Necroscope V: Deadspawn n-5

by Brian Lumley

  Some do, said another voice in his metaphysical mind, one which laved him like a shower on a sweltering hot day. It was Pamela Trotter, and she was a breath of fresh air.

  Penny had come into the garden with the Necroscope, but of course she hadn’t heard Pamela’s deadspeak. Harry sent her indoors; if not, she would only talk to him, question and distract him. But turning away towards the house she looked as if she might cry, and so he said: ‘I’m not putting you away from me, but I need to be alone for a couple of minutes. After that we’ll have lots of time for being together.’ Because I’ll have to watch you until I’m sure you’re just you. Or if it comes to the worst, until I’m sure that you’re something else.

  His thoughts were deadspeak, or good as, and Pamela picked them up. As Penny went back indoors, so the ex-whore said: A vampire lover, Harry? I’m jealous!

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t be.’ He shook his head and explained what had happened, the trouble Penny had probably landed herself in.

  Hey, I could use that sort of trouble! Pamela retorted. I mean, I really wouldn’t mind being undead with someone like you! But… too late for that. I’m not much up to fun and games any more. Maybe just one last time, eh? For the right man, you know?

  She went quiet and waited for his answer; a long, pregnant pause which defied him to cry off now. Not that he intended to. Eventually he said, ‘You think we should go ahead with it?’

  She sighed. Well, no question which one of you is in charge right now.

  ‘Oh?’

  You have the upper hand, Harry — the human you. For if your vampire was ascendant you’d have no such doubts. You would know what was right!

  Harry gave a snort. ‘My vampire would know what to do for the best? The best for my vampire, maybe!’

  So what’s your problem? (She was becoming impatient with him.) You’re one and the same, or will be.

  ‘My problem is simple,’ the Necroscope answered. ‘If the dark side of me gets its way, the human side loses — perhaps permanently. So maybe I should just let the police have Johnny Found. I know that left to their own devices they’ll get him soon enough anyway, because they’re right on his tail even now. But — ‘

  — But we had a deal! she cut in. I can’t believe you’d want to cry off. I mean, you were so hot for this! Did I let you into my mind — to read what you read there — for nothing? And the other girls? Are they dead for nothing, with no chance to square it? You were the only chance we ever had, Harry. And now you say let the police have him? I mean, fuck the police! Why, they wouldn’t even know what to do with him! What, lock him up in a lunatic asylum for a couple of years, then turn him loose to do it again? No! You were right the first time around: he has to pay now. The full price.

  He held up his hands. ‘Pamela, wait — ‘

  Wait, nothing! You… chickenshit vampire! Have me and the others been digging our way out all this time for nothing?

  That took Harry by surprise. ‘Others?’

  I’ve made a few friends. And they want to help.

  ‘So.’ He shrugged. ‘Let them help…’

  And after long, wondering moments: Then… you haven’t changed your mind?

  He shook his head. ‘Not for a minute. I was just thinking my way round it, that’s all. You’re the one who’s coming on all excited and changeable.’

  She was silent for a count of three, then said, I think that just now, just a minute ago, you deliberately let me run on — or off-at the mouth!

  ‘It’s possible,’ he admitted, nodding. ‘We chickenshit vampires are like that: argumentative just for the sake of it.’

  I’m sorry, Harry, (she felt an utter fool), but it’s just that we’re all set now. And when I homed in on you, it seemed to me you might be reconsidering things.

  ‘No,’ he said again, ‘just thinking things through — or maybe arguing with myself — for the sake of it. What did you want, anyway?’

  He could almost hear her sigh of relief. I was hoping you’d have some idea when we can expect…?

  ‘Soon.’ He cut her off. ‘It has to be very soon now.’ And to himself: Because if I’m going to get Johnny Found, it has to be before E-Branch gets after me. If they’re not already after me.

  In fact he strongly suspected that they were — no, he knew that they must be — and the night would yet prove him right…

  Harry finished his drink and went back inside.

  Penny was waiting for him, pale and lovely, and the look on her face begged the question: what’s going to become of us? The Necroscope wasn’t sure yet, so gave her a kiss instead. Which was when she asked him how it had happened to him. That was something he’d asked himself time and again, until he now believed he had the answer.

