by Brian Lumley
‘Her operation?’ Dragosani had tried not to seem too interested.
‘Yes, six years ago. Cancer. Very bad for a young girl. Her womb. So, they took it away. That’s good, she lives. But this is farming country. A man wants a wife who’ll give him children, you know? So, she’ll be an old maid — maybe. Or perhaps she’ll go and get a job in the city. Strong sons are not so important there.’
It explained something, possibly. ‘I see,’ Dragosani nodded; and, carefully: ‘But this morning…?’
‘Sometimes she doesn’t feel too good, even now. Not often. But today she really isn’t up to much. So, she stays in her room for a day or two. Curtains drawn, dark room, all wrapped up in her bed, shivering. Just like when she was a little girl and sick. She says she doesn’t want a doctor, but — ‘ he shrugged again. ‘ — I worry about her.’
‘Don’t,’ said Dragosani. ‘I mean, don’t worry about her.’
‘Eh?’ Kinkovsi looked surprised.
‘She’s a full-grown woman. She’ll know what’s best for her. Rest, quiet, a nice dark room. Those are the right things. They’re all I need when I’m a bit down.’
‘Hmm! Well, perhaps. But still it’s worrying. And a lot of work to be done, too! The English come today.’
‘Oh?’ Dragosani was glad that the other had changed the subject. ‘Maybe I’ll meet them tonight.’
Kinkovsi nodded, looked gloomy. He gathered up the empty tray. ‘Difficult. I don’t know a lot of English. What I know I learned from tourists.’
‘I know some English,’ said Dragosani. ‘I can get by.’
‘Ah? Well, at least they’ll be able to talk to someone. Anyway, they bring good money — and money talks, eh?’ he managed a” chuckle. ‘Enjoy your breakfast, Herr Dragosani.’
‘I’m sure I will.’
Beginning to grumble again under his breath, Kinkovsi left the garret room and made his way downstairs. Later, when Dragosani went out, both Hzak and Maura were readying the lower rooms for their expected English guests.
By midday Dragosani had driven into Pitesti. He did not know why exactly, except that he remembered the town had a small but very comprehensive reference library. Whether or not he would have gone to the library — or what he would have done there — is academic. The question did not arise for he was not given the chance to go there; the local police found him first.
Alarmed at first and imagining all sorts of things (worst of all, that he had been watched and followed, and that his secret — concerning the old devil in the ground — had been discovered), he calmed down as soon as he found out what the trouble really was: that Gregor Borowitz had been trying to track him down since the day he left Moscow and finally had succeeded. It was a wonder Dragosani hadn’t been stopped at the border where he’d crossed into Romania at Reni. The local law had tracked him to lonestasi, from there to Kinkovsi’s, finally to Pitesti. In fact it was his Volga they’d tracked: there weren’t many of those in Romania. Not with Moscow plates.
Finally the policeman in charge of the patrol vehicle which had stopped him apologised for any inconvenience and gave Dragosani a ‘message’ — which was simply Borowitz’s Moscow telephone number, the secure line. Dragosani went with them at once to the police station and phoned from there.
On the other end of the line, Borowitz came right to the point: ‘Boris, get back here a.s.a.p.’
‘What is it?’
‘A member of the staff at the American embassy has had an accident while touring. A fatal accident: wrecked his car and gutted himself. We haven’t identified him yet — not officially, anyway — but we’ll have to do it soon. Then the Americans will want his body. I want you to see him first — in your, er, specialist capacity…’
‘Oh? What’s so important about him?’
For some time now we’ve suspected him and one or two others of spying. CIA, probably. If he’s one of a network, it’s something we should know about. So get back quickly, will you?’
‘I’m on my way.’
Back at Kinkovsi’s Dragosani tossed his things into the car, paid what he owed and a little more, thanked Hzak and Maura and accepted sandwiches, a flask of coffee and a bottle of local wine. But for all that they gave him these parting gifts, it was obvious that Hzak had some misgivings about him.
‘You told me you were a mortician,’ he complained. ‘The police laughed when I told them that! They said you’re a big man in Moscow, an important man. It seems a great shame that an important man would want to make a fool out of a fellow countryman — an unimportant man!’
