Necroscope IV: Deadspeak n-4

by Brian Lumley

  Darcy gritted his teeth, raised the cleaver — And the membrane in the back of the cavity of Armstrong’s right eye bulged and erupted, and a finger, blue-grey and pulsating, wriggled out onto his cheek!

  ‘Jesus!’ Darcy fell back, almost fainted, and Manolis took over. He fired at Armstrong’s face, pulling the trigger of his silenced gun until the nightmare finger and face both were so much pulp. And when his magazine was empty, then he took the cleaver from Darcy’s rigid fingers, and took Armstrong’s head, too.

  Darcy had turned away and was throwing up, but between each bout he gasped, ‘Now we… we have to burn the… the ugly bastard!’

  Manolis was up to that, too. The lamps in the villa weren’t just ornamental after all. They contained oil, and there was a spare can of fuel in the kitchen. By the time Darcy could take control of his heaving stomach, the remains of Armstrong were burning. Manolis stood watching, until Darcy got hold of his arm and took him off to a safe distance.

  ‘You can never tell,’ he said, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief. ‘There might be a lot more in him than just that godawful finger!’

  But there wasn’t…

  ‘I hope you didn’t leave it like that,’ said Harry. ‘The oil couldn’t have burned all of him.’

  ‘Manolis got a body-bag,’ Darcy explained. ‘We took him to an incinerator in the industrial part of town. Said he was a mangy dog that crawled into the garden to die.’

  ‘The heat of that incinerator would calcine his bones down to powder,’ Manolis added.

  ‘So, we took second blood!’ Harry growled, but with such uncharacteristic savagery that the others glanced at him in surprise. He saw their looks and turned his face away. But not before Darcy noted that his eyes were more soulful — or soulless — than ever. And of course he knew why.

  ‘Harry, about Sandra,’ he started to explain yet again.

  But Harry cut him off. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said. ‘If anyone’s it was my fault. I should have made sure personally that she was out of this. But we can’t think about her now, and I mustn’t think about her — not if I want to be able to think about anything else. Manolis, did the information you were waiting for come in?’

  ‘A great deal of information,’ said the other. ‘Almost everything, except that which is the most important.’

  Manolis was driving his car, with Harry and Darcy in the back seat. They were approaching the centre of Rhodes New Town where Manolis was quartered. It wasn’t yet 6:00 p.m. but already some tourists were out in their evening finery. ‘Look at them,’ said Harry, his voice cold. “They’re happy; they laugh and dress up; they’ve had a blue sky all day and a blue sea to swim in, and the world looks fine. They don’t know there are scarlet threads among all that blue. And they wouldn’t believe it if you told them.’ And to Manolis, abruptly: ‘Tell me everything you’ve learned.’

  ‘Lazarides is a very successful archaeologist,’ Manolis began. ‘He came into prominence, oh, four years ago, with several important finds on Crete, Lesbos and Skiros. Before that… we don’t have much on him. But he does have Greek nationality, and Romanian! This is very odd, if not unique. The authorities in Athens are looking into it, but — ‘ he shrugged,’ — this is Greece. Everything takes time. And this Lazarides, he has the friends in high places. Perhaps he purchased his nationality, eh? Certainly he would have the monies for it if the rumours are correct. Rumours? They abound! It is said that he keeps — or sells to unscrupulous collectors — at least half of the treasures he excavates; also that he is the — how do you say? — the Midas! Everything he touches turns to gold. He only has to look at an island to know if any treasure is hidden there. Why, even now men of his are digging in an old Crusader castle on Halki!’

  Harry nodded. ‘I understand all of that, and I’ll tell you about it later. Go on.’

  Manolis turned left off a busy street into an alley, then left again into a tiny private car park behind his hotel. ‘We’ll talk inside,’ he said.

  He had good spacious rooms; apparently the proprietor owed the local police a few favours, and Manolis was collecting; as he talked he prepared cool drinks, but low in alcohol. For a Greek he was sweating profusely. Darcy mentioned it and again Manolis shrugged.

  ‘I am the criminals,’ he explained. ‘Pardon: a criminal. I am a murderer, and it concerns me.’

  ‘Armstrong?’ said Harry. ‘You never performed a more worthy act in your entire life!’

  ‘Still, I did it, and I am hiding it, and it bothers me.’

