by Brian Lumley
He put the extraordinary idea to the back of his mind. Now that Harry Jnr had released him he had places to go, people — dead people — to talk to. There were things he knew which he was unique in knowing. He knew, for instance, that the dead inhabit another sphere; also that in their lonely nether-existence they go on doing all the things they’ve done in life.
The writers write masterpieces they can never publish, each line perfectly composed, each paragraph polished, every story a gem. Where time isn’t a problem and deadlines don’t exist, things get done right. The architects plot their cities of the mind, beautiful aerial constructs flung across fantastic worlds and spanning sculpted oceans and continents, each brick and spire and sky-riding highway immaculately positioned, no smallest detail missing or botched. The mathematicians continue to explore the Formulae of the Universe, reducing THE ALL to symbols they can never put on paper, for which men in the corporeal world should be grateful. And the Great Thinkers carry on thinking their great thoughts, which far outweigh any they thought in life.
That had been the way of it with the Great Majority. Then Harry Keogh, Necroscope, had come along.
The dead had taken to Harry at once; he had given their existence new meaning. Before Harry, each one of them had inhabited a world consisting of his own incorporeal thoughts, without contact with the rest. They had been like houses with no doors or windows, no telephones. But Harry had connected them up. It made no difference to the living (who simply weren’t aware) but it made a great deal of difference to the dead.
Möbius had been one such, mathematician and thinker both, and he had shown Harry Keogh how to use his Mobius continuum. He’d done so gladly, for like all of the dead he’d quickly come to love the Necroscope. And the Möbius continuum had given Harry access to times and places and minds beyond the reach of any other intelligence in all of man’s history.
Now Harry knew of a man whose one obsession in life tad been the myths and legends and lore of the vampire. His name was Ladislau Giresci. How was it going for him now, Harry wondered, in the aftermath of his murder? Max Batu had killed him with his evil eye, for no good reason other than that Dragosani had ordered it. Killed him, yes, but not Giresci’s lifelong penchant for the legend of the vampire. What had been an obsession in life must certainly have continued afterwards.
Harry could no longer make any headway with Thibor, and Thibor would not let him get through to Dragosani. His next best bet had to be Ladislau Giresci. How to reach him, however, was a different matter. Harry had never met the Romanian in life; he did not know the ground where Giresci’s spirit lay; he must rely on the dead to supply him with directions, see him on his way.
Across the road from Brenda’s flat — once Harry and Brenda’s flat — there sprawled a graveyard hundreds of years old, containing a large number of Harry’s friends. He knew most of them personally from previous conversations. Now he drifted towards the lines of markers and occasionally leaning tombstones, his mind drawn by the minds of the dead where they lay in their graves communing. They sensed him at once, knew that it was him. Who else could it be?
Harry! said their spokesman, an ex-railway engineer who’d lived all his life in Stockton, until he died in 1938. It’s good to talk to you again. Nice to know you haven’t forgotten us.
‘How are things with you?’ Harry inquired. ‘Still designing your trains?’
The other came aglow in a moment. I have designed the train! he answered. Do you want to hear about it?
‘Unfortunately I can’t.’ Harry was genuinely sorry. ‘My visit is purely business, I’m afraid.’
Well, spit it out, Harry! someone else exclaimed, an ex-bobby of Harry’s acquaintance, late of Sir Robert Peel’s time. How can we help you, sir?
‘There are some hundreds of you here,’ Harry answered. ‘But is there anyone from Romania? I want to go there, and I need directions and an introduction. The only people I know there are… bad people.’
Voices rose in something of a babble, but one of them cut through, speaking directly to Harry. It was a girl’s voice, sweet and small. I know Romania, it said. Something of it, anyway. I came here from Romania after the war. There were troubles and oppressions, and so my elder brothers sent me away to an aunt who lived here. Strange, but I came all this way, then caught a cold and died! I was very young.
‘And do you know someone I can seek out, who can perhaps help me on my way?’ Harry didn’t like to seem too eager to be off, but he really couldn’t help himself. ‘It’s very important, I assure you.’
But my brothers will be delighted to guide you, Harry! she said at once. It’s only since you came that we’ve all been able to… well, get together again. We all owe you so much.
