The Touch

by Brian Lumley

  Scott did as he was told.

  The numbers on the screen of his mind were still in flux, changing at an astonishing rate, becoming ever more complicated. But then, as if frozen for a single moment in the eye of his—or someone else’s?—memory, Scott saw and recognized a certain fantastic formula. At which a door opened in the darkness where no door had ever before existed!

  “Yes, a Möbius door,” said Harry. And:

  “I know,” said Scott. “The part of you that’s in me knows. But me, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or how to do it!”

  “You just step through it,” said Harry. “Like this.”

  Scott felt his hand taken, clutched in Harry Keogh’s cold hand. And before he could open his eyes he was pulled in, drawn into and through the Möbius door—a door that previously existed only in Harry’s metaphysical mind, and now in Scott’s—to a “place” that was no-where or when, but lay parallel not only to space and time but also to regions adjacent and beyond what men are satisfied to call the universe.

  “God!” Scott cried, his cry ringing out across untold ages and infinities.

  Well, close enough, said Harry soundlessly, not letting go of Scott’s hand; unable to let go, such was Scott’s tight grip. A godlike mind, certainly. But there’s no need to speak in this place, Scott, for even thoughts have weight in the Möbius Continuum.

  The Möbius Continuum: Scott felt it all around him, around everything! Here beyond Harry’s door lay the ultimate darkness: the Primal Darkness, which existed always, even before the universe began. It was a place of absolute negativity; not even a parallel plane of existence, because nothing existed here, not under normal conditions or circumstances. And Scott knew—he understood—that if there was ever a place where darkness lay upon the face of the deep, this was it. And yes, it might well be the region from which God had commanded, Let There Be Light, causing the physical universe to split off from this metaphysical abstraction. For indeed the Möbius Continuum was “without form, and void.”

  Are you okay? Harry’s silent voice startled Scott from his contemplation of this surreal “place,” caused him to jerk violently; which only served to set him slowly spinning, and Harry with him. But the Necroscope knew how to bring their motion to a halt; and again he asked, Scott, are you okay?

  “Yes . . . I mean no!” said Scott, each word exploding deafeningly, almost like a thunderclap. Until, accepting what Harry had told him, he very quietly asked, Can we go now?

  But we only just got here! And there are other things you might want to see. You may never need them, but then again you might, and what good’s a tool if you don’t know how to use it?

  A tool?

  This, of course! said Harry. The Möbius Continuum. That’s what I used to call it, anyway. But however spiritual it may or may not be, it’s nevertheless a tool no less than deadspeak.

  Deadspeak, said Scott, gradually regaining his confidence, becoming used to the situation. Is that what you call it? This, er, “talent,” this speaking to dead people? I always thought of it as clairvoyancy.

  Clairvoyancy is a fraud, said Harry. A cheap, lousy trick to cash in on the bereaved. But what I used to do, and what you can do, that’s the real thing.

  Hmmm! Scott mused. The real thing? And then: Okay, Harry, you can show me these . . . these other things. But first, do you think I might—

  —First you’d like to try out your deadspeak? Harry knew, or guessed, what was in Scott’s mind, because he or part of him was in Scott’s mind. And so: Very well, he agreed, so let’s go there. Show me the coordinates.

  Coordinates? Single word questions again.

  Okay, forget it, said Harry. I can read them in your mind. And I could have guessed the place anyway, because that’s probably the only place you would know where to go to try out your deadspeak. Myself, I’ve visited lots of graveyards in my time. And I could have done without some of them.

  Hold on there a minute, Harry, said Scott. You changed the subject again. Did you say I have coordinates? In my mind?

  Every place you’ve ever been, said the Necroscope. If you remember it, it’s a coordinate. Now we point ourselves in that direction—and we think, we will ourselves there. And—

  There was the very slightest sensation of movement, and a moment later a Möbius door shaped itself out of nowhere. We’re there! said Harry, drawing Scott through the door and returning him to a gravity-bound environment, the darkness of a well-kept cemetery in northeast London. Flanked by high walls, the place was a quarter acre, where trees and shrubs formed the perimeter. A gentle breeze blew in the shrubbery, making a rustling sound, while a thin ground mist loaned the place a false sensation of desolation and a genuine sense of loss.

