by Brian Lumley
Somewhere on the river, then? A cold, damp foggy night on the river. What, a houseboat, maybe? Or a pier? And—and what the hell?—Someone had to be making a terrible mistake here! Whatever this was all about, they’d got the wrong man!
Finally his eyelids came unstuck, and Anderson lifted his head from his chest. That was painful, too, sending brilliant, jagged flashes of lightning through his skull. He hadn’t been hit, had he? Hit on the head? No, it was the chloroform, which he’d received in what must have been close to an overdose.
Chloroform? Kidnapped? James Anderson, who didn’t have an enemy in the world? Who would want to do anything like this to him? And why?
He drew a huge draft of air to yell for help, and …
… A door opened behind him, and a light came on. It was dim, that light—a single unshaded bulb hanging from twisted flex—but it came so abruptly and unexpectedly that he jerked back in his chair, gave an involuntary yelp of terror, and tried to turn his head. Which only caused him more pain.
“No, no,” came that same, hoarse, sandpapered voice—the one with the Italian accent—“just save your strength and sit still.” And the owner of the voice stepped into view from somewhere behind Anderson and continued: “You can save your breath, too, because no one is going to hear you. And even if you were able to shout that loud … well, we’re not about to let you.”
In fact there were two of them, but not the sort of heavies Anderson might have expected from the texture and tone of the voice. Tall, slender, dark in their long overcoats, their hats set to shade their eyes, they seemed more clinically sinister than the thugs his aching mind would have pictured. And he knew that these were the ones who had followed him through his gate, and that one of them at least had feral eyes and a sick, toothy grin.
They pulled up ricketty chairs, sat down facing him with the light behind them, so that only the glimmer of their eyes told him there were faces there at all in the shadows cast by the pulled-down brims of their fedoras. Their eyes, and maybe the white glint of grinning teeth, too. For long seconds nothing was said, until Anderson could stand it no longer. Then:
“What is this?” he gasped. “What the fuck’s it all about?” And he strained against the industrial tape binding his wrists, ankles, and head to the high-backed chair.
The pair looked at each other, then back at Anderson. And as he continued to curse and babble, one of them reached out a slender, almost female hand to grab his throat. But the incredible strength in that hand, the almost casual way the pressure was oh so slowly increased, the deliberate and effortless constriction of the fingers. So that Anderson knew—knew with an absolute certainty—that this brute could crush his windpipe to a pulp! But even as the knowledge dawned, so the steel claw of a hand released him and withdrew.
He gulped air, desperately wanted to massage his throat, swallow, but couldn’t, and could no longer hold back the vomit boiling up from his stomach. His captors quickly stood up, got well out of the way as he gagged, managed to turn his head an inch or two to the right, and threw up on the floor.
They let him get it out of his system, and as he sat there rigid, coughing, spitting out the last of the unutterable debris, came forward again. And the one with the voice said, “Now see what you did! It must have been all that abuse—all of the unnecessary vitriol, eh? But the next time you want to be sick, just tell me, OK? I can make you sick faster than you’d ever believe.”
“What … what is it you want?” Anderson tried to turn his face away from the smell of his own vomit but could only manage a few inches. Swathes of tape across his forehead held his head firmly in place.
“We want to know about E-Branch. In fact, everything about E-Branch.” The second of the two, whose voice was soft and sibilant as a hiss, leaned closer. And this was also the one with hands like steel claws.
“E-Branch?” Anderson, blinked his watering eyes. And Darcy Clarke’s words came back to him … some stupid fucking warning about the Official Secrets Act? Well, fuck the Official Secrets Act! And in any case Anderson didn’t know anything about bloody E-Branch, except that it was part … part of the security services?
He said as much, and the one with the gravelly voice said, “Oh, but you do—you know a great deal about it. Today we saw you with a Mr. Clarke, Darcy. And a Mr. Trask, Ben. Also with a Mr. Kyle, Alec. And we find him—Mr. Kyle—especially interesting. I mean we find all of them interesting, but especially him. So we can start there. Tell us about Mr. Kyle.”
