by Brian Lumley
Through eyes three-quarters shuttered, Harry scanned the land as it sped by beyond the windows of the car. The roadside en route from Bucharest to Ploiesti looked like a landscape in the aftermath of war. Bulldozers worked in teams in the poisonous blue haze of their rumbling exhausts, erasing small farming communities wholesale to fashion empty, muddy acres in their place; while other machines stood idle or exhausted alongside huge iron diggers with their bucket heads lifted and stretching forward, almost as if watching. And where once there were villages, now there was only earth and rubble and desolation.
“More than ten thousand villages in old Romania,” Harry’s driver, perhaps sensing that he was still awake, told him out of the corner of his mouth. “But old President Nicolae reckons that’s about five thousand too many! What a madman! Why, he’d flatten the very mountains if someone would tell him how to go about it!”
Harry made no answer, continued to nod—but he wondered, And what of Faethor’s place on the outskirts of Ploiesti? Will Ceausescu flatten that, too? Has he perhaps already flattened it?
If so, then how might Harry find it again? The last time he was here he’d come via the Möbius Continuum, homing in on Faethor’s telepathic voice. (Or rather, his necroscopic voice, for it was only the dead Harry could speak to in this way; he wasn’t a true telepath.) Faethor had spoken to him, and Harry had tracked him down. Now was different: he would only recognise Faethor’s place, know it for sure, when he got there. As to its precise location … he knew only that the birds didn’t sing there, and that the trees and bushes and brambles grew no flowers, developed no fruit. For the bees wouldn’t go near them. The place was in itself Faethor’s tombstone, bearing his epitaph which read:
This Creature was Death! His very
existence was a Refutation
of Life;
wherefore he now lies Here,
where Life Itself refuses to
Acknowledge him.
As the taxi passed a signpost stating that Ploiesti lay ten kilometers ahead, Harry shook himself, yawned, and pretended to come more properly awake. He looked at his driver.
“There were some rich old houses once on the outskirts of Ploiesti. The homes of the old aristocracy. Do you know where I mean?”
“Old houses?” The man squinted at him. “Aristocracy?”
“Then the war came and they were bombed,” Harry continued. “Reduced to so much rubble. The authorities never touched the place; it was left as a sort of memorial—until now, anyway.”
“Ah! I know it—or used to. But not on this road, no. On the old road, where it bends. Now tell me quick—is that where you want to go?”
“Yes. Someone I know used to live there.”
“Used to?”
“Still does, as far as I know,” Harry corrected himself.
“Hold on!” said the other, hauling his steering wheel hard right. They bumped off the road onto a cobbled avenue that wound away at a tangent under huge chestnuts.
“It’s along here,” said Harry’s driver. “Another minute and I’d passed it and would need to turn around and come back. Old houses, the old aristocracy, aye. I know it. But you came at the right time. Another year and it’s gone. Your friend, too. They just knock ’em flat, these old places, and whoever lives there moves on or gets knocked down with ’em! Oh, the bulldozers will be here soon enough, wait and see …”
Half a mile down the road and Harry knew that this was it. The shells of old buildings began rising left and right behind the chestnuts, dilapidated places mainly, though a few of the chimneys still smoked. And: “You can drop me here,” he said.
Getting out of the taxi and picking up his holdall, he asked, “How about buses? I mean, if I stay with my friend overnight, how will I go about getting back into town tomorrow morning?”
“Walk back to the main road, toward Bucuresti,” the other told him. “Cross over onto the right and keep walking. Every kilometer or so, there’s a bus stop. You can’t miss ‘em. Except—don’ t go offering dollars! Here, you’ve got some change coming. Banis, my Greek friend. Banis and leu—else people will wonder what’s up!” And waving, he drove off in a cloud of dust.
The rest of it was instinct; Harry just followed his nose; he would soon discover he’d been a mile or so off target, but time and distance were passing quickly enough and he sensed he was walking in the right direction. He saw few signs of humanity: smoke from distant chimney stacks, and an old peasant couple who passed him going in the opposite direction. They looked weary to the bone and pushed a cart piled high with sticks of furniture and personal belongings; without knowing them or their circumstances, still Harry felt sorry for them.
