Necroscope 4: Deadspeak

by Brian Lumley

  And in my turn, there was something I too had to know. “Did she ever suspect?” I asked him then.

  He shook his head. “Not once. My eyes held her entirely in thrall. She knew only what I wanted her to know, did only as I instructed her to do.”

  “And you caused her to think that you were me,” I growled, “so that she would hold nothing back!” And I went to grab him.

  In that same moment the dog had read my mind. Until then I had kept it shielded from him, but as the thought of him and Marilena together returned to plague me all grip was lost. He saw my thoughts, my intentions, avoided my grasp and lunged at me with his spear.

  I was on the rim of the cliff; I ducked to one side and his weapon tore my robe and grazed my shoulder; I wrenched it from him and knocked him in the face with it. His mouth was torn and his teeth broken in. Also, he jerked away from me and slammed his head against the cave’s ceiling. And as he collapsed I caught him up. Dazed, he could do nothing as I carried him to the sheer rim. His head lolled a little but his eyes were open, watching me as I gave way to the vampire within to let its fury shape and reshape my face and form!

  “So,” I grunted then, meshing my teeth where they came bursting through the ripped ridges of my jaws. “So, and you would be Wamphyri.” I showed him my hand, which was changed to the talon of a primal beast. “You would be as I am. But I would have you know, Janos, that the only reason you are human at all is because of your mother. I wanted her to have a child, and gave her a monster. But you called yourself a halfling and you are right. You are neither one thing nor the other, and no use to man nor beast. You desire flesh you can mould to suit yourself? So be it!” And I gathered up a gob of phlegm, froth and blood onto my forked tongue and hurled it into his gaping mouth, and massaged his throat until it was down. He gagged and choked until his eyes stood out in his face, but there was nothing he could do.

  “There!” I laughed at him, madly. “Let that grow in you and form the stretchy flesh you so desire, and make your own flesh like unto itself. Aye, for you’ll need something of the vampire in you—if only to mend all your broken bones!”

  And without more ado I hurled him from the cliff…

  Janos was sorely broken. All his bones, as I had guaranteed, and his flesh all torn on the rocks. A man, he would have died. But there had always been something of me in him, and now there was even more. What I had spat into him spread faster than a cancer, except that unlike a cancer it spared, indeed saved, his miserable life. He would mend, and live to serve my purpose.

  Before I went down into Hungary and headed for Zara, I commanded those Szgany I left behind me: “Tend him well. And when he is mended give him my instructions. He is to stay here and guard my castle and lands, so that when I return there will be a welcome for me. Until then he is the master here, and his will be done. So let it be.”

  Then I went to join the Great Crusade, the substance and outcome of which you already know …

  As Faethor’s voice tailed away, Harry looked up and all around and saw that the bulldozers were toiling now. Only two hundred yards away an old, raddled relic of a house went down in dust and shuddering debris, and Harry fancied he felt the earth shake a little. Faethor felt it too.

  Will they get this far today, do you think?

  The Necroscope shook his head. “I shouldn’t think so. In any case they seem to be working at random and don’t appear to be in too much of a hurry. Will it affect you—I mean, when they level this place? There’s not much of it left to level anyway.”

  Affect me? No, nothing can do that, for I’m no more. But it may make it damned hard to eavesdrop upon the dead, with all that rumble going on! And Harry sensed the extinct monster’s hideous grin, as the monster in turn sensed the inevitability of a concrete tomb, probably in the heart of a bustling factory complex. A grin, yes, for Faethor would not accept Harry’s concern, wouldn’t even acknowledge it. Pointless therefore to say:

  “Well, I hope you’ll be … OK?” But the Necroscope said it anyway. And quickly, before his (or Faethor’s) embarrassment could show through: “But now I have to get on my way. I’ve learned a lot from you, I think, and of course I’m grateful for the power of deadspeak, which you’ve returned to me. If I may I’ll contact you again, however—by night, of course, and probably from afar—so that you can finish your story. For I know that after the Fourth Crusade you came back to Wallachia and put an end to Thibor, and there must have been more between you and Janos, too. Since he is only recently risen, I know someone must have put him down. You, Faethor, I would suspect.”

