Necroscope®

by Brian Lumley

  “What? Are you mad?” Giresci drew back more yet, inadvertently dragging the younger man’s hand and arm into the beam of sunlight. Dragosani at once released him, snatched himself upright and reeled away into the room’s cool shadows. He had felt the sunlight on his arm like acid, and in that moment he had known!

  “Thibor!” He spat the word out like a vile taste. “You!”

  “Man, you’re ill!” Giresci was struggling to stand up.

  “You old bastard—you old devil—you ancient Thing in the earth! You would have used me!” Dragosani raved, as if to himself. But in the back of his mind, at the edge of his awareness, something chuckled evilly and shrank back, shrank down.

  “You need a doctor!” Giresci gasped. “A psychiatrist, anyway.”

  Dragosani ignored him. He understood all now. He crossed to the small occasional table, took up his gun from where he’d placed it, jammed it firmly into its under-arm holster. He made to stride from the room, stopped and turned back. Giresci cringed away from him as he approached.

  “Too much!” the oldster was babbling. “You know far too much. I don’t know who you are, but—”

  “Listen to me,” said Dragosani.

  “—I don’t even know what you are! Dragosani, I—”

  Dragosani backhanded him, bruising his mouth and jerking his head round on his scrawny neck. “Listen, I said!”

  When Giresci turned his watering eyes back to Dragosani, they had gone wide with shock. “I … I’m listening.”

  “Two things,” Dragosani told him. “One: you will tell no one else about Faethor Ferenczy or what you’ve discovered of him. Two: you will never mention the name of Thibor Ferenczy again, or ever attempt to learn more than you already know of him. Is this understood?”

  Giresci nodded, and in the next second his eyes went wider still. “Y—you?” he said.

  Dragosani laughed, however shrilly. “Me? Man, if I were Thibor you’d be dead now. No, but I know of him—and now he knows of you!” He turned towards the door, paused and tossed back over his shoulder: “It’s possible you’ll be hearing from me. Till then, goodbye. And Giresci—mark well what I’ve said.”

  Leaving the house and moving into sunlight, Dragosani groaned and gritted his teeth … but the sun did him no harm. Still, he doubted if he would ever feel entirely comfortable under its rays again. It was not Dragosani who had felt the sun’s sting in Giresci’s house but Thibor, the old devil in the ground. Thibor, who in that moment of time had been ascendant, in control! But even knowing that it was so, still Dragosani was glad to get out of the direct sunlight and into his car. The interior of the big Volga was like a furnace, but the heat was in no way supernatural. As Dragosani wound the windows down and pulled away, heading for the main road, so the temperature dropped and he breathed easier.

  And only then did he reach into his mind to dig out the leech-thing which was still hiding there. For he knew that if Thibor could reach him, then surely he could reach Thibor.

  “Oh, yes, I know your name now, old devil,” he said. “It was you, Thibor, wasn’t it, back there at Giresci’s? It was you, guiding my tongue, asking him those questions?”

  For a moment there was nothing. Then:

  I won’t deny it, Dragosani. But let’s be reasonable: I did little to hide the fact of my presence. And no harm done. I was merely—

  “You were testing your power!” Dragosani snapped. “You tried to usurp my mind! You’ve been trying to do so for the last three years—and might have succeeded if I hadn’t been so far away! I see it all now.”

  What? Accusations? Remember, Dragosani, it was you came to me that time. Of your own free will, you invited me into your mind. You asked for my help with the woman, and I gave it willingly.

  “Too willingly!” Dragosani was bitter. “I hurt that girl—or you did, through me. Your lust in my body … I could barely control it. I might easily have killed her!”

  You enjoyed it. (A sly whisper.)

  “No, you enjoyed it! I was carried along by it. Well, and maybe she deserved it—but I don’t deserve you sneaking into my mind like a thief to steal my thoughts. And your lust has stayed in my body—which you must have known it would. My invitation wasn’t permanent, old dragon. Anyway, I’ve learned my lesson. You’re not to be trusted. Not in any way. You’re treacherous.”