‘If I may,’ Harry answered, ‘I’ll come back and talk to you again some time. Meanwhile, I’m afraid I’ve no time to spare. What are your brothers called?’
They are Jahn and Dmitri Syzestu, she said. Wait and I’ll call them for you. She called, and in a moment her brothers answered. They were very faint, like voices on a telephone from the other side of the world. Harry was introduced.
‘Just keep talking to me,’ he told the brothers, ‘and I’ll find my way to you.’
He excused himself from the company of his friends in the Hartlepool cemetery, found a space-time door and passed through it into the Mobius continuum. ‘Jahn, Dmitri? Are you still there?’
We’re here, Harry, and we’re honoured to be able to help you like this.
He homed in on them, emerged through another door into the grey Romanian dawn. He found himself in a field of grass beside a pockmarked wall fast crumbling into ruins. There were ponies in the field but of course they couldn’t see him; they just stood still, shivering a little, their coats shining with drops of dew. Plumes of warm air came snorting from their nostrils like smoke. In the distance, the last lights of a town were blinking out as the sun rose on the eastern horizon.
‘Where is this place?’ Harry asked the brothers Syzestu. The town is Cluj, said Jahn, who was the oldest. This
place is just a field. We were in prison — political prisoners
— and we ran away. They came after us with guns and caught us here, trying to climb this wall. Now tell us, Harry Keogh, how we can help you?
‘Cluj?’ said Harry, a little disappointed. ‘I need to be south, I think, and east — across the mountains.’
This is easy! The younger brother, Dmitri, was excited.
Our father and mother lie side by side in the graveyard in Pitesti. Only a little while ago we were talking to them!
Indeed they were, a deeper, sterner voice joined in, from some distance away. You’re welcome to come and visit, Harry, if you can find your way here.
Harry excused himself — a little hastily but with many apologies — and re-entered the Mobius continuum. In a little while he was in a misted graveyard in Pitesti. Who is it you’re seeking? inquired Franz Syzestu.
‘His name is Ladislau Giresci,’ said Harry. ‘All I can tell you is that he died some little time ago at his home near a town called Titu.’
Titu? Anna Syzestu repeated. Why that’s nought but fifty kilometres or so away! What’s more, we’ve friends buried there! She was plainly proud to be of assistance to the Necroscope. Greta, can you hear?
Indeed I can! A new voice, sharp and shrewish, answered. And I’ve the very man right here.
There you are! said Anna Syzestu, in a told-you-so tone. If you want to meet someone in Titu, ask Greta Mirnosti. She knows everyone!
Harry Keogh? A male voice now came to the fore. I’m Ladislau Giresci. Do you want to come closer or will this do?
‘I’m on my way!’ said Harry. He thanked the Syzestus and went to Giresci’s plot in Titu. And finally, at last in the presence of the vampire expert himself, he asked, ‘Sir, I believe you can help me — if you will?’
Young man, said Giresci, unless I’m very much mistaken I know why you’re here. Last time someone came to me inquiring about vampires, it cost m
e my life! But if there’s any way I can help you, Harry Keogh, any way at all, just ask it!
‘That was Boris Dragosani who came to see you, right?’ said Harry. He sensed the other’s shudder. Giresci might have no body, but at the mention of Dragosani’s name he shuddered.
That one, yes, Giresci answered at last. Dragosani. When first 1 met him I didn’t know it, but he was already one of them. Or as good as. He didn’t know it himself, not quite, but the evil was in him.
‘He sent Max Batu to kill you with his evil eye.’
Yes, because by then I knew what he was. That’s the thing a vampire fears most: that people will discover what he is. Anyone who suspects… he has to die. So the little Mongol killed me, and he stole my crossbow.
‘That was for Dragosani. He used it to kill Thibor Ferenczy in the cruciform hills.’
Then at least it was put to good use! Ah, but when you talk about Thibor, you’re talking about a real vampire! said Giresci. if Dragosani, with all of his potential for evil, had lived — alive or undead — as long as that one, then the world would have an incurable illness!
