by Brian Lumley
Goodly: “A roughneck? But in the right circumstances that would be—and it already has been—a positive bonus. A rough diamond, maybe. Surely the Necroscope would know better than to choose a weakling for a job like this?”
Trask: “But a hard-man? A killer, even if he does have his reasons?”
Lardis: “Me, I say they were good reasons. I like him! And I say it again, if he’s Harry Hell-lander’s choice, that’s good enough for me.”
Trask: “And me … well, within limits. So don’t misunderstand me—I’m not arguing the Necroscope’s choice—it’s just that I don’t understand it. I have this feeling that Jake’s not only fighting us but fighting Harry, too.”
Goodly: “Oh, he is, be sure of it! But aside from his manners and tendency to aggression, there are similarities.”
Trask, dubiously: “More similarities?”
Goodly: “Indeed. For Harry believed in revenge, too. Don’t you remember? An eye for an eye? He was just a boy when he went after Boris Dragosani. If like attracts like—mentally speaking, that is—then I can well see how Harry would be drawn to this one. And that’s something else you might give some thought to: if you want Jake firmly on the team, and his mind exclusively on the job in hand, you could do a lot worse than find this man, this Luigi Castellano.”
Trask: “And then what? Let Jake go after him?”
Goodly: “This Castellano is rubbish and should be disposed of—we’re all agreed on that. I think Jake will chase him down no matter what, which makes Castellano a distraction. But if he were to be taken out … no more distraction. And we would have Jake’s gratitude.”
Trask, mildly surprised: “Well, now! And just listen to the cold-blooded one! But you’re right, and we’re checking into it. Interpol and other friends abroad. If we could just bring Castellano to justice, that might suffice.”
Goodly: “No, it wouldn’t.” (A sensed shake of the precog’s head). “When he is dead, that will suffice. You know as well as I do how Jake dealt with the other members of that gang. Do you really think he’ll be satisfied to see their boss nice and comfortable, all warm and well-fed behind bars?”
Lardis: “Anyway, in case I haven’t already said it loud or often enough, I like Jake Cutter. And so does Liz.”
Liz, heatedly: “I do not! Well, not especially.”
Lardis, chuckling throatily: “See?”
Then silence for a while, the darkness deepening, and Jake finally adrift in dreams. And a strange cold current taking him in tow, steering him to an unknown yet oddly familiar destination … .
A riverbank, and below its grassy, root-tangled rim, the water swirling in the eddies of a small bight. A boy, sitting on the edge and leaning forward at what seemed an unsafe angle, dangling his feet close to the slowly swirling surface. His elbows were on on his knees, his hands propping his chin, and he appeared to be talking to someone. Perhaps to himself.
Jake’s shadow fell on him, and the boy turned his head to look up at him. He didn’t seem at all surprised by Jake’s presence (but then, neither did Jake). On the contrary, he smiled a pale, painful, yet appreciative greeting. “Hello, there! So you came. Why don’t you sit down a while and talk to me?”
“I, er, didn’t like to cut in on you.” Jake answered, not knowing what else to say. And then, because he wasn’t sure what else to do, either—and wondering if he knew the other—he finally followed his suggestion, sat down, and asked him: “Er, do you think it’s possible we’ve met somewhere before?” Beginning to feel the strangeness of it all, he looked the boy over more closely, perhaps even warily.
Apart from the obvious fact that the other had recently been fighting, there didn’t seem to be anything especially odd about him. He could be any scruffy boy, though for some reason Jake found himself doubting that. Maybe eleven or twelve years old, sandy-haired, freckled; he wasn’t skinny yet barely filled out his ill-fitting, threadbare, second-hand school jacket. The top button was absent from a once-white shirt that hung halfway out of his grey flannel trousers, and a frayed, tightly knotted tie with a faded school motto hung askew from his crumpled collar. His lumpish nose supported plain prescription spectacles, small, circular windows through which dreaming blue eyes gazed out in a strange mixture of wonder and weird expectation.