  What? The voice in Dragosani’s head made mock of him. I, treacherous? Dragosani, I am your father.…

  “Father of lies!” Dragosani answered.

  How have I lied?

  “In many ways. You were weak three years ago, and I brought you food. I gave you back a measure of your strength. You scorned pig’s blood and said it was good only for freshening the earth. A lie! It freshened you. It gave you a lasting strength sufficient that you could reach out your mind to me even these three years later and in the full light of day! Well, I’ll feed you no more. Also, you said sunlight would merely irritate you. Another lie, for I’ve felt how it burns you. And how many other lies have you told to me? No, Thibor, you do nothing except for your own advantage. I always guessed it, but now I know for sure.”

  And what will you do about it? (Did Dragosani detect a tremor of fear in the mental voice? Was the Thing in the ground worried?)

  “Nothing,” he answered.

  Nothing? (Relief.)

  “Nothing at all. Perhaps I made a mistake, seeking to be as you were, desiring to be one of the Wamphyri. Perhaps I’ll now go away from here—and this time stay away—and let the years complete their work on you. I may have temporarily given your stinking bones something of flesh, something of life, but the centuries will take it all back again, I’m sure.”

  Dragosani, no! (Real fear now, panic.) Listen: I wasn’t testing my power. I wasn’t testing anything. Do you remember how I told you I was not unique, that others of the Wamphyri were extant even now? I said that for centuries I had waited for them to come and release or avenge me, and they came not. Do you remember that?

  “Yes, what of it?”

  Why, can’t you see? If our roles were reversed, would you have been able to resist? You gave me the opportunity to find out about those others, to learn what had become of them. Old Faethor, who was my father, dead at last! And Janos, a brother of mine who always hated me, exploded in the gasses of what he kept in his dungeons. Aye, dead and gone, both of them—and I for one glad of it! What? Didn’t they leave me rotting in the earth for half a millennium? Oh, they heard me calling down all those bitter nights, be sure of it—but did they come to set me free? Not them! So Ladislau Giresci fancies himself a tracker of vampires, does he? But I would have shown him how to track them, who left me to the dirt and the worms and the seep of centuries, when I rise up from this place! Ah, well, they are gone now, and my vengeance with them.…

  Dragosani smiled grimly. “I can’t help asking myself, Thibor, why they deserted you and left you to your fate? Your own father, for instance, Faethor Ferenczy: who would know you better than him? And why did your brother, Janos, hate you so? There’s more to you than meets the eye, eh, Thibor? A black sheep among vampires! Who ever heard of such a thing? But why not?—you yourself have mentioned your excesses more than once. And I have personal recollections of them. Do the things you’ve done bother even your conscience? Or are the Wamphyri, and you in particular, without conscience?”

  You make much of very little, Dragosani.

  “Oh? I don’t think so. I’m only just beginning to learn about you, Thibor. When you aren’t lying outright, then you’re obscuring the truth. It’s the way you are; you don’t know any other way.”

  The vampire was furious. You find it easy to insult me because you know I may not strike you! How have I obscured the truth?

  “How? Haven’t you said that I ‘gave’ you the opportunity to discover what had become of these kin of yours? But in fact you made your own opportunity. It wasn’t my intention when I started out from Moscow to go to the library in Pitesti, Thibor, so who put that thought in m
y head again, eh? And when you learned of Ladislau Giresci, why, I just had to go and see him, didn’t I?”

  Listen, Dragosani—

  “No, you listen. You used me. Used me just as the vampire of popular fiction uses his human vassals, just as you used your Szekely serfs five hundred years ago. But I’m no serf, Thibor Ferenczy, and that’s your big mistake. It’s one you’ll come to regret, too.”

  Dragosani, I—

  “I’ll hear no more talk, old dragon, not from your forked tongue. There’s only one thing you can do for me now: get yourself out of my mind!”

