by Brian Lumley
AHHH! came the black, gurglingly glutinous, utterly overpowering voice of Janos Ferenczy in Harry’s mind. BUT SUCH AN ELOQUENT INVITATION. NEVER LET IT BE SAID THAT I WAS THE ONE TO REFUSE YOU!
Möbius and his deadspeak were swept aside on the instant. Harry, paralysed, could do nothing. He felt the Ferenczy step inside his head as a fish feels the lamprey’s clamps in its gill, and was likewise impotent to stop it. It was as if some nameless slug had oozed in through his ear to eat his brain, and was now stretching itself luxuriously before commencing the feast. He tried to bring down the shutters of his mind but they were stuck, effortlessly held open by the invader.
OH? said Janos, as yet feeling his way, enjoying the horror of his host. AND DID I FEEL YOU CRINGE JUST THEN? COULD IT BE THAT YOU ATTEMPTED TO EVICT ME? AND WAS THAT A MEASURE OF YOUR STRENGTH? IF SO, THEN I’VE PRECIOUS LITTLE TO FEAR HERE! BUT FOR SHAME, HARRY KEOGH! WOULD YOU INVITE ME IN AND AS QUICKLY THROW ME OUT? AND WHAT SORT OF A HOST ARE YOU?
‘My… invitation… wasn’t to you!’ Harry forced his brain into gear, tried to remind himself that this was just another vampire. Janos settled on the thought like a vulture to carrion:
I WAS NOT INVITED? BUT YOUR MIND WAS OPEN AS A WHORE’S CROTCH — AND JUST AS TEMPTING!
Something of Harry’s horror receded; he tightened his grip on himself, forced his feverish mind into what he hoped was a defensive stance. But he could almost smell the vampire’s vile breath and feel his stealthy tread in the corridors of his most secret being.
AND STILL YOU ACCUSE ME OF STENCHES! the invader laughed. WHAT WAS IT YOU LIKENED ME TO THE LAST TIME? A DEAD PIG? YOU OF ALL PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW BETTER, FOR I AM UNDEAD…
Suddenly Harry was cool. He had felt stifled but now it was as if someone had thrown open a window to blow out all the cobwebs of his mind. He filled his lungs with the rush of this weird, conjectural ether and felt stronger for it. And from a far more buoyant if mysterious viewpoint, he wondered at the audacity of the vampire that he should feel so safe and secure as to be able to just… just walk in here.
All of these most recent thoughts were guarded, so that Janos took Harry’s silence as an indication of sheer terror. AND SO THIS IS THE MIGHTY NECROSCOPE, said the vampire. AND HOW DOES IT FEEL TO HAVE MY ‘FILTHY LEECH’S MIND’ IN YOUR HEAD, HARRY?
Harry continued to guard his thoughts. It wasn’t difficult; it was like deadspeak, where with a small effort of concentration the dead heard only what he required them to hear. And again he felt a peculiar surge of confidence which was surely well out of place here. For, asleep and dreaming, he couldn’t exert half as much control over his mind as when he was awake. However true that might be, still he sensed that Janos was becoming just a fraction more cautious.
YOU KNOW OF COURSE THAT I CAN BEND YOU TO MY WILL JUST AS I BENT — AND BROKE — THAT FOOL JORDAN? But was Janos stating a fact, or was he asking himself a question?
‘Keep telling yourself that,’ said Harry, without emotion. ‘But remember: you entered of your own free will.’
WHAT? And now there was a ragged, worried edge to Janos’s thoughts. As if for the first time he might be weighing the issues and considering his position here.
And in the back of Harry’s mind, unsuspected by Janos, it was as if he heard Faethor advising him again, as he had in the ruins of his house outside Ploiesti:
Instead of shrinking back from him when you sense him near, seek him out! He would enter your mind? Enter his! He will expect you to be afraid; be bold! He will threaten; brush all such threats aside and strike! But above all else, do not let his evil weaken you. And, finally: There may be more to your mind than even you suspect, Harry…
Janos was beginning to think so too. THIS MIND OF YOURS IS… DIFFERENT FROM THE MINDS OF OTHER MEN. IT WILL GIVE ME GREAT PLEASURE TO EXPLORE IT. AND IT WILL GIVE YOU GREAT PAIN!
‘Well, at least you have the vanity of the Wamphyri,’ said Harry. ‘But what is vanity without the means to match it?’
