by Brian Lumley
There was no exit; he was trapped here; he felt his essence draining away, his soul melting down to a nub…!
And at that point:
You’ve had some terrible dreams in your time, son, said his Ma out of nowhere. But I’m really quite sure it’s time you woke up from this one!
“Ma? Am I dreaming you?” Harry’s headache was gone, but his heart was hammering and his pillow was damp with cold sweat. He was suddenly awake, jerking to a seated position in his tousled bed. And seeing his bedroom in the pale stripes of a dawn light that filtered in through a louvered window, he breathed a massive sigh of relief and, however slowly, began to relax.
“I…I was dreaming,” he told himself then. “It was only a dream, a nightmare.”
But at least part of it wasn’t, for his Ma was still there.
Yes, you were dreaming, she told him—startling him again! But not of me. Your dreams were fearful, and I’m glad I was able to interrupt them. But you shouldn’t worry about it, Harry, for I’m not in the habit of spying on you in your sleep! I wouldn’t do that. It’s just that I have news I thought you would want to hear as soon as possible.
“News?” he mumbled, still shaken and only half awake.
From the Great Majority, yes. The whisperers got through to us. Or rather, we finally got through to them.
Excellent! thought the Necroscope. Exactly what he had been wanting to hear—but not until he could more properly take it in. It was after all still very early morning.
“Ma, would you mind if I have breakfast first?” he said. “I need something to eat, and it’ll help if I jump-start my system with a little caffeine. Then I’ll come and see you, okay?”
Of course, son, she replied, as he got out of bed and began to dress. And you’ll know where to find me, as always…
No more than an hour later, on the riverbank:
“So what’s your news, Ma? What have you discovered?”
Not just me, she replied, but a concerted deadspeak effort by the Great Majority, concentrating as one mind on those pitiful whispers from the bed of the ocean; until finally the dead and drowned ones heard them! But first they weren’t able to reply; their poor dispossessed voices—what was left of them—were simply too weak. If I may put it this way: as individuals their souls were mere vestiges, the very ghosts of ghosts!
But then, taking their cue from the teeming dead, they got together. And already being together, as it were, close to each other on the ocean floor, they conferred and elected a speaker through whom to channel their joined thoughts. And in so doing their mental messages, though still very faint, were amplified by a factor of four or five, perhaps even six! Which serves to tell us something of the extent of the killer’s terrible activities! So now, finally, their deadspeak whispers are at least audible to us. And to you too, son, for I can put you in touch with them.
“But do they know of me? Do they know who, or what, I am?”
Oh yes, for we’ve told them everything. Only speak to them, Harry, and they’ll feel your warmth as all of the dead feel it when you’re close. And then they’ll know it’s you.
“When may I speak to them?” The Necroscope was eager now.
Whenever you like, but sooner rather than later. Who knows how long they’ll be able to keep it together? For a long time, perhaps, now that they can communicate—or maybe not. As I’ve said before, the sea has a way of moving things, breaking them down. All of this has to be very hard for them.
“Then maybe I should go back to the house right now and do it from there. I can take their coordinates straight from your mind, right?”
Of course! Just as you wish, son.
And a moment later, as Harry sank down into his easy chair and relaxed, he told her, “I’m ready, Ma.” So was she, and the necessary coordinates were at once available to him…
Harry is it ye? Or shall Ah call ye Necroscope? The deadspeak voice was faint even now, despite the concerted efforts of its lifeless, sunken colleagues. Not only faint but distant, almost sidereal, as if from millions of miles away: the very “ghost of a ghostly voice,” as Harry’s Ma would most likely put it. Faint and distant, and oh-so-very cold, so very lost.
“Call me Harry,” Harry answered. “To most of my friends I’m just Harry.”
Aye, the other replied, and ye’ve a Great Majority o’ them! In death we ken and accept that, as we never would have dreamed o’ acceptin’ it in the lives that have been stolen frae us. But Ah can sense yere warmth like a wee candle’s flame in the nicht—except Ah’m far beyond warmin’ the noo.
