by Brian Lumley
The tramp cried out; he grew suddenly weak and flailed useless arms; his dog yelped and, perhaps sensing the unknown with its animal instinct, sat back on its haunches and hauled on the leash that was wrapped about its master’s right hand and wrist. Which was when the murderer pushed with all his and the other’s stolen strength, causing the tramp to topple over backwards and disappear through the door. The Alsatian yelped again, skidding on a leash as taut as a bowstring; until Hemmings put a foot on its backside, cursing as he gave it a vicious shove. And as the frantic animal jerked forward and passed only halfway from view…then the monster collapsed his door!
Slopping blood and guts from a middle sliced through as if by the keenest guillotine blade, the rear half of the dog fell over on its side, kicking its hind legs spastically just twice. Its escaping fluids slimed the concrete paved floor in an uneven, darkly expanding circle; which caused ex-Professor Hemmings to step lively to avoid fouling his shoes.
And without further pause, his hideous hunger satisfied, it was time he was on his way to the railway station; and glancing up and down the esplanade and beach as he went, reassuring himself that his actions and even his presence had gone unobserved the great leech set off back the way he had come.
Pleased with the way things had gone, he knew that his fat face, which for the moment was ruddy with his victim’s colour, would soon return to a more accustomed hue. As for his repast: rarely had he indulged himself so gratifyingly and so cheaply. But what a pity that the tramp had claimed his fiver before the door claimed him.
And one other thing. Before voiding the door, for a single instant Hemmings had caught himself peering half fearfully into the darkness beyond it. But there’d been nothing there. So perhaps that other thing—that yesterday thing—perhaps that had been his imagination…his conscience? But no, he thought and shook his head, hardly that! And grinning, with a spring in his step, he carried on walking…
Early that same evening, as the Necroscope Harry Keogh tried to relax in an easy chair in his rather dusty but comfortably familiar living room—as he sat there pondering this strange new case, this murder whose author used the Möbius Continuum as his weapon—he was startled from uneasy thoughts that were slowly but surely deepening into the reverie which in him usually preceeded sleep, by the sudden purring of his telephone.
It was B.J. Mirlu, enquiring: “Harry, mah wee man—are ye all right? Ah was expectin’ yere call—which didnae come. Now why is that, Ah wonder?”
Mah wee man! Those three small words of evocation which the Necroscope couldn’t ignore even if he fought them with his last breath; that post hypnotic-command that B.J. had anchored irremovably in his mind. If she were to call for him now that would mean the end of his investigations, at least for the time being. But well aware of the constraint, the imposition she had placed upon him, still Harry was largely in possession of his own mind and perfectly able to answer her, albeit carefully:
“I’ve been busy, Bonnie Jean, and it’s not over yet because I’m still trying to work something out. I was going to call you but you’ve beaten me to it! So…are you okay?”
“Oh, Ah’m fine, Harry. It’s just that Ah like tae hear yere voice now and then. Ye ken how Ah get out o’ sorts when Ah dinnae hear from ye.”
“But it’s only been a day, B.J.!”
She chuckled huskily. “So then, ye’ve no found someone else tae take mah place?”
“Is that likely?” He gave a derisive snort, then continued: “Now, what’s the real reason for your call?”
“Oh, aye?” she replied. “So it’s straight tae the point, is it? Well so be it! And maybe it’s just as well ye’re still busy wi’ whatever…so long as its no another woman!” She chuckled once again, then dropped the accent and quickly continued:
“Don’t come to the bar tonight, Harry. Not even if you manage to get done with your business. I could use a little sleep, especially if I’m to be up in the middle of the night.”
“Oh really!” said the Necroscope, in a mock suspicious tone of voice. “So now maybe I should be concerned about who’s going to be sleeping in my bed, should I? Who’s huffing, puffing, and threatening to blow me out of your…?” At which, no sooner were the words out, or almost—words that were so evocative of the tale of the three little piggies,—than he was biting down on his tongue! For even imagining the worst of his enigmatic moonchild lover, and especially when under her thrall actually knowing almost everything about B.J., it would never be a good idea to let any kind of wolf creep into their conversations! No, because this was by no means a fairy tale!
