Necroscope n-1

by Brian Lumley

  ‘But what of your lust on the night we took the girl?’

  Your lust, Dragosani.

  ‘And all the women you had in your life?’

  My energy, but my host’s lust!

  ‘But — ‘

  AHHHH! the voice in Dragosani’s mind suddenly gave a great groan. My son, my son — it is nearly finished! It is almost over!

  Alarmed, the necromancer advanced yet again to the edge of the circle. The voice was so weak, so despairing, so filled with pain. ‘What is it? What’s wrong? Here, more food!’ He slit the second bird’s throat, threw its twitching corpse down. The red blood was sucked up by the earth. The Thing in the ground drank deep.

  Dragosani waited, and: Ahhhh!

  But now the necromancer’s scalp fairly tingled. For suddenly he sensed great strength in the vampire — and even greater cunning. Quickly he stepped back — and in that same instant of time the pearly droplet overhead turned scarlet and fell!

  It landed on the back of Dragosani’s neck just below the high collar-line. He felt it. It could have been a drop of moisture fallen from the tree, except it was totally dry here; or it could be a bird dropping, if he had ever seen a bird in this place. In any case, his hand automatically went to his neck to wipe it away — and found nothing. The vampire egg needed no ovipositor. Like quicksilver it had soaked straight through the skin. Now it explored the spinal column.

  In the next moment Dragosani felt the pain and bounded from the tree. He found himself within what he had thought to be the danger area — bounded again as the pain increased. This time he was incapable of directing himself; he ran from the circle, blindly colliding with the boles of trees where they stood in his path; he tripped and fell, rolling headlong. And always the pain in his skull, the pressure on his spine, the fire lancing through his veins like acid.

  Panic gripped him, the worst panic he had ever known in his entire life. He felt that he was dying, that his seizure — whatever its cause — must surely kill him. It felt as though his internal organs were bursting, as though his brain were on fire!

  Within him, the vampire seed had found a resting place in his chest cavity. It ceased exploring, settled to sleep. Its initial fumblings had been the spastic kicking of the newborn, but now it was warm and safe and desired only to rest.

  The agony went out of Dragosani in an instant, and so great was his relief that his system completely lost its balance. Drowning in the sheer pleasure of painlessness, he blacked out.

  Harry Keogh lay sprawled upon his bed, sweat plastering his sandy hair to his forehead, his limbs twitching fitfully now and then in response to a dream which was something more than a dream. In life his mother had been a psychic medium of some repute, and death had not changed her; if anything it had improved her talent. Often over the years she’d visited Harry in his sleep, even as she visited him now. Harry dreamed that they stood in a summer garden together: the garden of the house in Bonnyrigg, where beyond the fence the river swirled its sluggish way between banks grown green with the hot sun and lush from the richness of the river. It was a dream of sharp contrasts and vivid colours. She was young again, a mere girl, and he might well be her young lover rather than her son. But in his dream their relationship was distinct, and as always she was worried for him.

  ‘Harry, your plan is dangerous and it can’t possibly work,’ she said. ‘Anyway, don’t you realise what you’re doing? If it does work it will be murder, Harry! You’ll be no better than… than him!’ She turned her head of golden tresses and gazed fearfully at the house through eyes of blue crystal.

  The house was a dark blot against a sky so blue that it hurt the eyes. It stood there like a mass of ink frozen against a green and blue background, as if fresh spilled in a child’s picturebook; and like a Black Hole of interstellar physics, no light shone out of it and nothing at all escaped its gaping, aching void. It was black because of what it housed, as black as the soul of the man who lived there.

  Harry shook his head, dragging his own eyes from the house only with a great effort of will. ‘Not murder,’ he said. ‘Justice! Something he’s escaped for almost fifteen years. I was little more than a baby, a mere infant, when he took you from me. He’s got away with it until now. But now I’m a man. How much of a man will I be if I let it go at that?’

  ‘But don’t you see, Harry?’ she insisted. ‘Taking your revenge won’t put it right. Two wrongs never make a right…’ They sat down on the grass and she hugged him, stroking his hair. Harry had used to love that as a baby. He looked again at the inkblot house and shuddered, and quickly looked away.