“But not beyond righting a great wrong,” said Harry. “Which is why I’ve come to speak to you, to learn who did this to you. We’ll get to that soon, I hope, but first tell me: who are you? For I’ve a feeling I may already know you.”
Who Ah am is a dead yin! the other replied at once, harshly and bitterly. So what can it matter who Ah was? Anyhow, such as ye could never have known such as me. What, a crippled, drugged-up addict like me? A penniless, degenerate bum frae the streets o’ Edinburgh? Oh, aye? And can ye no just see me mixin’ wi’ the likes o’ society such as ye have known? No, Ah dinnae think so!
“So then,” said Harry soberly. “It appears the teeming dead haven’t told you very much about me after all. You see, I’m not much for that sort of society. In fact, if society was aware of me at all, Angus—er, it is Wee Angus, isn’t it?—the odds are it would want nothing to do with me! In short, your society is the only one I know.”
Eh? Ah cannae believe that it’s true and ye really do ken me! But when, ah mean how, can we possibly have met?
“I didn’t say we’d met,” said Harry. “Only that I thought I might already know you.” And then, not wanting to tell the poor man how he’d seen him murdered, he chose the easy way out. “You see, Angus, you’re what’s called a ‘missing person.’ And that’s how I’ve come to know you.”
Ah! Frae the polis! Ah understand! But man, there’s a bunch o’ us doon here, and by now we’re all o’ us missin’ persons! Am Ah no right?
“Yes, but you’re not all lame, and you’re not all—in your own words—addicts and degenerate bums. And personally I don’t think you’re that either…I prefer to believe you’re just an unfortunate man who lost his way, and then lost everything to a merciless killer!”
Aye, someone—some fat evil slug—who promised much but took it all away. And ye’re goin’ tae put it right, are ye?
Harry liked Wee Angus’ description of the murderer. “That’s my intention,” he said. “But your fat evil slug is proving hard to locate. I need to know more about him, anything you and your dead friends down there can tell me that might lead me to him.”
Then ask away, said the other. And when we’re done the rest o’ us can speak tae ye, usin’ me as their instryment.
Knowing that Wee Angus would sense it, Harry nodded. “Let’s start with the number of lives he’s taken, or at least those we know of. Tell me, how many of you are there down there, Angus?”
There’s five o’ us, the dead man at once replied. But then: No, wait, there’s six—for Ah wasnae the last.
“What?” Still seated in his easy chair, Harry started as if he’d touched live electric wires. “But Angus…you were taken only two days ago!”
Two days? Ah wouldnae ken. Time’s a bit strange the noo. Ah feel it’s only minutes sometimes, and others it’s been forever.
“And what of the first four?” Harry inquired. “Have you any idea how long they’ve been there?”
No idea at all, his informant answered. Excep’ they’ve been here longer, and some much longer, than me. But still they made me their spokesman.
The Necroscope was intrigued. “And why was that?”
Because those first yins, they were slippin’ fast, slippin’ intae sleep, their thoughts fast fadin’. If yere mother and the Great Majority hadnae shouted so loud, shouted them awake again, then by now for sure they’d be gone intae the dark. Ah, but now they’re awa
ke, and thirsty for revenge! Ah’m their single voice because Ah’m still the brightest spark.
“Yes you are,” said Harry. “But what of number six, the one who came after you?”
Ah! Well, that yin’s no in the best o’ shape. No gettin’ it taegether too well. He’ll be needin’ a wee while yet tae settle doon. As for me: despite mah previous, er, infirmities, Ah’m no doin’ so badly. Bein’ dead, Ah dinnae feel so much pain! Ironic, is it no?
Harry was silent for a moment, then said: “I’d better speak to the others, the first four, for I need to know who they are, or who they were.”
With the amplified deadspeak of the first four reaching him through Angus, the Necroscope was able to speak to them, one at a time, lodging their names and their stories in his metaphysical mind.