  He sensed the vampire’s grim nod.

  “Well, what was done once may be done a second time, with your assistance.”

  You are welcome, Harry, any time. For after all, that is our dual purpose, to return him to dust. And now be on your way. I would like to rest a while in whatever peace is left to me—while I may.

  But as Harry took up his holdall, so his feet squelched in the slime of the rotting toadstools. Their “scent” reached him in a single poisonous waft. And:

  “Ugh!” He couldn’t hold back the exclamation of detestation. And Faethor picked it up, and perhaps saw in his mind something of the cause.

  What? he said. Mushrooms? His mental voice was a little sharp, Harry thought, and suddenly nervous. Perhaps the finality of his situation was affecting him after all.

  The Necroscope shrugged. “Mushrooms, toadstools—fungi, anyway. The sun is steaming them away.”

  He felt Faethor’s shudder and could have bitten off his tongue. His last sentence had been thoughtlessly cruel. But… what the hell! … why should anyone feel sorry about the fate of a long-dead, morbid and totally evil thing like a vampire?

  “Goodbye,” he said, heading out of Faethor’s ruined house, back towards the graveyard and the dusty road beyond.

  Farewell, that unquiet spirit answered him. And Harry, don’t linger over what you must do but seek to make a quick end of it. Time may well be of the essence.

  Harry waited a moment more but Faethor didn’t elaborate …

  As Harry climbed the rear wall of the old cemetery and stepped down among the plots and leaning slabs, someone very close to him said: Harry? Harry Keogh?

  He jumped a foot and glanced all around. But … no one there! Of course not, for it was deadspeak at work—without the terrible mental agony he’d come to associate with it. He’d been denied the use of his macabre talent for so long that it would take a little time to get used to it again.

  Did I startle you? asked the voice of some dead soul. I’m sorry. But we heard you talking to that dead Thing Who Listens, and we knew it must be you—Harry Keogh, the Necroscope. For who else among the living could it be, talking to the dead? And who else would even want to talk to or befriend such a Thing as that? Only you, Harry, who have no enemies among the Great Majority.

  “Oh, I’ve a few,” Harry eventually, hesitantly answered. “But mainly I get on with the teeming dead well enough, yes.”

  Now the entire graveyard came, as it were, to life. Before, there had been a hush, an aching void to camouflage a pent-up … something. But now that something burst its banks like a river in flood, and a hundred voices suddenly required Harry’s attention. They were full of the usual queries of the dead: how were those they’d left behind doing in the world of the living? What was happening in that bustling world of corporeal being, where minds were housed in flesh? Would it be possible for Harry to deliver a message to this oh so well-remembered and—loved father, or mother, or sister, or lover, and so on.

  Why, he could spend a lifetime simply answering the questions and running the many errands of the inhabitants of this one cemetery! But no sooner had he issued that thought than they knew and recognized its truth, and the mental babble quickly died down.

  “It isn’t that I don’t want to,” he tried to explain, “but that I can’t. You see, to the living you’re dead and gone forever. And apart from a handful of colleagues, I’m the only
one who knows you’re still here, but changed. Do you think it would help if all your still living friends and loved ones knew that you, too, remained … extant? It wouldn’t. It would only serve to make their grief that much worse. They’d think of you as being in some vast and terrible prison camp beyond the body! Well, it’s bad enough, I know, but not that bad—especially now that you’ve learned to communicate among yourselves. But we can’t tell that to the living you left behind you, for if we did those who’ve stopped mourning and returned to what’s left of their own lives, why, they’d start all over again! And I’m afraid there would always be fake Necroscopes to take advantage of them.”

  You’re right, of course, Harry, their spokesman answered then. It’s just that it’s such a rare—indeed unique—treat, to speak with a member of the living, I mean! But we can sense your urgency and we certainly didn’t intend to hold you up.

