by Brian Lumley
“I meant only—” Dragosani hastily began.
“That is almost the same as calling me a liar,” said Batu—and his face at once underwent its monstrous transformation. Now Dragosani got the full frontal view of what Borowitz had termed “the evil eye.” And without the slightest shadow of a doubt it was evil! It was as if Dragosani’s blood congealed in his veins. He felt his muscles stiffening, as if rigor mortis were already setting in. His heart gave a massive lurch in his chest, and its pain caused him to cry out and sent him staggering. But the necromancer’s reflexes were lightning itself.
Even as he reeled back against the wall his hand slid inside his jacket, came out grasping his pistol. He now knew—or at least thought—that this man could kill him. And survival was uppermost in Dragosani’s mind. Quite simply, he must kill the Mongol first.
Borowitz stepped between them. “That’s enough!” he snapped. “Dragosani, put it away!”
“That bastard almost finished me!” the necromancer gasped, his body trembling with reaction. He tried to move Borowitz out of his line of fire but the older man was like stone.
“I said that’s enough!” he repeated, “What, would you shoot your partner?”
“My what?” Dragosani couldn’t believe his ears. “My partner? I don’t need a partner. What sort of partner? Is this some sort of joke?”
Borowitz reached out a hand and carefully took Dragosani’s gun. “There,” he said. “That’s better. And now we can go back to my office.” On their way out, as he herded a shaken Dragosani before him, he turned to the Mongol and said: “Thank you, Max.”
“My pleasure,” said the other, his face once more wreathed in a smile. He bowed from the waist as Borowitz closed the door on him.
Out in the corridor Dragosani was furious. He snatched back his gun and put it away. “You and your damned weird sense of humour!” he snarled. “Man, I nearly died in there!”
“No, you didn’t,” Borowitz seemed unperturbed, “not even nearly. If you had a weak heart it would have killed you, just as it killed his neighbour. Or if you were old and infirm. But you’re young and very strong. No, no, I knew he couldn’t kill you. He himself told me that he couldn’t kill a strong man. It takes a lot out of him to do what he does, so much indeed that he would be the one to die, not you, if he really tried it on you. So you see, I had faith in your strength.”
“You had faith in my strength? You crazy old sadist—and what if you’d been wrong?”
“But I wasn’t wrong,” said Borowitz, starting back the way they had come.
Dragosani wouldn’t be placated. He still felt shaken, weak at the knees. Staggering after Borowitz, he said: “What happened back there was a deliberate set-up and you bloody well know it!”
His boss whirled and pointed directly at Dragosani’s chest. His grin was savage as a snarl. “But now you believe, yes? Now you have seen and you have felt. Now you know what he can do! You no longer think it’s a trick. It’s a new talent, Dragosani, and one we haven’t seen before. And who’s to say what other talents there are throughout the world, eh?”
“But why did you let me—no, make me—go up against something like that? It makes no sense.”
Borowitz turned and hurried on. “It makes lots of sense. It’s practice, Dragosani, and like I’m always telling you—”
“Practice makes perfect, I know. But practice for what?”
“I only wish I knew,” Borowitz tossed over his shoulder. “Who can say what you’ll come up against—in England!”
“What?” Dragosani’s jaw dropped. He chased after the older man. “England? What about England? And you still haven’t told me what you meant when you said Batu was my partner. Gregor, I don’t understand any of this.”
They had reached Borowitz’s offices. Borowitz swept through the anteroom and turned on his heel just across the threshold of his private room. Dragosani came to a halt facing him, stared at him accusingly. “What is it you’ve got up your sleeve—Comrade?”
“So you’re still accusing people of trickery, eh, Boris?” said the other. “Will you never learn your lesson the first time around? I don’t need to resort to trickery, my friend. I give orders, and you obey! This is my next order: you’re going back to school for a few months to brush up on your English. Not only the language but the entire English system. That way you’ll fit better into the embassy over there. Max will go with you—and I’ll bet he learns faster, too. After that, when we’ve made certain arrangements—a little field trip.…”
“To England?”
