all sorts of people and things,’ he said. ‘I’m Alec, Nestor, Nathan, take your pick. There’s something of Faethor in me, or has been, or will be. And something of me in a whole lot of people. It all depends on the time, the date, the place. And time is relative: what will be has been, ask any precog. That’s why we have to be sure it works out right, don’t you see?’
‘You… you’re Harry Keogh!’ said Jake, shivering without knowing why — until he remembered what Harry Keogh was. ‘You’re the ghost they’ve been telling me about!’
‘And you’re the gadget,’ said Harry.
‘But I don’t want to be!’ Jake felt himself riveted to the river bank; he wanted to leap away but couldn’t move. It was the dream, the nightmare — one of those nightmares — where, try as you might, you can’t escape from the thing that’s chasing you.