  Harry wandered amidst the plots, some ancient and others quite new, and inquired: “How will it affect you? When they get through levelling what’s left around here, I mean? You’ll still be here, I know that, no matter what happens—but won’t it bother you that your graves have been disturbed?”

  But they won’t be, Harry! an Area Planning Council member, late of Ploiesti, spoke up. For this cemetery has a preservation order on it. Oh, it’s true, a lot of graveyards have been reduced to rubble, but this one at least escapes Ceausescu’s madness. And I pride myself that I was in part instrumental—but I had to be. Why, members of my family, the Bercius, have been buried here for centuries! And families should stick together, right? Radu Berciu chuckled, however wryly. Ah, but I never thought that I’d benefit personally, or at least not so soon. For just nine days after I brought that preservation order into being, why, I myself died of a heart attack!

  Harry was thoughtful enough to enquire: “Are there any more here only recently dead?” For he knew from past experience that they’d be the ones hardest hit, not yet recovered from the trauma of death. At least he could find the time to speak to them before moving on.

  And eventually a pair of voices, sad, young, and very lost, found strength to answer him:

  Oh, yes, Harry, said one. We’re the Zaharia brothers.

  Ion and Alexandru, said the other. We were killed in an accident, working on the new road. A tanker crashed and spilled its fuel where we were brewing tea on a brazier. We burned. And both of us with new wives. If only there were some way to let them know that we felt nothing, that there was no pain.

  “But… there must have been!” Harry couldn’t disguise his astonishment.

  Yes, one of the Zaharias answered, but we’d like them to believe there wasn’t. Otherwise they could stay awake every night for the rest of their lives, listening to us scream as we burned. We’d like to spare them that, at least.

  Harry was moved, but there was nothing he could do for them. Not yet, anyway. “Listen,” he said. “It could be that I may be able to help—not now but at some time in the future. Soon, I hope. If and when that time comes I’ll let you know. Right now, though, I can’t promise you any more than that.”

  Harry, they tried to tell him in unison, their voices overlapping, that’s more than enough! You’ve given us hope, in that we now know we have a friend in a place otherwise beyond our reach. All of the teeming dead should be so lucky. And indeed they are lucky—that you’re the one with the power.

  He moved on, out of the cemetery and into the dusty road, turning right in the direction of Bucharest. Behind him the excited graveyard voices gradually faded, talking among themselves now, of him rather than to him. And he knew he’d made a lot of new friends. A mile down the road, however, he met two who were not his friends. On the contrary.

  The black car passed him heading where he’d just been, but hearing the sudden squeal of its brakes he looked back and saw it make a rocking U-turn. And from that moment he felt he was in trouble. Then, as the car drew up alongside and stopped, and as its occupants jumped out, he knew he was in trouble.

  They weren’t in uniform, but still Harry would know their sort anywhere. He’d met them before; not these two in particular, but others exactly like them. Which wasn’t strange for they were all very much of a kind. In their dark grey suits and felt hats with soft rims—which might have been borrowed right out of the Thirties—they were the Romanian equivalent of Russia’s KGB: the Securitatea. One was small, thin, ferret-faced; the other tall, wooden and lurching. Their faces were almost expressionless, hidden in the shade of their hats.

  “Identity card,” the small one growled, holding out a hand and snapping his fingers.

  “Work ticket,” said the other, more slowly. “Papers, documents, authorization.”

  They had both spoken English, but Harry was so badly taken by surprise that he fell straight into their simple trap. “I … I have only my passport,” he said, also in English, and reached for it in his inside jacket pocket.

  Before he could produce his forged Greek passport, the small, thin one thrust an ugly automatic pistol into his side. “Carefully, if you please, Mr. Harry Keogh!” he rasped. And as Harry’s hand came back slowly into view, so the document was snatched from him and passed to the larger of the two.

  Then, while the small one expertly frisked him, the wooden one opened up his passport and studied it. After a moment he held it out where his comrade could glance at it without looking away from Harry; they both grinned, coldly and without humour, and Harry thought how well they imitated sharks. But he also knew they had him, and for now there was nothing he could do about it.

