Necroscope IV: Deadspeak n-4

by Brian Lumley

  He glanced at the Gypsy beside him and said, ‘An enemy — possibly.’ But then he saw the knife ready in the other’s hand, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

  The other smiled, without humour. The Szgany don’t much care for silent watchers.’

  But Harry wondered: had the knife been for him, if he’d tried to make a run for it? A threat, to bring him to heel? ‘What now?’ he said.

  ‘Watch,’ said the other.

  A Gypsy girl in a bright dress and a shawl crossed the road to the car, and Nikolai Zharov sat up straighter at the wheel. She showed him a basket filled with trinkets, knick-knacks, and spoke to him. But he shook his head. Then he showed her some paper money and in turn spoke to her, questioningly. She took the money, nodded eagerly, pointed through the forest. Zharov frowned, questioned her again. She became more insistent, stamped her foot, pointed again in the direction of Gyula, along the forest road.

  Finally Zharov scowled, nodded, started up his car. He drove off in a cloud of dust. Harry turned to the Gypsy and said: ‘He was an enemy, then. And the girl has sent him off on a wild goose chase?’

  ‘Yes. Now we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘We?’ Harry continued to stare at him.

  The man sheathed his knife. ‘We Travellers,’ he answered. ‘Who else? If you had been awake you could have eaten with us. But — ‘ he shrugged,’ — we saved you a little soup.’

  Another man approached with a bowl and wooden spoon, which he offered to Harry.

  Harry looked at it.

  Don’t! said a deadspeak voice in his head, that of the dead Gypsy king.

  Poison? Harry answered. Your people are trying to kill me?

  No, they desire you to be still for an hour or two. Only drink this, and you will be still!

  And sick?

  No. Perhaps a mild soreness in the head — which a drink of clean water will drive away. But if you drink the soup… then all is lost. Across the border you’ll go, and up into the ageless hills and craggy mountains — which, as you know, belong to the Old Ferenczy!

  But Harry only smiled and grunted his satisfaction. So be it, he said, and drank the soup…

  Nikolai Zharov drove as far as Gyula and midway into the town, then finally paid attention to a small niggling voice in the back of his mind: the one that was telling him, more insistently with each passing moment, that he was a fool! Finally he turned his car around and drove furiously back the way he’d come. If Keogh had gone to Gyula he could check it later. But meanwhile, if the Gypsy girl had been lying…

  The Traveller camp was empty — as though the Gypsies had never been there. Zharov cursed, turned left onto the main road and gunned his engine. And up ahead he saw the first of the caravans passing leisurely through the border checkpoint.

  He arrived in a skidding of tyres, jumped from the car and ran headlong into the one-room, chalet-style building. The border policeman behind his elevated desk picked up his peaked, flat-topped hat and rammed it on his head. He glared at Zharov and the Russian glared back. Beyond the dusty, fly-specked windows, the last caravan was just passing under the raised pole.

  ‘What?’ the Russian yelled. ‘Are you some kind of madman? What are you, Hungarian or Romanian?’

  The other was young, big-bellied, red-faced. A Transylvanian village peasant, he had joined the Securitatea because it had seemed easier than farming. Not much money in it, but at least he could do a bit of bullying now and then. He quite liked bullying, but he wasn’t keen on being bullied.

  ‘Who are you?’ he scowled, his piggy eyes startled.

  ‘Clown!’ Zharov raged. ‘Those Gypsies — do they simply come and go? Isn’t this supposed to be a checkpoint? Does President Ceausescu know that these riff-raff pass across his borders without so much as a by your leave? Get off your fat backside; follow me; a spy is hiding in those caravans!’

  The border policeman’s expression had changed. For all he knew (and despite the other’s harsh foreign accent), Zharov might well be some high-ranking Securitatea official; certainly he acted like one. But what was all this about spies? Flushing an even brighter red, he hurried out from behind his desk, did up a loose button on his sweat-stained blue uniform shirt, nervously fingered the two-day-old stubble on his chin. Zharov led him out of the shack, got back into his car and hurled the passenger-side door open. ‘In!’ he snapped.

  Cramming himself into the small seat, the confused man blusteringly protested: ‘But the Travellers aren’t a problem. No one ever troubles them. Why, they’ve been coming this way for years! They are taking one of their own to bury him. And it can’t be right to interfere with a funeral.’