  Dragosani’s mind was fully developed now, trained, sharp as one of his own scalpels. Case-hardened by the necromancy which this very vampire had inspired in him, its cutting edge was swift and deadly. In its action it was keener than an ordinary man’s is over that of a Mongol—but how strong was it? Now Dragosani put it to the test. He squeezed with his mind, thrusting the monster out, driving him away.

  Ingrate! Thibor accused, retreating. But don’t think it ends here. One day you’ll need me, and then you’ll return. Only don’t wait too long, Dragosani. A year at most, and after that put aside all thoughts of ever acquiring Wamphyri knowledge, for you’ll be too late. A year, my son, and no more than a year. I’ll be waiting, and perhaps by then I will … have … forgiven you … Dragosaaaniiii…!

  Then he was gone.

  Dragosani relaxed, breathed deeply, suddenly felt exhausted. It had been no easy thing, exorcizing Thibor. The vampire had resisted, but Dragosani had been stronger. The real problem had not lain in getting him out—it would lie in keeping him out. Or perhaps not. Now that Dragosani knew Thibor was able to secretly insinuate himself in his being, he could maintain a watch for the old devil.

  But as for his Romanian “holiday”: that was over before it had begun. Cursing, he savagely applied the brakes and slewed the Volga round in a half circle, then started back the way he had come. He was tired but sleep would have to wait. All Dragosani wanted now was to put distance between himself and the Thing in the ground.

  * * *

  Dragosani stopped just outside Bucharest for petrol and tried to raise Thibor. It was still full daylight but he got something: a faint response, a shiver in his mind that echoed like a coffin and wriggled like a graveworm. In Braida in the dusk he tried again. The presence was stronger as night drew on. Thibor was there and might have responded if Dragosani had given him the opportunity. He did not but closed his mind and drove on. At Reni, after passing through Customs, he let down all his defences and literally invited Thibor in. It was full night now but the whisper in his mind was faint, as if it came from a million miles away:

  Dragosaaaniiii. Coward! You flee from me. An old creature trapped in the earth.

  “I’m no coward, old one. And I’m not fleeing but putting myself outside your range, where you can’t reach me. And if you do manage to reach me, next time I’ll know. You see, Thibor, you need me more than I need you. Now you can just lie there and think it over. I may come back one day and I may not. But when, if I do, it will be on my terms.”

  Dragosani (the whisper was faint but urgent) I—

  “Goodbye, Thibor.”

  And behind him, Thibor Ferenczy’s mental whisper was eaten up along with all the miles, and in a little while Dragosani felt safe to stop and sleep.

  And dream his own dreams.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Spring of 1976

  Viktor Shukshin was running close to broke. He had frittered away his inheritance from Mary Keogh-Snaith’s estate on various business ventures which had fallen through; rates on the big house near Bonnyrigg were high; the money he made from his private tutoring was insufficient to keep him. He would sell the house but it had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it would no longer realize a high price; also, he needed the seclusion that the place gave him. To let some of the rooms would likewise diminish his privacy, and in any case the structural and decorative repairs necessary before any letting could even be considered were quite beyond his means.

  His linguistic talent was not the only one he commanded, however, and so, over the period of the last few months, he had made several discreet trips into London to follow up and check out certain points of information he had acquired in the years he had been domiciled in the British Isles—information which should be worth a deal of money to certain very interested foreign parties.

  In short, Viktor Shukshin was a spy—or at least, it had been intended that he should become one when Gregor Borowitz first sent him out of the USSR, in 1957. Of course, there had been a hardening of East-West relationships at that time—and a general hardening of Russia’s policy towards her dissidents—so that it hadn’t been too difficult for Shukshin to get into Great Britain in the guise of a political refugee.

  After that, and especially after meeting, marrying and murdering Mary Keogh, Shukshin had found himself so well-fixed that he had reneged on his Soviet boss and settled to actual citizenship. Still, he had not forgotten his original reason for coming to Great Britain and as a hedge against the future had long since set about amassing information which might eventually be useful to his mother country. It was only recently, though, because of his financial difficulties, that he had begun to realize what a good position he was in. If the Soviets would not pay him the price he demanded for his information, then he could threaten them with the release to the British of his knowledge of a certain Russian organization.