‘I’m sorry about that, my friend,’ said Dragosani. ‘But I am an important man and my job is very special — and very tiring. When I come home I like to forget my work completely and just take it easy, and so I became a mortician. Please forgive me.’
That seemed to suffice; Hzak Kinkovsi grinned and they shook hands, and then Dragosani got into his car.
From behind her drawn curtains Use watched him drive away and breathed a sigh of relief. It was unlikely she’d ever meet another like him, and maybe that was as well, but…
Her bruises were blooming now but would soon fade, and anyway she could always say she had suffered a dizzy bout, tripped and fallen. The bruises would disappear, yes, but not the memory of how she had got them.
She sighed again… and shivered deliciously.
INTERVAL ONE:
On the top floor of a well-known London hotel, in a suite of private offices, Alec Kyle sat at the desk of his ex-boss and scribbled frantically in shorthand. The ‘ghost’ (he couldn’t help thinking of it that way) which stood facing him across the desk had been speaking rapidly, in soft, well-modulated tones, for more than two and a half hours now. Kyle’s wrist felt cramped; his head ached from the myriad weird pictures implanted there; he had no doubt at all but that the ‘ghost’ spoke the truth, the whole truth, and etc…
As to how it (he!) knew these matters he so fluently related, or why he related them — who is to say what knowledge such a creature should or shouldn’t have and tell? But one thing Kyle knew for certain was this: that the information to which he now found himself privy was vastly important, and that he must also consider himself privileged to be the medium through which it was imparted.
As a pain suddenly shot up his forearm from his wrist, causing him to drop his pencil and clutch at his hand as it went into a brief spasm, so his unearthly visitor paused. It was as good a juncture as any, Kyle thought, and he was grateful. He massaged his hand and wrist for a
minute, then took up a sharpener and renewed the
pencil’s point for what must be the ninth or tenth time at least.
‘Why not use a pen?’ the ghost asked, in such a perfectly natural and inquiring tone that Kyle found himself answering without even considering that he talked to something far less substantial than smoke.
‘I prefer pencils. Always have. Just a quirk, I suppose. Anyway, they don’t run out of ink! I’m sorry I stopped just then, but my wrist feels mangled!’
‘We’ve a way to go yet.’
‘I’ll manage some how.’
‘Look, go and get yourself another coffee. Have a cigarette. I realise how strange all this must be for you. It’s strange for me, too — but if I were you my nerves would be leaping! I think you’re doing remarkably well. And we’re getting on fine. I was fully prepared, before I came here, to allow several visits just to let you adjust to me. So as you can see, we’re well ahead.’
‘Yes, well it’s time that’s worrying me,’ Kyle answered, lighting up and drawing luxuriously on the smoke, saturating his lungs with it. ‘You see, I’ve a meeting to attend at 4:00 p.m. It’s then that I’m to try to convince some rather important people that they keep the branch open and allow me to take over from Sir Keenan and run it. So you see, I’d like to be finished before then.’
‘Don’t let it concern you,’ the other smiled his wan smile. ‘Consider them convinced.’
‘Oh?’ Kyle got up
and went through into the main office, put money into the coffee machine. This time the ghost followed him, stood behind him. When he turned from the machine it was there, office furniture visible right through it. It was less than a holograph, less than a bubble, ectoplasm. Kyle started and slopped a little coffee, edged around the other and went back into Gormley’s office.
‘Yes,’ the ghost continued, back where it had been, ‘I believe we’ll be able to “sway” your superiors in your favour.’
‘We?’ said Kyle.
The other merely shrugged. ‘We’ll see. Anyway, I want to tell you a little more about Harry Keogh now, before returning to Dragosani. Sorry to jump about like this, but it’s better if you see a complete picture.’
‘Anything you say.’
‘Are you ready?’
‘Yes,’ Kyle took up his pencil. ‘Except…’
‘Well?’
‘It’s just that I was wondering where you fit into all of this?’
‘Me?’ the ghost raised its eyebrows. ‘I suppose I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t asked. Since you have: if things work out the way I hope, I’ll be your future boss!’