  ‘Forget it!’ Harry insisted. ‘You may be doing it again, and sooner than you think. Tell me more about Lazarides.’

  Manolis nodded. ‘He is purchasing an island. Well, a rock, in the Dodecanese off Sirna. Amazing! I mean, what is that for an island? One small beach and a fang of rock jutting from the sea? But he plans a house there, on a great ledge on the rock. Again, there was once a Crusader tower there, a pharos. What he will do there is anybody’s guesses. There is no water; everything will have to be brought in by boat; he will be one very lonely creature up there!’

  ‘An aerie,’ said Harry, ‘or the next best thing. He still desires to be Wamphyri!’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Forget it. Goon.’

  Again Manolis’s shrug. ‘He keeps a small private aeroplane, a Skyvan, on Karpathos. There is a runway there now. He uses the plane for trips to Athens, Crete, elsewhere. Maybe even to Romania, eh? Which means that sometimes his boat may be found off Karpathos. Don’t worry, I have a man on it. Every day tourists fly out to Karpathos from Rhodes. They, too, use a Skyvan. It is the flying matchbox! But very, very safe. The pilot will look for Lazarides’s boat. I expect his call any time…’

  ‘Anything else?’ Harry was still very cool, very pale. He didn’t seem to have been touched by the sun.

  ‘About Armstrong,’ said Manolis. ‘Five and a half years ago he and some American friends went on a trip somewhere in Europe… that’s all I know about it, somewhere in Europe. There was an accident, a fall in the mountains or some such, and some people were killed. Armstrong survived but he didn’t go back to America. Instead he ended up here, in Greece, and applied for the Greek citizenship. The next thing we know, he’s working for Lazarides.’

  ‘And that’s it?’ Harry’s gaunt, almost vacant expression hadn’t changed.

  That’s it,’ said Manolis. And: ‘Oh, one other thing. I now have the authorization to chase this Vrykoulakas dog to hell, if I can find him!’

  Darcy nodded. ‘We didn’t sleep much last night. Manolis spent a lot of time phoning Athens. We pushed the drugs side of this thing just as hard as we could. So now we can use all the force that’s necessary to apprehend and search Lazarides and his lot.’

  ‘If we can find them,’ Harry echoed Manolis.

  ‘Well, two or three of them we can find, for sure!’ said the Greek. ‘On Halki, where they’re digging in those ruins.’

  Again Harry’s nod. “That will be as good a place as any to start, yes. I’d like to see this fang of rock in the Dodecanese, too. All right, and now I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered, and you’ll see for yourselves how it all fits together. But I warn you now, it’s an incredible story.’

  He told it all and they sat fascinated to the end. ‘And so now I have my deadspeak back,’ he finished off, ‘which is one step in the right direction, at least.’

  ‘You are the cool one,’ Manolis told him. ‘I thought so the first time I met you. You talk about steps in the right direction, and all this time Sandra, your lover — ‘

  ‘Manolis,’ Harry stopped him. ‘No man has lost more than I have. No, I’m not being a martyr, I’m just stating a fact. It started when I was a kid and it hasn’t stopped yet. I’ve lost just about every person I ever loved. I’ve even lost my son in another world, to another creed: this same damned creed, vampirism! And the more you lose, the more hardened you get to it. Ask any habitual gambler. They don’t play to win but to lose. They used to play to wi
n, but now when they win they just go right on back to the tables.’

  ‘Harry,’ Darcy took his arm, ‘ease up.’

  But Harry shook him off. ‘Let me finish.’ And he turned back to Manolis. ‘Well, I used to play to win, too. But it’s a hell of a game where all the cards are stacked against you. You want me to cry over Sandra? Maybe I will, later. You want me to go to pieces, to show that I’m a good guy? But what good will I be in all of this if I go to pieces? I loved Sandra, yes, I think. But already it’s too late to do anything about it. She’s just one more thing that I’ve lost. It’s the only way I can look at it and still go on. Except now I may be starting to win again. We may be starting to win again. Not Sandra, no, for she’s dead. And if she isn’t, then she’d be better off. I know this Janos Ferenczy now, and I know what I’m talking about. You call me cold, but you don’t know how I’m burning up inside. Now I’ll ask you to do me a favour: stop worrying about how you see things. Stop worrying about Sandra. It’s too late. This is a war and she was a casualty. What we have to do now is start hitting back, while we still have a chance!’

