by Brian Lumley
‘You’re a goner, Johnny,’ Harry told him, and opened his furnace eyes to reflect ruddily on the other’s paralysed, astonished features.
But Pound’s paralysis was shortlived, and the rest of it — his almost immediate response — was all instinct, so that not even the Necroscope could have seen it coming. ‘What?’ he gurgled, taking his left hand from the wheel and reaching up behind his head for a meat-hook where it hung from the cab’s frame. ‘A goner? Well, one of us is, that’s for sure!’
Harry’s plan had been simple: as Found attacked him, he’d conjure a Möbius door and wrestle him through it. But it was difficult enough just to take hold of a man in the cab of a truck, let alone when he was wielding a meat-hook.
Johnny had seen the huge bloodstain on Harry’s jacket and recognized him as the one he’d shot back in the diner’s vehicle park. How he came to be in the cab was something else, but he surely wouldn’t be much good for anything with a gaping hole in his shoulder. And even less good when Johnny was finished with him. ‘Whoever you are,’ he grunted, swinging the hook, ‘you’re dead fucking meat!’
The blow was awkward and left-handed, but still Harry couldn’t avoid it. He ducked down a little and the question mark of shining metal passed over his right shoulder, swooped down on him and caught in the hole which the bullet had torn out of his back. He gasped his renewed agony as Found yanked him towards him and glared into his face. Then -
— Using Harry as a counterweight, the necromancer lifted his left leg, reached it across Harry’s knees and kicked open the cab door. And as the truck careened down the twin lanes he kicked again, this time at Harry himself, and simultaneously released his hold on the meat-hook.
Sliding free of his seat into the rush of night air, the Necroscope made a desperate grab for the wildly swinging door. Luckily the window was down; as he looped his arms through the frame, so his feet slammed down on to the running board. Johnny could no longer reach him without letting go of the wheel, but he could at least try to shake him loose.
Heedless of other vehicles, the maniac threw his huge truck this way and that across the lanes, and Harry hung on like grim death until the thought suddenly occurred. Why not a big door? Why not the biggest bloody door you could ever imagine?
On his left and almost directly under his skidding, skittering feet, a car was sideswiped and sent spinning, crashing through the roadside barrier in a shriek of ruptured metal. It smashed into the embankment nose first and exploded like a bomb. But the big truck rushed on and left people frying and dying in its wake, and in the cab Johnny fuelled himself with their pain and knew that even dead they would hear his crazy laughter.
Enough! Harry thought, and conjured his giant door — on the road directly in front of the truck.
The rumble and thunder and rocking violence of the vehicle died away in a moment as it plunged through the Möbius door into darkness absolute; likewise the mad laughter of Johnny Found, shut off as he delivered a single gonging thought into the aweseome Möbius Continuum: WHAT?
What indeed?
The beam of his headlights went on for ever, cutting a tunnel through infinity. But apart from the headlight beams and the truck where its mass surrounded him, there was nothing whatsoever. No road, no sound, no sensation of motion, nothing.
WHAAAAT!? Johnny screamed again, deafeningly, in both his and the Necroscope’s mind.
But: No good shouting now, Johnny, Harry told him, hanging on the door and guiding the truck, aiming it like a missile to its final destination. Like I said, you’re a goner. And we’re very nearly there. Welcome to hell!
Johnny let go of the wheel and sprawled across the wide seat, reaching for the Necroscope where he clung to the door of the cab. But too late; they were there; Harry conjured another door in front of the truck and pushed himself free, slowing his motion to an abrupt halt. And the truck went rushing on -
— Out of the Möbius Continuum to emerge inches over the surface of a narrow road. It crashed down, bounced, rocked and roared; and as its free-spinning tyres found purchase on the tarmac, so it rocketed forward. Johnny screamed as he saw the sharp bend coming up where the road skirted a long, high wall of ivy-clad stone. He made a desperate grab for the steering wheel, but the truck had already mounted the kerb. It shot across a narrow strip of grass, tore through a mass of night-black shrubbery, slammed into the wall… and stopped.
Stopped dead.
… But not Johnny!