Then, suddenly aware of Jake’s inspection, the boy looked down at himself, wrinkled his nose in disgust, said: “This will be the school bully, big Stanley Green’s work. He’s got it coming, has our Stanley. In about a year from now, or maybe two.” And his lips were thinner, tighter, more determined.
There was dried blood on those lips, a gash in the corner of his mouth, but little or nothing of fear in his dreamy eyes, which were now other than dreamy and contained a certain glint. Indeed they looked older than the rest of him, those eyes, and Jake thought there was probably a pretty mature mind in there, somewhere behind that half-haunted face. But he could never in a million years have guessed how mature—or how wise in otherworldly ways.
And because the boy hadn’t as yet answered his first question (as to whether or not they knew each other), Jake now felt the urge to remind and prompt him. “Er, son?”
But he needn’t have concerned himself. Obviously the other had considered Jake’s earlier question, and now took his prompt into account, too.
“Son?” he finally repeated Jake, and cocked his young-old head on one side. “And you’re wondering if we know each other? Well, I’ve got to answer no to both questions. Uh-uh, Jake. You and I don’t know each other, not yet. And I’m not too comfortable with you calling me ‘son.’ It’s a case of—I don’t know—what came first, the chicken or the egg?” There was no animosity in his reply.
“Eh?” Jake frowned. “Someone else just bursting with riddles? I don’t need that right now.”
“But it’s a hell of an adventure,” said the boy, sounding not at all like a child, despite his child’s voice. “Er, working them out, that is. I’ve done my share of that, Jake.” Then, sitting back and gazing directly into Jake’s eyes, studying his face and perhaps more than his face: “So you’re he. And you’ve been having a hard time of it, right?”
“Well, since you seem to understand what’s going on here,” Jake answered, perhaps peevishly, “why don’t you tell me?” His dream might be working something out for him, resolving a problem.
And the other nodded. “Very well, I’m telling you: you’re having a hard time of it. But that’s just as much your fault as mine; you have a very defensive mind. And me, I don’t have much of a mind at all! Or I do, but not all in one place, not all at one time. Oh, I know—I mean, I’ve known—a lot of things. But what I remember and what I’ve forgotten are completely random. Like a kind of amnesia or a bad case of absentmindedness. Except it’s not. For you see, I’m really not all here. Or putting it more sympathetically, all of me isn’t here. Which means that while I won’t get things 100 percent wrong, I may not get them entirely right either. That’s why I need a focus. But now, since you seem determined to reject me, it looks like it may be hard for us to get along, and harder still for me to get it together. So, how long do you plan to keep slamming the door in my face, Jake?”
“Who are you?” Jake asked him then, feeling a weird tingle in his scalp, an unheard of sensation of negative déjà vu: that it wasn’t him but the boy who had been here—or somewhere—before. And Jake felt he knew where he’d been.
But the other frowned and now seemed as uncertain as Jake. “I … I’m all sorts of people and things,” he said. “I’m Alec, Nestor, Nathan, take your pick. There’s something of Faethor in me, or has been, or will be. And something of me in a whole lot of people. It all depends on the time, the date, the place. And time is relative: what will be has been, ask any precog. That’s why we have to be sure it works out right, don’t you see?”
“You … you’re Harry Keogh!” said Jake, shivering without knowing why—until he remembered what Harry Keogh was. “You’re the ghost they’ve been telling me a
bout!”
“And you’re the gadget,” said Harry.
“But I don’t want to be!” Jake felt himself riveted to the riverbank; he wanted to leap away but couldn’t move. It was the dream, the nightmare—one of those nightmares—where try as you might you can’t escape from the thing that’s chasing you.
“I’m not chasing you,” the young Harry protested. “You are chasing me. Chasing me away! And in fact he was wavering, physically (or metaphysically) wavering, his figure a mere outline, his face and form thinning towards transparency.
“But you’re after my mind, my body!” Jake cried.