YOU KNOW US… WELL, said Janos, edgier than ever. PERHAPS TOO WELL.
‘Having second thoughts, my son?’
And again, but angrily: WHAT?!
‘Come now, not so nervous. I speak more as an uncle than a true father. But it’s a fact I do have a son of my own. Except, of course, he is Wamphyri! But see, now I sense your trembling. What, you afraid? How so? For after all you have my measure. Have you not invaded my mind? Where is my resistance? With what may I resist? Here you are inside the castle of my very being. Ah, but there are castles and there are castles — and some are easier to get into than they are to get out of!’ And at last Harry brought the shutters of his mind crashing down.
Janos was confused; this was no mere man; it was as if he talked to… something far greater than a man. In his panic, so the vampire became vicious:
THESE PUNY BARRIERS YOU HAVE ERECTED… I AM SURROUNDED BY DOORS. BUT I HAVE THE STRENGTH TO BEAT THEM ALL DOWN, INDEED TO TEAR THEM FROM THEIR HINGES!
Harry heard him, but he also heard this:
When he yawns his great jaws at you, go in through them, for he’s softer on the inside!
‘Beat them all down, then,’ he answered. ‘Tear them from their hinges — if you dare!’
Janos dared. He ran through Harry’s mind shattering every barrier the Necroscope could put in his way, tearing down the shutters and screens on his Innermost Being. All Harry’s past was there, his loves and hates, his hopes and aspirations, and all trampled under as the vampire marauded through previously secret corridors of id. In any one of these places the monster might pause a while, play, cause Harry to laugh, cry, scream — or die. But realizing now that indeed he had Harry’s measure, he didn’t pause but rampaged. And:
WHAT? WHAT? he finally laughed, as he came to a place more heavily fortified than all the rest put together. WHY, IT CAN ONLY BE THE VERY TREASURE HOUSE! AND WHAT MARVELLOUS SECRETS ARE STORED HERE, HARRY KEOGH? ARE THESE THE VAULTS OF YOUR TALENTS?
And before Harry could answer — if he would answer — Janos had wrenched two of the doors open.
Beyond one of them was the ultimate NOTHING, so that in a single moment Janos found himself teetering on the threshold of the Möbius Continuum. And behind the other… was Faethor Ferenczy, crouching there where he directed Harry’s game, and now inspired Janos’s uttermost terror!
The invader reared back — from Faethor, who had now emerged more fully from his hiding place and was frantically trying to push him through the doorway to eternity, and from the Möbius Continuum both — and grunted his shock, astonishment and total disbelief. For within a mainly human identity he had stumbled across not only an Unknowable and terrifying concept, but also the entirely monstrous and alien mind of his own long-dead father!
Terror galvanized him: he tore himself free from Faethor, gasped a stream of semi-coherent obscenities at him, and fled. He broke out of Harry’s id, was gone in a moment. He had done no real damage, and the Necroscope guessed that he’d never dare try it again. But -
‘Faethor!’ Harry growled, his mental voice as grim and wrenching as an old chalk on a new blackboard — his own voice now, no longer influenced or guided by the mind of his secret tenant. And again: ‘Faethor!’
There was no answer, except perhaps a far, faint chuckle, like oily bubbles bursting on a lake of pitch. Or perhaps the furtive whir of bat-wings, echoing from the deepest, darkest cave.
‘Oh, you bastard… you liar!’ Harry howled. ‘You’re in here! You have been right from the moment I let you in! But I can find you, throw you out…’
And at last:
No need, my son, came Faethor’s distant, diseased whisper. The first battle is fought and won; the sun rises; I… get… me… gone!
After that: Harry surfaced from his dreams slow and cold, so that the sweat was dry on him by the time he was fully awake and Darcy Clarke came knocking on his door mumbling about breakfast. By then, too, Harry believed he’d worked out how he was going to play the rest of it
At 8:15 Rhodes Town was only just awake, but already Harry was down on a pier in Mandraki harbour to see his friends off. Darcy and Manolis waved several times as their boat pulled out onto the incredible blue millpond of the Aegean, but he didn’t wave back. He simply nodded and watched them out of sight, and silently wished them luck.
