Necroscope - Deadspeak Part 12

'And all the maths Mobius taught me, am I to forget that, too?'

You have already forgotten it! That is my most immediate stricture, for I won't be invaded in my own territory! Now be done with arguing, for it's over, it ... is ... done!

At which Harry had felt a terrible wrenching in his mind, which made him cry out; followed by darkness; followed by ...

. . . His return to consciousness in London, at E-Branch HQ. That had been four years ago. He had told E-Branch all he could, helped them complete and close their files on him and all his works. He was no lo nger a Necroscope; he could no longer impose his metaphysical will on the p hysical universe; the branch should have no further use for him now. But ev en after they'd tried and discarded every means at their disposal to return his paranormal powers to him, still he'd been certain they wouldn't let it rest there. As a Necroscope he'd been too great an a.s.set. They'd never for get him, and if they could get him back they would. And so would his millio ns of friends, the teeming dead. Oh, Harry's actual friends - his real comr ades among the Great Majority - numbered around one hundred only. But the r est knew of him. To them he would always be the one light in their eternal darkness.

And now one of them, by far the most important one to Harry, was trying to speak to him again: Harry, oh my poor little Harry! Why won't you answer me, son? He had al ways been her little Harry.

'Because I can't,' he wanted to tell her - but dare not, not even asleep and dreaming. For he'd tried once before, down at the riverbank, and now reme mbered it only too well: He'd gone there within the hour of his return to his home near Bonnyrig, the house which she had owned before him, and Viktor Shuks.h.i.+n in between. S huks.h.i.+n had drowned her under the ice, and left her body to float to this bi ght in the frozen river. There she'd settled to the bottom, to become one wi th the mud, the weeds and the silt. And there she'd stayed - until the night Harry called her up again to take her revenge! Since when she'd lain here i n peace, or been gradually washed away in pieces. But her spirit was here st ill.

And it had been here when, like so many times before, he'd gone to sit on the riverbank and look down at the water where it was untroubled and dee p and dark in that slowly swirling backwater of reeds and crumbling clay ba nk. It had been daylight; brambles and weeds growing across the old, disuse d paths by the river; birdsong in the shady willows and spiky blackthorns.

There were three other houses there beside his own, two of them detached and standing well apart, in large walled gardens extending almost to the ri ver. These two were empty and rapidly falling into disrepair; the third, nex t door, had been up for sale for several years now. Every so often people wo uld come to look at it, and go away shaking their heads. These were not 'des irable' residences. No, it was a lonely place, which was why Harry liked it.

He and his Ma had used to talk in private here, and he'd never had to fear that someone might see him sitting here on his own, apparently mouthing nons ense to himself.

He hadn't known what to expect that time; he only knew that conversation was forbidden, and that there'd be a penalty to pay if he tried to break th e strictures placed on his esper's mind. The acid test was the one thing E-B ranch hadn't attempted, mainly because he'd refused to go so far. Darcy Clar ke had been in charge then, and Darcy's talent had warned him away from push ing Harry, and Harry's friends, too far.

But there on the river Harry's mother, the spirit of the innocent girl she h ad been, had not been able to resist talking to her son again.

At first there had been only the solitude, the slow gurgle of the river, the birdsong. But in a little while Harry's singular presence had been note d. And: Harry? she had come breathlessly awake in his mind. Harry, is that y ou, son? Oh, I know it is! You've come home again, Harry!

That was all she'd said to him - but it had been enough.

'Ma - don't!' he'd cried out, staggering to his feet and running, as some one ignited a Roman candle in his skull to shoot off its fireb.a.l.l.s into the s oft tissues of his brain! And only then had he known what The Dweller, Harry Jnr, had really done to him.

Such mental agony that you will never dare try again! That was what hi s vampire son had promised, and it was what he'd delivered. Not The Dwelle r himself, but the post-hypnotic commands he'd left behind, sealed in Harr y's mind.

And nightfall had found Harry in the long gra.s.ses by the river's edge, painfully regaining consciousness in a world where he now knew beyond any doubt that he was a Necroscope no more. He could no longer communicate wi th the dead. Or at least, not consciously.

But asleep and dreaming . . . ?

Haaarry ... his mother's voice called to him again, echoing through the endlessly labyrinthine vaults of his otherwise empty dream. I'm here, Harry, here. And before he knew it he'd turned off and pa.s.sed through a door, and stood once again on the riverbank, this time in streaming moonlight. And: Is that you, Harry? Her hushed mental voice told him that she scarcely dared t o believe it. Have you really come to me?