Kyle’s face twitched and he grinned lopsidedly. ‘A… ghost? My future boss?’
‘I thought we’d been through that once,’ said the other. ‘I’m not a ghost and never have been. Though I’ll admit I came pretty close. But we’ll get to that, you’ll see.’
Kyle nodded.
‘Can we get on now?’
And Kyle nodded again.
Chapter Seven
Harry Keogh was miles away, his thoughts lost in the clouds that drifted like puffs of cotton wool on the blue ocean of a summer sky. Hands behind his head, a blade of sweet grass standing straight up like a tiny mast, its white tip trapped in his teeth, he hadn’t said a word since they’d made love. Seagulls cried where they made white splashes in the shallows, diving for fish, and their somehow plaintive songs came up off the sea on a breeze that moved the grass on the dunes like a caress.
A caress, too, Brenda’s hand where she stroked him, even though she no longer commanded the full attention of his flesh. In a little while he might want her again, but if not it wouldn’t matter. In fact she liked him like this: quiet, verging on sleep, with all of his strangeness sucked out of him. He was strange, yes, but that was all part of his fascination. It was one of the reasons she loved him. And sometimes she fancied that he loved her, too. It was difficult to tell, with Harry. Most things were difficult to tell with him.
‘Harry,’ she said, gently tickling his ribs. ‘Anybody in?’
‘Umm?’ the grass in his teeth gave a feeble twitch. She knew he wasn’t ignoring her, knew that he simply wasn’t here. Not here at all — not all of him — but somewhere else, somewhere very different. Now and then she would try to find out about that place, Harry’s secret place, but so far he’d kept mum.
She sat up, buttoned her blouse, straightened her skirt, brushed sand from its pleats. ‘Harry, you should do yourself up. There are people down on the beach. If they walked this way they’d see.’
‘Umm,’ he said again.
She did it for him, then curled beside him and kissed his forehead. Tugging his ear, she asked: ‘What are you thinking? Where are you, Harry?’
‘You don’t want to know that,’ he said. ‘It’s not always a nice place. I’m used to it, but you wouldn’t like it.’
‘I’d like it if you were there,’ she said.
He turned his face towards her, squinted a little, frowned seriously. He could look very serious, she thought, sometimes — in fact most of the time. Now he shook his head. ‘No, you wouldn’t like it if I was there,’ he said. ‘You’d hate it.’
‘Not if I were with you.’
‘It’s not a place where you can be with someone,’ he told her, which was as close to the truth as he had ever come on this subject. ‘It’s a place for being entirely alone.’
She wanted to know more. ‘Harry, I — ‘
‘Anyway, we’re here,’ he cut her off. ‘Nowhere else. We’re here and we’ve just made love.’
Knowing that if she tried to probe deeper he would only retreat, she changed the subject. ‘You’ve made love to me,’ she said, ‘eight hundred and eleven times.’
‘I used to do that,’ he said, presently.
It stopped her dead in her tracks. After a moment’s thought, she said: ‘Do what?’
‘Count things. Anything. Tiles on a toilet wall. You know, while I was sitting there.’
She sighed, exasperated. ‘I was talking about making love, Harry! Sometimes I think there isn’t an ounce of romance in you.’
‘There isn’t now,’ he agreed. ‘You just had it all!’ That was better. He was away from his morbid turn. That was how Brenda thought of it when Harry was vague and strange in that way of his: ‘a morbid turn’. She went along with it, wrinkled her nose playfully, was glad for his humour.
‘Eight hundred and eleven times’ she repeated, ‘in just three years! That’s a lot. Do you know how long we’ve been going out?’
‘Since we were kids,’ he answered. His eyes were on the sky again and she could see he was only half interested in what she was saying. There was something on his mind, hovering on the periphery of his awareness. Knowing him, she knew it was there. Maybe one day she’d know what it was. All she knew now was that it came and went, and that this time it seemed to be taking its time going.
‘But how long?’ she insisted. She caught his chin in a delicate hand, turned his face towards hers.