“But I don’t know anyone with that name,” Anderson gulped. “I wasn’t with anyone of that name. Darcy Clarke, yes. And Ben Trask, too. But no … what, Kyle? No Alec Kyle, no.” He tried to shake his head, moved it too and fro, barely sufficiently to emphasize his point.
“You don’t know anyone called Kyle?” the hissing one said. “But we saw you in the car with him.”
Anderson tried to nod. “Trask, Clarke, and Keogh. The one you’re talking about is called Harry Keogh. So you see, you’re making a big mistake here.”
As the two looked at each other, Anderson saw their faces in silhouette: gaunt, angular outlines, expressionless now and somehow lifeless. Or if not lifeless, then a different kind of life …
They turned back to him. And: “Harry Keogh,” said the one with the snake’s hiss. “Tell us about him.” And as if anticipating the doctor’s answer, he reached into his pocket and took something out. A knife—a Stanley knife—with a knob on the handle that he slid forward.
Anderson tried not to see the blade but couldn’t take his eyes off it. “I … I don’t know anything about him,” he said. And, as the hissing one shuffled his chair closer: “Oh, God! I … I mean … I don’t know very much about him!”
And the one with the knife turned his head to look back a little at the one with the gravelly voice, as if he were waiting for him to make a decision. Which, a moment later, he did. “You know,” he growled, “but if we let you, you could waste an awful lot of time. So maybe we can afford the time—and maybe not. But our patience has its limits. So let’s simply take … a shortcut? A short cut, yes. That sounds right. Now listen:
“When my friend here has finished with you, we’ll go away and let you think it over. Then, when we come back, there’ll be no more questions and answers. You will simply tell us all that you know in one long stream, one long gush, until everything is out. Because you’ll know that if you don’t … well, there are nine—or even nineteen?—more shortcuts.”
The whisperer stood up, stepped forward … and Anderson tried to cringe down into himself. The knife went down, down to his left side—sliced through the tape binding his hand to the leg of the chair. Then the whisperer took that hand and gave it a sudden jerk, dragging it upright, so that Anderson yelped his agony as his cramped elbow joint was forced through an angle of one hundred and eighty degrees. Finally the whisperer used more tape to bind his wrist again, this time to the chair’s backrest alongside his shoulder, with the palm facing forward. And:
“No heckling, please,” his tormentor grinned, as he shoved a gag in Anderson’s mouth and taped it in place, and showed him the knife again.
The blade was one of those special things. It was curved, almost hooked, shiny and sharp as a surgical tool. Using it, a skilled man would be able to cut the most intricate shapes out of the toughest timber. A wood-carver’s tool, yes—or maybe a surgeon’s?
“A-a-about K-Keogh—” Anderson somehow managed to mumble, around the rag and the tape where it had come unstuck from his bottom lip. But:
“Ah, no,” The gravelly one’s voice was deep now, and dark as a dungeon. “Later, save it for later. You see, we have to be sure we get it all. And this way we know we’ll get it all. For it’s a small example of what’s in store if we don’t.”
With which the whispering one trapped Anderson’s wriggling hand and smallest finger, applied the blade of his knife to it, and commenced to work on the smallest knuckle. He made his incision just half an inch back from the qu
ick of the pink fingernail, at the permanent crease where the finger bends, and with appalling speed and dexterity worked through the thin layer of flesh and cartilage to the bone and around it, and between the interface of the ball-and-socket junction. So that as the fingertip came loose, the stump had only just commenced to spurt.
It was so quick that Anderson barely felt the pain, not at first; rather, he sensed it, through goggling eyes that barely believed what they were seeing. And as the whisperer—or butcher—took his spurting finger into his mouth and began sucking on it, like a baby on a finger of chocolate, the one with the gravel voice said:
“So there you go. Nineteen shortcuts left, or maybe even a few more? It all depends on your appetite for pain.”