  ‘It’s not just that I want revenge, Mother,’ he said. ‘I want to know why! Why did he murder you? You were beautiful, his young wife, a lady of property and talent. He should have adored you — and yet he killed you. He held you under the ice, and when you were too weak to fight let you go with the river. He killed you as coldly as if you were an unwanted kitten, the runt of the litter. He tore you from life like a weed from this very garden, except he was the weed and you a rose. What made him do it? Why?’

  She frowned and shook her golden head. ‘I don’t know, Harry. I’ve never known.’

  ‘That’s what I have to find out. I can’t find out while he’s alive, for I know he’ll never admit it. So I’ll have to find out when he’s dead. The dead never refuse me anything. Which means… I have to kill him. And I’ll do it my way.’

  ‘It’s a very terrible way, Harry,’ it was her turn to shudder. ‘I know!’

  He nodded, his eyes cold. ‘Yes, you do — and that’s why it must be that way…’

  She was fearful again and clutched him to her. ‘But what if something goes wrong? Just knowing you’re all right, I can lie easy, Harry. But if anything should happen to you — ‘

  ‘Nothing will happen. It will be just the way I plan it.’ He kissed her worried brow, but still she clung to him.

  ‘He’s a clever man, Harry, This Viktor Shukshin. Clever — and evil! Sometimes I could sense it in him, and it fascinated me. What was I after all but a girl? And him — he was magnetic. The Russian in him, which was there in me, too; the brooding darkness of his mind, the magnetism and the evil. We were opposing magnetic poles, and we attracted. I know that I loved him at first, even though I sensed his dark heart, but as for his reason for killing me — ‘

  ‘Yes?’

  Again she shook her head, her blue eyes cloudy with memory. ‘It was something… something in him. Some madness, some unspeakable thing he couldn’t control. That much I know, but what exactly — ‘ and once more she shook her head.

  ‘It’s what I have to find out,’ Harry repeated, ‘for until then I won’t rest easy either.’

  ‘Shhh!’ she suddenly gasped, clutched him hard. ‘Look!’

  Harry looked. A smaller inkblot had detached itself from the great black mass of the house. Manlike, it came down the garden path, peering here and there, worriedly wringing its hands. In its black blot of a head twin silver ovals gleamed, eyes which led it towards the fence at the bottom of the garden. Harry and his mother huddled together, but for the moment the Shukshin apparition paid them no heed. He passed by, paused briefly and sniffed suspiciously — almost like a dog — then moved on. At the fence he stopped, leaned on the top rail, for long moments peered at the river’s slow swirl.

  ‘I know what’s on his mind,’ Harry whispered.

  ‘Shhh!’ his mother repeated her warning. ‘He can sense things, Viktor Shukshin. He always could…’

  The inkblot now returned, pausing every now and then, sniffing in that strange way. Close to the pair, the Shukshin-thing seemed to stare right through them with its silver eyes. Then the eyes blinked and it moved on, back towards the house, wringings its hands as before. As it merged with the house a door slammed echoingly.

  The sound repeated in Harry’s head, reverberating, metamorphosing from a slam to a knock, to a series of knocks, repeating:

  Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!

&n
bsp; ‘You have to go,’ said his mother. ‘Be careful, Harry. Poor little Harry

  He jerked awake in his flat. From the slant of the sunlight through the window, he knew that time turned towards evening. He’d slept for three hours at least; more than he’d intended. He started as the knock came again at the door:

  Rat-tat-tat!

  Who could this be? Brenda? No, for he wasn’t expecting her. Although it was a Saturday she was putting in some overtime, dolling up the hair of some of Harden’s more ‘fashionable’ ladies. Who, then?

  Rat-tat-tot Insistently.

  Stiffly, Harry swung his legs off the bed, stood up and went to the door. His hair was tousled, his eyes full of sleep. Visitors were rare and he liked it that way. This was an intrusion, something to be dealt with swiftly and decisively. He zipped up his trousers, shrugged into a shirt — and the knock came yet again.

  Outside the door, Sir Keenan Gormley waited, knowing that Harry Keogh was in there. He had known it coming down the street, had felt it climbing the stairs. Keogh’s ESP signature was written in the very air of the place as unmistakably as a fingerprint on clear glass. For like Viktor Shukshin and Gregor Borowitz, this was Gormley’s one great talent: he too was a ‘spotter’, he instinctively ‘knew’ when he stood in the presence of an ESPer. and Keogh’s ESP-aura was more powerful than any he had ever sensed before, so that he felt he was close to some great generator as he stood there at the door on the landing at the head of the stairs.