Pretty soon he felt hungry, and remembering a pack of salami sandwiches and a bottle of German beer in his holdall, he left the road through a gate into an ancient cemetery. The graveyard didn’t bother him; on the contrary, he felt at home there.
It was as extensive as it was rundown, that old burial ground; Harry walked through the ranks of leaning, untended, lichen-crusted slabs until he reached the back wall, well away from the road. The old wall was two feet thick but crumbling in places; Harry climbed it where its stones had tumbled into steps and found himself a comfortable place to sit. The sunlight slanted onto him through the trees, reminding him that in just another hour the sun would be down. Before then he must be at Faethor’s place. Still, he wasn’t worried. He felt that he must be pretty close.
Eating his sandwiches (which had kept remarkably well) and draining the sweet lager, he looked out over the sea of leaning slabs. There’d been a time when the occupants of this place wouldn’t have given him a minute’s peace, and when he wouldn’t have expected it. He’d have been among friends here, all of them bursting to tell him what they’d been thinking all these years. And it wouldn’t matter at all that they were Romanian, for deadspeak—like its twin, telepathy—is universal. Harry would have understood them perfectly well, and to a man they’d understand him.
Ah, well … that was then and this was now. And now he was forbidden to speak with them. Except he must find a way to speak to Faethor.
As that name crossed his mind so a cloud passed over the sun and the graveyard fell into shade. Harry shivered and for the first time turned and looked behind him, out of the cemetery. There were empty fields back there, crisscrossed with bramble-grown tracks and paths, where the land was humped in places and spotted with ruins, and the overgrown scars of old craters were still plainly visible. Closer to the main road a half mile away, the ground had been made swampy where the bulldozers had been at work interfering with the natural drainage.
Harry scanned the land with the eye of memory, superimposing the current scene and the scene remembered, and slowly the two pictures merged into one. And he knew that the taxi driver had been right: another year, maybe only a month, and he would be too late. For one of these crumbling piles was surely Faethor’s, and pretty soon the bulldozers would level it, too, into the earth forever.
Harry shivered again, got down from the wall on the other side, and made his way from ruin to ruin, searching for the right one. And as evening turned to twilight he found and knew the place at once, just from its feel. The birds kept their distance, singing muted evening songs in trees and bushes hundreds of yards away, so that they scarcely reached here at all; there were no bees or flying insects and the foliage bore neither flower nor fruit; even the common spiders kept well clear of Faethor’s last place in all the world.It seemed a singular warning, and yet one which Harry must ignore.
The place was not exactly as he remembered it. The absence of adequate drainage had threaded it with small, stagnant streams, where every slightest hollow had become a pool. A veritable swamp, normally it would be alive with mosquitoes, but of course it was not. At least Harry needn’t worry about being bitten while he slept. But that (being bitten) was a thought he could well do without!
In the deepening twilight he took out a sleeping bag from his holdall and made down h
is bed on a grassy hump within low, ivy-clad walls. Before settling, he answered the call of nature behind a crumbling mound of rubble some little way apart and, returning to his place, saw that he wasn’t entirely alone here. At least the small Romanian bats weren’t afraid of this place; they flitted silently overhead, then swept away to do their hunting elsewhere. Perhaps in their way they paid homage to the ancient, evil thing which had died here.
Harry smoked one of his rare cigarettes, then tossed away the stub like a tiny meteorite in the night to sizzle out in a small pool of water. Finally he pulled up the zipper on his sleeping bag and made himself as comfortable as possible, and prepared to face whatever his dreams would conjure …
Harry? The monstrous, gurgling voice was there at once, touching upon his sleeping mind without preamble. So, and it would seem that you have come. It sounded as close and vibrant as if a living person spoke to him, and Harry sensed no small measure of satisfaction in it. But in his dream, try as he may, he couldn’t remember what he was doing here.