At which the actual pain, not to mention the true horror, finally came. Then, as Anderson fainted, the same man or monster took a thimble from his pocket, lined it with cotton wool, and taped it over the mutilated finger.
And his sibilant companion sucked a dribble of Anderson’s blood from his lower lip and whispered, “Waste not want not,” then popped the severed section, fingernail and all, into his mouth.
“A tidbit,” the other nodded. “But after he’s told us all he knows, the main course is still to come.”
The Necroscope—the reluctant Necroscope—stayed in London for a further week. It seemed to him the ideal time and opportunity to work a few things out. Bonnie Jean had said he should get out of the house in Bonnyrig for a while, so that was OK. But she had also said he shouldn’t wander too far afield. Well, what was far afield to him? He could come and go as he wished, provided no one knew how he did it …
Couldn’t he?
Coming to London, he’d taken the train because Darcy Clarke had known, he was coming; he hadn’t wanted to arrive too quickly—or weirdly—despite that Darcy knew him for what he was, and what he could do.
Oh yes, he could still do it, certainly—
—But reluctantly.
Harry just didn’t want to use the Möbius Continuum, that was all, not if he could avoid it. As for his other thing: he wouldn’t even let himself think about that! For the Great Majority knew; all of them knew what he was and what he could do. It made no difference that they couldn’t possibly tell anyone, that the Necroscope’s secrets were absolutely safe with them, for the danger—what—ever it was—lay in the fact that his talents weren’t secret from them.
So he stayed in London a while, seven days, and tried to work a few things out.
Darcy Clarke was happy to have him stay at E-Branch HQ, less than happy with the fact that James Anderson had disappeared and the Branch’s locators couldn’t find him. In itself, their failure wasn’t that odd: the hypnotist wasn’t an operative—wasn’t an esper as such—just someone they’d used from time to time. Therefore he wasn’t much known to the rank and file, and his habits were very much unknown. He had left very little of an “aura” with the locators, which meant they didn’t have much to go on. It was that he’d vanished now that worried Darcy most. And that he was probably the only one in the world who could switch Harry back onto the right track.
But having Harry here was a good thing, even if he wasn’t seen too much in and around the HQ itself, and Darcy even dared hope that one day his presence might be permanent. For the Necroscope was still the most powerful tool for good that E-Branch had ever known and used. Which was of course the problem: that they’d used him and then discarded him—but not without first making sure he’d be of no further use to anyone else. Not even to himself, apparently …
So the Necroscope wandered the streets of London, but in fact got very little sorted out. And semi-detached as it were, from his own world of strange metaphysical powers, the more he looked out on the real world the less he felt a part of it, or of any world. London, which had never seemed familiar, was totally alien to him now, utterly strange. He was a stranger here, adrift in a strange world, but he suspected he’d feel the same almost anywhere. Except perhaps in his own place in Edinburgh, or in the arms of B.J. Mirlu.
He was adrift, yes. Because his anchor had come loose.
Which was why he called the wine-bar at least three times a day every day, only to get the same message from B.J.’s answering machine:
“Ah’m sorry, but due tae circumstances beyond mah control, the bar has been closed indefinitely.” Bonnie Jean’s voice, her phony Edinburghian burr, but sounding oh-so-distant and seeming more dispassionate every time, as if she too were slipping away from him. That would be the real breaking point, he knew. That would be when the world really fell apart. If he were about to let it happen.
But he wasn’t.
Harry’s last night at E-Branch was a restless one. He did sleep, but derived little benefit from it. He was accommodated in his old room (or “Harry’s Room,” as it was now known) which opened directly into the main corridor; and about three in the morning his foggy but somehow desperate dreams finally crystalized into something that was more than a dream.
Awake, the Necroscope no longer had contact with the dead; he had all but shut them out of his life. Asleep … he was far more receptive.
And as for R.L. Stevenson Jamieson: well, he was very determined. And no way he was going to be ignored.
Harry? Necroscope? Man, you is hard to reach! What’s with you, Harry? I mean, you gots to know I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t real improtant?