  Feeling the ground beneath his feet, Scott stumbled a very little; not as much as when Shania had shown him her mechanical version of a similar trick. And the “boy” Harry said, “So then, who will you speak to first?”

  Still not quite believing what was happening—or what he was dreaming—Scott said, “My father, I think. He’s been suffering for a long time. I think he believes he neglected me; and he did, but he had what he thought were good reasons. I suppose it was all down to his good old British stiff upper lip. Still, I was never left wanting for anything, so I don’t have a lot to complain about. I just want to set it straight that’s all . . . I want him to be at peace, with himself.”

  “And you’ve never wanted that before?” Perhaps Harry’s not-so-simple question sounded a disapproving note.

  But Scott protested, “What? Hold on there, Harry. I mean, I didn’t know that anyone was there before! I didn’t know that anything was left of them.”

  “Ah, but they are there!” said Harry. “Some of them for an eternity, or so it seems. The flesh is gone, and even the bones eventually, but mind goes on. Just think, Scott: all the learning that’s ever been is down in the ground or gone up in smoke, lost to us except where it was written in books for us to read. But did you think that’s all there was to it? Not in the least. The creative ones go right on creating: they write their music, the books that they never had time to complete; or they fathom scientific problems, design great architectural works and machines that the living never even imagined! They’re very active, Scott, if only in their minds—because mind is all they have left. And the real pity of it is that no one in your corporeal world knows what they’ve done, for there isn’t anyone they can talk to . . . not anymore. Well, not until now.”

  “You mean me?”

  “I mean you.” Harry nodded. “But I’ve a feeling they won’t lean too heavily on you, as they sometimes did on me. They will probably understand that you’re here for a purpose. No, I think it will be the other way around: you who needs them. And, Scott, once they know you, when they’ve felt your warmth, you’re going to have plenty of friends among the dead.”

  Scott couldn’t find an answer to that, so instead he shuddered a little . . .

  While the two had talked, so they’d walked. Now they were close to Jeremy St. John’s grave, and Scott found himself walking more slowly. “And do they love?” he said. “Do they remember the loved ones they left behind? Are they maybe jealous of them because they still have their lives? I think maybe I would be.”

  “I have found,” said the Necroscope, “that it’s mainly the bad ones—the ones who were bad in life—who go on being bad in death, and usually they’re shunned by the others. And as for love: well, mostly the dead feel concerned for the happiness of the loved ones they left behind, not for themselves. Also, it’s known and accepted that those who loved the most in their lives are the ones who move along the quickest; their grief—for the living, you understand—doesn’t last too long. No, for there’s lots of room for love in the other places, Scott.”

  “The other places?” Scott was baffled again. “They move on to other places? What kind of places, Harry?” But:

  “Better places, that’s all,” said Harry. “So don’t go worrying yourself about it.
And anyway, here’s your father’s grave.” And sure enough, there was that less than familiar sarcophagus, and the headstone with what Scott had always considered a pompous inscription: “A Man of Manners, a Man of Breeding.”

  Jeremy St. John wasn’t there . . . or he was, but not in the semblance of flesh he’d been wearing when Scott had seen him in a previous, rather more dreamlike dream. For now his father was simply a voice, but one which was faint as a breeze, whispering as if from a million miles away.

  “Who is it?” that voice inquired. “Who is it close by, who I sense as warm as life. The dead have spoken of such; a Necroscope who speaks to the dead from life. But what have I done to deserve such a visitor? Are you here to chastise me? If so, too late, for I’ve been doing that for years . . .”

