Deadspeak

by Brian Lumley

  “Trevor’s fine,” Layard answered his anxious query. “I think. He’s getting dressed, anyway. What’s happening your end?”

  Papastamos spoke English the same way he spoke Greek: rapid-fire. “We’re watching the boats—both of them—but nothing,” he said. “If anything has come ashore from the Samothraki, it couldn’t have been very much, and certainly not the hard stuff, which is about what we expected. I’ve checked out the Lazarus, too; unlikely that there’s any connection; its owner is one Jianni Lazarides, archaeologist and treasure seeker, with good credentials. Or … let’s just say he has no record, anyway. As for the crew of the Samothraki: the captain and his first mate are ashore; they may have brought a very little of the soft stuff with them; they’re watching a cabaret at the moment, and drinking coffee and brandy. But more coffee than brandy. Obviously they plan on staying sober.”

  Jordan had meanwhile finished with dressing and was heading for the door. He moved like a zombie, and his clothes were the same ones he had worn this morning. But the nights were still chilly; plainly he hadn’t so much chosen these light, casual clothes as taken them because they’d been handy. Layard called after him, “Trevor? Where do you think you’re going?”

  Jordan looked back. “The harbour,” he answered automatically. “St. Paul’s Gate, then along the mole to the windmills.”

  “Hello? Hello?” Papastamos was still on the phone. “What now?”

  “He says he’s going to the windmills on the mole,” Layard told him. “And I’m going with him. There’s something not right here. I’ve known it all day. Sorry, Manolis, but I have to hang up on you.”

  “I’ll see you down there!” Papastamos quickly answered, but Layard only caught half of it as he was putting the phone down. And then he was struggling into his jacket and following Jordan where he made his way doggedly downstairs into the lobby, then out of the door and into the Mediterranean night.

  “Aren’t you going to wait for me?” he called out after him, but Jordan made no answer. He did glance back, once, and Layard saw his eyes staring out of his sick-looking face like holes punched in pasteboard. Plainly he wasn’t going to wait for him, or for anyone else for that matter.

  Layard almost caught up with his robotic partner as Jordan crossed a road heading for the waterfront, but then the lights changed, engines revved, and mopeds and cars started rolling in the scrambling, death-wish, devil-take-the-hindmost fashion of Greek traffic. In that same moment he found himself separated from Jordan by bumper-to-bumper metal; and by the time the exhaust fumes had cleared and the lights changed again, the telepath had disappeared into milling groups of people where they thronged the streets. Hurrying after him, Layard knew he’d lost him.

  But at least he knew where he was going …

  Jordan felt that he was fighting it for all he was worth, every step of the way, even knowing it was useless. It was like being drunk in a strange place and among strangers, when you lie on your back and the room spins. It actually seems to spin, the corners of the ceiling chasing each other like the spokes of a wheel. And there’s nothing you can do to stop it because you know it isn’t really spinning—it’s your mind that’s spinning, inside the head on top of your body. Your bloody head and body, but they won’t obey you … you can’t make them do what you want no matter how hard you try!

  And all the time you can hear yourself trapped in your own skull like a fly in a bottle, buzzing furiously and banging repeatedly against the glass, and saying over and over again, “Oh, God, let it stop! Oh, God, let it stop! Oh, God … let … it … stop!”

  It’s the alcohol—the alien in your system, which has taken control—and fighting it only makes you feel that much worse. Try lifting your head and shoulders up off the bed and everything spins even faster, so fast you can feel the centrifugal force dragging you down again. Force yourself to your feet and you stagger, you turn, begin to spin with the room, with the entire bloody universe!

  But only lie still, stop fighting it, close your eyes tight, and cling to yourself … eventually it will go away. The spinning will go away. The sickness. The buzzing of the fly in the bottle—which is your own battered, astonished, gibbering psyche—will go away. And you’ll sleep. And it’s possible the strangers will roll you and rob you blind.

  Roll you? They could steal your underpants—even rape you, if they felt inclined—and you couldn’t stop them, wouldn’t feel it, wouldn’t even suspect.