  ‘Lunatic!’ Zharov put his foot down hard, skidded dangerously close to the rearmost caravan and began to overtake the column. ‘Did you even look to see if they might be up to something? No, of course not! I tell you they have a British spy with them called Harry Keogh. He’s a wanted man in both the USSR and Romania. Well, and now he’s in your country and therefore under your jurisdiction. This could well be a feather in your cap — but only if you follow my instructions to the letter.’

  ‘Yes, I see that,’ the other mumbled, though in fact he saw very little.

  ‘Do you have a weapon?’

  ‘What? Up here? What would I shoot, squirrels?’

  Zharov growled and stamped on his brakes, skidding the car sideways in front of the first horse-drawn caravan. The column at once slowed and began to concertina, and as the dust settled Zharov and the blustering border policeman got out of the car.

  The KGB man pointed at the covered caravans, where scowling Gypsies were even now climbing down onto the road. ‘Search them,’ he ordered.

  ‘But what’s to search?’ said the other, still mystified. ‘They’re caravans. A seat at the front, a door at the back, one room in between. A glance will suffice.’

  ‘Any space which would conceal a man, that’s what you search!’ Zharov snapped.

  ‘But… what does he look like?’ the other threw up his hands.

  ‘Fool!’ Zharov shouted. ‘Ask what he doesn’t look like! He doesn’t look like a fucking Gypsy!’

  The mood of the Travellers was ugly and getting worse as the Russian and his Securitatea aide moved down the line of caravans, yanking open their doors and looking inside. As they approached the last in line, the funeral vehicle, so a group of the Szgany put themselves in their way.

  Zharov snatched out his automatic and waved it at them. ‘Out of the way. If you interfere I won’t hesitate to use this. This is a matter of security, and grave consequences may ensue. Now open this door.’

  The Gypsy who had spoken to Harry Keogh stepped forward. ‘This was our king. We go to bury him. You may not go into this caravan.’

  Zharov stuck the gun up under his jaw. ‘Open up now,’ he snarled, ‘or they’ll be burying two of you!’

  The door was opened; Zharov saw two coffins lying side by side on low trestles where they had been secured to the floor; he climbed the steps and went in. The border policeman and Gypsy spokesman went with him. He pointed to the left-hand coffin, said: ‘That one… open it.’

  ‘You are cursed!’ said the Gypsy. ‘For all your days, which won’t be many, you are cursed.’

  The coffins were of flimsy construction, little more than thin boards, built by the Travellers themselves. Zharov gave his gun to the mortified border policeman, who fully expected the next curse to be directed at him, and took out his bone-handled knife. At the press of a switch eight inches of steel rod with a needle point slid into view. Without pause Zharov raised his arm and drove the tool down and through the timber lid, so that it disappeared to the hilt into the space which would be occupied by the face of whoever lay within.

  Inside the coffin, muffled, someone gasped: ‘Huh — huh — huh!’ And there came a bumping and a scrabbling at the lid.

  The Gypsy’s dark eyes bugged; he crossed himself, stepped back on wobbly legs; likewise the border policeman. But Zharov hadn’t not
iced. Nor had he noticed the high smell, which wasn’t merely garlic. Grinning savagely, he yanked his weapon free and jammed its point under the edge of the lid, wrenching here and there until it was loose. Then he put the bone handle between his teeth, took the lid in both hands and yanked it half-open.

  And from within, someone pushed it the rest of the way… but it wasn’t Harry Keogh!

  Then-

  — Even as the Russian’s eyes stood out in his pallid face, so Vasile Zirra coughed and grunted in his coffin, and reached up a leathery arm to grasp Zharov and lever himself upright!

  ‘God!’ the KGB man choked then. ‘G — G — God!’ His knife fell from his slack jaws into the coffin. The old dead Gypsy king took it up at once and drove it into Zharov’s bulging left eye — all the way in, until it scraped the inside of his skull at the back. That was enough, more than enough.

  Zharov blew froth from his jaws and stepped woodenly back until he met the side of the caravan, then toppled over sideways. Falling, he made a rattling sound in his throat, and, striking the floor, twitched a little. And then he was still.

  But nothing else was still.