“Exactly. You and your partner. There’s a man over there called Keenan Gormley, Ex-MI5. ‘Sir’ Keenan Gormley, no less. Now he’s the boss of their E-Branch. I want him dead! That’s Max’s job, for Gormley has a bad heart. After that—”
Dragosani saw it all now. “You want him ‘interrogated,’” he said. “You want him emptied of secrets. You want to know all about him and his E-Branch down to the last detail.”
“Right first time,” Borowitz gave a sharp nod of his head. “And that’s your job, Boris. You’re the necromancer, inquisitor of the dead. It’s what you get paid for.…”
And before Dragosani could answer, completely expressionless for once, Borowitz closed the door in his face.
* * *
A Saturday evening in the early summer of 1976. Sir Keenan Gormley was relaxing with a book in his study at home in South Kensington, an after-dinner drink on the occasional table before him, when the telephone rang in the house proper. He heard it, and a few moments later his wife’s voice calling: “Darling, it’s for you.”
“Coming!” he called, and sighing put down his book and went through. As he took the telephone from her, his wife gave him a smile and returned to her own reading. Gormley carried the telephone to a wicker chair and sat down before glass doors which stood open on a large, secluded garden. “Gormley here?” he said into the mouthpiece.
“Sir Keenan? This is Harmon. Jack Harmon in Hartlepool. How’s the world been treating you all these years?”
“Harmon? Jack! How the devil are you!? My God! How long’s it been. It must be twelve years at least!”
“Thirteen,” came the answer, tinny with the effects of static. “Last time we spoke was at the dinner they threw for you when you left ‘shhh!—you know who!’ And that was back in ’sixty-three.”
“Thirteen years!” Gormley breathed, amazed. “Where does time go to, eh?”
“Where indeed? Retirement hasn’t killed you off, then?”
Gormley chuckled dryly. “Ah! Well, I only half-retired, as I believe you know. I still do this and that in the city. And you—are you still stout as ever? I seem to remember you’d got yourself the head’s job at Hartlepool Tech?”
“That’s right, and I’m still there. Headmaster?—Christ, it was easier in Burma!”
Gormley laughed out loud. “It’s very good to hear from you again, Jack, especially since you seem in such good health. Now then, what can I do for you?”
There was something of a pause before Harmon finally answered: “Actually, I feel a bit of a fool. I’ve been on the point of calling you several times in the last week or so, but always changed my mind. It’s such a damned strange business!”
Gormley was at once interested. He’d been dealing with ‘strange businesses’ for many years now. His own fine-tuned talent told him that something new was about to break, and maybe it was something big. His scalp tingled as he answered: “Go on, Jack, what is it? And don’t worry that I may think it daft. I remember you for a very level-headed chap.”
“Yes, but this is very—you know—difficult to put into words. I mean, I’m close to this thing, I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and yet—”
“Jack,” Gormley was patient, “do you remember the night of that dinner, how you and I got talking afterwards? I’d had quite a bit to drink that night—too much, maybe—and I seem to remember mentioning things I shouldn’t have. It was just that you seemed so well-placed—I
mean, as a headmaster and all.…”
“But that’s exactly why I’m calling you now!” Harmon answered. “Because of that chat of ours. How on earth could you possibly know that?”
Gormley chuckled. “Call it intuition,” he said. “But do go on.”
“Well, you said that I’d be seeing a lot of youngsters pass through my hands, and I should keep my eyes open for any that I thought were rather … special.”
Gormley licked his lips, said: “Hang on a moment, Jack, there’s a good chap.” He called out to his wife, “Jackie, be a love and fetch me my drink, would you?” And to the telephone: “Sorry, Jack, but I’m suddenly quite dry. And now you’ve found a kid who’s a bit different, have you?”
“A bit? Harry Keogh’s a lot different, you can take my word for it! Frankly, I don’t know what to make of him.”
“Well then, tell me and let’s see what I can make of him.”