‘I’m sorry,’ said Harry, ‘but I can find nothing to admire in such monsters. And in any case, there was one greater than Thibor, who came before him, and outlasted him. His name was Faethor, and Thibor took his second name from him. Rightly so, for it was Faethor who made him a vampire. I’m speaking of Faethor Ferenczy, of course.’
Ladislau Giresci’s voice was the merest whisper now as he answered: Indeed, and that was where my interest in the undead really began. For I was with Faethor when he died. Imagine that, and him a creature at least thirteen hundred years old!
‘These are the ones I want to know about.’ Harry was eager. ‘Thibor and Faethor. In your life you were a vampire expert; however people might scorn your obsession or look upon you as an eccentric, you studied the vampire’s myths, his legends, his lore. You were still studying them when you died, and it’s my guess that dying didn’t stop you. So where’s your research led you now, Ladislau? How did Thibor end up buried there on the cruciform hills? And what of Faethor between the tenth and twentieth centuries? It’s important that I know these things, for they relate to what I’m doing now. And what I’m doing relates to the safety and sanity of the whole world.’
I understand, said Giresci, soberly. But Harry, don’t you think you should speak to someone with even more authority? I believe it can be arranged.
‘What?’ Harry was taken aback. ‘Someone with more authority than you? Is there such a person?’
Ahhh! said a new voice, a powerful voice. It was black as the night itself and deep as the roots of hell, and it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Oh, yesss, Haarrry, there is — or was — just such a one. And I am he. No one knows as much about the Wamphyri as I do, for no one has or ever will live so long. So very long, indeed, that when I died I was ready for it. Oh, I fought against it, be sure, but in the end it was for the best. Now I have peace. And I have Ladislau Giresci to thank for giving me that final, merciful release. Since he obviously holds you in the greatest esteem — as do all the dead, apparently — then so must I. So come to me, Harry Keogh, and let a real expert answer your questions.
It was an offer Harry couldn’t refuse. He knew who it must be at once, of course, and he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it himself. It was, after all, the obvious answer.
‘I’m coming, Faethor,’ he said. ‘Just give me a moment and I’ll be right there.
Chapter Eleven
To this day, on the outskirts of Ploiesti, towards Bucharest, there stand gutted ruins, reminders of the mundane horrors of war. The burned-out shells lie like half-buried stony corpses in open countryside, strangely gorgeous in the summer when the old bomb craters are full of flowers and brambles and wildlife, and ivy climbs shattered walls to turn them green. But it takes the winter and the snow to make the devastation visible, to bring into monochrome perspective the gaunt reality of the region. The Romanians have never rebuilt in or near these ruins.
This was where Faethor Ferenczy had finally met his death at the hands of Ladislau Giresci during a Second World War bombing raid on Bucharest and Ploiesti. Pinned to the floor of his study by a splintered ceiling beam when his home was hit, he had feared the encroaching flames because alive, vampires burn very slowly. Giresci, working for the Civil Defence, had seen the house bombed, entered the blazing ruin and tried to free Faethor — to no avail. It was hopeless.
The vampire had known that he was finished. With a superhuman effort of will he had commanded.Giresci to make a quick end of it. The old way was still the only way. Since Faethor was already staked, Giresci need only behead him. The flames would do the rest, and the ancient monster would burn along with his house.
The things he experienced in that house of horror stayed with Giresci for the rest of his life. They were what had made him an authority on vampirism. Now Ladislau Giresci was dead along with Faethor, but still the vampire stood in his debt. Which was why he would give Harry Keogh whatever assistance he could; at least, that was part of the reason. The rest of it was that Keogh was up against Thibor the Wallach.
It wasn’t yet winter when Harry Keogh homed in on Faethor’s incorporeal thoughts and emerged from the Möbius continuum into the creeper-and bramble-grown ruin which had been the vampire’s final refuge on earth. Indeed, the summer was barely turning to autumn, the trees still green, but the chill Harry felt might have suggested winter to the bones of any ordinary man. Harry was least of all ordinary. He knew it was a chill of the spirit, a wintry blast blowing on the soul. A psychic chill, which is only felt in the presence of a supernatural Power. Faethor Ferenczy had been such, and Harry recognised that fact. But just as surely Faethor, too, knew when he was face to face with a Power.