Then he drove over to the beach at Kritika and swam for an hour before returning to the hotel and showering. Even after furiously towelling himself dry, and despite the fact that it was at least seventy-five degrees out in the sun, he was still cold. The coldness he felt had nothing to do with the outside temperature. It came from inside.
Harry’s bed had been freshly made; he lay on it with his hands behind his head and thought a while, slowly emptying his mind and letting himself drift…
… Then made a stab at Faethor!
And caught him there in his mind before he could wriggle down out of sight. Faethor, right there in his mind, and the time just a little after 10:30, and a scorching sun standing high in the sky. So much for the sun as a deterrent. Harry should have known: ghosts don’t burn. It might give Faethor a few bad dreams but it couldn’t physically hurt him because there was nothing physical left of him. Any of Harry’s dead friends could have told him that much.
‘You old devil!’ he said, but coldly, for he wasn’t name-calling, just stating a fact. ‘You old bastard, you old liar. So just like Thibor fastened on Dragosani, you’re thinking of latching on to me, eh?’
Thinking of it? Faethor came into the open, and Harry could feel him as close as if he stood right there at his bedside. Fait accompli, Harry. Get used to it.
Harry shook his head and grinned mirthlessly. ‘I will be rid of you,’ he said. ‘Believe me, Faethor, I’ll be rid of you, even if it means getting rid of myself.’
Suicide? Faethor tut-tutted. No, not you, Harry. Why, you are tenacious as the ones you hunt down and destroy! You will not kill yourself while there’s still a chance to kill another one of them.
‘Another one of you, you mean? But you could be wrong, Faethor. Me, I’m only human. I’d die pretty easily. A bullet through my brain, like Trevor Jordan… I wouldn’t even know about it. Believe me, it’s tempting.’
I see no real notion of suicide in your thoughts, Faethor shrugged, so why pretend? Do you think I feel threatened? How can you threaten me, Harry? I’m already dead!
‘But in me you have life, right? Listen and I’ll tell you something: you really don’t know what’s in my thoughts. I can hide them, even from you. It’s deadspeak; that’s how I learned to do it; by keeping back my thoughts from the dead. I did it then so as not to hurt them, but I can just as easily use it the other way.’
For a moment — the merest tick of the clock — Harry felt Faethor wavering. And he nodded knowingly. ‘See? I know what’s on your mind, old devil. But do you know what’s on mine, if I hide it from you… so?’
Deep in the psyche of Harry, the Father of Vampires felt himself surrounded by nothing. It fell on him like a blanket, as if to smother him. It was as if he were back in the earth near Ploiesti, where his evil fats had been rendered down the night Ladislau Giresci took his life.
‘You see,’ Harry told him, letting the light of his thoughts shine in again, ‘I can shut you out.’
Not out, Harry. You can only shut me off. But the moment you relax I’ll be back.
‘Always?’
For a moment Faethor was silent. Then: No, for we made a bargain. And so long as you hold to it, then so shall I. When Janos is no more, then you’ll be rid of me.
‘You swear it?’
Upon my soul! Faethor gurgled like a night-dark swamp, and smiled an immaterial smile.
It was the natural sarcasm of the vampire, but Harry only said: Til hold you to that.’ And his mental voice was cold as the spaces between the stars. ‘Just remember, Faethor, I’ll hold you to it…’
Manolis handled the boat. It had a small cabin and a large engine, and left a wake like low white walls melting back into the blue. Always in sight of land, they had rounded Cape Koumbourno and outpaced the water-skiers off Kritika Beach before Harry had even hit the water there. By 9:00 a.m. they had passed Cape Minas, and with the mainland lying to port were heading for Alimnia. Darcy had thought he might have trouble with his stomach, but the sea was like glass and with the wind in his face… he might easily be enjoying an expensive holiday. That is, if he wasn’t perfectly sure he was heading for horror.
Around 10:00 a pair of dolphins played chicken across the prow of the boat where it sliced the water; by which time they’d passed between the almost barren rocks of Alimnia and Makri, and Halki (which Manolis insisted should be ‘Khalki’, for the chalky shells it was named after) had swum into view.
Fifteen minutes later they were into the harbour and tied up, and Manolis was chatting with a pair of weathered fishermen where they mended their nets. While he made his apparently casual inquiries, Darcy bought a map from a tiny box of a shop right on the waterfront and studied what he could of the island’s layout. There wasn’t a great deal to study.