  It was a replay of Jordan’s first violent experience with alcohol. That had been when he’d started university and got homesick—of all bloody things! A couple of fellow students, college comedians thinking to have a little fun at his expense, had spiked his drinks. Then they’d played a few tricks on him in his room. Nothing vicious: they’d rouged his cheeks, given him a Cupid’s-bow mouth, fitted him up with a garter belt and stockings, and stuck a Mickey Mouse johnnie on his dick.

  He woke up cold, naked, ill, not knowing what had happened, wanting to die. But a day or two later when he was sober, he’d tracked them down one at a time and beaten the living shit out of them! Since when he’d only ever got physical when there was no other way around it.

  But by God, he wished he could get physical now! With himself, with this mind and body which wouldn’t obey him, with whoever it was that was doing this to him. For that was the terrible thing: he knew it was someone else doing it to him, jerking him about like a puppet on a set of strings, and there was still nothing he could do about it!

  Stop! he kept telling himself. Get a grip of yourself. Sit down … throw up … hold your head in your hands … wait for Ken. Do anything—but of your own free will! But before his runaway body could even begin to obey such instructions:

  AH … BUT IT IS NOT FREE! YOU CAME SPYING, INVADED MY MIND—AN ANT IN A WASP’S NEST! SO NOW PAY THE PRICE. GO ON: PROCEED JUST AS YOU ARE. GO TO THE WINDMILLS.

  That terrible, gonging, magnetic voice in his head—that will which superimposed itself over his will—that telepathic, hypnotic command of some one or thing as powerful, more powerful, than anything he’d ever imagined before, which made a mockery of resistance more surely than any Mickey Finn.

  Jordan’s legs felt like rubber—almost vibrating, twanging at the knees—as he strained to hold them back. As well hold back opposite magnetic poles, or a moth from a candle. And still he followed the waterfront to the mole, and along its rocky neck, until the ancient windmills stood visible there against a horizon of dark ocean.

  Dressed all in black, Seth Armstrong was waiting, crouching in the shadows where the seawall was shaped like a castle’s battlements, after the style of the old Crusaders whose works were still visible all around. He let Jordan go stumbling by, looked back into the darkness of the mole, under the winking lights of Rhodes Old Town where it sprawled on the hill.

  He heard footsteps, running, and a voice, panting:

  “Trevor? For Christ’s sake, slow down, will you? Where the hell do you th—” And Armstrong struck.

  Layard saw something big, black, gangling, step out of the shadows. One eye glared at him from a slit in a black balaclava. Gasping, he skidded to a halt, spun on his heel to flee—and Armstrong rabbit-punched him down to the night-shining cobbles of the path. Out like a light, Layard lay crumpled at the foot of the seawall. And Jordan, feeling the strictures on his will slacken a little, turned back.

  He saw the large, dark, mantislike figure of Armstrong bent over Layard’s unconscious form, saw his friend hoisted aloft on powerful shoulders—and ejected through one of the wall’s embrasures, out into thin air! A moment more and there came a splash—then the chop … chop … chop of disturbed water gradually settling—and finally, as the figure in black now turned towards him—

  —More running footsteps!

  The beam of a torch cut the night, slashing it to left and right like a white knife through a black card.

  And Manolis Papastamos’ voice, just as sharp, slicing the silence: “Trevor, Ken, where are you?” />
  Be careful! the alien voice in Jordan’s mind commanded, but the order was the merest whisper and no longer directed at him. It no longer dominated but merely advised. And he knew that his telepathic mind had simply “overheard” instructions meant for some other, meant in fact for the man in black. Do not allow yourself to be caught or recognised!

  Splashing sounds from below the wall, and a gurgling cry! Ken Layard was alive! But Jordan knew for a fact that the locator couldn’t swim! He forced his legs to carry him to the wall, where he could look out through an embrasure. And all the while he was aware of his controlling alien, confused and furious, mewling like a scalded cat in the back of his mind. But no longer fully in control.

  Papastamos came running, a small, slim, streamlined shape in the night, and Jordan saw the long-limbed, gangling figure in black back off into the shadows. “Man-Manolis!” he forced his parched throat to croak. “Look out!”

  The Greek lawman came to a halt, breathlessly called out, “Trevor?” and flashed his torch beam full in Jordan’s face.

