Today he’d told himself he ought to go out and get some fresh air, but he hadn’t been able to raise the enthusiasm. Maybe later, much later, when the bars were emptying and he wouldn’t be noticed, then he’d slip out of his cocoon and see what could be seen. For now, there were dreams—
Water.
He’d dreamt water; sitting beside a pool in Fort Lauderdale, a pool full offish. And the splash of their leaps and dives was continuing, an overflow from sleep. Or was it the other way round? Yes; he had been hearing running water in his sleep and his dreaming mind had made an illustration to accompany the sound. Now awake, the sound continued.
It was coming from the adjacent bathroom, no longer running, but lapping. Somebody had obviously broken in while he was asleep, and was now taking a bath. He ran down the short list of possible intruders: the few who knew he was here. There was Paul: a nascenthustler who’d bedded down on the floor two nights before; there was Chink, the dope dealer; and a girl from downstairs he thought was called Michelle. Who was he kidding? None of these people would have broken the lock on the door to get in. He knew very well who it must be. He was just playing a game with himself, enjoying the process of elimination, before he narrowed the options to one.
Keen for reunion, he slid out from his skin of sheet and duvet. His body turned to a column of gooseflesh as the cold air encased him, his sleep-erection hid its head. As he crossed the room to where his dressing gown hung on the back of the door he caught sight of himself in the mirror, a freeze frame from an atrocity film, a wisp of a man, shrunk by cold, and lit by a rainwater light. His reflection almost flickered, he was so insubstantial.
Wrapping the dressing gown, his only freshly purchased garment, around him, he went to the bathroom door. There was no noise of water now. He pushed the door open.
The warped linoleum was icy beneath his feet; and all he wanted to do was to see his friend, then crawl back into bed. But he owed the tatters of his curiosity more than that: he had questions.
The light through the frosted glass had deteriorated rapidly in the three minutes since he’d woken: the onset of night and a rain-storm congealing the gloom. In front of him the bath was almost filled to overflowing, the water was oil-slick calm, and dark. As before, nothing broke surface. It was lying deep, hidden.
How long was it since he’d approached a lime-green bath in a lime-green bathroom, and peered into the water? It could have been yesterday: his life between then and now had become one long night. He looked down. It was there, tucked up, as before, and asleep, still wearing all its clothes as though it had had no time to undress before it hid itself. Where it had been bald it now sprouted a luxuriant head of hair, and its features were quite complete. No trace of a painted face remained: it had a plastic beauty that was his own absolutely, down to the last mole. Its perfectly finished hands were crossed on its chest.
The night deepened. There was nothing to do but watch it sleep, and he became bored with that. It had traced him here, it wasn’t likely to run away again, he could go back to bed. Outside the rain had slowed the commuters’ homeward journey to a crawl, there were accidents, some fatal; engines overheated, hearts too. He listened to the chase; sleep came and went. It was the middle of the evening when thirst woke him again: he was dreaming water, and there was the sound as it had been before. The creature was hauling itself out of the bath, was putting its hand to the door, opening it.
There it stood. The only light in the bedroom was coming from the street below; it barely began to illuminate the visitor.
“Gavin? Are you awake?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Will you help me?” it asked. There was no trace of threat in its voice, it asked as a man might ask his brother, for kinship’s sake.
“What do you want?”
“Time to heal.”
“Heal?”
“Put on the light.”
Gavin switched on the lamp beside the bed and looked at the figure at the door. It no longer had its arms crossed on its chest, and Gavin saw that the position had been covering an appalling shotgun wound. The flesh of its chest had been blown open, exposing its colourless innards. There was, of course, no blood: that it would never have. Nor, from this distance, could Gavin see anything in its interior that faintly resembled human anatomy.
“God Almighty,” he said.
“Preetorius had friends,” said the other, and its fingers touched the edge of the wound. The gesture recalled a picture of the wall of his mother’s house. Christ in Glory – the Sacred Heart floating inside the Saviour – while his fingers, pointing to the agony he’d suffered, said: “This was for you.”
“Why aren’t you dead?”
“Because I’m not yet alive,” it said.
Not yet: remember that, Gavin thought. It has intimations of mortality.
“Are you in pain?”
“No,” it said sadly, as though it craved the experience, “I feel nothing. All the signs of life are cosmetic. But I’m learning.” It smiled. “I’ve got the knack of the yawn, and the fart.” The idea was both absurd and touching; that it would aspire to farting, that a farcical failure in the digestive system was for it a precious sign of humanity.
“And the wound?”
“—is healing. Will heal completely in time.”
Gavin said nothing.
“Do I disgust you?” it asked, without inflection.
“No.”
It was staring at Gavin with perfect eyes, his perfect eyes.
“What did Reynolds tell you?” it asked.
Gavin shrugged.
“Very little.”
“That I’m a monster? That I suck out the human spirit?”
“Not exactly.”
“More or less.”
“More or less,” Gavin conceded.
