by Brian Lumley
And Shukshin was so close on his heels that he, too, must swerve wildly, his arms windmilling, to avoid his own trap! “Careful, Stepfather!” Keogh called back over his shoulder as he sped away. “I almost collided with you then.”
Dragosani and Batu heard. Batu said: “A fortunate young man, this one—so far.”
“Oh?” Dragosani wasn’t so sure fortune had anything to do with it. Shukshin had been unable to specify Keogh’s talent: what if he was a telepath? He would have the power to pluck his stepfather’s treacherous thoughts right out of his head. “Myself, I think our blackmailer will find this more difficult than he thought.”
Shukshin had come to a halt now, standing still on the ice in a peculiar hunched stance and watching Keogh intently where he continued to skate. The Russian’s shoulders and chest rose and fell spasmodically and his body visibly shook, as if he were in pain or suffering from great emotional stress. “This way, Harry,” he called harshly. “This way! You’re too good for me, I’m afraid. Why, you could skate circles around me!”
Keogh came back, circled the other’s hunched figure, and again. And with each sweep his skates went inches closer to disaster. Shukshin held out his arms and Keogh took his hands, spinning round the older man and turning him on his own axis.
“And now,” Max Batu whispered to Dragosani where they looked on, “The coupe de glace!”
Suddenly Shukshin stopped turning and appeared to stumble into Keogh. Keogh twisted his body to avoid him. Their hands were still locked. One of Keogh’s skates dug in where it cut through a skim of powdery snow and into the groove of the channel hacked by Shukshin. He was jerked to a halt and only Shukshin’s grip on his wrists kept him from falling onto the infirm disc of ice.
Shukshin laughed then, a crazed, baying laugh, and thrust Keogh away from him—thrust him towards death!
But Keogh held tight to the sleeves of Shukshin’s coat and as he was pushed so he pulled. Caught off balance Shukshin jerked forward; Keogh bent to one side and threw him over his hip—but when he released Shukshin, still the Russian held fast to him! With a cry of outrage the older man fell inside his own circle, dragging Keogh after him.
Both of them crashed down in a tangle on ice which at once shifted beneath them. The circle made cracking sounds at its rim, like small gunshots; water spouted up in black jets as the disc tilted and broke in two halves; Shukshin gave a cry of horror—a strange, mad cry like a wounded beast—as the semicircle of ice supporting him and Keogh stood on end and tipped them into the freezing, gurgling water.
“Quick, Max!” Dragosani snapped. “We can’t afford to lose both of them.” He charged from behind the cover of the conifers with Batu close on his heels.
“Who would you prefer to save?” the Mongol rasped as they jumped down onto the ice.
“Keogh,” he answered at once, “if it’s possible. He’ll know more about the British organization than Shukshin. And he has this talent of his—whatever it is.”
Even as he spoke those words a fantastic idea had come to Dragosani, one he had never even considered before. If he could “learn” necromancy from an undead Thing and with it steal the thoughts and secrets of the dead, mightn’t he also steal their talents? At the Château Bronnitsy the agents were all allies, working on the same side, towards the same end. But here in England the ESPers were enemies! Why not steal Keogh’s as yet unknown talent itself—and use it to his own ends?
From the hole in the river where cakes of ice churned in dark, frenzied water, a great grunting and gasping sounded as Batu and Dragosani drew closer; but as they more cautiously approached the rim itself all sounds ceased and they were greeted only by the gurgle and slap of water moving under and against the ice. For a moment a clutching hand shot dripping into view and clawed at the rim, but before they could make a move to grab it the hand was gone, sucked under.
“This way!” Dragosani gasped. “Follow the course of the river.”
“You think there’s a chance?” Batu obviously thought not.
“A very slim one,” said Dragosani.
They ran on the ice as best they could under a silent moon.
Beneath the ice, tumbled and turned by the current, Harry Keogh somehow got his jacket off and let it go. Under his shirt he wore a rubber wet-suit vest, but still the cold was terrific. It must surely finish Shukshin, who was completely unprotected.