  At the front of the column a Gypsy drove Zharov’s car into the ditch at the side of the road. The Securitatea lout was reeling back in the direction of his border post, shouting: ‘It had nothing to do with me — nothing — nothing!’ The Szgany spokesman stepped over Zharov’s body, looked fearfully at his old king lying stiff and dead again in his coffin, crossed himself a second time and manhandled the cover back into place. Then someone shouted, ‘Giddup!’ and the column was off again at the trot.

  Half a mile down the road, where the roadside ditch was deep and grown with brambles and nettles, Nikolai Zharov’s corpse was disposed of. It bounced from caravan to road to ditch, and flopped from view into the greenery…

  Even as Harry had drained the soup in the bowl to its last drop, drug and all, so he’d brought Wellesley’s talent into play and closed his mind off from outside interference. The Gypsy potion had been quick-acting; he hadn’t even remembered being bundled into the funeral caravan and ‘lain to rest’ in the second coffin.

  But his mental isolation had disadvantages, too. For one, the dead could no longer communicate with him. He had of course taken this into account, weighing it against what Vasile Zirra had told him about the short-term effect of the Gypsy drug. And he’d been sure he could spare an hour or two at least. What the old king hadn’t told him was that only a spoonful or two of drugged soup would suffice. In draining the bowl dry, the Necroscope had dosed himself far too liberally.

  Now, slowly coming awake — halfway between the subconscious and conscious worlds — he collapsed Wellesley’s mind-shield and allowed himself to drift amidst murmuring deadspeak background static. Vasile Zirra, lying only inches away from him, was the first to recognize Harry’s resurgence.

  Harry Keogh? the dead old man’s voice was tinged with sadness and not a little frustration. You are a brash young man. The spider sits waiting to entrap you, and you have to throw yourself into his web! Because you were kind to me — and because the dead love you — I jeopardized my own position to warn you off, and you ignored me. So now you pay the penalty.

  At the mention of penalties, Harry began to come faster awake. Even though he hadn’t yet opened his eyes, still he could feel the jolting of the caravan and so knew that he was en route. But how far into his journey?

  You drank all of the soup, Vasile reminded him. Halmagiu is… very close! I know this land well; I sense it; the hour approaches midnight, and the mountains loom even now.

  Harry panicked a little then and woke up with something of a shock — and panicked even more when he discovered himself inside a box which by its shape could only be a coffin! Vasile Zirra calmed him at once:

  That must be how they brought you across the border. No, it isn’t your grave but merely your refuge — for now. Then he told Harry about Zharov.

  Harry answered aloud, whispering in the confines of the fragile box: ‘You protected me?’

  You have the power, Harry, the other shrugged. So it was partly that, for you, and it was… partly for him.

  ‘For him?’ But Harry knew well enough who he meant. ‘For Janos Ferenczy?’

  When you allowed yourself to be drugged, you placed yourself in his power, in the hands of his people. The Zirras are his people, my son.

  Harry’s answer was bitter, delivered in a tone he rarely if ever used with the dead: ‘Then the Zirras are cowards! In the beginning, long before your time — indeed more than seven long centuries ago — Janos fooled the Zirras. He beguiled them, fascinated them, won them over by use of hypnosis and other powers come down to him from his evil father. He made them love him, but only so that he could use them. Before Janos, the true Wamphyri were always loyal to their Gypsy retainers, and in their turn earned the respect of the Szgany forever. There was a bond between them. But what has Janos given you? Nothing but terror and death. And even dead, still you are afraid of him.’

  Especially dead! came the answer. Don’t you know what he could do to me? He is the phoenix, risen from hell’s flames. Aye, and he could raise me up, too, if he wished it, even from my salts! These old bones, this old flesh, has suffered enough. Many brave sons of the Zirras have gone up into those mountains to appease the Great Boyar; even my own son, Dumitru, gone from us these long years. Cowards? What could we do, who are merely men, against the might of the Wamphyri?

  Harry snorted. ‘He isn’t Wamphyri! Oh, he desires to be, but there’s that of the true vampire essence which escapes him still. What could you do against him? If you had had the heart, you and a band of your men could have gone up to his castle in the mountains, sought him out in his place and ended it there and then. You could have done it ten, twenty, even hundreds of years ago! Even as I must do it now.’