As the truck and its trailer concertinaed — as the wall cracked and sent stone debris flying — as massive petrol tanks shattered and showered fuel on to hot, tortured metal, turning the truck into a blazing inferno — so Johnny was ripped out of his driver’s seat and hurled through the windscreen. Bones in his left arm and shoulder broke where, pinwheeling, he hit the top of the wall before crushing down on to something hard far on the other side. There was pain, more pain than he’d ever known; and then, apart from flickering firelight from beyond the wall, and a booming, whooshing explosion as the emergency tank blew, there was a deafening silence. The silence of mental concentration, of knowing even through waves of agony that someone — several pitiless someones — were watching him.
He cranked his neck up an inch from where sharp gravel chips stuck to the tattered mess of his face, and saw Harry Keogh standing there, looking down on him. And behind the red-eyed Necroscope there were other — people? Things, anyway — which Johnny knew should never be. They came (crawled, staggered, crumbled) forward, and one of them was or had once been a girl. Johnny backed off, pushing with his raw hands, sliding on his belly and his knees, skidding in the bloodied gravel until he collided with something hard, which brought him up short. He somehow turned his head and looked back, and saw what had stopped him: a headstone.
‘A… a… fucking graveyard!’ he gasped.
And Harry Keogh said, ‘End of the road, Johnny.’
Pamela Trotter said, You kept your promise, Harry. And he nodded.
And Johnny Found, Necromancer, knew what had passed between them. ‘No!’ he gasped. Then screamed: ‘Noooooooo!’
He would get to his feet. Even broken, shattered, cut to ribbons, he would flee from the hell of it. But Pamela’s dead friends fell or flopped on him and bore him down, and a hand that shed rotting flesh and maggots stoppered his mouth. Then she came to him and searched among his rags, until she found his new knife. And close up like that — badly gone into corruption though she was, even with the flesh beginning to slough from her face — still he knew her.
You remember that good time we had? she said. You didn’t even say thanks, Johnny, and you didn’t leave me anything to remember you by. Well, now I think it’s time I had me a small memento. Or even a big one, eh? Something I can take back down into the earth with me, right? She showed him his own knife and smiled at him, and her teeth were long where the blackened gums had shrivelled back from them.
Harry turned away and shut out the sight; shut out Pound’s silent, frenzied shrieking, too, from his mind. But to Pamela he said, ‘Make sure you kill him.’
Except: Too late! She was weeping her frustration. Or rather, too soon! Damn the bastard, Harry, but he’s already died on me!
Harry sighed his relief and thought, Just as well. She heard him and a moment later agreed:
Yes, I suppose it is. Shit, I didn’t want to dirty my hands on this filth anyway!
And now Pound’s deadspeak reached out to both of them, to Harry and to Pamela. What… is this? Where… am I? Who… is it out there?
Neither one of them answered him, but the sheer weight of Harry’s presence impressed itself on Pound’s mind like a light shining in through the stretched membrane of shuttered eyelids. He knew that Harry was there, and that he was special. It’s you, right? he said. The guy with the dark glasses, with some kind of magic. You brought me here with your magic, right?
Harry knew that Pamela would probably never speak to Johnny Found, neither Pamela nor any other of the outraged Great
Majority. Instead of taunting the necromancer, they’d merely shun him, lock him up or out, like a leper. So maybe Harry shouldn’t speak to him either but simply go away. And perhaps that would be the most merciful thing to do.
Except… Harry had a less than merciful thing inside him, which now caused him to speak up.
You had the same magic, Johnny, he said. Or you could have had. You could speak to the dead — could have trained yourself, as I did, to converse with them and befriend them — but no, you chose to torture them instead.
Found was quick to catch on. So now I’m one of them, right? I’m dead and you did it to me. But just answer me this: why?
Harry could have explained: that he’d needed to focus his Wamphyri passions on something — to have something to let them loose on — rather than people who were previously his friends; which was to say E-Branch and the world in general. He could have explained, but didn’t. For his vampire wouldn’t let him. Found had been the cold, cruel, uncaring one in life; death should be a cold, cruel place, too. And just as uncaring. An eye for an eye.