The boy, the dream-Harry, the ghost (who by now was beginning to look ghostly, insubstantial as smoke), gave a desperate shake of his almost immaterial head. “That’s not me, Jake. It’s the Wamphyri who want your mind, body, and soul. I am the one—or rather we are the ones, and maybe the only ones—who might be able to stop them. So don’t send me away, Jake. Don’t fight me off!”
And suddenly Jake realized that he could, that he was actually doing it: fighting the other off, sending him away.
“I … I can, can’t I?” he said, his fear retreating.
“You very nearly did!” said Harry, sighing as he firmed up again. “Okay, so perhaps this is too strange for you, the wrong time and place, the wrong me. I didn’t think you’d see any harm in a small boy, that’s all.”
“What, in a child who talks like a man?” Jake felt himself shivering again, but less violently. “A boy whose eyes are innocent as a baby’s yet old as the ages? A boy capable of metempsychosis—who’s in my mind right now—while I’m the helpless, intended vessel?”
“You’re by no means as helpless as you think,” said Harry, perhaps admiringly. “That mind of yours: stubborn as hell, with good shields you’ve never had reason to use, nor even suspected you had! Anyway, mind transference isn’t something that I … that I have in mind? I’ve had my time, Jake, my lives—and I’m still having them—but I do get your point. So very well, let’s try something else … .”
A moment ago it had been warm in evening sunlight that came in flickering beams, fanning through the trees on the far bank and setting the water sparkling out towards the middle of the river where the current ran fastest. Now, in a single instant, it was cold and dark; frost lay thick on the ground, and the river was a ribbon of ice, frozen and motionless. A full moon hung low in a windswept sky, and a trio of gardens fronted rich houses that reared to the right of Jake and the boy where they walked along the river path. Except Jake’s companion was no longer a boy but a youth.
Jake started away from the stranger—stumbled, might have fallen into frosted brambles on the overgrown riverbank—but Harry was quick to take his arm, hold him steady. “It’s okay,” he said, to still Jake’s cry of alarm. “It’s a different time, that’s all, an older me. But the same place, more or less. The same river. We were back there,” he thumbed the air, indicated the path behind them, “a few hundred yards down river, sitting on the bank. It was summer and I was talking to my mother when you came by. Now it’s … oh, quite a few winters later. I’m a little closer to your own age now, so perhaps we’ll be able to get along that much better.”
Closer to my own age? Jake thought. But you’re a good deal firmer, too. That’s a hell of a strong grip you have on my arm, and how much stronger on my mind?
But Harry the youth only shook his head in disappointment. “Hiding your thoughts won’t help. I’m in here, remember? Well, at present I am, anyway, while you accept me.”
“Jesus!” Jake gasped. “It’s like something out of A Christmas Carol! When I wake up, I won’t believe it.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Harry. “Worse still, you may not even remember it. That’s why we have to get things done while we can, and hope they get fixed in your mind.”
“Things?”
“Until you trust me,” the other answered, “until you allow me a little permanency, we’ll have to move in stops and starts. We’ll get nowhere until I know the whole story, and I won’t be able to help you until you believe.”
“Believe in a ghost?”
“But I’m not, not really. And Jake, you wouldn’t—I mean you really wouldn’t—believe how often I’ve been through this before! Oh, I’ve had trouble convincing others before you.”
While Harry talked, Jake looked him over. It was the same “boy” for sure, but he’d be nineteen or maybe twenty years old now. Wiry, he would weigh some nine and a half stone and stand seventy inches tall. His hair was an untidy sandy mop that reminded Jake of Clint Eastwood’s in those old Western movies of more than thirty years ago. But his face wasn’t nearly so hard and his freckles were still there, lending him a naive and definitely misleading boyish innocence.
More than any other feature, Harry Keogh’s eyes were especially interesting. Looking at Jake, they seemed to see right through him (the sure sign of an esper, as Jake was now aware), as if he were the revenant, and not the reverse. But they were oh so blue, those eyes, that startling, colourless blue which always looks so unnatural, so that one thinks the owner has to be wearing lenses. More than that, there was something in them which said they’d seen a lot more than any twenty-year-old has any right seeing.