  The shadows erupted and Armstrong smashed a blow to Papastamos’ face. The Greek rode with it, went sprawling. His torch fell with him, clattering, its beam slithering everywhere. The man in black was running back along the mole towards the town. Papastamos cursed in Greek, snatched at the torch where it rolled past him, aimed it after the fleeing figure. Its beam trapped an elongated human shadow, jerking on the seawall like a giant crab escaping to the sea. But Papastamos was armed with more than just a torch.

  His Beretta Model 92S barked five times in rapid succession, slinging a five-spoked fan of lead after the scuttling shadow. A wailing cry of pain and a gasped, “Uh—uh—uh!” came back, but the footsteps didn’t stop running.

  “M-M-Manolis!” Jordan hadn’t let up on his battle with the clamp on his will. “K-K-Ken … is … in … the … sea!”

  The Greek got up, ran to the seawall. From below came a gurgling and gasping, the slosh of water windmilled by flailing arms. And without a thought for his own safety, Papastamos climbed up into the embrasure and launched himself feetfirst into the harbour …

  In his window seat upstairs in the Taverna Dakaris, Janos Ferenczy’s three-fingered right hand closed on his wineglass and applied pressure until the glass shattered. Wine and fragments of glass, and a little blood, too, were squeezed out from between his tightly clenched fingers. If he felt any pain, it didn’t show in his gaunt-grey face, except perhaps in the tic jerking the flesh at one corner of his mouth.

  “Janos … master!” Armstrong spoke to him from a little over three hundred yards away. “I’m shot!”

  How badly?

  “In the shoulder. I’ll be useless to you until I heal. A day or two.”

  Sometimes I think you have always been useless to me! Go back to the boat. Try not to be seen.

  “I … I haven’t got the telepath.”

  I know, fool! I shall see to it myself.

  “Then be careful. The man who shot me was a policeman!”

  Oh? And how do you know that?

  “Because he shot me! His gun. Ordinary people don’t carry them. But even without it, I guessed what he was as soon as I saw him. He was expecting trouble. Policemen look the same in whatever country.”

  You are a veritable mine of information, Seth! The vampire’s thoughts were scathingly sarcastic. But I take your point. And since it now seems I may not take this thought-thief for my own, I shall find some other way to … examine him. His own telepathy shall be his undoing. His mind is receptive to the thoughts of others, which until now has made him a big fish in a little pond. Ah, but now he has a shark to contend with! For I was a mindspy five centuries before he was born!

  “I’m going back to the boat,” Armstrong confirmed.

  Good! And if any of my crew are ashore, be sure to call them back. And Janos thrust the other out of his mind.

  He returned to Jordan, where he had staggered to a seat underneath one of the antique windmills and sat there in moon-and starlight. Jordan was exhausted, totally drained by the mental battle he’d fought with his unknown adversary, but not so far gone that he couldn’t appreciate what he’d come up against.

  The last time Jordan had experienced anything like this had been the autumn of ’77, at Harkley House in Devon. Yulian Bodescu. And it had taken Harry Keogh to clear up that mess! And was this like that? he wondered. Had he and Ken Layard sensed the presence of … of this Thing, even before it had become entirely apparent to them? Or apparent to him, anyway? All the pieces were starting to fit together now, and the picture they were forming was—terrible! Cannabis resin, cocaine? They were commonplace, even harmless, compared to this.

  E-Branch must be put in the picture at once! The thought was like an invocation:

  E-BRANCH? That deep, seething voice was there inside Jordan’s head again, and mental jaws were tightening on his mind. WHAT IS THIS E-BRANCH? And pinned there by the sheer weight of the vampire’s telepathic power, Jordan could only squirm as the monster commenced a minute, painful examination of all his most private thoughts …

  Janos might have examined Jordan all night, except he was interrupted. Looking down out of his window, he saw the bearded, big-bellied Pavlos Themelis, master of the Samothraki, making his way across the street towards the Taverna Dakaris. He was a little late, coming to meet with the man he called Jianni Lazarides; but coming anyway, and Janos couldn’t continue to dig away at Jordan’s mind and hold a conversation with Themelis at the same time.