And quickly changing the subject, he went on: “So then, why will you be up in the middle of the night?” Another ill-advised question, possibly; and, in light of what she was, something he might not want to know and which B.J. probably wouldn’t want to tell him. But she at once replied:
“Because I want to get underway while the roads are all but empty. One of the girls will be driving me up to Inverdruie, to see Auld John, an old friend of mine for so many years now that…well, that would be much like telling you how old I am, and I’m fussy about my years. But I fancy there may be some sort of problem—nothing you need be concerned about—just something that I might have to sort out for John, that’s all.”
“Oh,” said Harry, attempting to sound mildly disappointed; which in a way, and however paradoxical it might seem, he actually was! But then, shrugging it off, he said: “Well, okay. You know where I’ll be when you get back, and even if it’s only for a day or two you know I’ll be missing you.”
And now the accent was back again as she answered, “Me too, Harry. But mind ye now, do stay away frae the bar, mah wee man. Because they girls o’ mine…well let’s put it this way: when the cat’s away the mice can play. Aye, and sometimes they get a wee bit frisky, they lassies.” And yet again she chuckled, however darkly.
“B.J.,” he told her, “You know I’ve no use for the wine bar if you’re not there, so get back soon. And whatever Auld John’s problem is in Inverdruie, take care of yourself—promise?”
“Oh, Ah’ll take care, ye may be sure o’ that, Harry. And Ah expect the same o’ ye.”
“It’s a deal,” said the Necroscope…
Wide awake now, and while outside the light was still good despite the unseasonable drizzle and blustery wind, Harry donned a raincoat, put up the hood and went out into his rank garden. He must see to that one day, he thought, treading the bramble- and weed-strewn path to the gate and out onto the equally overgrown riverside track, and down it to the bight where his Ma’s sunken remains lay still on their deep bed of mud and rotting vegetation.
It hardly seemed right, Harry thought, keeping the thought to himself where he stood on the bank above her swirling grave, that his mother should be here when there were other places she could be; not merely better or more suitable burial-places, but a promised nirvana or Elysium. But no, his Ma had held back for him and he knew she would have it no other way. And so for now:
“Hi, Ma,” he said. “How’s it going?”
Frustratingly! she immediately replied. Harry, you told me that this poor man tumbled from a secret door high over the sea and disappeared in the water before you could follow him. Assuming the fall didn’t kill him, which it surely must have, still it would have stunned him and he would have drowned. Now I know all too well what that last must have been like, and…(As she paused, the Necroscope sensed a gentle shudder, an almost tangible trembling in his unique mind, before she was able to continue:)…and so I fully understand why he wasn’t able to speak to you following so closely on his death.
But that was then and this is now—by which time he should surely be in contact with at least a handful of the Great Majority, others who died like him at sea. Well, he should be—
“But he isn’t?” Harry finished it for her, then said:
“Ma, perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in what I told you. You see, I believe this man was dead before he was ejected from the ki
ller’s door. And yes, I know he would have been in shock from the transition, and that I couldn’t expect any sort of coherent deadspeak from him, but I didn’t hear anything…well, except maybe the farthest, faintest of whispers; more a silence than a sound really, like an echo through an otherwise empty hole in my mind. It’s—I don’t know—very difficult to explain.”
Ahhh! she said. But that’s exactly what we’ve been getting! Of course, there could be several good reasons for such difficulties; the deep sea has a tendency to…well, to wash things away. Also, there are mercifully few drownings, while the death you described is probably of a kind—
“But not necessarily so,” said Harry, frowning. “And that’s what I’m trying to find out: whether or not there were more.”