The island was a big rock something less than eight by four miles, with the long axis lying east to west. Looking west a mile or two, mountain crests stood wild and desolate where the island’s one road of any description wandered apparently aimlessly. And Darcy knew that his and Manolis’s destination lay way up there, in the heights at the end of that road. He didn’t need the map to know it: his talent had been telling him ever since he stepped from the boat to dry land.
Eventually, done with talking to the fishermen, Manolis joined him. ‘No transport,’ he said. ‘It is maybe two miles, then the climbing, and of course we will be carrying our — how do you say — picnic basket? It looks like a long hot walk, my friend, and all of it uphill.’
Darcy looked around. ‘Well, what’s that,’ he said, ‘if not transport?’ A three-wheeled device, clattering like a steam-engine and pulling a four-wheel cart, came clanking out of a narrow street to park in the ‘centre of town’, that being the waterfront with its bars and tavernas.
The driver was a slim, small Greek of about forty-five; he got down from his driver’s seat and went into a grocery store. Darcy and Manolis were waiting for him when he came out. His name was Nikos; he owned a taverna and rooms on a beach across the bottleneck of the promontory behind the town; business was slow right now and he could run them up to the end of the road for a small remuneration. When Manolis mentioned a sum of fifteen hundred drachmae his eyes lit up like lamps, and after he’d collected his fish, groceries, booze and other items for the taverna, then they were off.
Sitting in the back of the cart had to be better than walking — but not much better. On the way Nikos stopped to unload his purchases at the taverna, and to open a couple of bottles of beer for his passengers, and then the journey continued.
After a little while and when he’d adjusted his position against the jolting, Darcy took a swig of his beer and said: ‘What did you find out?’
‘There are two of them,’ Manolis answered. ‘They come down at evening to buy meat — red meat, no fish — and maybe drink a bottle of wine. They stay together, don’t talk much, do their own cooking up at the site… if they cook!’ He shrugged and looked narrow-eyed at Darcy. ‘They work mainly at night; when the wind is in the right direction the villagers occasionally hear them blasting. Nothing big, just small charges to shift the rocks and the rubble. During the day… they are not seen to do too much. They laze around in the caves up there.’
‘What about the tourists?’ Darcy inquired. ‘Wouldn’t they be a nuisance? And how come Lazarides — or Janos — gets away with it? I mean, digging in these ruins? Is your government crazy or something? This is… it’s history!’
Again Manolis’s shrug. ‘The Vrykoulakas apparently has his friends. Anyway, they are not actually digging in the ruins. Beyond the castle where it sits up on the crest, the cliff falls away very steeply. Down there are ledges, and caves. This is wher
e they are digging. The villagers think they are the crazy men. What, treasure up there? Dust and rocks, and that’s all.’
Darcy nodded. ‘But Janos knows better, eh? Let’s face it, if he buried it, he should know where to dig for it!’
Manolis agreed. ‘As for the tourists: there are maybe thirty of them right now. They spend their time in the tavernas, on the beach, lazing around. They are on holiday, right? Some climb up to the castle, but never down the other side. And never at night.’
‘It feels weird,’ said Darcy, after a while.
‘What does?’
‘We’re going up there to kill these things.’
‘Right,’ Manolis answered. ‘But only if it’s necessary. I mean, only if they are things!’
Darcy gave an involuntary shudder and glanced at the long, narrow wicker basket which lay between them. Inside it were spearguns, wooden stakes, Harry Keogh’s crossbow, and a gallon of petrol in a plastic container. ‘Oh, they are,’ he said then, and offered a curt nod. ‘You can believe me, they are…’
Fifteen minutes later Nikos brought his vehicle to a halt in a rising re-entry. To the left, pathways which were little more than goat tracks led steeply up through the ruined streets of an ancient, long-deserted hill town; above the ruins stood a gleaming white monastery, apparently still in use; and higher still, on the almost sheer crown of the mountain itself -
‘ — The castle!’ Manolis breathed.
As Nikos and his wonderful three-wheel workhorse made an awkward turn and went rattling and jolting back down into the valley, Darcy shielded his eyes to gaze up at the ominous walls of the castle, standing guard there as it had through all the long centuries. ‘But… is there a way up?’
‘Yes,’ Manolis nodded. ‘A goat track. Hairpins all the way, but quite safe. According to the fishermen, anyway.’