  This morning he had found himself under the scrutiny of a thought thief, reached out, and delivered a blow to the other’s mind. It had been an instinctive reaction which nevertheless served to give the vampire time to think. Jordan was strong, however, and had recovered. Well, and now Janos must strike again at that mind—a different sort of blow—and one from which the English mindspy would not recover. Not without a deal of help, anyway.

  Driving his vampire senses deep into Jordan’s psyche, Janos found the door of sanity locked, bolted, and barred against all mankind’s worst fears. And chuckling, he turned the key, took down the bars, threw back the bolts—and opened the door!

  That was enough … and now he would know just exactly where to find Jordan whenever he desired to continue his examination. It was done with only moments to spare, for already the Samothraki’s master was coming up the stairs.

  As Pavlos Themelis and his first mate entered the room, they saw the Greek prostitute cleaning away Janos’s broken glass and offering him her own. Unmoved, he accepted it, said, “Go now.”

  As she made to get by the huge drug runner, Themelis grabbed her arm in a fist like a ham, caught her round the waist, and swung her off her feet. He turned her over and her skirts fell down over her furious face. Themelis sniffed between her legs and roared, “Clean drawers! Open crotch, too! Good! I may see you later, Ellie!”

  “Not if I see you first!” she spat at him as he set her on her feet. Then she was down the stairs, through the taverna, and out onto the street.

  From down below Nichos Dakaris’ hoarse voice bellowing after her as she went into the night: “Bring ‘em back alive, my girl! Bring ’em right back here where I can see the colour of their money!” This was followed by gales of coarse laughter, then more bouzouki music as before.

  Pavlos Themelis took a seat across the table from the man he knew as Jianni Lazarides. The chair groaned as he sat down on it and parked his elbows on the table. He wore his peaked captain’s hat tilted on one side, which he supposed gave him an irresistible piratical look. It wasn’t a bad ploy: no one would normally suspect anyone who looked so roguish of being a rogue! “Only one glass, Jianni?” he growled. “Prefer to drink alone, do you?”

  “You are late!” Janos had no time for banter.

  Themelis’ first mate, a short, squat, torpedo of a man, had remained at the head of the stairs, from where he carefully scanned the room. Now he called down to Dakaris, “Glasses, Nichos, and a bottle of br
andy. Good stuff, too, parakalo!” And finally he picked up a chair and carried it to the table by the window seat. Seating himself, he asked Themelis, “Well, and has he explained himself?”

  Behind his dark glasses, Janos narrowed his eyes. “Oh? And is there something I should explain?”

  “Come, come, Jianni!” Themelis chided. “You were supposed to come aboard us this morning in the harbour, not go sliding off in your pretty white ship as if you’d been stung in the arse or something! We’d pull alongside, you’d come over and see the stuff—of which there’s a kilo for you, if you’ve the use for it—and then we’d collect your valuable contribution on behalf of our mutual sponsor! A show of good faith on both sides, as it were. That was the plan, to which you were party. Except … it didn’t happen!” His easygoing look suddenly turned sour and his tone hardened. “And later, when I’ve parked up the old Samothraki and I’m wondering what the bloody fuck, I get this message saying we’ll meet here instead, tonight! So now tell me, are you sure there’s nothing you’d like to explain?”

  “The explanation is simple!” Janos barked. “It could not happen the way it was planned because we were being watched! By men on the harbour wall, with binoculars. By policemen!”

  Themelis and his second-in-command glanced at each other a moment, then turned again to Janos. “Policemen, Jianni?” Themelis raised a bushy eyebrow. “You know this for a fact?”

  “Yes,” said Janos, for in truth he did now know it for a fact; he’d had it direct from the English thought thief. “Yes, I am certain. I cannot be mistaken. And I would remind you that right from the start of this venture I have insisted upon complete anonymity and total isolation from its mechanics. I must not be left vulnerable to any sort of investigation or prosecution! I thought that was understood.”

  Themelis narrowed his eyes, slanted his mouth in a sneer … then turned his bearded face away as Nichos Dakaris came labouring up the stairs. “Huh!” Themelis’ torpedolike second-in-command grunted as Dakaris slammed down glasses and a bottle of brandy on the table. “What happened, Nick? Did you have to send out for it?”