—And the few who do meet their ends in the water, however it occurs, usually move on quite quickly. It’s almost as if the aching loneliness of their estate is acknowledged and answered; well, perhaps depending upon how they’ve lived their lives. For it’s an accepted fact among the teeming dead that the vile ones seem to be kept waiting for a long, long time. And they usually suffer their term in silence, for we are reluctant to have anything to do with them. It isn’t cruelty, Harry; we simply avoid their contamination.
The Necroscope was disappointed. “So you’ve got nothing for me?”
Oh, we do have something, but as you said it’s very difficult to explain—like echoes in a mental void, you said. But I think we can do better than that, if not very much better.
“Then by all means let’s hear it,” said Harry. “Whatever it is, it has to be better than nothing.”
Well, she responded, as you yourself have said, there seem to be deadspeak whispers—but the very faintest, most distant and undecipherable whispers. Just exactly what one might expect of long-drowned persons whose remains have been dispersed, cast abroad—which, as I pointed out, is in itself a curious thing; for usually the souls of the drowned move on quite quickly to a better place or places. Or so the teeming dead are given to believe. My own case to the contrary, naturally, but only because I chose to stay behind…for now at least.
Harry frowned as his frustration mounted to match his Ma’s, then said: “But apart from the fact that you seem to be suggesting more than one whisperer, how does that help me? Especially if they’ve become so dispersed—so scattered—as to make them unintelligible? I mean, if that’s the case then even if I could go to them, which I can’t, still I couldn’t, er, ‘fathom’ them; no pun intended. But if you and the Great Majority can’t find a way to read them, what point is there in my trying?”
But that’s just it! his Ma answered. They don’t seem to be at all widely scattered. Faint and plaintive as they are, still all of these ethereal whispers appear to have just one point of origin—one and the same location—or very nearly so!
Hearing that the Necroscope’s attention, which had begun to wander as he considered other avenues of investigation, was immediately reanimated. Several deadspeak whispers or echoes, but only one point of origin, one location! And without as yet fully understanding why, Harry was at once reminded of that anomalous formula with which the unknown Möbius murderer had conjured and abused the Continuum. Not only reminded of it, he believed that with his intuitive grasp of exotic and extramundane mathematics he could recall it more fully to mind and perhaps even recreate it. But for the moment, where he stood on the rim of the river, Harry wasn’t at all best situated to concentrate upon the formula’s alien elements and study them more closely.
The Necroscope’s unshielded thoughts were, of course, deadspeak and entirely “audible” to his Ma, who told him: I have no knowledge of numbers, Harry—especially not your numbers—but I know how important they are you. We’ll have plenty of time for talking later, so now you should go and do what you do best. And meanwhile I shall urge the teeming dead to work harder. You know that if it’s for you they’ll do all they possibly can, but…before you go, let me for a change ask you a question.
“Go right ahead,” said Harry.
Son, didn’t we not so long ago have dealings with something very similar to this?
Harry knew exactly what she meant. “That thing in the woods that had been eating people, imprisoning their souls for untold ages? Yes, it was similar in its way, but that was an alien being, and probably the last of its kind. This time we’re talking about a man, a human being—however inhuman—who I think feeds on his victims’ life-forces like a loathsome leech; not so much incarcerating their souls as, far worse, reconstituting them as sustenance until deadspeak whispers are all that remain of them: their dregs, if you’ll forgive me for putting it that way. And that’s the kind of creature I think I’m up against.”
A very terrible man! she said then. A monster! Some kind of hideous mutation!
“That’s right,” the Necroscope agreed. “Even as the Mongolian Max Batu was a mutation, with his evil eye; and as I myself am a mutation…well, of a sort. It’s a matter of genetics, I suppose.”
You have my genes, Harry, she answered at once, but you are not a monster! You must never think that way!
“Oh, I don’t!” he replied. “Not for a moment…but it’s a safe bet there are plenty of people who would think that way if ever I was found out! I mean, I talk to dead people, Ma!”
Yes, and as I’ve said, we would do almost anything for you. You’re the one light in our darkness, Harry! But now you should go and do whatever you can to put this thing right.
Knowing she would sense it, he nodded and said: “Thanks for all your help, Ma. Just talking to you helps sort things out—and we’ll definitely talk later.”