'I can't answer you, Ma!' he wanted to say, but could only remain silent.

But you have answered me, Harry, was her reply. And he knew it was so. F or the dead don't require the spoken word; sufficient to think at them, if y ou have the talent.

Harry crumpled to the riverbank, adopted a foetal position, hugged his h ead with his arms and hands and waited for the pain - which didn't come!

Oh, Harry, Harry! she said at once. Did you think that after that first time , I'd deliberately hurt you or cause you to hurt yourself?

'Ma, I - ' (he tried it again, wincing expectantly as he got to his feet),' -1 don't understand!'

Yes, you do, son, she tut-tutted. Of course you do! It's just that you've forgotten. You forget every time, Harry.

'Forgotten? Forgotten what, Ma? What do I forget every time?'

You forget that you've been here before, in dreams, and that what my gra ndson did to you doesn't count here. That's what you've forgotten, and you d o it every time! Now call me up, Harry, so that I can talk to you properly a nd walk with you a little way.

Was that right, that he could talk to her in dreams? He had used to in the old days - waking and dreaming alike - but it wasn't like that now.

But it is like it now, son. It's just that you need reminding each time!

And then another voice, not his mother's, echoing more in the caverns o f his memory than his sleeping mind proper: . . . You may not consciously speak to the dead. And if they speak to y ou, then you must strike their words immediately from memory or - suffer th e consequences.

'My son's voice,' he sighed, as understanding came at last. 'So, how man y times have we talked, Ma? I mean, since it started to hurt me ... in the l ast four years, say?' And even as she began to answer him he called her up, so that she rose from the water, reached out and took his hand, and was draw n up onto the bank - a young woman again, as she'd been on the day she died.

A dozen, twenty, fifty times (a mental shrug). It's hard to say, Harry. F or always it's more difficult to get through to you. And oh, how we've missed you, Harry.

'We?' He took her hand and they walked along the dark river path togeth er, under a full moon riding high through a cloud-wispy sky.

Me and all your friends, the teeming dead. A hundred there are all eager to hear your gentle voice again, son; a million more who would ask what you said; and all the rest to inquire how you're doing and what's become of you . And as for me: why, I'm like an oracle! For they know that I'm the one you speak to most of all. Or used to ...

'You make me feel like I've forsaken some olden trust,' he told her. 'But there never was one. And anyway, it isn't so! I can't help it that I can no longer talk to you. Or that I can't remember the times when I do. And how has it become difficult to get through to me? You called me and I came. Was that so difficult?'

But you don't always come, Harry. Sometimes I can feel you there, and I call out to you, and you shy away. And each time the waiting grows longer be tween visits, as if you no longer cared, or had forgotten us. Or as if, perh aps, we'd become a habit? Which you now desire . . . to break?

'None of that is true!' Harry burst out. But he knew that it was. Not a habit which he would break, no, but one which was being broken for him - by his fear. By his terror of the mental torture which talking to the dead woul d bring down on him. 'Or if it is true,' he said, more quietly now, 'then it's not my fault. My mind would be no good to you burned out, Ma. And that's what will happen if I push my luck.'

Well, (and suddenly he was aware of a new resolve in her voice, and of the strengthening of her cold fingers where they gripped his hand), then so mething must be done about it! About your situation, I mean - for there's t rouble brewing, son, and the dead lie uneasy in their graves. Do you rememb er I told you, Harry, there was someone who wanted to talk to you? And how what he had to say was important?

'Yes, I remember. Who is he, Ma, and what is it that's so important?'

He wouldn't say, and his voice came from far, far away. But it's strange when the dead feel pain, Harry, for death usually puts them beyond it.

Harry felt his blood run cold. He remembered only too well how the dead , in certain circ.u.mstances, felt pain. Sir Keenan Gormley, murdered by Sovi et mindspies, had been 'examined' by Boris Dragosani, a necromancer. And de ad as he had been, he had felt the pain. 'Is it ... like that?' he asked hi s mother now, holding his breath until she answered.

/ don't know how it is, she turned to him and looked him straight in the eye, for this is something I've never known before. But Harry, I fear for you ! And before he could even attempt to rea.s.sure her: Oh, son, son, my poor lit tle Harry - I fear so very, very much for you! Is it like that, you ask? And I say: will it be - can it ever be -like that again? And how, if you're no lo nger a Necroscope? And then I pray that it can't be. So you see, son, how I'm torn two ways. I miss you, and all the dead miss you, but if it puts you in danger then we can do without it.

