by Brian Lumley
‘And is that your concern?’ Gormley cut him off. ‘That he’s become a successful author so young?’
‘Eh? Heavens, no! I’m delighted for him. Or at least I was. I still would be if only… if only he didn’t write the damn things that way…‘He paused.
‘What way?’
‘He… he has, well, collaborators.’
Something about the way Hannant said the last word made Gormley’s scalp tingle again. ‘Collaborators? But surely a lot of writers have collaborators? At eighteen years of age I imagine he probably needs someone to tidy his stuff up for him, and so on.’
‘No, no,’ said the other, with an edge to his voice that hinted of frustration, of wanting to say something outright but not knowing how to. ‘No, that’s not what I meant at all. Actually, his short stories don’t need tidying up — they’re all jewels. I myself typed the earliest of them for him, from the rough work, because he didn’t have a machine. I even typed up a few after he’d bought a typewriter, until he got the idea of how a good manuscript should look. Since then he’s done it all himself — until recently. His new work, which he’s just completed, is a novel. He’s called it, of all things, Diary of a Seventeenth-century Rake!’
Gormley couldn’t suppress a chuckle. ‘So he’s sexually precocious too, is he?’
‘Actually, I think he is. Anyway, I’ve worked with him quite a bit on the novel, too: that is, I’ve arranged it into chapters for him and generally tidied it up. Nothing wrong with Keogh’s history or his use of the seventeenth-century language — in fact it’s amazingly accurate — but his spelling is still atrocious and on this book at least he was repetitive and disjointed. But one thing I can promise you: it will earn him an awful lot of money!’
Now Gormley frowned. ‘How can his short stories be “jewels” while his novel is repetitive and disjointed Does that follow logically?’
‘Nothing follows logically in Keogh’s case. The reason the novel differs from the shorter works is simple: his collaborator on the shorts was a literary type who knew what he was doing, whereas his collaborator for the novel was quite simply… a seventeenth-century rake!’
‘Eh?’ Gormley was startled. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you do. I wish to God I didn’t! Listen: there was a very successful writer of short stories who lived and died in Hartlepool thirty years ago. His real name doesn’t matter but he had three or four pseudonyms. Keogh uses pseudonyms very close to the originals.’
‘The “originals”? I still don’t — ‘
‘As for the seventeenth-century rake: he was the son of an earl. Very notorious in these parts between 1660 and 1672. Finally an outraged husband shot him dead. He wasn’t a writer, but he did have a vivid imagination! These two men… they are Keogh’s collaborators!’
Gormley’s scalp was crawling now. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘I’ve talked to Keogh’s girlfriend,’ Harmon continued. ‘She’s a nice kid and dotes on him. And she won’t hear a word against him. But in conversation she let it slip that he has this idea about something called a necroscope. It’s something he presented to her as fiction, a figment of his own imagination. A necroscope, he told her, is someone — ‘
‘ — who can look in on the thoughts of the dead?’ Gormley cut in.
‘Yes,’ the other sighed his relief. ‘Exactly.’
‘A spirit medium?’
‘What? Why, yes, I suppose you could say that. But a real one, Keenan! A man who genuinely talks to the
dead! I mean, it’s monstrous! I’ve actually seen him sitting there, writing — in the local graveyard!’
‘Have you told anyone else?’ Gormley’s voice was sharp now. ‘Does Keogh know what you suspect?’
‘No.’
‘Then don’t breathe another word about this to a soul. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, but — ‘
‘No buts, Jack. This discovery of yours might be very important indeed, and I’m delighted you got in touch with me. But it must go no farther. There are people who could use it in entirely the wrong way.’
‘You believe me, then, about this terrible thing?’ the other’s relief was plain. *I mean, is it even possible?’
‘Possible, impossible — the longer I live the more I wonder just what might or mightn’t be! Anyway, I can understand your concern, and it’s right that you should be concerned. But as for this being “a terrible thing”: I’m afraid I have to reserve my judgement on that. If you are correct, then this Harry Keogh of yours has a terrific talent. Just think how he might use it!’