With which he stepped back into the cover of the tall hedge bordering the river path and conjured a door, and just a moment later was gone from that place…
…Back into his living room, which doubled as his study despite the lack of clutter and disorder such offices all too frequently display. There was a desk and chair, plus Harry’s easy chair; a shelf with a handful of books: an illustrated Atlas of The World too tall for the shelf and therefore laid flat; a fat Webster’s Dictionary and updated Thesaurus; three leather-bound mathematical treatises, which the Necroscope had discovered and bought cheaply in an Edinburgh used bookshop just off the Royal Mile, and various bits and pieces of bric-a-brac: a large conch here, an hourglass whose sands had long since solidified there, but that was all. Simply a drab and rather dusty room, (for the Necroscope wasn’t much good at housekeeping) but still a familiar room, containing nothing much to distract or preoccupy him, where he could relax and think things through, work things out.
With heavy curtains drawn across the glazed patio doors, in the pool of yellow light cast by a table-lamp’s circular shade, Harry slumped down in his chair, gradually immersing himself in that which any normal mentality must surely consider a drifting maze of abstruse and esoteric numbers—but not merely numbers, not as ordinary men are given to understand such.
With his eyes half shut, it was as if Harry floated through some vast and cosmic brain’s neural pathways, a labyrinth whose walls and whorls were composed of continuously evolving symbols and equations, ciphers and numerals, algebraic and decimal permutations, logarithmic computations and complex calculuses that strove to explain and manipulate all of the constantly changing quantities. In effect and in mathematical terms, the Necroscope was adrift in an as yet incomplete interpretation of the entire space-time universe! But he knew that these were patterns—the very DNA of existence—which only God Himself could ever bring to a conclusion or summation, because God alone was the author, the Ultimate Mathematician.
August Ferdinand Möbius had been here before Harry, it went without saying; but even Möbius, Harry’s mentor, would not have been able to interpret one quarter of what was hidden or hinted at here. Unlocking the formula to the Möbius Continuum had been his greatest achievement, but even so he’d been obliged to wait until he was dead. For death had set his mind free to solve the many problems that had eluded h
im in life. And he was out there even now, Harry felt sure, still working on his Grand Theory of Everything.
But that’s how it was with the Great Majority: what so many of them had done during worthwhile lives they continued to do in death or until they moved on…and perhaps even then. But the Necroscope was very much alive, and he’d inherited not only his mother’s and her mother’s psychic skills but the Möbius Continuum, too—and his mentor’s numerical genius.
Harry knew what he was looking for. The formula he used to conjure Möbius doors was only one of several, possibly of many, he felt sure. It had to be so because he had actually witnessed someone or some devil using and misusing just such an inferior, perhaps rudimentary version whose coefficients appeared skewed, subordinate to his own. As the monkey is to man, so this cruder formula was to Harry’s. For while it offered access to the Möbius Continuum, certain important elements of control seemed to be missing. It was like…like a car without a steering wheel, a blunt instrument as opposed to a vehicle; Harry knew that instinctively. What he did not as yet know was how it worked: its limitations, how he might use them, or prevent them from being used against him in the future confrontation that he now accepted as inevitable.
And fearless in this unruly mental environment, this self-induced manifestation—lulled by the lure of Lorelei numbers, evolving and expanding exponentially all around him—he almost failed to recognize it, almost let it go streaming by into the inner recesses of his own mind, to reside there until, perhaps by some future effort of trial and error, he might try to call it forth again.
But no, having seen it barely in time, he stabilized it in his mind’s eye while yet letting its evolution continue.
It was the basic framework, the skeleton, of some primitive formula which had the bare bones but never the flesh of a workable conjuration. Riveted in his chair, concentrating his mind, the Necroscope forced it to mutate, creating upon and within it a simple mathematical substratum, a foundation on which to build a congeries of more readily functioning systems. A little flesh was then added to these additional bones, but far too many organs were still missing…