Harry started to swim, kept his head turned sideways with his face against the ice, actually found places where cold air was trapped in shallow pockets. He swam towards his mother, following her stream of troubled thoughts just as he had followed them unerringly two hours ago with his eyes closed. Except then there had been plenty of air to breathe and he had been warm.
Panic gripped him momentarily but he put it out of his mind. His Ma was over there—that way! He began to swim more strongly—and something grasped at his feet, his legs. Something fastened its grasp on him and clung to his trousers. Shukshin! The river was bobbing them along in tandem, like matches down a drain, gluing them together through gravitational attraction.
Harry swam more desperately yet, with his arms, with one leg. He swam as never before, his lungs bursting, his heart a great gong clanging away in his chest. And Shukshin clawing his way up his body, his hands like the pincers of some great crab, snatching at Harry as if to pull him to pieces.
This was it; he could swim no more; the water was the black blood of some giant alien into whose veins Harry had been injected where Shukshin was an alien antibody bent on his destruction.
“Ma! Ma! Help me!” Harry cried out with his mind as at last he was forced to draw breath, but drew only icy water which gushed into his straining jaws and nostrils.
“Harry!” she answered at once, loudly, close at hand, her own voice frantic in his head. “Harry, you’re here!”
He kicked backwards, lashed out with both feet at Shukshin, and thrust upward with his back and head, crashing himself against the ice cover—which immediately, mercifully, shattered into thin shards as his head and shoulders emerged into air!
And suddenly the water was still and his feet touched a muddy bottom five feet down, and even before his eyes had focused and his battered senses stopped spinning, Harry knew he had made it. Now he summoned his last reserves, threw out his hands and grasped at tough roots where they projected from the overhanging bank. And slowly he began to draw himself up and out.
Beside him the water swirled and gurgled as from some hidden commotion. Harry half-turned and terror drew his lips back from his teeth—as Shukshin’s mad face came surging up alongside him, choking and gagging! The madman saw him, spewed water and a babbling scream of rage into his face, clutched at his throat with hands like steel grapples.
Harry brought his knee up into the maniac’s groin. Bones broke but still Shukshin hung on. He dragged Harry inexorably back, slavered into his face. For a long moment Harry thought he meant to bite him, savage him like a rabid dog! He fought Shukshin, slammed his clenched fists again and again into his ghastly face, to no avail. The madman would win. Harry was about to go under.…
He reached out again for the tough roots in the river bank, but Shukshin’s hands at his throat were shutting off the air, shutting off life itself.
“Ma!” Harry silently cried. “You were right, Ma. I should have listened. I’m sorry.”
“No!” came her denial of defeat. “No!” Shukshin had killed her, but he must not be allowed to kill her son.
And again the bitter water gurgled and churned—but more blackly yet! Dragosani skidded to a halt not fifteen feet away, grabbed at Batu and drew him also to a standstill. Panting, their breath forming fragile feathers of snow in the air, they looked—they saw—and their jaws fell open. Two men had gone down under the ice back there, had been washed downstream to this hole, and until a moment ago two figures had fought and torn at each other here in the still water beneath the river bank. But now there were three figures there in the water, and the third one was as
terrible a thing as ever Dragosani had heard of or imagined or seen in his blackest nightmares!
It was … not alive, and yet it had the mobility of life, the authority of life. And it had purpose. It clung to Shukshin, wrapped itself about him, put its mud-and-bones arms around him and its algae and plastered-hair skull against his. Of eyes there were none, but a putrid glow shone out from empty sockets with a semblance of sight. And where before Shukshin had only howled and gibbered and laughed like a madman, now he quite literally went mad.
Shriek after shriek pealed out from him as he fought with the awful thing, the shrillest lunatic screeching that Dragosani and Batu had ever thought to hear; and at the very end, just before the horror dragged him under, words which at last the petrified watchers could understand:
“Not you!” Shukshin babbled. “Oh God, oh no, not you!”