‘I shudder to think!’
‘What? And you a headmaster? Shame on you, Jack!’
‘I’m sorry, I’m not quite sure I — ‘
‘But wouldn’t you yourself like the chance to talk to the greatest teachers, theorists and scientists of all time? To Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci, Aristotle?’
‘My God!’ the voice at the other end of the line almost choked. ‘But surely that would be — I mean, quite literally — utterly impossible!’
‘Yes, well you just keep believing that, Jack, and forget all about this conversation of ours, right?’
‘But you — ‘
‘Right, Jack?’
‘Very well. What do you intend to — ?’
‘Jack, I work for a very queer outfit, a very funny crowd. And even telling you that much is to tell you too much. However, you have my word that I’ll look into this thing. And I want your word that this is your last word on it to anyone.’
‘Very well, if you say so.’
Thanks for calling.’
‘You’re welcome. I — ‘
‘Goodbye, Jack. We must talk again some time.’
‘Yes, goodbye…’
Thoughtfully, Gormley put the phone down.
Chapter Eleven
Dragosani had been ‘back to school’ for over three months, brushing up on his English. Now it was the end of July and he had returned to Romania — or Wallachia, as he now constantly thought of his homeland. His reason for being here was simple: despite any threats he made when last he visited, still he was aware that a year had passed, and that the old Thing in the ground had warned him that a year was all the time allowed. What he had meant exactly was beyond Dragosani to fathom, but of one thing he was certain: he must not let Thibor Ferenczy expire through any oversight on his part. If such an expiry was imminent, then the vampire might now be more willing to share a few more secrets with Dragosani in exchange for an extension on his undead life.
Because it had been getting late in the day when he drove through Bucharest, Dragosani had stopped at a village market to purchase a pair of live chickens in a wicker basket. These had gone under a light blanket on the floor in the back of his Volga. He had found lodgings in a farm standing on the banks of the Oltul, and having tossed his things into his room had come out immediately into the twilight and driven to the wooded cruciform ridge.
Now, at last light, he stood once more on the perimeter of the circle of unhallowed ground beneath the gloomy pines and surveyed again the tumbled tomb cut into the hillside, and the dark earth where grotesquely twisted roots stood up like a writhing of petrified serpents.
Past Bucharest he had tried to contact Thibor, to no
avail; for all that he’d concentrated on raising the old devil’s mind from the slumber of centuries, there had been no answer. Perhaps, after all, he was too late. How long might a vampire lie, undead in the earth, without attention? For all Dragosani’s many conversations with the creature, and for all that he had learned from Ladislau Giresci, still he knew so little about the Wamphyri. That was restricted knowledge, Thibor had told him, and must await the coming of Dragosani into the fraternity. Oh? The necromancer would see about that!
‘Thibor, are you there?’ he now whispered in the gloom, his eyes attuned to the shadows and penetrating the dusty miasma of the place. ‘Thibor, I’ve come back — and I bring gifts!’ At his feet the chick
ens huddled in their basket, their feet trussed; but no unseen presence moved in the darkness now, no cobweb fingers brushed his hair, no eager invisible muzzles sniffed at his essence. The place was dry, desiccated, dead. Dangling twigs snapped loudly at a touch and dust swirled where Dragosani placed his feet on the accumulated vegetable debris of centuries.
‘Thibor,’ he tried again. ‘You told me a year. The year is past and I’ve returned. Am I too late? I’ve brought you blood, old dragon, to warm your old veins and give you strength again…’
Nothing.
Dragosani grew alarmed. This was wrong. The old Thing in the ground was always here. He was genius loci. Without him the place was nothing, the cruciform hills were empty. And what of Dragosani’s dreams? Was that knowledge he had hoped to glean from the vampire gone forever?