Oh, he knew Faethor’s mental voice well enough, but not why the vampire had chosen to seek him out. Unless it was to torment him. And so he kept silent, for the one thing he did remember was that he was forbidden to speak to the dead.
What, all of that again? Faethor was impatient. Now listen to me, Harry Keogh: I didn’t seek you out but the other way around. It is you who visits me here in Romania. And as for being forbidden to speak to me—or to the dead in general—surely that is why you are here, so that I may undo what has been done to you!
“But … if I speak to you”—Harry paused and waited for the pain to strike him down, which it did not—“there’s this pain that comes and—”
And has it come? No, because you are asleep and dreaming. Conscious, you may not converse with me. But you are not conscious. Now tell me, pray, may we get on?
Now Harry remembered: asleep, his deadspeak couldn’t hurt him. Oh yes, he remembered that now—and more than that. “I came … to find out about Janos Ferenczy!”
Indeed, Faethor answered, that is one of the reasons why you are here. But it is not the only one. Before we consider that, however, first answer me this: did you come here of your own free will?
“I’m here out of necessity,” said Harry, “because there are vampires in my world again.”
But did you come as a free man, as you yourself willed it? Or were you compelled by force, cajoled or coerced against your own natural desires?
By now Harry was fully “awake” in his dream and more surely aware of the vampire’s wiles. Moreover, he’d grown as skillful in their word games as the Wamphyri themselves and knew that they were only a form of verbal manoeuvering. “Compelled?” he said. “Well, no one pushed me. Coerced? On the contrary, my friends would have kept me back! But cajoled? Only by you, old devil, only by you.”
By me? Faethor played the innocent. How so? You have a problem and I have the answer. Someone reached inside your head, grabbed up your brains, and tied a knot in them. I can perhaps untie it—if I feel inclined. Which I may not, so long as you create obstacles and make these accusations! So tell me quickly now: how have I cajoled you? In what way?
“The way I understand it,” said Harry, “the word ‘cajole’ has several meanings. To coax or persuade with flattery; to wheedle; to make delusive promises. It is to allure or inveigle so as to derive a point of personal gain. These are the meanings of the word. Ah, but when a vampire cajoles … then the object of the exercise is far less clear. And the consequences frequently dire.”
Hah! Harry sensed Faethor’s exasperation, and his astonishment that a mere human being should attempt to try him with one of his own games! But he also sensed the vampire’s shrug of indifference, and perhaps of finality. And: Well, said Faethor, that says it all! You do not trust me. So be it; your journey is wasted; wake up and get yourself gone! I had thought we were friends, but I was mistaken. In which case … what care I that there are vampires in your world? To hell with your world, and with you, Harry Keogh!
Harry wasn’t about to fall for that one. He was supposed to plead now, for Faethor’s audience. But Faethor would never have called him here just to dismiss him so casually. It was simply the way of vampires, that was all. A ploy to gain the upper hand. But just as some dreams are brilliantly clear and real as life, so this one was developing. Within it, Harry’s wits were grown razor sharp.
“Let’s have it out in the open, Faethor,” he said abruptly. “For it suddenly dawns on me that while we’ve talked now and then, you and I, we’ve never actually met face-to-face. And I feel certain that if I could only see your earnest, honest face, why then, I’d be that much more at ease in your presence—and not need to stay so firm on guard!”
Oh? said the other, as if surprised. And are you still here? But I could swear our conversation was at an end! Or perhaps you didn’t understand me. Then let me make myself plain: GO AWAY!
Harry’s turn to shrug. “Very well. And no great loss. For let’s face it, I could never have relied on anything you said anyway!”
What? Now Faethor was furious. And how many times have I assisted you, Harry Keogh? And how often have I borne you up, when I could—and should—have let you founder?
“We’ve had this conversation before,” said Harry, unperturbed. “Must we play it out again? If my memory serves me well, we agreed in a previous time that former liaisons had been to our ‘mutual’ advantage: neither one of us gained more than the other. So come down off your high horse and tell me truly, why now do you insist on this sinister ritual, that I should come to you of my own free will? And if I admit as much, under what obligation will I place myself, eh?”