Then he was gone, and the thing of bones and mud and weeds and death with him.…
And Harry Keogh was left to scramble out on to the river bank.
Batu might perhaps have gone blindly, numbly after him but Dragosani still clutched at his arm. He clutched it, almost for support. Batu began to adopt his killing crouch but Dragosani stopped that, too. “No, Max,” he hoarsely whispered, “we don’t dare. We’ve seen something of what he can do, but what other talents does he possess?”
Batu understood, relaxed, drew himself upright. On the bank above them Harry Keogh became aware of their presence for the first time. He turned his face towards them, found them, stared at them. His eyes focused on them at last and he looked as though he might speak, but he said nothing. For long moments they simply stared at each other, all three, and then Keogh glanced back at the jagged patch of black water. “Thanks, Ma,” he said, simply.
Dragosani and Batu watched as he turned, staggered, stumbled and then began to run weavingly back towards Shukshin’s house.
They watched him go, and made no attempt to follow. Not yet. When he was out of sight Batu hissed:
“But that thing, Comrade Dragosani? It wasn’t—couldn’t be—human. So what was it?”
Dragosani shook his head. He believed he knew the answer but wouldn’t commit himself now. “I’m not sure,” he said. “It had been human once, though. One thing is certain: when Keogh needed help it came to him. That’s his talent, Max: the dead answer his call.” And he turned to the other, his eyes darker still in sunken orbits.
“They answer his call, Max. And there are a lot more of the dead than there are of the living.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
On Thursday morning Harry went back to the river, back to the place where his mother lay once more locked in mud and weed. Except that there were two of them there now, and he had not gone to talk to her but to Viktor Shukshin. He took a cushion from the car and carried it down to the river bank, putting it down in snow six inches deep before seating himself and hugging his knees. Below where he sat the ice had crusted over again and snow had settled on the place where he’d cut his escape hole, so that only an outline showed through.
After sitting in silence for a while, he said: “Stepfather, can you hear me?”
“… Yes,” came the answer in a moment. “Yes, I can hear you, Harry Keogh. I hear you and I feel your presence! Why don’t you go away and leave me in peace?”
“Be careful, Stepfather. Mine might be the last voice you ever hear. If I ‘go away and leave you in peace,’ who’ll speak to you then?”
“So that’s your talent, is it, Harry? You speak to the dead. You’re a corpse rabble-rouser! Well, I want you to know that it hurts me, like all ESP hurts me. But last night, for the first time in many long years, I lay here in my freezing bed and slept soundly, and there was no pain. Who’ll speak to me? I don’t want anyone to speak to me! I want peace.”
“What do you mean, it hurts you?” Harry pressed. “How can my just being here hurt anything?”
Shukshin told him.
“And that’s why you killed my mother?”
“Yes, and it’s why I tried to kill you. But in your case, it might also have served to save my own life.” And now he told Harry about the men Borowitz had sent to kill him, Dragosani and Batu.
Harry wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to know it all, from the beginning right to the present. “Tell me about it,” he said, “all of it, and I swear I won’t bother you again.”
And so Shukshin told him.
About Borowitz and the Château Bronnitsy. About the Russian ESPers where they worked for world conquest through ESP in their secret den in the heart of the USSR. He told of how Borowitz had sent him out of Russia to England to find and kill British ESPers, and how he had broken away and become a British citizen. And he told him again about the curse that dogged him: how ESP-talented people rubbed his nerves raw and brought on the madness in him. And at last Harry understood and might almost have pitied Shukshin—were it not for his mother.
And as Shukshin talked so Harry thought of Sir Keenan Gormley and the British E-Branch, and he remembered his promise to go and see Gormley and perhaps join his group when all of this had been sorted out. Well, now it was sorted out. And now Harry knew that he must go and see Gormley. For Victor Shukshin wasn’t the only guilty one. There were others far worse than he could ever be. The one who had sent him out on his murderous mission in the first place, for instance. For if Shukshin had never come here, Harry’s mother would still be alive.