Why did I kill you? Harry shrugged, began to turn away.
Hey, fuckface! Found shouted after him, defiant, furious even in death. That doesn’t cut it. You had your reasons, sure enough. Because of the dead? Shit! Who gives a fuck for the dead? So come on, tell me… why?
And so — coldly, cruelly and uncaringly — Harry told him. You’re right, he said. No one gives a fuck for the dead. And you, Johnny, you’re dead. You want to know why? And again he shrugged. Well, why the fuck not?
8 The Vampire Killers
Even though the Great Majority no longer trusted him, Harry had always respected them. He thanked Pamela and those of her friends who had assisted in bringing Johnny Found to justice; and as they commenced their arduous return to what would now be their final resting places, so the Necroscope employed his metaphysical mind’s fantastic equations and materialized a Möbius door. But in the moment before he stepped through it…
… An agonized voice — not deadspeak but telepathy, which even as he received it changed to deadspeak — reached out to him from a deserted stockyard not far from the mainline station in Darlington. It was Trevor Jordan: alive at first, then dead, turning to fused flesh, bubbling blood and charred, blackened bone as a squad of former E-Branch colleagues torched him to sticky, steaming cinders!
Trevor! Harry gasped, his own agony almost as great as the telepath’s as he received the full, searing impact of his final seconds. Trevor, I’m coming — right now — just keep talking and I’ll find -
No! Jordan cut him off, as all the pain of a life at its termination faded away and death’s cool darkness crashed over him, laving him like an ocean wave. No, Harry, don’t… don’t come here. They’re expecting you, and believe me they have the right gear. And anyway, you have no time. The girl, Harry, the girl!
The Necroscope understood. Of course: Penny.
The Branch had been closing in on him; they had closed in on Jordan; they would close in on Penny — and they’d be doing it even now!
Trevor! Harry was torn — felt himself riven — two ways: a secondary agony, of frustration and indecision. But Jordan was right. No one should be put to such an agonizing death, and certainly not an innocent. Jordan had been just such a one, and so was she. No matter what name anyone gave her now, or what she would be tomorrow, tonight she was an innocent.
You can’t help me, Harry, Jordan told him, trying to make it easier for him. Not this time. You can only jeopardize your own safety — and Penny’s. But it’s OK, it’s OK. I lived twice, which was enough. And dying twice was… that was too much. I don’t need any more.
In the Möbius Continuum, Harry still felt himself dragged apart, pulled two ways. He moaned his horror — and his anger — as he deliberately shut Jordan’s deadspeak thoughts out of his mind. Later, maybe later, he’d have time to thank him for the warning. But as for now -
— Bonnyrig.
He emerged along the river bank, well away from the house, emerged to a darkness shot with the crimson of his fury. Wamphyri fury! The thing within held sway; its awareness washed out from the Necroscope like human — like inhuman — radar, scanning the house standing in darkness. Except… when Harry left here the lights were ablaze!
Harry’s telepathy was carried on his vampire probe. In the house, five people — five warm beings full of blood — five clever, thinking creatures, and four of them possessed of wild, weird talents. But nothing so weird as Harry’s. His metaphysical mind touched upon their minds, but guardedly, so that they wouldn’t suspect.
Penny first, terrified for her life, but as yet unharmed. Then Guy Teale, an as yet undeveloped seer, given on occasion to glimpsing the future, which Harry well knew was an unwieldy, unforgiving talent at best. And Frank Robinson, a spotter with the ability to recognize another esper on sight, or even in close proximity (his mind flinched a little when Harry touched it, but not enough that the Necroscope’s presence was revealed; Robinson’s talent, too, was as yet embryonic). But then… ah, then there was Ben Trask. A sad thing: Harry had hoped there’d be no old friends here, but here was Ben. And finally -
— Paxton!
Paxton the mind-flea, the previously unreachable itch, a vampire no less than Harry himself, who scorned the blood of others for the secret juices of their minds, their very thoughts. And indeed Paxton was something else: keen beyond the call of duty, zealous to a fault, vicious as the crossbow he even now held on Penny Sanderson in the Necroscope’s bedroom. So that quick as Harry was to withdraw his probe, still he wasn’t quick enough and Paxton knew he was there.