He sensed that she was avoiding something. 'Ma, are you sure you don't know who he is, this one who tried to contact me? Are you sure you don't kn ow where he is, right now?'

She let go his hand, turned away, avoided his eyes. Who he is, no, she sai d. But his voice, his mental voice, Harry, crying out like that. Oh, yes, I kn ow where he is. And all the dead know it, too. He's in h.e.l.l!

Frowning, he took her shoulders, gently turned her until she faced him agai n, and said, 'In h.e.l.l?'

She looked at him, opened her mouth - and nothing but a gurgle came out ! She coughed chokingly, spat blood . . . then straightened up, swelled out , wrenched herself free of his suddenly feeble grasp. He saw something in h er mouth, forked and flickering, which wasn't a human tongue! Her skin sagg ed and grew old, becoming wormy as centuried parchment in a moment! Flesh s loughed from her bones, revealed her skull, smoked into dust as it fell fro m her like a rotting shroud! She cried out her horror, turned and fled away from him along the riverbank, paused a moment over the bight and looked ba ck. A rancid, disintegrating skeleton, she laughed at him even as she toppl ed into the water - and he saw that her eyes glowed crimson in the moonlight, and that the teeth in her skull were sharp, curving fangs!

Nailed to the spot - fear-frozen there - Harry could only cry out after h er: 'Ma-aaa!' But it wasn't his mother who heard and answered him: Haaarry! the voice came from a long way away, but still Harry whirled on the riverbank, staring this way and that in the moon-silvered night. There was no one there. Haaarry! it came again, but clearer in his mind. Haaarry K eeeooogh! And it was just as his mother had described it: a voice full of he ll's own torment.

Still stunned by his mother's metamorphosis - which he knew could only be some sort of dire warning, for it was nothing she would ever deliberately en gineer - Harry was at first unable to answer. But he recognized the voice's d espair, its anguish, its hopelessness, as it continued to call to him: Harry, for G.o.d's sake! If you're out there please answer me. I know you s houldn't, I know you daren't - but you must/ It's happening again, Harry, it'

s happening again The voice was fading, its signal weakening, its telepathic potency wanin g. If Harry was ever to get to the bottom of this he must do so now. 'Who ar e you?' he said. 'What do you want of me?'

Haaarry! Harry Keogh! Help us! Its owner hadn't heard him; the voice w as tailing away, beginning to merge with a wind sprung up along the riverb ank.

'How?' he shouted back. 'How can I help you? I don't even know who you are!' But he suspected that he did. It was a rare thing for the dead to spe ak to him without rapport first being established by some form of introduct ion. Usually he had sought them out, following which they would normally be able to find him again. Which made him suspect that he'd known this one (o r these ones?) before, probably in life.

Haaarry -for G.o.d's sake find us and make an end of it!

'How can I find you?' Harry shouted into the night, wanting to cry from t he sheer frustration of it. 'And what's the point of it? I won't even remembe r, not when I'm awake.'

And then - the merest whisper fading into nothing, and yet powerful eno ugh to call up a wind that howled along the riverbank and s.n.a.t.c.hed at Harry , causing him to lean into it - there came that final exhortation which chi lled the ex-Necroscope's blood to ice-water, sent gooseflesh creeping on hi s spine and wrenched him back into the waking world: Find us and put us down! the unknown voice implored. Put an end to these scarlet threads right now, before they can grow. You know the way, Harry: sha rp steel, the wooden stake, the cleansing fire. Do it, Harry. Please . . . do . . . it!

Harry sprang awake. Sandra was clinging to him, trying to hold him down . He was drenched in cold sweat, shaking like a leaf; and she was frightened, too, her eyes wide from it, her mouth forming a frozen 'O'.

'Harry, Harry!' she lay sprawled half across him. She let go his shoulders, h ugged his neck, felt his heart pounding against her breast. 'It's all right, it's all right. It was a bad dream, a nightmare, that's all.'

Eyes wide and darting, s.h.i.+vering and panting for breath, he stared all a round the room and let its familiarity wash over him. Sandra had put on the light the moment his shouting had brought her awake. 'What?' he said, his ha nds trembling where they clutched her. 'What?'

'It's all right,' she insisted. 'A dream, that's all.'

'A dream?' Her words sank in and something of the gaunt vacancy went out of his eyes. He gently pushed her away, began to sit up - then drew air in a gasp and started bolt upright! 'No,' he blurted, 'it was more than just a dream - much more. And Christ, I have to remember!'