  And now Harry Keogh himself opened that door…

  Gormley had seen Keogh before, but never so close. Over the last three weeks, while he had been staying with Jack Harmon, he’d seen him often. Gormley and

  Harmon, following Keogh on occasion, had kept the youth under close but discreet observation; likewise on the two occasions when George Hannant had accompanied them. And Gormley had not taken long to agree with both Harmon and Hannant that indeed Keogh was something special. Quite obviously they were correct about him; he was a necroscope; he did have the power of intelligent intercourse with the dead. Gormley had given Keogh’s weird talent a lot of thought over the last three weeks. It was one which he would dearly love to have under his control. Now he must somehow find a way to put that idea to Keogh.

  Blinking the sleep from his eyes, Harry Keogh looked his visitor up and down. He had intended to be brusque no matter who it was, to deal with the problem and be done with it, but one look at Gormley had told him this was something which wasn’t going to go away. There was a quiet air of unassuming but awesome intellect about this man, and coupled with his charming smile and demanding, outstretched hand, it formed a combination which was totally disarming.

  ‘Harry Keogh?’ said Gormley, knowing of course that it was Keogh and insisting that the other take his hand by shoving it even farther forward. ‘I’m Sir Keenan Gormley. You won’t have heard of me but I know quite a bit about you. In fact — why, I know just about everything about you!’

  The landing was ill-lit and Harry couldn’t quite make out the other’s features, just indistinct impressions. Finally, briefly, he took Gormley’s hand, then stepped aside and let him in. The contact, however brief, had told him a lot. Gormley’s hand had been firm and yet resilient, cool but honest; it had promised nothing, but neither had it threatened. It was the hand of someone who could be a friend. Except -

  ‘You know everything about me?’ Harry wasn’t sun he liked the sound of that. ‘Well that won’t come to much. There’s not a lot to know.’

  ‘Oh, I disagree with you,’ said the other. ‘You’re far too modest.’

  Now, in the brighter light from the windows, Keogh looked at his visitor more closely. His age could be anything between fifty and sixty, but probably at the top end; his green eyes were a little muddied and his skin full of small wrinkles; his well-groomed hair was grey on a large, high-domed head. About five-ten in height, his well-tailored jacket just failed to hide slightly rounded shoulders. Sir Keenan Gormley had seen better days, but Harry Keogh would think he had a way to go yet.

  ‘What do I call you?’ he said. It was the first time he’d spoken to a ‘Sir’.

  ‘Keenan will do, since we’re to be friends.’

  ‘You’re sure of that? That we’re to be friends, I mean? I must warn you I don’t make many.’

  ‘I don’t think we have any choice,’ Gormley smiled. ‘We have too much in common. Anyway, the way I hear it you have lots of friends.’

  ‘Then you’ve heard it wrong,’ Harry frowned, shook his head. ‘I can count my real friends on one hand.’

  Gormley believed he might as well get straight to the point. And anyway, he wanted to see Keogh’s reaction if he was caught off balance. It might just provide the final ounce of proof. ‘Those are the live ones,’ he quietly answered, easing the smile gradually off his face. ‘But I think the others are rather more numerous…’

  It hit Harry like a grenade. He’d often wondered how he would feel if anyone should ever confront him like this, and now he knew. He felt ill.

  He reeled, found a rickety easy chair, sank down into it. Pale as death he shivered, gulped, gazed at Gormley

  through the eyes of a cornered animal. ‘I don’t know what you’re — ‘ he finally began to croak his denial, only to have Gormley cut him off with:

  ‘Yes you do, Harry! You know very well what I’m talking about. You’re a necroscope. And you’re probably the only real necroscope in the entire world!’

  ‘You have to be crazy!’ Harry gasped desperately. ‘Coming in here and accusing me of… of things. A necroscope? There’s no such thing. Everyone knows you can’t… can’t…’ Trapped, he faltered to a halt.

  ‘Can’t what, Harry? Talk to the dead? But you can, can’t you?’