  Wasting few words, he quickly told her about old Faéthor Ferenczy’s place in Ploiesti, Romania: the once-ruins where an ancient father of vampires had lain, where surely by now the bulldozers had levelled everything and a concrete mausoleum was mushrooming to the grey skies. Except the vast hive would not be intended as a memorial to the evil of Faéthor (for he had been secretive to the end, so that no one living today remembered him) but to that of the madman Ceausescu’s agro-industrial obsession. Anyway, there was nothing of Faéthor left there now; or, if anything, only a memory. And even then not in the people, only in the earth which the Great Vampire had poisoned.

  ‘I’d lost my talents,’ Harry explained. ‘I had no deadspeak and was locked out of the Möbius Continuum. But Faéthor told me he could fix all that if I would only go to see him. I was over a barrel and had to do it; but in fact he did give me back my deadspeak, and he assisted in my rediscovery of the Möbius Continuum. But all of that was incidental to his plan, which was to come back, to return as a Power and a Plague into the world of men.

  ‘As to how he would do it: I still don’t know if it was an act of evil will or the automatic action of alien nature. I don’t know whether Faéthor caused it to come about, or if he knew it would happen of its own accord. I can’t be sure it wasn’t something he himself set in motion, “with malice aforethought”, or simply the last gasp of his own vampire’s incredible urge for survival. All I know for sure is that there’s nothing more tenacious than a vampire.

  ‘The mechanics of the thing were simple: Faéthor had died when his home was bombed during the war. Staked through by a fallen ceiling beam, and decapitated out of mercy by a man who happened upon the scene, his body had been burned. Nothing of him escaped the fire… or did it?

  ‘What of his fats — vampire fats — rendered down from his flesh, dripping into cracks in the floorboards, seeping into the earth while the rest of the house and Faéthor’s flesh went up in flames? The Greek Christian priests of old had known how to deal with vampires: how every piece of the Vrykoulakas must be burned, because each smallest part has the power of regeneration!

  ‘Anyway, that’s how I see it: Faéthor’s spirit — and not only that but something of the monster’s physical essence, too — had remained there in the atmosphere of the place, and in the earth, waiting. But waiting for what? To be triggered? By what? By Faéthor, when he found himself a suitable vessel or vehicle into the future? I believe so. And also that I was to have been that vehicle.

  ‘Something of him — call it his essential fluids, if you like — had gone down into the earth under his ruins to escape the furnace heat, and when I went to see him and laid myself down to sleep upon that selfsame spot (God, I did, I really did!) then that something surfaced to enter into me. But what was it? I had seen nothing there but a few bats flitting on the night air, which came nowhere near me.

  ‘No, I had seen… something.’

  At this point the Necroscope directed Penny’s fascinated gaze to a shelf of books on the wall by the fireplace. There were a dozen of them, all with the same subject: fungi. She stared hard at the books, then at Harry. ‘Mushrooms?’

  He shrugged. ‘Mushrooms, toadstools, fungi — as you can see, I’ve made something of a study of them. In f
act they’ve occupied quite a bit of my time in the last few weeks.’ He got her one of the books, titled The Handbook Guide to Mushrooms and Other Fungi, and turned to a well-thumbed page near the back. ‘That’s not the one.’ He tapped a fingernail on the illustrated page. ‘But it’s the closest I’ve found. My fungus was more nearly black — and rightly so.’

  She looked at the page. ‘The common earthball?’

  Harry gave a grunt. ‘Not so common!’ he answered. ‘Not the variety I saw, anyway. They weren’t there when I settled down to sleep, but they were there when I woke up: a ring of morbid fruiting bodies — small black mushrooms or puffballs — already rotting and bursting open at the slightest movement, releasing their scarlet spores. I remember I sneezed when their dust got up my nose.

  ‘Later, when they’d rotted right down, their stench was… well, it was like death. No, it was death. I remember how the sun seemed to steam them away. Shortly after that, Faéthor wished me well — which should have been a warning in itself — and advised me not to waste any time but complete the task I’d set myself with despatch. I thought it a queer thing to say, that the way he’d said it had been queer, but he didn’t elaborate.’