But still Jake felt a little easier with all of this now. After all, it was only a dream. And since this ghost, or whatever it was, was conversational, why not talk to it? Or humour it, as the case might be.
“So, if convincing people is as hard as you make out, why do you put yourself to the trouble?” he asked his strange companion.
They had come to a halt before the gate in the garden wall of the central house. Lights in the downstairs room adjacent to the garden sent angular black shadows marching over the brittle shrubbery and garden path … the shadows of men, glimpsed only briefly before the patio doors were slammed and curtains jerked hurriedly across the wide windows.
For a long moment Harry made no answer to Jake’s question; he stood as if transfixed, looking in through the gate’s horizontal bars. But the house was mainly dark, where mere chinks of light escaped at odd angles from the corners and joins of poorly-fitted curtains.
Then the youth started, blinked his eyes in the pale moonlight, and breathlessly answered, “Why do I keep putting myself out? That’s easy, Jake. It’s because I was the beginning, and I have to be the end.” Then he gave another start, and said:
“We can’t stay here. That house there is where I was born. My stepfather has visitors—Boris Dragosani and Max Batu—and later, I’ll be visiting him, too. Tonight is the night I killed him. But there are things you mustn’t see, not yet.”
“You … you killed him?” And now the cold that Jake felt wasn’t entirely physical, if it ever had been.
“I will,” said the other. “But I don’t want to see it, and I don’t want you to see it. So now we have to go. Another place and time. Are you up to it?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“You can always wake up, but I wouldn’t advise it. It was hard enough getting into you this time. And if you’re as badly frightened as—”
“Frightened?” Jake cut him off, his pride surfacing. “Maybe I am, but I’m also interested—very. I want to know where this is going, want to find out what it’s all about. And since they won’t tell me—”
“They?” (Harry’s turn to cut in.)
“Ben Trask and his people,” Jake answered.
“Ah!” said Harry, nodding his head and smiling knowingly. “I might have guessed. In fact I suppose I knew. You mentioned ‘them’ before, and obviously E-Branch HQ was where I aimed you that first time, when I first became aware of you. But that was then and this is now, and we have to move on. Since this was my home for so many years, we’ll probably be back. But … my timing was years off, and I can’t think why. It must be my memory, which is incomplete. You see, I’m incomplete! I’m not entirely here. Actually, I’m not entirely anywhere! It seems to be only the strongest of time
s and places to which I’m drawn.”
“Maybe it’s a variation on the old theme,” said Jake. “The killer returning to the scene—and time—of the crime!”
“Very clever,” said Harry. “And you could even be right—in a way. The lure of powerful times and places. Yes, I can see that. But a killer?” He shrugged. “I can’t deny it, and I won’t try to explain it, not now. It’s like I said: this isn’t a good time for me. So I’ll ask you once again—”
And: “Yes.” Jake nodded. “I’m up to it. I think.”
“Very well.” The other nodded. “But this time I’ll try for a place of innocence.”
“Er, before we go,” Jake quickly put in, “can you answer a question or two? I mean, while I’m still steady on my feet?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t asked them sooner,” Harry answered, his eyes still anxious where they peered through the bars of the gate at the house.
“Why me?” Jake said. “Why not one of these people you seem to know so well, the E-Branch crowd? Surely they would have accepted you that much more readily. From some of the things I’ve heard them say about you, they hold you in some kind of awe.”
“But you’re young,” said the other. “You’re strong enough to face whatever it is that’s coming. Ben Trask and the others, they’re old now. And they don’t need …”
“Yes?”
“—Redemption? No, that’s not it. Let’s just say they’re not troubled. They’re straight in what they have to do. But you are troubled. There’s a lot of anger in you, Jake, an explosive strength. And that’s what is needed. It’s what we have to find a use for, but the right use.”
“So I was chosen out of nothing?” Jake frowned. “Because I need saving? What if I don’t want saving? You see, I still have a job to do, and one way or the other I’ll do it. What I’m saying is, you’re taking a chance with me. I might not work out the way you want me to.”