For a moment he knew despair, anger, frustration, but then -
The trussed chickens in their basket stirred a little and
one of them made a low, worried clucking sound, A breeze whirred eerily in the higher branches over Dragosani’s head. The sun dipped down behind distant hills. And something watched the necromancer from behind the gloom and the dust and the old, brittle branches. Nothing was there, but he felt eyes upon him. Nothing was different, but it seemed now that the place breathed!
It breathed, yes — but a tainted breath, which Dragosani liked not at all. He felt threatened, felt more in danger here than ever before. He picked up the basket and took two paces back from the unhallowed circle until he brought up against the rough bark of a great tree almost as old as the glade. He felt safer there, more solidly based, with that tough old tree behind him. The sudden dryness went out of his throat and he swallowed hard before enquiring again:
‘Thibor, I know you’re there. It’s your loss, old devil, if you choose to ignore me.’
Again the wind soughed in the high branches, and with it a whisper crept into the necromancer’s mind:
Dragosaaaniiii? Is it you? Ahhhh!
‘It’s me, yes’, he eagerly answered. ‘I’ve come to bring you life, old devil — or rather, to renew your undeath.’
Too late, Dragosani, too late. My time is come and I must answer the call of the dark earth. Even I, Thibor Ferenczy of the Wamphyri. My privations have been many and my spark has been allowed to burn too low. Now it merely flickers. What can you do for me now, my son? Nothing, I fear. It is finished…
‘No, I can’t believe that! I’ve brought life for you, fresh blood. Tomorrow there’ll be more. In a few days you’ll be strong again. Why didn’t you tell me things were at such a pass? I was sure you cried wolf! How could you expect me to believe when all you’ve ever done is lie to me?’
… Perhaps in that I was mistaken after all, the Thing in the ground answered in a little while. But when even my own father and brother hated me… why should I trust a son? And a son by proxy, at that. There is no real flesh between us, Dragosani. Oh, we made promises, you and I, but too much to believe that anything could come of them. Still, you have prospered a little — through your knowledge of necromancy — and at least I tasted blood again, however vile. So let it be peace between us. 1 am too weak now to care…
Dragosani took a step forward. ‘No!’ he said again. “There are still things you can teach me, show me. Wamphyri secrets…’ (Did the ground tremble just a little beneath his feet? Did the unseen presence’s creep closer?) He moved back against the tree.
The voice in his mind sighed. It was the sigh of one who wearies of all earthly things, of one impatient for oblivion. And Dragosani forgot that it was the lying sigh of a vampire. Ah, Dragosani! Dragosani! — you’ve learned nothing. Did I not tell you that the lore of the Wamphyri is forbidden to mortals? Did I not say that to become is to know and that there is no other way? Begone, my son, and leave me to my fate. What? And should I give you the power to rule a world, while I lie here and turn to dust? What is that for justice? Where is the fairness in that?
Dragosani was desperate. ‘Then accept the blood I’ve brought you, the sweet meat. Grow strong again. I will accept your terms. If I must become one of the Wamphyri to learn all of their secrets — then so be it!’ he lied. ‘But without you I cannot!’
The Thing in the ground was silent for long moments while Dragosani breathlessly waited. He fancied that the earth trembled again, however minutely, beneath his feet, but that could only be his imagination — the knowledge that something ancient and evil, rotten and undead lay buried here. Behind his back the tree stood seemingly solid as a rock, so that Dragosani hardly suspected it was eaten away at its heart. But indeed it was hollow; and now something gradually eased its way up through the earth and into the dry, worm-eaten wood.
Perhaps in another moment Dragosani might have sensed movement, but in that precise instant of time Thibor spoke to him again and his attention was distracted:
Did you say you had … a gift for me?
There was interest in the vampire’s mental voice now, and Dragosani saw a ray of hope. ‘Yes, yes! Here at my feet. Fresh meat, blood.’ He snatched up one of the birds and squeezed its throat so that its squawking ceased at once. And in another moment he had taken a sickle of bright steel from his pocket and sliced the chicken’s gizzard. Red blood spurted and the carcass flopped a little where he tossed it, while feathers fluttered silently to the black earth.