  She shook her head. ‘You breathed the spores of a toadstool and became…?’

  ‘A vampire, yes.’ Harry finished it for her. ‘But they weren’t the spores of just any toadstool. These things were spawned of Faéthor’s slime, of his rottenness. They were his deadspawn. But… well, that wasn’t all there was to it. For I’d had a lot of truck with vampires, too, over the years, and I’d learned their ways — perhaps learned too much. Maybe that’s also part of it, I’m not sure. But at least you can see now why you shouldn’t have gone to bed with me. A few spores was enough for me. So… what about you?’

  ‘But as long as I’m with you…‘she began.

  ‘Penny — ‘ he cut in, ‘ — I’m not staying here. I’m not even staying in this world.’

  She flew into his arms. ‘I don’t care which world! Take me wherever you go, whenever you go, and I’ll always be there to care for you.’

  Well, he thought, and I will need someone. And you are a lovely creature. And out loud: ‘But I can’t go anywhere until Found is finished. It’s not just for you but all the others he murdered, too. And one in particular. I made her a promise.’

  ‘Found?’

  ‘Johnny Found, that’s his name. And I have to get after him. He has to die because he’s… he’s like me and all the others I’ve had to deal with: not meant to be. Not in any clean world. I mean, Found hurts the very dead! Isn’t dying enough without him, too? And what if he ever fathers children? What will they be, eh? And will their mother leave them on a doorstep like Johnny was left? No, he has to be stopped here, now.’

  Just thinking about the necromancer had worked Harry into a fury, or if not Harry, his vampire certainly. He wondered what Found was doing right now, this very moment.

  He more than wondered — he had to know.

  Harry freed himself from Penny’s arms, put out the light, stood dark in the darkened room and reached out with his metaphysical mind. He knew Pound’s address, knew the way there. He sent a probe there, to Darlington, the street, the house, into the ground-floor flat… and found it empty.

  This was his chance to take something belonging to the necromancer. Would there be watchers in the street? Probably. But with any luck he wouldn’t be there long enough that they’d see him. ‘Penny, I have to go somewhere now,’ he said. ‘But I’ll be right back. A few minutes at most. You’re to lock the doors and stay right here, in the house.’ His red eyes glowed. This is my place! Only let them dare to… to… and…’

  ‘Let who dare?’ she whispered. ‘E-Branch? Let them dare to what, Harry?’

  ‘A few minutes,’ he growled. ‘I’ll be back before you know it.’

  6 Countdown to Hell

  There were watchers.

  Harry chose to exit from the Möbius Continuum at the same point as the last time he’d been there, in the shadow of the wall across the alley from Pound’s place. And one of the watchers was right there!

  Even in the moment he stepped from the Continuum into the ‘real’, physical world, Harry heard the plain-clothes man’s gasp and knew someone was there in the shadows with him; knew, too, that even now this unknown someone would be reaching for his gun. One big difference between them was that Harry could see perfectly well in the dark. Another was that his adversary was only a man.

  Reacting in a lightning-fast movement, Harry reached out to slap the man’s weapon out of his hand… and saw what kind of a ‘gun’ it was which the other had produced from under his coat. A crossbow! He knocked it away anyway, sent it clattering on the cobbles, and held the esper by his throat against the wall.

  The man was terrified. A prognosticator — a reader of future times — he had known that Harry would come here. That had been as far as he could see; but he’d also known that his own life-thread went on beyond this point. Which had seemed to mean that if there was trouble, Harry would be on the receiving end.

  The Necroscope read these things right out of the esper’s gibbering mind, and his voice was a clotted gurgle as he told him: ‘Reading the future’s a dangerous game. So you’re going to live, are you? Well, maybe. But what as? A man — or a vampire?’ He tilted his head a little on one side and smiled at the other through eyes burning like coals under a bellows’ blast, and in the next moment stopped smiling and showed him his teeth.

  The esper saw the gape — the impossible gape — of Harry’s jaws, and gagged as the vampire’s steel fingers tightened on his windpipe. In his mind he was screaming, Oh, Jesus! I’m dead — dead!