But too late; already it was receding, draining back to the roots of his su bconsciousness. 'It was about. . . about - ' he desperately shook his head and sent a spray of sweat flying, ' - my mother! No, not about her but . . . she wa s in it! It was ... a warning? Yes, a warning, and . . . something else.'

But that was all. It was gone, driven out against his will by the will of some other - the will, or legacy, of his son -by the post-hypnotic commands he 'd planted there in Harry's mind.

's.h.i.+t!' Harry whispered, damp and s.h.i.+vering where he sat on the edge of t he bed.

That had been at 4:05 a.m.

Harry had had maybe three and a half hours' sleep, Sandra an hour less.

When he'd finally calmed down and put on his dressing-gown, then she had mad e a pot of coffee. And as he sat there s.h.i.+vering and sipping at his drink, s o she had tried to bring his dream back to mind, had urged him to remember i t ... all the while cursing herself inside that she'd slept right through it ! For if she had stayed awake she might just have caught a glimpse of the te rrible thing he'd experienced, whatever it had been. That was her job: help him sort out his mind and get back what he'd lost. Whether he wanted it or n ot, and whether or not it was good for him.

But: 'No use,' he'd shaken his head after long minutes of patient questioning , 'it's gone. And probably best that it's gone. I have to be ... careful.'

Sandra had been tired. She hadn't asked why he must be careful because she knew. But she should have asked because she wasn't supposed to know. An d when she'd looked at him again his soulful eyes had been steady on her, h is tousled head tilted a little on one side, perhaps questioningly. 'What's your interest, anyway?' he'd wanted to know.

'Only that if you get it off your chest you'll feel better about it.' At least her lie had the ring of logic to it. 'Once a nightmare is told, it's not so frighte ning.' 'Oh? And that's your understanding of nightmares, is it?'

'I was trying to be helpful.'

'But I keep telling you I can't remember, and you keep prodding away at me. It was just a dream, and no one tries that hard to winkle someone else's dreams out of them! Not without a d.a.m.n good reason, anyway. There's somethi ng not right here, Sandra, and I think I've known it for some time. Old Bett ley says it's my fault that what we have isn't exactly right for me, but now I'm not so sure.'

There was no answer to that and so she'd kept quiet, acted hurt, drawn a part from him. But in fact she'd known that he was the one who was hurt, and that was the last thing she wanted. And when he finally got back into bed a nd she joined him there, then it had become obvious how cold he was, how sti ff and silent and thoughtful where he lay with his back to her . . .

A little over an hour later she was awake again, a call of nature. Harry slept on, heavy in the bed, dead to the world. That thought made her s.h.i.+ver a little as she rejoined him; but of course he wasn't dead, just exhausted, mentally if not physically. His limbs were leaden, his eyes still, his brea thing deep, slow and regular. No more dreams. Dawn was maybe three-quarters of an hour away.

Lying beside him, still Sandra felt distanced from him. Their relations hip, she felt, was like fancy knitting, which was something she'd never bee n any good at. One slip of the needle and the whole thing comes undone. And that was a shame. Their lovemaking last night had been very, very good. Fo r both of them, she knew.

To reinforce delicious, liquid memories of him inside her, she reached across him and down, taking him in her hand. And a moment later she was rew arded when he stiffened and pulsed in the tube of her fingers. An animal re action, she knew, but she was grateful for it anyway.

Her loyalties were rapidly breaking down, splitting apart, and she knew that, too. E-Branch paid the bills, but there had to be more to life than fat pay cheques. Harry was what she wanted. He wasn't just a job any more, hadn't been for a long time. And the time was ever drawing closer when she must make the break, say to h.e.l.l with the Branch and tell him the whole thi ng; d.a.m.n it, he'd probably guessed it by now anyway.

Drifting, her thoughts began to run in pointless circles.

Before falling asleep again she was aware of noises in the garden where t he property fronted the river. Slow noises, shuffling, sluggish. A badger? Sh e wasn't sure if there were any badgers up here. Hedgehogs, then . . . Not bu rglars, anyway . . . Not in a district as rundown as this ... No money here .

. . Badgers . . . Hedgehogs . . . A grating of stones on the gravel of the g arden paths . . . Something doggedly busy in the garden . . .

Sandra slept in a fas.h.i.+on, but the noises were still on her mind. Conscious of them, she hovered on the verge of true sleep and wouldn't let herself be drawn down. But as dawn began to filter its first feeble rays of pale li ght through the blinds of Harry's room, the garden sounds gradually faded aw ay. She heard the familiar creak of the old arched-over gate at the bottom o f the garden, and what might have been a slow series of shuffling footsteps, and then no more.