  30

  Such was the misery in his father’s distant-sounding voice that Scott felt choked. For a moment he couldn’t speak—didn’t know how to speak, not to his father—until Harry told him: “Scott, it’s easy. You hear him, don’t you? And you believe, don’t you? That’s all it takes. So now speak, and he’ll hear you, too.” And so:

  “Father,” said Scott, albeit tremulously, “it’s me, Scott. I’ve been given the power to speak to you. It’s funny, but I’ve only just realized that’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time.”

  “Scott?” said the other, his voice much louder and perhaps a little disbelieving. “Is it really you, son? Or have I needed this so desperately and for so long that I’m only imagining it?”

  “No, it’s me,” said Scott. “I’ve been shown the way to . . . to do this. And you’re the first one I’ve come to talk to. It’s strange but now that I can, and now that I’m here, I don’t know what to say!”

  “Son! Son!” Jeremy St. John cried, but so close now it was as if he were seated right next to Scott on his tomb. “I dreamed you came to me once before, but we weren’t able to talk to each other. Yet now . . . can it be . . . that you are the Necroscope?”

  “No.” Scott shook his head, and knew that his father would sense it. “No, I’m not the Necroscope, I’m just Scott. But I’ve sort of borrowed the Necroscope’s powers; how long for, I can’t say. I’ve been given certain of his skills because of some work I have to do, a wrong I must put right. I would try to tell you about it but I don’t know how long I’m allowed to stay here and I need to talk to Kelly, too. Kelly was my wife. I got married, father, but not while you were alive, so you never got to meet her. Kelly was . . . she was murdered, by a lunatic!”

  “Murdered?” (Horror in that voice from the tomb.)

  Scott nodded. “Yes, but it’s just one of many wrongs I’ll be trying to put right. Just one, but to me the most important, of millions of murders—most of them done in distant worlds—and some six billion more that an alien creature and his group are planning to do in this world, in the very near future.” He explained in brief and waited for a response. And eventually:

  “All of this to do,” said his father, wonderingly. “And by the sound of it no easy task. And yet you’ve found time to come and speak to me. Do I deserve it, son? I wasn’t the best father in the world, now was I? The best? Hardly that, for I was never there for you.” The catch in Jeremy St. John’s voice was almost a sob.

  “But you stuck to your guns,” said Scott. “I got that much from you at least. There are plenty of things I remember about you: how you would never quit or admit defeat; your starch and your pride.”

  “Pride?” his father replied. “Yes, I was proud, wasn’t I? But you know what they say, son: it comes before a fall. And I feel like I’ve fallen a very long way.”

  “Then we really are pretty much of a kind.” Scott nodded. “When Kelly died I hit rock bottom. I don’t think anyone could fall much farther than I fell. It was like a black pit, and to tell the truth I’m still climbing out of it. But at least I’ve got help.”

  “But surely that was different,” said his father. “I mean, you didn’t do anything wrong. There was no guilt on your part.”

  Scott felt he was losing the argument—or rather that he was losing his father again, losing him to his own misery—and so said, “There was no guilt then, it’s true. Or maybe a little guilt, right at the end. But that was then and this is now. You see, Kelly hasn’t been dead for very long, and yet . . .”

  “Ah!” said his father. “I think I see. But, Scott, son, you can’t be unfaithful to a memory . . . can you?”

  “I don’t know,” Scott replied. “But I think maybe you can, especially if what you thought had gone away is still there and you’re able to touch it, and you can still talk to it.”

  “Ah!” said his father again, with a knowing deadspeak nod. “So there’s a downside to these powers, is there?”

  Scott could only agree. “As I’ve only now discovered,” he answered, feeling the chill of his father’s slab creeping into his bones.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it?” said his father, in a tone as soft and gentle as any Scott had ever known him to use. “I think you came here to console me—which you’ve done and quite admirably—yet suddenly here I am consoling, or perhaps condoning, you. Or trying to, anyway.”

  Scott shook his head, surprised by his sudden discovery of something new. “It’s something I never really knew you had,” he said. “Your understanding! But you were an ambassador, a politician; of course you understood things. And you were—and you still are—my father! We should have talked, but we couldn’t. I was just a child; what could you have said to me that I would have understood?”