  The last time anything like this had happened to him was when he’d first gone to speak with Möbius in a Leipzig cemetery. On that occasion he had made his escape through the Möbius Continuum. Also, he’d made use of an expert and practical knowledge of the martial arts, taught to him by several dead masters. Well, and he was still an expert with many years of practice behind him; but at that earlier time he’d been a far younger man, less experienced and wont to panic. He was much calmer now, and with every reason: in the years flown between Harry had faced terrors such as these two thugs could scarcely imagine.

  “And so we are mistaken,” the wooden one said, his command of English slightly guttural but still very good, especially in its sarcastic inflection. “You are not this Harry Keogh after all but a Greek gentleman named … Hari Kiokis? Ah, a dealer in antiques, I see! But a Greek who speaks only English?”

  The one with the ferret’s face was more direct. “Where did you stay last night, Harry?” He prodded the snout of his pistol deep into Harry’s ribs. “What traitor gave you shelter, eh, Mr spy?”

  “I … I stayed with no one,” Harry answered, which wasn’t entirely true. He indicated his holdall. “I slept in the open. My sleeping-bag is in here.”

  The tall one took the holdall from him and opened it, and pulled out the sleeping-bag. It had a little mud on it and a few stains from the grass. And now the special policeman’s face wasn’t so wooden. If anything he looked bewildered, but only for a moment. “Ah, I see!” he said then. “Your contact didn’t show up, and so you’ve had to make the best of things. Very well, then perhaps you’ll tell us who was supposed to meet you, eh?”

  “No one,” said Harry, as an idea began to form in his head. “It’s just that sleeping out is cheap and I enjoy a little fresh air, that’s all. And in any case, what business is it of yours? You’ve seen my passport and know who I am, but who the hell are you? If you’re policemen I’d like to see some sort of identification.”

  And while they stared at him, and at each other, in something of astonishment, so he reached out with his deadspeak to the minds of his new friends in the graveyard half a mile away. He spoke (but silently) to Ion and Alexandru Zaharia, and his message was simple and to the point:

  I’m under threat from two men. Your countrymen, I’m afraid: Securitatea, Without your help I’m done for! Harry got so much out, and only so much, before the small one kicked him in the groin. He saw it c
oming and managed to deflect most of it, but still he collapsed, rolling in feigned agony in the dust of the road.

  “There now!” said the wooden one, his voice cold and empty of emotion. “You see, you see? You’ve angered Corneliu! You really must try, Harry Keogh, to be more co-operative. Our patience is by no means infinite.” He went to the back of the car, opened it and threw Harry’s things in. But he placed the forged passport in his own pocket.

  But what can we do, Harry? Ion Zaharia’s anxious voice came to him where he huddled on his side, playing for time. We could try to … but no, for you’re too far away. We’d never get to you in time.

  No, Harry answered, you stay right where you are. Only dig yourselves out, that’s all. You and anyone else who—well, who’s still in shape—and who wants to help. But don’t go wasting yourselves trying to come to me, for I think I know how to bring these bastards to you.

  “Jacket!” the small, thin one—Corneliu—snapped. “Quickly!”

  Harry sat up, half-shrugged out of his jacket before it was snatched from his back.

  “All very disappointing, really,” said the other one, who wasn’t so much wooden now as disdainful, superior. “We fully expected that we would have to shoot you! Such things they told us about you! Such problems you’ve caused our friends across the border! And yet … you don’t seem very desperate to me, Harry Keogh. Perhaps your reputation is undeserved?”

  Harry had given up all thoughts of trying to bluff it out. They knew well enough who he was, if not what. “That was all a long time ago,” he said, “when I was younger. I’m not so foolish now. I know when the game is up.”

  An open-backed truck rumbled by heading for Bucharest. In the back, seated on benches along the sides-, twin rows of men and women, mainly aging peasants, faced each other. Their eyes were uniformly empty of hope; they scarcely glanced at Harry where he kneeled in the dirt with a pair of thugs standing over him; they had troubles of their own. They were the destitute, the homeless ones, their lives blighted by Ceausescu’s blind, uncaring agro-industrial policy.