“Harry Keogh,” Harmon began, “is … one hell of a weird fellow. He was first brought to my attention by a teacher at the boys’ school in Harden a little farther up the coast. At that time he was described to me as an ‘instinctive mathematician.’ In fact he was a near genius! Anyway, he sat a form of examination and passed it—hell, he flew through it!—and so came to the Tech. But his English was terrible. I used to get on to him about it.…
“Anyway, when I spoke to this fellow up at Harden—the young teacher, I mean, a fellow called George Hannant—I somehow got the impression that he didn’t like Keogh. Or maybe that’s a bit strong; maybe Keogh simply made him uneasy. Well, I’ve recently had cause to speak to Hannant again, and that’s how the whole thing came to light. By that I mean that Hannant’s observations of five years ago match mine exactly. He too, at that time, believed that Harry Keogh … that he.…”
“That he what?” Gormley urged. “What’s this lad’s talent, Jack?”
“Talent? My God! That’s not how I would describe it.”
“Well?”
“Let me tell it this way. It’s not that I’m shy of my conclusions, you understand, just that I believe the evidence should be heard first. I’ve said that Keogh’s English was bad and I used to urge him to do better. Well, he improved rapidly. Before he left the school two years ago he’d sold his first short story. Since then there have been two books full of them. They’ve sold right across the English-speaking world! It’s a bit off-putting to say the least! I mean, I’ve been trying to sell my stories for thirty years, and here’s Keogh not yet nineteen, and—”
“And is that your concern?” Gormley cut him off. “That he’s become a successful author so young?”
“Eh? Heavens, no! I’m delighted for him. Or at least I was. I still would be if only … if only he didn’t write the damn things that way.…” He paused.
“What way?”
“He … he has, well, collaborators.”
Something about the way Harmon said the last word made Gormley’s scalp tingle again. “Collaborators? But surely a lot of writers have collaborators? At eighteen years of age I imagine he probably needs someone to tidy his stuff up for him, and so on.”
“No, no,” said the other, with an edge to his voice that hinted of frustration, of wanting to say something outright but not knowing how to. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. Actually, his short stories don’t need tidying up—they’re all jewels. I myself typed the earliest of them for him, from the rough work, because he didn’t have a machine. I even typed up a few after he’d bought a typewriter, until he got the idea of how a good manuscript should look. Since then he’s done it all himself—until recently. His new work, which he’s just completed, is a novel. He’s called it, of all things, Diary of a Seventeenth-century Rake!”
Gormley couldn’t suppress a chuckle. “So he’s sexually precocious too, is he?”
“Actually, I think he is. Anyway, I’ve worked with him quite a bit on the novel, too: that is, I’ve arranged it into chapters for him and generally tidied it up. Nothing wrong with Keogh’s history or his use of the seventeenth-century language—in fact it’s amazingly accurate—but his spelling is still atrocious and on this book at least he was repetitive and disjointed. But one thing I can promise you: it will earn him an awful lot of money!”
Now Gormley frowned. “How can his short stories be ‘jewels’ while his novel is repetitive and disjointed? Does that follow logically?”
“Nothing follows logically in Keogh’s case. The reason the novel differs from the shorter works is simple: his collaborator on the shorts was a literary type who knew what he was doing, whereas his collaborator for the novel was quite simply … a seventeenth-century rake!”
“Eh?” Gormley was startled. “I don’t follow.”
“No, I don’t suppose you do. I wish to God I didn’t! Listen: there was a very successful writer of short stories who lived and died in Hartlepool thirty years ago. His real name doesn’t matter but he had three or four pseudonyms. Keogh uses pseudonyms very close to the originals.”
“The ‘originals’? I still don’t—”
“As for the seventeenth-century rake: he was the son of an earl. Very notorious in these parts between 1660 and 1672. Finally an outraged husband shot him dead. He wasn’t a writer, but he did have a vivid imagination! These two men … they are Keogh’s collaborators!”
Gormley’s scalp was crawling now. “Go on,” he said.