And at last Harry was satisfied. Until now his life had seemed greatly aimless, unfulfilled—his one ambition had been to kill Shukshin—but now he knew that it was bigger than that, and suddenly he felt small in view of the task which still awaited him.
“All right, Stepfather,” he finally said, “I’ll leave you now and let you rest. But it’s a peace you don’t deserve. I can’t and won’t forgive you.”
“I don’t want your forgiveness, Harry Keogh, just your promise that you’ll leave me alone here.” Shukshin told him. “And you’ve given me that. So now go and get yourself killed and let me be.…”
Harry climbed stiffly to his feet. Every bone in his body ached—his head, too—and he felt completely sapped of strength. It was partly physical, but mostly emotional. It was the calm which follows the storm, and, although he couldn’t yet know it, it was also the lull before the greater storm still to come.
But now he shrugged himself upright, left the cushion lying there forgotten in the snow, headed back towards his car. Behind him and yet with him a voice said in his mind: “Goodbye, Harry.” But it wasn’t Shukshin’s voice.
“Goodbye, Ma,” he answered. “And thanks. I’ll always love you.”
“And I’ll always love you, Harry.”
“What?” now came Shukshin’s horrified mental gasp. “What! Keogh, what’s this? I saw you raise her up, but—?”
Harry didn’t answer. He let Mary Keogh do it for him:
“Hello, Viktor. No, you’re wrong. Harry didn’t raise me up. I raised myself up. For the sake of love, which is something you can’t understand. But that’s over now and I’ll not do it again. My Harry has others to look after him now; so I’ll just lie here, lonely in the mud. Except maybe it won’t be so lonely now.…”
“Keogh!” Shukshin frantically called out after Harry again. “Keogh, you promised me—you said you were the only one who could talk to me. But now she is talking to me—and she hurts me most of all!”
Harry kept on walking.
“Now, now, Viktor,” he heard his mother’s answer, as if she spoke to a small child. “That will get you nowhere. Did you say you want peace and quiet? Oh, but you’ll soon get bored with peace and quiet, Viktor.”
“Keogh!” Shukshin’s voice was a diminishing mental shriek now. “Keogh, you have to get me out of this. Dig me up—tell them where to find my body—only don’t leave me here with her!”
“Actually, Viktor,” Mary Keogh remorselessly continued, “I think I’ll rather enjoy talking to you. You’re so close to me here that it’s no effort at all!”
“Keogh, you bastard! Come back! Oh … please … come … back!”
But Harry kept on walking.
* * *
By 1:30 P.M. Harry was back in Hartlepool. The roads were nightmarish, layered with compacted snow for more than half the journey, so that in the main he was driving on his nerves. This only served to drain more of his strength, and when at last he got home it was as much as he could do to drag himself upstairs.
Brenda, his wife of eight weeks, was bright and chirpy about the flat, which had undergone some fantastic and inexplicable metamorphosis since she had moved in after their registry office wedding.
She was less than three months pregnant but already blooming. Harry, too, had been in fine fettle when last she had seen him; but now, in complete contrast—
He barely managed the effort of kissing her on the cheek, was asleep almost before his head hit the pillows.
He had been away for three days, doing “research,” she knew, for a new book he was planning—what and where exactly he’d never bothered to say. Well, that was Harry and she should be used to it by now—but she was not used to him turning up looking like he’d spent a month in a concentration camp!
After he had slept right through the afternoon and seemed to have developed a fever, she called the doctor who visited at about 8:00 P.M. Harry didn’t bother to wake up for his visit; the doctor thought it might be pneumonia, though the symptoms weren’t quite right; he left pills, instructions and his telephone number. If Harry got worse during the night, especially if his breathing became irregular or he started coughing, or if his temperature went up appreciably, Brenda was to call him at once.