The dead speak well of you, Harry, the vampire opened, his mental voice sepulchral. indeed, they love you! That is hard for one who was never loved to understand. You are not one of them, and yet they love you. Perhaps it is because you too, like them, are without body. The voice took on a grimly humorous note. Why! it might even be said that you are… undead?
‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned about vampires,’ Harry answered evenly, ‘it’s that they love riddles and word games. But I’m not here to play. Still, I’ll answer your questions. Why do the dead love me? Because I bring them hope. Because I intend no harm but only good. Because through me they are something more than memories.’
In other words, because you are ‘pure’? The vampire’s words dripped with sarcasm.
‘I was never pure,’ said Harry, ‘but I understand your meaning and I suppose you’re near enough right. Which might also explain why they’ll have nothing to do with you. There’s no life in you, only death. You were dead even in life. You were death! And death walked with you wherever you walked. Don’t compare my condition with undeath — I’m more alive now than you ever were. When I arrived here and before you spoke, I noticed something. Do you know what it was?
The silence.
‘Exactly. No cock crowing. No birdsong. Even the droning of bees is absent here. The brambles are lush and green but they bear no fruit. Nothing, no one will come near you, not even now. The things of Nature sense your presence. They can’t speak to you like I can, but they know you’re here. And they shun you. Because you were evil. Because even dead, you’re still evil. So don’t sneer at my “pureness”, Faethor. I shall never be alone.’
And after a moment’s silence, Faethor said thoughtfully, For one who seeks my help, you don’t much hide your feelings.
‘We are poles apart,’ Harry told him, ‘but we do have a mutual enemy.’
Thibor? Why then have you spent time with him?
‘Thibor is the source of the trouble,’ Harry answered. ‘He is, or was, your enemy, and what he left behind is my enemy. I hoped to learn things from him and was partially successful. Now he’ll tell me no more. You offered help, and here I am to accept your offer. Bu
t we don’t have to pretend friendship.’
Guileless, Faethor said. That is why they love you. But you are right: Thibor was and is my enemy. However much I’ve punished him, 1 can never punish him enough. So ask what you will of me, and I’ll answer all.
‘Then tell me this,’ said Harry, eager once more. ‘After he hurled you from your castle in flames, what became of you then?’
I shall be brief, Faethor answered, because I sense that this is only part of what you desire to know. Cast your mind back then, if you will, one thousand years into the past…
Thibor the Wallach, whom I had called son — to whom I had given my name and banner, and into whose hands I had bequeathed my castle, lands and Wamphyri power had injured me sorely. More sorely than even he suspected. That cursed ingrate!
Thrown down from the walls of my castle in flames, I was burned and blinded. Myriad minion bats fluttered to me as I fell, were scorched and died, but dampened the flames not at all. I crashed through trees and shrubs, tumbled in a thousand agonies down the steep side of the gorge, was torn by trees and boulders alike before striking bottom: But my fall was broken in part by the foliage, and I fell in a shallow pool which put out the flames that threatened to melt my Wamphyri flesh.
Stunned, as close to true death as a vampire might come and remain undead, still I put out a call to my faithful gypsies down in the valley. I know you will understand what I mean, Harry Keogh. We share the power to speak with others at a distance. To speak with the mind alone, as we do now. And the Szgany came.
They took out my body from the still, salving water and cared for it. They carried me west over the mountains into the Hungarian Kingdom. They protected me from jars and jolts, hid me from potential enemies, kept me from the sun’s searing rays. And at last they brought me to a place of rest. Ah! And that was a long rest: for recuperation, for reshaping, a time of enforced retirement.
I have said Thibor had hurt me. But how he had hurt me! I was sorely damaged. All bones broken: back and neck, skull and limbs. Chest staved in, heart and lungs a mangle. Skin flayed by fire, torn by sharp branches and boulders. Even the vampire in me, which occupied most parts and portions, was battered, torn and scorched. A week in the healing? A month? A year? Nay, an hundred years! A century, in which to dream my dreams of red — or night-black — revenge!