The leaf-mould soaked up the bird’s blood as a sponge soaks water — but behind Dragosani’s back a pseudopod of putrefaction slid swiftly up inside the hollow tree, its leprous white tip finding a knot-hole where a branch had decayed and poking through into view not eighteen inches above his head. The tip throbbed, glistening with a strange life of its own, filled with an alien foetal urgency.
Dragosani took up the second bird by its neck, stepped two paces forward to the very rim of the ‘safe’ area. ‘And there’s more, Thibor, right here in my hand. Only show a little trust, a little faith, and tell me something of the powers I’ll command when I become as you.’
I… I feel the red blood soaking into the ground, my son, and it is good. But still I think you came too late. Well, I will not blame you. We were at odds with one another — I was as much to blame as you — and so let the
past be forgotten. Aye, and 1 would not have it end without showing you at least a small measure of what I’ve come to feel for you, without sharing at least one small secret.
‘ I’m waiting,’ Dragosani eagerly answered. ‘Go on…’
In the beginning, said the Thing in the ground, all things were equal. The primal vampire was a thing of Nature no less than the primal man, and just as man lived on the lesser creatures about him, so too lived the vampire. We both, you see, were parasites in our way. All living things are. But whereas man killed the creatures he fed upon, there the vampire was kinder: he simply took them for his host. They did not die — indeed they became undead! In this fashion a vampire is no less natural a creature than the lamprey or the leech, or even the humble flea; except his host lives, becomes near immortal, and is not consumed as in the normal manner of massive parasitic possession. But as man evolved into the perfect host, so evolved the vampire, and as man became dominant so the vampire shared his dominance.
‘Symbiosis,’ said Dragosani.
I can read the meaning of the word in your mind, said Thibor, and yes, that is correct — except the vampire soon learned to keep himself secret! For along with evolution came a singular change: where before the vampire could live apart from his host, now he was totally dependent upon him. Just as the hagfish dies without its host fish, so the vampire must have his host simply to exist. And if men discovered a vampire in one of their own sort — why, they would simply kill him! Worse, they learned how to kill the greater being within!
Nor was this the last of the vampire’s problems. Nature is a strange one when it comes to correcting errors and quite ruthless. She had not intended that any of her creations should be immortal. Nothing she makes is allowed to live for ever. And yet here wa
s a creature which
seemed to defy that rigid dictum, a creature which — barring accidents — might just survive indefinitely! And furious, she took her spite on the Wamphyri. As the centuries waxed and waned and the Earth grew through all the ages towards the present day, so my vampire ancestors developed within themselves a weakness. It was bred into them — it came down the generations, down all the years. It was a stricture of Nature, and it was this: that since vampires ‘died’ so very rarely, she would allow them only rarely to be born!
‘Which is why,’ said Dragosani, ‘you’re dying out as a race.’
As individuals, we may only reproduce once in a life-span, no matter the great length of that span…
‘But you’re so potent! I can’t see that the fault lies with your males. Is it that your females are infertile… I mean, that they only have the one opportunity to reproduce?’
Our ‘males’, Dragosani? said the voice in Dragosani’s mind, with a sardonically inquisitive edge that he didn’t like. Our ‘females”…? And once again the necromancer stepped back against the tree.
‘What are you saying?’
Males and females. Oh, no, Dragosani. If Nature had saddled us with that problem then surely were we long extinct…
‘But you are a male. I know you are!’
My human host was a male.
Dragosani’s eyes were now very wide in the dark. Something inside urged him to flee — but from what? He knew that the Thing in the ground could not — dared not — harm him. ‘Then… you’re a female?’
/ thought I had explained adequately. I am neither one nor the other…
Dragosani wasn’t sure of the term. ‘Hermaphrodite?’
No.
‘Then asexual? Agamic!’
A pearly droplet was forming on the pallid, pulsating tip of the leprous tentacle where it protruded from the hole in the tree above Dragosani’s head. As it grew it became pear-shaped, hung downward, began to quiver. Above it a crimson eye formed, gazed lidlessly, full of rapt intent.