It nodded. “He’s right,” it said. “In his way, he’s right. I need blood: that makes me monstrous. In my youth, a month ago, I bathed in it. Its touch gave wood the appearance of flesh. But I don’t need it now: the process is almost finished. All I need now—”
It faltered; not, Gavin thought, because it intended to lie, but because the words to describe its condition wouldn’t come.
“What do you need?” Gavin pressed it.
It shook its head, looking down at the carpet. “I’ve lived several times, you know. Sometimes I’ve stolen lives and got away with it. Lived a natural span, then shrugged off that face and found another. Sometimes, like the last time, I’ve been challenged, and lost—”
“Are you some kind of machine?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“I am what I am. I know of no others like me; though why should I be the only one? Perhaps there are others, many others: I simply don’t know of them yet. So I live and die and live again, and learn nothing—” the word was bitterly pronounced, “—of myself. Understand? You know what you are because you see others like you. If you were alone on earth, what would you know? What the mirror told you, that’s all. The rest would be myth and conjecture.”
The summary was made without sentiment.
“May I lie down?” it asked.
It began to walk towards him, and Gavin could see more clearly the fluttering in its chest-cavity, the restless, incoherent forms that were mushrooming there in place of the heart. Sighing, it sank face-down on the bed, its clothes sodden, and closed its eyes.
“We’ll heal,” it said. “Just give us time.”
Gavin went to the door of the flat and bolted it. Then he dragged a table over and wedged it under the handle. Nobody could get in and attack it in sleep: they would stay here together in safety, he and it, he and himself. The fortress secured, he brewed some coffee and sat in the chair across the room from the bed and watched the creature sleep.
The rain rushed against the window heavily one hour, lightly the next. Wind threw sodden leaves against the glass and they clung there like inquisitive moths; he watched them sometimes, when he tired of
watching himself, but before long he’d want to look again, and he’d be back staring at the casual beauty of his outstretched arm, the light flicking the wrist-bone, the lashes. He fell asleep in the chair about midnight, with an ambulance complaining in the street outside, and the rain coming again.
It wasn’t comfortable in the chair, and he’d surface from sleep every few minutes, his eyes opening a fraction. The creature was up: it was standing by the window, now in front of the mirror, now in the kitchen. Water ran: he dreamt water. The creature undressed: he dreamt sex. It stood over him, its chest whole, and he was reassured by its presence: he dreamt, it was for a moment only, himself lifted out of a street through a window into Heaven. It dressed in his clothes: he murmured his assent to the theft in his sleep. It was whistling: and there was a threat of day through the window, but he was too dozy to stir just yet, and quite content to have the whistling young man in his clothes live for him.
At last it leaned over the chair and kissed him on the lips, a brother’s kiss, and left. He heard the door close behind it.
After that there were days, he wasn’t sure how many, when he stayed in the room, and did nothing but drink water. This thirst had become unquenchable. Drinking and sleeping, drinking and sleeping, twin moons.
The bed he slept on was damp at the beginning from where the creature had laid, and he had no wish to change the sheets. On the contrary he enjoyed the wet linen, which his body dried out too soon. When it did he took a bath himself in the water the thing had lain in and returned to the bed dripping wet, his skin crawling with cold, and the scent of mildew all around. Later, too indifferent to move, he allowed his bladder free rein while he lay on the bed, and that water in time became cold, until he dried it with his dwindling body-heat.
But for some reason, despite the icy room, his nakedness, his hunger, he couldn’t die.
He got up in the middle of the night of the sixth or seventh day, and sat on the edge of the bed to find the flaw in his resolve. When the solution didn’t come he began to shamble around the room much as the creature had a week earlier, standing in front of the mirror to survey his pitifully changed body, watching the snow shimmer down and melt on the sill.
Eventually, by chance, he found a picture of his parents he remembered the creature staring at. Or had he dreamt that? He thought not: he had a distinct idea that it had picked up this picture and looked at it.
That was, of course, the bar to his suicide: that picture. There were respects to be paid. Until then how could he hope to die?
He walked to the Cemetery through the slush wearing only a pair of slacks and a tee-shirt. The remarks of middle-aged women and school-children went unheard. Whose business but his own was it if going barefoot was the death of him? The rain came and went, sometimes thickening towards snow, but never quite achieving its ambition.
There was a service going on at the church itself, a line of brittle coloured cars parked at the front. He slipped down the side into the churchyard. It boasted a good view, much spoiled today by the smoky veil of sleet, but he could see the trains and the high-rise flats; the endless rows of roofs. He ambled amongst the headstones, by no means certain of where to find his father’s grave. It had been sixteen years: and the day hadn’t been that memorable. Nobody had said anything illuminating about death in general, or his father’s death specifically, there wasn’t even a social gaff or two to mark the day: no aunt broke wind at the buffet table, no cousin took him aside to expose herself.
He wondered if the rest of the family ever came here: whether indeed they were still in the country. His sister had always threatened to move out: go to New Zealand, begin again. His mother was probably getting through her fourth husband by now, poor sod, though perhaps she was the pitiable one, with her endless chatter barely concealing the panic.