“R.L.? Is it you?” Harry mumbled and muttered, tossing in his bed. “God, can’t a man get any sleep around here?” At first irritated—which showed in his attitude and apparent disinterest—still there had been that in the black man’s dead “voice” which went several degrees beyond urgency; so that despite the barriers that the Necroscope was tempted to erect, he nevertheless felt inclined to pay attention. Sensing this, R.L. said:
Necroscope, me and my obi has been lookin’ out for you for a long time now. And I’s tellin’ you: man, you has enemies! You has enemies in London, and you has ‘em in Scotland, too. They’s been watchin’ you, Harry! Just bidin’ their time, watchin’, and waitin ’!
“Yellow men,” Harry answered, because in sleep the borders between the various levels of knowledge and being are far less clearly defined; also because “yellow men” were on his mind in connection with the bomb.
Don’t know what colour or creed they is, only that they’s there, R.L. answered, and sighed his relief that the Necroscope was listening. Then, quickly continuing: Also, that maybe what they was waitin’ for has come.
“Come? What are you talking about, R.L.? Maybe you’d better come again!” But Harry’s attention was fully centered now.
Not what but who, R.L. told him. Him, Necroscope: the one they was waitin’ for. And he’s just ’bout the worst! Not just a watcher but a … a doer, a boss. And he’s here, close and gettin’ closer all the time. He came quick, tonight, right out o’ the blue. And I can feel him like a fog over a swamp, reachin’ out for you.
Harry felt the alien cold in R.L.’s dead voice, and said, “Out of the blue?” He clung to that. “He came by airplane?”
Is that what I said? R.L. thought about it. I suppose it be! Anyway, he’s here, and the others is clustered to him. But like I said: they was watchers: kinda small fry, you know? And this one’s a doer. What’s more … he knows where you is, Necroscope!
“So, there’s danger everywhere,” Harry answered. “In Edinburgh, and here too.” But the real nature of the threat continued to elude him. And R.L. dared not enlighten him.
In all three places, the dead man said, stepping a little outside the parameters of his mission.
“What?” Harry hadn’t failed to notice a certain emphasis. “Did you say three places? Where else, then?”
Buried, Harry. Buried deep. Buried … real … deep …
“What is?” The Necroscope was definitely interested now. But he was anxious, too, for he could sense the dead man slipping away from him, perhaps deliberately. “What’s buried deep, R.L.?”
Ca
n’t say no more, Harry. Believe me, I’d really like to, but it gots to break in its own sweet time. Or, might could be you’d end up broken, too, right … along … with … it …
With which he was gone.
III
VICTIMS
A FEW HOURS EARLIER, SOME THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES AWAY, IN Scotland: Zahanine had been watching Harry Keogh’s place for a week, which had to be the most frustrating, unrewarding job that Bonnie Jean had ever given her. And in this cold wet weather, the dreariest. Keep an eye on Harry? Follow him? Oh, really?
That time a week ago, he had been in the house. She knew that for sure. Then—no longer in the house—gone! And she hadn’t seen him go. Since when, never a sign of him. No smoke from the chimney, or lights of an evening; no answer when finally she’d lost patience and gone knocking at the door.
The man was some kind of ghost! A very attractive, mysterious ghost, but just as spooky as the rest of them. Which, from someone like Zahanine, was a compliment. But to be here in the third week in February, at midnight, on a night like this … she supposed she should consider herself lucky it wasn’t snowing! Anyway, she would stick it out for another hour, and then she’d be out of here …
… But she knew she would have to be back again at seven in the morning. That was the routine Bonnie Jean had set until he was back. For Harry Keogh was very important to her. And to them, and to everything. And B.J. had spared no effort in making her point:
“He is everything,” she’d told the girls before they quit the wine-bar and went into hiding. “Without him there’s no me, no you, no tomorrow. I mean that quite literally: let anything happen to him, it’s all over, done, finished. He’s the one and only one. In whatever shape or form, Harry Keogh is the future—mine, and yours.”