  Clammy sweat broke out on Harry’s forehead. He gasped for air. He was caught and he knew it. Trapped like a ghoul with a dripping heart in his hands, like a rapist in the beam of a policeman’s torch, gasping between his battered victim’s thighs. It hadn’t felt like a crime before — he’d never hurt anyone — but now…’

  Gormley stepped forward, took his shoulders, shook him where he sat. ‘Snap out of it, man! You look like a grubby little boy caught masturbating. You’re not sick, Harry — this thing you do isn’t an illness — it’s a talent!’

  ‘It’s a secret thing,’ he protested weakly, his face shining. ‘I… I don’t hurt them, I wouldn’t do that. Without me, who would they have to talk to? They’re so lonely!’ He was almost babbling now, convinced that he was in deep trouble and trying to talk his way out. The last thing Gormley wanted was to alienate him.

  ‘It’s okay, son, it’s okay. Take it easy — no one’s accusing you of anything.’

  ‘But it’s a secret thing!’ Harry insisted, gritting his teeth, growing angry now. ‘Or at least it was. But now, if people know about it — ‘

  ‘They won’t get to know.’

  ‘You know!’

  ‘It’s my business to know these things. Son, I keep telling you: you’re not in trouble. Not with me.’

  He was so persuasive, so quiet. Was he a friend, a real friend, or was he something else? Harry couldn’t control his panic, the shock of knowing that someone else knew. His head whirled. Could he trust this man? Dared he trust anyone? And if Gormley meant the end of him as a necroscope, what of his revenge on Viktor Shukshin? Nothing must interfere with that!

  He reached out desperately with his mind, contacted a confidence trickster he knew in the cemetery in Easington.

  Gormley felt the power that washed out from Harry at that moment, a raw alien energy like nothing he’d felt before, which set his scalp tingling and quickened his heart alarmingly. This was it! This was the necroscope’s talent in action. Gormley knew it as surely as he was born.

  In his chair Harry had gradually squeezed himself into a more compact mass, hunching down. He had been the colour of drifted snow, dripping sweat like a faulty tap. But now -

  He sat up, bared his teeth
and grinned a wild grin, tossed back his head and sent beads of sweat flying. He uncoiled like a spring, all of the panic going out of him in a moment. His hand hardly trembled at all as he brushed damp hair back from his forehead. Colour rapidly returned to his face. ‘That’s it,’ he said, still grinning. ‘Interview’s over.’

  ‘What?’ Gormley was amazed at the transformation.

  ‘Certainly. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? You came here to find out about Harry Keogh the author. Someone mentioned to you the theme of a new story I’m writing — which no one’s supposed to know about, incidentally — and you just hit me with it to get my reaction. It’s a horror story, and you’ve heard I always act out what I write. So when I act out the part of the necroscope — which is a word of my own coining, by the way — naturally I do it with authority. I’m a good actor, see? Well, you’ve had your free show and I’ve had my fun, and now the interview’s over.’ The grin fell abruptly from his face and left it sour, sneering. ‘You know where the door is, Keenan…’

  Gormley slowly shook his head. At first he’d been stunned, but now his instinct took over. And it was his instinct that told him what was happening here. ‘That’s clever,’ he said, ‘but nowhere close to clever enough, Who are you talking to now, Harry? Or rather, who is it talking through you?’

  For a moment defiance continued to shine in Harry Keogh’s eyes, but then Gormley once more felt the flow of weird energies as the youth broke the link with his clever, dead, unknown friend. His face visibly changed; sarcasm drained away and Harry was himself again; but at least he retained something of composure. His panic had passed.

  ‘What do you want to know?’ he said, his voice flat and emotionless.

  ‘Everything,’ Gormley answered at once. ‘I thought you already knew everything? You said you did.’

  ‘But I want to hear it from you. I know you can’t explain how you do it, and I certainly don’t want to know why; it’s enough to say that you found yourself with a talent you could use to improve your own life. That’s understandable. No, it’s the facts I want. The extent of your talent, for instance, and its limitations. Until a moment ago I didn’t know you could use it at a distance — that sort of thing. I want to know what you talk about, what interests them. Do they see you as an intruder, or do they welcome you? Like I said: I want to know everything.’