  ‘You could be,’ Harry told him. ‘You could oh so easily be. It rather depends on how well we get on. Now tell me: who killed Darcy Clarke?’

  The man, short and sturdy, balding and narrow-eyed, used both hands to try to loosen Harry’s grip on his throat. It was useless. Turning purple, still he managed to shake his head, refusing to answer the Necroscope’s question with anything but a gurgle. But Harry read it in his mind anyway.

  Paxton! That vicious, slimy…

  At that Harry’s fury filled him to bursting. It would be so easy to just tighten his grip until this staggering shit’s Adam’s apple turned to mush in his hand… but that would be to punish him for what someone else had done. Also, it would be to pander to the monster raging inside him.

  Instead he tossed the man away from him, took a deep breath and breathed a vampire mist. By the time the esper was able to prop himself on one elbow against the wall, choking and massaging his throat, the mist lay over the alley like a shroud and Harry had disappeared into it -

  — Or rather through it, and through the Möbius Continuum into Johnny Pound’s flat.

  He knew he didn’t have a lot of time; it depended how many men the Branch had up here — they could be coming through the main door of the building right now. And they’d be equipped with all the right gear, too. A crossbow is a hellishly ugly weapon, but a flamethrower is far worse!

  Pound’s flat was grimy as a pigsty and smelled just as bad. Harry moved through it without touching, thinking: Even my shoes will feel unclean.

  First he checked the door. It was sturdy as hell, made of heavy old-fashioned oak hung on massive hinges, fitted with three locks and, on the inside, two large bolts. Obviously Johnny hadn’t intended that anyone should break in; which sufficed to make Harry feel a little safer, too. He quickly moved on.

  In the front room, before a small, grimy window overlooking the now quiet road, he paused beside a cheap writing desk. One drawer was half-open; Harry glimpsed a metallic sheen from inside but was distracted by the items on top of the desk: a creased, stained, huge-breasted Samantha Fox calendar, with today’s date ringed in biro alongside some scribbled marginalia, and a hand-scrawled message on a sheet of A4 bearing the Frigis Express logo. The calendar didn’t seem especially important… at least, not until Harry had rea
d the message on the A4:

  Johnny -

  Tonight. A London run. Your ‘lucky charm’ truck, which I’ll have loaded for you. Pick her up at the depot 11:40. It’s for Parkinson’s in Slough. They’ll be dressing it for Heathrow Suppliers starting first thing in the morning, so we can’t be late with this. Sorry for late notice. If you can’t make it, let me know soonest.

  The note was signed in some indecipherable scrawl, but Harry didn’t need to know who had signed it. The date at the top was today’s. Johnny had a London run tonight, leaving the Darlington depot at 11:40.

  Now Harry looked at the calendar again. In the margin opposite the ringed date, Found had scribbled: ‘London run! Good, ‘cos I feel lucky and this could be my night. And I need to fuck inside a tit…’

  Glancing at his watch, Harry saw that it was 11:30. Johnny was at the depot right now.

  The Necroscope came to a decision there and then. His mad quarry used a Frigis Express truck (his ‘lucky charm’ truck) as a prop in his crazed games of sex, murder and necromancy; and so the truck should likewise feature in his punishment. Very well, tonight would be Johnny’s last run. And now all Harry needed was an item from the lunatic’s personal belongings.

  He yanked the desk drawer open the rest of the way, and a half-dozen heavy metal tubes jumped in their velvet-lined compartments. Harry looked at them and thought, What the…? But as he carefully lifted one of the tubes out of the drawer he knew well enough what the…

  The thing was a weapon, which Found himself must have made or had manufactured, for use on his victims. Or for use on one of them, anyway. A name had been painted with a small brush in black enamel on the shining metal: Penny. And Harry thought, This was what went into Penny, before Found went into her.

  The weapon fitted Pamela Trotter’s description perfectly. A section of steel tubing about an inch and a half internal diameter, one end was cut square and had a rubber sheath or hand-grip, and the other end was cut diagonally to a point. That was the cutting edge of the tool and its rim had been filed from the inside out to a razor’s sharpness. The Necroscope already knew how — and why — such a hideous knife would be used. The very thought of it was sickening.