First of all he spoke—
—To Alf Samuels, a poor soul who had gone to pieces after losing his wife and daughter in a car accident; he had been the driver and blamed himself. He’d been taken when drunk and staggering home to a cold, empty house.
Then to Patrick Kelley, an out of work shipbuilder who came from Belfast, seeking work in Newcastle—and found only death while begging one night outside a bookmaker’s shop in Falkirk.
And to Donald McMannus, a mentally challenged youth murdered in the cemetery where he’d habitually kept a five year watch over his father’s grave. Talking to that one was difficult…
Finally to Mary Anne McNiven, sixteen years old and already walking the streets, driven from home and eventually into prostitution by a lecherous stepfather whose advances she’d spurned, considering it an improvement to be with men willing to pay her rather than someone like him!
As for Wee Angus: Harry already knew what happened to him, for he had seen it with his own eyes.
And all of them told more or less the same story: of a fat, red-haired, devilish man whose pale putty face turned red as he gripped them and drew off their life essence, then sent them to their fate down what they sensed as a dark and deadly tunnel—the alternate route through the Möbius Continuum, of course.
As for why anyone would do such a thing:
I think he was feeding, said Mary Anne McNiven, wise beyond her years. He was satisfying a lust different from anything I’d ever known. He was like a vampire, if I believed in such—and perhaps I do now—but it wasn’t my blood that turned him red. It was something from deep inside me, something that powered me and made me what I am, or what I was.
“You’re right,” Harry agreed. “It was your soul, Mary Anne, most of which has been drawn off. And this isn’t a man like any other. He’s not even human, not entirely. He’s an evil monster, a mutant, the result of weird, twisted genes.”
And still you’ll try to avenge us?
“Because I have to,” said the Necroscope, feeling oddly embarrassed. “It’s—” he shrugged the feeling off, “—it’s what I do. But this time as much for myself as for you.”
But if you do find and confront him, won’t he be able to do the same to you as he’s done to us?
“Maybe, and maybe not. I still have one or two tricks up my sleeve. But right now I have to leave you. There’s more work to be done, connections I must make, like a jigsaw puzzle I’ve got to fit together.”
Harry, wait! Determinedly and very urgently, now, en masse, they spoke up. Please wait, Necroscope!
“What is it?” He was taken aback. “Something I’m missing?”
Something we are missing—our very lives! Hasn’t Wee Angus told you how we thirst for revenge? And didn’t the teeming dead tell us a variety of things about you, in order to explain something of your beliefs, your philosophy, and the way that you’ve lived your life? For instance: an eye for an eye?
Harry felt cold inside. “I think I know what you’re getting at,” he said. “But—”
In the event you actually kill him, Harry, how exactly will you do it?
Now, reading their innermost deadspeak thoughts, the Necroscope knew for sure what they were getting at, and he answered: “Well, yes, that’s probably how I would try to do it. But—”
Then call us up! They all of them begged him as one. Surely you can understand why we would want to be part of it?
Harry pictured it, and it was gruesome. For as Wee Angus had told him, some of them had been down there for a long, indeed a very long time. And the deep salt sea isn’t kind to dead flesh.
“But I can’t see how you would manage it,” he said. “I mean…the problem with—to put it crudely—your various conditions. It would have to be the worst thing ever, maybe as bad as dying itself!”
You must leave that to us, Harry. For ever since we learned of you, of what you can do, we’ve been making our plans. But it will be an oh-so-slow process, and you’ll have act now. Only tell us you need us; tell us to make all ready; tell us to rise up, Harry! And we will.
Harry considered it: an eye for an eye. And it was true, it had always been his way. Let the punishment fit the crime. What could he do but give these poor denuded souls what they wanted?
And so he did; and having freed them from their immobility, and asking no more questions, the Necroscope drew his deadspeak thoughts back from the frozen deeps.