Ahhh! sighed Faethor, after a moment. And if only it could have been you, Harry Keogh, instead of blood-crazed Thibor or that scheming, devious lout Janos! If only I had chosen my sons more carefully, eh? Why, such as you and I could have ruled the world together! But … too late now, for Thibor got my egg and Janos was my bloodson. And now there’s neither spark nor spunk left of me to form another.
“If I thought for a moment there was, Faethor”—and even dreaming Harry shivered—“then believe me I wouldn’t be here!”
But you are here, and so I beg of you, observe the formalities, that ancient “ritual” of which you speak so harshly and suspiciously.
“So now you beg of me,” said Harry, “and still I ask myself: what’s in it for you?”
Aye, and we’ve had that conversation before, too! Faethor cried. Well then, if I must repeat myself: that bloodspawn of mine—that child of my human side, Janos—walks in the world of men again, and I cannot bear it! When Thibor was desperate to be up and about, who was it came to your aid in keeping him down, eh? I did, for I loathed the dog! And now it’s the turn of Janos. What’s in it for me, you ask? Well, when you destroy him, you might remember to tell him how his father helped you, and even now lies laughing in his grave! That will be profit enough.
“What?” said Harry, speaking (and thinking) slowly and very carefully. “But surely that would be a lie, for nothing at all of you lies in any grave. You burned up in the fire that destroyed your house—didn’t you?”
But you know I did! the other cried. But still I am here, in a manner of speaking, for how else could I talk to you? It is my ghost, my spirit, the echo of a voice long vanished that you hear. It is your talent, your ability to speak with the dead, which in itself should be evidence enough of my extinction!
Harry was silent awhile. He knew that it was tit for tat, this for that, and that he’d get nothing without first giving something. Faethor was eager, indeed insistent, that his rules should apply in any exchange here. And in the end it was plain the vampire would have his way, for Harry’s cause was doomed without him. He thought these things, but yet contrived to hide such thoughts from Faethor.
Ah-ha! And now I see it! the other finally burst out. You are afraid of me, Harry Keogh! Of me, a long-dead thing, burned up and melted away in a holocaust! B
ut why now? What is different now? We are not strangers. This is not the first time we’ve come together for a common cause.
“No,” said Harry, “but it’s certainly the first time I’ve bedded down with you! I’ve been here before, yes, but when I was awake. And other than that, I’ve only ever spoken to you across great distances, again via deadspeak, when there was no possible danger to me. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about vampires, Faethor, it’s that when they seem at their most vulnerable, that’s when they’re most dangerous.”
We’re arguing at odds, getting nowhere, said the vampire, almost despairingly. But for all the “fatigue” he displayed, still Harry guessed that Faethor wouldn’t be moved from his stand in this matter. Which meant there remained only one way to break the deadlock.
“Very well,” he said, “and so one of us must give way. Perhaps I’m a fool, but … yes, I came of my own free will.”
Good! the vampire grunted at once, and Harry could almost sense him smacking his lips. A most wise and agreeable decision. And why not? For if I’m to observe your manners and customs, why should not you observe mine, eh? They loved to win, these creatures, even in so small a thing as a contest of words. Perhaps that was all to the good, for now Faethor might find room to give way in other matters. And as if he had read Harry’s thoughts:
And now we may face each other on equal terms. You desired to speak to me face-to-face? So be it.
Until now the dream had been blank and grey and unyielding, a place without substance except in the exchange of thoughts. But now the grey took on a gently swirling motion and rapidly dissolved down to a thickly misted plain under a slender horned moon. Harry sat on a ruined wall with his feet dangling in the ground mist where it lapped at his ankles; and Faethor, seated upon a heap of rubble, was a dark figure in a shrouding robe, whose hood cast his face in shadows. Only his eyes burned in that hollow darkness, and they were like tiny scarlet lamps.