Shortly after that the birds were singing, and Harry came up the stairs in his dressing-gown with a steaming pot of coffee and biscuits on a tray. 'Brea kfast,' he said, simply. And: 'We had a rough night.'

'Did we?' she sat up.

'Up and down a bit,' he shrugged. He was still pale but less weary-look ing now. And she thought she detected a new look in his eyes. Wariness? Rel uctant realization? Resolution? Hard to tell with Harry. But resolution? Wh at had he resolved to do, to say? She must get to him before he got to her.

'I love you,' she said, putting down her cup on a small bedside table. 'For get anything else and just remember that. I can't help it and don't want to, bu t I just love you.'

'I ... I don't know,' he said. But looking at her -sitting up in his bed l ike that, still pink from sleep and with her nipples achingly stiff - it was h ard not to want her. She knew the look in his eyes, reached out and tugged at the cord of his dressing-gown; and he was hard under there and moving with a l ife of his own.

Then they were clinging and she curled herself onto him; and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were warm, soft and pliant against him; and he touched her in those places wh ere he knew she liked him to, and stroked her at the wet, mobile junction of their flesh. It was the best it had ever been, and their coffee went cold . .

Later, downstairs, with a fresh pot beginning to bubble, he said: 'And now I could face a decent breakfast!'

'Eggs and bacon? Out on the patio?' She thought that maybe the worst was over. She'd be able to break it to him now without fearing it would destroy everything. 'Will it be warm enough out there?'

'Middle of May?' Harry shrugged. 'Maybe it's not so hot at that. But the sun'

s up and the sky is clear, so ... let's call it invigorating rather than chilly.'

'All right.' She turned towards the fridge but he caught her arm.

'I'll do it, if you like,' he said. 'I think I'd enjoy making breakfast for you.'

'Fine', she smiled and went through the old house to the front. It was the ba ck, really, but facing the river like that she always thought of it as 'the front '.

Opening large patio windows where they overlooked the high-walled gard en, the first thing she noticed was the gate under its stone archway, hang ing ajar on rusting scroll hinges. And she remembered hearing it creaking just as dawn was breaking. A puff of wind, maybe, though she couldn't reme mber the night as being especially breezy.

She walked down across the crazy-paving patio with its weathered garden furniture. The garden was a suntrap, seeming to gather all of the early-morn ing May sunlight right into itself. Already the wall of the house was warm, basking in the glow. It wouldn't at all be a bad place to live, she thought, if Harry would only get it fixed up.

He had, in fact, done a little work on the house and grounds in the last four or five years. He'd had the central heating put in, for one thing, and h ad at least made an effort to sort out the garden. She crossed the patio to t he lawn and made her way down the gravel path which divided it centrally. The gra.s.s was longer than it should be but still manageable, barely. At the bott om of the lawned area the garden had been terraced on one side, with a shallo w dry-stone wall holding back the soil. This was the alleged 'vegetable garde n', though the only vegetation here now consisted of large areas of stinging nettles, brambles run wild, and a huge patch of rhubarb!

She saw that several of the stones were missing from the top tier of the wall, and at once remembered the grating sounds she'd heard when she lay ha lf-asleep. If a section of the wall had simply fallen, perhaps pushed over b y an expansion of dew- or rain-sodden soil, then its debris would be lying h ere at the foot of the wall. But there was nothing, just a missing top tier; and for her life she couldn't see someone sneaking in here just to steal st ones! Perhaps Harry would know something about it.

She carried on down to the gate and looked out across the reedy bank to t he river, whose surface was inches deep in undulating mist. It was a calm sce ne but very eerie: the mist lying there like cream on milk, turning the river to a twining white ribbon for as far as the eye could see. She'd never seen anything quite like it before. But maybe it augured well for a warm day.

Then, closing the gate and wedging it with a half-brick, she paused and s niffed at the morning air. Just for a moment then she had thought to smell so mething . . . gone off? Yes, gone entirely off, in fact. But just as quickly the smell had disappeared.

So maybe that was what last night's snuffling and shuffling had been abou t: local nocturnal creatures sniffing at the body of some poor dead thing or other where it lay in the reeds there at the river's rim. Which might also ex plain the maggots squirming in a tangle on the overgrown path just outside th e gate!

Maggots! Ugh! Loathsome things!