The telepath at once narrowed his eyes and quietly, with a shiver in his voice, called downstairs: ‘He’s close! He’s coming!’
In the spacious front room of the house, which had served mainly as Harry’s study — whose French windows looked out over a garden descending in shallow terraces to a high wall and the river bank beyond — Ben Trask and Guy Teale received Paxton’s hushed warning and acknowledged it with tight-lipped glances and cramped, edgy movements. Moon and starlight were their only sources of illumination, which in itself was a mistake on their part. Their eyes had needed to adjust to the darkness, and even now worked inefficiently in the room’s gloom. But the Necroscope’s every sense was already adjusted; the night was his element.
It was the same for those upstairs as for Trask and Teale: their only light was that of the moon, creeping into Harry’s bedroom through a window with the curtains thrown back. But downstairs: Teale felt Harry’s presence, touched Ben Trask’s elbow and husked, ‘Paxton’s right. He’s close. And my God, I suddenly realize what we’re doing here! Ben, what if he comes here, right to this room?’
‘You do nothing,’ Trask answered, gruffly. ‘You hold that crossbow on him and do nothing. You give me a chance to talk to him, is all. But if I don’t get that chance, or if you yourself are threatened, then you shoot — and you shoot for real! The heart. Is that understood?’
It was.
‘Now be quiet. Watch. And listen.’
Outside in the garden, mist crawled through the gate in the wall where it hung on rusted hinges. Milky tendrils covered the lower terraces and lapped along the paths. And Trask knew well enough what that meant.
Harry made a Möbius jump from the river bank beyond the gate and emerged with his back to the wall of the house, just to one side of the open French windows. He listened and could hear the breathing of the two men in the room, could feel their very heartbeats. One of them was Ben Trask, but Penny wasn’t with them. She was upstairs… and so was Paxton.
‘Jesus!’ Teale panted, the short hairs rising at the back of his neck. ‘He’s here! I know he is! And I’ve just seen a lot of trouble, a whole load of pain, for one of us.’
Trask cocked his SMG. He took two paces out through the French windows and stood ankle-deep in mist, looking this way and that about the night garden. But he failed to look up. He backed into the room a
nd said, Trouble? Pain? For me? You? Who for, for fuck’s sake?’
‘Paxton!’ Teale hissed. ‘For Paxton!’
Trask turned horrified eyes to the ceiling. Paxton, Robinson and the girl were upstairs; Harry owed Paxton one, maybe several, and that vicious little bastard was holding his woman up there. Trask had worked out, with entirely human logic, that like any ordinary adversary the Necroscope would enter the downstairs rooms first; which was the main reason he’d sent Paxton upstairs: to keep Harry safe, for a little while anyway. Long enough that Trask could maybe talk to him and make sure he got whatever breaks were due him. But Harry wasn’t any ordinary adversary and Trask might have guessed he wouldn’t work that way. He’d work his way, which was unique. But Paxton was in charge up there, and Robinson had a bloody flamethrower!
‘Upstairs!’ Trask gasped. ‘Let’s go — now!’
Harry, too, had decided that it was time. Upside down above the high window of his bedroom, he used the great webbed sucker discs of his hands to cling to the pitted wall of the house and lowered his head to look in. A cloud scudding over the moon obscured the small shadow which his head cast. He glanced inside for a moment only, then withdrew. But adding together what he saw and the thoughts of those inside, he now had a complete picture. And before anyone or thing could move or do anything to change that picture, he acted.
He relaxed his hold on the wall, conjured a door and fell through it -
— Into the bedroom.
Robinson knew it at once. ‘He’s here!’ the spotter yelped, spinning on his heel, jumping and gyrating, trying to aim the hot nozzle of his flamethrower in every direction at the same time but seeing and aiming at nothing.
Paxton knew it was true; he could actually feel the Necroscope’s mind touching his own like an oozing slug — as close as that — but inside the room nothing seemed to have changed. And from downstairs the voices of Trask and Teale were hoarse where the two came running, thundering through the house and up the stairs, shouting their warnings.