  “I knew that,” his father answered, the catch back in his voice, “and so I never tried. And still I’m riddled with guilt, but not only because of the way I neglected you, Scott. For no matter how hard I try to reason things out in order to forgive myself, there can be no escape from the fact that I did what I did to your mother.”

  “And no escaping that she did what she did to you,” Scott answered. “But I know she loved me, and I loved her back; which was where you and I drifted apart. You looked at me and thought of her, and you simply didn’t want to look anymore. And though I’m sorry now to say it, the feeling was mutual. But that’s all done with now . . .”

  Scott fell silent until, remembering something that Harry had told him, he thought to ask: “Is she . . . is she still there, my mother? Is she still with the dead, or has she already moved on?”

  “Oh, she’s a long time gone from the Great Majority,” Jeremy St. John husked. “But then, she’d suffered more than enough in life; it would have been unfair if she’d suffered here, too. I was never in touch with her, but then no one was. Your mother was beyond that, Scott. And now she’s—”

  “—Beyond everything, in a better place?” said Scott. “I’m glad for that.”

  “And I’m glad for you,” said his father.

  “It’s time I went,” said Scott then. “But first I want to be sure that things are okay with you—between us, I mean.”

  Jeremy St. John sighed. “Things are fine with us now, son. And I thank you.”

  “If I don’t get back to you”—Scott got up from the sarcophagus—“well, you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I know,” the other replied. And then: “Good-bye, son. Thanks for . . . for everything, and good luck with whatever lies ahead . . .”

  What lay ahead was Kelly’s grave, and Scott had no idea what he was going to say to her—or if he’d be able to say anything at all—or if he did, what her response would be. Indeed, the only thing he knew for sure was that he wouldn’t lie to her, because he never had. But in any case Kelly beat him to it, for even as he and Harry approached her plot with its beautiful marble headstone, she said:

  “Your thoughts are deadspeak, Scott; and me and the others here, we’ve been listening to you ever since you got here, from the moment we felt your warmth. We’ve felt it before, but distantly: like a small, flickering candle burning in a dark cellar room—but so small that we didn’t know where or who you were. There a
re plenty here who remember the Necroscope. They thought maybe he had returned. Myself . . . well, I’m a newcomer here, and I never knew the Necroscope. But that warmth: I seemed to sense something of you in it. Being new, however, I said nothing.”

  Scott opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again as finally words came. “Kelly! It’s you! You’re here!”

  “Of course,” she said. “Where else would I be? But I’m not destined to stay here for very long; so they’ve told me, anyway. They put that down to my love for you: so much of it that I can no longer give you. But still it’s here, and it has to go somewhere. And I’m told there’s plenty of room for it in—”

  “—In the other places,” Scott burst out as a lump in his throat threatened to shut off his air, and another in his chest squeezed his heart, his soul, and the tears from his eyes. “The better places, I know. Kelly! Kelly!” But:

  “No, don’t do that, Scott,” she chastised him oh-so-gently, “or you might start me doing it, too. And far too many tears are being shed already, on both sides of the divide. In fact, that’s the only thing I’ve been worried about: that you would be hurting. It seemed unfair to me that you should be hurting when I’m past all that.”

  “You”—Scott tried not to sob—“you don’t hurt?”

  “Only for you,” she answered. “But not physically. There’s no lump in a throat that’s still, Scott, and no pain in a heart that’s stopped beating. I’m beyond all that now. But as for my soul—”

  “—There are better places,” he choked the words out, “for your soul.”

  He sensed her deadspeak nod. “And I feel—I don’t know—an undertow,” she continued dreamily. “Something tugging at me, but pleasantly. It’s as if . . . as if I were being called away. Scott, I know I have been called!

  The only reason I’ve resisted is because you’re still out there among the living. I had to be sure you weren’t hurting, that you were healing, but there was no way to know . . . until now.”