  For long moments Manolis said nothing. Then: ‘My friend,’ he said, very softly, ‘you are wound up very tight. You bear a great weight on your shoulders, and I am a great fool. I cannot hope to know what it is like for you, or even anything about you. You are not the ordinary man, and I had no right to speak the way I did or think the things I have thought.’

  Harry sat very still, just looking at the Greek; and slowly Manolis watched the Necroscope’s soulful eyes turn to liquid. Before they could spill over, Harry stood up and kicked his chair away, and went unsteadily to the bathroom…

  Later:

  ‘What I hate especially about this,’ said Harry, ‘is that he’s laughing at us — at all of us, at Mankind — and perhaps at me in particular. It’s his vampire ego. He calls himself Lazarides, after the Biblical Lazarus, raised up from the dead by Christ. Depending on your beliefs that’s a blasphemy in itself. But he doesn’t stop there. Just to rub it in and make his point he calls his boat by the same name! He dares us to discover him, yells: “Hey, look, I’m back!” He breaks the first rule of vampires and makes himself prominent, in several ways. And I think he does it deliberately.’

  ‘But why?’ said Darcy.

  ‘Because he can afford to!’ Harry answered. ‘Because people no longer believe in vampires. No, I don’t mean us but people in general. In this day and age he can afford to be prominent, because to a point he’s safe from the masses. But he also does it because he knows that the people who do believe — and they are the ones he’s chiefly interested in, the dangerous ones, you, me, E-Branch, and any other friends — will go up against him.’

  ‘You mean he… he wants a showdown?’

  ‘Oh yes, for he’s seen the future! That’s the thing he was best at, and it’s how he thwarted Faethor. He knows we have to have a showdown, so he’s guiding events his way, to give himself every advantage. He’ll use my own devices against me, and against anyone who is with me. He has Ken Layard, and so can locate any one of us more or less at will. He crippled Trevor Jordan so that he’d be no use to us; and he’s taken Sandra not out of spite or greed or lust but the better to know me, because then he’ll not only know my strengths but also my weaknesses. As for last night: he sent his thrall Armstrong to test you and possibly destroy you, so as to deny me the use of one of my last crutches.’

  ‘But if he can see the future, wouldn’t he know we’d get Armstrong?’ Manolis used his policeman’s logic. ‘In which case, why simply sacrifice him like that?’

  ‘A test,’ Harry answered, ‘like I said. He wouldn’t see it as a sacrifice. Vampires have no friends, only thralls. And anyway, Armstrong was only one of Janos’s players; he has plenty more. Ken Layard, for example, who can do anything Armstrong could do and a lot more. But I understand your question: why provoke a skirmish you can’t win, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘The future isn’t like that,’ he said. ‘It isn’t easily read, never safely, and there’s no way to avoid it. And, it must always be remembered, nothing is certain until it has happened. There was a man, a Russian esper, called Igor Vlady. I met him once in the Möbius Continuum. In life he’d been a prognosticator, he read the future. And when he was dead he kept right on doing it, eventually to become a master of future and past time. Where all space was an open book to Möbius, all time was Vlady’s playground. Incorporeal, he wandered the timestream forever. Vlady told me that in life he had always held his own future inviolable: he wouldn’t read it, felt that to do so would be to tempt fate. He didn’t want to know how or when his time would come, for he knew that he’d only worry about it as it loomed ever closer. Eventually, in a moment of uncertainty and fear, he broke his own rule and forecast his own death. He believed he knew from which quarter it was coming, and fled to avoid it. But he was wrong and fled into it! He was like a man crossing railway tracks, who sees a train coming and jumps to avoid it — into the path of another train.’

  Darcy said: ‘You mean, Janos can’t trust what he reads of the future?’

  ‘He can trust it only to a point. He sees only the wide scheme of things, not the fine details. And whatever he sees, he knows he can’t avoid it. For example: he knew Faethor would destroy him, but saw beyond it to a time when he’d be back. He couldn’t stop Faethor and didn’t really try to, for the inevitable was by definition inescapable, but he could and did make certain of his return.’