  Which was why, this sparkling May morning, Shukshin had written a carefully coded letter to an old “pen-friend” in Berlin—one who had not heard from him in over fifteen years, and had thought never to hear from him again—who would forward his letter through East Germany and on to Gregor Borowitz himself in Moscow. That letter was in the post even now, and Shukshin had just returned home in his battered Ford from the Bonnyrigg post office.

  But coming across the river on the stone bridge that led to his driveway, Shukshin had been startled to feel in himself a strange churning which he’d at once recognized of old, a weird energy which turned his spine chilly and tugged at his hair like static electricity. On the bridge, leaning over the parapet and staring into the river’s slow swirl, a slim young man in a scarf and overcoat had lifted his head and stared at Shukshin’s car. His pale blue serious eyes had seemed to burn right through the car’s bodywork, touching Shukshin with their cold gaze. And the Russian had known that the stranger was endowed with more than Nature’s ordinary talents, that he commanded more than man’s normal powers of perception. He had known it absolutely, for Shukshin, too, was gifted. He was a “spotter”: his talent lay in the instant recognition of another ESP-endowed person.

  As to who the youth could be, the significance of his appearing here at this time: there were several possibilities. It could be coincidence, an accidental meeting; this would not be the first time nor even the fiftieth that Shukshin had stumbled across such a person. But ESP came in a range of strengths and colours, and this one had been strong indeed and scarlet—a red-tinged cloud in Shukshin’s mind. Or his presence here could be deliberate: he may have been sent here. The British branch must also have its spotters, and Shukshin may well have been detected and trailed. In the light of his recent trips to London—and what he had subsequently discovered of the British ESPionage branch—this theory was by no means farfetched and sent something of a panic surging through him. Panic and more than panic. There was something else in Shukshin now, something he must control. Something which made his eyes narrow as he thought how easily he might have swerved his car to crush the stranger against the parapet wall. The emotion was hatred, the deep and abiding hatred he felt towards all ESPers.

  His rage slowly subsided and he looked at his hands. The knuckles of his fingers were white where he gripped the edges of his desk. He forced himself to release his grip and sat back, breathing deeply. It was always this way, but he had learned how to control it—almost. But if only he had not sent that letter to Borowitz. That m
ight have been a big mistake. Perhaps he should have offered his services direct to the British instead; perhaps he still should, and without delay. Before they could investigate him any further.…

  Such were his thoughts when the doorbell rang, and because they were guilty thoughts he gave a violent start.

  Shukshin’s study was downstairs in a room to the rear of the house that opened through patio windows into its own courtyard. Now he stood up from his desk, passed from bright spring sunshine into gloom as he hurried through the ground floor rooms and corridors towards the front, and midway started again as the doorbell once more tore at his nerve-endings.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming!” he called ahead—but he slowed down and came to a halt on the interior threshold of the long, glazed porch. Out there beyond the frosted glass stood a well-muffled figure which Shukshin knew at once: it was that of the young man from the bridge.

  Shukshin knew it in two ways, one of which was simple observation and could be in error. The other way was more certain, as positive as a fingerprint: he felt again the surge of rare energy-fields and the heat of his instinctive hatred for all such ESP-talented men. Again a tide of panic and passion rose up in him, which he forcibly put down before moving to the door. Well, he had wondered about the stranger, hadn’t he? Now it seemed that he was not to be kept in suspense. One way or the other he would soon discover what was going on here.

  He opened the door.…

  “How do you do,” said Harry Keogh, smiling and extending his hand. “You must be Viktor Shukshin, and I believe you give private tuition in German and Russian?”

  Shukshin did not take Keogh’s hand but simply stood and stared at him. For his own part, Harry stared back. And for all that he continued to smile, still his flesh crawled in the knowledge that he now stood face to face with his mother’s murderer. He put the thought aside; for the moment it was sufficient to just look at the other and absorb what he could of this stranger whom he intended to destroy.