“I’ve talked to Keogh’s girlfriend,” Harmon continued. “She’s a nice kid and dotes on him. And she won’t hear a word against him. But in conversation she let it slip that he has this idea about something called a Necroscope. It’s something he presented to her as fiction, a figment of his own imagination. A Necroscope, he told her, is someone—”
“—who can look in on the thoughts of the dead?” Gormley cut in.
“Yes,” the other sighed his relief. “Exactly.”
“A spirit medium?”
“What? Why, yes, I suppose you could say that. But a real one, Keenan! A man who genuinely talks to the dead! I mean, it’s monstrous! I’ve actually seen him sitting there, writing—in the local graveyard!”
“Have you told anyone else?” Gormley’s voice was sharp now. “Does Keogh know what you suspect?”
“No.”
“Then don’t breathe another word about this to a soul. Do you understand?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts, Jack. This discovery of yours might be very important indeed, and I’m delighted you got in touch with me. But it must go no farther. There are people who could use it in entirely the wrong way.”
“You believe me, then, about this terrible thing?” the other’s relief was plain. “I mean, is it even possible?”
“Possible, impossible—the longer I live the more I wonder just what might or mightn’t be! Anyway, I can understand your concern, and it’s right that you should be concerned. But as for this being ‘a terrible thing’: I’m afraid I have to reserve my judgement on that. If you are correct, then this Harry Keogh of yours has a terrific talent. Just think how he might use it!”
“I shudder to think!”
“What? And you a headmaster? Shame on you, Jack!”
“I’m sorry. I’m not quite sure I—”
“But wouldn’t you yourself like the chance to talk to the greatest teachers, theorists and scientists of all time? To Einstein, Newton, Da Vinci, Aristotle?”
“My God!” the voice at the other end of the line almost choked. “But surely that would be—I mean, quite literally—utterly impossible!”
“Yes, well, you just keep believing that, Jack, and forget all about this conversation of ours, right?”
“But you—”
“Right, Jack?”
“Very well. What do you intend to—?”
“Jack, I work for a very queer outfit, a very funny crowd. And even telling you that much is to tell you too much. However, you have my word that I’ll look into this thing. And I want your word that this is your las
t word on it to anyone!”
“Very well, if you say so.”
“Thanks for calling.”
“You’re welcome. I—”
“Goodbye, Jack. We must talk again some time.”
“Yes, goodbye.…”
Thoughtfully, Gormley put the phone down.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dragosani had been “back to school” for over three months, brushing up on his English. Now it was the end of July and he had returned to Romania—or Wallachia, as he now constantly thought of his homeland. His reason for being there was simple: despite any threats he made when last he visited, still he was aware that a year had passed, and that the old Thing in the ground had warned him that a year was all the time allowed. What he had meant exactly was beyond Dragosani to fathom, but of one thing he was certain: he must not let Thibor Ferenczy expire through any oversight on his part. If such an expiry was imminent, then the vampire might now be more willing to share a few more secrets with Dragosani in exchange for an extension on his undead life.
Because it had been getting late in the day when he drove through Bucharest, Dragosani had stopped at a village market to purchase a pair of live chickens in a wicker basket. These had gone under a light blanket on the floor in the back of his Volga. He had found lodgings in a farm standing on the banks of the Oltul, and having tossed his things into his room had come out immediately into the twilight and driven to the wooded cruciform ridge.
Now, at last light, he stood once more on the perimeter of the circle of unhallowed ground beneath the gloomy pines and surveyed again the tumbled tomb cut into the hillside, and the dark earth where grotesquely twisted roots stood up like a writhing of petrified serpents.
Past Bucharest he had tried to contact Thibor, to no avail; for all that he’d concentrated on raising the old devil’s mind from the slumber of centuries, there had been no answer. Perhaps after all he was too late. How long might a vampire lie, undead in the earth without attention? For all Dragosani’s many conversations with the creature, and for all that he had learned from Ladislau Giresci, still he knew so little about the Wamphyri. That was restricted knowledge Thibor had told him, and must await the coming of Dragosani into the fraternity. Oh? The necromancer would see about that!