  Manolis had kept up with all of this as best he could, but now he began to feel something of the hopelessness of it. And he asked: ‘But how can you even think to beat this creature? He would seem to me… invincible!’

  Harry smiled a strange, grim smile. ‘Invincible? I’m not so sure about that. But I’m sure he wants us to think he is! Ask yourself this: if he’s invincible, why does he concern himself with us? And why is he so worried about me? No, Igor Vlady was right: the future is never certain, and only time can tell. And anyway, what difference does it make? If I don’t seek him out, he’ll only come looking for me.’ He nodded. ‘A showdown, yes, it’s coming. And for now Janos is pulling the strings. We can only hope that in his manipulations he’ll overstep himself and make the same mistake Igor Vlady made… and step in front of a train.’

  At 8:05 p.m. the call Manolis was expecting from the pilot of the Rhodes-Karpathos Skyvan materialized; it transpired that Jianni Lazarides’s aircraft, piloted by a man in his employ, had taken off at 3:00 a.m. from the Karpathos airstrip, destination unknown, with Lazarides himself aboard — accompanied by a man and woman answering Sandra’s and Ken Layard’s descriptions!

  Harry had steeled himself to expect something of the sort and wasn’t so badly shocked, but he was puzzled. ‘How do you mean, destination unknown? Wouldn’t the aircraft require some sort of clearance? Didn’t he log himself out, go through customs, or whatever they have to do?’

  Manolis gave a snort. ‘I say again, this is Greece. And Karpathos is a small island. The airport is… a shack! It has only existed for a year or two, and wouldn’t be there at all if not for the tourists. But, did you say customs? Hah! Someone to stamp your passport if you’re a foreigner coming in, maybe, but not if you’re Greek and going out! And at 3:00 in the morning — why, it amazes me that anyone has even bothered to remember the time so precisely!’

  ‘Stymied,’ said Darcy. ‘He could have gone anywhere.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘No, I can find him. The problem is, it may not be so easy for me to go where he’s gone. We’ll jump that one when we reach it. Meanwhile, I have to speak to Armstrong.’

  That caught both Manolis and Darcy off balance — for a moment. Darcy was the first to recover, for he’d seen the Necroscope at work before. ‘You want us to take you to him?’

  ‘Yes, and right now. Not that I think time is any longer of the essence, for I don’t. Wheels have been set in motion and everything will eventually come to a hea
d, I’m sure. But if all I had to do was sit twiddling my thumbs… I think I’d go mad.’

  Manolis had caught up. ‘Are you saying you’re going to speak to a dead man?’

  Harry nodded. ‘Yes, at the incinerator. That’s where he is and where he’ll always be, from now on.’

  ‘And… and he’ll talk to you?’

  ‘It doesn’t trouble the dead to talk to me,’ said Harry. ‘Armstrong’s no longer in thrall to Janos. He might even be eager to square things. And later, tonight, then there’s someone else I must try to reach.’

  ‘Möbius?’ Darcy wondered.

  ‘The same,’ Harry nodded. ‘A vampire tangled my mind and took away my deadspeak, and it took another vampire to put the mess to rights. But the one who caused the damage was also a great mathematician: my son, who inherited his talents from me. And while he was in my mind he also closed certain doors, so that now I’m’ innumerate. Well, if Faethor could do what he did, maybe Möbius can restore that other talent of mine. If so, then Janos gets a real run for his money.’

  The incinerator was still working. A young Greek labourer on overtime shovelled timber waste into the red and yellow maw of a glaring, roaring beast, while overhead, smoke shot with dying sparks billowed blackly from a high chimney. Darcy and Manolis stood to one side watching the stoker at work, and Harry sat on a crate a little apart from them, his strange eyes staring and almost vacant. His mind, however, was anything but vacant, and the Necroscope’s every instinct assured him that Seth Armstrong’s spirit was here. Indeed, he could hear its moaning cries.

  Armstrong, Harry said, but softly, you’re out of it now. You’ve been released. Why all the sorrow?

  The moaning and sobbing stopped at once, and in another moment: Harry Keogh? Armstrong’s dead voice was full of astonishment and disbelief. You’d talk to me?

  Oh, I’ve talked to a lot worse than you, Seth, Harry told him. And anyway, it’s my guess you were just another victim, like so many others. I don’t think you could help what you’d become.