He stared at her blankly, let his eyes focus of their own accord. ‘How long? Four or five years, I suppose.’
‘Six,’ she said. ‘Since you were twelve and I was eleven. At twelve you took me to the pictures and held my hand.’
‘There you go,’ he said, making an effort and coming back to earth. ‘And you just accused me of being unromantic!’
‘Oh?’ she said. ‘But I bet you can’t remember the film we saw. It was Psycho. I don’t know which of us was the most frightened!’
‘I was,’ he grinned.
‘Then,’ she continued, ‘when you were thirteen, we made a picnic in the field on Ellison’s Bank. After we had eaten we fooled about a bit and you put your hand on my leg under my dress. I shouted at you and you pretended it was an accident. But the next week you did it again and I wouldn’t speak to you for a fortnight.’
‘I should be so unlucky now!’ Harry sighed. ‘Anyway, you soon enough came back for more.’
‘Then you started going to school in Hartlepool and I didn’t see so much of you. The winter was a long one. But the next summer was a good one — for us, anyway. One day we got a changing tent on the beach at Crimdon and went swimming. Afterwards, in the tent, when you were supposed to be drying my back, you touched me.’
‘And you touched me,’ he reminded her.
‘And you wanted me to lie down with you.’
‘But you wouldn’t.’
‘Not until the next year. Harry, I wasn’t even fifteen! That was terrible!’
‘Oh, it wasn’t so bad,’ he grinned. ‘Not the way I remember it. But do you remember that first time?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘What a mess!’ he chuckled ruefully. ‘Like trying to pick a lock with a piece of wet blotting paper.’
She had to smile. ‘You got good at it very quickly, though,’ she said. ‘I always wondered where you learned it all. I suppose I really wondered if someone else had shown you how.’
He had been smiling but now the smile fell from his face in a moment. ‘What do you mean by that?’ he said sharply.
‘Why, another girl, of course!’ She was startled by his abrupt change of mood. ‘What did you think I meant?’
‘Another girl?’ he was frowning still. But slowly his look turned first to a sour smile, then an amused grin, and at the last a shaky laugh. ‘Another girl!’ he said again, laughing outright now. ‘What, when I was eleven?
’
Relieved, Brenda laughed with him. ‘You’re funny,’ she said.
‘You know,’ he answered, ‘it seems that all my life people have been telling me the same thing: that I’m funny. I’m not really, you know. God, sometimes I wish I knew how to be: how to have a good laugh! It’s as if I don’t have time, as if I’ve never had time. Did you ever get the feeling that if you don’t laugh soon you’ll scream? It’s a feeling I get, I promise you.’
She shook her head. ‘Sometimes I think I’ll never understand you. And sometimes I think you don’t want me to.’ She sighed. ‘It would be nice if you wanted me as much as I want you.’
He stood up, drew her to her feet and kissed her on the forehead, his way of changing the subject. ‘Come on, let’s walk all the way along the beach into Hartlepool. You can catch a bus back to Harden from there.’
‘Walk into Hartlepool? That’ll take all day!’
‘We’ll stop for a coffee on the beach at Crimdon,’ he said. ‘And we can have a swim from the sands a bit farther along. Then we’ll go to my place. You can stay until this evening if you like — unless you’ve other plans?’
‘No, I haven’t — you know I haven’t — but…’
‘But?’
Suddenly she was upset, a touch of anxiety. ‘Harry, what’s going to happen to us?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Do you love me?’
‘I think so.’
‘But don’t you know? I mean, I know I love you.’
They began to walk along the dunes, gradually making for the damp sands where the sea was retreating. There were people swimming in the sea down there but not many; the beach was dirty with all the debris of the coalmines to the north, a problem which had been growing for a quarter of a century. Black lorries trundled at the waterline like great amphibious beetles, where their crews shovelled up rounded nuggets of washed sea-coal like black gold. A few miles south of here it was a little cleaner, but as far as Seaton Carew coal and slag deposits marred the clean white sands. Farther south still the damage was much less, but since the mines were almost exhausted Nature would soon begin to put things right again. Still, it would take a long time for the beaches to return to their former beauty. Perhaps they never would.