Here was the stone. And yes, there were fresh flowers in the marble urn that rested amongst the green marble chips. The old bugger had not lain here enjoying the view unnoticed. Obviously somebody, he guessed his sister, had come here seeking a little comfort from Father. Gavin ran his fingers over the name, the date, the platitude. Nothing exceptional: which was only right and proper, because there’d been nothing exceptional about him.
Staring at the stone, words came spilling out, as though Father was sitting on the edge of the grave, dangling his feet, raking his hair across his gleaming scalp, pretending, as he always pretended, to care.
“What do you think, eh?”
Father wasn’t impressed.
“Not much, am I?” Gavin confessed.
You said it, son.
“Well I was always careful, like you told me. There aren’t any bastards out there, going to come looking for me.”
Damn pleased.
“I wouldn’t be much to find, would I?”
Father blew his nose, wiped it three times. Once from left to right, again left to right, finishing right to left. Never failed. Then he slipped away.
“Old shithouse.”
A toy train let out a long blast on its horn as it passed and Gavin looked up. There he was – himself – standing absolutely still a few yards away. He was wearing the same clothes he’d put on a week ago when he’d left the flat. They looked creased and shabby from constant wear. But the flesh! Oh, the flesh was more radiant than his own had ever been. It almost shone in the drizzling light; and the tears on the doppelganger’s cheeks only made the features more exquisite.
“What’s wrong?” said Gavin.
“It always makes me cry, coming here.” It stepped over the graves towards him, its feet crunching on gravel, soft on grass. So real.
“You’ve been here before?”
“Oh yes. Many times, over the years—”
Over the years? What did it mean, over the years? Had it mourned here for people it had killed?
As if in answer:
“—I come to visit Father. Twice, maybe three times a year.”
“This isn’t your father,” said Gavin, almost amused by the delusion. “It’s mine.”
“I don’t see any tears on your face,” said the other.
“I feel . . .”
“Nothing,” his face told him. “You feel nothing at all, if you’re honest.”
That was the truth.
“Whereas I . . .” the tears began to flow again, its nose ran, “I will miss him until I die.”
It was surely playacting, but if so why was there such grief in its eyes: and why were its features crumpled into ugliness as it wept. Gavin had seldom given in to tears: they’d always made him feel weak and ridiculous. But this thing was proud of tears, it gloried in them. They were its triumph.
And even then, knowing it had overtaken him, Gavin could find nothing in him that approximated grief.
“Have it,” he said. “Have the snots. You’re welcome.”
The creature was hardly listening.
“Why is it all so painful?” it asked, after a pause. “Why is it loss that makes me human?”
Gavin shrugged. What did he know or care about the fine art of being human? The creature wiped its nose with its sleeve, sniffed, and tried to smile through its unhappiness.
“I’m sorry,” it said, “I’m making a damn fool of myself. Please forgive me.”
It inhaled deeply, trying to compose itself.
“That’s all right,” said Gavin. The display embarrassed him, and he was glad to be leaving.
“Your flowers?” he asked as he turned from the grave.
It nodded.
“He hated flowers.”
The thing flinched.
“Ah.”
“Still, what does he know?”
He didn’t even look at the effigy again; just turned and started up the path that ran beside the church. A few yards on, the thing called after him:
“Can you recommend a dentist?”
Gavin grinned, and kept walking.
It was almost the commuter hour. The arterial road that ran by the church was already
thick with speeding traffic: perhaps it was Friday, early escapees hurrying home. Lights blazed brilliantly, horns blared.
Gavin stepped into the middle of the flow without looking to right or left, ignoring the squeals of brakes, and the curses, and began to walk amongst the traffic as if he were idling in an open field.
The wing of a speeding car grazed his leg as it passed, another almost collided with him. Their eagerness to get somewhere, to arrive at a place they would presently be itching to depart from again, was comical. Let them rage at him, loathe him, let them glimpse his featureless face and go home haunted. If the circumstances were right, maybe one of them would panic, swerve, and run him down. Whatever. From now on he belonged to chance, whose Standard-Bearer he would surely be.
BRIAN LUMLEY
Necros
BRIAN LUMLEYIS THE AUTHOR of the popular series of Necroscope vampire books. Born on England’s north-east coast, Lumley was serving as a sergeant in the Corps of Royal Military Police when he discovered the stories of H.P. Lovecraft while stationed in Berlin in the early 1960s.
After deciding to try his own hand at writing horror fiction, initially set in Lovecraft’s influential Cthulhu Mythos, he sent his early efforts to editor August Derleth. The latter’s famed Arkham House imprint published two collections of Lumley’s short stories, The Caller of the Black and The Horror at Oakdene and Others, plus the short novel Beneath the Moors.
The author continued Lovecraft’s themes in a series of novels before the publication of Necroscope in 1986 made him a best-seller all over the world. The initial volume was followed by Necroscope II: Wamphyri! (a.k.a. Necroscope II: Vamphyri!), Necroscope III: The Source, Necroscope IV: Deadspeak and Necroscope V: Deadspawn.
The Mammoth Book of Vampires: New edition (Mammoth Books) Page 6