  Not Wamphyri? the other was astonished. But… he is!

  ‘Wrong! He has his own form of necromancy, true — and certainly it’s as cruel a thing as anything the Wamphyri ever used — but it is not the true art. He is a shape-changer, within limits. But can he form himself into an aerofoil and fly? No, he uses an aeroplane. He is a deceiver, a powerful, dangerous, clever vampire — but he is not Wamphyri.’

  He is what he is, said Vasile, but more thoughtfully now. And whatever he is, he was too strong for me and mine.

  Harry snorted again. ‘Then leave me be. I’ll need to find help elsewhere.’

  Smarting from Harry’s scorn, the old Gypsy king said: Anyway, what do you know of the Wamphyri? What does anyone know of them?

  But Harry ignored him, shut him out, and sent forward his deadspeak thoughts into Halmagiu, to the graveyard there. And from there, even up to the ruined old castle in the heights…

  Black Romanian bats in their dozens flitted overhead, occasionally coming into the gleam of swaying, jolting lamplight where they escorted the jingling column of caravans through the rising, misted Transylvanian countryside. And the same bats flew over the crumbling walls and ruins of Castle Ferenczy.

  Janos was there, a dark silhouette on a bluff overlooking the valley. Like a great bat himself, he sniffed the night and observed with some satisfaction the mist lying like milk in the valleys. The mist was his, as were the bats, as were the Szgany Zirra. And in his way, Janos had communicated with all three. ‘My people have him,’ he said, as if to remind himself. It was a phrase he’d repeated often enough through the afternoon and into the night. He turned to his vampire thralls, Sandra and Ken Layard, and said it yet again: ‘They have the Necroscope and will bring him to me. He is asleep, drugged, which is doubtless why you can’t know his whereabouts or read his mind. For your powers are puny things with severe limitations.’

  But even as Janos spoke so his locator gave a sudden start. ‘Ah!’ Layard gasped. And: There… there he is!’

  Janos grasped his arm, said: ‘Where is he?’

  Layard’s eyes were closed; he was concentrating; his head turned slowly
through an angle directed out over the valley to one which encompassed the mountain’s flank, and finally the mist-concealed village. ‘Close,’ he said. ‘Down there. Close to Halmagiu.’

  Janos’s eyes lit like lamps with their wicks suddenly turned high. He looked at Sandra. ‘Well?’

  She locked on to Layard’s extrasensory current, followed his scan. And: ‘Yes,’ she said, slowly nodding. ‘He is there.’

  ‘And his thoughts?’ Janos was eager. ‘What is the Necroscope thinking? Is it as I suspected? Is he afraid? Ah, he is talented, this one, but what use esoteric talents against muscle which is utterly ruthless? He speaks to the dead, yes, but my Szgany are very much alive!’ And to himself he thought: Aye, he speaks to the dead. Even to my father, who from time to time lodges in his mind! Which means that just as I know the Necroscope, likewise the dog knows me! I cannot relax. This will not be over… until it is over. Perhaps I should have them kill him now, and resurrect him at my leisure. But where would be the glory, the satisfaction, in that? That is not the way, not if I would be Wamphyri! I must be the one to kill him, and then have him up to acknowledge me as his master!

  Sandra clung to Layard’s arm and locked on to Harry’s deadspeak signals… and in the next moment snatched herself back from the locator so as to collide with Janos himself. He grabbed her, steadied her. ‘Well?’

  ‘He… he speaks with the dead!’

  ‘Which dead? Where?’ His wolf’s jaws gaped expectantly.

  ‘In the cemetery in Halmagiu,’ she gasped. ‘And in your castle!’

  ‘Halmagiu?’ The ridges in his convoluted bat’s snout quivered. ‘The villagers have feared me for centuries, even when I was dust in a jar. No satisfaction for him there. And the dead in my castle? They are mainly Zirras.’ He laughed hideously, and perhaps a little nervously. ‘They gave their lives up to me; they will not hearken to him in death; he wastes his time!’

  Sandra, for all her vampire strength, was still shaken. ‘He… he talked to a great many, and they were not Gypsies. They were warriors in their day, almost to a man. I sensed the merest murmur of their dead minds, but each and every one, they burned with their hatred for you!’