And then, feeling colder still, he huddled down further yet in his easy chair…
But shortly, as the morning wore on, so Harry warmed up, warmed to what must be done. For the chill he felt wasn’t at all physical but of the mind. And in his mind those words the dead ones had used, not as an accusation but as a simple reminder, continued to ring clear:
“An eye for an eye.” His philosophy, yes…
Darcy Clarke’s list was still on the table where he left it last night. There seemed small need to check it now, but he did so anyway. And all of the missing ones to whom he’d spoken were there, the ones who would scarcely be missed at all, or not too much; which in itself was a thought that brought something else into clearer perspective, something Harry felt he really should have seen from the beginning. The fact that this Möbius monster wasn’t merely brilliant—even a near-genius, if only by reason of his morbid mathematical achievements alone—but that he was also very clever! For not only would his victims’ corpses never be found, for the most part they wouldn’t be missed! In murdering them in that way, he not only fed himself but also disposed of the (dreadful expression!) “leftovers,” leaving no trace, no evidence of his crime whatsoever! For who was there to care for such as them?
No one, except the Necroscope himself.
And frowning as he glanced through the list a second time, Harry wondered if there was anything else he might have missed. Such as those “last seen” dates, for instance.
What was it that Wee Angus had told him: that the earliest victims had been down there a very long time? Well if so, what was the meaning of the apparent discrepancy which was only now coming to light? Wee Angus had been murdered just two days ago, while the sixth and most recent victim had been taken…what, only yesterday? Did this mean that the great leech had suddenly gained in confidence, or was it that his needs were now growing exponentially? On the other hand, Angus hadn’t been too sure of time spent in the deeps; sometimes it seemed to go quickly, and at others slowly.
And for a third time Harry studied those dates:
Alf Samuels, last seen eighteen months ago, very drunk and disconsolate, in a pub on the Dalkieth Road in Edinburgh. Most likely a suicide (hah!) though no body had ever been found…Nor ever would be! thought Harry.
Patrick Kelley, last seen one year ago approximately, in a Falkirk betting shop where he’d begged one pound from a winning punter to place a losing bet. He had appeared down and out, and very desperate. But even more so now!
Donald McMannus, last seen in the late evening four months ago, wandering in the graveyard in Glasgow where his father was buried. Perhaps the victim of a gang of prejudiced local youths, though nothing by way of clues—or a corpse—had ever been recovered.
Mary Anne McNiven, last seen a month ago
in a district of ill repute favoured by prostitutes, and warned off by an Edinburgh police patrol for soliciting. Very young and attractive, it was possible she had been smuggled away to London, probably by a pimp or perverts.
How wrong could they be? thought Harry. But then what else could people, the police, statisticians and other compilers-of-lists be expected to believe? For after all, they were frequently correct.
As for Wee Angus, and finally, just yesterday, number six: they probably wouldn’t be missed or appearing on any list for a while yet. But if the timings of their murders were any indication of how things were progressing, then patently things were progressing far too quickly—and rapidly accelerating…!
Since it was almost noon, time had also passed quickly for the Necroscope. And as if on cue, as he was returning Darcy’s list to its envelope, the telephone rang.
Deep in disquieting thought, Harry reached fumblingly, automatically for the ’phone and said, “Yes, what is it?”
“It’s me, Harry,” Darcy replied. And a moment later, sounding puzzled: “Are you just up, not quite awake maybe? Am I disturbing you or something?”
Giving himself a shake, Harry answered, “No, no, and no. I wasn’t all here, that’s all. Lost in thought and, while I hate to admit it, more than a little worried, too. Things are still coming along but way too slowly, while other things are happening much too quickly. But I’m glad you called, because there’s something else I may want you to do for me.”
“Whoah!” said the other. “First there are things I need to tell you.”
“Information?” said Harry. “Something I’ve asked for? Well go ahead. I hope it’s good news.”
“I believe it could be, but that’s for you to decide. We’ll have to wait and see. Until when: